#fun fact: this is getting renamed because who knew

[adiodont]

ref for the summer-fall-spring outfits for the kids (and their base skin tones and all that)

i’m working on a larger project right now, (“announcement” coming tomorrow)

so if things are slowing down for a bit that’s why! (but i’ll try my best to have something out weekly for you guys)

[reinarandraw]

Title: The Last Voyage Fandom: Our Flag means Death Pairing: Sam Bellamy / Izzy Hands Rating: E Word Count: 116,820 Tags: Israel Hands-centric, Soft Israel Hands, Gratuitous Smut, Fluff, Light Angst, Romantic Comedy but sexier, Original Character(s),canon characters will make appearance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Edward Teach's Kraken Era 

Izzy Hands thought his life was ending when Blackbeard banished him. With no ship and no captain to serve, he was ready to just drink his misery away. Then he met with Sam Bellamy who offered him a chance to sail with The Last Voyage as his first mate.

Hello tumblr! May I offer you a novel length Bellhands I wrote since October? It’s a romcom with smut, so it’s basically a smutty pirate novel. I have tons of fun writing this one. I’m a bit sad that it’s done, but it’s done!

Thank you for those who have read it! Below is some details from the fic so there’ll be spoiler! This my commentary and fun facts about this fic so if you want to read it, do click read more

This fic ending changed so much compared to the ending I wrote in my initial plan. I didn’t plan to write Ed this dark and I def had a plan to make Stede more stubborn and idiotic. I honestly didn’t know why Edward became darker and darker the more he showed up in the stories. I’m still conflicted with Stede’s ending because he became this tragic man whose crime was falling in love with the wrong man at the wrong time. I’m using Flashlight Method when I write so that’s why I always end up in strange plot points.

My original plan is to have Sam rescued Izzy at the end of chapter 9 then he signalled Hornigold to catch Ed and Stede. Izzy was furious when he knew that and in chapter 10, Izzy and QAR would try to save Ed and Stede. This plan no longer work because Ed and also Sam became darker than my original plan :’)

I was planning to include a Treassure Hunter scene to mirror the canon tv show. Sam’s real life collegue Olivier Levasseur was infamous for levig this cryptic message about the whereabout of his treasure. I was planning for Izzy and Sam to find that treasure together. I got a headache planning a treasure hunting

I told @laughingandcryingwhilewriting that I wanted to write a sensual bathing scene. I didn’t get a chance to write one :’)

I implied that Paul was struggling with suicial thought when he was young. That’s why he wore a handkerchief on his left wrist. He kept touching his left wrist when he told Izzy about Maria.

That’s also why Sam didn’t tell Paul about his depression and suicidal thought because he knew Paul was struggling with that issue. Bellhands shippers, we should exploit Sam’s survivor’s guilt in our fic because it’s delicious.

I’d like to think Bones was so self indulgent because if he didn’t focus on himself, he would start thinking about others because he was very emphatetic and it burned him out. He was your burnout health care worker. He was actually stressed 24/7. Dirk and Izzy would help him with his mental health.

Beasley was a bit of blank card for me. I just wanted to make him super chaotic but super competent. He was also super random, which was fun to write. He’s also super into music, which I thought would be funny but it worked out.

Dirk was your typical grandpa who like to give your advice. I really didn’t know why Dutch became such an important language in this fic. I blamed Dirk.

Peddle is my baby. He’s from the same ethnicity as I am. The blessing he gave Izzy at Chapter 10 is actually a prayer for newly wed in my enthnicity language :D

I renamed Queen Anne’s Revenge to New Concord because QAR’s name was La Concorde. I thought I was being clever.

Sam making a deal with Badminton and Rogers is supposed to mimic what Izzy did in canon. Again, I thought I was being clever.

I made a mistake of googling Woodes Rogers and found Rogers in Black Sail. I am in love. That’s why Rogers appears in the beginning of chapter 10

I had an idea of making a sequel to this fic. Rogers didn’t excute Edward, but instead he hired Edward as a pirate hunter so he could sicc Edward at Sam. He knew Sam was a pirate and he knew if he made a move against Sam, he would be fucked. The Sequel would delve more in political situation in The Bahamas and war prep against Rogers. I won’t write the sequel though because I want to write my Billionaire and Coffee Shop Manager AU.

The premise of ths fic is Izzy finally healed through the power of love and friendship. Actually Izzy is the one who healed Sam. Of course, I thought I was being clever.

My initial plan for Stede’s ending was too horrible. If you play video game called Dishonored, Sam was going to do the same thing low chaos!Corvo did to Pendleton Twin.

My take on Sam is he’s usually very generous and kind but he became super cruel to those who wronged him. He tortured someone in chapter 3 and he had someone tied to a mast of a sinking ship. I thought he would want to physically hurt Stede and Ed especially with the burn wound on Izzy’s face. Maybe this is just me trying to justify my choice because I lowkey regret what I wrote.

Paul is the aroace friend who gives great love advices. He told Sam not to sleep with Maria and looked what happened next :<

I almost didn’t write the matelotage. I’m glad I wrote it.

Most of the songs in my LV Playlist are sung by Home Free because my face and voice claim for Sam is Tim Foust. 

Please listen to Take Us Home by Alan Doyle. It’s the perfect wedding song for LV Bellhands

Thanks for reading my musings. I just need to let it go. If you have any questions or prompt for Last Voyage Bellhands, do send your question my way!

[clearcloudlesssky]

*sips tea* WHY, HELLO THERE

I am here to inquire about your writing! (I just want to give you an excuse to make a tumblr post about it because you're an amazing writer)

Who's your favorite oc and why?

What two characters do you think have the most interesting dynamic together out of the ones youve written?

What tropes do you use the most?

Do you have any ocs you think youd get along with irl? Any you think you'd hate irl?

ALSO...CAN I MARRY ORPHEUS??? (and eule i love them both)

WHY, HELLO TO YOU AS WELL

thank you for inquiring about my writing!! it means a lot seriously

i am so so sorry i didn’t answer this sooner i literally did not know that there was a inbox until today sobs

well anyhoo questions

1) who’s your favorite oc and why?

my favorite oc at the moment is levine. mostly cause depressed doctor with a missing inventor childhood friend, who disappeared after a morally wrong experiment, but then the subject of that experiment appears at his doorstep and what tf is he supposed to do now.

plus i just like his personality (me saying he’s quiet and hates interacting with people just like me frfr)

ok but on the legitimate side of things

levine tends to portray himself as a misanthrope who dislikes spending time with others, but in reality he uses it as a mask to cover up the fact that he doesn’t actually hate people, rather he ends up caring too much, so he just withdraws.

he pretends to be the first option, but ultimately he’s a bleeding heart disguised as a cynic. yes, he’s bitter and somewhat jaded by certain events, but that doesn’t stop him from feeding the scrawny cat on the side of the road or taking in a child? automaton? person? that was left to him.

plus his relationship with childhood friend aka local crazy woman camille who is his exact opposite is fun to write

2) what two characters do you think have the most interesting dynamic together out of the ones you’ve written?

hmmm out of the characters that i’ve written so far the relationship between yuna and neva is probably the most interesting to me, seconded by marion and cinna.

in yuna/neva’s case it’s the mixture of childhood-friends-turned-reluctant-enemies-but-not-really, and the thing about their vibe that i like is that they just keep making each other worse. they love each other, they adore each other, but they also hate and despise each other, and whenever one falls it’s inevitable that the other follows.

yuna is usually the one to take the first downward plunge, without any hesitation, and she always looks back at neva like “are you coming?” —and neva always looks at her, and something inside her whispers that this is wrong, she shouldn’t be doing this, but another part says yes this feels good, and enjoys the thrill, and it’s that side that wins over like all of the time.

because when it comes down to it yuna just does what she wants in the moment, without much regard for the future or the people around her. maybe a different person could reel her in, or clean up her messes, or tell her hey this is wrong, but that person will never be neva. neva is kinda apathetic to both life and people, she’s just plodding through life. yes, she has a better moral compass than yuna, but she’s not pressed enough to follow through on that bit of conscience within her and stop what they’re doing, so everything usually just spirals and spirals until it explodes.

that was basically them in their teenage years, and when the story starts as reuniting adults, the pattern just. happens again but on a larger scale. i told you they’re my toxic lesbians and i love themmmm

3) what tropes do you use the most?

erm i would say that i use “childhood friends” AKA “knew each other in youth” wayyyy too frequently. also a sucker for the parental figure and traumatized child relationship

4) do you have any ocs you think you’d get along with irl? any you think you’d hate?

i think that i’d get along with eurydice (wow i should probably rename her) mostly because she’s a chill lady, runs a tea shop. i’d like to get a drink from her and just relax. i also think i’d get along with doll but let’s be real, doll gets along with like 99% of the people they meet. they are my sunshine porcelain automaton child. (i coparent with levine.)

erm i would probably dislike hanging around yuna, enough said about that. i kinda want to say marion but i wrote him to be fairly charismatic and i don’t think that i would be immune haha

5) can i you marry orpheus (also eule)

STOP MARRYING PEOPLE’S OCS ASHER >:(((((

you have permission to marry eule. but marion comes as a side piece. this is non-negotiable.

as for orpheus, ask anil lmao

suddenly occurs to me that nobody knows who these people are. oH well maybe i’ll post more later TwT

i wrote this at 2AM coughing so if this is incoherent i sincerely apologize

[awriternamedart]

Akrasia has met its end, so heres a quick FAQ with a few questions you might have about it !! (Minor spoilers if you havent finished the ficc below the break!)

What does Akrasia mean, and why did you name the fic that?

Akrasia - The state of mind in which someone acts against their better judgment through weakness of will.

I came across the word while doomscrolling pinterest while I was writing Akrasia. Fun fact, the original name for Akrasia was actually Ice Shards, Mask Fragments. But Akrasia as a word stuck with me, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the word really suited Sampo in the fic, and his constant back and forth with himself over his feelings for Gepard. So yeah, I renamed the fic.

Was Akrasia ever going to have a happy ending?

Nope. From the very beginning, Akrasia was meant to have an ambigious/bitter ending. It felt fitting, to me at least, because of Sampos nature, and the whole angle I took with his character.

You can actually find various hints about the ending throughout the fic, mostly in Sampos dialog and thoughts. I tried (key word tried) to write him with a flighty sort of air around him, a kinda sense of doom from the start. Sampo knew what would have to happen the moment it started.

What happened after Akrasia?

Up to intepretation! Personally, I think Gepard didnt end up joining the Astral Express, instead asking them to just keep him up to date if they ran into Sampo, up until the time the epilogue happens. Reverse Serval situation, because he is honorbound and Gepard is a military man at heart. He knows where his duty lies. But like I said, its really up to you guys and what you wanna think happened.

WHERE IS LYNX ?!

So I started writing Akrasia the month of Star Rails release, (MAY 2023 TF?!), before we knew anything about Lynx. Because I didnt want to mischaracterize her, I ended up just not writing her explicitly

Will there be any more Akrasia fics?

Yes, actually! I made an Akrasia series on Ao3 for a reason. Im planning on doing a few DanCae shots to compliment the Starch7th ones already there, as well as a few side stories for the GePo/SamPard moments that were in passing in the main story. Things like missing scenes, more sexier times, and elaboration into characters I didnt really get to explore in the base story. But Akrasia itself is done and dusted. All fics pertaining to its small lil universe will be under different names.

How old is everyone in Akrasia?

I wrote and percieved Gepard and Sampo to be in their early 30s, maybe extremely late 20s. Seele and Bronya are mid 20s, Serval is mid 30s and Natasha is late 30s early 40s. As for the Trailblazers, well we know Dan Heng is probably far older then we think, Caelus and Stelle are.. weird, and March cant fucking remember. So I wrote them all witu the idea of mentally mid 20s.

Why are Stelle and Caelus in Akrasia?

cause I wanted them to be. Like, genuinely I just didnt want to choose and I wanted both Starch and DanCae so yeah. I just said their both here.

If you want the internal lore reason, the Stelleron was unstable enough that it ended up needing another vessel to contain all of its power. So Stelle and Caelus are just really weird twins, basically. They share a level of physical connection outside of looks as well, (ie, the matching scars from cocolia) but only to extreme , permanent damage. They also trade off who uses the lance and the baseball bat at their leisure.

Why are there some plot inconsistencies ?? (they bug me the author alot)

because its fanfiction /j thats not my excuse

Nah theres actually a reason for it. Akrasia originally was written to be aroind 10k words long, and clearly thats not what fucking happened.

So i ended up going back and editting alot of scenes, removing one scene entirely that actually was pretty important and i tried to make sure i caught every error but- well yeah i missed some.

If your curious about said scene, well- Remember the drunk Sampo scene? Yeah originally they had a drunk hook up and that was the main catalyst for the story. I ended up completely scrapping the scene and changing it around as it became more of a slowburn and the scene felt more and more out of place with the story i wanted to tell.

Hell in the original manuscript for the fic they never even got together, so theres that -

Will there be a sequel to Akrasia?

maybe? Im not planning to have one but the possibility is there, though im not sure what it would entale. For now, just indulge yourself in the side stories.

Do you allow fanwork ?

hell yeah mate, and this goes for anything I post on ao3. your more then welcome to draw or write stuff based on what Ive made, to take inspiration from the ideas Ive had. Writing, alt ending, art, hell playlists if you want(strangers by kenya grace is my assigned akrasia song btw). As long as you aint takin it and claimin it as yours.

[robbybirdy]

7. Oatmeal dump cookies

Hello, Every Birdie. Today we are going to be making some Oatmeal Drop Cookies. This recipe is honestly really simple and easy to follow. And it can be edited so that you can add other things. I added Strawberries, Chocolate Chips, and a little bit of leftover frosting, from the red velvet cake. 

The recipe that we are going to be using is the one that is on the container of Equate’s (Walmarts brand) of old-fashioned oatmeal. Yes, you could use quick oats. But it just doesn’t have the same taste. 

The recipe and the description will be down below. 

The ingredients that you will need for this recipe are:

Butter or Margarine

Sugar 

Brown Sugar

Eggs

Milk

Vanilla

Flour

Baking soda

Salt

Oats

Chocolate chips 

Strawberries

After you get all of your ingredients together you are going to preheat your oven to 375℉. 

You are going to cream together your butter and your sugars. The recipe calls for 1 cup of each, brown and white sugar. But because I was using some of my cream cheese frosting that I made with the cake, I only added about ½ cup of each. Because I knew that the cookies would have been too sweet. 

After about 2 minutes of beating the butter and sugar mixture, you are going to add in your eggs, milk, and vanilla. 

In a separate bowl, mix together your dry ingredients. This includes your flour, baking soda, and salt. 

Combine this with the sugar mixture. Once it is almost all incorporated, you are going to add your other ingredients. Such as your chocolate chips and your strawberries. 

If you have made cookies before in the past, you know what cookie dough is supposed to look like. It is somewhere in between soft and hard. You want your cookie dough to be soft, not dropping off the spoon. You want it to be firm enough so it can be rounded by hand if needed. 

The first batch was on the soft/ drippy side. And I knew that these cookies weren’t going to be cookies. Rather they came out to be crunchy granola. Still edible and my siblings told me that they were good. They are the types of people who would tell me if the cookie or the food was inedible but in a nice way. 

Added a little bit more flour to the mixture, and bake it for the same amount of time. It didn’t come out like crunchy granola this time. It came out really well. 

I was so emotionally drained after I made these cookies. They tasted really good. One thing you have to teach yourself when you are baking is that it is a science. That not everything is going to work how you think it will work. Because there are going to be multiple different factors that you can not change. 

I hope that you liked this recipe. If you ever have a “fail” in baking that doesn’t mean that you are a failure. It means that you are in fact learning. Just have fun with it! The recipe will be in the description down below. Feel free to check it out. See you in the next recipe. Thank you.

[reaperbabegaming]

BELLE AUTOMATA CHRONICLE 1 - GAME REVIEW

Reviews can contain a few spoilers. Heavy, in-depth spoilers will have a warning.

Dev Team - Jellyfish Parade Romance Routes - 2 (GxB) Rating - Teen Available On - Itch.io and Steam Price - $19.99

Overall Rating 5/5

*This review is solely based on Chronicle 1

SUMMARY (RETRIEVED FROM ITCH.IO)

Aureve is an android, content with a life of weaving silk tapestries alongside her master--but when he dies, his family sells her off due to her being a rogue: a self-aware android.

Thrown into a new home of refuge for rogues, the newly freed Aureve must find her place amongst them and answer the question once and for all: how does one weave a new identity when the strings to the old have been cut?

Inspired by lore from the likes of Cupid and Psyche, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio and other beloved tales, Belle Automata is the journey of an android reinventing herself. Join Aureve and the others as they forge their own paths dealing with love, self-acceptance, and grief for a life left behind.

REAPER REVIEW

I remember backing the first Kickstarter for Chronicle 1, knowing then and there that it was going to be a good game…and I was not disappointed! 

Fun fact: Belle Automata was the first game I ever backed and it’s all been downhill for my wallet from there.

I was immediately pulled in by the art, not only of the Love Interests (LIs) but also by the Main Character (MC) herself, Aureve, whom you can rename but I loved it so much that I left it (plus if you don’t change it the voice lines will say her name). Then add on the idea of rogue androids and finding your new self when you’ve lost everything you ever knew, this story became personal. I was there to help Aureve find the best her that she could be. 

But what’s an otome without the LIs? 

CAST

Romances for Chronicle 1

The Nightmare Prince (He/Him) - If scary name then why so adorable? My obligatory protecc character.

Victor (He/Him) - What can I say? I like an android with a hard exterior but soft heart.

Others/Future Romances

Zaffre (He/Him) - The flamboyant best friend (for this run), but is there more behind his smile?

Diego (He/Him) - Sweet, gentle, quiet Diego…he knows all.

Roman (He/Him) - The big bro that everyone lowkey wishes they had.

Klaus (He/Him) - A great doctor…if not a little scatterbrained at times.

One thing I enjoyed about Belle Automata was how it is being broken into Chronicles, so while we are introduced to all of the potential LIs in this chronicle (C1), we can’t romance them until later. I like this approach because it allows me to pick between 2 romances rather than 6 and I can love them in their own stories. This also allows the supporting cast to play different roles based on who you’re romancing. 

For example, in my Victor playthrough, I became very close friends with Zaffre and the occasional companionship with the Nightmare Prince and Diego, while Roman and Klaus interacted with me in some pivotal moments. I was able to appreciate every character as they were rather than potential romances, something I think I miss when all romances are available in games. This also made me want to romance Zaffre in Chronicle 2 even though I had no inclination to do so beforehand. 

It’s also clear how much effort the dev team put into this game when it comes to sensitive topics that the characters face, as well as making a game with a full POC cast with various skin tones. These things are very important to the team and that shines through in the game.

*Heavy spoilers ahead*

Now, I don’t know how I missed this but there are in fact 6 possible endings, and oh man was I in shambles upon getting the neutral ending. Although looking back it was still quite sweet and could still lead to a sweet ending between the two…BUT I WANTED THE KISS! 

There are about 14 decisions after you enter the romance route and I guess I made 1 too many incorrect choices. I’m not sure what the range of correct answers you need to get for each ending but a lovely community member posted a guide on Steam which I will link here (which I followed after getting my fated ending because I love doing the first runs with no help. No matter how much it hurt my soul). 

*End of heavy spoilers*

To my fellow otome players who like choice indicators or plus/minus systems after your choices to see how you’re doing…this game might annoy you especially with Victor cuz a lot of his responses could be to either or so it felt to me. But don’t let that discourage you cuz again GUIDE. 

OTHER THINGS TO NOTE:

Aureve is the literal best MC I’ve come across and if you don’t love her…I have some questions.

100,000+ words of dialogue.

About 7-10 hours of gameplay.

There’s full voice acting! And I don’t mean pages of Narrator and a few character lines. It is easily 90% character voiced lines.

6 endings possible.

The community comes to the rescue with the Perfect Ending Guides (thank you!!!)

There is currently a Kickstarter going on to fund Chronicle 2 and 3 and you can bet I put my money where my mouth is because I need more of these characters. I mean after romancing Victor or the Nightmare Prince just imagine seeing them as side characters to other romances! You could see multiple different facets of your favorite LI! 

Steam and Itch.io game links :)

Who are you looking forward to romancing?

[voidspacecowboy]

Before we get into the book proper, I want to take a moment to appreciate the absolutely gorgeous map of Tellus. In its very first incarnation, this map was a terrible drawing I did in MS Paint, showing blobs where the countries were and squiggly lines where the storm barriers crossed over. My agent at the time and I agreed that without a visual, the whole concept of storm barriers might get a little confusing — but we also agreed that there was no way we could send off my version of the map with submissions!

So, I reached out to my friend Jade, who is way more artistically talented than I am, and she turned my messy map into something that I could actually present to other people. That version was then seen by the folks at Bloomsbury’s graphic design department, and this final incarnation of the map was born!

Every fantasy book is made 400 times cooler with a map; that’s a fact. And I have so much love for this one — to the point where I am considering getting the compass-on-a-cloud tattooed on my actual body sometime.

The only thing I wish now, in hindsight, is that I’d been a little more… imaginative, with the country names. I was going for something that would put the reader in mind of an existing place in our world, but— well. I was sixteen and a little heavy-handed there. Such is life.

But the map itself is awesome, and I love how the storms barriers are represented throughout! I think it makes things a lot easier to understand.

Anyway, onto the story itself!

There is a whole lot of information crammed into the first two chapters. I remember writing and re-writing a million times, trying to get them punchy and exciting while also filling in enough worldbuilding to show what was going on. At this point in the story, all we’ve got is Catherine’s very biased (and very naive) view of the current political climate, but it’s enough to know that something is suspect. And enough to know that her dad is The Worst.

I was (and in many ways still am) bad at elaborating on characters and descriptions in my initial writing. I have everything in my head, and I forget that unless I have put the words down on the page to do so, the reader is not going to see all that stuff, because it’s in my head. Editing the first two chapters was a real workout for my seventeen year-old self, to breathe life into the surroundings and the characters that weren’t my protagonist. Even now, my first drafts are usually pretty lacking — I tend to just get the story down first, and then have someone else tell me all the parts I forgot to scoop out of my brain and onto paper.

Fun fact; in the original drafts of this, Samuel (the family mecha) was actually called Nicholas, but it was decided that having Nick and Nathaniel in the same scenes would get confusing, so he was renamed.

The mechas were actually one of the first things I thought of when I was initially plotting this story and building the world of Tellus, other than the skyships themselves. And while originally I had this idea as just the one standalone story, once I reached a point where I realised I wanted to tell more stories in the same world, I knew immediately that one of those stories had to be the initial creation of mechas — I knew it was going to be creepy and weird, and I definitely wanted to get it out there. And I did, as a side-plot in The City Bleeds Gold!

There’s actually a few nods to future TCBG stuff in these chapters; another is the Erovan festival mask that Sam wears to cover his gears. At the time I just thought it would be cool to have a fancy masquerade mask on this intricately built mechanical servant, but later on when I was looking for inspiration for TCBG, I thought about that mask and the festival I had claimed existed, and everything just kind of spiralled from there.

So chapter one lets the reader know pretty quickly that Catherine is looking for answers, and chapter two includes some of my favourite early scenes in the book. The scene where Catherine slips away from her father and makes her quick-change in a back alley is actually the scene I would read when I did school visits or event appearances that asked me to read an excerpt — it’s just so much more dynamic than reading the actual first chapter, ending on the lovely little cliffhanger of Catherine being on her own for the first time ever. I would stop on the line ‘She had escaped her father. She was free.’ and nine times out of ten I’d have people begging me to keep going.

The chapter also includes the first ever glimpse of the Stormdancer — the ship that started it all. For those who aren’t aware, I got the initial idea for TBtS when I had a dream that I only half-remembered upon waking, of a girl on the deck of a flying pirate ship. That ship was the Stormdancer, and the rest of the plot came secondary. All I wanted was to tell a story about that ship and that girl; the stuff with the war and the kids and everything else were just the things I had to do to make that story make sense.

So there we are, at the start of our journey, and I’ll see you all tomorrow!

[sixerbookblog]

Book of a Thousand Days

Several times, my sister has recommended I read the book "Book of a Thousand Days," citing it as one of the best journal entry books she has ever read. I have not read that many journal entry books, but I still read it as she got it for me. Took me long enough to get to it though. About three years.

This isn't going to be a full review, but I will go over some things like the characters and scenes that I can recall that I particularly enjoyed. As well as a little bit on the fantasy aspects of the book.

Dashti was a very good protagonist, even though her change was minimal. We can see her, over time, fall in love with Khan Tigus, but she keeps the fact that she is a stubborn character who respects her elders and the ancestors to a fault. She berates herself whenever she has bad thoughts about Lady Saren and Lord Khaser at first or romantic thoughts about Khan Tigus. One scene that really stood out to me with those thoughts is when she got "My Lord" the cat, and how she proclaimed she was in love. I thought it was very clever to kind of throw off the reader and have the fact that Dashti is stubborn to guard her feelings. Another one scene I really liked with her was the scene with her splashing Lord Khaser with the water from their tub. Very comedic in between the two near tragedies that occur. And one scene that my sister really hyped up (for good reason) was Dashti's trick of Lord Khaser's army. With everything we knew about nudity in the continent and its lore, along with how sacred the nude body is, it was an incredible scene. Mirroring what Khaser had done to Lady Saren and calling him out was a very powerful scene. And I thought it was great that Dashti still recalled letting her fear take over during parts of it because she is terrified. It's a good character moment instead of just being "girlboss is girlbossing it up."

Lady Saren, as a deuteragonist is a welcome one. While perhaps written to get on the reader's nerves and serve as the one who makes Dashti question the creation of gentry by ancestors and seeing them as people instead, her moments of vulnerability are fantastic. Even the scenes which were "annoying" in most aspects, such as her refusal to bathe, go outside, or reveal herself to Tigus made me feel deeply for her. I really liked Lady Saren's character as she slowly grew. In a way that made sense. She only had Dashti around the tower, but Dashti was busying herself as a lady's maid. Despite the fact that Lady Saren saw Dashti as her best friend, they were never equals, and never happy as equals. A scene I really liked with Lady Saren was her learning the song of animals, and once she got My Lord, the cat, she was much better. She desperately needed a companion for herself, but not one that was looking at her romantically. Another I really liked was when she begged Dashti to kill her. (I do headcanon Lady Saren as aro/ace!)

Khan Tigus was...fun, he had good conversations and chemistry with Dashti, even though for the most part he thought of her as Lady Saren. And when faced with her songs he was very preoccupied with the fact he had another possible marriage to help boost his army and his focus was on the war. Looking back, I'm only remembering how fondly Dashti liked him, but honestly? I don't think he stuck out to me that much.

Lord Khaser was a great villain and one who confirmed the magic of the world, surprisingly. I do also really like the fact that he was destroyed by his own hubris in many ways. Renaming his country in favor of the Goddess of strength, thus angering the God of tricks... his own power that he used to maim so many others caused his own army to maim him instead... the fact that his use of fear against a twelve year old was the very thing that bit him in the back 7 years later. Fantastic. Love to see Hubris take down the one who had it.

[artificial-ascension]

Original 13 successors

There were 13 people enrolled in the start of the L program. The 13 were picked for their intelligence but also due to knowing L personally from the time he spent as a regular orphan. These are my HCs for them.

A:

His real name is Alejandro Alexander Anderson-Armenta. He's from England but was raised mostly by his mother who was from Spain. His father, despite loving him and his three siblings very much, couldn't be around often due to his job as a sailor. This job would eventually kill him after his ship sank. A's mother died a few months later falling from her lighthouse during a storm. After they were orphaned they A and his siblings were adopted by a kind stranger who actually was a mobster looking to sell them into human trafficing but later decided to keep them after seeing how smart A was. After living with him for a year, A realized he was being played and sook vengeance and the events that followed traumatized him for life. Afterwards he was taken to Wammys House because any kid who could take down a mafia syndicate in one night deserves to be there. His three siblings got to come too. A as a person is cunning yet fair. He prides himself on his strict moral code which includes don't kill people and don't lie. A is incredibly manipulative, usually getting whatever he wants through his whit and charm plus his overall good attitude. The things he wants are simple, A is very hedonistic and power hungry. He wants drugs, money, sex, fancy items, and most importantly power over others. He loves being first place. He loves being the first number one. He is neutral towards detective work but loves the benefits he reaps from it. But of course A was still deeply unwell. Smart and successful yes but truthfully he knew he'd never get to settle down with his success. A was thinking long term, he liked drinking and sleeping around and wasting all his money on new fancy jewelry but when he was 60 would he still want that? Probably not. Plus, A loved the younger kids. He was a terrible role model but he loved them greatly and didn't want them to go through what he did and needed to do something that would shake Wammys House so much it changed how the operated and nothing do do that better than a gool ole fashion suicide.

Other fun facts about A include:

He is transmasc. He has been since he was very young. He one day decided to be a girl again when he was nine and couldn't make it through the day so he's fairly certain little kid him was right on the gender. His parents didn't care and just went with it. They personally renamed him from Alejandra to the very creative new name Alejandro

If A had to choose a name for himself it'd be Axle because it sounds cool

His alias was Auxiliary, and while he found it incredibly insulting it was better than Alternative or something. Definitely better than Backup

A had other aliases he went by. Alan Philips Grant was the name he used to apply to colleges and Anonymity was his detective name for when he wanted to be unconnected to L

A and B are dating and are equally terrible for different reasons

A is goth. But he is often too lazy to dress the way so no one can often tell

Aside from typical gothic music A also likes rap

He doesn't actually care fordetective work. He mostly solved organized crimes cases (his roots of course) but his true passion was marine biology

He and L used to be rivals before they were friends. A is a year and two months younger than L

B

B is from Japan. His legal name is Beyond Birthday but before that it was Koete Tanjobi. When he moved to England, he translated his name directly into English instead of giving himself a normal name. B is part shinigami, his mom being part of some weird shinigami cult. B inherited the eyes from both his parents as they are a recesive trait. His stand in dad died in a robbery and B wasn't to torn up about it, as he was very young and did not really understand death however. His mom died in a train wreck and Beyond was with her at the time. He probably would have died too if not for his shinigami heritage. His shinigami dad is still alive but stuck on earth because his notebook is stuck on earth and no one has bothered to pick it up and give it to him (someone please help him) That’s effectively his punishment for making his horrid child. After his parents died Beyond went and lived with his uncle who eventually sent him to Wammys House as his health was failing and Wammy was a friend of his. Beyond was very shy as a child but eventually was corrupted by A and puberty which made him something of a devious ass. He actually did like detective work but never really managed to surpass A which he was fine with because he liked A alot and seeing him happy made second place much more bearable. In due time he'd gain something of an obsession with beating the real number one which was L obviously on a personal level. After A's death B left for LA where he'd get into some high jinx and several years later would commit LABB.

Other fun facts include:

He can see shinigami and the rules for transferring death note ownership don't apply to him. He can freely pick them up and give them away and not suffer memory loss

B has a medical degree and is a certified forensic tech. He really loves the dead body part of investigations. Not for any weird reason he just likes human anatomy

B gains no overt satisfaction from killing people. He doesn't really have violent urges but he has nothing telling him he shouldn't kill someone. He views a life as the ultimate tool a person has in their journey of existence. Giving it up is something you can only do once so you have to make it count and taking a life to him is just as severe. He just thinks beating L is so important is justifies sacrificing four lives

The rest under the cut.

X

A's older brother, Xavier, and the number 9 of gen 2. Their backstory is similar, only X is unaware that A was the cause of the mafia collapse all those years ago because A never told anyone. He's much less cruel than his brother and alot more straight edged. He likes similar things but he's alot less hardcore about them. He follows orders very well, probably because A always told him what to do as A was the smarter of the two. X generalized his cases, but wasn't much for solving them, which is why he was number 9 dispite being similarly intelligent as his brother. He eventually went on to join the British navy as he came from a well recognized military family and his Wammys connections gave him more free reign than he otherwise would have had. He probably has the most fulfilling Wammys kid life, other than his dead brother which never got over

Fun X facts:

His name is pronounced the Spanish way therfore he sounds more like an H than an X

His alias was Xenon, because there aren't alot of good X names around

He and A used to bully other kids for fun when they were little. X was the muscle, A was the reason they never got caught

He's older than A by three years and has a lot more experience with the real world being one of the only Wammys kids to ever go to public school at some point in their life

They have a photographic memory and remember everything from A's birth onwards

Y

Gen 2s number one. She's from South Korea and her name is Yujin Jin and she hates the repeating sound. Y was more of a peace keeper, being one of the older kids she tried to keep the other L clones civil but always failed. Her parents actually went missing and were never found. There's absolutely no idea where they went but there's strong evidence that they abandoned her to start a new life elsewhere. After she was abandoned she went to an orphanage and was eventually transferred to Wammy's for her brilliance. She was the only other Wammys kid to live a decent life, returning to South Korea as an adult to be a college professor

Fun Y facts:

Her alias was Yin

She was the third oldest of the original successors

She specialized in cold cases and always considered trying to solve her parents case but was too afraid of what she'd learn to do it

She teaches history

Z

Gen 2s number three. He name is Zoe Duval and she was from France. Her parents we arrested for something she is still unaware of. She is a bit afraid to see it because she's certain it was bad. She's very much a more carefree and cool person though somewhat of a loose cannon and overall goofball. She's similar to T in alot of ways and they're good friends but she's close with everyone.

F

Lowest of the originals on the rankings. Not out of stupidity but out of sheer laziness. F is a serious drug addict, though most people can't tell. He's very put together and organized. He sells most of the drugs in Wammys and has gained the reputation as a fun sucker as he plays closer to the rules and generally has the idea of a good time as a calm time. His parents were shot and killed in a robbery. He went though foster care for a while and managed to loose an additional four sets of families before eventually ending up in Wammys House. F unfortunately dies in the field, and is the only other Wammys kid to die in the same place by the same method as their parents (A being the other) For F, he was on a mission in his home country of Taiwan when he was shot.

Fun F facts:

His real name is Feng Lao and his ailias was Ferrum. He also got called Fang alot which he somewhat hated mostly because he didn't like his name being butchered to much. It did somewhat end up becoming his drug dealer name. He has another detective name he rarely uses, which is Fairweather

F barely did detective work. Mostly drug related cases because he was already a drug dealer and already knew how they worked. Plus... he got some good plugs when he didn't arrest people...

F hates guns and therfore has to get weird with his weapon choice. He's well trained in sticks and other long weapons, his weapon of choice is his trusty lead pipe

He has arcade carpet in his room, glowing stars on his ceiling, neon signs on his walls. He loves bright color and no one ever bothered to see what he did to that poor dorm room... the only person who will room with him is K because they are in love (K hates the decor but loves the man) (F is also Bisexual)

F is a character who actually exists. He was in the beginning ofthe L Change The World movie but not the book (I love obscure Wammys kids so much...)

I roleplay him on Tumblr

J

K

K's parents were good friends of Watari and occasionally taught at Wammys. The orphanage has always felt like a second home to her so she adjusted well.

E

T

H

I

W

[atmiron53]

Skeletal frame Knight in Another World Episode 8

This episode of Skeletal frame Knight in One other World is our own first proper advantages to Chiyome, typically the beastman ninja woman from back in episode 4. Merely put, she's the beastman version of Ariane; her job is to clandestinely rescue kidnapped beastmen that the people want to sell while slaves. Also, such as Ariane, she is usually kind and keen? though unlike the particular dark elf, the girl has yet to get quite as distrustful and disdainful regarding humanity in standard. But what's genuinely interesting about Chiyome is exactly what she teaches us about this particular fantasy world: Arc is not the first person from each of our world to include crossed over. While there have been hints of various other crossovers before (Ariane is from typically the city of? Maple? in the Good? Canada? Forest, after all), this is the first period we certainly have learned regarding another actual individual from our world. six-hundred years before Arc's adventure began, one more man named? Hanzo? helped the oppressed beastmen? teaching these people regarding the way involving the ninja and even renaming them because various famous ninjas from across history. But there's a great interesting hidden part to this. Hanzo's namesake, Hattoi Hanzo lived from 1542 to 1597. Goemon's namesake, Ishikawa Goemon lived from 1558 to 1594. Chiyome's namesake, Mochizuki Chiyome likewise lived close to the same amount of time. Really not hard to do the easy math and observe that these historical figures all lived close to 450 years back. However, the ninja-loving Hanzo, who arrived in the imagination world 600 in years past, already knew about these people and their very own exploits. This suggests that there are usually some timey-wimey shenanigans going on. Either moment moves faster in the fantasy planet or people such as Hanzo and Arc are not only transported across place when they come to the illusion world but moment as well. For many we know, Arch could run across a person from Earth's distant prospect? or ancient history. It opens upward a massive will of worms for potential future reports. Learning about Hanzo also lets people see a change in Arch. Each time Chiyome talks about the woman ninja clan, Arc geeks out. Exactly what is telling about this is that he doesn't even attempt to hold himself back again. Rather than roleplaying the stoic dark night like normal, she has comfortable letting their true feelings out. This shows merely how much he's come to have confidence in Ariane over their particular adventures so significantly. He doesn't worry her abandoning him or her for being unusual or otherwise knowing him. The fact that he feels comfortable geeking out inside front of Chiyome, alternatively, likely provides to do with the sense of familiarity. Since arriving to the fantasy world, Arc provides been a stranger in the strange area. But with Chiyome, he finally has someone who can discuss with him about things he is usually both knowledgeable and even passionate about. Of training course, he'd feel some sort of connection to the woman regardless of the relatively brief time they've put in together (and your ex having a related origin and purpose to Ariane most likely helps as well). All in almost all, this episode is a good introduction to Chiyome using some fun worldbuilding alongside it. I recently hope we find some stuff of which separates Chiyome extra clearly from Ariane as a character going forward. Randomly Shaman King Gogoanime : ? So, Prince Dakares was powering his sister's killing. However , it seems like his help is actually working for his sibling, Prince Sekt. When the aid reported that the killing failed, he has been holding the evidence that it succeeded. (Remember, none regarding people who escaped Arc's wrath saw him or her resurrect the little princess? so all the particular eyewitnesses think she actually is still dead. ) In other words, the aid's target was probably in order to trick Dakares and even get him to be able to go to the? safehouse? where he or she could be assassinated easily at any kind of time. ? It's wonderful to see a new fantasy world that treats teleportation miracle as being the world-changing factor that it must be. ? The meal scene between Arc and Ariane had been cute. She honestly really wants to help him work through his fears and he's available enough to fresh experiences to welcome her help.

? You know, I for some reason doubt that Arc was a major, physically imposing person in our world. He probably only always wished for to attempt out that test of strength clich� he saw inside anime and couldn't help himself. ? Bad Arc, he acquired totally fleeced for your garbage mask plus thought he would look cool. ? Therefore similar magics can compound and go off wild. Well, gowns good to realize. Skeleton Knight inside Another World happens to be streaming on Crunchyroll. Richard is an anime and video clip game journalist using over a ten years of experience residing and working found in Japan. For more of his articles, check out the Twitter and blog.

[razorblade180]

Actor AU 3

The previous one<-

Penny:*dancing on set*

Nora:Someone seems happy.

Penny:🎶First episode I don’t have to wear props! 🎶 This is so liberating!

Nora:You read the script right?

Penny:Just let me vibe!

xxxx

Neo:*hanging off ledge*

Cinder:.....Long live queen. *pushes her off*

Ruby:Yo! Let’s add a lion king character!

Director:No!

xxxx

Ironwood,Broadcasting:.....

Everyone:.....

Ironwood:*leans it closely* You have one hour...or I poison Gotham Harbor.

Yang:Pay up Weiss! I told you he’d say it!

Weiss:Damn it!

Ruby:*laughing hysterically.

xxxx

Adam:*sips tea* Now you’re probably wondering why I’m on set for V8 when I have not scene or relevance. The answer is simple.

Neo:*hits Yang of the edge*

Blake:Yaaaaang-

*faint laughing offset*

Blake.....*snickers* You asshole, I was in the zone!

Adam:I’m just adding to the tension!

Yang:*hanging from harness* You should’ve yelled “Lionized!!!!!”

Adam:Oh that would’ve been great!

Blake:You two are the worst!

xxxx

Right after Cinder stabs Penny

Jaune:Penny!!!! H-Hold on!

Penny:J-Jaune? I don’t...I don’t feel so g-good... hehe, this...*tearing up* this really hurts...

Jaune:*crying* Don’t speak! My semblance, I’ll...I

Penny:No...don’t. No time, but....there’s still something I need you t-to do. Cinder...can’t get the power and the relics. *reaches for blade*

Jaune:W-What?! No, I....I can’t-

Penny:It’s okay Jaune. *smiles* Everything is...gonna be okay.

Jaune:*raising bl-

Director:Cut!

Jaune:Huh?

Penny:Hmm? *sits up* Oh no, did I miss a line?

Director:*points to Cinder*

They turn to see Weiss comforting the the woman with a hug while trying not to laugh at the situation.

Penny:What happened!?

Weiss:She’s crying over the scene!

Penny:What!? *runs over*

Cinder:I am so sorry I ruined take! You were doing so well. Too well! Ugh, god damnit!

Penny:Awww you know I’m fine right? Come here! *hugs her*

Weiss:Cinder fall everyone, the biggest teddy bear around. *wipping eyes*

Jaune:You’re crying too!?

Weiss:I am the second biggest teddy bear around.

xxxx

Jaune:We have to go!!!

Winter:*points at Cinder*....Sleep with one eye open.

Director:Cut! Why!?

Cinder:Hahahaha!

Winter:I couldn’t help myself.

Director:Be angry!

Bloop!

Winter:*glares* The next time I see you I swear, I’ll have your head!

Director:Less angry!

Cinder:That one actually kinda scared me. Haha geez, Winter giving chills!

Bloop!

Winter:Can I curse?

Director:We’re already at the limit before we’d have change ratings.

Winter:Dang it! I just one F bomb!

Director:We’ll put it the gag reel.

Bloop!

Jaune:We need to go!

Winter: Tsk, *points sword* You are going to pay for everything you’ve done! So watch you fucking back...

Director:Happy?

Winter:*grinning* Yeah that felt great!

xxxxx

Bomb starts sliding slowly.

Qrow:*clenches Clover’s pin*

Bomb falls off plan set

.....

Vine and Elm:.....

Harriet:Well...boom! I guess!? For the love of- *face palms*

Qrow:....Uhhh I haha, I think hahaha- hahaha! Can we maybe tilt the plan a little less!? Oh boy! I guess someone should’ve grabbed that.

Harriet:You know what, can we keep this ending!?

Robyn: Rename the whole episode haha. “Adults watch bomb slowly fall”

Vine:Okay but I like how we’re all just waiting for it to stop, and then just tips right over! The moment it started moving I knew it was going way too fast!

Elm:Mission failed everyone. We’ll get em next time.

xxxxx

Interviewer:How do you think fans will react to this finale?

Penny:Well I can’t spoil anything for obvious reasons but I hope it resonates well. It’s fun having my character be around for a finale for once, and with so many other roles she doesn’t get interact with much. It’s been really fun.

Interviewer:Oh yeah? Who’s been best to work with?

Penny:Oooo that’s tough. My cousin, Nora, she’s been fun to interact with this volume. But uhhh I think I’ll give it to Jaune. We don’t have many scenes overall together but...it’s hard explain. I feel like between my character and his, there’s this kinda mutal headspace they have for their friends. If I had to pick a person I would say Jaune would have the ability to open up Penny in a way nobody else could.

Interviewing:Interesting, well I hope you both get more interactions and that this finale debuts well.

Penny:Thank you!

xxxxx

Winter:*dragging Ironwood off*

Emerald:....Wait, I know I do illusions, but how did the Ironwood not hear or feel the wind coming from an airship several feet away? I kicked up dirt and alerted Amber in volume 3.

Director:....Do we have time to rewri- no? Okay... just don’t think about it!

xxxxx

Nora:Someone cut the signal!

Watts: *playing Galaga* Hehehe all according to plan.

Neo:Change the tab! It’s- we see it in camera! Haha!

Watts:*strokes mustache* I know. That’s how genius I am. Cracking codes and high-scores! Muhahaha!

xxxx

Ruby:Fun fact, we have two Hound costumes. One where he’s mainly doglike and the other when he’s beating up people. But I you wonder who’s playing him under all that? *takes mask off*

Cardin:Sup.

Ruby:Forever a bully, even behind the set.

Cardin:Pfft am not.

Penny:You had a laugh tossing me!

Cardin:You don’t count, you’re family!

Penny:Ah!?

xxxxxx

Yang:*holding camera* Pssst!

Ren:*sipping coffee*???

Yang:Ready for our fight in the snow?

Ren:I can’t feel my toes! I’m gonna yell at you and then walk away.

Yang:I’ll mess up so we’ll stay here longer.

Ren:Yang! We can have a real fight in the snow right now!

Yang:Heheh, kidding. Mostly.

xxxxx

Ruby:Blake have you heard of Among Us?

Blake:Wh-what?

Ruby:Among Us. You gotta do tasks without an imposter killing you. I only bring it up because we’re rebooting the power. Someone always dies in electrical.

Blake:Ruby this is real life. Besides this way more Resident Evil, but with no- Tyrant!

Hound:*busts through window*

Ruby:Wny is it always electrical!!!?

xxxxx

Ironwood:*doing shirtless pull-ups*

Ozpin:He’s getting ready for his fight scenes. Trying to look winded but a little bulkier in the moment.

Winter:*watching Ironwood*

Ozpin:*snickering* Winter is trying to get into the mindset of having to a play a character who has to go against all that. The agony of fighting someone you looked at for so long.

Winter:You can call it like it is. I’m gawking a little.

Ozpin:She’s gawking a little.

xxxxx

Hazel:*grabs Salem*

Salem:*squeezing his biceps* Its like my entire torso. You eat a bear for breakfast?

Hazel:Oh my god.

Salem:You know this isn’t the worst way to go out. I had a good run. At least you hold me, unlike Ozma! Why didn’t you hold me like this!?

Hazel:You’re so ridiculous.

xxxxx

Set crew adjusting lighting in manor. All but one stays on.

Oscar and Penny:*waltzing underneath it*

Nora:...I like how on or off camera I personally lose the dating game while another redhead wins.

Ozpin:Which pair you talking about?

Nora:Huh?

Yang and Adam:*cracking jokes*

Nora:This is nonsense! Where’s Jaune!?

Weiss:Food run with Ruby.

Nora:Aaaaaggghhh!

[gukyi]

into the wilderness | pjm

summary: alright, so last summer’s camp was... disastrous. from the murky green showers to the wasps nests, it was all-around a bad time. but none of those things could be quite as catastrophic as the end-of-camp counselor campfire, when you told park jimin that you were in love with him. and if telling him was terrible, then seeing him again this summer, one year after your fruitless confession, just might be the death of you.

{camp counselor!au, unrequited love!au, friends to lovers!au}

pairing: park jimin x female reader genre: angst, fluff, comedy word count: 27k warnings: unrequited love, camp shenanigans, awkwardness, secondhand embarrassment/hurt, ot7 cameos a/n: hello and welcome to the one thing that guyi has wanted to write for literal years now but never go around to! finally i can cross camp counselor au off my list. anyway, it’s been over a year since i wrote for jimin so i hope that this monster 27k fic can make up for that !!! i swear the ending is happy. i swear. i promise.

Something about last summer sucked. 

Maybe it was the record six wasps’ nests you found around the cabin, leaving you with more bee stings than mosquito bites by the end of camp. Maybe it was that weird murky green color of the water in the showers and the sinks that didn’t go away until three weeks in, when you were already positive you had contracted some sort of pond disease from brushing your teeth. Maybe it was the lack of Namjoon, who had an internship and couldn’t come, therefore removing all sense of order and leaving you and the rest of the counselors in a state of chaos.

Or maybe it was the fact that, on the very last night, at the very last counselor campfire, you told Jimin that you loved him. 

Truth be told, you weren’t sure how badly it would go. But telling him was so much easier than keeping it hidden, than letting it drag on and on, this boulder sitting on your chest for the rest of time. You had spent the whole eight weeks of camp rationalizing it to yourself, so much so that by the time the last counselor campfire rolled around, you were convinced that it wouldn’t be that disastrous. 

There was no part of you that thought Jimin would reciprocate your feelings. No part of you that secretly hoped that maybe he felt the same, and that you could end the summer with more money in your bank account and a boyfriend on your arm. You knew he didn’t. Jimin was sweet, and thoughtful, and gentle, which is exactly why you fell in love with him, but he was like that to everyone. You didn’t think that telling him would suddenly make him fall in love with you.

You told him because people like Jimin deserve to know that somebody loves them. 

You told him because you thought that nothing would change. 

What you didn’t really expect to happen was this:

Your marshmallow is burnt beyond recognition, poking off of the edge of a stick like a sad piece of coal rather than a sweet treat. At this point, it’s even darker than the chocolate sitting on the graham cracker in your lap, waiting to be smushed together into the sugar-fest known as a s’more, so eloquently named because you will apparently always want some more. 

“Uh, hello? Earth to Y/N?”

Taehyung’s hand waves furiously in front of your face as he leans forward to make eye contact with you.

“Huh?” You ask, shaking yourself out of your thoughts. Your mind has been awfully cloudy these days, overcast like the weather around here. It’s a wonder you’re able to make your way through. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, an eyebrow raised. “Your marshmallow looks like what happens when I try to make scrambled eggs.”

“Your scrambled eggs look like that?” Seokjin interrupts, pointing accusingly at your charred marshmallow. You’ve seen Taehyung in the kitchen. It’s not that bad, is it? “Next year you should sign up for some of Yoongi’s cooking classes. The six-year-olds can cook better than you.”

“You’d have to pay me way more than the shit they’re giving us to get me to teach Taehyung how to cook,” grumbles Yoongi. 

“I’m fine,” you promise Taehyung as Yoongi and Seokjin launch into a tirade about raising minimum wage. “I just—” You glance at your marshmallow. You don’t even think the fish monster at the bottom of the pond would eat it. And he apparently eats people whose hearts have turned to stone. Like Seokjin, who swears that it had eaten the tip of his pinky finger. “—like my marshmallows really cooked.”

Taehyung looks skeptical but drops the subject nonetheless, turning back around so he can find a different conversation to barge his way into. You’re willing to put money on him finding some way to annoy Jungkook. 

Insecure about your apparent lack of marshmallow-roasting skills, you pull your stick away from the campfire, blowing on it until you decide that you’re willing to risk burning the tips of your fingers. You pluck the marshmallow from the skewer, hissing to yourself as you quickly plop it onto the graham cracker, squishing the whole thing together. 

The marshmallow is so burnt that it barely gives underneath the press of your fingers, bouncing back up like rubber. You frown at your s’more, which clearly should be renamed to something else because nothing about the thing in your hands makes you want some more. 

Next to you, Jimin laughs at your pitiful attempt at a classic campfire treat. 

“You want mine?” He asks with a smile, holding out a flawless s’more, the kind that they make in movies to perpetuate the illusion of perfection. You look up at him and in the light of the fire he glows, like a spark from the flames had created him right then and there, like he had been born with light in his eyes, a halo surrounding his body. 

You wonder if Jimin knows how beautiful he is. How beautiful he has always been, radiating kindness and joy and laughter. He must know, right? It must be impossible for him to notice how everyone falls in love with him. You certainly aren’t an exception. 

He holds out the s’more in his hands, laughing as he looks at you because there must be something endearing about being a shitty s’more maker, and you think, what’s the worst that can happen?

“I’m in love with you.”

The s’more drops to the ground, hitting the grass with a thud. 

Jimin’s eyes meet yours, and for once, they are unreadable. This tragic sort of confusion, like he can’t believe the words you’re saying to him. Like his mind refuses to accept them as true. 

He opens his mouth, but you answer for him. 

“It’s okay,” you assure quickly, reaching a hand out to rest on his own. The touch makes him look away, like your fingers are the flames of the campfire, burning him where they touch his skin. “I—I know you don’t feel the same.”

It’s not a secret. Not to him, and not to you. Jimin purses his lips because he feels guilty for not loving you back. Because he is so good, so kind, that he feels as though he has wronged you because he doesn’t love you the way you love him. Like it’s his fault. 

“Y/N—” He starts, but he does not finish. 

“You…” you interrupt, looking down at your feet. You can’t look at Jimin because looking at him hurts, and you can’t look anywhere else because Jimin is all you think about. All you ever think about. “You don’t have to say anything.”

He speaks, and it’s as if the words don’t belong to him. Don’t belong to anyone. 

“What are we supposed to do?” He asks. 

You shrug, resigning yourself to this. You knew that he wouldn’t feel the same. You didn’t know how terrible he would feel because of it. “Nothing,” you tell him. “I just thought you should know.

He nods, because he knows, and he nods, because he can’t do anything else. 

The fire crackles beside you, s’mores forgotten on the ground as your friends laugh and cheer, distant sounds that echo in your head like white noise. Jimin is all you can think of and right now you’re thinking about what happens next.

“I’m sorry.”

Maybe telling him wasn’t such a good idea after all. 

“Me too.”

Your busted-up sedan revs angrily as you rally up the mountain, shaking your head in an attempt to rid the memories of the campfire from your mind. Unfortunately, the nasty thing about memories is that the more you try to forget them, the more you seem to remember.

You sigh. Something about last summer sucked. 

Nothing about this summer makes you feel like it’ll suck any less.

The good thing about being thirty minutes late is that you’re still thirty minutes earlier than Taehyung, who does not have a single punctual bone in his body. You can count on one hand the amount of instances where he’s actually been on time, all of which are because you and the other counselors conspire to tell him that events are an hour earlier than they actually are just to make sure he doesn’t stroll in an hour late and improperly dressed. 

The bad thing about being thirty minutes late is that everyone besides Taehyung is already here, waiting for you. 

Your sedan crawls to the clearing at the top of the mountain, fighting against gravity and itself as it chugs up the last few feet, coming to a rough stop in the dirt, sunken in from countless tires tracking across it. 

Through your windshield, you can make out two figures with two clipboards, only one of which has something genuinely useful on it. 

“Y/N!” Hoseok cries out excitedly, splaying his arms out as if to hug the entire front of your car only to reveal the near-blank clipboard in his hand. All that’s on it is a neon green Post-it note with a caricature drawing of who you assume to be Yoongi, if the grouchy expression and chef’s hat are anything to go by. There’s no signature or name, but Hoseok’s art skills are on par with those of the campers you work with and Jungkook has a fun and quirky habit of vandalizing all drawable surfaces with pencil sketches of the counselors, so you take a wild guess as to who the artist is. 

You pop the door of your car open and step out into the sticky weather, warm and muggy despite the clouds above. It’s the same as when you step into your bathroom after your two roommates have showered, using up all the hot water and leaving a layer of fog on the mirrors for you to all play hangman on. Only, this steam never goes away. 

“Hoseok!” You cheer, letting the man wrap you up in a sweltering hug, your hands gently patting the top of his back so as not to come in contact with the dampness soaking through his thin cotton t-shirt. You haven’t seen each other for nearly a year, though, so you give in more than you usually would and relax into his hold. “You look good, I like the hair,” you compliment, two fingers coming up to twirl at his bright red locks, deep and vibrant like the cherries you pick. 

“Dyed it just so I could tell the kids I’m a superhero!” Hoseok grins. He’s already heading over to the back of your car to pop the trunk and pull out your duffel bags so that he can park your car in the garage at the other end of the campsite.

“Then who’s the villain?” You call, tossing him your keys.

“I guess that would be me.”

You whip around to find a platinum-blonde Namjoon standing happily before you, looking at least a little bit resigned as he grins at you. His hair is longer this year, like growing it out would somehow compensate for frying it with layer after layer of bleach. And with his silver-white hair and the fact that he is the only counselor any of the kids are genuinely afraid of disobeying, you suppose he would be the antagonist after all. 

“Namjoon, nice to see you again.” You go in for a hug even though Namjoon clearly had no plans on instigating one himself, because someone as hardworking and patient as Namjoon deserves a little platonic affection every one in a while. What, with everyone else constantly conspiring with the campers to oust him every summer. 

The truth is that all of you know that without Namjoon, this camp would be nothing but chaos in its purest form, with the counselors unable to wrangle the kids and the kids using that knowledge to their fullest advantage. Take last year, where everything seemed to go wrong because Namjoon had his stupid internship with a business firm and spent the entire summer drilling finances into his head instead of losing brain cells watching kids eat sand.  

If you had any dignity left you’d blame your rotten confession to Jimin on Namjoon’s absence as well. 

“Nice to see you, too, Y/N,” Namjoon says when you part, checking your name off of the list on his clipboard. “I feel like it’s been ages since I was here.” You can see red marks all over the page, blank only where the name Taehyung is written. 

Some things never change, you suppose. 

“Well, we definitely missed you last year,” You say with a chuckle, trying not to immediately associate your personal misjudgements with the lack of Namjoon, who you can hopefully keep from ever finding out what happened at last year’s end-of-camp counselor campfire. The problem is that Namjoon picks up on social cues and body language like a sociologist, so your only hope is pretending that the campfire never even happened. “Camp was pretty much a mess without you.” In more ways than one.

“Namjoon!” Someone calls. You and him both jerk around to the source of the sound when you see a figure barreling towards the both of you, face obscured in shadow. 

You almost don’t recognize him, with his pitch black hair and thick voice, like he has somehow become a new person in the nine months you’ve gone without seeing him. But the moment he comes into view, you know, and you can’t even pretend to not know, not with the way your heart freezes in place, mid-beat, like the sight of him has turned you to stone. Not with the way that Namjoon is right beside you, and how you don’t think you can bear explaining to him why you and Jimin aren’t as close as you used to be. Not with the way that Jimin looks as beautiful as he always has and always will be, no matter how many summers pass, this timeless portrait, this piece of art that’s come to life. 

There’s a part of you that’s shocked still at seeing him, like you had almost thought that after last summer at least one of you would bail on this shitty summer job, filled with mosquitoes and mud and wifi that only works in the room that doubles as the gymnasium and the mess hall. It’s the same part of you that wants to go back to pretending that nothing ever happened last summer. 

But Jimin is here, in front of you, eyes wide and out of breath and gorgeous, and pretending that last summer never happened is the same as pretending that you never fell in love with him at all.

“The water in the boys’ cabins sinks is green,” he says with a tense smile, making Namjoon nearly smack his clipboard into his forehead. 

“Ugh, seriously?” He asks, and you can’t tell if you’re thankful or hurt that Jimin’s failed to acknowledge you. “Fine,” he scribbles something down on the clipboard, this handwriting scrawl that only he can read, “I’ll figure out what to do with that later. In the meantime, just don’t drink it.”

“Seokjin’s already made lemonade with it, though—”

“Great,” Namjoon says, exasperated as he takes off towards the main cabin, where Seokjin is sitting on the balcony with his feet up on the railing with a glass of suspiciously murky lemonade in his hand, one that he’s offering up to Yoongi with a devilish grin on his face. 

His disappearance leaves only you and Jimin left standing at the entrance, rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet in the hopes that one of you will either leave or spare the other the torture of a conversation. 

“Hey,” Jimin says quietly, trying to meet your eyes. 

You look away, pretending to smack an imaginary mosquito on your arm while an actual one bites your leg. “Hey, yourself.”

“It’s been a while.” The last time we saw each other you told me you loved me. 

“Yeah, it has.” I know.

“How are you doing?” Do you still love me, or was the distance and time enough?

“I’m alright. Same old, same old.” I never stopped. “How are you?” What about you? Did you stop seeing us as just friends?

“Doing well, thanks.” No. You’ll always be just a friend to me. Jimin sighs, looking up at the overcast sky with his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, taking in the scenery before him. He exhales, long and heavy, before turning to you with a soft little smile, the kind of grin that almost makes you feel like forgetting might not be the best thing to do after all. “I just feel like this summer is a fresh start, you know? Like, I feel like there’s something different about being here this year.”

Maybe this summer, you can learn to move on from me, too. Because something’s gotta give. 

“I hope you’re right about that,” you tell him, because being around him hurts and being away from him makes you replay that night over and over, wondering what would have happened if you had just kept your stupid mouth shut. You open your mouth to say something, anything else, anything to break the ice that didn’t used to be there before, cut between the tension that has settled between the two of you, but your tongue is dry and your heart is sore just looking at him. 

Defeated, you walk over to where Hoseok’s left your duffel bags, hiking them onto your shoulders and heading towards the girls’ cabins, ready to end this conversation before it tears you in two. 

Jimin seems to flounder, standing awkwardly for a few moments as he watches you walk towards the cabins, skirting around him a few feet away because brushing by his side seemed too close for comfort. But then he says, “Hey, Y/N?” 

And it makes you stop dead in your tracks, unable to deny him an answer. 

You turn around to look at him, and he offers you a grin. 

“Are we good?”

Your love for me, will it affect our friendship?

You swallow.

It already has. It always has. From the very beginning, loving you was part of our friendship. I don’t know how to be friends with you without it. Even when you didn’t know it, I loved you. In a way, it was easier back then. Telling you was the one thing I shouldn’t have done. 

“Yeah, Jimin,” you tell him. “We’re good.”

The trek to your cabin from the main buildings of the camp is nothing if not familiar. Familiar in the way that the ground curves beneath your feet, leading you up to the top of a small hill where the building sits, looking out over the rest of the clearing. Familiar in how the scent of the woods that surround you fills up your senses, this fresh, airy feeling, like the very oxygen is smothering you. Familiar in how this place reeks of the memories of summers gone by, summers spent beneath the stars and by the campfire. 

Summer memories that make your heart burst with fondness and summer memories that… don’t. 

The fact is that it has always started and ended here. 

When you kick open the door to the cabin, there is only one other occupied bed. It belongs to Hazel, a counselor in her sophomore year in college who joined the crew last year and assumed that the Namjoon-less pandemonium that was camp last summer was just the norm. Hopefully she can take a much-needed break this year now that Namjoon’s back and she’s not the only one fruitlessly trying to cajole the campers into behaving. 

You beeline towards the bunk bed that has been your summer home for the past three years, the one shoved right up against the back right corner, giving you a perfect view of the entire cabin. The downside is that it’s the same corner that spiders seem to prefer as their location of choice for their webs, but better you, a stone-cold college student, than a terrified six-year-old. 

Plopping your duffel bags on top of the mattress, you let out another sigh. You wonder what it is about this summer that is so damn tiring, so exhausting that you can’t help but outwardly exhale every ten seconds, like merely being here is wearing you out, bit by bit. 

You’re looking forward to when the campers arrive tomorrow. Sleeping alone (well, nearly alone) in a cabin feels uncomfortably empty. Plus, you’re hoping that they’ll provide you with some sort of distraction so you don’t have any free time left to spend dwelling on the what-ifs and the should-have-dones. When there’s only a dozen of you, it’s much easier to run into him. 

The moment you collapse on your bed, a messy brown head of hair comes bounding out from the shared bathrooms in the center of the cabin. 

“Y/N!” Hazel cries out, launching herself across the room and into your arms for the tightest hug you’ve had in a long while. 

“Hey, Haze,” you greet in return, offering her a squeeze back. You didn’t often mix in your camp activities, with Hazel in charge of the nature walks and animal conservation activities while you hide in your air-conditioned arts and crafts room, but living together brought upon you a closeness you otherwise don’t share with anyone else. Plus, Hazel keeps a family-sized pack of Oreos and a gigantic jar of smooth peanut butter by her bunk at all times for emergencies. 

“I feel like it’s been so long!” She laments when she finally releases you, looking positively thrilled to be here right now. 

Not long enough, you think to yourself, though you don’t suppose any more time apart from Jimin would make seeing him again any easier. “Yeah, but the year goes by so quickly,” you agree half-heartedly. Too quickly. 

“I’m so excited for this year.” Hazel grins, clapping her hands together. “I have so much planned for all the nature walks and everything. I spent all of last week reading up on edible plants and berries found in this part of the country. I’m gonna teach all of the kids what they can eat in case they get stranded in the forest!”

“Fun,” you say with a hesitant nod. It’s not that you don’t trust Hazel to have done her research, it’s more that, knowing the campers and knowing the counselors, someone’s going to try and get lost in the woods around the camp, eating everything they can. Not to mention the fact that Hazel’s so innocent she’d probably reveal to someone like Seokjin or Jungkook which plants were poisonous without even realizing it. 

Camp last year was a mess, but at least nobody died. 

“Hey, aren’t you excited, too?” She asks, a hand on your shoulder as she notices your reluctance. “Apparently Namjoon’s a great leader so this year isn’t going to be as bad as last year.”

“Last year wasn’t bad just because Namjoon wasn’t here,” you comment vaguely. Hazel doesn’t need to know about all of the drama that goes down between the counselors. Hopefully she can get out of here without being dragged into something by one of you. 

“Well, this year is supposed to be better!” She cheers you on, determined to get you to feel as enthusiastic as she is. “No matter what did or did not happen last summer. Plus, you know that if anything bad happens I always have my secret stash, counselors only.” She winks. 

“Thanks, Haze,” you say, sighing again like it’s your job to be worn out by life. “I think I just need a bit of time to get back into the swing of things.”

“That’s the spirit!” She rallies. “I’m gonna head back to the main camp and see if there’s anything good to drink. I’m thirsty.”

“Stick to soda,” you advise, eyes wide at the thought of her downing anything that Seokjin’s had a sneaky hand in making. 

She doesn’t seem to notice your worry, already bounding towards the door, light on her feet. “I was feeling a Fanta anyway. See you at the camp counselor meeting if I don’t see you around beforehand!” She pulls open the heavy wooden door, half outside when she stops to turn back at you, wagging a finger in the air. “Remember, Y/N, leaves of three, let them be!” 

The door slams shut behind her, creating a cloud of dust in its wake. You watch helplessly as the particles dissipate into the air, as the silence that was once so comforting begins to terrorize you once more. 

You collapse back onto your bunk. If only last summer’s murky green water had poisoned you. Then maybe you’d finally have a good enough excuse for your utter lapse in judgement, and you wouldn’t be sighing so much.

There were no camp counselor meetings last year. There were only haphazard caucuses, irregular get-togethers where no one knew quite what was going on and there were no real announcements to be said, no real orders to be given. You had almost forgotten what it was like to have someone with genuine leadership skills working here. 

The problem last year was not getting everyone into the same room for thirty minutes. It was keeping everyone focused in that same room for thirty minutes, which was essentially impossible because, at your age, submitting to someone of authority is the very last thing you want to do. Especially when the consequences pretty much only amount to having to drink Seokjin’s murky green lemonade.

But like with everything else, Namjoon has, somehow, made the impossible possible. 

“Guys, guys, can we stop drawing on the board, please? I need that,” Namjoon begs as he walks into the room to find Jungkook and Taehyung with chalk in their hands and a chalkboard at their disposal. What they’ve accomplished so far is an expert drawing of Spongebob and Patrick with their faces missing, waiting to be filled in by one of the unlucky people in this room. 

“Okay, so who’s Patrick?” Taehyung asks the audience. 

“Hoseok!” shouts Seokjin.

“You!” shouts Hoseok. 

“Seokjin!” shouts Hazel, too, just because she likes being involved in things. 

Jungkook lets out a cackle at that. “Are you kidding?” He asks. “If anything…” He does a quick sketch on the board, hand flying across it so quickly you’re actually a little bit impressed, “Seokjin would be Plankton.” 

He steps away from the board to reveal a scarily-realistic drawing of Seokjin’s angry face on Plankton’s tiny, antennaed body, making everyone—even Namjoon, who usually tries to keep the roasting between counselors to a minimum—laugh. 

Seokjin scowls, and normally you would feel bad for him always being the butt of Jungkook’s endless jokes, but you can see a half-empty glass of green lemonade by Jungkook’s side, and you decide that he can hold his own just fine. 

“I think you guys would be Spongebob and Patrick,” Jimin pipes up from the back. You freeze, turning your head slightly just to see him sitting on the table pushed up against the wall. You hadn’t even noticed him. Or maybe you had, and your brain just decided to pretend that you hadn’t. 

Nevertheless, hearing his voice doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Jimin’s right,” Jungkook agrees, already beginning to fill in the blank space where Spongebob’s face would normally go with a caricature of his own. “I’d be Spongebob because I have a wider face than you, Tae.”

Taehyung doesn’t object, instead moving his hand to an empty spot on the board. “Yeah. Oh, and Namjoon’s Mr. Krabs, obviously,” Taehyung says, adding his own drawing of Mr. Krabs with Namjoon’s camp get-up on—cargo shorts, a short-sleeved flannel shirt, a baseball cap, and high-tops.

“I would not be—hey, give me that!” Namjoon shouts, indignant, before ripping the chalk from Jungkook’s hands as he cackles wickedly, clearly pleased with himself. Namjoon shoos the both of them away from the board before wiping it with the eraser, which has very obviously not been cleaned since last year, leaving a trail of pale yellow dust in its wake wherever Namjoon drags it across the chalkboard. “Chalkboard for official matters only.” He glares at Jungkook and Taehyung, who high-five each other. 

The chatter soon subsides as Namjoon writes down the meeting to-do list on the board in his same old scratchy handwriting. Namjoon’s one of those people that writes exclusively in capital letters, simply enlarging any letters that actually need to be capitalized. You’re almost one-hundred percent positive it’s to establish written dominance over the rest of the counselors. 

“Okay, first order of business,” Namjoon begins after coughing to get everyone’s attention. “It’s come to my attention that the entire cabin water system is green.”

“Hasn’t it always been—?” Hazel asks, innocent eyes wide in confusion. 

“I called the utilities people and they’re coming tomorrow to fix it, so in the meantime, do not drink the water. Showering and using the bathroom is fine. I would use water bottles for brushing your teeth, though,” Namjoon says, crossing off something on his clipboard as the rest of the counselors murmur in approval. 

“See, this is what happens when Namjoon’s here,” deadpans Yoongi, motioning up to him where he stands at the front of the room. “Shit gets done.”

“Okay, secondly, no swearing in front of the kids,” Namjoon says, adding that onto the board as a final reminder. “The fact that I have to tell you guys this multiple times every year is ridiculous.”

“Fuck you, I can do what I want!” Taehyung shouts, earning a chorus of fuck yeah’s. 

“You guys do know that I have the power to fire you, right?” Namjoon says pointedly, making Taehyung shut his trap. “Okay, moving on. Everyone’s been assigned to the same things that they were assigned to do last year, and if you weren’t here last year, then the year before that.” Namjoon receives some cheers and some groans in response to this, the former mostly from people who work indoors, and the latter mostly from people who don’t. 

“Seriously?” Seokjin whines. “I don’t think Yoongi has stepped foot out of the kitchens in literal years.”

“And I would like to keep it that way, thank you very much!” Yoongi counters. 

“Oh, shut up, at least you get to spend some time indoors teaching all of the kids how to play Hot Cross Buns on their guitars,” Taehyung counters. “I got more mosquito bites than freckles last summer.”

“My students have long advanced from Hot Cross Buns,” Seokjin says proudly and a little bit devilishly. “We’re working on something more technical now.”

“Like what?” Jungkook challenges.

“Okay, continuing…” Namjoon says loudly, eyeing Seokjin suspiciously. “If you’re new, you should have already received notification as to what activities you’re in charge of, but if you’re not sure, come and talk to me.”

“Oh, so Jimin’s still on first aid, then?” Taehyung asks, wiggling his eyebrows. “What do you think Y/N’s gonna do to get herself sent down to his tent? Glue her fingers together? Burn herself with a glue gun?”

“Shut up,” You mumble tensely, embarrassed that somehow you and Jimin’s relationship has turned into a counselor affair. 

Last summer, you had accidentally given yourself a palm full of splinters from the birdhouses that you had the campers paint to bring home with them, and the first aid tent is the only place that has bandages. Jimin was there, as he always is, and the two of you spent the evening plucking out all of the pieces of wood from your hand and patching it up with Band-aids that had Spiderman and Moana on them. Contrary to apparently popular belief, it was not on purpose, even though the hour of hand-holding was rather nice. 

“Or Jimin can just find some excuse to visit Y/N in the arts and crafts room,” Seokjin tacks on unhelpfully. “You know, last summer I don’t think I saw them eat lunch in the counselor room at all. They were always finding secret places in the woods.”

“Maybe we were just busy during lunch?” Jimin suggests, clearly equally uncomfortable. 

“Busy fucking, probably,” Taehyung mutters. 

“It’s none of your business,” you snap, because the last thing you want to be talking about right now is how wonderful your relationship with Jimin used to be, when all that’s left this summer are the burned remnants of it, the ashes of something that could have been. You don’t need a reminder of why you thought that you and Jimin would be alright, of why you thought that telling him wouldn’t be that bad. It was terrible, and now all you can do is pick up the pieces, patch together a friendship whose thread has come loose. 

“Alright, let’s keep going,” Namjoon says, picking up the weirdly tense atmosphere and doing his best to bring the attention back to him and the meeting at hand. “You guys should know that this year, Hoseok is thinking of adding in a counselor dance to the end-of-camp show…”

You look over at Jimin, who immediately turns away when he spots your gaze, making to pick at the rips in his jeans, doing anything and everything he can to avoid eye contact with you, and your shoulders sink. 

Jimin had asked you, “Are we good?”

And you had responded, “Yeah, Jimin, we are.”

And the two of you must have both known that was a lie. 

You turn back to face the front, focusing on how Hazel is rubbing your forearm and not asking questions, and you try to feel a little bit better. 

After the meeting, you and Hazel decide to spend the night holed up in your cabin eating from her Oreo stash instead of eating dinner with everyone else, half because it’s only the first day and already being around all of the other counselors is tiring, and half because you don’t think you can handle seeing Jimin any more today, but not before Namjoon stops you on the way out of the door. 

“Y/N,” he says, making you pause in your tracks. “Can we talk?”

“What about?” You ask, hoping to God that it’s not about everyone thinking you purposely injure yourself just so you can see Jimin at the first aid tent. 

“Just quickly, you and me,” Namjoon says casually, pulling you to the corner of the room, away from any windows so no one can see you two talking. “Did today’s meeting make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” you lie like a liar. “What are you talking about?”

Namjoon’s too observant for his own good, you decide, when he frowns at you, clearly not buying whatever it is you’re trying to sell him. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” he says quietly. “But I know that something happened between you and Jimin.”

You open your mouth to object and tell him that you and Jimin are fine, but Namjoon raises his eyebrows at you, like he’s challenging you to tell him another lie. 

“Well…” you begin, resigning yourself to the truth. “Yeah. Last summer.”

Namjoon purses his lips, nodding in understanding. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“You’re not my mom, Namjoon,” you say with a smile, even though maybe telling someone about it might not be a half-bad idea after all. Plus, Namjoon’s your friend and the only one around here who’s any good at keeping secrets, so getting the words off of your chest could be good.

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” he reminds you, because he’s wonderful like that. 

“No, it’s alright…” you sigh. “I guess someone else has to know.” You close your eyes, willing the words to come up from your throat, willing them to not hurt you as they leave your lips. “Last summer at the campfire I told Jimin that I loved him.”

Namjoon doesn’t say a word. 

“And he doesn’t love me back, which is not the problem because he shouldn’t change how he feels about me just to make me feel better. It’s not his fault, and I’m not angry at him or anything. I knew that he didn’t love me back when I told him,” the words come up like bile, slowly and carefully before spilling out in front of you. “But I was an idiot, and I thought telling him would make me feel better, or something. And it didn’t, because now Jimin and I don’t know how to act around each other anymore, and everything sucks.”

Namjoon offers you a careful, hesitant smile. 

“So yeah. That’s what happened.”

“Sounds like you and Jimin should talk about it,” Namjoon suggests, and maybe he’s smart, and a good leader, and attends a prestigious college along the coast, and studies business and sociology, but that is the worst idea he has ever had. 

“No,” you immediately say, shaking your head. “It’s no big deal. Jimin and I are still friends.”

“Are you, though?” Namjoon asks. 

You sigh, reaching up to rub at your forehead. “Yeah, we are,” you insist, perhaps more to yourself than to Namjoon. He looks skeptical, but doesn’t ask any questions. “It doesn’t even matter. I made a mistake and now I’m gonna deal with the consequences.”

“I can try to get the rest of the boys to stop teasing you and Jimin. I know it must be weird for you both right now,” Namjoon offers, always wanting to help. You scoff. Weird would be the biggest understatement of the century. 

“Jimin and I can handle it,” you say, not wanting to disrupt the rest of the counselor dynamic just because you and Jimin are dealing with things right now. Besides, the teasing has always been in good fun, and you know the boys well enough to know that they aren’t doing it out of malicious intent. “But I appreciate your concern.”

“Just doing my job,” Namjoon says proudly. You stand there in silence for a few more seconds until he coughs awkwardly to fill up the space. “You can go now, by the way, Y/N. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright.”

“I’m fine,” you promise, silently hoping that one day, when you talk to Namjoon, you won’t have to lie to him anymore. “Thanks for checking in.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” he says in that comforting way, that warm way that wraps around you like a mug of hot cocoa on a cold winter night. 

You crack open the door to find Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook tossing around a frisbee on the open lawn as Seokjin and Yoongi watch from a picnic bench, soda cans sitting next to them. Someone must have mentioned the green lemonade. Jungkook purposely tosses the frisbee too high for Jimin to reach, making him jump wildly in a fruitless attempt to grab it. He falls backwards onto the soft grass, laughing alongside Taehyung and Jungkook as Taehyung pulls him back up to his feet. 

You smile to yourself, the longing and the pain and the love settling deep within your heart, finding a home amongst the wishes and the dreams. Seeing him there, the widest smile on his face as he tosses around a frisbee with some of his best friends, letting the rays from the setting sun fill him up with joy, it reminds you why you fell in love with him. It reminds you why you’re still in love with him.

Something seizes up at your heart, clenching it between its fingers. That used to be you, the thing whispers. You used to make him laugh like that. 

You did. From the moment you met him, you let his laughter fill your senses, burned the sound of it into your brain. You used to be so close. You used to think that maybe, just maybe, Jimin might love you back. 

You should have never told him, it murmurs, grip growing tighter. Look at where it got you.

If I could turn back time and redo that night, I would, you fight back. 

But you can’t.

The wicked thing releases your heart, lets it drop to the floor. You don’t pick it up. 

Every year, you and the other counselors keep a scorecard on the chalkboard in the meeting room to see how quickly someone gets sent to the first aid tent, whether it be from stumbling over a twig or contracting poison ivy or drinking the green water. Last year, it took two hours and thirteen minutes. 

This summer, it happens barely an hour after all of the campers have arrived. 

You make a mental note to write down the time on the scorecard as you run over to help the poor boy off of the ground after slamming into a spruce tree while playing an early game of tag with his friends. The side of his cheek is imprinted with the texture of the tree bark, and he has some scrapes on his hands and knees from the fall. 

“Whoa, hey, you alright?” You ask, leaning down to help him up. “You gotta watch where you’re looking, okay? Don’t want you to get hurt.” 

The beauty about young children is that very little actually causes them great pain. If it weren’t for all of the overprotective counselors, the kids would probably run themselves into the cabin walls and trees for the entire duration of camp.

“I’m not hurt,” the young boy says, standing up proudly. “I’m fine. My mom says I have thick skin.”

“What’s your name?”

“Eli,” the boy tells you matter-of-factly. “That’s my cabin.” He points to the one to the west of the camp that Taehyung and Jungkook are in charge of. Why Namjoon continuously assigns them to the same cabin year after year is beyond you. Once, they convinced everybody in their cabin that Seokjin and Yoongi’s cabin was haunted, and the only solution was to out-scare the ghosts by yelling and screaming right outside. 

“Is this your first year at camp?”

“Yup,” Eli says, rocking back and forth on his feet. He is not at all fazed by the blood and broken skin on his hands and knees, nor the pieces of wood and bark sticking out of the side of his face. 

“Alright, Eli, even though you have thick skin, I have to take you to the first aid tent. Really quickly, okay? Just to make sure you aren’t gonna get an infection. Then you can go and tell all of your friends how thick your skin,” you say, already beginning to usher Eli towards the first aid tent.  

“I think I have the thickest skin out of everyone here,” Eli says, as if goading you on. 

“You know what? I have to agree with you,” you say. “I get hurt really easily. My mom always says that I need to be extra careful here.”

“I’m sick of listening to my mom,” Eli pouts, stomping on the ground as you lead him towards the first-aid tent. 

“Me too,” you agree. No point in telling him that he needs to yield to his parents when he probably won’t even remember this conversation by the time he wakes up tomorrow. Besides, it’s never too early to begin teaching kids about rebelling against authority figures. “But you won’t have to listen to everything I say, okay? We’re just gonna be really good friends.”

“Like with my babysitter,” Eli says. 

“Exactly,” you say, stopping right outside of the first-aid tent. You’re not even positive that anyone’s inside, especially since it’s barely been an hour since camp officially started. Hopefully, Jimin’s somewhere else so you can just patch Eli up yourself. 

The first aid tent is not so much a tent as it is a shed with a fabric entrance, two curtains attached to a rod above the entryway to provide some semblance of privacy since nobody in the camp is handy enough to actually install a working door. But calling it the first aid tent is better than calling it the first aid shack, which, in the wise words of Yoongi, makes it sound like “a hospital where people go to die.”

When you push open the curtain, the first thing you notice is Jungkook and Seokjin in the far left corner, each with ice packs and suspiciously identical markings on them. They’re both making desperate attempts to patch each other up, fighting with the gauze and bandages that are laid out on the table beside them, as if in a competition to see who can better take care of the other. 

Besides that, Jimin is lounging along the wall, leaning back against it as he gazes into nothing, deeply lost in thought. His eyes trace the lines of the shed, foot tapping to an imaginary beat, brows furrowed. You wonder what the hell it is that Jimin could possibly be thinking about so intently, what it is that is making him not even pay attention to the two overgrown children in the corner of his tent, attacking each other with first-aid materials. 

Watching him, you almost don’t want to disturb him. Almost want to grab one of the kits on the shelf by the doorway and pull Eli outside, partly because you don’t think Jimin absolutely needs to be present for you to clean Eli’s wounds and give him some Spiderman Band-aids, and partly because you don’t think you can bear having to say hello to him. 

Eventually, and only because Eli would start thinking it was weird you weren’t talking to each other (and not because a part of you just wants to hear his voice again), you take another step forward, coughing. 

“Wha— oh, hi,” Jimin says, the sound of your arrival breaking him out of his trance. He rubs at the nape of his neck, clearly trying to brush off any awkwardness. “How can I help you guys?” His voice is unrecognizable. 

“Eli here crashed into a tree while playing tag,” you say tensely, doing your best to look around the room, anywhere else, literally anywhere else, just so you don’t have to look at him. “I just brought him here to make sure he’s alright.”

“I’m fine,” Eli insists. 

“Well, Eli, we just have to double check that,” Jimin says comfortingly, reaching down to bring Eli over to one of the benches. He sits him down and kneels so that he can be at eye-level with him, and says, “Sometimes our bodies say that they’re alright even when they really aren’t.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jimin meets your gaze, looking at you like there’s nothing left that you can do, looking at you like there is so much that he wants to say but no way to tell you. 

You open your mouth, willing for the words to come out, but your throat is dry and your heart is pounding in your ears, a painful thud with every breath that you take. He must have known that what you said was a lie. He must have known what you were going to say when he asked, but he asked anyway, not to get the truth but to see where your relationship stands. 

As it seems, your relationship doesn’t seem to be standing at all. 

It lies in front of you, shattered into a million pieces like a broken mirror, cursed but still doing its job, still showing you this fragmented reflection of yourself. Mixed together like this, you can’t see where your friendship ends and your love began. Mixed together like this, it is impossible to repair. 

“Y/N—” Jimin begins. 

“I should go,” you say at the same time, making the two of you stop in your tracks once again. “Thanks for, uh, patching Eli up. Just make sure he gets to the mess hall in time for dinner.”

“I will,” Jimin says with a nod. There is so much that he wants to say but you don’t think you can bear listening to another word come out of his mouth, to another apology for not loving you back when it wasn’t even his fault to begin with. 

You ruined your friendship but Jimin seems to think that he is the one to blame. 

“I’ll see you at dinner?” Jimin asks. 

You look back at him, wanting so desperately to say yes, to pretend that everything is back to normal, to act like this is the beginning of last summer instead of this one, where you loved him and he didn’t know and everything was alright. But you can’t, because it’s not last summer. It’s this one, and you still love him but he knows now. He fucking knows and just thinking about it makes your heart shake in its cage, holding itself together but unable to stop itself from cracking from within.

Jimin must have known you wouldn’t have agreed. Why did he ask?

“Wait, Y/N, hold up!” 

You’re already halfway out of the makeshift door when you turn around to see Jungkook barrelling after you, leaving Seokjin in the dust as he joins you outside, pulling you away from the entrance instinctively. No one has ever been particularly good at keeping secrets here. 

“Can I help you, Jungkook?” You ask, blinking at him, trying to act as normal as possible. 

“Are you alright?” He leans in close, looking into your eyes, concern washed over his features. 

“Everybody seems to be asking me this,” you say, acting like you don’t know why. “I’m fine.”

Jungkook, for all of his wide-eyed innocence, for the way that he views the world as perfectly imperfect, doesn’t buy it. “You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says. “I don’t know what went down between you and Jimin.”

“Nothing happened,” you say, forcing a laugh just so you don’t sound miserable. 

“Whatever it is, I just want you to know that it doesn’t always have to be like this,” he says, reaching out to take your hand in his own, his calloused thumb rubbing soothingly against your skin. “But you should be honest with your feelings, don’t you think?”

“You and Namjoon both think that I don’t have a handle on this, when I do.” You don’t. And being honest with your feelings is what got you into this mess in the first place. 

“Come on, Y/N, you don’t think we haven’t noticed, have you?” He asks, soft and sad and desperate to get through to you. 

“It’s no big deal,” you insist. “Jimin and I are alright. We’ve always been alright.”

“If you say so…” says Jungkook, no less skeptical than he was when he initiated this conversation. 

“Are we done here?” You ask, already pulling your hand from his grasp so you can go back to your cabin and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, resigned as he lets you go. “But you know I’ll always be here for you, right?”

“I know, Jungkook,” you promise, because he always has and he always will be. “Thanks for looking out for me.” You begin to scurry away from the first aid tent, praying that Jimin didn’t hear you and Jungkook and wishing that everything was the way that it used to be.

“Be honest!” Jungkook shouts when you’re a hundred feet away, rushing back towards your cabin. 

Jungkook wants you to be honest?

Telling Jimin that you love him ruined your life. It ruined camp, it ruined your friendship, and it ruined your future. Seeing him now makes your heart ache and your brain dizzy. Every night you replay that conversation in your head, over and over, wondering if there was something that you could have done differently, something that you could have changed so you wouldn’t have ended up like this. Jimin wants to be friends again but you don’t know how to do that without him feeling guilty for not loving you back. 

You want to be honest?

Jimin makes you feel like there is a fire beneath your skin that you can’t extinguish, the flames creeping towards your heart. 

The only solution, it seems, is to smother them. 

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is that he’s impossible to avoid. 

You peer into the mess hall to see if lunch that day is any good and you see him laughing at a table surrounded by elementary schoolers munching on hot dogs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You go hunting in the storage shed for some extra packs of popsicle sticks and find him cleaning out the old flower pots to use in the greenhouse. You lead your group of campers from the arts room to the lake and see him and Taehyung setting up the net for some friendly water polo, laughing as they try to tie each other up in the rope. 

It feels like you’re watching a movie unfold in real time, one where he is the star and you are nothing but a background character, the desperate loser who confessed to him in the beginning of the film just to develop his character arc, make him seem personable and relatable, then forgotten about until the end when you spot each other on the street and nod silently to each other, as if to say you’ve both inexplicably reached a peace between the two of you. 

Is that what the future holds for you? A wordless camp, an empty conversation? Will you simply go the rest of the summer without speaking, then nod to each other right before you leave? Will this be the last time you ever see each other?

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is knowing that just because you want things to be different doesn’t mean they will be. Just because you want Jimin to love you back doesn’t mean he will. Just because you want everything to go back to normal doesn’t mean they will. 

As it turns out, love confessions don’t always end in fireworks.

Park Jimin is impossible to avoid not only because he’s everywhere but also because he is everybody’s best friend, the campers’ favorite counselor and the counselors’ favorite companion. He is kind and thoughtful and electric. He is magnetic. He makes others laugh without even trying, he names the plants in the greenhouse after the people he loves, he stays behind after activities to clean up when no one else will. 

Falling in love with Jimin wasn’t you picking out your favorite traits of his, wasn’t you seeing him do one selfless thing and deciding that he could do no wrong. It was submerging yourself in the lake, little by little before you dive in headfirst. It was catching glimpses of his goodness until you were consumed by it. It was knowing that you prefer yourself when you’re around him.

Falling in love with Jimin was like the heat in summer—endless. 

If only falling out of love with him would be just as easy. 

The weather has been unusually nice today. There isn’t a cloud in the sky as the sun beats down on you, rays peeking through the tall branches and leaves of the spruce and oak trees that surround you, casting hazy shadows on the grass beneath your feet. It isn’t too muggy, isn’t too sticky and sweaty, this perfect medium between warm and hot, between dry and humid. It’s the sort of day that you romanticize every day of summer being, only to realize that summer actually consists of sweating through three different t-shirts and needing to eat your ice cream in ten seconds before it melts into a puddle on the concrete. 

Nonetheless, camp policy has always been that when it’s a beautiful day, the campers are going to spend every hour they’re awake outside, going on nature walks and playing capture the flag and eating watermelon on the splinter-y picnic benches. It’s nice, because it gives you a break from having to tell the kids not to touch the tips of the glue guns, but it also stinks, because it forces you to leave your sweet, air-conditioned paradise in favor of a mosquito-infested summer hell. 

Luckily, the kids have been washing off the summer heat in the cool water of the lake with the counselors that actually prefer being outside, playing volleyball in the shallows or canoeing out where it’s deeper. Sometimes, you wonder why Namjoon will let so few counselors supervise so many campers, and sometimes, you decide that it’s better them than you. 

You take a seat on the picnic bench by Yoongi, who is drinking notably clearer lemonade than in days past, so you assume that Namjoon got the water problem fixed like he promised. The two of you have never been outdoorsy people. Why you’ve been working at a summer camp for the last three years escapes you both. You and him lean back against the edge of the built-in table. From here, you have a perfect view of the lake, clear and blue and filled to the brim with rambunctious children, keeping at least somewhat of a watch over them so that Namjoon can’t shout at either of you for slacking off. 

“You know that Seokjin gave you murky water lemonade earlier, right?” You ask, just to make conversation. 

“I know,” Yoongi says, wholly unfazed. He takes another sip and sighs, feeling refreshed. Without batting an eyelash, he deadpans, “You know that you and Jimin aren’t going to get any better if you don’t talk to each other, right?”

“What are you talking about?” You scoff, playing dumb. 

“Just because all of those other idiots didn’t hear what went down between you and Jimin last summer doesn’t mean I didn’t,” Yoongi mutters monotonously. 

You jerk up, stick straight at his words, eyes wide as you glare at him. He heard you?

Yoongi laughs at your reaction, reclining back impossibly farther. “Relax, I haven’t told anyone. You know it’s none of my business.”

“Well,” you sputter out, “if it’s none of your business then why are you talking to me about it?”

Yoongi frowns. “Because you’re my friend, Y/N. And I hate seeing you like this,” he says, that soft lilt to his voice peeking through the rigid words spilling from his lips. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore. A lot of the other counselors do.”

You purse your lips together, guilty. 

“Especially Jimin.”

“I just need time,” you say, trying to be honest for once in your life. Loving Jimin was never going to go away without a fight. 

“You need to talk to each other,” corrects Yoongi. 

“Talking is what got us into this mess,” you huff out, dejected. Yoongi heard it himself—your confession sent you and Jimin’s relationship down the garbage chute. 

“And talking is what’s going to get you out of it,” Yoongi tells you pointedly, truthfully, in that horrible way where you know that he’s right but refuse to accept it. “Promise me you’ll try?” He reaches out to place a hand atop yours, looking into your eyes with hopeful promise. “We want you back.”

“I’ll try,” you sigh out, because it’s never been worth fighting with Yoongi. Not when he cares so deeply. 

“Try what?”

You and Yoongi whip your heads around to find Jimin standing on the opposite side of the picnic bench, helping himself to a piece of sliced watermelon. 

“Try enjoying the outdoors more,” Yoongi covers for you instantly, making you breathe out a little sigh of relief. “We both hate when Namjoon makes it an outside day.”

“It’s not that bad,” Jimin says with a smile. The only reason Jimin doesn’t mind it is because he gets the best of both worlds—half the day spent inside the first-aid tent, the other spent inside the greenhouse by the woods. “There’s beauty in everything.”

Yoongi scrunches up his nose. “Like that?”

In the distance, you spot three things: Jungkook and Taehyung, laughing evilly as they run down along the rocky beach. The clothes clutched in their hands, crumpled up in their grasps while they hoot and holler. And Seokjin, hair sopping wet and half-naked, with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and ugly lime green water shoes on, chasing after them. 

“I’m out,” Yoongi says without missing a beat, grabbing his lemonade and dashing off to safety. Yoongi’s exit leaves you and Jimin standing there, stranded, frozen in place, as Jungkook and Taehyung rush by you, each grabbing a piece of watermelon on their way. Something falls from Jungkook’s hold as they pass you, and Jimin reaches down to pick it up. It’s one of Seokjin’s socks. 

“Give that back, Park Jimin!” Seokjin’s banshee screech rings in your ears. 

“Run,” Jimin says, and you don’t get another say in the matter before Jimin is grabbing your wrist and pulling you along with him, Seokjin’s angry caws echoing throughout the clearing. 

Even though Jimin didn’t even actually steal his clothes from the locker room by the lake, Seokjin has determined that anyone who runs from him is automatically guilty, thus lumping both you and him into a wild goose chase alongside Jungkook and Taehyung, who are almost always the guilty parties when it comes to practical jokes like this. For a few moments, it’s the four of you running across the open field with Seokjin hot on all of your heels, desperate to catch up to at least one of you despite being severely out-matched, both in athletic ability and footwear, and then suddenly Jimin is pulling you behind the shed as Jungkook and Taehyung make a sharp right, headed in the opposite direction. 

Crouched behind the shed, you and Jimin stop for a minute to catch your breath, chests heaving after doing more exercise in the last thirty seconds than you have in the last week alone. You’re pressed up against the back siding, and only after your heart rates finally slow down do you become faintly aware of Jimin’s hand still gripping your wrist, like he’s simply forgotten to let go. 

“You think we lost them?” He asks with a wicked grin, and it’s impossible to avoid his gaze when he’s so close like this, when there’s barely a foot of space between your bodies, when his fingertips still press against your skin. 

“I think so,” you heave out in response. 

“Better stay here for a bit longer just in case,” Jimin says, and it’s the flirty sort of thing that he would say if it were last year, the flirty sort of thing that he would say if you two were friends like you used to be, but you aren’t anymore, and now it feels like Jimin is trying too hard and you aren’t trying hard enough. 

“I… I mean,” you say, pulling your wrist out of his grasp, rubbing at where your skin sizzles from his touch. “We’re probably fine.”

“Are we?” He asks, and this is exactly why you shouldn’t try to talk to him, exactly why talking won’t erase the tension that has settled between you two, repair the cracks in what you are. You’re not fine, because everything changed when you told Jimin that you loved him, and you’ve never been good at adjusting. You’re not fine, because for the first time in your years-long relationship, loving him is getting in the way. 

“I hope we are,” you admit, more to yourself than anyone else. Oh, how you so desperately wish that things were back to normal. Oh, how it would be so easy if only things were just a little bit different. 

“Me too,” Jimin says, and he smiles and, oh, how it makes you feel real and true and whole. He stands back up and reaches an arm out to help you do the same. For once, it doesn’t feel like a Band-aid on top of a stab wound. It feels like a lifeline. 

You let Jimin help you back to your feet, and for some reason your heart feels just a little bit lighter. 

“You think we’re alright?” Jimin asks.��

“Yeah,” You respond with a nod. “I think we will be.”

One thing that Namjoon is big on is interdisciplinary recreation. This is half due to the fact that he attends a private liberal arts school on the east coast and half due to the fact that he doesn’t always trust some of the counselors when it comes to chaperoning a whole group of kids on their own. You aren’t going to name names, but they’re the same people that steal clothes for fun. 

He’s got a list up on one of those massive sheets of lined paper filled with suggestions for all sorts of things that combine two or more of the basic activities the camp offers, ranging from making handmade bird seed treats in the kitchen to put out on nature walks to dodgeball in canoes. Some of Namjoon’s ideas are a lot more feasible than others. 

Namjoon’s never been a pushy person. He’s repeatedly said that he purposely avoids telling people what to do within their activity sectors because he doesn’t want the counselors to think that he’s stepping all over them or doesn’t trust them to come up with their own entertainment. The list in the counselor meeting room is titled: ACTIVITY SUGGESTIONS, bolded and circled, just so everyone knows that he isn’t forcing you to do anything (if you’re being honest, the emphasis on suggestions somewhat works against his whole niche). But sometimes, especially for someone whose greatest fear is stripping away others’ creative freedom, he can be rather insistent. 

Take, for example, the two stacks of plain flower pots left anonymously inside the arts and crafts room when you walk in to set up the activity for the day. You were originally going to have the younger kids color in their own guitars to hang up in the music room—an activity that was not on the activity suggestions list—and give the older ones some clay and let them go to town, but you suppose that decorating flower pots will be just as entertaining. At least you didn’t have to go hunting for the materials. 

The only problem with decorating flower pots is that, once the campers have painted streaks and polka dots and glued charms all over them, the flower pots have a rather specific place to go. A place that is part of a notable Park Jimin’s domain. 

A sneaky little feeling beneath your skin suspects that someone may have let it slip to Namjoon that you and Jimin could do with a bit of relationship repair. And Namjoon and Yoongi have been bunking in the same cabin for as long as you can remember. 

Sighing to yourself as you begin to set up the flowerpots on old newspapers spread out on the wooden tables, you decide that spending an hour with Jimin in the greenhouse (maybe even less if you can find an excuse to get yourself out of there!) couldn’t be any worse than being crouched down behind that cobwebbed old shed with his hand on your wrist and his eyes gazing into yours. At least you’ll have thirty campers to maintain the distance between the two of you. 

You suppose that you do have the easier of the two jobs. Arts and crafts is a rather simple activity to oversee, barring the occasional papercut or glue gun burn. Luckily, painting flower pots means that you will really only have to worry about the campers mod-podging their fingers together, and even then, the bathroom is just down the hall. Jimin, with his having to wrangle the kids to garden neatly and not hit each other with the trowels, is going to have it much harder. 

There’s a part of you that knows you’ll stick around. Not just to lessen the load of campers for him, but just so you can spend a little more time in the same room, breathing the same air, pretending that things are the way that they used to be. 

When you leave the arts and crafts room to hike the ten minutes to the greenhouse, followed by all of the campers dutifully carrying their brand new flowerpots in their hands, you feel like a young bird leaving the nest. Taught to fly little by little, but one day forced to face the real world and exist without the safety net you’ve called home for so long. The arts and crafts room hasn’t always been your favorite place in the camp, but this year it’s felt like you’ve been holding on particularly tight.

Jimin is already waiting happily in the greenhouse for your arrival, this stupid old gardening apron tied around his waist with a faded picture of a cartoon cactus on the front that says free hugs. He watches fondly as all of the kids shuffle into the greenhouse, the whole room just barely big enough to fit all of you, wide eyes peeking out from behind seed packets and green leaves. 

You stay in the back corner as Jimin gets to work, having all of the campers place their pots on the tables in front of them, bright plastic buckets of soil at the ends of their tables, flower seeds waiting to be planted. 

As much as Jimin is fantastic at patching kids up inside the first aid tent, the greenhouse is where he really belongs. The harsh rays of the sun are softened by the glass walls as they beam down on him, surrounding him with this warm yellow halo, painting him into the scenery behind him. Here, amongst the lush vegetables and flowers and ferns, Jimin doesn’t look like an underpaid camp counselor carrying the weight of thirty children on his back. He looks like this fairy in the woods, this forest sprite that has grown up amongst the trees and the moss and the wildflowers, who has learned to tend to the world’s greatest garden. He looks like someone whose mere presence makes the plants smile a little wider. 

Jimin’s like that with everyone. It should come as no surprise to you that the plants feel better when they’re around him, too. 

Jimin has always been so good with kids. More so than any of the other counselors, really, though they all try their best to be fun and friendly and gentle and stern all at once. But there’s something in Jimin’s nature that just makes him the best at it, something about the way he cares for them so deeply, something about the soft lines of his face that earns him their trust the fastest. He’s good with everything that camp throws at him, from frisbees to murky water to lake monsters, but nothing has ever seemed quite as right for him as his connection with the campers. 

The children don’t know how lucky they are to know someone like Jimin. Someone who believes wholeheartedly in the goodness of others, someone who will stop at nothing to fix what has been broken. 

You think about how lucky you are to love someone like Jimin every day of your life.

“Mr. Jimin?” A squeaky little voice pipes up. It’s a young girl named Zoe, whose flower pot is decorated with a painting of her entire family, a group of four stick figures with red shirts and purple dresses holding hands together, loopy smiles drawn onto their faces. 

“Just Jimin, alright?” Jimin corrects. 

“Are you sure these seeds are going to turn into flowers?” Zoe asks, looking skeptically at the packets in front of her. 

Jimin laughs, and it is as warm as the rays of the sun that stream through the glass walls. “I can’t promise that they will, Zoe.”

“Then why are we doing this?” She pouts. 

“Because,” Jimin says, pointing to the packets in front of the campers, “the only way that I can promise that these seeds will turn into flowers is if you guys can promise to love them. Because no matter how much sun they get, no matter how much you water them, they will only bloom if you really, really love them.”

“How do they know?” Another girl pipes up. 

“Flowers are just like us,” Jimin tells her gently. “They can feel when they’re loved, and they love us back by blooming for us.” He shuffles around the back of the greenhouse where he stands, fishing through the shelves lining the walls until he emerges with a rather large pot in his hands, placing it down on the table beside him with a thud. “Take this hydrangea, for example.”

Your breath catches in your throat, the blue flowers flashing before your eyes. 

You planted those together. Last summer. You and Jimin snuck out to the greenhouse while everyone else was eating potato salad for lunch and spent the hour listening to pop songs from the eighties and planting a baby hydrangea. 

They will bloom every year, Jimin said. 

So they’ll always remind us of us, you responded. 

It’s the first time that you and Jimin have looked at each other since you entered the greenhouse. He catches you off-guard, eyes wide as you stare back at him, suddenly feeling this gut-wrenching ache from deep within your belly. And Jimin—

God, Jimin looks like he’s tried everything under the sun and moon to keep that damn hydrangea from wilting. 

“They were planted early last summer. And they bloomed, right? But they look so sad,” Jimin explains, rallying himself and turning his gaze away from you. “And I gave them new soil and watered them regularly, but I’m still missing something.”

“Love!” Zoe shouts. 

“Right,” Jimin says with a tense nod, eyes flickering to yours once more. Your shoulders slump. “But I have a lot of love to give, so hopefully they’ll be alright soon. You guys just have to remember that love is the most important thing that you can give to your flowers. Just like you and me, the flowers need to know that there is someone who loves them.”

But you do know, you want to shout out to him. You’ve known this whole summer and you knew back at the campfire and you probably knew even before that. You’ve known for so long and still the flowers that we planted together are fucking wilting. Like they can’t even bear that this is what we’ve come to. What do you mean, they need to know that there is someone who loves them? You do. And I love you. You must know that, don’t you?

You feel the vines of a thorny rose wrap around your heart, clenching it tight. It’s been in bloom for a year now, thick red petals filling up the empty spaces between your bones, nectar swimming within your veins. And when you picked it, cut it off at its stem to place in Jimin’s hand, it grew only stronger, bloomed only harder.

Oh, if only that hydrangea knew how much you loved him. 

Afterwards, you stay back to help clean up. There’s soil all over the floor, buckets knocked over in the campers’ frenzy to go play games in the gym with Jungkook, discarded paper seed packets and trowels left littered across the tables. 

Jimin doesn’t put on any eighties music. Instead, you stand there in silence, brushing the leftover soil into dust pans and buckets, placing the gardening tools on the rack by the entrance. 

Even though you know flowers don’t wilt that fast, it feels like with every second that passes, the hydrangea is a moment closer to death. The color seems to fade every time you look at them, going from its vibrant pale blue to a sallow green, no longer able to tolerate being in the same room as the two of you. 

Your love doesn’t seem like it’s going to fix it this time. 

“I didn’t know that it was doing so badly,” you say, and the words don’t even feel like they belong to you when you hear them back, making Jimin stop dead where he stands. 

“What?” He asks. 

“The hydrangea.”

Jimin looks over at the pot on the table, and he sighs, helpless. “I’ve tried everything. It just doesn’t seem to be working with me this year.”

It’s no secret to the both of you why. 

“Hopefully you can figure something out,” you offer alongside a half smile. “I would hate to see them die after only a year in bloom.”

“Me too,” Jimin sighs. 

“How have you been?” You ask him, because you never really did get a real answer when you asked him that very first day. And because no matter what you do, you’ll always be curious about him. 

“Alright,” Jimin says, and it’s not a lie. “I’m looking forward to graduating next year.”

“Yeah, me too,” you say, even though you’re only looking forward to the not-being-in-college part of graduating. Not so much the being-chucked-into-the-real-world part. “How’s the major coming along?”

“Well, physics never gets any easier,” Jimin jokes, and even though it’s a little bit forced it makes the two of you both laugh, desperate to get back to the way that things used to be, step by step. “What about you? Still going for English?”

“With a side of business so that I don’t end up a broke poet,” you remind him. “But yeah.”

“Maybe you can write me into one of your stories,” Jimin suggests. 

Oh, but doesn’t he know already? He’s the main character in every single one. All of your poems are about him. He is your inspiration and your muse. He fills up each blank page all on his own. Doesn’t he know? 

“Maybe,” you agree, even though there has never been a ‘maybe’ when it comes to him.

You nearly drop the plastic bucket of soil on your toe when you hear his next question. 

“Have you, uh, been seeing anyone lately?” Jimin scratches at the nape of his neck, clearly nervous. Your heart sinks. Out of all of the possible questions he could ask you to keep this relatively casual conversation going, he chooses that one? 

You look up at him, wondering why on earth he’s asking you this when your love has already been laid out bare in front of him, every corner unfolded so he can read across the lines like a map, memorize the splotches of color. You look up at him and you are helpless, desperate for him to realize that even with thousands of miles and hundreds of days between you, for you, it has always been him.

You wonder if the only reason he’s asking is to see if you were starting to move on. 

“No,” you mutter lifelessly. “I haven’t.” And then, like a devilish whisper in your ear, “Have you?”

You almost expect him to say yes. You almost expect to hear him recount all of the fantastic dates he’s been on, all of the loving relationships he’s been in, but instead, he says, “Me neither.”

And that? That makes your heart stop dead in its tracks. 

“I tried to, you know,” Jimin says, and each word is a puncture wound inside of you. “But I just couldn’t. Nothing really stuck.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” you tell him, because you are. Because Jimin deserves to love someone who will love him back. Someone that isn’t you, someone who hasn’t been hopelessly pining after him for a year. 

“No, it’s alright.” Jimin shrugs. “I’m kind of glad that nothing stuck.”

And if hearing the words “me neither,” leave his lips made your heart freeze up, then hearing these words set it aflame. You don’t respond, instead choosing to let the words etch themselves into your memory, carve themselves into your heart, give you hope, if only a droplet of it. Any is enough to have your heart beating a little faster.

“I miss this,” Jimin breathes out, and if you closed your eyes and pretended that you were somewhere else it would almost sound like a confession. You glance up at him, and he is so empty, clinging hopelessly onto the remnants of things past just like you, and you realize that being honest is really the only option you have left. “I miss doing stuff like this.” 

The with you goes unspoken, but it rings loud and clear in your ears anyway. 

“I miss it too,” you say, because Jimin must know already, doesn’t he? How if you could choose to go on loving him without him ever knowing, then you would do it in an instant? How loving him silently was painful but loving him like this, unbearable. “I feel like it’s been a long time.”

A long time since you both really spoke to each other. A long time since you were friends the way you used to be. A long time since you first began to love him.

“Can’t we go back?” Jimin asks, a foolish question. He should know better than to ask for something he already knows he can’t get. 

“You know we can’t,” you tell him. You’ve already tried.

“Then can we begin again?” He proposes, the two of you meeting in the middle of the greenhouse, right in front of the hydrangea. You hadn’t even realized you were barely three feet away from him until you were already there. “Please? I miss us, Y/N. Don’t you miss us, too?”

Gazing at Jimin, you feel your heart tremble. One thing that hasn’t changed is how weak you are to his touch, to his eyes, to the way that they make every part of you feel like jelly, feel like you’ll collapse without him to hold you up. You’ve never been able to say no to him. It’s one of the things you don’t think you’ll ever outgrow. 

“We can try,” you say, because being honest may be hard, and talking even harder, but now you would rather try to piece yourselves back together than spend the rest of the summer wondering what to do with the shattered remains on the floor, stepping around them instead of cleaning them up, repairing what has been broken. 

It’s like the words are music to Jimin’s ears, the way he lights up, grinning wide and real and true. He inhales and it feels like a breath of fresh air, like a brand new season has come to rest upon the two of you. It feels like relief. It feels like hope. It feels like new.

You hadn’t realized it before, but you’ve been dying to make him smile. 

Next to you, the hydrangea seems just a little bit brighter. 

It’s getting easier. 

No longer are you turning in the opposite direction whenever you see him hanging around the center of camp, praying that he hasn’t spotted you from where you stand. Nor are you making excuses about having to go help Namjoon with something or run back to your cabin whenever he shows up to spend time with you and the other counselors. 

And even though it’s still a little tense when you accidentally look up at the same time and meet eyes, even though it still feels like you two aren’t quite the same, it’s getting easier. 

You’ve even begun to eat lunch together again. 

It’s not exactly like it was before, not like when you would scurry off to the greenhouse or the shed or some other hidden place, spread out a picnic blanket and bask in each other’s company, laughing about anything and everything, but it’s better. It’s better than how it used to be, when you would always bring your lunch back to your cabin to eat in silence, drown yourself in your comforter and your thoughts, letting them pile on top of you, one by one. It’s better than how you used to pretend that you didn’t even know each other. 

Slowly, step by step, things have almost started to feel normal again. 

“You guys seem happier lately,” Taehyung commends mindlessly as he sits down across from you and Jimin, three pieces of meat lover’s pizza on the paper plate he sets on the tabletop. 

You and Jimin smile at each other. You suppose that you have been.

“Three, Tae?” The moment gone too soon, Jimin’s focus is immediately redirected to the behemoth meal in front of Taehyung. “Seriously? Aren’t you lactose intolerant?”

“The meat balances it out,” Taehyung says matter-of-factly, even though it definitely doesn’t. He takes an enormous bite out of one of the slices, eating nearly half the pizza in a single chomp. “But seriously, I mean it. You guys look a lot happier. Yoongi!”

Yoongi freezes in his tracks from where he’s walking by your table, spilling his open soda can all over his plate of pizza at Taehyung’s shout of his name. 

“Don’t you think that Jimin and Y/N seem happier?” Taehyung asks, motioning to the both of you. 

“I don’t know,” Yoongi says with a shrug, aloof as always. You chuckle to yourself, knowing fully well that it was him who got Namjoon to leave two stacks of flower pots in the arts and crafts room to give you an extra push towards talking with Jimin. Taehyung huffs, disappointed but not surprised that Yoongi contributed so little to the conversation, but he doesn’t notice how Yoongi gives you a smile and a thumbs up as he heads over to where Namjoon and Hoseok are sitting. 

“Well, I think you guys do,” Taehyung says pointedly. 

“Did we seem… unhappy to you?” Jimin asks, an eyebrow raised. 

“No,” says Taehyung. “I don’t know, you guys just seemed different. You know, I was talking with Jin and he and I were convinced that the two of you were dating last year and then broke up sometime before this summer because you guys were acting so weird earlier.”

“Really?” You ask, cracking an awkward smile just to keep the mood light because god, Taehyung really is a lot more observant than you give him credit for. “That’s so funny, honestly.” It’s not. “You know that we’re just friends, Tae.”

Next to you, Jimin is staring down his lunch like it’s insulted his family. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he opens his mouth to say something, anything, goddamnit, anything that will make you feel like you’re not the only one who wants you two to be friends again. Anything that will remind you that being friends is all you have left because he will never love you back. 

“You could have fooled me,” Taehyung acknowledges. “Seokjin was pretty convinced, too. We even had a bet going to see which one of you would admit it first.”

“You guys bet on us?” Jimin asks, a little horrified and a lot of something else, something that you can’t quite place. 

“Not with money!” Taehyung defends. “Marshmallows for the end-of-camp counselor campfire. But neither of you ever said anything so we ended up just dropping it and ate as many marshmallows as we wanted.”

Oh, if only Taehyung knew. Oh, if only he had heard you that night, heard you pour your heart out in front of that fire. Oh, if only he had noticed, noticed the warm yellow glow that made Jimin look like he had been bathed in candlelight, noticed those roasted marshmallows over the heat, noticed the words that replay in your head like a broken record. 

There’s a part of you that wants to know who Taehyung was betting on. A part of you that is wondering why on earth would either of them ever assume that Jimin would be the one to confess first when he has only ever seen you as a friend and you have always seen him as something more. Seen him as this dream come to life, seen him as the answer to all of your prayers. 

Jimin never would have confessed first. That hasn’t changed. 

“Thinking back, it was kind of stupid of us to bet on you guys when you hadn’t even confirmed anything,” Taehyung says with a sigh, pursing his lips together tightly. “I don’t know. I guess that Seokjin and I both really, really wanted you guys to get together.” He chuckles, but it isn’t funny anymore.

Believe me, Tae, you think to yourself. You guys weren’t the only ones.

“Eh,” Taehyung hums, shrugging to himself. He clearly isn’t as caught up about it as you and Jimin, who wonder every day how different things would be if you had just kept your damn mouth shut that night, if you had never loved him in the first place. “I guess I’m just glad to see you both smiling again.”

“Thanks, Tae,” you say, because even if Taehyung doesn’t know the whole story he’s still hit the nail on the head, and even if he can’t pick up the way that Jimin’s body has tensed up beside you, even if he doesn’t notice how normal feels like the furthest thing to describe the two of you right now, he has always wanted the both of you to be content.

“Makes me kinda sad to know you guys are just friends, even though I’m obviously not going to force you into anything.” Taehyung takes another bite of his pizza, the words just conversational to him even if they clearly aren’t to either of you.

Slowly, Jimin looks back up from his lunch, like he’s finally made up his mind. You meet Jimin’s eyes when he does, and for once you don’t dare jump into the swirling sea of his irises, for once you can hardly tell if the waves are calm or rough. For once, it feels like Jimin is looking at you the way you look at him—helplessly.

Taehyung smiles, looking fondly at the both of you. “You guys would have been cute together,” he says it because he means it. “You make each other so happy.”

He means that part, too.

The end-of-camp show is a longstanding tradition where all of the kids, divided by age group, celebrate the best part about summer and going to a sleepaway camp: being away from their parents. There are dance performances choreographed by the counselors (namely Hoseok, who has the most free time because his other job mainly consists of making sure Namjoon doesn’t lose his head), a guitar performance organized by Seokjin (who has promised not to rickroll everyone this year), and an art show setup by you to display all of the treasures that the campers have created. But your favorite part of the show is how, no matter how much time time is spent practicing and rehearsing, the performance will always end in chaos. The only predictable thing about it is its unpredictability. 

This year, as suggested by Hoseok and immediately implemented by Namjoon, the counselors are being roped into a performance of their own, one that is bound to be even more disastrous because even though you can all listen to directions, you are all also just as capable of purposely disobeying them. 

Part of you suspects that the only reason Hoseok even recommended that you all do this is because he enjoys watching the camp counselor collective crash and burn. Like there’s something cathartic about watching you go up in flames.

Nevertheless, you do it, because if not for yourselves then for Hoseok, and if not for him then for Namjoon, both of whom tirelessly to make sure that camp is a place where you and the other counselors can do the dumbest things without repercussions. If it weren’t for the two of them, camp would be a lot less fun.

Hoseok also just absolutely relishes in being in charge of something, something that involves dancing and singing and performing, which are his favorite things to do, and it would be cruel of all of you to deny Hoseok this opportunity, if only for a silly little camp performance. 

Hoseok manages to wrangle a time and space for rehearsal thanks to one of those magic scientists that perform cool things with chemicals, one that Namjoon has arranged to visit camp to give you and the other counselors a much-needed break from the endless excitement of children. 

And so, you all trickle into the empty counselor meeting room at three in the afternoon exactly, waiting to see what the hell Hoseok has come up with now. 

All of the tables, chairs, and other miscellaneous furniture has been pushed up against the walls, leaving just enough room for all of you to fit relatively comfortably, with Hoseok standing smack in the middle of the room, looking proud. 

“I’m scared,” Hazel admits to you as you pass by Hoseok to stand where the rest of the counselors have gathered. You sneak a peek at the clipboard in Hoseok’s hand, which isn’t empty this time, and is instead filled with sheets of paper that look like they belong in the hands of a sports coach, X’s and O’s and arrows littering the pages. 

“Don’t be,” you say, though the tremble of your voice is probably doing very little to calm her nerves. You end up grouped together with Jimin and Yoongi, who are both standing in silence, waiting for something to pull them out of their thoughts. “Hey,” you say softly, giving Jimin a nudge. 

“Hey,” Jimin responds, face lifting a little when he sees you. From behind him, Yoongi is eyeing the both of you, but he doesn’t seem very worried. Jimin laughs tensely. “I’m nervous about what Hoseok has in mind for us.”

You glance over to Hoseok as he talks animatedly with Namjoon, who looks a little bit in over his head. Namjoon must have known that Hoseok would spare no expense when it came to a counselor performance. 

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” you assure him with a squeeze to his wrist, making him smile weakly at you. 

“First Namjoon makes us sit outside, and then he makes us do exercise?” Yoongi huffs. “When will it end?”

“High time he got you out of the damn kitchens,” Jungkook mutters to himself, making all of the other counselors within earshot laugh. Yoongi turns around to give Jungkook half of a noogie before Hoseok claps to get everyone’s attention. 

“Alright, hi everyone!” Hoseok cheers. “Glad you all could make it.”

“Did we have a choice?” Seokjin asks. 

“Nope!” Hoseok grins. “Anyway, as you know, this year Namjoon and I have been thinking of doing a counselor performance at the end-of-camp show to show unity and entertain the kids, since they’re the ones who have been doing all of the work thus far to make the camp show a reality. And I, as your assistant head counselor and dance choreographer, get to set it up!”

“Oh, God,” Taehyung says. 

“It’s not going to be a super serious thing because this is camp and we’re literally performing for prepubescent children, so don’t worry!” He says, doing nothing to ease people’s worries. He turns around to face the chalkboard, and begins to magnet the pieces of paper from his clipboard onto it, page by page, as the rest of you stare on in horror. “But I have come up with a bit of a dance for us to perform…”

“Oh, God,” Seokjin repeats dramatically. 

“Anyway,” Hoseok says, clapping his hands together once more to redirect everyone’s attention from the mess on the board back to him. “It’ll be a bit of a partner dance for the first half, and then everyone gets about five seconds worth of a solo in the middle where you can do whatever you want—” when Hoseok spots Jungkook, Taehyung, and Seokjin already beginning to scheme, wicked smiles widening, he quickly adds, “—within reason, and then a big old group thing to finish it up. Does that sound good?”

“Whoop,” Yoongi deadpans.

“Great!” Hoseok says, fumbling for another piece of paper in the stack that he still has left on his clipboard. 

“God, a partner dance?” You ask awkwardly, feeling noticeably more worried than before. It’s not that you’re dreading having to dance, or even having to perform in front of a bunch of kids, it’s the idea of having to dance with someone else, a specific someone else in particular, that has your stomach doing flips. “Why did Hobi think that was a good idea?”

“It might be fun, don’t you think?” Jimin says, trying to keep the mood light. It’s clear he has no worries about the potential for being paired up with you, which might have been able to fly last year but this summer, you’re not so sure. You and Jimin just managed to start eating lunch together again without wanting to curl into a ball and hide. What’s going to happen if you have to dance with each other?

“I’m not a very good dancer,” you admit, a weak excuse for your real fear. 

“Then I’ll teach you,” Jimin says, and the words are hopeful and filled with light as he works so desperately to remind you that not all has been lost. That you can begin again. 

“Okay, partners,” Hoseok says, looking at his list. “Namjoon and Yoongi, Jungkook and Seokjin, Taehyung and Hazel, Maria and Ruby, Jia-yi and Quinn, and Jimin and Y/N.”

Shit. 

Yoongi, noticing your alarm, immediately interrupts, “Uh, is it possible for us to switch partners?”

“Why?” Hoseok asks innocently. 

And in that split second, that moment of pause, you look from the wide-eyed Yoongi to Jimin, who is gazing back at you like he’s finally got it right, like he’s finally been given an opportunity to fix what you had broken, to repair your relationship, brick by brick, if only for a stupid counselor performance. Jimin, who is smiling and smiling and smiling because you are finally eating lunch together and you are finally watering that damn hydrangea and you finally get to dance together, and everything in the world is slowly beginning to feel right, the dust is beginning to settle after a month’s worth of storms. 

You inhale, then you exhale, and you say, “I’m fine with my partner. I don’t think we need to switch, do we?”

And you swear, your heart feels lighter already. 

Jimin pops into the arts and crafts room more often these days. Sometimes he actually does it because he needs to drop something off, because a camper left something in the greenhouse or because Namjoon is making him, but most times, he does it just to say hi, just to charm all of the campers as they make collages out of old magazines or glue together fabric for no-sew pillows. 

And every time he does it, every time there is that familiar knock on the door, you nearly tumble over yourself from excitement. The best part about it is how normal it’s all beginning to feel, how familiar it is. You are almost back to where you used to be. 

Almost back to when you loved him, and he didn’t know, and everything was alright. 

Today, the kids are making cards for you to mail back home before the summer is done, before camp comes to a close and they return to their lives and you return to yours. Normally, you’d automatically send the letters back to the parents, but this time, you offer up an alternative. 

“These cards are going to be mailed back home to the people that you love,” you say, holding up your own as an example. It’s a basic one, yellow cardstock with daisies made out of construction paper glued onto it, but it serves as a good guideline for whatever the campers want to do with their own. “You just need to provide their address so that we can make sure it gets to the right person.”

“It doesn’t have to be our parents?” One boy asks.

“Nope,” you say with a smile, shaking your head. “You can send it to anyone you love. It’s just to let them know how you are, and that you miss them.”

“Who are you sending yours to?” A different girl, Rose, asks. 

“I’m not sure yet,” you say, because you don’t really need to let your parents know how you are when you text each other constantly, and all of your friends from back home can see all of the shenanigans you get up to on your social media, but a letter is no fun if only one person ever gets to read it. 

“You should send it to Jimin,” Rose suggests matter-of-factly, making you sputter out the water you were taking a sip of all over the table in front of you. 

“Jimin?” You repeat, forcing a smile. “I see Jimin all the time.”

“But you really like him, don’t you?” She asks, even though she obviously already knows the answer. Goddamn, kids pick up on everything. “I can tell.”

“Is that so?” You return, eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah, me too!” The boy chirps up. “You always look so nervous whenever he comes to say hello. Like you don’t know what to say. That’s what my mom looks like whenever she comes home from a new date with a boy she really likes.”

You do? That is news to you. 

“It’s okay, though,” Rose interrupts. “I think that he really likes you too. Otherwise he wouldn’t just be popping in every other day to say hello!”

“Maybe he really likes seeing you guys, instead!” You offer, feeling your cheeks heating up at the thought that you and Jimin have laid yourselves out bare like a board book for everyone to read. 

“I don’t think so. He looks too happy when he sees you.” The girl shakes her head. “You should send your card to him, so he knows that you love him.”

Oh, he knows, that’s for sure, you think to yourself. There’s no way that Jimin hasn’t already realized that you still love him. That you have always loved him. Even the campers have it figured out, and they’re still in elementary school. But you think that the worst part of this, the worst part of all of these freakishly observant children verbally beating you up with reminders of your relationship with Jimin, is how they seem to think that Jimin likes you back. That Jimin sees you as something more. 

Because he didn’t, last year. And he didn’t, earlier this summer. And there is no way things have changed that much. 

“You guys should keep working on your cards,” you say, desperate for the subject to drop, desperate to talk about anything, literally anything, besides Jimin. “We want to send them by the end of the week so that the people you love will get them before camp’s over.”

“So you do like him!” The boy exclaims. 

“Cards, Oliver!” You reprimand him, earning a chorus of giggles, though there is no mistaking the way your body has tensed, the way your words are shaking. No mistaking how your heart trembles at the thought of Jimin, sweet, wonderful, beautiful Jimin, actually liking you back. 

It can’t be. 

You and Jimin have always just been friends. That’s all you’ll ever be. You swear. 

You swear.

“The hydrangea looks better,” you comment as you enter the greenhouse, eyes immediately darting towards the pot on the table at the front. In it, the hydrangea has blossomed fully, its petals a vibrant sky blue, basking in the faint glow of the sun as it streams into the greenhouse, peeking between the misty gray clouds, painting everything with a hazy yellow warmth. 

“It does, doesn’t it?” Jimin asks from where he’s wrestling with an enormous packet of soil, pausing his battle to turn and look at the blossom, smiling to himself. “I think we must have worked some sort of magic.”

“Or maybe it’s just your expert gardening skills,” you tease, hauling in some plants by the door that Jimin has been meaning to bring inside the greenhouse for days now. “I’m not in here enough to make any sort of noticeable difference.”

Jimin scoffs disbelievingly. “You’re in here almost as much as I am nowadays.”

“Just to help out,” you defend weakly, pouting to yourself. It’s not like you’ve completely abandoned your air-conditioned arts and crafts room to fool around in the balmy greenhouse, soil underneath your fingernails and seeds stuck to your clothes. You just prefer to spend your free time here. Nothing criminal about that.

Plus, Jimin sure doesn’t seem to mind. 

“And for that, I thank you,” says Jimin with a grin, the bag of soil finally beginning to cooperate with him. He hauls it over his shoulder to bring into the back room, where he keeps all of the bigger tools and plants that are too advanced for the campers, and you pretend not to ogle the way his biceps bulge as he carries the soil away, the bag easily fifty pounds or more. 

What? You didn’t fall in love with Jimin just because of his electric personality. 

“Besides, you come into the arts room so often that all the kids are starting to think you work there instead of here,” you remind him pointedly. He laughs, and the sound bounces off of the glass walls, filling up the room. 

Jimin comes out of the back room, a little bit of soil smudged onto his cheek from his gloves, and he’s smiling. “Maybe I just like seeing you.”

“Next time we do a craft I’ll make sure to prepare an extra one so you can do it with us,” you joke, ignoring the way his words warm you from the inside out, convincing yourself that this is what it was like last year, too, so Jimin doesn’t mean anything by it. 

Convincing yourself that Jimin has never loved you the way that you love him. 

“Am I going to be allowed to sit next to you?” He asks as he walks up to where you’re working, that same flirty lilt to his voice, that teasing tone that he always used to use on you, especially whenever it came down to spending time together. 

“Only if you’re good,” you chide in response, leaning over to pick up a flower pot just so you don’t have to see his damn face, so you don’t have to see the way his eyes glint in the sun as he toys with you, as he presses all of your buttons with ease.

Obviously, you had seriously miscalculated how far away he was, because by the time you’re standing up straight he’s right behind you, playfully pinching at your waist, the sensation sending an electric jolt through your veins. You jump and gasp at the feeling, nearly dropping the goddamn flower pot, body suddenly turning to jelly. Behind you, Jimin is in stitches. 

“I could have dropped this!” You scold him as he doubles over in laughter, giggling and giggling and giggling, so much so that you can’t even pretend to be angry at him, too endeared by his happiness, by his pure joy, to shout at him any more. 

“You’ve always been so ticklish, Y/N,” Jimin says between puffs of air, trying to catch his breath.

“I am not! You just surprised me!” You defend, even though Jimin’s right and he knows it. Your outrage leaves him in hysterics still, amused by the way you so easily fall right into his trap.

“Whatever you say,” he singsongs, helping you haul in the last of the flowerpots. “I think that’s the last of them.”

“Next time I show up, a whole different part of the greenhouse will need work,” you say with a sigh, because no matter how much you do, no matter how much you clean and reorganize, there will always be something left. 

“The work is never done,” Jimin says with a smile, having already resigned himself to this fate. “But I think it looks pretty good.”

And looking at the greenhouse, looking at the vibrant hues that fill the room, from the rich golden marigolds to the bright pink lilies, from the rich green leaves to the soft blue hydrangea, you have to agree. It’s no wonder why Jimin loves this place so much, spends so much time in it despite its severe lack of circulation and the absence of reliable shade. It’s because everything in here he has had a hand in making. Everything in here is here because of him. 

This place will never not remind you of him. 

“It’s getting late,” Jimin says, checking his watch. “You think they have dinner ready for us?”

“God, I hope so,” you say with a sigh. “I’m starving.”

“Then shall we feast?” He asks, holding his arm out for you to take. 

You wrap your arm around his own, and you grin. “We shall.”

Then the thunder cracks, and the sky begins to sob. 

You’re barely three feet out the door before you feel the wet splotches on your shoulders, cold drops on your skin, made thicker by the leaves above your head, forcing you to retreat back into the greenhouse. Thanks to the glass, the raindrops that hit the rooftop ring like mallets on a drum, booming and loud, echoing throughout the room. 

“Damn,” Jimin says, staring out at the once sunny clearing, now shrouded in a grey haze. “It was sunny two minutes ago.”

“It’s just a summer storm,” you assure, arm still wrapped up tight in his own. “They never last long.”

“Think we should wait it out?” He asks. 

“Whatever you want to do.”

Jimin grins, squeezing you tight. “How about this? Five minutes, and if it doesn’t stop, we make a run for it?”

You nod. “Five minutes.”

Five minutes pass and the rain has no intention of letting up, seemingly getting heavier as you count down the seconds, the light grey fog that has blanketed the clearing turning to an angry deep blue, thick and endless. The alarm on Jimin’s watch goes off, signifying your wait’s end, and you open your mouth to suggest that maybe you should wait here a little longer, but barely get the first letter out before Jimin is flinging open the door to the greenhouse and pulling you out into the rain. 

You shriek as the drops hit you, little pellets of water striking you like beads, soaking your clothes and your skin everything in between. Jimin looks back from where he’s running in front of you, one hand still wrapped around your wrist, and his hair is in strands and his shirt is sticking to his torso, and you don’t think that, in your three years of knowing him, you’ve ever seen him happier. He pulls you out into the rain and he looks like a shot from a movie scene, looks like the hero in a coming-of-age film, letting the rain wash away his worries and his insecurities, letting himself be reborn beneath the crying sky. 

And he stops, and you stop, and you stand there in the pouring rain just looking at each other, picturesque frames, moments in time, letting the water soak into your skin, letting it trickle down your cheeks, decorating your eyelashes. You feel his hand sink down to your own, feel your fingers intertwine. And he is smiling, God, he is smiling so fucking wide, smiling at you like there is no place he would rather be, smiling at you like you smile at him when you think he isn’t looking, like you are the reason he is filled with light. Jimin stands there in the rain with his hand on your wrist and droplets of rain dotting his skin, and he is brand new. And you watch him, watch the way it rains down upon him, and you wonder what the hell he is thinking. 

You wonder what on earth he sees when he looks at you. 

(Is it the same as what you see when you look at him?)

“Aren’t you cold?” You ask him, feeling like your voice is a distant melody, feeling like it’s coming from somewhere else. 

He shakes his head, and you can see the rain spraying from the ends of his hair, soaked strands framing his face. “Isn’t this wonderful?” He asks up to the sky, tilting his head up to let it rain down upon him, let the droplets drizzle down his cheeks. “Don’t you love it?”

“It’s nice,” you admit, because there’s something refreshing about being here, about being caught in the midst of a summer storm, washing away the dirt and sweat and worries. 

“It’s perfect,” Jimin corrects, voice trampled by the rain, thick and heavy. “I feel like this is just what I needed.”

“Needed for what?”

He looks back at you, looks at the way your bodies are still connected, at the way you’re standing barely a foot apart in the pouring rain, and he grins and says, “Just what I needed to know.”

You don’t have time to ask him what he needs to know, what he has been so desperate to learn, before he’s pulling you back into him and up onto the deck, wet footsteps on the wooden porch as you heave yourselves out of the rain and into the counselor meeting room, drenched from head to toe. 

“Oh my God, what the hell happened to you guys?” Seokjin asks, shocked when he spots the two of you, still holding hands. 

“Got caught in the rain,” you say sheepishly, still feeling out of breath. 

“In the rain?” Taehyung asks. “For how long?”

“Long enough,” Jimin answers this time, finally letting you go to run towards the back of the room. You watch helplessly as he does, your hand clenching around nothing, missing his touch. When he returns, he’s got a dry windbreaker in his hand, crumpled up from being in his backpack for so long. “Here, use this,” he says, placing it over your shoulders, pulling the collar tight at your front. 

“Thanks,” you say breathlessly, wondering what the hell Jimin is going to use to dry himself off, clothing so soaked not even a day in the sun could dry it. 

“That was fun,” Jimin says, fixing the windbreaker over your shoulders to make sure it’s covering as much of you as possible. “Who knew, right?”

“Right,” your voice trails off, too focused on the way his brows are furrowed as he tries to dry you off with a jacket made of fabric meant to repel water rather than absorb it, mouth pressed into a pout as he shuffles it around, drying off whatever he can. 

“Maybe we can do it again sometime,” he says when he’s satisfied, gazing into your eyes, trying to get you to gaze back into his own. When you falter, he chuckles, this little huff of air dispelled from his lungs. “I’m gonna go bother Hoseok for something dry. Don’t stay in those clothes too long, or you’ll catch something.”

With that, he disappears into the other room, soggy footsteps leaving prints in his wake. You’re so busy watching his back disappear from view that you don’t even notice Namjoon coming up to you, a sage expression written all over his face. 

“What?” You challenge, not liking the way he looks so suspicious. 

“Nothing,” he says with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I just… don’t know if you really do have anything to worry about when it comes to him.” He nods his head in the direction of Jimin before vanishing, called over by Seokjin and Jungkook to complain to him about something, leaving you floundering in the doorway to the counselor’s room. 

Does Namjoon know something you don’t?

Are you missing something here?

Because as far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin are finally getting back to where you used to be. As far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin did these same things last year, worked in the greenhouse together, planted flowers together, ate lunch together (okay, maybe you didn’t stand in the pouring rain together), and you are positive Jimin didn’t love you back then. As far as you’re concerned, this isn’t different. This is normal. 

Outside, the rain has stopped, a rainbow hidden behind the trees the only reminder that it was ever there in the first place. 

Despite the fact that you will literally only be performing for a bunch of children, Jimin is insistent on teaching you how to dance. 

At least, that’s it looks like, when he asks you to meet him in the counselor’s room one day half an hour before the mandated practice that Hoseok’s arranged for the whole group of you while the all the campers are off on a nature hike with some of the local rangers from the reserve nearby. You don’t know why this couldn’t wait until during practice, when Hoseok puts on some upbeat dance music and lets everybody do what they want, which usually ends up in someone getting twirled (usually Seokjin), but you don’t really mind. Your other option was to lie around in your cabin waiting for the next social event. 

Jimin’s already inside by the time you arrive, this smooth, soft jazz playing from the little speaker that he brought with him, set up on a table at the front of the room. The furniture hasn’t been moved back to their original spots since the first practice, so anytime Namjoon calls a meeting everyone ends up sitting on the floor like a kindergarten class, but at least it makes dance practice easier. 

Even though he’s not really dancing, his body is still moving, absorbed in the music as it echoes around the room, hips swaying and head bobbing. He loses himself in the melody so easily, letting each and every note pluck along to the strings of his heart, this deep, mellow sound that fills him up like a wine glass, dulcet and sweet. 

“Hey,” you say softly from where you stand, watching him from the doorframe. 

Jimin jumps a little bit at the sound of your voice, almost embarrassed that he hadn’t spotted you sooner. “Hey,” he says in return, coming to a halt. “I didn’t, uh, see you there.”

“That was kind of the point,” you joke, walking into the room and joining him where he stands in the center. “Why did you want me down here?”

“You mean I need a reason to see you now?” Jimin teases in return, a little smirk playing along his lips. You frown, narrowing your eyes at him, unimpressed. He gives. “Alright, you got me. I promised you a dance lesson, didn’t I?”

“This isn’t the kind of music that Hoseok puts on, though,” you point out, even as Jimin intertwines his hand in your own and pulls you in close to him, the two of you stepping in time to the beat, not too slow but not too fast, either, this even, steady swing, the sort of thing an old bar would play during the evening rush. Jimin doesn’t pay your comment any attention, instead focusing on his hand on your side, your fingers laced together between your bodies. 

You have, admittedly, never been much of a musical person. You never go out to clubs because sweaty, drunk people just aren’t your style, you don’t ever dance, and you can barely keep a beat when you sing in the shower. Your body has always been stiff as stone despite your (and your friends’) best attempts to achieve otherwise, and as such, you had long resigned yourself to the fact that you do better with your mouth than with your feet. 

But still, Jimin rallies on, because you’re here, goddamnit, and even if you never dance again after this, at least you can say that you have. He moves you around the room in time with the honeyed melody, even daring to pull some advanced tactics like spinning you beneath his touch, hand held above your head as you twirl in place. And you try to let loose, try to lose yourself in the music like he does, but it’s hard when you have always been more of a wordsmith than a dancer.

What’s also not helping is how every bone in your body always seems to freeze up at his touch. 

“Relax, alright?” He says, guiding you across the old wooden floor, boards creaking beneath your feet. “It’s just me.”

That’s the problem, your brain supplies unhelpfully. 

“I told you that I wasn’t a very good dancer,” you say bashfully, unable to look Jimin in the eye when he is so close, when his body is practically pressed up against yours, when his fingertips leave burn marks where they press against his skin, sparks flying. 

It’s different than when it was raining, because when it was raining, even though you were close, there were other things for Jimin to look at besides you. He gazed up at the sky and thanked it for its tears, gazed around the clearing and surrounded himself in the navy blue haze, closed his eyes and felt the drops on his skin, felt them wash away his nightmares and replace them with dreams. 

It’s different now, because there is nothing impressive about the counselor room. Because the janky old tables and dirty windows aren’t something to be gazed at. Because Jimin’s focus is on you and only you, and it makes you feel like he’s staring right through you, like he’s gawking at your heart where it sits in its cage, trembling beneath his eyes. Jimin makes you want to board yourself up, wall yourself in, and reveal yourself bare all at once, like there is so much that he already knows but so much more that he could, if only things were just a little bit different. 

“You’re doing just fine,” Jimin promises, voice as soft as his steps, padding on the hardwood. You’ve lost track of the number of times you’ve circled the room, Jimin guiding you without reason or rhyme, just rhythm. He makes sure you’re always looking at him, reaches a hand out to tilt your chin back up if you dare glance away, keeping his steely gaze trained on you, determined to have you do the same. “Isn’t this nice?” He murmurs. 

“It is,” you agree. You don’t even have to think about your response, letting the words fall off your tongue, because even if you do feel tense, even if your bones are stiff, there is something about this that sets you at ease. 

And you stay like that, wrapped up in each other, swaying to the beat of this song, a beat that is strikingly similar to the drums of your hearts, and the moment feels as though it’s freezing. Feels as though the rest of the world is fading away, leaving only the two of you and the warm, rich tune that floats through the air, slowing down as time seems to come to a halt. 

“Do you still miss us?” You breathe, and you can see the words as they leave your lips, see them written out in puffs of smoke between you before they fade into nothingness. 

“No,” Jimin responds, equally as speechless. The word disappears quickly in front of you, replaced by his next ones, “because this is what I had been waiting for.”

The words stare down at you angrily, your eyes raking over them, line by line, letter by letter, hoping to imprint them into your skin and your brain and your heart, hoping to keep them locked up besides your love for you to replay, over and over, one of many memories that keep you up at night, that you flicker back to watch like an old film, reminiscing of who you used to be, what you used to do. 

They disappear far too quickly, and suddenly time begins again, and you get dizzy just from how much the rest of the world needs to catch up, whizzing by you in fast forward. Or maybe you’re just dizzy because Jimin has always made you feel this way, always left you gasping for air, weak in the knees, heart pounding. 

God, he makes your heart pound. He makes it drum in your ears like the Nutcracker, like thunder during a summer storm. 

“Don’t you want…” he asks, trailing off, eyes hazy and deep, absolutely unreadable. 

“Want what?” You respond, and you swear you aren’t doing it on purpose but you feel yourself leaning forward, closing the gap between you, inch by inch—

“Want to see me lift Seokjin up in the air?” Jungkook’s voice rings out into the room. “I can, you know, he weighs like two pou—whoa, alright.”

A hoard of people stop behind Jungkook as he stands in the doorway like a floundering fish, blinking at you and Jimin. His arrival does not give you enough time to part without things looking suspicious, without all of the damn counselors already making their assumptions, leaving the two of you separating awkwardly, smiling tensely. 

“What were you guys doing?” Taehyung asks, breaking the silence that has blanketed the room. 

“Practicing,” you say quickly, looking as far away from Jimin as possible. Not even you are buying into your excuse. 

“Sure thing,” Taehyung responds, eyebrows raised in understanding, already having formulated his own, likely more realistic answer. 

“Alright,” Hoseok says, appearing from behind the crowd with a clap of his hands. “I guess that means that Y/N and Jimin don’t need to be joining us today, off you guys go.” He gestures for the two of you to leave, but the only exit doubles as the entrance, which means the two of you are left to shuffle past a crowd of counselors, all of whom are staring at you as you pass them by. Jimin doesn’t reach out his hand, and you don’t make any attempts at changing that. 

You nearly suffocate on the way out, overwhelmed by the tension that has filled the atmosphere, leaving everyone helpless to it. 

Jimin goes in one direction and you go in the other, the both of you clearly too stupefied to say anything meaningful to each other, determined to spend the rest of the night apart in an effort to dispel the dozen rumors that you know have already begun to circle the camp. 

On your way back to your cabin, alone and lost in thought, you finish your conversation. 

“Do you want…” Jimin asks, voice trailing off. 

“Yes,” you say. “I want it all. I want you.”

You wonder if Jimin feels the same. 

There is something eerie about the camp late at night, when the only lights that shine are the dim yellow wall sconces outside of the cabin doors, when everyone is sound asleep in their bunks, when there is only the moon and its stars to keep you company, watch over you from their place in the universe. There’s something eerie about the quiet, not because you have a reason to feel unsettled but because you’re so used to camp being this lively, bustling place, filled with things to do and people to see. 

When you see it like this, empty and silent, it almost makes you think you aren’t even in the same place anymore. 

The one and only place that you go when you cannot sleep is the pier, extending out over the lake, the cool, clear lake, looking out into the midnight horizon, a perfect view of the stars and their reflections, cast over the water, twinkling endlessly. You take a seat on the edge, legs dangling over the water, and you stare out into the world, a cool breeze tickling your skin. 

You wonder what it is that’s keeping you awake tonight. What it is that is holding sleep just out of your grasp, your dreams suspended above your head. Camp ends in three days and for once you finally feel satisfied, feel as though you have done what you wanted and accomplished what you had hoped. The last few days of this summer are a far cry from those of last summer, where you were wearing yourself thin thinking about your confession, thinking about what you would say and when you would say it, and what you would do based on the fifteen thousand different things that Jimin could say in response, so hung up on telling him that you barely focused on anything else. 

But this summer, you and Jimin are finally starting to be alright again. And even though you don’t think you will ever move on from loving him, you have moved on from the fact that he will probably never love you back, moved on from your failed confession, and you are learning to be okay with what you have, even if it’s not what you want. 

The truth is that you and Jimin have never felt closer. Driven by your mutual desperation to be friends again, to return to the way that things were when you were together, when you were inseparable, you have been pulled together like moths to each other’s flames, like the thunder and the lightning. You can’t think of anything from this summer that you have wanted more than to be by his side again. But things are different from last summer, different because you and Jimin are not only friends but friends who have had to reckon with love, with its disastrous effects. 

So maybe that’s why you’re awake tonight. Because this summer feels inexplicably stranger than last summer, and you feel like you’re missing something. 

“I thought I’d be the only one still awake.”

You whip your head around at the voice to find Jimin standing at the other end of the pier, ink black hair hanging over his eyes, stars swimming in his irises. You can barely make out his face this late at night, when there is nothing to cast upon him a glow besides the moon and its lonely companions, but you will never mistake his soft, honeyed voice, never mistake the way his eyes sparkle and shine. He is grinning at you, warm and kind, as he slowly makes his way towards you, footsteps tapping along the worn wooden planks, until he sits down next to you, feet hovering above the water. 

“You and me both, I guess,” you feel yourself whisper, not daring to speak a decibel louder. 

“Lots on your mind?” He asks, looking out into the horizon. You sigh, too tired to respond. He understands anyway, just like he always does. “Mine too.”

You let the silence wash over you like a wave that bathes the shoreline, gazing out into a world that carries on no matter the time of day, no matter who watches over it. Like this, you and Jimin don’t need to explain yourselves to each other. Don’t need to force a conversation just for the sake of filling up the quiet night. Like this, your presence is enough, the knowledge that he is here beside you, staring out into the same sky, into the same moon and stars, is all that you need. 

Something has long gone unspoken between the two of you. Something that you can’t quite place. Jimin has had something to say for a long time but he lets his body do the talking, lets you fill in the gaps. But this time, it feels like the more you try to read between the lines the less you understand, and goddamnit you wish that he would just tell you, would just say it so you don’t have to keep wondering and wondering and wondering—

“I never did tell you,” Jimin says, breaking you out of your reverie.

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you what I was thinking, that night.”

He doesn’t need to elaborate any further for you to know what night he’s talking about. You stare down at the lake, at the way it seems to move into itself even though there is nothing to disturb it. 

“I guess I was just so shocked that you, you know, liked me like that, that I didn’t really focus on anything else. Didn’t think about why, or how, or when, or what to do. It existed separately from all of that,” he admits, breaths heavy. 

“You didn’t need to focus on that stuff,” you assure him softly. “It was my burden to hold. I was the one who chose to tell you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Does he know? Does he know that you never hated him for not loving you back? That you didn’t expect him to do anything about it? 

“I just felt so bad,” he says, and you hear the way the words prick at his tongue, leave burn marks along his lips. “Because I didn’t know what to do after that. I wanted to love you back so badly but I just couldn’t.”

And even though you already knew this, even though you were already well aware that Jimin has always only seen you as a friend, for some reason hearing him say it aloud still hurts, still pierces your heart, wounds that your love for him alone cannot fix. 

“It’s not your fault,” you promise him, because throughout all of this, no matter what, you have never, ever blamed him for not loving you back. “I didn’t expect anything. At all. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Don’t I, though?” Jimin asks, and God, he sounds so helpless, sounds like he’s tried everything under the sun to figure things out and still, nothing has felt right. “We had always been so close. I wondered why I couldn’t fall in love with you and the things that we did together when you could. I thought that I was doing something wrong. You deserved someone who would love you back, and I so desperately wanted to be that person.”

“You owed me nothing,” you declare. “You still don’t owe me a damn thing. All I wanted was for you to know.” And look where that got you.

“Knowing didn’t feel like enough,” Jimin divulges. “I wanted to do more for you than just acknowledge it. I replayed that night in my head, over and over, wondering what more I could have said to you.” He sighs, deep and slow and filled with weight, filled with a year’s worth of thoughts he never told anyone else. “You told me you loved me and it was all I could think about. Then and now.”

“You still think about it?” You wonder aloud, sad because Jimin doesn’t deserve to have this weight on his conscience when you are the one at fault, and hopeful because maybe, just maybe, your confession meant just as much to him as it did to you. 

“I can’t stop,” he confesses. And then he turns to you, turns to you in the glow of the moon, his eyes drowning in starlight, and he says, “Every time I look at you I think about how you love me.”

You don’t know what to say. You are too absorbed in the swirling sea of his irises, letting the warmth wash over you in waves, filling you up before emptying out again, shocks of cold before the heat races through you. Jimin is right there, right here, and he is gazing at you and you wonder. 

You wonder, what if. 

You wonder, what if he loved me back?

“Even when I was away from you I thought about it,” he chuckles to himself, amused at his own obsession. “I thought about you, that night, at the campfire. You were wearing this neon pink camp t-shirt and your marshmallow looked like coal and you had this warm orange glow on you, and I swear to God, that image is imprinted in my brain. I see it every time I close my eyes.”

You didn’t know that. 

“When I went on dates, I saw you instead. I would be sitting in a booth with some girl and she would be trying to talk to me about the menu and all I would see is you.” Jimin exhales, filling the pauses that he leaves between his sentences, eyes raking you up and down as if he’s trying to commit this scene to memory, as if this night on the pier is something worth remembering. “They knew, too. All of them told me that I should get over my ex before going on a brand new date.” 

Get over you? What about you was there to get over? Your love has always been one-sided. You have never known a world where it hasn’t.

“And I wouldn’t even try to explain to them that I didn’t have an ex to get over, and that you were the one who confessed to me, and that I didn’t love you like that,” he forces another laugh, like he doesn’t even believe the words he’s saying himself. “Then this summer rolled around, and I saw you arrive and I just can’t tell you in words how happy I was to see you. How looking at you just lifted my spirits.”

“I hardly recognized you at first,” you admit shyly. 

“I dyed my hair,” Jimin reminds you. That’s right. He had brown hair last summer. “And I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know how to without bringing up all the shit that happened last year, and things were awkward between us, and I guess…” he trails off, thinking for a moment. “I guess I just really, really wanted us to get back to the way things were, but I didn’t know how to. And I didn’t know what had changed.”

“Nothing changed,” you say, even though everything did. But loving Jimin has always been a constant in your life, a truth, and this summer was no different. “I wanted to go back to being friends with you, too.”

“I thought I wanted that, too.”

This time, you are the one who turns to look at him. What could he possibly mean by that? 

(Can it be?)

“At first, that’s all I wanted,” Jimin begins. “I wanted us to go back to being friends, I wanted us to eat lunch together and have it not be weird, I wanted us to spend time in the greenhouse and the arts and crafts room together, I wanted us to hang around the rest of the counselors without them noticing how different we were. But then I noticed that the hydrangea was wilting no matter what the fuck I did to keep it alive, and I realized that wanting our friendship back wasn’t enough for me anymore.”

You are frozen in place. You are locked into his gaze, body turning to stone, unable to even utter a single word. To breathe a single breath. And you look into his eyes, Jimin’s beautiful, ocean eyes, Jimin’s sparkling, ink eyes, and you pray. 

“And then Hobi partnered us up for the stupid camp counselor performance, and we got caught in the rain, and then we danced in the counselor meeting room and I just—” His chest heaves, words flounder. As if he has so much to say, as if the words are practically spilling off of his tongue, and yet they are still not enough. He closes his eyes. Pauses. Catches his breath. And then he asks, “If I asked you if you still loved me, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you breathe out. 

“If I asked you if you wanted me to love you back, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you whisper again. 

Jimin blinks.

“If I asked you if you wanted me to kiss you, would you say yes?”

You barely get out the first letter before Jimin is pulling you into him and pressing his fiery lips upon yours. His hand cradles your cheek, the other one splayed out on the wooden pier to keep his balance, dragging you into a messy, desperate kiss, one that sends sparks ricocheting throughout your body, turning your blood into liquid flames, that fills you up from the inside out. The feeling of his lips pressed upon yours makes your heart shake so wildly in its cage that it frees itself, growing a thousand times wider. The rose inside of you vanishes, finds itself replaced by a blooming, bright blue hydrangea, one that settles deeply within your soul. 

Your legs dangle off the pier as your arms wrap around Jimin’s body, curling around his torso in a futile effort to bring him closer than he already is, to feel the warmth of him press against you, sending jolts down your spine, into your bones. You feel yourself getting dizzy just at the feeling alone, kiss drunk, the rest of the world spinning like a goddamn teacup ride, but you cling onto him and you know that he will always be there to catch you if you fall. You know that he will always be there to steady you when you feel the world slipping out from beneath your feet. 

You have him, you have him, you have him. You have him, and he is right here, and he loves you like the sun loves the moon, and you love him like the waves love the shore.

When you part, you almost lose your balance and fall right off the damn pier. Jimin reaches out to grab you just in time, saving you from a watery grave (or just major embarrassment), and the two of you laugh, letting your voices fill the moonlit air, heads light, bodies blissed out. 

“Honestly, I was a little nervous you were going to say no,” he admits with a laugh. 

“Impossible,” you chide. “You know I’ve always loved you.”

No matter what, that will never change. 

“And now,” he says, pressing another kiss to your forehead, this one gentle and plush, “you know that I will always love you, too.”

It doesn’t feel like something long overdue. It doesn’t feel like something that you have been waiting and waiting and waiting for, something you have expected from the moment you told him. 

No. This feels like something new. 

This feels like your heart is in bloom. 

The end-of-camp show, no matter how much time and effort Namjoon puts into making it go smoothly, is a train wreck. But it is a train wreck in that wonderful way, in that way where you would be suspicious if things actually went according to plan, in that way where chaos and disarray reign supreme. Quite frankly, when it comes to the end-of-camp show, you never expect anything less. 

The truth is that the majority of the end-of-camp show performances are just for the counselor’s entertainment, an afternoon of fun to wrap up the end of camp, topped off by a fun meal (usually pizza) and a night around a bonfire, letting the heat warm your bodies from the inside out. Unless Jungkook and Taehyung pull some extremely ridiculous prank, the last official day of camp is usually everyone’s favorite, filled with snacks and music and laughter.

The performances by the campers go about as well as any performance by a bunch of elementary schoolers can go—that is to say, the kids remember the first five seconds of the choreography before they devolve into pandemonium, dancing as many weird, trendy dances as they can, and some you don’t even think have been invented yet. Nonetheless, Hoseok is proud, and beams at all of the campers as they scurry away from the center of the gymnasium once their dance is done, grabbing little snacks on the tables by the windows before settling in to watch the next stage. Hoseok does a good job of keeping the music current and upbeat so that nobody falls asleep, and gives the campers enough creative liberty so that it doesn’t feel too practiced. 

Lightly rehearsed, Hoseok likes to say. 

Absolute madness, Yoongi usually corrects.

After the dances, Seokjin and his hoard of campers with guitars the size of an overgrown ukelele make their way to center stage, and you and the other counselors bet on what stupid song he’s taught them all. He starts it off with everyone’s favorite and the most timeless of all tunes—Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star—before the musical highlight. 

(“It’s gonna be Fireflies,” Taehyung insists, so confident in his choice that he even wagers two of the homemade Rice Krispie Treats that Yoongi got all of the campers to make for today’s celebration. 

“It’s been too long since he rickrolled us,” Jungkook says, eyes narrowing suspiciously to Seokjin at the front of the room. “I’m just waiting for it.”

“Wonderwall, obviously,” Hoseok contributes, even though Seokjin got all of the campers from last year to play that. 

You and Jimin are both almost positive Seokjin has chosen to perform Let it Go, a song that will never truly escape you, but you keep your comments to yourselves. 

“I’m thinking Photograph,” Namjoon comments mindlessly, late to the conversation.

“The Nickelback song?” Yoongi says with a scoff. “Dude, we’re the only ones old enough to even know that song. No no, I think it’ll be Despacito.”

“If I have to hear Despacito one more time, I’m going to jump out of the f—” Taehyung stumbles on the syllable as Namjoon turns to glare at him, making Taehyung sputter for a replacement. “F… -reaking window. Watch me.”)

In the end, none of you guess correctly, because Seokjin has chosen to teach all of the campers how to play Country Road, Take Me Home, and honestly, none of you can even be mad about it because by the thirty second mark, you’re all singing along. There’s just something about that song that forces you to belt out the lyrics, something magical and irresistible. 

Afterwards, it is finally time for the counselor’s performance, which, if the camper’s excited screams are anything to go by, is apparently the peak of the afternoon. Hoseok puts on the same upbeat dance music and all of you go to town, following his choreography without any hitches before jumping into the solo section. Namjoon and Yoongi both attempt a trendy Internet dance and fail miserably, Taehyung and Hazel do a little tango that involves no accidents, and then it’s you and Jimin’s turn. 

The music isn’t really appropriate for the slow dance that Jimin taught you in the counselor meeting room, but he makes it work and you follow along, tracing his footsteps and laughing at the prickly sensation his hand on your waist sends shooting through you. You really have always been ticklish there. Hoseok only gives everyone thirty seconds before they’re booted off to the sideline, but thirty seconds is just enough time for Jimin to spin you once before pulling you into a kiss in front of dozens of campers and all of the counselors, whose hollers and hoots fill the gymnasium, bouncing off of the walls and ricocheting into your ears, when they watch you. It has your cheeks heating up something fierce, all embarrassed by Jimin’s big reveal, but the great big smile on his face makes it all worth it. He looks so happy to be here with you. He looks so goddamn happy to have you. 

It makes you feel like you can do anything. 

Ultimately, Jungkook and Seokjin get the greatest applause, because Jungkook lifts Seokjin into the air figure-skating style before Seokjin comes crashing down on him, and they land in a puddle on the gymnasium floor to the screams of all of the campers and counselors, who have never seen anything quite as artistically dramatic in their lives. 

Afterwards, you and Jimin retire to the snack tables alongside the rest of the counselors as the campers are free to roam the building, check out the art on display and eat as many ants on a log and homemade Rice Krispie Treats as they can get their grubby hands on. 

“Congrats, you guys,” Namjoon says, raising his dixie cup filled with lemonade. “It worked out after all.”

“I’m proud of you,” Yoongi murmurs to you, a soft smile gracing his features. 

“Love always prevails,” Jungkook declares, sighing happily, always a hopeless romantic at heart. You sure hope that one day, Jungkook will fall in love with someone who loves him back unconditionally, because he deserves it. 

“Which one of you confessed first?” Seokjin says, Taehyung nodding furiously behind you. You see that the bet is still on. 

“Me,” you say. 

“Me,” Jimin says. 

You both look at each other, eyebrows furrowed, clearly on separate wavelengths. 

Seokjin narrows his eyes. “Alright… which one of you said ‘I love you’ first?”

“That would be me,” you admit sheepishly, having a year’s headstart on Jimin when it comes to love confession. 

“I fucking knew it,” Seokjin says, palm out. Taehyung begrudgingly smacks five dollars into Seokjin’s hand, muttering to himself about how he was convinced that Jimin would tell you first. It makes you wonder, just a little bit, how long Jimin had known.

You open your mouth to defend yourself and your weak, weak heart, when you feel a tap on your side. Behind you is the same girl from the day that you were making cards to send back home to people you love, the one who absolutely grilled you about your feelings for Jimin. 

“Yes, Rose?” You ask happily. 

“So did you send it to him?” She questions. 

“Send what?”

“Your card. Did you send it to Mr. Jimin?” She elaborates, eyes wide in curiosity. You make a mental note to remind her to never stop being inquisitive. It will take her far. 

“No, I didn’t,” you say with a laugh, shaking your head. You look back at Jimin, where he’s laughing with Seokjin and Taehyung about their stupid bet on you, and you grin. He is so beautiful. It’s still hard to believe he’s yours. “Jimin doesn’t need a card to know that I love him.”

Not when he’s right here, and not when you know he loves you back. 

The counselor campfire is held on the day very last night that you spend together, after all of the campers have left the mountain, returning home, and you finally have the place to yourselves. Namjoon and Yoongi light it because everyone else has been banned from doing so after the Great Flame Incident two years ago, and then you all sit on the logs around the fire pit, reminiscing of the summer gone by, musing aloud about what the future holds. 

You and Jimin snuggle up together, and this night faintly reminds you of the one from last year in the way that Jimin still glows, warm and yellow, in the light of the fire, in the way he seems to make perfect s’mores no matter what, in the way that he laughs at everything that you say. But even with all of the similarities, nothing, literally nothing, could top how you feel right now, dancing on cloud nine with Jimin by your side. 

Never in your wildest dreams did you imagine you’d have him. Never in your wildest dreams did you think your confession would amount to anything more.

“You’re burning your marshmallow again,” Taehyung points out crudely, the side of your marshmallow already turning an ashy coal color. 

“Ah, fuck,” you mutter to yourself, yanking it away from the fire as you blow on it. 

“You’re never gonna learn, are you?” Jimin teases. He plucks his off of his stick, perfectly toasted, and holds it out for you. “Here, have mine.” You open wide and he pops it onto your tongue, the crisp, sweet flavor melting in your mouth as all of the other counselors groan, clearly wishing that they were somewhere other than here. Jimin’s fingers reach up to your chin, tilting your face towards him, before a thumb comes out to wipe away at the smudge on the side of your lip, a sticky white crumb that he pops into his mouth, earning another round of whines.

“Gross,” Seokjin says, nose scrunched up. “Just because you guys are in love now doesn’t mean you have to keep showing us. We get it.”

“Oh, just leave them alone,” Yoongi chides. “They’ve been pining after each other for so long, let them have this.”

“Thanks,” you murmur to Yoongi. You have a lot to thank him for. He has always been on your side, even when you weren’t. 

“Anytime,” he promises. 

“If they’re gonna be like this next year, then I don’t know how long I’m going to last,” Taehyung admits with a fond sigh, because no matter how much he pretends to be annoyed, you know that he’s happy for you. 

Namjoon sucks in a breath. “Uh, yeah, about next year…” he says, wringing his hands together. “I’m not going to be coming back.” You fall into silence, the only sounds the crackle of the fire, the rustle of the wildlife in the woods. “I have another internship at a firm, and then I’m going to be going into the job market, so I don’t, uh, I don’t really see myself coming back here.”

“Me too,” Yoongi chirps up, earning a surprised look from everyone else. “I’ve just been given an offer to produce music for this small record company, but they’re located across the country, so I’ll be moving soon. I guess—well, I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you all.”

“Congrats,” you tell him, sad to hear he won’t be back but thrilled to know he’ll be doing something he truly loves instead. “Seriously, Yoongi. That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, man, that’s sick,” Jungkook pipes up. “When you’ve won your Grammy you have to remember to mention us.”

Yoongi chuckles to himself, small and quiet, but even in this orange light you can see the way his cheeks are turning cherry red, relishing in the praise. “I’ll miss you all,” he says. 

And slowly, one by one, you all begin to admit that even though you love it here, being a camp counselor had always been temporary, and it just wouldn’t be the same without everyone else here with you too. You and Jimin will be graduating this coming school year. So will Taehyung. Seokjin has a Master’s degree in acting that he wants to pursue. Even Jungkook, who is younger than all of you besides Hazel, has said that he plans to travel with his college lacrosse team next summer. 

“Damn,” Taehyung says when everyone is finished, as you all begin to count how many of you there will be left for next summer. “Who’s gonna do Namjoon’s job?”

“I already asked,” Namjoon says with a proud grin, “and Hazel said she is happy to take on the responsibility.”

“Oh, fuck yeah!” Seokjin shouts, giving Hazel a massive hug, nearly crushing her in two. “Hell yeah, Haze! You are going to be kick ass at that. I’m proud of you!”

The rest of the counselors soon follow suit, congratulating Hazel and cheering for her future. It almost makes you want to come back, but you know that Hazel will be fine without you. As long as she still has her secret stash. 

“Nice work, Haze,” you tell her, earning a shy smile from her in response. “You’ve always been a leader.”

“I’m just nervous I won’t be as good as Namjoon,” she admits timidly, clearly a little overwhelmed at such an enthusiastic response. 

“You have nothing to worry about,” Namjoon assures her. “I know you’ll be fine. Plus, you won’t have all of these losers to worry about, so your workload will be much lighter.”

“Hey!” Seokjin, Taehyung, and Jungkook all shout at once. 

“Don’t get me started on the two of you,” Namjoon chides, eyes narrowed. “You’ve caused me more stress than my senior thesis.”

“Out of love,” Seokjin swears, Jungkook and Taehyung nodding enthusiastically next to him. Namjoon rolls his eyes, even though you know that he secretly loves the extra work that they give him. It keeps him young, in that old-timey kind of way. 

“Then I guess this is it, isn’t it?” Hazel asks, standing up and holding out a finished s’more, already taking on her newly-bestowed head counselor duties. “I suppose I’ll do the honors. Congrats to Y/N and Jimin for finally figuring their relationship out, congrats to Yoongi for getting into that record company, congrats to Namjoon for getting his internship, and congrats to everyone else for doing what they love, and for not letting their dreams be dreams. This summer feels sort of like the end of an era, in a way, don’t you think? I mean, lots of us are moving on to bigger and better things, celebrating the past and aspiring to become people that we hope will be admired in the future. And I guess that I just want you all to know that no matter who you become, no matter what you do, I’ll always be someone who admires you.”

If you were a little drunk or just a little more sentimental, Hazel’s words would almost bring tears to your eyes, but instead you just join everyone in cheers, standing up and clinking your s’mores together.

And in a way, it really does feel like the end of an era. No more summers on the mountain, no more late-night camp pranks, no more hydrangeas in the greenhouse. You’re moving on, not only from this part of your life but from your almost-fruitless quest for love, from the place that led you to fall so deeply for Jimin, the place that has housed every memory you have ever saved of him. You’re moving on to a world where Jimin is with you every step of the way, where you know that he will always be there for you, where you no longer have to fight yourself to keep from loving him, where you have to do everything you can to preserve an already-fragile friendship. 

No. Now, you can take your first step forward with Jimin by your side. 

“Cheers!” Everyone shouts. 

“Cheers,” Jimin says to you, pulling you in for a quick little kiss, and no matter how hot the campfire burns Jimin’s lips upon yours will always be what warms you from within. “Cheers to us.”

You grin against his lips, pressing back because you can never get enough, and you murmur, “Cheers to us.”

“Hey! Jungkook!” Seokjin shouts right as Jungkook hops into his car. “When we text you in the group chat you better fucking respond!”

“I will, I will!” Jungkook screams back, voice so loud you can hear it despite the fact that all of his windows are rolled up. 

“No, he won’t,” Yoongi deadpans as he passes you by, duffel bags hanging from his shoulders. “You know he won’t.”

“He never does,” you agree. Getting a text from him is almost as impossible as winning the lottery. “I’ll call you, alright? I know you don’t really like texting, either.”

“Talking is just easier,” he says with a nod. “I’m looking forward to it. Call me whenever you need me.”

“I will,” you promise, watching as Yoongi bids you one final goodbye before heading to his own ride. He plops his bags into the trunk of Namjoon’s car before getting into the passenger seat. Namjoon pushes his head out of the window to wave, smiling wildly at you as he starts the car. You grin, waving back, and watch him, Yoongi, and Jungkook, disappear down the mountain. 

“You’re next, right?” 

You whip around to find Jimin standing behind you, a frisbee in one hand and a suitcase in the other. He won’t be leaving for another couple of hours, when Taehyung’s finally ready to go. They live close to each other so they figured they’d save money by splitting an Uber, which will be waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain.

“Yeah, gotta get back before college starts,” you say, dropping your bags at your feet. “But we’ll see each other before then, right?”

Jimin and you attend universities on opposite sides of the country. Loving each other is the easy part. Staying in love is what will challenge you. 

“Of course,” he promises. “I’ll visit whenever I can. And I’ll come see you on all my breaks during the semester, too. You and Jungkook.”

“Good, you better,” you say, and you pull him in for a bruising hug because you know that this will be the last time for a while. Not a long while, but a while, and even if you have committed every slope of his figure, every inch of his face to memory, you still have to remember how warm he is when you hold him, how soft his lips are when they touch yours. Those things… those are new. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he assures you. “But I’ll miss you too.”

Several feet away, Hoseok honks the horn of your car to let you know that you’re all ready to go.

“I’ll call you when I’m home, okay?” You promise, pulling him in for another hug, one last time, feeling this strange desperation rush through you, like you won’t see him for weeks and this is all you’ll have left. “Isn’t it weird? You’re right here and I miss you already.”

“We’ll see each other again before you know it,” he says, pressing his lips to yours in a sweet, quick kiss. No matter how many times he does it still sends sparks shooting through your veins, but you suppose that that’s just another thing you’ll have to remember. When you part, he notices your worry, eyes softening at the sight. “Hey,” he says, lifting your chin up so you look at him. “I love you.”

You crack a smile. “I love you, too.” 

It’s not a goodbye. 

It’s an until I see you again.

You grab your duffel bags and hike them over your shoulder, footsteps heavy and weighted as you slowly make your way towards your car. Every four steps or so, you turn back just to make sure that Jimin’s still there, and sure enough, he’s watching you, this lopsided, love-drunk smile lacing his features. 

You place your bags in the backseat of your car before heading to the driver’s side, hand on the handle as you look up one final time. 

There Jimin stands in the middle of the clearing, the warm afternoon sun bathing him in a halo. There he stands, beautiful, and kind, and lovely, and in love. And you are so in love. You wave. He waves back.

And you know that you two will be alright. 

You jump into your car and tug the door shut behind you, keys in the ignition, engine revving, and you sigh, content and feeling confident in life. You peer into the rearview mirror to see Taehyung running up to Jimin, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and waving goodbye to you. You lift your hand up in response, watch as they bid you farewell as you creep towards the slope down the mountain. 

As you drive down the mountain, you take a deep breath, inhaling the fresh summer air, and you smile. 

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[incorrectquotesconaisseur]

SO GUYSSSS I JUST FINISHED READING RULE OF WOLVES AND WHAT THE HELL???? I am a MESS

(so here are my thoughts that I had while reading it)

❗❗RULE OF WOLVES SPOILERS❗❗

• Lol Nikolai has a horse named Punchline, I love him so much

• Sankta Zoya Y E S

• Nina is sooo badass I love her - Brum needs to die btw

• Fjerda is a little shit

• "If not for Nina, their blessed termite eating at the heart of Fjerda’s government" - did I mention I love Nina?????

• Nikolai is a freaking mastermind and I love him

• OMG THEY HAVE AN ANTIDOTE FOR PAREM NOW???? HELL YEAH take THAT Fjerda!!!!

• Nina adopting Kaz's mindset when back at the Ice Court is what I live for

• UGH THE APPARAT

• Nikolai is soooo in love with Zoya I AM GOING CRAZY

• Zoya's "you forget that in Kerch greed is a virtue" gave me MAJOR Kaz vibes... I miss my crow babies

• Maybe it's an unpopular opinion, but I don't really like Ehri

• ZOYALAI NATION, HOW ARE WE??? ARE WE CRYING?

• I just REALLY love the found family trope and seeing everyone gathered in Zoya's rooms and Zoya curled up on the couch next to Genya I just AAAAAAAAA

• I absolutely adore the whole concept of the Darkling's prison and the CONSTANT sunlight he has to face HA - Alina vibes

• OMG "bring me Alina Starkov" WHAT THE FUCK I have literal chills ESPECIALLY after seeing the S&B trailer:)

• Nina being so confident in everything she learned from the Crows gives me so much serotonin I WANT MY BABIESSS

• Oh my god... I like prince Rasmus, he gives me major Nikolai vibes

• I draw immense satisfaction from Kaz and Zoya using "podge" as their preferred curse word :))))

• NIKOLAI CAN SEPARATE HIMSELF FROM HIS DEMON???? King behavior

• HOLY SHIT ALINA AGREED TO THE MEETING here we go again, fam

• I'm seeing Nikolai talking a lot about accepting his death and being undisturbed by the prospect of it and it feeaks me out - if he dies, I die with him

• Random, but: they need to get the thorn stuff from the Order of Sankt Feliks or whatever, right??? Maybe they have to steal it... and they would require expertise... MAYBE SOME CROWS PLS???????? (I am such a clown)

• Okay wait... so the letters that prove Nikolai is a bastard are in the druskelle sector... PLEASE TELL ME NINA HAS TO BREAK IN THE ICE COURT the fact that she is back there ALONE makes my heart clench so hard... I MISS MY CROWS

• FUCK ALINA SHOWED UP (also Oncat apparently and now I want to cry about Harshaw again)... AND MAL I can't take this I AM HYPERVENTILATING

• I AM LEGIT ON THE FLOOR Yuri is still there FINALLY understanding that the Darkling is evil AND NOW MY MAIN MAN GOT HIS POWERS BACK oh, I love the chaos

• NIKOLAI FUCKING CARRIES ZOYA'S RIBBON IN HIS POCKET nobody fucking touch me

• THE WEDDING IS FOR GENYA AND DAVID????? I AM SOOO CONFUSED what the heck

• Nikoali is the most fucking badass amazing cunning freakishly intelligent idiot I have ever seen in my entire life, my love for him is immesurable, I cannot put into words just how awesome his awesomeness is TAKE THAT MAKHI YOU BITCH

• OH HELL NO the demon is trying to escape SMACK THAT BITCH NIKOLAI BABY

• Oh wow, Rasmus is crazyyyy af he isn't anything like Nikolai my perfect boi SORRY

• OMG Nikolai's dad us a good guy??? I feel so sorry for him... SO NIKOLAI WAS RIGHT TO BE A ROMANTIC huh

• FUCKING HELL again with the nichevo’ya???? Darkling bby, what the HECK

• Nononononooo NO NOOOO NOT DAVID WHAT THE FUCK LEIGH

• "This is what love does" one of the most powerful quotes tbh

• Wait... they want to???? STEAL??? titanium from the Kerch??? .... DOES THIS MEAN.... C R O W S?????

• Okay but... the Darkling's POV? POWER MOVE I love it!!! And the fact that he uses Aleksander as his name with zero reticence now is just *chef's kiss*

• I'm sorry but... I don't like Mayu's chapters I AM SO SORRY I DON'T

• Nina is my badass queen STEP ASIDE PEASANTS

• All these SoC Easter Eggs and mentions are driving me insane

• Idk why but imagining the Darkling drinking beer is sooo funny to me

• I AM LOSING MY SHIT they are in Ketterdam KETTERDAM does that mean ....DOES THAT MEAN ....I better see my Crows or I am throwing hands

• The Zoyalai conversations in this book are KILLING me

• OH MY FUCKING GOD so Kaz took the Emerald Palace over and renamed it THE SILVER SIX???? LIKE???? I AM LEGIT CRYING???

• Ummm...Zoya, honey, WHY do you want to VOLUNTARILY stay away from Nikolai, HUH?????

• THE ONLY REASON HE AGREED TO HELP NIKOLAI WAS BECAUSE HE GUARANTEES INEJ'S PROTECTION if that's not L O V E idk what is YAAASSS KANEJ

• FUCKING SHIT JESPER!!!! IT'S JESPER!!!! WYLAN!!!! I AM FAINTING MY BABIESS

• The Crows' banter is WHAT I LIVE FOR

• Kaz is the most cold, badass and calculating motherfucker on the planet, I love him soooo much

• No NO NOO JORAN IS THE ONE WHO KILLED MATTHIAS????? HOLY SHIT I am sooo scared LEIGH WHYYYY

• Kaz's reaction to Nikolai's demon is legit the funniest shit ever

• Kaz and Nikolai are bffs - THIS IS HEADCANON LEAVE ME BE

• Queen Leyti has severely disappointed me

• I am having waayyyyy too much fun reading about the Darkling among blindly faithful monks - this is the stuff of sitcoms

• (I know the Crows only had a cameo and they won't pop up again, but I can't help desperation wanting to see Nina reunite with them and PLEASE GIVE ME INEJ!!!)

• Honestly, it's pretty cool getting to have a look in the Darkling's head - it's SUPER fucked up

• OOOOO the blight vs the Darkling = the only confrontation I want to see

• FATHER AND SON REUNION

• I don't care much for Hanne x Nina, but I have to admit that they make a very cute couple

• FUCK THEY BROKE STURMHOND'S BLOCADE FUUUUCK

• WAIT NO it was their plan all along HOLY SHIT electricity RULEZZZZ who knew physics would prove THIS useful???

• UUUGHH FUCK THE APPARAT I am so sick of this guy - Zoya was right, they should have killed him

• I am really pissed at the Darkling- YOU FUCKING ACKNOWLEDGE HOW MUCH RAVKA NEEDS YOUR HELP, YOU SEE NIKOLAI'S BRAVERY, YOU KNOW YOU CAM HELP, AND YOU DO NOTHING??? BRO WHAT THE FUCK

• HELL YEAH ZOYA IS A DRAGOOON fuck some shit up sweety Y E S

• MY SKIN IS CLEARED AND MY CROPS ARE WATERED BY THE DARKLING RAISING A MOB TO CALL ZOYA "SANKTA"

• Also... the Darkling winking at Nikolai? FLERT

• WHAT THE FUCK???? HANNE DIED??? holy shit, why???? WHY CAN'T NINA BE HAPPY???????

• Nikolai is an absolute SAVAGE in a debate

• Idk what to think abt Rasmus... he was kinda badass for standing up against Brum

• SOLDIER. SUMMONER. SAINT. slap me and call me a hoe I SCREAMED WHEN I READ THAT

• ZOYA AS QUEEN, SIGN ME THE FUCK UP

• Okay I stan the Darkling again

• ZOYALAI IS CANON I REPEAT ZOYALAI IS CANONNNNN

• OKAY WOW HANNE IS A FULL-ON BADASS yep, I stan

• I really???? LOVE??? this ending for the Darkling??? Idk but it is VERY fitting

• ALINA!!!! AT ZOYA'S!!!! CORONATION!!!! my life is complete

• FUCKING SHIT INEJ!!! INEEEEEJJJJ my queen my love AAAAAA

• The conversation at the end between Alina, Zoya and Genya DESTROYED ME

• STEALING THE HEART OF SANKT FELIKS yes please BRING THE CROWS BACK!!!!! I NEED ANOTHER CROWS SEQUEL!!!!

• I fainted, I ascended, I DIED at the last page

• NOW I NEED A SEQUEL!!!

• Leigh, you ARE goig to write what happens next, right? RIGHT? RIGHT????

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 23, second part

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Nature Abhors a (Power) Vacuum

Jin Guangshan, Nie Mingjue, and Lan Xichen have gathered to decide what to do about the remaining Wen people and also what to do about the Yin metal. They have not invited Jiang Cheng to this discussion, or blowhard Clan Leader Yao, despite those clans having been hit particularly hard by the Wens in the course of the war. 

The three of them have a conversation about what to do with the Wen captives, showing their different attitudes towards killing.

Jin Guangshan: Killing is awesome, particularly in project management. It's just so efficient. Nie Mingjue: Killing is necessary, and a little bit fun, too. Lan Xichen: Killing is necessary, sadly, but we can randomly spare some women or old people, as a token sign that we’re not monsters. Kind of like when you have a fancy dinner and include a tofu dish for the vegetarians. Nie Mingjue: Nobody likes tofu, Xichen.

Jin Guangshan says he's looking for the Yin Iron and that they can't let any Wens or "ambitious people" get a hold of it. By ambitious people he means Wei Wuxian, not himself and his murder kid. Lan Xichen realizes this right away but doesn't, you know, do anything to contradict him.  Jin Guangshan says he's asked "A-Yao" to look into it. Which is smart, because A-Yao is already in cahoots with Xue Yang, who actually has the piece of Yin Iron they're looking for.

Getting Jiggy With It

Then Jin Guangshan introduces Meng Yao, now renamed Jin Guangyao, in a weird twist on generation names. He has given him the name of a sibling or cousin of his own generation (starting with Guang), rather than a name of the next generation (starting with Zi). JGS says that JGY just recently learned about about being related to him, although we know perfectly well that's not true. 

And they both talk like he appreciates JGY's efficiency and helpfulness, but that's not why JGS has him at his side. He has taken him in because he is a steel-eyed murder bot, not in spite of it. 

(OP does not believe that Jin Guangyao could have been a good person if only his dad had let him hold Jin Ling that one time, as some have argued. Dude killed his own child because there was a chance he might be disabled in a way that could lead to gossip. Dude is a stone cold killer.)

(more after the cut)

In the language of CDrama costume (which is not, precisely, the language of actual historical clothing), Jin Guangyao has chosen to dress as a minister instead of as a chevalier. This is partly an artifact of his mother's ideas about a gentleman. It also suggests that he’s content with the sort of career that's available to a bastard of a noble house--not inheriting the noble title, but having enough favor to rise in power. 

It may also be a ruse to make him seem like he's not a strong cultivator and not a strong fighter, when in fact he is both, at least by the time he’s throwing death chords at Jiang Cheng, much later in the show. 

Mingjue makes all kinds of grumpy faces and snarky remarks to let everyone know that he fucking hates Jin Guangyao.  Xichen agrees to his “nice refugee camp with only a little death” plan, with no qualifications.

Now we get to see Jin Guangyao's manipulation of Lan Xichen. Lan Xichen says that Nie Mingjue wants a plan that’s more killy, because he believes in punishing evil. JGY deliberately misunderstands this, pretending that Lan Xichen said he, JGY, is evil, kind of forcing LXC to reassure him and take his side in an argument that isn’t actually happening. 

They have a little handholding while bowing, and then after Lan Xichen leaves, Jin Guangyao puts on his evil face and has all the prisoners killed behind the big closed door.  

This is done in such a violent fashion that the blood apparently flows up several stairs to the door, and over the tall raised threshold, before flowing downward toward the camera. Some evil is so extreme that even traditional Chinese doorway architecture can’t stop it.

Run To the Rock

Then we go outside to where Wei Wuxian is standing on a rocky outcropping, thinking it would be a good strategic spot to choose if he's ever in a battle where he wants to commit suicide right quick.

Lan Wangji comes to join him and admire the view, not knowing yet that this view, or one a whole lot like it, is going to be seared into his memory for most of his life.

Lan Wangji is becoming more and more committed to Wei Wuxian, more and more inexorably joined to him, but he still doesn't agree with him. So they each have this comfort in each others' presence at the same time as being massively in conflict.

Wei Wuxian asks him what he thinks of all the politicking and murdering. Who is good and who is evil? LWJ doesn't answer because WWX is leaking black smoke, so he grabs him and tells him to concentrate.  Lan Wangji is, incidentally, wearing Princess-Leia quantities of lip gloss.

Lan Wangji asks if Wei Wuxian would like to learn a new tune, "Absterge" according to Netflix. The fuck? [op looks it up in the dictionary]. "To cleanse, especially by wiping." Also known as aftercare. Netflix. Honey. This word is MIDDLE FRENCH. Will you knock it the fuck off?

So anyway, instead of answering his question about who is good and who is evil, LWJ asks if he wants to learn a song called "Cleansing." Wei Wuxian says “hey babe, are you fucking kidding me?” 

His actual words are "you doubt me too?" meaning "you think I also took the missing 4th chunk of Yin iron to make my ugly tiger amulet, rather than obviously having used that giant sword I pulled out of the turtle?"  

Lan Wangji mentally replays Wen Ruohan's questions in his head--the questions he barked at Wei Wuxian right before choking him unconscious--which Lan Wangji also feels entitled to know the answers to. Fuck you, Lan Wangji. He answers WWX with "when did you forge your amulet?" Which is his way of saying "yes, I doubt you."

Wei Wuxian kindly refrains from saying "while we were on a break, bitch" and instead tells him the exact truth--I found a yin iron sword in the turtle--but says it in his patented "make it sound like a lie" way. 

LWJ keeps grilling him, eventually coming out and saying dude, you knew the sword was Yin iron, why did you need to use it?

This is the crucial question--why WWX broke his first promise, to Lan Yi, which was to try to get rid of the Yin Iron. He won’t tell anyone the answer, which is that he needs to use it because he can't cultivate normally, because he lost his golden core. He made a lot of promises before that happened, and he probably expected to keep them. But without his core, everything changed; without his core, he’s a different person, so it’s maybe not fair to expect him to honor his previous promises. 

I’m reminded of my grandfather, who was the oldest son of an old southern US family, with lots of expectations as the firstborn. He went off to WWI as a soldier, expecting to die. He didn’t die, and so from that point on, he regarded his life as a gift. He felt could do whatever he wanted with it, and let go of expectations from before the war. He moved to Paris and took up with a glamorous divorcee 7 years older than him (my Grandma, eventually). 

The actual point of that story, other than OP having cool grandparents, is that when you think you’re going to die, and then you don’t die, your ideas about what you owe to people can change quite a bit. Wei Wuxian expected to die in the Burial Mounds; he expected to die at Nightless City; he expects it, over and over, and each time he doesn’t die, he gets further and further from being what everyone else wants him to be. And--a lot like soldiers returning from a war-- NOBODY in his life knows how to talk to him about it. 

Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji to back off, Lan Wangji says why aren't you letting me help you, and they are once again on the edge of the same fight they keep having. Lan Wangji does some impassioned arm holding while Wei Wuxian says he's not like Wen Ruohan. 

Romantic Duet #1

The argument is interrupted by screams and killing, so they go to check it out, and find the Jins hunting down some prisoners for sport. They arrive in time to save two people. Yay?

Jin ZIxun acts like a jerk, as always. The new element is that per Jin Guangshan, anyone concerned with Yin Iron shouldn't be alive.  He says that the Lan and Nie clans agreed, and challenges Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji stops him from responding, grabbing his wrist.

The Jins leave and Wei Wuxian refers back to their earlier conversation, saying there will be more resentful spirits now and that "Rest" is the music to play, not "Cleansing."

He gives Lan Wangji a long look and then pointedly removes Lan Wangji’s hand from his wrist, by holding his hand, which is some next-level mixed signaling. Lan Wangji totally deserves it at this point, though. He keeps pushing and pushing WWX about his cultivation method, but he refuses to discuss the underlying morality of it, or the morality of the killing going on right in front of them. 

WWX walks off, leaving LWJ to stew in his own juices surrounded by a bunch of fresh corpses. 

Lan Wangji fails his saving throw against the guilt trip, and sits his ass down to play Rest, just like Wei Ying told him to. So switchy!  Wei Wuxian, out of sight but not out of earshot, hears him and accompanies him on Chenqing.

This scene is slightly ridiculous and a whole lot sublime. Ridiculous because it's their first time playing music together, so it's a super slow, romantic, extended scene, but they're surrounded by corpses. And not the helpful, friendly, third-wheel-on-a-date type of corpses.

It's sublime because the occasion of their first beautiful, literally magical duet is an argument. And they are joining together to play beautiful romantic music - as a service for the dead. And they are doing it while they are on literally opposite sides of a literal killing field. And Lan Wangji is sitting literally in the middle of a wide open road; the sort of road that they will both reject, metaphorically, later in the show. There is so much about their conflict and their journey that is encapsulated in this one musical moment.

Lan Wangji, by playing the song Wei Wuxian said was needed, is telling WWX that he took his words to heart, that he is listening, even though they're at odds.

WWX, by stopping and playing with him, is acknowledging this. And by settling the dead souls together, they are both reinforcing their dedication to doing what's right even as they both struggle with knowing what that is.

When Other Friendships Have Been Forgot, Ours Will Still Be Hot

Now we have the sworn brothers thing. I understand, plot wise, why this has to happen, but why would Nie Mingjue ever agree to this? Lan Xichen's puppy eyes are just that persuasive?

If they ever crack your spine, drop a line If they ever cut your throat, write a note If you’re ever in a mill and get sawed in half, I won’t laugh (HA HA HA HA)

Tedious Party Time

Now there's a cultivation party, which is about as excruciating to watch as it would be to attend.

Everyone is lining up to praise Jin Guangshan. To be fair, he did provide shelter for most of the smaller clans while the war was going on. So being grateful is appropriate, but Clan Leader Yao practically breaks his own neck kissing Jin ass. Yao says JGY’s contribution was the greatest of the war, adding, "fuck Wei Wuxian; everything is his fault."

The Jiangs show up wearing mourning belts that show off their itty bitty waists, and Jin Guangshan makes shifty eyes like a cartoon landlord when he sees them arrive.

JGS praises Jiang Cheng, and asks when his fancy clan-leader ceremony is going to happen. Jiang Cheng says he's still in mourning so it's not appropriate. JGS is like “Oh...yeah," as if he totally forgot about all the Yunmeng slaughter, and talks up his friendship with Jiang Fengmian. He acts comforting while WWX manages not to barf.

Then the Lan clan shows up and there is nice encouraging chit chat between LXC and JC...

...and just, SO MUCH mournful staring between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian.

Then the Nies arrive.  Jin Guangshan tells Nie Mingjue he's late, and that everyone's waiting for him. That might be true in the script but it’s clearly bullshit on the screen, where the Lans and the Jiangs are still milling around looking for the coat room.

Nie Mingjue--who, let's remember, JUST swore to be brothers with Jin Guangyao--looks at him like he's something that fell off a garbage truck.  Lan Xichen jumps in to maximize the discomfort by pointing out that Jin Guangyao should address Nie Mingjue as Big Daddy Da-ge from now on.

Then the Jins offer Nie Mingjue the giant fire throne because...he's the leader of the Sunshot campaign, I guess? Of course it's all a manipulation tactic, designed to make him say he won't sit there, so that JGS can elevate himself to head cultivator, or something? And sit in front of the throne but not on it? Cultivator succession seems kinda arbitrary. 

I swear to god, it wasn't until I was clipping this episode that I realized Wen Ruohan had two thrones and they're in different rooms from each other.

Finally everyone goes to sit down, but because there hasn't been enough fucking awkwardness, JGY stops WWX to ask him what's on his mind. WWX asks him why he's not carrying his sword, which made me laugh and laugh. Wei Wuxian must have been just waiting for a chance to ask someone else that question for a change. 

Jin Guangyao says he threw it away, because it was just a random sword, but he really means he had it made into a sneaky murder belt, that he will be using again in 13 to 16 years. They both fake-laugh and trade Mean Girls insults pretend to like each other. 

Everyone wanders around toasting each other. Lan Wangji goes to find Wei Wuxian, after first making sure that his hair looks good.  

Wei Wuxian is lying around on the steps, sprawling and drinking wine, and not, incidentally, looking for Lan Wangji. He continues to not seek him out and Lan Wangji continues to chase after him.

Wei Wuxian says "how about playing Cleansing?" but Lan Wangji says he's learning a new score. It looks like it's going to be another argument, but then Wei Wuxian smiles and kind of praises Lan Wangji for being stubborn. 

Awkward Marriage Proposal

Just then everyone inside starts cheering for Jin Guangshan to give a speech. Jin Guangshan is making a move to marry Jiang Yanli to his son, which is a big time power grab, given that the Jiang Clan is 1. vulnerable and depleted 2. has control of the Yin tiger amulet.

We get a very rare glimpse into Jiang Cheng’s inner mind, where he thinks that saying yes isn’t a great idea, but isn’t sure what to do. This marriage would make his sister happy, but could destroy the Jiang Clan's independence.

Fortunately, Wei Wuxian joins the party just in time to fuck up Jin Guanshan’s plans. Will this teach Jin Guangshan not to invite Wei Wuxian to parties? It will not.  

Soundtrack: Friendship, by Cole Porter (from “Anything Goes”)

Bonus:

[anachronisticcrab]

Percy Being Good To Nico

I love Percy and Nico friendship, but in canon, Percy was such an ass to Nico. So here are some ideas of how that could have been changed in a canon divergent fic

After the Battle of the Labyrinth, when Nico was trying to leave CHB and Percy stopped him, Percy gave Nico his phone number and home address in case of emergency (that’s how he knew where Percy lived)

After Percy’s birthday party that Nico crashed, Sally started getting Nico to come for dinner once a month, which caused Nico and Percy to become a lot closer

This seriously cut back on Percy’s stress because he wasn’t constantly worrying about Nico (like where he was, if he was okay, how many monsters was he fighting now, how much is he eating, where is he sleeping, when was the last time he actually performed any sort of self care, etc)

Pretty quickly once a month dinners became once a week dinners, which usually ended in Nico staying overnight

When Sally and Paul got married, they moved into Paul’s apartment, and Sally gave Nico the address. When he showed up the first Friday for dinner, he almost cried of joy (they had added an extra bed in Percy’s room for Nico to stay in)

Percy throws Nico a surprise party for his birthday every year, and Nico tried baking Percy a cake for his birthday one year. Suffice to say, it didn’t end well, but Percy still ate it with a smile on his face because his little brother made it for him

After that though, Percy and Nico agreed that Percy and Sally would stick to the baking, and Nico could stick to making meals

They had a two hour conversation after the Battle of Manhattan to talk about the Styx thing. It ended with a tearful apology from Nico, and a tearful hug from Percy. Now the two of them have a conversation twice a month about their feelings and bullshit that’s happened

Percy making Nico watch an endless stream of Disney movies (Finding Nemo, Moana, The Little Mermaid, basically anything that goes along with the sea)

When Percy finds out about Nico’s love of pirates, he gets Nico to watch all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies with him

Percy feeds Nico bullshit facts about the modern century (ie. the Soviet Union renamed themselves the Cotton Candy Brigade and then disbanded, but citizens of former soviet countries are still called Munchkins)

Nico feeds Percy bullshit facts about both the 30’s and Italy (ie. Italy is known to its citizens as the Peninsula of Cazzo, and that they didn’t have cutlery or plates in the 30’s)

Sometime between botl and tlo, Nico’s feelings for Percy morphed from romantic to brotherly

When Nico had to lie to Percy about who he was in SoN, it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. Percy knew that he knew Nico, and it crushed Nico that Percy couldn’t remember him, and that he couldn’t tell Percy anything. He hadn’t seen his big brother in almost a year, and now Percy didn’t remember him, and he couldn’t remind him

When they saw each other again on the Argo 2 before Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus, you cannot convince me that Percy didn’t give Nico a hug

Nico genuinely didn’t have a crush on Percy by HoO, he thought of Percy as a brother. He was still really ashamed of being gay, and he loved Percy (just in a very different way). That’s why Jason wasn’t sure if Nico still liked Percy or not after the Cupid thing. He could tell that Nico was ashamed and loved Percy, but he didn’t know that Nico just loved Percy in a different way

Nico got super ticked off at Percy when he said ‘are you sure you can do this’ to the shadow travel thing at the end of HoH mostly because Percy has a bad habit of treating Nico like he’s still that ten year old geek from Westover Hall

Like really. Everyone else around Nico sees a terrifying teenager who’s summoned army’s of the undead and destroys his enemies in ten seconds flat, but Percy just sees a kid with big eyes infodumping about his favourite card game wearing armour that’s three sizes too big telling him that he’s scared

It pisses Nico off because he’s not a little kid anymore, Percy! he can take care of himself! he isn’t gonna break the second he goes to fight!

Also, by extension, Nico and Tyson are siblings and Hazel and Percy are siblings (which adds Frank into their family, cause he’s Nico’s age and dating Hazel). So when Reyna, Nico, and Hedge were caught by Leah and Dakota on the boat, Nico was super excited to see his little brother again. He wasn’t even that upset when Tyson pulled him into a hug (even though he hates hugs)

When they see each other again at CHB after the Battle, they give each other a big hug. Percy tells Nico’s that he was so worried he’d never see his baby brother again, and Nico proceeds to make fun of Percy for waking up Gaia with a nosebleed

Also, after Reyna and Nico’s hug, Percy pulls Nico aside and is like ‘what’s the deal with you and Reyna’ and Nico’s like ‘she’s my sister now’ and Percy goes ‘oh, okay, cool. bring her around for family dinner next weekend’

Same with Jason, Rachel, and Meg, too. Percy’s always down for more adoptive family being around

After Nico came out to Percy and Annabeth, and told Percy that he’s gay, Percy went to the infirmary to talk to Nico. He wasn’t allowed in at first, but he waited outside for three hours so he could speak with Nico

Of course, this led to a three hour discussion, which involved a lot of apologies from both of them, and a lot of shared stories, and laughs, and a few tears. Percy told Nico he shouldn’t be ashamed of who he is, and he should’ve told Percy sooner

When Percy went home for the school year, and to see his parents again, Nico joined him. There were lots of tears, hugging and blue cookies. Then Sally grounded them both for staying away for so long and worrying the hell out of her and Paul

When Percy sees Nico and Will interact, he makes it his goal to make them a couple. He and Jason spend hours plotting ways to get them together

Whenever Nico’s away from home for any amount of time, Percy gives Nico a big hug, ruffles his hair, and complains that he stayed away

When Nico first moves to New Rome for university, Will’s living in Massachusetts for Harvard Med School, so he moves in with Jason and Percy for a few years while he gets a degree in linguistics and anthropology

Btw, Annabeth thought Percy would distract her when she was trying to study, so she moved in with Piper and Reyna, and Percy moved in with Jason. It should’ve only taken her 4 years to get her masters in architecture, but the university offers a bunch of history, math, and design classes that she took because they were really interesting (it ended up taking her 6 years)

That’s all for now. I might make another post about this cause I live for Percy and Nico friendship. Btw,, DO NOT tag as P*rcico. This is purely familial and platonic headcanons

[multi-fandom-freak0221]

If Your Done With Embarrassing Me On Your Own Won't You Go Ahead and Tell Them

Oh my god y'all have just blown me away. I was not expect so much positive feed back. I was screaming so much I could not Believe how much you guys liked that. And so many people are asking to be tagged in the next part thank you guys so much. Also can I just say moving from Google Docs to Tumblr was a bitch to do and I hated it. But y'all inspired me so much that I decided to just go ahead and type it up on tumblr and move it to Google Docs afterwards.

This part's title is from "Impossible" by Shontelle. The song in this part is "Young Volcanoes" by Fall Out Boy

This is Part 2 of my fic based on @misashabunbun 's Love of Three.

Part 1

Tagging List (I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE I NEED ONE.):

@thestressmademedoit @colorfulmongerpsychicranch @lizziejay @indecisive-mess-named-me @captainmac6 @luveverything12 @kris-pines04 @brokenwordsarehard2

To say Marinette was busy would be an understatement. Between working with Luka and Uncle Jagged producing her album as Neon Titanium and her friends insisting that they help heal her brokenheart she felt like she was caught in a whirl wind. But it was nice she had fun. Luka and Uncle Jagged knew how to turn the hard work of producing music into a fun experience while still being efficient. And her friends they had her laughing harder than she laughed in while and smiling brighter than their resident sunshine child. They did everything they could think off.

She went shopping with Chloe and Kagami. She watched horror movies with Alix, Nathaniel, and Adrien. Marc and Luka let her rant to them which turned into a crying session which then turned into a meditation session. And on top of that her and Peter hung out as well. Whether they just worked in silence together on their respective projects or they were pranking Uncle Tony, kwami did she have fun renaming the protocols on the Iron Man suit. Soon Peter easily fit his way into her group of friends abd he fit in perfectly. Everyone got along with him.

But he wasn't the last to join their ragtag group. Everyone was shocked when Felix Graham De Vanily came to their group offering Marinette condolences on her lost engagement. He was sincere and courteous so of course no one was surprised when Marinette invited him to join in the currently planned game of dodgeball, except maybe Felix himself. But nonetheless he joined in the competition and found himself hanging out with the rest of the group as well. Soon his cold off-standish demeanor was traded for sly smirks and slick humor that nobody caught at first except Marinette and Peter who would laugh openly at his responses.

Soon enough Felix was a part of the group and felt comfortable letting his guard down. It help that they didn't treat him as the Graham De Vanily heir or Adrien's asshole cousin. They treat him like Felix, the boy who while very proper cried watching Big Hero 6. Also the boy who slam dunked on Adrien without breaking a sweat. Yet he still is the master of backhanded compliments and insulting people with a smile and having them thank him. He could truly be himself and he was thankful.

And while he easily was getting along with everyone, anyone with easy could see he had a soft spot for Peter and Marinette in general. It was in the way his face would soften when looking at them. Or the way he would smile when Marinette would get excited over something. Or the way he always paid attention to Peter when he was geeking out. It was the way he softly teased them over their height, Marinette being the shortest of the group and Peter only being taller than Marinette and Alix. And everyone knew Marinette's heart was still healing, so it came no surprise when Felix and Peter started dating. And while everyone was happy for them no one, but Marinette herself missed the looks of longing both boys would send towards her.

Believe it or not Felix was not the most surprising addition to their friend group. No the last addition came soon after Marinette formally did an interview after too much press took notice of Damian Wayne's fiancee being seen for the first time in almost a year, in New York of all places.

She remembered Uncle Tony setting up the interview with someone he trusted. She was glad that this was only an interview as Damian Wayne's (ex) fiancee and not MDC or Neon Titanium. She can only imagine how big a deal it will be when she reveals. But that was future Marinette's problem. Present Marinette had to focus on what to say without giving too much details because no matter how much he deserved it, she didn't want to throw Damian to wolves like that. She settled on saying that she was going through some things and no longer was content in Gotham. She claimed that she decided it was in her best interest to leave, but she didn't want to make a big deal about which is why nothing had been said until now.

The interview went well and everyone accepted her answers. It was released about a month after she left Damian and two weeks since Peter and Felix started dating. She still got news alerts for Gotham so she was waiting with baited breath for her interview to reach the Gotham, but it never seemed to. No announcements from WE or the Wayne family in general. She couldn't say it didn't hurt that no one even realized she was gone yet. But what hurt more was when 2 weeks after her interview she got an alert from Gotham Gazette saying the Damian claimed they set a date for their wedding. She cried that day. How could he not even notice she was gone? Was he so used to lying about her and their relationship that he didn't even give a second thought to what he was saying any more? And while she despaired, she relished in the fact that her friends did not let her be alone. Her face was buried in Peter's neck, she was sat on Felix's lap, Chole was threading her fingers through her hair, her feet laid over Peter legs and settled on Marc's, Adrien sat on the floor in front of Felix a hand rest on her back and everyone gathered around as close as possible trying to physically reassure her. Luka was even humming softly. She appreciated all the love amd support she had and soon she was feeling much better. Eventually it turned into a puppy pile napping session and if she ended up curled up between Peter and Felix? Eh, nobody said anything.

It was these series of events that led to their newest and by far strangest addition to their friend group. Here it was, two days after Damian's announcement and here in front of her stands no other than Jonathan Kent, Damian's best friend.

"Hey, Mari. It's been a while, huh?" She could admit Jon looked nervous. The way he wouldn't meet her eyes and how his hand was rubbing his neck. But him bring nervous did nothing to calm her nerves about why he was even here.

Marinette took a deep breath and drew as much of her inner Ladybug as she could. "Why are you here, Jonathan?"

Jon flinched at how she used his full name. "I'm so sorry, Nette. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I'm sorry I didn't push harder. You were my friend too. I should have checked on you. Damian was such a good liar, I never knew. I should have known but I didn't and that doesn't excuse the fact that I wasn't there for you." Jon took a deep breath and finally met her eyes before speaking again. "But I'm going to do better, Nette. Whatever you need just say the word. Even if it means leaving. When we saw your interview Dad told Uncle Bruce to make sure his family was in order especially his youngest. He didn't give any details and Uncle Bruce got offended. I guess he did end up talking to Damian, but Damian doubled down on his lies and his family is believing him. But I know better because I saw what you said and I know even that wasn't the whole truth. So I want you to know I'm on your side."

Marinette was silent for a minute she study him and his words. The way she was looking at him made Jon feel like his whole soul was being judged, but he didn't dare look away. He needed her to know he meant it and that he was truly sorry for not being for. After a minute that felt like hours Marinette smiled softly at him. "I could always appreciate a hug from a friend." She held her arm open and Jon surged forward and hugged her tightly lifting her off the ground.

Marinette giggled a bit before he set her down. "Thanks, Jon for being here for me. I know Damian is you best friend-"

"He lost that right when he decided to lie to me repeatedly for his own benefit." Jon looked uncharacteristically upset at the fact.

"Well if you're in need of some more good friends, I know a group you should meet. Come on, we're about to have a pool day. I'm sure I have some swim trunks I've designed that you could probably fit. "

After they changed intl their respective swimwear, Mari led Jon to her Uncle Tony's pool where the rest of her friends were already waiting. "Hey guys! I'd like you to meet my friend Jon. He's in need of some good company."

Those who recognized Jon looked up surprised before see his nervous fidgeting and hearing Marinette's last sentence before nodding in understand. It was Peter who spoke up first. "Well any friend of Mari's is welcome with us. Come on we were about to play chicken fight!" And just like that their pool party was in swing. The played a couple pool games and had some snacks before Marinette decided to play some music. Soon a familiar tune was playing over the speakers.

When Rome's in ruins

It was Chole who started singing along first sitting laying on one of the pool chairs. In between Alix and Kagami.

We are the lions

Free of the colosseum.

In fields of poison

We're anitvenom

We're the beginning of the end.

Soon Alix was singing the next part as Chloe finished the first part.

Tonight, the foxes hunt the hounds

It's all over now

Before it has begun

We've already won

Luka was quick to pick up the chorus while trying to get everyone to join in with him.

We are wild

We are like young volcanoes

While everyone was distracted with singing Luka had Adrien and Jon sneak with him behind the girls in the pool chair. Each of them grabbed one and threw them in the water. Luka grabbed Kagami, Adrien grabbed Chloe and Jon grabbed Alix.

We are wild

Americana, exotica

Do you wanna feel a little beautiful, baby?

As everyone else's singing tapered off into laughing, Marinette picked up the next part solo as she walked to the diving board and climbed up.

Come on, make it easy, say I never mattered

Run it up the flag pole,

She ended her singing with a cannonball into the pool. Peter picked it up from his place in Felix's arms.

We will teach you how to make boys next door out of assholes

He sung his verse looking at Felix the whole time, who scoffed jokingly when Peter winked at him, but gave a him a kiss after he was done singing. Marc and Nathaniel picked up where he left off dueting together.

Tonight, the foxes hunt the hounds

And it's all over now

Before it has begun

We've already won

Soon everyone was singing along again to the chorus playing around splashing each other.

We are wild

We are like young volcanoes

We are wild

Americana, exotica

Do you wanna feel a little beautiful, baby?

Soon everybody had calmed down slightly singing a little quieter. Marinette her self was floating on her back towards the center of the pool. Smiling at all her support around her.

We are wild

We are like young volcanoes

We are wild

Americana, exotica

Do you wanna feel a little beautiful, baby?

As the song ended Jon was the first to speak. "What the fuck is in the water in Paris that makes y'all so talented?"

Peter laughed as he easily agreed, "That's what I said!"

Adrien chuckled at the Americans in their group antics. "To be fair, Felix is from London and Kagami is from Japan."

"Still! That is crazy. And Marinette I never knew you could sing like that!" Jon looked over towards the bluenette, his eyes softening at her.

Marinette giggled. "Neither did the rest of the world until Neon Titanium featured in Luka's last single."

"What?!" Jon exclaimed. "You're Neon Titanium?! I loved that song! Nette you're even more amazing than I thought."

Luka threw his hand up saying "Here, here." Making Marinette blush as all her friends joined in on complimenting her.

About a 3 weeks later, Marinette found herself working on a dress for her debut as Neon Titanium which uncle Tony insisted she do at a gala he's throwing. Which she suspects he's throwing just for her to debut because there was absolutely no gala planned before.

That was what she was doing when Jon, Felix, and Peter found her. It didn't take long for Jon to fit in with group. And with how often he stayed with them in New York instead of going back to Metropolis, no one was surprised when he started dating Peter and Felix. Marinette was happy for them even though it seemed like everyone was in happy relationships but her. But she knew she still had some things to work out before returning to the dating scene.

As they approached Marinette paused her sketching to look at her friends. "What's up guys? You needed something?"

The 3 boys looked at each other before Peter spoke up. "Yeah, actually. We wanted to tell you something." He rubbed the back of his neck before letting out a sigh. "We like you Marinette. A lot. And we would love for you to date us."

Marinette could feel the rejection on her tongue, but before she could say a word Jon cut her off.

"Let us finish first Nette. Please. After we're done you can tell us to never bother you again, but just let us get this out." Jon pleaded at her. Marinette just nodded and let them continue.

"We all like you a lot," Felix started his words very sincere. "But we all know that your still healing. We only told you because we thought it would be fair for you to know."

It almost seemed as they had planned and rehearsed for this because Peter effortlessly picked up after Felix. "We're not trying to guilt you into dating us because at the end of the day it is still you decision. And we know it may be some time before your ready to even consider dating us, but we're willing to wait."

Jon grabbed her hands as he prepared to finish them out. "We just want you to know how amazing we think you are. We'll be beyond lucky if you decide to date us when you're ready to make that choice. And until you are we're still your friends and we'll continue helping you heal and be better how ever you want us to. And if you decide you don't see us that way we'll still be some of your closest friends because having you in our lives is a blessing Nette."

Soon they all seemed to be holding one of her hands as they finished what they had to say. Marinette had silent tears streaming down her face, but the big smile she had eased away their worries. She pulled them into a tight hug for a moment before pulling back.

"You guys are the absolute best friends a girl can have." She smiled at them gratefully. "You're right that I'm not ready yet, but when I am, you guys will be the first people I consider dating. Promise. Now do you guys wanna see the designs I'm considering for my reveal?"

As the boys gathered around Marinette for her to show them her sketchbook she thought to herself with a smile.

I might not be quite okay yet, but with all the great people I have on my side, I know I will be soon.