#get a girl who was popular in school + a hormonal teenager and what you get? the bf dumped her lol and then she dumped him a week later

[malkaviian]

infodump in the tags about charlotte since she has been appearing more frequently in my thoughts

[antxlss]

convenient

pairing: xavier thorpe x reader

summary: your best friend xavier only talks to you when it’s convenient, and you’ve always been okay with that. but he’s really pushed it this time.

warnings: suggestive, toxic friendship, daddy issues

a/n: i really like this one! but i need you guys to come through with the requests, i’m not creative at all. comment them below!

-—————————⋆｡‧˚ʚɞ˚‧｡⋆—————————-

the boy’s dorm (3rd person):

it was a friday night in ajax’s room. all the boys were there. kent, ajax (obviously), rowan, xavier, and a few other boys were all in a meaningless discussion about girls. what else would a group of hormonal teenage boys be talking about?

“you guys get no bitches. i literally pulled the hottest werewolf chick in the school.” ajax said confidently. he was talking about enid, the girl he had just taken out on a date earlier that evening.

of course all the boys went into an uproar about how they can pull more “bitches” than the other.

“what about xavier? he has the most popular girl in school. bianca barclay?” one of the boys added.

“xavier has two chicks” ajax explained. “y/n l/n is all over you 24/7”

“that’s not funny, man. y/n is my best friend.” xavier said sounding almost upset.

“so you’re telling me you wouldn’t bang her if you had the chance, because i definitely would.” kent said smirking.

that comment caused all the boy to erupt into a fit of laughter. xavier wasn’t amused as he angrily left the room slamming the door behind him.

in the girls’ dorm (2nd person):

you were in enid’s dorm with enid, yoko, and a few other girls from ophelia hall, just painting each other’s nails and talking about whatever came to mind. when suddenly you brought up the elephant in the room. enid had went out with ajax, her long time crush, earlier that evening, and all of you were dying to hear about it.

“okay e, spill it. how was your date?” you said.

“oh, it was magical! we went on a picnic by the lake! he even offered to take insta pics for me! he’s so perfect.” she rambled with lovestruck eyes. “okay. enough about me. i’m not the only one who’s going to be hammered with questions about their crush tonight.” enid continued. “y/n, when are you going to admit that you are in love with xavier?”

“i’m not in love with xavier.” you scoffed.

you were so in love with xavier. you had been best friends with him since before freshman year at nevermore. you both attended the same middle school. you guys just stuck together when you were sent to nevermore. you both joined the archery club which caused you to spend more time together, and now you guys are practically inseparable. having known each other for so long, you know about his rocky relationship with his father. in fact you are probably the only one who knows all the details. that’s why he always comes to you to talk and trauma dump.

being as close as you guys were, made it impossible for you to not catch feelings. but when he started dating bianca barclay earlier this year, you knew he didn’t feel the same way towards you. so, you have just continued being his best friend and the girl he runs to only when it’s convenient. but that’s enough for you.

“i’m tired” you yawned. “i think i’m going to head back to my dorm.”

“yeah, it’s getting late you guys.” yoko agreed.

and with that you all wrapped everything up and headed your separate ways.

[time skip]

it was saturday, which meant all the nevermore students were aloud to go to jericho. all of your friends already had plans with their boyfriends or their other friends, so you had planned a day out by yourself. you weren’t actually that mad about it. you could use a day alone.

you got up and got ready putting on a cute, but comfy outfit. you did some light makeup, grabbed your bag and headed out.

you decided to walk to town, a little exercise wouldn’t kill you. once you arrived, you headed to the local library to trade out some of the books you had borrowed last weekend. you could use the school’s library, but the selection there was very limited, and you have a very vast selection of books. basically the school library isn’t cutting it, so you find all your novels here.

you walked in the library returning your old books and heading to the shelves to find three more books to hold you over until your next trip to jericho. you found some books that interested you and you checked them out. you shopped around at a few more stores until you went to your last stop. the weathervane.

you walked in and ordered your usual, an iced matcha latte, and headed to your usual booth. you pulled out your laptop and worked on some homework that was due on monday while you sipped on your drink. you were working peacefully for a few minutes when what sounded like arguing snapped you out of your homework.

two tables across from you sat xavier and bianca. they seemed to be arguing about something. xavier looked really upset. you tried your best to make out what they were saying, but it was nearly impossible. they kept at it for a few more seconds before xavier got up and stormed out. bianca put her head in her hands and trailed behind him. part of you wanted to get up, follow your best friend and ask him what was going on, but you knew better. you didn’t want to overstep. if he wanted to to talk to you he would text you. so, you left it alone and continued with your day.

[time skip]

it was 10:00 p.m. that night. you were reading one of the books you had picked up earlier that day. you had your phone on do not disturb mode so you could focus on your book. it never did cross your mind that someone would try to get a hold of you. that is until you heard frantic knocks against your door. you knew exactly who it was. xavier. luckily you had a scored a single dorm this school year, so it wasn’t unusual for xavier to sneak in and hang in your room. but considering what you saw happen today, this wasn’t just a hang.

you quickly hopped off of your bed, shutting your book and taking out your airpods. as soon as you opened the door xavier rushed in and you shut the door behind him.

“why weren’t you answering me?” he asked sort of angrily.

“i was reading and my phone was on do not disturb mode” you replied. “why are you so upset?”

“i found out that bianca was using her siren song on me. god i knew i couldn’t trust her.” he scoffed while running his hand through his long hair.

“i’m so sorry xavier. did you break up with her?” you asked in a settling tone.

“yeah. today at the weathervane.”

of course you already knew that, you watched the whole thing go down. “just know i’m always here for you.” you comforted him as you put you hand on his upper arm.

“i know.” he said as he inched closer to you. he grabbed your chin and pulled your face towards his. your noses were almost touching. his lips lingering over yours. he moved his other hand to the back of your neck and pushed your lips together.

the kiss was hungry, desperate, angry, and full of desire. you wanted more. this is what you’ve always wanted. but why is he doing this. he’s never shown any romantic interest in you. that’s when it hit you.

you pull away.

“w-what’s wrong?” xavier stutters out of breath.

“no. don’t do that. you can’t just come in here and take advantage of me. you can’t just come here and fuck me just because you’re heartbroken.” you say holding back tears.

“do you really think that low of me y/n?” he yells.

“yeah. i do.” you yell back. “this is how it’s always been in the four years that i’ve known you. you only come to me when you’re desperate. like that time in sixth grade when all your other friends had already planned to go to the movies and it was too late for you to join so i was the only one left to hang out with. or that time last year, everyone else already had a date to the rave’n and all the other girls you asked rejected you, so i was your last resort.” you screamed back tears falling down your face.

“i’m sorry y/n.” xavier tried to get out, but you cut him off.

“or like right now. you have blown me off every single time i have tried to talk to you since you got with bianca and you finally talk to when you can’t run to her anymore. not to mention the only time you talk to me is when you need a therapist.” you were now full on bawling.

“i’m really-“ he started.

“now you’re playing with my feelings. can’t you see i’ve been in love with you ever since i’d met you? even when you treat me like crap. no. you only want me when i’m convenient.” you finish.

“y/n, please.” he begged.

“no get out. now.” you cried.

“but-”

“right now. please.” you were desperate for him to leave. you couldn’t even look at him.

with that he got up and walked out and you were left alone with your thoughts. it felt good to get that off your chest after four years.

part 2

[graciegoeskrazy]

somebody else

george daniel + xcx!stepdaughter!teen!reader

(ft charli, gabbriette, and matty!)

warnings: cursing, daddy issues, bio dad comes back, king george, charli is a queen

a/n: ty anon who requested this and dug an old idea out of the trash lmao. hope u enjoy! i’m really proud of this one actually tehehe.

“Y/n, what time do you get out of practice today?” George asked, packing your lunch.

You stared at your phone with a blank expression, reading the texts you had received through the night.

“Y/n?” George called again when there was no response. “Hellooooo? Earth to y/n??” George teased.

Your head snapped up and your eyes widened in realization. “Sorry, I, uh- I get out at 5:30,” You tried to play it off with a laugh, immediately looking back down the texts.

“You okay?” George sensed something was off.

“Yeah, fine. Got to go,” You stood from the bar stool and grabbed your things, including the luch george had packed that was lying on the counter. You brushed it off quickly, trying to evade further questions.

“Wait a minute- what was that?” George persisted, concerned.

“Nothing, George! I’m fine, I got to go to school,” You placed a kiss on his cheek, standing on your tip toes, before you turned to your mom who was walking in from the bedroom she and George shared. “Bye, mom!” You said, rushing out the door.

“Bye, darling,” Charli said, walking out in her pjs and bedhead

With that you slammed the door and headed off the school. Charli laughed at the look stuck on her fiance’s face and kissed hm and she wrapped her arms around her torso. “What’s wrong?” She asked.

“Nothing, I guess. She’s just acting weird. Staring at her phone,” He said, trying to downplay her worries.

She smiled. “That’s what teenagers do, George…” she added, trying to reassure him.

He shrugged as he cleaned up the mess from packing her lunch. “Have you noticed she’s acting differently?” George pressed on, sensing there was more beneath the surface.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“I don’t know-“ George hesitated, searching for the right words.

“Yes, you do,” George looked up with a look. Charli tilted her head and smiled.

He continued. “Quieter. Not the chipper, happy girl we know and love?”

Charli got serious. “I mean, yeah, but I had just chalked it up to hormones,” She admitted, realizing she couldn’t ignore the signs any longer.

“Hm,” George said, looking down.

His other hand sensed the concern on his face. “She’ll come around. Whatever is happening, our girl is stronger than it. She’ll be fine,”

“Yeah,” George agreed, though his worry still lingered.

“Our girl,” He whispered and smiled.

…

You did your best to avoid the texts on your phone. He was up to his nose in nonsense again and it was starting to get to you, even more than usual. For the first week or so, he was respectful. You set boundaries, never promised to see him in person, and he agreed. Over time he got more abrupt. He would message you constantly, saying ‘hey’ or ‘sorry’ or ‘please forgive me’ or other stupid shit. Eventually, when you didn't reply he would curse you out. He would make threats and call you names, proof of the real him. You would cry and fight the urge to scream in the school bathroom. A stark contrast to the life you lived at home and school. You were a model student with a combination of popularity and straight A’s. A nice nepo baby who was a good friend to everyone and a joy to be around. Nobody knew of the dark past that you lived through.

Your ‘dad’, if you can even call him that, caused trouble from the beginning. Your mom and him were in love for a long time, but when you came along and Charli was ready to live a family life along with her career, despise your expectancy, your dad backed out and left. Charli begged and pleaded for years, but to no avail. Your early childhood memories include vivid glimpses of him from the times he did try and come around, but he always chose different things over you. The last time he tried was nearly 5 years ago. You were 10. You were excited when your mom said he wanted to see you again, You were excited to be like the other kids at school and have 2 parents, but that was a short-lived dream. He left after a while, completely ghosting you and your mom.

A message popped up on your Instagram account a couple of weeks ago. Usually, the messages you get are from XCX or 75 fans who want to connect to you to get closer to George or your Mum, so you ignore them at first glance. That was until you saw the name. His name. He said he wanted to talk and and gave you his number, You reached out. He said all he wanted to do was relay a message - he was doing good, he hoped you were doing good, he was in a better, more stable place, he would like to talk or even meet but there was no pressure.

And like a fool, you fell for it.

…

Gabbriette promised to pick you up from school and take you out to ‘start of spring break right’. She had known you for years, being friends with your mom, and had become somewhat of an aunt, so when she and Matty fell in love and started dating, it was nothing short of perfect. She took you to your favorite spot the two of you shared, then to a shop or two, eventually meeting up with Matty who said he wanted to meet the two of you for dinner.

You took a picture of the delectable pate in front of you with the couple just behind, capturing the warmth of the moment with a pink heart emoji and posted it without a second thought.

After a delightful dinner, filled with laughter and shared stories, you all headed back to your parents’ place. Charli suggested a game night of ‘Cards Against Humanity’, and that’s how the five of you ended up gathered around the coffee table in the living room, ready for a night of fun and friendly competition. After a good hour of laughter and drinking, a knock sounded at the door.

“Who’s that?” Charli asked, looking at George.

“I wasn't expecting anyone?” he said. George looked at you expectantly but you just shrugged, oblivious as to who was on the other side of the door.

The laughter continued as Matyt placed another card down and your mom went to answer the door.

“Y/n, can you go to your room for a second?” She stayed staring through the peep hole in the door.

“Why?” You stood up and gave her a confused look, snacking on the sucker Gabbriette got you earlier that day.

She turned to you, a serious look on your face as she sent a pleading look to her friend. “Just do it for me, please? Gab? Can you go with her?”

She put a reassuring hand on your back as she guided you upstairs. The last thing you saw was George running to Charli’s side at the door.

…

Once upstairs and inside, Gabby closed the door behind her and told you to sit on the bed. “What was that about? Who’s there?” You asked.

You could tell that she knew something was up, but was trying to downplay it for your sake. “I don’t know! Don’t worry about it. She's probably being dramatic about something.”

You rolled your eyes. “Gabby, my mother loves attention but she is not dramatic.”

A knock sounded at your door. “Hiiii.” Matty poked his head through the door before fully making his way though.

“What's happening?” You asked, fear evident in your tone.

He shrugged and smiled, clearly hiding something. “Nothing. It was just a sketchy guy at the door.” He smiled.

You crossed your arms. “You liar.” You tried to get passed him and make your way to the door.

He put his arms on your shoulders to stop you from passing. ‘Hey! I’m not lying.” He technically wasn’t. You didn't believe it though.

“Yeah, sure, leave the acting to your parents.” You laughed and pushed past him and through the door.

As much as he wanted to laugh, his anxiety grew as he watched you brush pass him with ease and walk downstairs. “Y/n wait.”

Charli was face to face with a man, someone you recognized. Anger was written all over her face. “For the 5th and final time, get out.” George was hovering behind her, strong and protective Even though he never said a word.

“I’ve come to talk, just to talk.” He said.

Before your mother could get another chance to speak the steps beneath you creaked, giving your position away. All 3 heads turned to you, silent. Eventually, a voice spoke up.

“Hi, my love.” He said, hesitantly.

“Hi, Justin.” you softly said.

The man’s man was Justin Lemoine. He was your biological father.

He had been in and out since the moment you were born. You thought he was gone forever when he left nearly 5 ago and never came back. The slowly but surely growing relationship the two of you were building vanished instantly when he told your mother he couldn't do it again. You were 10 years old then, but now you were almost 15.

Then you were innocent and naive, now you were a young woman who was more certain of who you were, what you wanted, and the life you wanted to live. And that life didn’t include Justin.

He was always ‘Justin’, never ‘Dad’ or ‘Papa’, or anything like that. That space was reserved for someone else. Someone like George.

He tried to take a step toward you but you shook your head, letting him know to take a step back. “I came to talk to you real quick-”

“I don't want to talk to you.” You flatly said.

“C’mon, don't be like that.”

“They told you not to come over here.” He knew the ‘they’ you were referring to was the court and the agreement

“I know, I-”

“Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been meaning to stop by since-”

“Since the last time you saw me?” You took a small step towards him, telling him you were serious.

He sighed and gave a solemn look. “Yeah.”

“So 5 years. Right?” It was said more mater-of-fact rather than a question.

‘Y/n.” He started his stint of trying to reason with you. You interrupted before he got the chance.

“No, I’m right, right? It's been 5 years since you’ve seen me? End of 2019, correct?”

He sighed again, starting to back down just the slightest bit. “Yeah.”

You let out a hum and you crossed your arms. George and Charli watched from behind, in awe of your spirit. “So what was it? Lots of wrong turns?”

His gaze shifted downwards. “Something like that.” It was almost as if he was ashamed. It was as if he was being genuine and serious this time. It felt like he really wanted to try again.

That thought only lasted a second before reality snuck back in. A beautiful simple guess of ‘what could be’ was loss in an instant. The reality was conversations like this between you and him have happened one too many times. The reality was taking the alternate suggested route would only lead to disaster and chaos, again. You had your answer, your envisioned future, at that future did not include him.

You stood stoic and strong. “You can leave now.”

He tried to move forward to you. “Listen, y/n, I just-”

“You said you wanted to talk…we talked. So, you can leave now.”

He sighed again. “I want you to give me another chance, baby girl-”

“Don’t call me that.” You were getting heated and angry which you knew would not end well, especially for him. You had your mother's ferocity and fiery nature, and it wasn't something to be messed with.

“C’mon don’t be like that I can-”

“I gave you another chance. Multiple. 5 years ago.”

You swallowed and stayed silent, unsure of what to do next. You had already made your next move.

“Leave.”

He sighed and tried to reach out to you. “Y/n, I’m-”

“Leave right now or I swear to god the next time you come and bother me or my family again it won't be pretty.” You stared at him with fire in your eyes.

He let out a soft chuckle. “‘Family’, huh?”

You nodded.

“You think you can just choose? Do you think you can pick a couple of people, and call them your aunts and uncles? Let them take you out to Central Park for a day?” You tilted your head before you relized he was alluding to the post you had made with Gabby earlier that day, “Or your Dad? You think that man is your Father?” He gestured to George for the first time. You could hear shifting in the background and George sighing, You assumed he was about to make a move, but Charli stretched an arm to block him and you spoke before he got a chance. “He's been more of a Dad to me in the past 3 years than you have in my entire lifetime.”

And every ounce of fire that George had inside him, wanting to go and punch that prick of a man in the face, was extinguished by your words. George sighed and Charli grabbed his hand, squeezing it.

Justin, meanwhile, was speechless. You had really replaced him. “Leave, Justin.” You said, without any room for question. He left, slamming the door behind him.

It was quiet for a solid 5 seconds before anyone spoke. You broke the silence. “I'm going to bed.”

Charli reached out to you. “Baby-”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” You looked back and smiled.

You went upstairs and closed the door with a slam, continuing to sob into your pillows for the next hour.

…

Sleep eventually consumed you. Matty and Gabbriette left shortly after the fight and George and your Mum agreed to figure out the next steps tomorrow, knowing you were safe with them and believing Justin wouldn't make any more moves. When you woke up the clock on your phone read 2:15. You knew sleep wasn;t an option at this point so you got up and headed to the kitchen. You sat on the stool, to tired to move, to weary to make tea, so you just sat there. That was until you heard the footsteps coming from the hallway. It was George, half asleep. Your eyebrow twitched as he yawned and headed to you. He didnt say a word, just placed a kiss on your head before heading to the other side of the counter to make your favorite tea. A hit on deja vu creeping up as the two of you resembled the same positions as this morning.

You broke the silence after a minute. “What are you doing up?”

He shrugged as he continued his work.“Couldn’t sleep.” He slid the mug across the counter, along with a small container of honey.

“Thanks.” You softly said.

He watched as you finished making your drink. Your eyes were puffy, a sign you’ve been crying, along with the dark undereye circles that have been growing darker and darker over the past few weeks. All the signs he's seen and evidence he's gathered were now starting to make sense. “You okay?” He asked.

“Fine.” You said not looking up from your drink.

“You sure?” he asked, pushing you ever-so-slightly.

You sighed and shrugged, “I’ve been better I guess.” tears started to fall for what felt like the millionth time.

George rushed around the other side, wanting nothing more than to wrap you in his arms. “Hey- It's okay, it’s okay.”

You stayed quiet for a minute before talking though your hiccuped sobs.“I should’ve known he would come, I’m sorry.”

He tucked your head under his chin as you sobbed into him. “You don’t need to apologize, love. How would you’ve known?”

“Because he said he would!” Yous aid breaking away.

“What?” George asked, confused.

You sighed and pulled out your phone, opening the message up and laying it on the counter for george to lok at as you buried your head in your hands.

He hesitantly took the phone and started scrolling. It wasn’t long before angered built inside of him. “How long has this been happening for?”

You spoke through the sobs. “…I don’t kno-“

“Y/n.” He got serious and protective.

You sighed. “About a month…or two.”

Tension hung heavy in the air as you finally confessed

“Why didn’t you tell us?” George’s voice trembled with concern.

“Because everything was so perfect! Our family was fine, and I didn’t want this coming in and messing it up!” your words spilled out, laden with frustration. “That’s what he does. That’s what he’s always done,”

George hugged you again and you sighed into him. “I will get this sorted out. You won’t have to talk to this man again…if you don’t want to, of course-”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” your response was firm.

“Okay,” George breathed a sigh of relief. He could tell something else was bothering you, another thing eating away at your mind. “What are you thinking right now? What’s going through your mind?” He inquired gently.

After a moment of pondering, you responded. “I just can’t believe I’m half him. I just can’t believe that this is my life and I have to deal with him,” Your voice cracked with emotion.

“You are not him, you are you. And you are 20 times stronger than that shrimp of a man,” His response got the ends of your lips to twitch up in a smile that lasted for a millisecond, but George considered that a win. “Okay? You don’t have to worry about him anymore. I promise,” You nodded. “Maybe make your Instagram private though?”

[thesketchyheartist]

03/20

Neon Genesis Evangelion (EP 8, 16, 24, 26)

I want to start off this post by talking about a new main character Asuka. It took me about 2 episodes to figure out she is Rei's opposite. Appearances: Blue hair and red hair. Long hair and short hair. Eye colors are different. One is soft-spoken, the other is vocal. One talks too little (from what I gather from the assigned episodes, I think Rei is supposed to be Eve or Lilith, but Asuka is like Shinji in that they are some descendants of the Evas or Angels or something that is not totally human, so this explains why she acts so cold), the other talks too much. Also the weird but true observation: one is indifferent to perverted accidents, the other is sensitive to perverted accidents; both may or may not [always] involve Shinji.

Asuka represents the tsundere stereotype, I think. I hear the "Baka, hentai!" comment from her a lot, but I can't tell if it's hormones or if she is actually attracted to Shinji. Shinji is a teenage boy, so I know he gets the classic red hand mark on his face, and it's rarely ever his fault. Those characters who are quick to anger and violence without listening to reason are often redheads, and I know it's a popular trope, but I realize as I am writing this the paradox of it all. Asuka is a young girl, and as a bit of a crazy anime watcher, I do believe violence is not always the answer, but it's wrong to assume violence is not an option. However, if every situation that triggers you is answered or resolved in violence, then it's rarely ever resolved. If Asuka even paused for a moment, she could tell Shinji probably did not even have the guts to pull harassment on any girl. To accuse him would make her the true culprit, not the victim. I know the children did not have parental figures to follow, but I guess their immaturity further proves they are really not qualified at all to be humanity's saviors. On the other hand, it is ironic that Asuka's hits can be overlooked so easily. Think about it, if a young boy suddenly had his p**is touched, accidentally or not, by a girl, he probably would just shove her off because if he hit her face, everyone would call him violent. Children who are used as child weapons are essentially taught that violence via their mecha skills is the ONLY solution to solve humanity's biggest problems, so quietly, it's the only solution for small misunderstandings.

Finally, the last episode was more philosophical than I thought. I didn't watch EP25 which I assume is the final battle because I don't think there is a sequel series. The ending didn't even explain what happened to humanity. But I think it's a good moral story to explain ego and self. The swap to 2D pencil drawings is a good way. Without depth, shadow, and background, a sketch exists limitless. I like how Shinji was always told what to do and how he should live. Even at his crisis, he asks people what he should do and how to live, they are the ones telling him the truth of how he should live. While I know the show is the one telling us the truth, to Shinji, it's still outsiders instructing him, even if they have his well-being in the best care possible. It was Shinji, experiencing the No Angels AU (that got to be an AO3 tag, if not, something like No Eva AU) or Middle/High School AU (love the silly shoujo reference with Rei, bread in mouth, "I'm going to be late on my first day of a school in this new city!", and headbumping ML, but not the accidental peeking), that he realizes the truth people have been trying to tell him this whole time. Funny how even his best friends care more about him than he does himself, and only when he really loves himself unconditionally, Eva or no Eva, even in a world where only he exists, that he can learn to actually love others, even his hated father becomes a person he can accept unconditionally. You realize after hearing all the voices, it's because they were people, not static faces with voices, that Shinji can compare his world and his self-image to everyone he meets in the show to find his true self.

It's such a roundabout way to explain everything. All anyone needs is a famous quote by a powerful warrior, one who transcended the mortal realm for his wisdom, bravery, and sheer popularity:

I never heard about ATLA until COVID-19. Funny because if I had heard of this show when it came out, I would have had a very different childhood.

My favorite post-spring break gift from my professors is an exam (it's not.)

-03/19/24

[golvio]

I’ve Figured Something Out About “Tomie”

Junji Ito’s Tomie isn’t a straight feminist “tragic monster/victim” sort of story. It’s about getting over your high school bully or abusive high school girlfriend in the way Jennifer’s Body was about breaking out of and moving on from an abusive friendship.

Like...even if Tomie is as much of a victim as she is a villain in her stories, there’s no getting around that she’s a genuinely awful person. She’s a bully who’s entertained by tormenting her classmates, she shows no signs of having a conscience, and she even molests a little boy in one story and grooms him into becoming a serial killer. She’s horrible.

And yet, at least in the initial stories and before things get Really Bad in the later stories, it’s usually a mundane sort of horribleness. It’s what you’d expect from a garden-variety high school mean girl: shallow, self-centered, petty, manipulative, and so on. People have been telling stories about being bullied by girls just like Tomie in high school for as long as there have been high schools. That alone doesn’t make her a monster.

If she’d been allowed to grow up, she probably would’ve ended up as that one lady who you occasionally have nightmares about who messages you out of the blue on Facebook to “apologize” for being so cruel to you and wanting to “catch up” like she was your bestie you’d lost touch with instead of your worst nightmare, only to reveal she only messaged you to try to pull you into the MLM borderline-cult she’s selling crappy leggings for because she’s that desperate for commission money. Either that or she’d become an antivax nurse. Or one of those kindergarten teachers children have nightmares about who eventually gets arrested for child murder or molestation. Or maybe the mistress of a string of Republican senators until she saves up enough money from selling off her diamond necklaces to retire early.

But the thing that destroys people in Tomie stories isn’t Tomie herself so much as the obsessions they build around her, usually focused on “changing” her in some way. But the thing is, Tomie, much like some of the awful, shallow bullies in high school, will not change. She will never change. She remains locked physically and mentally in high school. No amount of pleading to her better nature, acquiescing to her wishes, or obsessively pursuing revenge against her will cause her to change.

Tomie will never grow up. And the people who become fixated on her are people who refuse to grow up, remaining hung up on the idea of Tomie, the memory of her. Her first murderer is a teacher who pursues an extremely inappropriate relationship with her because he’s the “cool” teacher who only relates to the high schoolers he teaches because, mentally, he never actually left high school himself. The younger men who pursue her are the sorts of guys who never left that hormonal teenaged boy mindset. Even the older men who stalk her are exactly the types of men who’d think dating a girl young enough to be their daughter is a good idea--hilariously emotionally immature, desperately chasing their glory days or fixated on a memory of a high school crush and obsessively clinging to a memento of her despite being married to another for twenty years.

The more sympathetic boys and young men seem like kids who never developed self-esteem, who got sucked into an abusive, controlling relationship because they didn’t think a man could be abused and a woman abusive, didn’t think they could do better, felt like they were “lucky” that a pretty, popular girl noticed them even if all she did was cut them down, isolate them from their friends and family, and humiliate them in public to keep them in line. But they never move past that. Their attempts to escape are half-hearted at best. They never reach out for help. They never accept help when it’s offered to them. They can’t imagine a life outside of Tomie, even if they’re surrounded by examples of healthier relationships that aren’t founded on abuse. They feel compelled to keep on truckin’, desperately trying to make it work or prove themselves to be The One who Tomie surely will treat differently than every other man she’s ever used, until it kills them.

The girls and women who fall to her aren’t much better off, although they tend to skew younger, so they usually at least have an excuse for acting immaturely. They’re also often high school girls in the process of being bullied by Tomie, which also makes their rage understandable, particularly if you yourself have been there. Either that, or they’re impressionable young girls who enter abusive friendships with Tomie, idolizing her and wanting to become her even as she mistreats them and their obsession eats them alive until there’s nothing left (their wish is usually granted in the most ghastly way possible). The most common archetype for her serial or adult female victims tends to be the sort of person who, upon seeing the profile of their childhood bully on social media, becomes inflamed with an all consuming desire for revenge and starts spiraling to the point where it hampers their ability to function as a mature adult who hasn’t been in school for decades, letting their trauma and hatred consume them instead of seeking help. The one exception being that one story where she pretends to be a baby. That one was weird.

But it really clicked for me when I saw the ending of the last story in the anthology, “Old and Ugly.” The two surviving characters, Yasuko and Ryo, have spent years waiting for the payoff of a scheme that would force Tomie to age naturally, finally getting their “revenge” as she loses her looks. Their obsession pushes them to seal her alive in a brick of concrete, which they keep watch over until, decades later, they finally crack it open. Ryo hallucinates an aged Tomie and starts laughing and mocking her, but Yasuko sees that the block is not only empty, but probably has been for some time. There’s a crack at the bottom that Tomie escaped through without them noticing. They’d basically wasted their whole lives for a revenge plot that didn’t give them the satisfaction or closure they’d desperately wanted. Yasuko realizes too late that the time she devoted to following Ryo’s plan would’ve been better spent cutting ties with her toxic “sister” and going to therapy.

The people who emerge from Tomie stories (relatively) unscathed are the people who let go of her. The people who don’t let their lust, jealousy, or rage at her consume their lives. Tsukiko is initially jealous of Tomie for ensnaring a boy she had a crush on, Yamazaki. Even after Tsukiko moves to a new town and tries to put the past behind her, Tomie ropes her back in by dangling the promise of “rescuing” Yamazaki in front of her. But she only escapes permanently when she realizes she needs to give up both her childish rivalry with Tomie and her crush on Yamazaki, who’s in so deep that he was never going to return her feelings and would keep on betraying her so long as Tomie was around. After that, she stops appearing in stories, presumably no longer haunted by Tomie’s presence.

The old man from the mansion in Tsukiko’s last story is also spared, since he places his daughter’s wellbeing over any potential infatuation he might have with Tomie. Unlike basically every salaryman husband in the series, he’s emotionally mature and a devoted father instead of an immature man who thinks and acts like a hormonal teenager once he drops the front of being an adult breadwinner.

Umehara from “Gathering” is able to resist Tomie’s seduction field and escape because he’s been in a mature, adult relationship before, having lost his wife/girlfriend, Naoko, to cancer shortly before the story starts. He’s mature enough to recognize that he can’t fill the Naoko-shaped hole in his heart by impulsively pursuing a girl who’s probably way too young for him, anyways. Meanwhile, the other men in the “club” are desperately trying to use Tomie to fill their own emotional voids the way a bunch of reactionary nerdbros and channers would obsess over an anime “waifu” or an idol singer.

What these three people have in common is that they all recognize Tomie is not worth the time or effort that so many people feel compelled to pour into her. She’s never going to change. She’s never going to love anyone. She can barely even tolerate herself. She’ll never grow up or grow out of her childish mindset. She’ll never become a better person. She’ll never regret her actions. Even physical punishment or emotional trauma, though it actually gets a reaction out of her, is, at best, temporary. Scare her and she turns into a horrifying monster and splits herself into pieces, each of them mocking you like nothing happened. Wound her and she heals instantly. Kill her and she comes back in some form or another, virtually unchanged. She remains locked into the way she was in high school for all eternity, doomed to endlessly play out the circumstances of her first death forever.

Leave her alone and she’s just another bog-standard mean girl. Give her your attention and obsession and she amplifies into an unbeatable nightmare that spans the entire world.

High school is over. It’s been over for years. She’s not worth it. Let her go. Move on. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t spend it being tormented by this one extremely specific memory.

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 2/5

Book Blurb: In Serena Kaylor's sparkling debut, a homeschooled math genius finds herself out of her element at a theater summer camp and learns that life—and love—can’t be lived by the (text)book. Growing up homeschooled in Berkeley, California, Beatrice Quinn has always dreamed of discovering new mathematical challenges at Oxford University. She always thought the hardest part would be getting in, not convincing her parents to let her go. But while math has always made sense to Beatrice, making friends is a problem she hasn’t been able to solve. Before her parents will send her halfway across the world, she has to prove she won’t spend the next four years hiding in the library. The compromise: the Connecticut Shakespearean Summer Academy and a detailed list of teenage milestones to check off. If Beatrice wants to live out her Oxford dream, she has to survive six weeks in the role of “normal teenager” first. Unfortunately, hearts and hormones don't follow any equations. When she's adopted by a group of eclectic theater kids, and immediately makes an enemy of the popular—and annoyingly gorgeous—British son of the camp’s founders, Beatrice quickly learns that relationships are trickier than calculus. With her future on the line, this girl genius stumbles through illicit parties, double dog dares, and more than her fair share of Shakespeare. But before the final curtain falls, will Beatrice realize there’s more to life than what she can find in the pages of a book?

Review:

A girl who has been homeschooled her entire life and has spent her days dedicated to her projects and her dream of getting into Oxford... and when she does get in her parents wont let her go unless she agrees to go to theatre camp for the summer. Beatrice Quinn has always been socially awkward, in fact its to the point where she doesn’t have friends and spends most of her days alone just working on math and her passions. Her parents are concerned about what will happen to her when she moves all the way to England to go to school by herself and will only agree to let her go if she agrees to go to a theatre summer camp and prove she can socialize, so they give her a list of tasks she has to accomplish to prove to them she has and they’ll let her go. Easy enough right? Except for someone as painfully shy and socially awkward as Beatrice it might not be that simple. Beatrice finds herself in the Connecticut Shakespearean Summer Academy, and where she’ll discover friendship, heart break, and first love, as well as finding the confidence in herself to finally get out of the books and maybe just start living life. I adored Beatrice’s friendships in this book, Nolan and Mia were great friends who supported and helped Bea realize what it means to actually be a friend, they challenged her, helped her, and supported her as she took her first steps. My biggest issue came with Nik, the son of the famous actors who is the epitome of “tease the girl because you like her” except there was no chemistry between them, and the more he bumbled and messed it up the less I liked him. Bea’s first interaction with him ends with him calling her ugly and soon spirals into a competition that states if he wins she has to kiss him. Yes I get that he was “challenging her” and such but honestly, no, it just wasn’t for him. All in all it was a cute story about growing out of your shell and trying new things.

*Thanks Netgalley and St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[capableism]

13 The Musical Movie Missing Essential “Offensive” Songs

Evan Goldman is becoming a man in the Big Apple, or so he thought. After his parents divorce, he is forced to have his Bar Mitzvah in Indiana. 

Photo by Sudan Ouyang from  Unsplash

Musical Conventions

13 is unique with no adults in the cast; it is easier to suspend disbelief for the immature choices driven by dating. 13 has a song, 

Terminal Illness, which focuses on Archie, a character with muscular dystrophy. A progressive neuromuscular condition. Terminal Illness is about Evan using Archie's disability to secure R-rated movie tickets for a date. 

Authentic Teenagers

Archie is hormone-crazed for Kendra, the most popular girl in school, and Brett, the most popular guy. 

Evan purposefully tells Archie he can date Kendra if he uses the pity he receives from his muscular dystrophy to his advantage and gets Evan's mother to pay for the tickets to the Bloodmaster. 

While Evan is more focused on his Bar Mitzvah than Archie, the song and Archie are self-aware of disability. Evan: 

"Listen, I'm not making fun. Of your terminal Illness. But you hold the secret to getting my mom to say yes. No one says no to a boy with a terminal illness.  Who could refuse when you shuffle your shoes and say please? Use all the tricks that you learned in your cradle. You don't need to lay it on thick with a ladle. 'Cause no one says no to a boy with a fatal disease!”

Self Awareness

Archie is a charismatic character and, earlier in the musical, has a number of Get Me What I Need; he tells Evan that having a date with Kendra is his dying wish. Terminal Illness is a musical number that shows Evan views a disability as an advantage he can use, partly because Archie also uses it that way. 

 Nuances in "Offensive" Songs

During the number of Terminal Illnesses, the question "who could complain?" refers to this plan. Evan responds, "Except for you because you're dying. In the next stanza, Archie responds, "Except for you because you're Jewish and you always complain." Evan says, "It's true." Both responses are played for laughs. 

This song shows both boys are willing to use what they can to get a date. Throughout the musical, Archie makes jokes about his disability. It is played for laughs as self-deprecating humor. "No one makes fun of me on the special needs bus. That would be ironic.” 

The movie adaptation omits all of these small details about Archie and songs such as Terminal Illness most likely to modernize the musical to be less offensive. However these songs drive the musical plot forward that has a more realistic depictions of a person's early teenage years.

References

Hessenger, J. (2022). 13: The Musical Follows Broadway Tradition by Becoming a Terrible Movie. Paste Magazine. https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/13-the-musical-review

[justahighschoolersblog]

PART ONE.

Why are people mean? That’s a question no one will probably get a straightforward answer for. “They have a hard life,” is something that a lot of people say. Or you could use the famous, “They are just projecting their insecurities on you.” But why would we ever tell a kid that this person is picking on you, its because they like you. You should never tell a kid that being mean is a sign of love.

The definition of mean is “intend to convey, indicate, or to refer to (a particular thing or notion); signify.” Google describes mean as a verb, which would make it an action. Well, technically that is not wrong. Someone can act mean, and be mean, but I would more describe it as an adjective. I mean, it describes someone doesn’t it? Like, using it in a sentence. “Mr. Duncan is so mean!” That’s describing Mr. Duncan, not really saying an action he did.

There is multiple definitions of the word mean, like this one, “intend (something) to occur or be the case.” I can more see how this one is a verb, though. Are they just putting all definitions as a verb, even though one or the other is not a verb?

Lets get back to the point, “Why are people mean?” Now, my opinion of why people are mean is not what the person beside me thinks, or the person sitting behind me. Everyone thinks differently, that also refers to someone being mean. Not everyone is mean, but some people are. You may meet someone and they are the nicest person you ever met, but then you meet there sibling, parent, or cousin and they are the rudest person you ever met. It is not about genetics, or about how your raised, although in some cases it can be, its about your personality. Just because your mother or father is mean, doesn’t mean you have to be like them.

Now, most of the bullying is in high school. People are 10x meaner than ever, and as insecure as someone could be. Teenagers are going through puberty, and there hormones are all over the place.

Me, as a 16 year old in my junior year of high school, can say for myself that I have been bullied. I am not the ‘popular’ girl. I am not as pretty as the fellow girls in my grade. I have acne, short hair, I am not as skinny as them, but I’m not overweight. I wear glasses, I don’t wear the trending clothes. But that isn’t what I get bullied for. This one girl, we are friends now(we don’t talk that much though), but she used to just be so rude to me, for no reason. It finally stopped when she started to work with me. She would see me at school, and at work. She still wouldn’t be all that nice to me, but hey, she wasn’t bullying me anymore.

The main groups who get bullied in school, at work, or just in public in general are the LGBTQIA+ people, POC, and anyone who doesn’t fit in the social norms.

[draculaney]

A (not so) brief history of Twilight & me

I was only vaguely aware of it in middle school as it came out, I remember seeing multiple copies floating around in the hands of girls I didn’t really hang out with. High school me hated it on principle and was loud about it. I didn’t like that they had deviated so much from what vampires have “always been”. (like I was some expert lmfao) Vamps to me at that time were gothic or super badass. Buffy, Queen of the Damned, Blade, etc. On the flip side, there was the cartoony vampire like The Count on Sesame Street, Count Chocula, or the Disney movie “Mom’s Got a Date with A Vampire”

I had a group of friends in high school lovingly chide me into reading it before passing judgment. I liked supernatural books already, so I was like “uuuugh fine.” I loved it, and quietly hopped right onto the hype train in about 2009.  I remember getting swept up in the thought of it all and wanted my life to have a lot of the adventure and overwhelming emotional love that Bella experienced while also feeling the drudgery of my normal life. I remember having a desire to leave all of what my life was for something better for the Twi version of vampirism (superhuman abilities, impervious skin, venom based plastic surgery, etc). it was a way to feel like I was a person who could experience the same things as Bella, since she was pretty boring and I was very interesting (lmao)

Enter my tumblr phase: Getting introduced to feminism and learning how to critique media in the same breath, I found a hoard of blogs dedicated to telling my why Twilight was bad actually, but for abuse reasons, and how it was such a bad influence on young girls lives. I had a new reason to beat my chest about how bad twilight was, memes and vitriol included. I ran with it, unchecked for many years without examining the weird undercurrent of misogyny that a lot of these memes and stuff had attached to them. Have you ever had to listen to a grown man tell you what he thinks about something that’s popular for teenagers? Why was I putting so much stock into this hatred? I also went through a VERY intense Buffy the Vampire Slayer phase at this point in my life as well, which on the internet were always put at odds with one another. (side note: I'm gonna k*ll Joss Whedon for the buffy movie version having menstrual cramps when vamps are near. I'm gonna commit a moider.)

One night in like 2017ish, I talked my roommate into watching the first movie with me, as we had a time honored tradition in putting on “bad movie” nights. We both found that while Twilight sucks, its actually like….fun? And it’s bad in a campy way? Like, once you let yourself be taken on the ride of Twilight outside of the context of the Discourse and teenage hormonal soup, it is a buckwild story told by a well meaning but misguided Mormon woman about wish fulfillment.

I'm also someone who has lived with mental illness for my post-adolescent life. on a rewatch/reread of twilight, I resonated with the depiction of Bella more than I used to. The more knowledge I had about my own symptoms and presentations of my own mental health, the more I saw in Bella. It feels like a lot of it was so easy to brush off back in the late 2000s  -oh she's just an emotional teenage girl. -oh she's boring and not proactive in her life. -she had no thoughts and gets everything solved for her. it is so easy to introject those ideas and apply them to my own life and experiences. I have also been so heartbroken I don't want to move. I have also acted out in order to feel the smallest inkling of a happy feeling. I have also been terrified of abandonment and watched it come true before my very eyes.

Learning how to have empathy for the character of Bella swan was an exercise in learning how to have empathy for the parts of myself that exist in a messy and perpetual teenage state. When I hated Bella swan, I denied a huge  part of myself that resonated with her originally when I was a fan. When the stories on tumblr were smugly reblogging the "Edward is a domestic abuser" posts, it felt so easy to fall into the headspace of "yeah, I am so different from Bella that I would never fall for that kind of emotional manipulation!!" but I did, as do so many others.

There is never a twilight meme page that exists today that doesn't have a post that depicts Bella as useless or a burden; how she is the reason everyone in the series suffers. Bella is blamed for the brunt of the actions that happen against her. She's blamed for being too sweet smelling, for being the cause of Edward's obsession. She's blamed for not falling in love with Jacob, eternally friendzoned and who takes it out on her emotionally. She is blamed for not reacting properly when her heart is broken. She is blamed for the Cullens killing James, which begins Victoria's hunt. She is blamed for the hybrid baby which brings on a possible vampire war with the Volturi. She internalizes all of it, as we see in the series.

The part of me that started to care about Bella is the part of me that started to take interest in looking back in my past and realizing that when people hurt me, it wasn't my fault. Pop psychology calls it "healing the inner child" and one huge step is realizing that when you are hurt or blamed about something that happened as a child, you were a child. Bella is a teenager, the awkward stage between childhood and adulthood. where you want to grow up so fast without realizing what that means yet, without realizing what you're leaving behind. Bella is shown to never have a healthy childhood, the hints we get at her upbringing was full of strife and responsibility that any adolescent should never be put through.

So here we are now. A 30 year old who can’t seem to get this out of my head. I might as well write about it in graphic detail, yknow?

[extravaguk]

pairing: jungkook x reader

summary: But above all things, the last thing you expected to happen when you came back was to show your tits and get pierced by none other than motherfucking Jeon Jungkook.

Jeon Jungkook. Guk. Gukkie. Jeongukkie.

wordcount: 15k

genre: summer!au, ex high school classmaters, kinda frenemies to lovers, tattoo artist!&piercing artist!jungkook, popular!reader

rated: m (fluff - smut - angst)

warnings: you broke jungkook's heart you bitch!! , oral sex (m&f), protected sex (shocking tbh), CL as your bestie it doesnt get better than that! idk i dont wanna spoil too much

author's note: fucking finally dude!! i've been writing this since february but school was kicking my ass. now that i finished my exams and mercury is in gemini i was able to finish it. if you read this, i hope you enjoy it!

Inkphoria

You've been standing outside the shop re-reading the word for fifteen minutes, although it definitely feels like it has been longer. You're gripping the flyer too tightly, rumpling the paper in your hand until you're pretty much sure it's ruined. It's the first day of June, and it's already too hot. The sun and humid weather are causing beads of sweat to form in your hairline and your white tank top to stick to your skin. Your jean shorts didn't feel this uncomfortable a few hours ago and you're sure the heat is causing your mascara to transfer to your eyelids and lower lashline. You've never needed a slushie and a smoke this bad in forever, even if you knew the later would make your parents lose their shit.

Inkphoria

You read it again. Your brain is trying to guess what font its written in, an excuse to try to steady your heart beat until your nerves ease a little and you can finally gather the courage to step into the damn shop. You've noticed a few people passing by giving you strange looks because maybe it hasn't been fifteen minutes. Perhaps you've been unmoving like an idiot in the middle of the street for longer than you want to admit.

Chaelin's voice echoes inside your head.

'Its not that much of a big deal. It's not even that painful, trust me.'

You wish you could trust your best friend, but your best friend is also the same woman who assured you Cats was the movie of the year. Yes, not 'Cats: The Musical'. 'Cats', the movie.

'And this could be a great start to get out of your comfort zone and start living your life exactly the way you want to, not the way people expect you to. Not the way your family wants you to, not the way Adam wanted you to.'

But although her credibility could sometimes be questionable - like that time she also told you she'd tried marmite and 'honestly, it's not as bad as people make it out to be'-, you also didn't trust anybody in this world as much as you trusted her. She had always been your entire support system, the only one around you who never sugarcoated, who always treated you as an equal, who was always there for you to help you discover yourself and, at the same time, remind you of who you were.

'And it's gonna look so hot, too.'

That's it. Sticking the wrinkled flyer on your back pocket, your feet finally start moving. It doesn't take longer than three strides and you're pushing open the door.

The first thing you notice is that, thankfully, the shop is empty. The second thing you notice is the bright sky blue walls, a green undertone peaking through. Your eyes scan nervously the interior. Frames with tattoo designs and people modeling other different designs decorate the walls, some skateboards also hanging from the ceiling. A few plants in the corner, and two leather couches on either side of the room. Your scanning stops on the counter, where a girl with short, platinium hair and -what you guess is- the eighty percent of her body inked. Face included. She's been looking at you, a smirk tugging at her lips. Her tone is amused when she speaks

"Hi." she says. "You can come closer, you know? We don't bite."

Great. As if you couldn't feel more out of place, apparently you also couldn't look more out of place.

"Sorry." you gulp as you walk forward. "It's my first time doing anything like this."

She laughs this time, but it's not mean. It's not mocking, thank God, and the smile she sends you is as warm as the weather, friendly, luckily helping you calm down a bit. "A virgin, huh? JK's gonna love this." your eyes jump in surprise, but she's fast to wave her hands in front of you. "Just a joke. So, first time getting a tattoo. You have something in mind, honey?"

"Um, no. Not a tattoo. Not yet, I think." you wet your lips, regretting not reaplying chapstick before stepping inside. "A piercing."

"Oh! Cool!" she claps her hands, too excited for your own taste, pulling from under the counter a catalogue. "So, where will it be? Cartilogue? Nose? A lot of people are getting their septums pierced right now, though, so you might-"

"Nipples. Like, one of them."

Her gaze finds yours in surprise, although her face swiftly transforms again into an amiable expression. "Now, that's badass. Alright!" she skims through the pages of the catalogue until she finds the nipple piercing collection. You scratch your head before wiping your forehead sweat-free. "You can pick either barbells or hoops, although barbells heal faster and they don't move around as much. There's different kinds of metal, too. Gold or platinium. If your skin is sensitive, I recommend titanium. It's hypoallergenic and not as problematic."

The blonde keeps talking as you nod your head, a smile making its way into your face while silently thanking her for her easygoing personality. It quickly makes you feel comfortable and stupid for being so terrified of doing this.

Once you decide, settle on the cost and sign the papers, she stands up from the stool she'd been sitting on. "Ok, I'll go tell my coworker. He's been sketching tattoos all morning, it's time he gets to work!" she laughs, but suddenly your smile banishes and your throat shuts down.

"He?" your alarmed tone halts her motions and she looks back at your frightened expression.

He? A he is going to pierce your nipple? You're about to let a random stranger, a HE, see and touch one of your boobs and then pierce a needle through one of your nipples?

"Oh, baby, don't worry. I'd do it myself if I knew how to, but I only do tattoos. Most of our staff are on summer vacation so it's mostly just him and I. If you don't feel comfortable, which is totally understandable, you can wait until september when Minzy comes back and she can do it for you." It's her turn to scratch the back of her head as she adds: "but trust me, we're professionals. He's not a creep or anything like that. He's been doing this for a long time. He won't cross any boundaries."

September? You won't even be here in september. Fuck.

Sure, you could do it when you move back into the city. But this summer was supossed to be the summer. You already decided after your breakup with Adam that there would be no trace of the old you. That it was time to push yourself, to do the things that you've always wanted to do, unapologetically. To find the new you, the real you. To stop being scared.

So after going through you options for a few seconds and taking a deep breath, you make up your mind.

"It's fine. I can do it."

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

"JK, sweetheart!"

Jungkook is finishing drawing a Chinese dragon when Mijoo opens the door without knocking. Again. He puts the pen down, rubbing his eyes. It's monday, a slow monday, not much work, and he had hoped it would stay that way until closing time. It's summer and Jungkook hates summer. He hates the heat, he hates being drenched in sweat, and he hates the fact that he can do nothing about it. Because working in the summer is terrible. Summer makes him lazy, makes him want to bathe in a tub full of iced water and not get out until he turns into a raisin and october comes. It makes him irritable. Summer makes him annoyed by people -like Mijoo, even if he loves her to death- and himself.

"I got a girl here who wants a nipple piercing, her first piercing by the way, so get your shit ready and bla bla bla. Straight titanium barbell. Also, don't flirt and don't be creepy. She almost ran away when I told her a male was going to be touching and piercing her tit, be mindful of that. She's too cute, if you want to get her number you should wait until it's done. I think that's it. I'll bring her in in a minute."

Mijoo leaves as fast as she talks, but Jungkook is already used to it. He's already used to the headaches her mouth causes too. He sighs before standing up, tying his too-long raven hair into the best bun he can manage. He washes his hands, sets the table up, sits on the chair and puts the gloves on. He's too busy sterilizing the jewerly when Mijoo comes back with you.

"Alright, my babies. I'll leave you to it." she turns to you. "He'll explain everything, from how the process will be to how to take care of it after it's done." she leaves before saying bye, closing the door behind her, and then he finally turns to you.

Your eyes meet and suddenly everything stops. He almost drops the sterilizing machine, his whole body tensing, going into panic mode as he recognizes you immediatly. His hands shake.

Of course he does. Of course he recognizes his high school crush. The too goody two shoes, too pretentious and too rich, too good for everybody and, most importantly, 'too good for Jeon Jungkook' girl of his high school dreams. Of course he recognizes the girl he had confessed his stupid crush to when he was sixteen. Of course he recognizes the girl who rejected and broke his young and foolish heart when he was a dumb teenager.

It doesn't matter that six years have passed ever since. He still knows every lock of your hair like the palm of his hand. He still remembers the shape of your lips and the exact shade of your eyes. He can still identify the body he fantasized about -and jacked off to- when he was a hormonal teen, now filled in all the right places. Now a grown woman.

Just one look at you after years and years of pining is enough to almost make him faint. And grow a boner under his jeans.

And by the look on your face, your eyes wide and your mouth agape, you recognize him as well.

Dammit.

He schools his features and clears his throat. Forces his body to relax and compose himself, because he's not a teenager anymore. He's also a grown man, who has matured, who now has much more experience with women than he did back then. He had already embarrased himself enough when he was sixteen to be doing it all over again. You're just another attractive girl in a sea of attractive women.

He turns to you. You still haven't said anything. Neither has he.

"Um, you can sit on the table." he manages, motioning to the set up in front of him. He watches you taking doubtful steps until you're sitting down, your eyes avoiding his gaze. He almost forgot you were here to get pierced. Holy shit, you were here to get pierced. To get your nipple pierced.

You're a professional, Jungkook. You can do this, Jungkook. You've seen boobs before, Jungkook. You've pierced nipples before, Jungkook.

Clearing his throat again and forcing his hands to stay by his side, he speaks. "The... The top." your gaze finds his, like a puppy about to get scolded. You look at your top, realization dawning on you. "You don't have to take it off. You can just pull it down."

So you do, pulling the straps of the white tank top down and dragging the fabric down with trembling fingers. No bra. Jungkook gulps as your breasts comes into vision. As perfect as he had imagined years ago. His cock twitches. Round, full, perky and so damn inviting he has to hold himself back from latching onto one nipple with his mouth around it and swirling his tongue over the nub until you're a pretty, moaning, little mess on his piercing tabl-

He closes his eyes for just a second before reminding himself to act like the 23 year old Jungkook he's tried so hard to become. The confident, assured Jungkook he is.

"Okay, this is how it'll go. First I'll clean it and scrub it to get rid of any bacteria." he's so glad he hasn't stuttered yet. 23 year old Jungkook doesn't stutter like 17 year old Jungkook. He's also glad he can pick the alcohol bottle and the surgical scrub without trembling. When he faces you again, you're watching his motions with your lip caught between your teeth. That has him swallowing the lump in his throat.

Making eye contact with him again, you take a deep breath and offer a small nod, so he gets to work. He can show you and himself he's a grown man. A grown man who can pierce a nipple without appearing like it's the first time he's seen a boob in his life. The sooner he does it, the sooner it's over.

Jungkook wets the paper towel with alcohol before carefully wiping over your nub with it. Your back arches, probably from the cold feeling, he guesses. He rubs it a few times before throwing it in the trash can nearby. He avoids looking at how enticing the soft peak is salluting him when he reaches for the marker. He doesn't say anything when he dots it with it, jaw clenched and his dick painfully stiff.

"Lay back." his voice low as he commands, turning away to get the clamp. When he slides closer, he tries to ignore the view: you, with your hair sprawled and your sweaty, shiny skin and your eyes focused on the cieling, nipple fully erect, like the star of one of his most erotic dreams. He extends his free gloved hand before he can stop himself, fingers carefully working the nub until he's sure it's painfully hard. Almost as hard as he is.

You gasp, your back arching again. He stills and looks at you, your cheeks flushed pink. Probably from the heat, he guesses again. Or at least that's what he tells himself. He can't stop himself from wondering how responsive would you be in a different setting, most likely his bed while his teeth play with your breast and his cock dives into-

"You okay?" he studies your face, your eyes not meeting his and instead still focusing on the white ceiling.

"Mhm." you reply with a small voice.

"Relax, alright? It'll be over soon." his voice is as gentle as he can, his fingers mindlessly caressing your breast to try to soothe your nerves. Or maybe it's just because he's a selfish bastard. Whatever it is, he forces himself to bring the clamp to your nipple, securing it around it.

"Take a few deep breaths. This will only take a second of pain and then it will go away." He misses the way your mouth falls open, but he doesn't miss the way your eyes squeeze tight as the needle goes in.

"Ah!" he definitely doesn't miss that either. He goes rigid for a second, because that didn't fucking sound like a cry of painfulness. It's breathy, and whiny, not too loud and, for fucks sake, if that's how you sound when you're getting fucked, he swears to God-

He feels your heartbeat under his hands when he puts the barbell in and then the bandage over it. He takes a look at you, chest moving up and down. And then you take a look at him and what he sees is almost enough to take you right there.

Reddened cheeks, drops of sweat framing your face and those eyes glazed with something he's seen too much in the women he's fucked throughout his life. They're half lidded, mascara adorning your long lashes and almost smudged, looking right through him.

"Jungkook..." and your voice, as you say his name -acknowledging him for the first time since you stepped into his shop, for the first time since you were sixteen-, it's hoarse, almost inaudible, like you just came all over his-

He's on his feet in an instant like he's been burned. "It may bleed for the first week, and it can be really sore. The swelling will eventually come down." he's quickly tidying up the table, a bottle in his hand that he hands to you without looking directly. "Wash it gently with this soap and warm water once per day. Don't touch it. Wear a comfortable...bra. If it gets crusty, clean it with saline. Not alcohol or any other thing you might clean a wound with. The soap I just gave you or saline. Nothing else."

He's pacing around the room as he takes his gloves off and throws them in the trash bin, too agressively maybe, then he keeps rambling, like he's hurriedly trying to make you leave as soon as possible. "Avoid pools and the sea. It takes about six months to a year to heal, so don't... don't touch it, don't play with it or..." he clears his throat, "don't let anyone else play with it. And if it gets infected, come back immediately and I'll take a look at it." which he honestly hopes it won't happen. When he faces you, your top is back on and you're getting off the table.

"Alright, um...I'll do that." clearing your throat, your hand gripping the doorknob. "Thank you."

But right before you can exit the room, Jungkook says your name.

"_____." when you turn around to face him, it takes a few seconds for him to make eye contact from across the room. "It was good to see you."

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

"Let me see!"

It's the first thing Chaelin says when she opens the door to her appartment. It's on the second floor, small enough to compare it to most expensive appartments you'd stayed in throughout your life, but big enough for Chaelin, her cat and her -impressive- collection of acrylic nail kits and pairs of high heels. It's also big enough for her to offer you the only guest room until summer is over so you didn't have to, one, stay at your parents' place, and two, find an appartment in a short period of time for a short period of time.

When you left years ago, you did so with the thought of 'never looking back'. You never really expected to return here, of all places. Maybe visit your best friend for a weekend at most, have dinner with your parents on a saturday and then go back to the new life you'd made for yourself on a sunday.

But that was before you'd caught Adam cheating.

Tale as old as time: childhood sweethearts get engaged, move in together, son of a bitch sleeps with the assistand he told his girlfriend not to worry about, and then the brokenhearted girl packs her bags and leaves the cheating bastard begging for her to come back.

You'd be lying if you said you were surprised.

Throughout your life, you'd learned to expect many things, regardless of being sheltered and babied by your family since you were born. Watched too much Maury and Dr.Phil. Too much Gossip Girl to know what the deal with life really is.

So, thankfully, you'd only shed a few tears, mostly because your ego and self steem were slightly triggered. You'd realize long before that your feelings for Adam started to disappear once he popped the question and you said yes. Your love story began as teenagers but soon after graduating, the two of you went on different paths: you'd matured, grown into your twenties while he got stuck at 17 and never stopped acting as such.

So yeah, whatever, break ups are hard. But they're not as hard when the love is gone and the sole reason to stay with your partner is to please your parents. You were also right when you expected your mom to tell you to 'forgive and forget' because 'those things just happen, it's not a big deal, honey'.

But above all things, the last thing you expected to happen when you came back was to show your tits and get pierced by none other than motherfucking Jeon Jungkook.

Jeon Jungkook. Guk. Gukkie. Jeongukkie.

The lanky nerd with braces, glasses and an anime obsession much bigger than his hentai obsession, which is saying a lot. The shy, awkward classmate who'd stuttered his undying crush for you when you were just kids. That one who you had rudely rejected like the bitch you used to be in high school.

But my God, Jeon Jungkook was anything but a kid now.

You were shocked. You were gagged. Couldn't seem to fathom what was happening and what your eyes were seeing. It took you a while to close your mouth when you realized JK was Guk. Gukkie. Jeongukkie.

With messy black hair, a smoldering gaze free of glasses, piercings adorning both ears, and his right eyebrow,, the braces long gone showing perfectly straight - but still bunny like- teeth. The clothes he wore were loose, all black, but it was impossible not to notice the muscles of his back and arms, covered with tattoos from his hands to his forearms. You'd bet there were more of them underneath the fabric.

It was awkward at first. You didn't know what to do, or what to say. Didn't know if he rememberd you. So you chose to stay quiet while your body chose to react like it had never been in the presence of an attractive young man in it's entire life.

And oh, did it react.

He was reluctant, his old timid demeanor peeking through his newly adopted persona. But as soon as those hands came in contact with your skin, your whole body was lit on fire. Like you were 16 and losing your virginity over again and it was the first time a dude touched your boobs.

There shouldn't have been anything erotic about it -besides the fact that your entire breasts were exposed-, it should've been just a professional procedure. But those gloved fingers touched and pinched and suddenly you were too aware of Jeon Jungkook and the way you were starting to sweat profously, not due to the heat of the season.

You tried to distract yourself by looking at the cieling and not at his gorgeous face. Tried to avoid thinking about Jeon Jungkook and how his mouth would feel wrapped around you. Tried not to think about the way your panties were a second skin to your folds, and how tempted you were to grind your hips until you recieved some sort of friction with the jean fabric of your shorts. You wonder if he noticed you squeezing your thighs together. You hope not.

And then the needle happened. You never thought of yourself as a particularly kinky person. Sex with Adam was boring for the most part and you'd lost your libido for a long time. Stopped thinking about sex altogether. But the pain. The pain mixed with his hand rubbing soothing circles on your breast and his voice, as sweet as honey, guiding you through it. It made you reconsider a lot of things you'd once dismissed as 'weird' or 'deviant'

You swear you almost came right on his table.

And then your eyes connected, you made the mistake of calling his name like a satisfied woman who still needed more, and it was all gone. He stood up like a scared cat, gave you a bunch of explanations about the aftercare that you barely grasped without even looking at you and pretty much rushed you to leave.

So you walked, all the way from the tattoo parlor to Chaelin's appartment, mortified, and completely humilliated.

"Are you gonna let me see or not?" your friend says expectantly as you finally sit down after chugging a glass of iced water. You sigh, placing the glass on the table before carefully pulling down your top. "Oh my God, it looks so cool!" she gasps and you can't help a smile while she studies it in amazement. "Did it hurt?"

"Um, I guess." you keep out the part where you almost orgasmed, obviously, stopping her hand from touching when she reaches towards you. "Wait, no. He said something about not touching it for like six months or a year, I don't remember."

At that, Chaelin's eyebrows quirk up. "He? It was a he? Was he cute, at least?"

"You won't believe this..." looking away for a few seconds, you take a deep breath. "It was Jeon Jungkook."

There's a pause, a silence that fills the room when Chaelin's jaw drops. "Jeon Jungkook...pierced your nipple?"

You close your eyes, bracing yourself for what you're a hundred percent sure is coming.

"Ha..." there it is. "Ha ha..." you still know there's more. "Ha ha ha..."

Chaelin laughs hysterically for about God knows how long, while you keep drinking your glass of water unfaced, your mind drifting back to Guk. Gukkie. Jeongukkie, his tattoos and his stupid gloved hands.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

You know he's here.

Everything was cool, you were doing alright, having a great time with your vodka sprite in hand and your cute white bikini on. Chaelin was by your side, the guys were excited to have you back and thankfully, you'd avoided most questions about Adam and they'd avoided digging too deep into the topic. You'd sunbathed the whole afternoon, kept away from the water like he'd told you and ate the Hawaiian pizza Yoongi insisted on ordering despite Namjoon's and Jimin's complaints.

It's at night, when you're a little tipsy and your cheeks are flushed, that you feel it. You'd barely noticed Taehyung disappearing to let in a new guest.

You don't see him, but you feel him.

You're sitting on the pool tile steps, legs dangling and the water baely reaching your belly to make sure it doesn't touch your very sensitive and newly pierced nipple. Your back is facing the sliding glass doors of Hoseok's house, but the moment you hear his voice, smooth but animated as he converses with Taehyung, your body wakes up immediately, back straightening, goosebumps forming on your arms and nipples tightening against the fabric of your two piece.

You don't turn around, instead opting for downing the remaining of your drink and coming to the realization that, of course, Taehyung, social butterfly who'd always got along with everybody and remained friends with most people from high school, still keeps in touch with Jungkook.

You ignore him when he enters the pool, still peering from the corner of your eyes while pretending to be engaged in Chaelin's and Jihyo's conversation. Your mind sabotages you by taking you to that day a week ago at the tattoo parlor.

To the warmth of his hand, to the few strands of hair that his small ponytail couldn't keep together, to the way his eyes focused on such an intimate part of your body, to the endless ink decorating his skin, to-

Great. Now your bottoms are wet and not due to the water.

You don't miss Chaelin supressing a laugh and her not so subtle elbowing. You glance at her in warning and try to keep calm for the next fifteen minutes until Jin proposes moving to the living room to watch a movie.

"I'm gonna stay here for a little longer, guys." you say, after clearing your throat. You needed some time to gather yourself before being in a confined space with Jungkook.

"Are you sure?" Jin stops by your side to place a hand on your shoulder as everybody starts exiting the pool. "It's Mean Girls! You love Mean Girls! You never miss a minute of Mean Girls!"

Rolling your eyes, you wave him dismissively. "I know every dialogue on Mean Girls like the back of my hand, I think I'll be alright, Jin."

When everybody finally leaves, you take a deep breath, covering your face with your hands in an attempt to get him out of your head. Damn Jeon Jungkook and his irresisitble glow up.

"You okay?"

The unexpected voice startles you, a gasp finding its way out of your mouth and causing you to jump on your seat, heartbeat erratic as you instantly recognize who it belongs to. Your hand grasps your chest as if that would do anything to protect yourself against him.

"Shit, don't do that!" you say, the words almost getting stuck in your throat as you see him approaching you, still submerged in the pool. The more he nears you, the less water depth there is and the more visible his torso comes into view. Wich was exactly what you'd been avoiding.

Because Jeon Jungkook was ripped, as you'd imagined when you first encountered him.

Broad shoulders and strong biceps and chiseled abs and veiny forearms. Drenched hair, a full sleeve of tattoos and water dripping from delicious tan skin and all just so very hard. That paired up with a loopsided smile that does nothing but make you shudder.

"Sorry." he doesn't sound apologetic at all when he says that, the smirk adorning his features telling. "You just seemed a little off." you advert your gaze when he pushes his hair back.

"I'm fine, just...just wanted to be by myself."

"Oh" Jungkook's smile disappears. "I can leave, if you want me t-"

"No!" you're not sure where that comes from and neither does he, judging by the look on his face when your eyes find his. Eyebrows raised and mouth slightly parted, he's as surprised as you and there's an awkward silence for a few seconds. "Um, you don't have to. I mean, it's not my house, you can do whatever you want." you sniff and tame your voice, trying to seem cool and collected like you didn't just practically beg him not to go.

Ironic, considering this was exactly what you had been fearing for the past thirty minutes.

And then he smiles. A knowing smile. A smile that says 'you just totally checked me out and now you don't want me to leave'. A smile that you would have never associated with Jeon Jungkook of all people years ago. A smile that makes you want to look away but still keeps you in place.

"Sure." he says, closing the space between the two of you slowly but still leaving enough distance. "So, how's it going?"

You clear your throat, head high and determined not to let this man, or any man for that matter, turn you into a trembling mess. You're still you and you're not easily shaken by the opposite sex. Or at least that's what you helplessly chant in your head.

"Everything's cool. I'm on summer vacation now," a little white lie, "so I decided to-"

"The piercing." he says, the smile never leaving his face. "I meant how's the piercing."

"The pier- right." you almost miss the step he takes forward, all too aware of his height over yours but thankful for the centimeters that being propped on the stairs added to yours. "It's-" you almost, almost miss his knee touching your knee and him slightly separating your legs with his own inch by inch. Or how your thighs open unvoluntarely to welcome him in and how you can barely find coherent words to speak. "It's doing-" or the way his smile disappears and is instead focusing his dark stare fully onto yours.

"It's doing well." you finally say in a whisper, not being able to bring yourself to be louder.

He hums. "May I see it?" Jungkook wets his lips with the tip of his tongue and the action and his voice is enough to make you nod your head, bewitched.

His movements are unhurried, his hand coming up to tentatively come in contact with the flesh of your clavicle. His fingers skim through your skin upwards, his touch is feather-like when it wraps around your throat. You pant, and he stops but he doesn't move away, his eyes still focused on yours, studying you, daring you to pull back, to tell him to back off. But just a simple touch of his and you're fully under his control. It reminds you too much of the day you got that damn piercing.

Your lips are parted and for a moment he stays just like that. His body so close to yours but not close enough, and his hand slightly gripping your neck. Your pussy clenches around nothing and you can't wrap your head around the fact that something so simple sets your entire being alive and leaves you aching.

Then, as slow as he started, his hand travels from the front of your neck to the back, pushing your hair aside to carefully untie the straps of your bikini. He breathes through his nostrils, doesn't make a sound. He seems so collected it's starting to annoy you.

Instead, your breathing is ragged when the top falls down, exposing both your breasts to him. That's when he removes his eyes from yours and his jaw clenches. Your nipples perk up under his gaze, like they remember him and the effect he had on them just a week ago. You're at least glad you're not the only one affected but he seems to be a master at keeping it under wraps.

Then, his hand moves again, leaving goosebumps on your skin as it goes south. Jungkook takes his time, so deliberate you want to scream, until he's cupping your pierced breast, keeping away from the nipple just like he'd advised you a few days prior. You can't look away from his face, from his eyes observing you like you're a full course meal and he's been starving for days. You feel drops of water falling from his hair to your thighs, his thumb caressing your skin so delicately as it faintly nears your still tender nipple. Just nearing it, never touching it.

"Beautiful." his murmur is almost imperceptible and for a moment you think you've imagined it. Your back arches on its own, breast pushed against the palm of his hand, almost like your body is begging him to come closer, to touch you more, to feel you all over. He meets your eyes briefly, gauging your reaction, before going back to your chest. Suddenly, the grip on your breast tightens, fingers ever so softly squeezing your flesh. From your throat comes a mewl, your eyes shut and your legs close around his waist.

"Jungkook, please..." you whisper when you open your eyes. He looks at you, unvertainty written all over his face, lips bruised as if he had been biting on them too hard, gaze as glassy as yours. And just like that, the spell is broken. He blinks and his expression changes completely. Lips forming a straight line and jaw tight. His hand retracts, fixing your bikini top over your breasts before tying it around your neck like it originally was. Meanwhile your eyebrows crunch in confusion. But when you're about to start asking questions, he clears his throat.

"It's healing okay." he steps back, avoiding your eyes. "I'll see you inside."

Jungkook leaves the pool like nothing happened.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

Jungkook is fiddling, fixing the position of his glasses and combing through his straight hair with shaky hands, habits he's tried so hard to get rid of in his sixteen years of existence but still finds impossible to.

He can't help it. He's always been like this: the quiet and awkward kid in class who sits in the back, a misunderstood puppy in a sea of stronger dog breeds that could eat him alive. An outcast. Too geeky for his own good. Notebokes full of Dragon Ball doodles on the margins of the pages, the shelves in his room stacked with Marvel figurines, and a closet filled with outdated clothes that he has been inheriting from his older brother.

He has never been the type to stand out, always being overlooked by people like he's invisible. He doesn't mind though. He'd much rather be ignored than getting picked on by bullies like he used to in elementary school.

He never gets invited to parties. Ever. He's a nobody who barely speaks, and when he does he either stutters or manages to embarrass himself in one way or another. He's seen the look on people's faces when they look at him. Their eyes seem to scream 'weirdo' everytime he gets acknowledged.

So obviously the only reason he was invited to this particular party had a first and last name: Kim Taehyung. The only kid in Jungkook's entire life who didn't look at him in a funny way, the only kid who took the time to entangle in a random conversation with him after class and who seemed geniune enough to make Jungkook feel comfortable.

He's not sure how it happened, since Taehyung mostly hangs out with the cool kids. But somehow it did, and now Jungkook is uncomfortably standing in a living room full of drunk teens, looking directly at you.

You, the one girl Jungkook had been pining on for God knows how long. You, who are obviously too pretty, too popular, and way out of his league. You, with your plaid skirt and your polo shirt and those legs that never seem to end. You, who are sitting with your friends in a couch, drink in hand and visibly tipsy. And yet, he doesn't think he's ever seen anyone pull of the 'drunk-rosy-cheek' look better than you.

He can hear your laugh through the music and he already thinks it sounds better than whoever is playing in the background.

"Come on, Gukkie! Her friends are leaving and she's all by herself now! It's your chance" Taehyung's obviously drunk too because it took Jungkook a while to decypher his exact words. He'd disappeared for a while and now that he's back, he's pushing Jungkook in your direction.

"This was a mistake, Taehyung." Jungkook shakes his hair and steps back, quickly glancing at the front door to prepare his escape. But his new friend's grip on his hoodie keeps him in place.

"Guk, listen. The only thing you have to do, is walk up to her, and say 'hey I think you're, like, really pretty. Just letting you know. Bye!' That's it. Jung- Dude, Guk, seriously, look at me." Taehyung grabs Jungkook's cheeks, squishing them between his hands and forceing him to face him. "You've been crushing hard on her for years, my man. We're graduating and you won't see each other again. What's the worst thing that can happen? Getting rejected?"

Jungkook's eyebrows draw together. "Um, yeah?"

"Exactly! Getting rejected is not the end of the world, bro! It just means keep trying on other girls!" Taehyung releases his hold on Jungkook's cheeks. "I just think you're going to regret not telling your crush she's your crush. Who knows? Maybe in the future you two will get married."

Jungkook snickers, muttering a 'yeah right' under his breath. Still, he can't help the smile that Taehyung's words always seem to pull out of him.

"Now," Taehyung playfully slaps Jungkook before turning him in your direction again. "Go get 'em, tiger!"

"Okay," Mijoo's voice slices through Jungkook's memories. She's sitting on Jungkook's desk, munching on her brownies and looking at her coworker expectantly. "And then what?"

He sighs, running a hand through his hair, sits back on his chair, already feeling the effects of Mijoo's baked goods. "And then I walked up to her, like a damn fool, stutter and all. And I say:" he clears his throat, making an effort to do his best teenage Gukkie impression."'Hey, _____, um, so, I think you're beautiful and I've had a crush on you since seventh grade, haha, just wanted to let you know.'"

Mijoo rolls her eyes, still chewing. "And then what?"

"And then she looked me up and down, giggled, fucking giggled, Mijoo, and said 'Who are you, again?'" Mijoo gasps and Jungkook closes his eyes, trying to force that recollecion out of his head.

"What a bitch." she can't help but laugh before apologizing. Jungkook merely shrugs his shoulders and takes another bite of his brownie. "She didn't say anything else?"

"She said something along the lines of:" he clears his throat again, this time, doing an impression of you. "'That's sweet and all but, you and I... we're not the same. And I have a boyfriend, so...' She said that like I didn't know, like I wasn't aware of the school's it couple! Like I was dumb!"

Mijoo nods. "And now you want to fuck her even more than you did in high school."

"I- No! Well, yes. Fuck, of course I want to sleep with her! But I just... can't."

"Why not?"

"Did you hear anything about what I just told you or were you too concentrated trying to get high?"

It's Mijoo's turn to roll her eyes. "I heard everything you just told me. I just don't understand what the problem is. You two were sixteen. Sure, she was a bitch about it, but Lord knows I've been a bitch my entire life and now I'm not anymore." Jungkook raises an eyebrow at that. "Okay, sometimes I can be nice. But the point is..." Mijoo finishes her piece of brownie before getting off of Jungkook's desk. "It's been, what? Nine? Ten years? People change, JK. You're the best example of that. You want to fuck her and she obviously wants to fuck you too. You're both adults." she wipes her hands on her shorts. "I think it's time you fulfill that high school fantasy of yours."

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

You've made up your mind.

And by you, it means Chaelin has made up your mind.

It didn't take long to convince you though. That last interaction with Jungkook cause too many emotions stirring within you. It left you hot, it left you bothered, it left you confused. Sure, it also left you a little bit embarrassed like the first time, but above everything else, that interaction with Jungkook left you absolutely livid.

Because who the fuck did Jeon Jungkook, formerly known as Guk, Gukkie, Jungukkie, and currently known as JK, think he was to come near you, speed your heart rate's up, and then runaway like that?

You've spent days thinking about it. About that face, about that body, about those hands and- shit. You're doing it again.

You've spent days trying to push those intrusive thoughts. Spent days trying to bury what happened. You've spent days trying to keep quiet, not telling anyone about it and just wishing that stupid spark of desire simply went away.

But it has just been simply unavoidable. You haven't been able to ignore the sleepless nights with your brain drifting back to that night and forbidding your hand from slipping under your panties. Or the excessive amount of time during the day where images of him suddenly popped in your head and wouldn't go away, even with you squeezing your thighs to try to make the ache go away.

So you ended up ranting and ranting and ranting to the only person you could confide on, who is obviously your best friend. Your best friend, who's too smart for her own good and knows you too well for your liking. Because apparently your moodiness and snappy remarks couldn't go unnoticed.

And after explaining the fiasco over a bottle of wine -and minutes of endless laughing on Chaelin's part because, again, it's Gukkie you two were talking about and, according to her, this was "the most karmic thing I've ever seen"-, she gave you the best advice an older sister could ever give.

"Fuck him."

"I know right? Fuck him!"

"No. I mean, fuck him."

And now here you are. Right inside that room you stepped in weeks ago, confronting the man in question with the same confidence that has always distinguished you from others and trying to act like the fluttering inside your belly wasn't nauseauting.

"A date."

"Yes."

"You want to go on a date with me." this wouldn't be so hard if Jungkook didn't look so delectable in a plain white t-shirt and ripped jeans. You cross your arms over your chest, doing your best to not look down at the exposed skin of a man who obviously worked out a lot and apparently, never skipped leg day. "What's the catch?"

He's sitting on his chair, back resting comfortably and legs spread, narrowing his eyes at you and probably wondering why the girl at the front desk let you in without an appointment. Also, probably wondering if there was a catch to all of this.

"There's no catch. I just want to go to the fair this weekend. I'll ask Taehyung for your number and text you the date and the exact place we'll be meeting. Unless..." your quirk one of your eyebrows. "Unless you're already planning on how you'll chicken out this time."

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

Of course, Jungkook says yes to going on a date with his high school crush but spends the following days overthinking every single thing.

He can't help but feel like it's kinda sketchy. What if you're planning your vendetta on him? What if you don't even show up and he ends up there looking like a damn idiot? What if you hate him and are just messing up with him? What if that incident in high school is going to repeat itself?

"If she doesn't show up, you simply move on and never speak to her again. It's that simple. She can't have that much power over you to cry about something like that." Mijoo had said that same day she let you in the tattoo parlor after you'd asked to see Jungkook. Jungkook's coworker hadn't even question you and just motioned you to Jungkook's room with a knowing smile on her face. Later that day, Jungkook had scolded her about it and she'd simply shrugged.

He considers cancelling, eyes reading the 'won't be able to make it, sorry (sad face emoji)' over and over again and fingers hovering over the send button so many times he's lost count. But then he remembers that comment of yours about him chickening out and Jungkook starts seeing red.

How couldn't you understand he's just terrified of you rejecting him one more time? Sure, Jungkook is now an adult who doesn't get butthurt over stuff like that. He's experienced too much after graduating from high school and he's a much stronger individual than his fragile self back was back then.

But something about you just makes him feel so... weak.

He still finds it impossible to concieve where he got the courage to approach you like that at Taehyung's pool, or how he brought himself to touch you for longer than a minute without coming in his pants. He'd enjoyed it too much. Allowing him to see you so exposed, just for him. He'd be so tempted to kiss you right there and then, to run his hands up and down your thighs and fully wrap your legs around him to let you known how much you'd affected him. Once you called his name, it was like he'd finally snapped out of it and backed away like he'd been burned by you. He spent the next twenty minutes trying to keep himself from pulling down his pants and jerking off in his friend's bathroom.

It's terrible. Because he feels like the teenager he used to be when you're around. Shy, insecure and overall a mess. You showing up in his life after so many years and now apparenly being interested in him seems like a dream that he's not sure he wants to keep being in or wake up from before it's too late and he falls back into that tumoltuous longing that will inevitably end up in heartbreak. His heartbreak.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

It's saturday night, he's standing by himself in the crowded fair at the spot. You're fifteen minutes late and he's already about to turn back and dip out. He feels too awkward and the nerves are eating him alive.

You're not going to show up. You're not going to show up and now he feels and looks even dumber than the time he told you he was crushing on you. You're not even going to show up and now he's going to come back home, get drunk by himself and curse your name for-

"Hey!" he turns around to the sound of your voice and sees you running towards him. "Sorry I'm late! I couldn't find my phone and spent like thirty minutes looking for it. Turns out, Sharon Stone, was taking a nap on top of it and I didn't even notice."

"Sharon Stone?"

"Chaelin's cat."

To be honest, he's too surprised to process your explanation right away. He might also be a little speechless because that sky blue sundress looks too good on your skin and your eyelashes are so long, framing your beautiful eyes, and your lips are all glossy and kisseable that it takes him a while to find his own voice.

He clears his throat. "It's alright." scratching the back of his head, he momentarely adverts his gaze from you in an attempt to not get distracted by how soft your hair looks and how much he wants to wrap it around his hands in a ponytail. "Um, where do you want to go first?"

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

Almost an hour and a half later, when the sun has already disappeared and you're both surrounded by colorful lights, Jungkook decides to buy the both of you hot dogs and a drink and you both settle down on a bench.

You've been walking all over the fair, going from booth to booth, playing any game in sight Jungkook dared you to -he obviously had a competitive streak-: from the ballon and dart games, to the shooting games, to the bumping cars, to the ball-in-basket one. To say you were having fun was an understatement.

You'd almost regretted setting the date up. You were sure he wouldn't even show up and if he did, you were scared of how awkward things could get between the two of you. And if things were awkward, you were sure it would only take less than thirty minutes for the both of you to part ways and never talk again about such failure of a date.

To your surprise, none of that happened.

The conversation was flowing, both of you acting like you were strangers on their first date getting to know each other, which, to be fair, that's exactly what it felt like. There was a slight banter, teasing each other when one of you lost in whatever game you were playing while the other was obviously winning. There were laughs and a funny feeling in your tummy whenever you'd walk side by side and his arm brushed yours.

There was no stiffness on his shoulders, no mention of the past or your previous encounters, no acknowledgement of the blatant sexual tension you'd experienced before, not an ounce of avoidance whenever your eyes met his and he was even sure of himself enough to place a hand on your lower back or briefly interwine your fingers with his to guide you through the mass of people.

It felt like you'd both unspokenly agreed on making each other feel comfortable enough to have a good time.

"I didn't think you were going to show up, to be honest." you suddenly say, taking a sip of your strawberry juice and thankful to finally let your feet rest for a while.

Jungkook looks at you, hot dog mid air and eyebrows almost disappearing into his hairline. "You didn't think I was going to show up? I didn't think you were going to show up." you simply shrug, lowering your gaze seepishly, the beginning of a smile on both your faces. He surprises you by tilting your head in his direction with his forefinger. You watch him watching you, a little dazed, a little lost in how his dark hair messily falls over his forehead and his equally dark eyes study your face, his thumb swiping over your lower lip. "You um... There was ketchup right there." he lies.

"Oh" you say, feeling your face heating up. "Thanks. Red doesn't really match this dress." you manage a smile and tuck a lock of your hair behind your ear.

At that, he eyes your dress for a moment, mouth slightly ajar. He's debating on whether or not to say something but you beat him to it.

"I'm sorry, by the way."

"For being late? I already told you it's fin-"

"No." you shake your head. "For... that time when we were young and I was such a concieted brat." you say, looking away , trying to find anything else that's not his pretty face. "I thought I was a queen bee back then. I was annoying and rude, specially to you. I..." you lick your lips. The cherry glittery gloss was already gone. "I thought it was cute, what you said. There was no reason for me to act like that. I know this doesn't make anything right but..." when you turn to face him again, there's still the same expression on his face. "I'm sorry."

A few seconds go by before it's him who's shaking his head. "It's okay. It was a long time ago, anyway." he smiles at you, although it doesn't reach his eyes and seems sorta forced. You sigh, and he takes your hand. "Let's go to the ferris wheel."

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

tell you're tense. You're sitting right beside him in the ferris cabin, your back is all straight, you're facing forward and he believes you haven't blinked for what feels like an eternity. He thinks it has everything to do with your conversation a few minutes ago. You were probably not content with his response but what could Jungkook do? There was really no point in apologizing for something that happened years ago, but at the same time, he didn't want to hold anything against you like a resentful asshole because it was really not who he was. But there was still a little bit of stingyness inside of him and he didn't know how to make it go away.

At the end of the day, here you were, on a date with him that you'd asked for, getting along and asking questions about him and laughing at his jokes and trying to start all over again.

But then the ferris wheel starts moving, and he finally understands why you look so uncomfortable.

It's the way you immediately grip his forearm, nails digging in his skin and he swears he hears the smallest gasp forcing itself out your throat.

"Are you... scared?" he tentatively asks.

You say nothing for a while, not moving an inch. He would laugh if you didn't look so pained about it.

"I don't like small confined spaces nor rollercoasters." you finally say through gritted teeth.

"It's not really that small and ferris wheels are not rollercoasters. " your nails dig deeper and he winces. "Okay, okay. You don't like small confined spaces nor rollercoasters, and that includes ferris wheels. So why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know. I've never liked ferris wheels but you seemed excited about it, so..."

There's a silence after that in the environment, neither of you exactly sure of what to say or how to act. Until Jungkook moves one of his hands hands until it's resting on the one who's holding onto him for dear life, fingers caressing yours. The warmth of his hand spreads through yours and although it's almost July and you can already feel your sweaty back staining your dress, it's oddly comforting. What's more comforting even, is him twisting his body towards you and talking with the calmest and most soothing tone you've ever heard.

"Look at me." you do instantly, unwillingly, and kinda wish you hadn't. It's almost as if your body will do anything he says without question. Like he has some sort of power over it to just react however he wants. His eyes bore into yours and suddenly the cab doesn't seem so suffocating. "It's just you and me right now. We're not even on a ferris wheel." the corners of his mouth turn slowly upwards. You zone out the environment, suddenly too aware of him and how close he is and how loud the beating of your heart is to your own ears.

"Jungkook."

You swallow the knot in the back of your throat when he removes his hand from yours. It almost makes you protest, - now realizing you've losened the tight grip on his arm- , before it craddles your face, keeping you in place while bringing his body closer.

"You have to stop saying my name like that."

With his thigh touching your thigh, your whole demeanor melts. When he leans closer, and you feel his breath fanning over your lips, your eyes shut closed.

"Tell me I can-" he starts to say.

"Yes." you finish for him. He doesn't doubt on closing the distance between you two. His lips touch yours and your body shakes in excitement. It's just him lightly skimming your lips with his but it's already too much and at the same time, not enough. It has you deepening it, yourself moving closer when he kisses you again. It has you relaxing against him, the tenseness prior disappearing and making you arch your back when his tongue asks for permission.

But it's exactly then, the moment you open your lips to him, that has you losing your mind.

The sparks fly, traveling from your head to your toes and then settling on the pit of your stomach as soon as the kiss starts to turn desperate and rough. When he nibbles your lips with his teeth, it makes you mewl and whine and your nipples tight against the cotton of your dress. It makes the metal barbell to feel uncomfortable, slightly painful. And when he goes back to being messy and filthy with his tongue tangled with yours, your thighs close on their own.

He forces himself to pull his hand back and bring it down, finding the parting of yd opening them for him. "Wait," you say, your fingers wrapping around his forearm as you try to catch your breath."The ferris-" he shuts you up with another kiss.

"We're not on a ferris wheel." he reminds you, a soft whisper against your mouth. And for whatever reason, you believe him.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

"He fingered you on the ferris wheel."

"Yes."

"And you came before the ride was over."

You take a small sip of wine, your eyes focusing on the TV where a rerun of the Golden Girls is playing, although, to be fair, lately you haven't been able to pay much attention to anything else but a certain brunet with doe eyes and kisseable lips. "Yes."

She hums, stealing a handful of popcorn from the bowl between your thighs.

"How long did it took? Like five minutes?"

There's a pause in which you clench your jaw, your fingers twitching around the glass in your hand, and then you answer. "Probably less."

There's another pause, and then-

"Ha...Ha ha...Ha ha ha-"

You let her laugh. It's okay. You knew you had it coming.

Chaelin knows the pillow you throw right at her face is also something she had coming.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

It's not that you're mad.

Jungkook and you had a great time on that fair date, he made you laugh, bought hot dogs and drinks for the two of you and got you off inside the cab of a ferris wheel on record time with those magical, long fingers of his. Technically, there shouldn't be anything to be angry about.

Except it's been a week and you can't stop thinking about him, about wanting more, and about those words that he left you with after the ferris wheel ride ended, when you had tried to return the favor.

'Next time, maybe.'

And there hasn't been a next time.

The thought of texting him or giving him a call to ask for another date is persistent in your mind. It remains while you do the laundry or wash the dishes, while you shower, while you eat or while you spend your days at the beach with Chaelin. There's always the incessant desire to reach out towards your phone, unlock it and dial his number to beg for more.

But you'd never been one to beg, so you resist the urge everytime that feeling starts to creep up on you and it washes over you like a wave. You silence your phone and try to concentrate on making the most out of your summer.

It's one random night, when you're tiredly dragging your feet across Chaelin's apartment's carpet, yawning and ready to succumb to a well needed slumber, that you see your phone screen's lighting up with a message.

Your heart pathetically leaps inside your chest when you read his name.

'you free on saturday?'

You wish you could say you ghosted him, ignored his text and moved on with your life until it was him who begged you for another date. But the truth is you opened it in a matter of seconds and typed 'i'm free, why?' back in a rush with trembling fingers.

So now you're on the passanger seat of his car while he sits on the driver seat, the first saturday night of July, like he's Danny Zuko and you're Sandy Olsson, watching a vintage movie in a drive-in theater which plot you don't give a shit about, even if Jungkook's date plan idea made something inside of you churn with adoration.

And the only reason why you don't give a single damn about the movie playing in front of your eyes, is because you're hot. Way too hot. And the reason and cause is none other than the boy-now-turned-man sitting on your left.

You barely exchanged words when he picked you up, just rode in silence until you got to your destination and you bet he can feel as well as you do the tension in the air.

You've surveyed him a few times from the corner of his eye, noticing him fiddling with the rings around his fingers and shifting in his seat from time to time. And if the sight of his fingers bring memories that you've tried to bury to keep yourself from lunching towards him, a brief glance at his forearms, adorned with ink drawn through his golden flesh -doing a poor job at concieling the veins running underneath- and his skin-tight jeans wrapping those muscled thighs of his is enough to have you be the one squirming in your seat.

A woman can only endure so much, and you come to that realization thirty minutes into the movie.

"I want to suck your cock." you say, a stern expression on your face as you turn your body in his direction.

Jungkook frozes as your voice slides over him. It takes him a couple seconds to look at you, shock widening his eyes and parting his lips.

"Huh?" he manages, his grip on the steering wheel turning his knuckles white.

Without separating your gaze from his, you gather your hair and tie it in a ponytail with the hair tie previously around your wrist. You don't miss the quick glance he sneaks into the curvature of your neck and the valley between your breasts.

Inching forward, closing in on him, you place one of your hands on top of his thigh, the action making his whole body tense. "____..." he whispers your name in a warning that doesn't sound convincing even in his own ears.

You smile, your eyes never wavering from his as your hand inches upwards, slowly caressing over the fabric of his jeans until you finally come across what you were looking for.

His hand flies to your wrist, stilling your movements. "____, this is not-". He starts, but his voice gets stuck inside his throat when you palm his undoubtly growing erection.

"Shh." your shaky breath fans over his cheek and you force yourself on your knees on the passanger seat in a more comortable possition to stop the trembling to reach them.

You fumble with the belt holding his pants in place, then with the button and finally with the zipper. He helps you by lifting his hips to pull his jeans and boxers to his thighs and you have to bite back a mixture between a gasp and a moan at the sight below you. You haven't even seen Jeon Jungkook naked all the way, but the mere sight of his hard cock with pre-cum glistening on his crown is probably the sexiest thing you've ever had the pleasure of appreciating.

It gets sexier when you wrap your hand around the base and his body melts in the driver seat, throwing his head back with his eyes shut. It gets even sexier when you finally lower your head, swirling your tongue over the head before finally engulfing him fully in the wet warmth of your mouth.

"Shit." his voice is tight, uneven as his hand loosely grips your ponytail, as if careful not to accidentally hurt you and break the glorious moment.

Although you wouldn't mind at all. Because the moment your hands are on him, and your tongue is on his shaft, that's the only thing you care about. Your belly is twisting, an undeniable wet spot on your panties as the fabric sticks to your folds, and the more you suck Jungkook, the more you want from him. His earthy taste is addicting and the soft little whimpers he occasionally can't prevent himself from are making you want to milk him until he can't take it no more. There's this desire within you to whorship him and his cock like you had been dreaming for the past weeks.

"This is s-so fucking h-hot." he rasps between ragged breaths, the bobbing of your head, sliding up and down his dick as your hand works the centimeters your mouth can't take is about to make him faint.

"Getting a blowjob?" you joke, your throat starting to feel sore as you kiss his leaking tip.

"N-no." he draws in a rough breath when you take him all of him again. "You giving me a blowjob... T-the f-fact that anyone c-could see us..." he darts a quick glance at your body, your ass up in the air and your dress sliding down, almost exposing you completely. "The fact that-ah! Shit..." he squeezes his eyes when he feels a glob of your spit lubricating him.

There's a sudden need to make you feel the same, to touch your skin and have you shaking the same way you have him. So one of his hands travels from your spine, to your perked ass, finally dragging the cotton of your dress to allow himself to see your thin white panties. "The fact that anyone could see you l-like this," he murmurs, regaining a little bit of control when he squeezes one of your cheeks. "letting t-them see you s-sucking my cock and..." he smirks when he feels you gasping around him, his fingers trapped between your thighs and pushing them inside your heat easily "and letting them see me fingering this pretty little pussy."

Soon after that he's cumming in your mouth while you're cumming around his fingers.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

At first, it's mostly on weekends when you see each other. Weekends of stolen kisses and soft sighs and whispering against each other's lips. Then weekends turn to week days, sitting on grass while sipping on refreshing beverages, drawing each other laughs, elbows touching as you walk around the park side by side because the both of you are too scared to interwine your fingers together.

Jungkook feels content like this: sitting on the sand with you between his thighs, admiring the sunset while nuzzing your neck and inhaling your scent every now. He likes waching you enoying your strawberry ice cream, almost forgetting the chocolate chip one already melting in his hand.

"If you were an ice cream flavor,which one would you be?" you ask him, relaxing against his chest.

"Rocky road."

"Why?"

He shrugs behind you. "Everyone likes rocky road."

You hum, playfully rolling your eyes. "What about me? Which ice cream flavor would I be?"

"Lemon sherbet, in the summer."

"Lemon sherbet? Out of all of the flavours out there, you're rocky road and I'm lemon sherbet?"

"Lemon sherbet, in the summer." he corrects.

"Okay, fine. Why?"

"You're boring and basic."

You gasp, trying to feign outrage but not being able to repress the laugh that escapes your throat. You elbow him, his laugh mixing with yours while taking the time to wrap his arms around your form, the breeze blowing your hair allowing him a spot between your neck and your shoulder. "You're boring and basic, but once you have a taste..." he presses a small kiss on your skin, causing the tiny hairs on the nape of your neck to rise. "Once you have a taste, specially on the hottest day in the middle of summer, you can't stop tasting and licking until there's no more lemon sherbet left."

You suck in on a breath when he craddles your jaw to face him. "It's been my favourite flavor since I was a kid." he kisses you immediately after, his lips swallowing the small whimper now stuck in your throat.

You close your eyes as his tongue opens your mouth, arousal blasting your insides and something much, much deeper that you fear to even name shredding your chest.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

The beginning of august comes faster then you two realize, but what you both do realize is how hard it's becoming to stay away from each other.

It's been thirty days of dates happening almost everyday, sharing high school memories and anecdotes of the time you spent away from each other. Hours of getting to know each other and opening up to each other. From failed relationships to new friendships. Of park dates walking side by side and fingers now interwined because you both realized one day that, fuck it.

It's difficult to sleep when you realize you're starting to catch serious feelings for somebody who was just supposed to be a fling. It's hard to sleep when his face, his voice and his touch and thoughts of missing him when you don't see each other start haunting you at night.

It's hard for Jungkook to focus on work when you're everything that's occupying his mind. Because he has a hundred sketches to make but he's too busy thinking about the hundred different sketches he would make of you.

It's hard not to send him a goodnight text, just like it's hard for him not to reply in a matter of seconds, almost as if he was already waiting to recieve it.

Jungkook thinks of you at night. Of how pretty and absolutely perfect you are for him. Of the taste of your lips, the way your hair feels between his fingers, or the flush on your cheeks when he makes you cum as droplets of sweat accumulate between your breasts. He thinks about your voice. He also thinks about the amount of hours left to be able to listen to it again.

But mostly he thinks about how ridiculous this situation is. Because he was stupidly crushing on you when you were only teenagers, daydreaming about a chance with you. And now his crush is long gone and he's starting to realize that he's falling, and falling fast.

You, too, think of Jungkook at night. Of his ability to bring a smile out of you, to soothe you with just a few words and filling your belly excitement, happiness and feelings you're sure you've never felt before.

Jungkook's managed to imprint himself in your dreams, and you, in his.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

Getting drunk with Jungkook is fun and messy.

It's fun because he lets loose, he stutters a lot like he used to do when he was a teenager and he makes you laugh louder than ever before. It's messy because he has no control over his hands as they explore your body, clumsily taking your clothes off as his mouth laps at the breast he's allowed to touch.

He's more forceful and dominating too, pinning your hands above your head, and commanding you to keep them right there, on the pillows of his bed. When you rebel against it, your fingers finding the hard planes of his chest, he pulls away from you and places them back where he left them. "Don't make me tie you up." he threatens, and your body shudders beneath him.

He sucks, and bites and leaves marks all over your skin, grunting in response to your moans. Creating a path of kisses from your lips to your stomach, his shoulders separating your knees, opening you up only for him. And thankfully, when you reach down to tug at the strands of hair framing his face, he lets you, because he knows you need something to hold on to the moment his tongue eats you up. He leaves his fingertrips on your thighs as he keeps you in place, not allowing you to runaway. Just forcing you to take it as he takes from you.

And when you cum, he doesn't back away. He keeps sucking, and licking and punishing you with his mouth until you're cumming over and ove again, screaming and begging for his cock.

Having Jungkook over you, both completely naked, skin to skin and only sweat in between is more than you could've ever fantazised about. He slurls your name when he puts the condom on. He would do anything to feel you raw, but he also knows he wouldn't be able to last a minute. The sight of you spread open, with your cheeks darkened by a crimson blush and your hair tangled all over his pillow is a picture he wants to keep forever.

He enters you when you call his name, your voice dripping with need. He stretches your warm and wet felsh, slowly easing himself into you at first, until he's fully inside and your bodies are completely in union. A shiver runs down Jungkook's spine when he looks at your contorted face in pleasure, your lips forming an 'O' and your pussy clenching around him.

"Oh, my God." you moan into the dark of Jungkook's room, and even then, he can clearly appreciate every curve of your body lifting off the mattress to connect with his. He lowers himself on his elbows on either side of your head, caging you in and capturing your mouth with his.

"I know, baby." he murmurs. It's hot, in the middle of August but suddenly Jungkook doesn't hate summer as much as he used to. Not with you sharing the heat with him. "It's way beyond what I could ever imagine." You nod hurriedly against his lips, your arms finding their way around his neck as he starts rocking in and out of you.

"It's too good." you cry, when he hits a particular spot that has you rolling your eyes in bliss and gripping his waist tighter with your legs against you. Your fingers thread through his hair, not bothered by the beads of sweat gathered on the nape of his neck.

"Too good..." he agrees, not missing the shiver that's shaking your own frame when he picks up his speed. "You have no idea what I would do t-to fucking feel you with n-no barriers between us," his movements become frantic as his hips slap against yours, his jaw clenched as he keeps talking, "to s-stuff you full of my c-cum over and over again until it won't stop d-dripping."

Jungkook's voice against your ear has you trembling and your orgasm nearing closer, your nails scratching down his back as his thrusts overpower your form. "Would you like that?" he asks with his voice strangled.

"Y-yes. Anything y-you want."

"You'd take all of my cum like a good cum-slut?"

You hate the fact that that's what makes you come undone. The twisting and knotting in the pit of your stomach finally snapping until you're holding on to him like you never want to let him go and he's following soon after.

Because if Guk, Gukkie, Jengukkie was not only able to make you come in less than a few minutes with his fingers or his tongue, but he was also able to make you cum instantly just by calling you a good cum-slut, that means you're fucked. Like, really, really fucked.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

There's a knot in Jungkook's stomach and a suffocating grip around his vocal chords as he caresses your skin. The sun is rising in the distance with the first rays of light entering his room through the window. Your shamphoo is intoxicating him, numbing him and enticing him to bury his nose in the tangled curls pressing against his chest. Your arm is thrown across his stomach, your breathing leavig goosebumps all over his body.

"It's too early. Go back to sleep." you mumble against his heart. He wonders if you can feel it dangerously speeding up.

"I can't." he says, voice struggling to stay balanced. "I have to tell you something."

You hum in response, sleep still interwined with your body, your arm tightening around him. You sigh in content, expecting him to elaborate.

He wets his suddenly dry lips. "I don't want this to end. In fact, ____.... I want more. Need more."

"Jungkook..." your whole body goes rigid right away, untanglling your bodies from each other and sitting up on the mattress.

"No, listen to me." he mimicks your movements, rapidly grabbing your hands to make you look at him. His eyes are expressive, a mixture of fear and hope swirling in his dark irises. "I wake up everyday, and you're the first thing I think of. I go on about my day, and I keep thinking about you, wondering what you're doing and counting down the hours until I get to see you again. I spend every night dreaming about you, and when we'e together, the only thing I can think about is how I wish I could stop time so I don't have to say bye to you the next morning. ____, I-"

"Jungkook, stop please." you shake your head, pushing away from him and in desperate need of air. You press a hand against your chest, beating back the throb of pain while the other curls in a tight fist, the feeling of your fingernails digging into your palm less painful than the ache inside your heart. "This... This wasn't supossed to happen, Jungkook." you start pacing around the room, as if trying to find an exit while avoiding his gaze. "This was just a summer fling. That's all it was, I'm supposed to come back to the city in two weeks and-"

"A summer fling?" a sardonic sneer comes out of him. "Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening again..." he mumbles to himself before rising from the bed. You stop immediately, a shiver quaking through you as his impressive frame intimidates His eyebrows are drawn together and his dark eyes are void of any prior emotion. "You're going back to the city in two weeks? And you didn't care to tell me until now, after I just spilled my guts to you?"

You eyes fill up with uncomfortable tears, reaching one arm towards him. "Jung-"

He flinches, taking one step back. "A summer fling is all I mean to you?"

"Ju- "

"Look me in the eyes, right now, and tell me that's all I mean to you. A summer fling." panic crawls up your throat. There's the need within you to confirm, to stare into his beautiful and stern eyes and tell him that, yes, that's all he is to you. But you've never been a good liar. So nothing comes out. You opt for wrapping your ams around yourself wishing they were his and lowering your eyes to the ground. "I think... I think you should leave."

Those are the last words he says to you, and the last thing you see when you turn around one more time after gathering your clothes, is his back as he looks out the window.

You allow yourself to cry the exact moment you step into Chaelin's apartment. Your friend is sitting on the couch, bowl of cereal in hand and a fresh cup of coffee sitting on the livingroom's table.

"Hey, you're early tod- Baby, what's wrong?"

"Please, don't laugh."

That morning, you lay down for hours on the couch with your head on Chaelin's lap while she softly brushes your hair as you cry, hiccup, fight through the pain in your heart and relate to her as best as you can the latest events.

She doesn't laugh at all.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

"She'll come back." Mijoo's slurred words do nothing to put Jungkook's state at ease that night. He simply shrugs, fingers clenching at his sides, frowing into his drink before gulping down the bitter taste of vodka in one shot. "Seriously, I think she's just afraid. My ex was the same."

"Comparing her to your ex is not the analogy you think it is."

"Ugh, shut up. Things didn't work with my ex because she was a bitch." Jungkook gives Mijoo a pointed look which she responds to by rolling her eyes and sipping on her rum coke. "Your girl is not a bitch. She used to be a bitch. What she did this morning was bitchy, but, like I said, she's just being a pussy. If she only wanted sex with you, she wouldn't have been doing couple stuff with you the entire summer."

"Whatever. I don't care." he lies and Mijoo knows he's lying but decides to drop the subject fo now.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

"We can't keep spending our days smoking weed." Chaelin speaks over Blanche's voice on the TV.

"I know. I'm just sad."

"You have to come back and tell him how you feel."

"I know."

There's a beat of silence before your friend kicks your thigh with her feet.

"I know and I will." you mumble through red eyes and smoke clouds.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

It's September first and it doesn't feel like Jungkook's birthday at all. He's been trying to focus on his work, alternating between isolating in full hermit mode and hanging out with friends to drink away his sorrow. The days have gone by and before he could realize it, he woke up today with over twenty text messages wishing him a happy day and a throbbing hangover.

He dresses up on autopilot. First a cotton shirt, then a pair of jeans and lastly, his Nike's. He doesn't bother tying his sneakers just like he doesn't bother taking a shower. He smokes a cigarette for breakfast, the death stick making him feel nauseaus on an empty stomach. And then he goes to work.

He's been repeating the same routing for the past weeks and he's not thinking of changing it, not even on his bithday.

He spends hours drawing, tattooing and drawing some more between yawns. He ignores texts an phone calls and simply waits until the day is over to go home, go to bed and forget about the fact that you're probably on your way to the city and that he hasn't crossed your mind not even once.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

Inkphoria.

You've been standing outside the shop re-reading the word for fifteen minutes, although it definitely feels like it has been longer. You're gripping cup of ice cream as it melts down your fingers the more you wait. The shop is already empty and it's starting to darken out side, and still you're so hot. Your shorts are heavy and your tank top is sticking to your skin. You didn't even bother to put on any make, although your eyebags definitely needed some concieling and your lashes some dimension to hide the fact that you'd been crying for the last few days.

'You're crazy about him.'

Chaelin's voice echoes inside your head.

You've lost count of how many times your best friend has given your advice, or simply encouraged you to do something you've been too scared to try.

'And he's cazy about you too.'

Chaelin might be wrong about marmite and the movie Cats, but she's definitely now wrong about anything regarding your and Jungkook.

That's it. You briefly close your eyes, inhale a deep breath then release it slowly. You start walking. It doesn't take longer than three strides and you're pushing the door open.

The tattoed blonde looks up from the counter the second you come into view. She smiles at the distance between you two. "You can come closer. I won't bite."

You clear your throat, stalking closer to her. "Is he-"

"He's in the back." she replies before you can finish you question. You close your mouth, clear your throat and nod your head.

"Thanks, Mijoo." she gives you a small wink, her smile easing your nerves like she had three months ago.

She watches you disappear. She shakes he head, her smile meeting her eyes. "I told him so."

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

Jungkook ignores the knock on his door at first. It's almost ten and the parlor is about to close. He just has to finish this last fucking sketch so he can grab his shit and go the fuck ho-

Knock knock.

He growls, exhasperation cursing through him. He runs a hand through his messy pile of hair, his rings tangling between the strands, making him wince in pain. "Come in." he grunts under his breath. The door opens. "Mijoo, I really have to finish-"

He stops dead in his tracks as soon as he sees you.

"Hey." you say after a moment of hesitation.

"Hey." he replies and although there's something inside, deep in his chest, shouting at him to stand up, run up to you and kiss your face while he tells you how beautiful you look right now and how happy he is to see that you're still here, he decides against it. "Listen, ____, I'm pretty busy-"

"No, you listen to me." you cut him off abruptly. He looks taken aback and is already opening his mouth to say something, but you're not having it. "Please, just... Let me talk."

Silence looms between the two of you for a while, a staring contest defying each other to back down. When you take one step inside and close the door behind you, he sighs and leans back against his chair.

You move towards him slowly, your lip caught between your lip going through your mind for the speech you'd been preparing the last few days. Your hands are sticky due to the the sugary treat liquifying in your hand. "I know there's no reason you should give me another chance after rejecting you in high school, and there's definitely no reason why you should forgive me for the way I shut you out a few weeks ago. You've been confessing your feelings to me since we were teenagers, and now it's my turn to tell you exactly how I feel about you."

"Jungkook, the truth is... I like you so much. I like you more than I've ever liked anyone. Ever. I said this was just a summer fling, and I was lying. I was lying because there's no way a simple summer fling could make me feel the way you do. There's no way a simple summer fling could make me want not just summer with you, but also fall and winter, and spring and every summer that comes next."

You hadn't realize when your eyes filling up with tears until the sight of him starts blurrying in front of you. His fingers reach yours, his thumb comforting on your skin. "____, it's okay-"

"I'm not done yet." you sniffle, gathering enough courage to continue. "I brought you a lemon sherbet because you said it was your favourite. But you also implied I was your favourite, and I want to keep being you favourite, but now it's already melted and-"

The corners of Jungkook's lips start pulling upward as he tugs you towards him, his heart loudly jumping inside his chest. "Shhh, come here."

He takes the ice cream from your hand and places it on his desk. Then he's helping you onto his lap, your head tucked under his chin and your arms wapping on their own around his neck.

He doesn't care about your sticky fingers or the wet stains of your tears in his shirt. The only thing he cares about is the fact that you're right there, letting him engulf your frame and drown in the scent and warmth he'd misses so much.

≿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━≾

The first day of June has Jungkook sweating and wishing for a haircut. Jungkook usually hates summer. He hates the fact that he has to shower at least twice a day, and the fact that the heat is almost unbearable to sleep in and also the fact that he's easily sunburnt.

This year, however, Jungkook likes summer a little bit more.

"Excuse me, miss. Do you have an appointment?" it's the fact that you're starting to wear those summer dresses he loves so much, and the fact that your skin glows under the sun like glitter, and also the fact that he can lick ice cream off of it whenever he desires.

"I am the appointment." your giggle is almost childlike, playing with Jungkook's heart strings. You shut the door behind you, nearing him. You also seem to always have that flush on your cheeks. Although he likes to think part of it is due to him. He doesn't say anything else as he puts his pencil down and instead turns around in the chair to have you immediately on top of his thighs.

Yeah, he also likes the path your lips trace from his cheek, to his jaw, ending at the juncture between his neck and his shoulder. It still makes his body quaver to this day.

"Let me see." he murmurs against you forhear, his hand already working on unbottoning the front of your dress.

"Mijoo hasn't left yet." you whisper back, your smile impossible to supress and the faint whimper impossible to hide when his fingers expose your breast and tug at the titanium barbell adorning the already hardened nub.

Jungkook loves knowing he was the one to do that, and also the only one to play with it. He doesn't hesitate when he dips his head. "As if we'd ever cared about that." he adds, wrapping your sole point in his mouth.

He fucks you on his studio table with your legs around his waist and his tongue playing with both your breasts, the tattoo sketches long forgotten, scattered on the floor as he whispers against your flesh something that sounds a lot like 'I love you'.

[kingpreciouswrld]

Under the Shade

High School AU

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Genre: Angst/Fluff

Warnings: bullying, homophobia, homophobic slurs, swearing, violence, blood (if i missed any please lmk!)

Word count: 1.7k

Summary: You’ve always been bullied at school until one day, someone steps in to help you with the aftermath.

A/N: I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know what the hell this is. I started this last night and tried to make it sound poetic at the end but my english sucks ass so...also, always know you aren’t alone if you’ve ever been/are being bullied. The slurs in this piece have been used against me in middle school. Some people can be stupid and ignorant but you will always, ALWAYS have allies behind you. Remember that <333

__________

Whoever came up with the idea of putting a bunch of hormonal teenagers together in a building for up to 6 hours every week day should be in jail.

Yeah kids gotta learn but the development of teens mixed with the stress and struggling of everyone trying to find themselves made it a shit show. The learning part wasn’t that bad but for some reason it was deemed ‘not cool’ to be into learning.

It was the other students that made school the nightmare it was.

You didn’t understand why the school’s administration tried so hard to get everyone to be nice to each other, it would never happen. The friends you make could be temporary or permanent and there were always the same cliques in each school. And in every school there will always be a food chain.

There were the top dogs, the ones who ruled the school just because they came from well-known/well-off families or because they were just widely liked by the student body. Then there was everyone else, the ones who clung to their books and braced the high school experience to survive and graduate.

Of course, school wouldn’t be school if there weren’t shitty kids who bullied others. The shitty kids were usually the top dogs, knocking everyone and anyone else down to feel superior.

The bullying was always about irrelevant things, stupid little dramatic disputes to keep themselves entertained.

That was you.

You were the classmate that got bullied. Of course, it was over stupid things: too weird, ugly, annoying, creepy, just the usual things.

You were at the mercy of Rogers and his group.

They were the top dogs, the apex predators of the school. His group was made up of athletes and populars: there was Steve, a dude who goes by Bucky, Tony, Natasha, and Carol. Although the girls aren't privy to physical violence, Carol settled on condescending remarks and verbal abuse, Natasha on the other hand was merely a bystander to the bullying.

They made your school experience a battlefield.

They were your enemies and your target goal was to avoid them at all costs, and maybe get through the day without new cuts and bruises. Your cover would be staying behind in Ms.Harkness’ class or the nearest bathroom. Your allies were Wanda, Bruce, and Clint. The only thing you were missing was a weapon.

You had nothing to protect yourself from the onslaught of your bullies. Sure, you had some harsh words but physically you couldn’t defend yourself.

They always attacked at the end of the school day, off of school property so they wouldn’t get in trouble. Sometimes, if they were feeling spicy, it would happen during lunch by your locker or under the bleachers.

There was no way of avoiding them. You don’t know how they did it but they were always there waiting for you.

Today wasn’t any different.

The hallways were swarmed with kids who got out of their classes and are now trying to get home as soon as possible.

“Thanks Ms.Harkness, see you tomorrow!”

“Alrighty hun, be safe!”

As you stepped out of the classroom, you scanned your horizon. You didn’t see any sign of the group or one of the group members but wouldn’t risk it.

Just to play it safe you exited through one of the back doors of the school.

With your thoughts and sights fixed on getting home unscathed, you failed to notice Steve’s group who had stalked after you and slipped through the door.

“Leaving so soon?”

Whipping your head around, your eyes widened.

It was the whole group save for Natasha, which was odd. She always stuck with Steve.

“What do you want now Rogers?”

The group had formed a half circle around you but you wouldn’t back down.

“I heard through the grapevine that we’ve been messing with a little dyke.”

Your heart started to race. You weren’t out, only your friends knew. You weren’t planning on coming out at all during high school.

“I thought it was impossible for me to hate your guts more than I already do but now that I know you’re a fruitcake we’re gonna have a field day with you Y/L/N.”

How did they find out? It couldn’t have been any of your friends..unless Steve and his group hurt them? Are they okay? What if they‒

*CRACK*

You fell to the ground with a shout and immediately held your nose. You were panicking so much that you didn’t have time to see Bucky move in and crack you a good one.

You didn’t need to pull your hand away to know that you were bleeding. Your nose was probably broken and you wouldn’t put it past them if they decided to send you to the hospital.

“Steve, ple‒AH!”

A steel toed boot landed into your gut. ‘When the fuck did he get new shoes?’

“YOU DON’T GET TO TALK TO ME!” he yelled as he sent you another kick in the gut.

This time, you were ready for the kick and you curled in on yourself, trying to protect your stomach as much as possible.

You heard moving above you and you flinched as a shadow passed over you.

You could hear laughing and snickering but they were getting farther and farther away until it was quiet.

You didn’t want to risk it so after waiting a minute or two, you finally lifted your head up and checked your surroundings.

You sighed, you were alone.

Wincing, you felt your stomach muscles pull as you sat up. Your nose throbbed and with a sigh you prodded the area softly, but you knew it was broken.

You were in shock at the recent events. Why are kids these days homophobic? It was so stupid. What was their problem? You weren’t hurting anyone, hell no one was supposed to know anyway so how did they find out?

You all but crawled your way to the nearest tree and rested against its trunk. You sighed tiredly as you took in the coolness of the shade.

You laid your head back and used some breathing techniques to help calm yourself. Your head was buzzing, all you could think of was, why?

It was crazy.

It was stupid.

It hurt.

It hurt so much.

You almost dozed off until you jolted awake as you felt a light kick on the bottom of the sole of your shoe.

And there, right in front of you, was Natasha.

The redhead looked down at you with a nervous expression. Once she saw your beat up form, she felt guilty.

She was there when Steve was told about you being gay and when he told the group about the plan to ambush you, she immediately came up with an excuse, saying she was busy and needed to leave school right away.

Her heart constricted as she heard Steve and the others rant about all the ways to beat you up.

No one knew but she was gay herself and that was the sole reason she stuck with Steve and his group. It was her protection. If she was in the group, people would leave her alone.

And they did.

She was a nice person, her friends said so, but she lost those friends once she started to hang out with Steve. She stood by and watched as her new ‘friends’ beat up everybody else, some of them didn’t even put up a fight. And after the carnage, they always looked to her, their eyes pleading with her to help them in one way or another, but she couldn’t, not when Steve and his group were around.

Today was different.

She stayed hidden until she knew the coast was clear before she came out into the clearing.

You were too out of it to notice her presence and you blearily blinked your eyes, your voice coming out rough and tired,

“What do you want?”

Natasha bit her lip as she fidgeted with her fingers,

“You’re not scared of me?”

“Seriously?” you rolled your eyes, “I have worse nightmares about failing AP Chem, why would I be scared of you?”

“Well Stev‒”

“You’re nothing like Steve.”

The redhead furrowed her brows as you returned to your previous position against the tree and she watched as you closed your eyes,

“You never physically hurt me and I’ve never seen you be rude to anyone. I don’t think you could even hurt a fly.”

Natasha crouched down to your level as she observed your injuries: the bleeding stopped if not slowed down, and your breathing was a bit shallow but you didn’t seem to be struggling to breath so you were probably just exhausted. She pulled her water bottle and a packet of tissues out of her backpack before she shuffled towards you.

Moving slowly so as to not startle you, she wetted a tissue and slowly started to dab the blood away from your nose.

At first contact, you flinched a little but then you processed the wetness against your face. Your eyes fluttered open and you saw Natasha, face scrunched up in concentration, as she gently and delicately wiped your face, almost as if she was scared to break you.

The closeness of the redhead intimidated you. It was always hard for you to be around pretty girls and now the prettiest girl you’ve ever known was crouched down in front of you, fussing over your injuries.

Your heart swelled at the sight.

As Natasha finished cleaning your nose, she grabbed her water bottle and gently held it against your nose. You winced at the coldness but took over her hold on the bottle and held it up yourself,

“You don’t have to take care of me…”

“I want to.”

The Russian let out a sigh as she sat down properly, moving to copy your position against the tree.

The two of you sat under the shade, silently enjoying the presence of the other, a silent promise spoken between you both.

You knew after today things would go back to normal. Natasha would continue to be a bystander and you would always be at the mercy of Steve and his group. It seemed as if nothing had changed.

But something did.

Some could say you made a new friend, no matter how disappointing the circumstances were.

You knew she would be there to help you in the aftermath from now on.

You made a new ally,

Under the shade.

[sixeyesgojo]

Dad!Gojo with a teenage daughter

Summary: In which you've grown up a little too much for his liking. Using a female reader.

Characters: Gojo with a teenage daughter

Word count: -

Content warning: mentions of menstruation, blood, reader is injured but nothing descriptive, Gojo Satoru

A/N: requested on AO3.

Oh dear. Gojo knew that raising kids did not fall into the "easy" category, like exorcising special grade curses was to him. At first, it was extremely exhausting, brain-draining even, but as the time went by, he managed to do better, to just manage. Young children were a handful and he knew it from experience - not only was he a teacher of youngsters but he had also been younger once upon a time. Gojo remembered being put on a pedestal in his childhood years since he was the honored one and came from a renowned household. However, nothing ever prepared him for this.

Raising a teenage daughter was a challenge he had to take up on a daily basis. Puberty, the hormones, the fights, the worries about her going out late at night, the helplessness he felt. It wasn't rare for him to consult Shoko in "times of extreme crisis" (as he called them), asking for help and advice.

After hitting puberty, you became more and more distant to him bit by bit and as if that wasn't already enough for the two of you, your mood could change in an instant. Of course, you still loved him the same - he was your dad after all - but it is a known fact that teenagers may feel like their parents wouldn't be able to relate.

-

One day you had started bleeding from down below and frantically called out to your dad to explain your situation. He understood what was happening with your body and he knew this day would eventually come... but experiencing the situation itself and not really being prepared still sent him into panic mode. Yes, he went out to buy some pads, some tampons, whatever you needed at that moment but gosh, you should have seen him at the store: "What size should these be? Is this the right one? There are pads for NIGHTS ONLY?" It was a good thing he was super charming and just charmed his way out, so it was less embarrassing.

He hurried home to give you the necessary items. One thing he didn't expect in that moment was the tears that were streaming from your face, which was contorted in pain, as you opened the bathroom door to accept the items he had bought. Of course he knew cramps were a side effect of menstruation but he was just so perplexed to be able to think straight in that moment. Gojo patiently waited in front of the bathroom door until you came out, repeatedly asking if you needed anything else in the meantime. When you came out, dried tears on your face and just overall being a mess, he gave you a comforting hug and then scooped you up in his big arms and carried you to your bed. "For today, just rest, sweetheart. Your amazing dad will take care of the rest," he had said in a gentle tone. Later on, he even texted Shoko and Mei Mei to ask how to help as a dad, googled all about periods and how to ease the pain.

The very next day, you were wondering where he went when you didn't see him at home - turns out, he headed out early to buy an extra blanket and a hot water bottle just for you, some more pads and/or tampons (in different sizes since he wasn't certain about your flow yet and he was certain that you didn't know yet either), pain relievers and some snacks and sweets. Sweets could never be a wrong choice, could they? At least they always did the trick for him and he remembered that being the case for you too. He read that a lot of women eat chocolate as a sort of comfort food, so of course he also stocked up on chocolate. The look of gratefulness on your face when he finally came home and presented all the things he had gotten for you? He thought he should have taken a picture of your happy face in that moment but little, did he know he was going to be tackled into a hug by his daughter.

"Thank you so so so so so much, you are the best dad," you exclaimed and gave him a big smooch on the cheek. Gojo grinned and replied cheekily, "I mean, I know I am the best dad but it doesn't hurt to hear it once in a while from my little girl!" With him supporting you during times like menstruation, close to nothing could go wrong, even if your mood changed within the blink of an eye. He would spoil you with affection.

-

As human beings, there was no way for the both of you to avoid fights and misunderstandings, so naturally father and daughter ought to disagree sometimes. One time was particularly bad that you even ran away from home. Every ounce of stress was just piling up at that time. On top of that, you were on your period and the mood swings killed you. Ultimately, you couldn't handle it any longer and ran out of the house. Well, let's just say even the strongest jujutsu sorcerer could break out in panic. This state worsened when he got a call from Ijichi - an unregistered curse had manifested and was randomly attacking civilians. His gut gave him a pretty shitty feeling and the white-haired sorcerer just knew something was wrong. He had to hurry. When he arrived at the scene, he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw you lying weakly at the ground in front of a strong curse. This was enough to trigger his anger and he defeated the evil curse quickly. Hurrying to your side, he cradled your battered form in his arms and checked whether you had any life-threatening injuries - thank heavens, you didn't.

"This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't run away," you sobbed, the argument long forgotten, "I'm so sorry, Dad." "No, shh. Baby, I am sorry for letting it escalate like that. But what matters the most to me right now is your safety, so let's get away from here and we can talk it out when you feel better, yeah?"

Ever since that time, everything has gotten a little easier, especially since your dad helped you create a system you could rely on in order to manage stress and your mood swings.

-

When you hit age 16, oh boy, that was an age he feared. For multiple reasons:

He knew how he had been at 16. Gojo was definitely one of the more popular boys within the female community, despite attending a school with no more than twenty students overall. He had been invited to a lot of parties and who was he to not enjoy himself when he could? Going out almost every night and coming home early in the morning was a given. If he hadn't gone to Jujutsu Tech, his grades would have sucked. In theory, you could also end up like that or even less moderate - he prayed that was not the case. He was lucky enough that you went out moderately and not as often as he used to. The thing is, he was not exactly concerned about your safety. If anyone knew that you could handle grade 2 curses just well at this age, it was him... since he taught you how to defend yourself.

It was the boys he was worried about. Not everybody had good intentions. For sure, he would handle anyone in a heartbeat that tried to touch you with malice. Furthermore, he was overly worried about you getting to know some guy for a fling or even worse: you falling in love and only to get your heart broken. He wouldn't know how to act if the latter ever happened. Rest assured (or not), every guy you ever bring home will be thoroughly scanned by his Six Eyes and his soul. Gojo was sceptical (but wouldn't show it) until proven otherwise.

Once he had gotten comfortable with your guy friends though? Bring them over any day. Sometimes you question whether he didn't just adopt them all in his mind. Still, Gojo getting along with all your friends was something you were very grateful for.

Gojo knew that raising kids was not an easy task, like exorcising special grade curses was to him, but he still wouldn't trade his precious daughter for the world or anything else.

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

fuck I still haven't done the rewrite of the Mutant Town AU that I specifically came off hiatus to write, like the Plant Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts were written to prep this au and I just got wildly distracted so uhhhh

yeah the concept is in the link but the gist is that the people and town becoming mutated by constant ectoplasmic contamination, we all know and love this concept right but I'm gonna expand on it

this is a direct result of the portal being opened, but they aren't getting infected from the portal, the issue is that creating a permanent opening into the ghost zone has weakened the veil between their worlds and Amity Park and the Ghost Zone sort of slip in and out of each other constantly

and because ectoplasm responds strongly to emotions (poltergeists being made from atmospheric emotions for example) it all tends to converge very heavily at the school full of hormonal teenagers

so Casper High becomes its own god damn cryptid, the teachers get so jaded about opening the door to a classroom and finding just a whole ass ghost zone on the other side that they just put a sign on the door telling kids to go to a different room, lockers swap contents with other lockers so kids have started putting their names on the inside so they know who's stuff they've just found

this also means the kids get super affected, like super affected, literally, they all get ghost powers, some are just physical mutations, some are just super abilities, or a general increase in natural ability, like a member of the track team getting super speed

it takes a while for Danny and co. to figure this out, Sam and Tucker should have been warning signs as they've spent the most time around ghosts and the ghost zone, but that's why the Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts are important

they have powers, but they thought they came exclusively from outside sources, they had no idea that their abilities were also strengthened and influenced by being highly contaminated by ectoplasm, which is why when one day Mikey sneezes and green acid shoots out of his nose and melts his desk, everyone is a little bit startled

the teachers have long since started using ghost detectors after the time Paulina spent a whole week overshadowed by Kitty, so Mikey gets a check over and other than the usual atmospheric reading Lancer gets nothing especially strong from him

there have been concerns about the gradually increasing ectoplasmic content in the air messing with ghost detector results, the devices have to be recalibrated constantly, so Lancer asks the one and only son of the local ghost hunters in the room if he has some other way to check

Danny's parents make him keep a few protective items in his schoolbag, so he tries some gear on him to see if anything comes flying out, but nothing does, Danny isn't too surprised seeing as he couldn't sense a ghost in the room anyway, but it definitely makes things a little concerning

even if it were a repeat of the Spectra incident and he wasn't being overshadowed, the Fenton's tech would have still gotten rid of whatever was causing this if it were an external influence

Mikey is sent home for the day and his parents are told to keep an eye on him

and then the next week, Star drops a pen off her desk and a strand of her hair whips out to grab it, she's also checked for ghost influence and sent home

a few weeks after that it happens again, a kid on the basketball team makes a leap to the net and stays in the air, they have to call in the cheerleaders to climb on top of each other to reach him and pull him down

Danny has been trying to figure out what's happening from the first moment with Mikey, and his parents have also been getting calls from worried parents who want to know if they can fix whatever's happening to their kids

over the next couple of months, every kid in the school has some kind of ability or mutation, Dash heals whoever he touches, which he discovers after punching Nathan in the face and curing his acne, Paulina turns invisible, which freaks her out at first until she realises it's great for eavesdropping, Wes can conjure fire (because I desperately needed him to have a polarising ability to Danny), Kwan becomes empathic and can feel and influence people's emotions

Valerie also had an early mutation that she didn't know about, when Technus gave her a new suit, her body pretty much just absorbed it as a part of her, Technus had not intended this to happen, and was pretty peeved about it, Valerie found out that she had stolen control over the suit when Technus had a big rant about it during a fight, and she put the pieces together once other kids started developing abilities

this whole thing causes a ton of chaos as kids are struggling to control what they can do, so Danny has to step in and help them out, he often has to run off to change into Phantom in order to protect everyone from an ability that's gone haywire, he ends up pretty much running ghost power training courses after school to help them control themselves

he's also gotten stuck in situations where he's had to step in and help someone without having the time to change forms, meaning he has to make up a cover story about having developed his own powers way before everyone else since he's been living on top of a portal for years, he only tells people about his ice powers

Jazz has always had a tendency to be able to reign in her emotions and keep a cool head, (the only ones who can really push her buttons are Danny and sometimes her parents, at school around other kids who look up to her she's often very in control) meaning she doesn't draw ectoplasm to herself all that much, and though Danny uses the excuse of having lived on top of a ghost portal to explain why he's already so familiar with using his power, it's actually not even remotely true, because the Fentons use specialised air purifiers to keep the atmospheric ectoplasm at a manageable level, the Fenton house ironically has the least atmospheric contamination compared to the rest of the town, that's how Maddie and Jack have had limited mutation to themselves (though they aren't wholly free, they've mostly just gotten physically stronger and tougher)

so even though Jazz develops her power a little earlier than everyone else's, it's not that far ahead, and she actually doesn't even realise she already has one until half the school has developed theirs

Jazz has the power to slow time in a little bubble around herself, she'd been using it without realising while studying, having gotten through hours of work in half that time, she always thought it was just her losing track of time or she was just getting faster at reading, she also spends a lot of time counselling other students and trying to help them sort out their problems, and they'd often comment that they felt like they'd been talking for so much longer than they had, again she just chalked it up to losing track of time

a lot of students had wondered why Danny developed a power early and Jazz hadn't, until someone walked in on Jazz helping a girl through a panic attack in the bathroom, and found them both talking extremely fast, a lot of her friends realised in hindsight that she'd been doing that unwittingly for quite a while, nobody had noticed because she always talked to people privately, so nobody outside her little time bubble had seen it happen

Sam and Tucker come clean about their abilities too, but they also don't give the full rundown, still keeping some things close to the chest to avoid standing out from everyone else

then there's the teachers

adults typically have a better time regulating emotions than teenagers, meaning much like Jazz they aren't drawing as much ectoplasm toward themselves, but this doesn't exempt them from developing something after a while, especially with the heightened stress of managing a school full of volatile super kids

Mr Lancer discovers that he can create shields, after an incident where he jumps in front of some students to protect them from another power gone awry

Tetslaff ends up with a sonic ability, able to project her voice like a megaphone (yes this is a Coach Boomer from Sky High reference don't @ me), Principal Ishiyama develops a physical mutation, growing to twice her size, she likes that she can tower over the students while delivering speeches, but she doesn't like having to stoop through doors all the time, she has the one to her office resized, along with her chair and desk

so as you can imagine, the town ends up erupting into chaos, a lot of kids very much misuse their abilities, Danny does his best as Phantom to teach people to be responsible, but sometimes he has to resort to literally kicking their asses to get them to straighten up

but for the most part, a ton of kids were already looking up to him, and are generally pretty happy to follow his example, especially the more popular kids, it's generally considered not very cool to get your ass kicked by Phantom, so weirdly enough a lot of kids get peer pressured into not causing any real damage or injury with their powers

this doesn't mean they don't absolutely misuse them, they're just more subtle about it

until a ghost shows up, a lot of the kids are more than happy to let loose to protect themselves and their friends, and Phantom for the most part is happy to let them, with some supervision of course, he still has to make sure nobody gets too hurt (including the ghosts)

the entire debacle makes Danny's life simultaneously a whole lot easier AND so much more fucking stressful

[captnjacksparrow]

Why did Sasuke have sex with Sakura if he did not like her? He did horrible things to her and yet he made a baby with her so it means that he finds Sakura attractive. He is not that type of guy who would put his d just like that and I do not believe that he did not know about protection so he wanted a baby with Sakura.

To that Anon..... Who once asked me who is hornier, NaruHina or SasuSaku???.... And I told you my answer.... And if you are reading my post today... This ask is the literal proof for you!!!! Look at the proof of their Love.... 

God!!! I'm really uncomfortable talking about sex in an ask. Anyways, this will be my last time...

Disclaimer: The Word ‘Sex’ is used many times in this post. If you feel uncomfortable, please don’t read it.

Reasonable Answer:

The Studio forced Sasuke to do 'the thing'. That's all.

Prediction Based Answer:

Why do you think 'Having Sex' must always be related to attractiveness and romance????

Your question makes me doubt your Media Observing experience. I mean, maybe you are a 12 year old kid who never watched modern Movies other than Disney Stuffs.... 

Do you really think every sexual experience that everyone had so far was romantic????

Have you heard about 'One Night Stand'???? Or 'Casual Sex'??? Both of them were done just for experimenting... I mean horny teenagers get hormonal rage and they just do it and then forget about it. I'm sure you must have watched it in many Hollywood Movies. Popular Movie Example.... Iron Man... Tony Stark had wild sex with Christine Everhart for one-night but he never loved her or even remember that thing.

He is not that type of guy who would put his d just like that

Since you yourself had admitted that Sasuke is not that type of Guy... Surprisingly, I also agree with you on this, Anon.... So, can we safely eliminate One Night Stand and Casual Sex out of the possibilities?????

With that being said.....

There is something called 'Obligatory Sex'.... Like Back in those days, Kings cannot marry the girl they really loved. Because of Social Status. So, they marry a socially sound girl and make them into a Queen. Their purpose is solely for making Prince and Princess. They really won't share the same bed chambers because the King don't really love the Queen. But most of the Kings take their loved girl as their Beloved Concubine with whom they can share their true love in an honest way... Go and watch Historical Chinese and Korean Drama.... They are full of these themes. Or watch Game of Thrones Season 1...  The King, when he was trying to have sex with the Queen, he whispers his Beloved Girl’s name.... That irritated the queen... So the Queen went behind King’s back and had sex with her Br.... Sorry, some person and ended up having 3 kids.... What’s more?, She passed all those 3 kids as the King’s Children. The sex portrayed in this series are mostly either abusive, non-consensual... if it is romantic, it always ended up in a Tragedy, if it is an One-Timer, one of the partner will dump the other in the end..... or if it doesn't belong to any of the above, then it must be the sex that happens in Brothel House.

And there is something called 'Give and Take' Sex... Like having sex for one time, just as a favour. There is this Oscar Award Winning movie called 'Forrest Gump'... in which Tom Hanks mother have a one-time sex with a School Principal... Just for making her disabled kid to get admitted in his School.

And there is something called ‘Societal Pressure’ Sex... In Patriarchal Societies, such as mine, most of the marriages are Arranged Ones. So, Couple’s don’t really love each other in the beginning and they were forced to marry. And it’s this girl’s responsibility to bore a Baby within 10 months, otherwise, the Mother-In-Law or her Neighbours will pester that newly married girl.. .. And finally they consummate the marriage just for satiating her ‘New Found’ Family. Because Infertility thing will not be tolerated. This is how my Grandmom had her 5 kids... that is, without loving the Man she married. To this day, she still resents my Grandfather because she hates him for personal reasons. This is very common from where I come from.

And finally.... ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Sex.... Rather than me explaining it...You must watch this Oscar Award Winning movie. Oh, By the Way.... This movie was directed by Ang Lee from China... A place where homosexual contents in contemporary media were strictly banned and censored by their Government but they are the best in producing successful and soulful Shounen Ai novels...

He did horrible things to her

He never did anything horrible apart from rejecting her love advance... If she stayed quiet and remained non-horny in Chapter 693, he wouldn’t have put her in that Genjutsu.��

So, Stop making Sasuke as this monster just to portray your Kween as a Victim. She is the harasser in SS. 

I have given 2 Oscar Award Winning movies, 1 Most Emmy Award Winning TV series, Culturally similar TV series from China and Korea, 1 Blockbuster movie which gave rise to a Biggest Billion Dollar Franchise called MCU, Real Life Experience..... And yet here you are living in your la-la-land thinking that every Sex is based on Romance. Sasuke might have ‘did the deed’ based on any of the above... If he did as you said, that is, having Sex out of Attractiveness, he wouldn’t have abandoned her and Sarada for 12 years, he wouldn’t have asked her, “What are you doing here?” on seeing her face after a decade, he wouldn’t have refused to Kiss her.... The very natural response after seeing your beloved person is to Hug.... or atleast have a Brimming Smile. Sasuke did neither.

Please come to the real world instead of staying in your Colourful Disney World, Anon.

[corruptedcaps]

A Nasty Valentine

Randall was never a popular kid at school. He was geeky, overweight and was a bit of a loner. No girl would give him the time of day. No one except his favourite teacher Ms. Nice. She was always so kind to him and treated him with respect something even most of the other faculty didn’t do. He in turn was a big teachers pet. He would sit up front, would stay late to help her clean up and would always hand in his homework early.

This of course just made him a bigger target for bullies but he didn’t care. He was smitten with Ms. Nice and he was convinced she liked him. She would drop hints like saying “Oh Randall why couldn’t you of been around when I was your age? I might of not fallen for every bad boy that came by if I had you back then.”

It was statements like this that gave him his genius idea in the first place. Due to being forever ostracized at school Randall had dedicated himself to his studies and had become a brilliant amateur chemist. He had come up with a myriad of formulas that would one day make him a fortune but for now he had one special dose that would give him what he truly desired.

He had been waiting for the perfect day to enact his plan and thought there was no better time than Valentines Day. He waited until after class when everyone left to go up to Ms. Nice and presented her with a special box of chocolates.

“Thank you some much Randall you shouldn’t have. You’re such a thoughtful boy. You’ll make a girl you’re age very happy one day.” She said picking a chocolate at random and eating it in one go.

“Well I’m hoping that day is today.” He said which made Ms. Nice puzzles for a moment before she felt an unusual rumble in her stomach.

“Oh Randall I’m feeling a little hot under the collar all of a sudden, can you open the windows?” She said but Randall remained in place as he watched his teacher take off her jacket. Randall could see the changes slowly creep across Ms. Nice’s body. Her wrinkles began to smooth out and disappear. Her damaged dyed red hair began to repair itself and return to its original hazelnut colour. Ms. Nice was still unsure what was happening.

“Oh god what’s happening to me? Why do I feel my body tightening up? Why does it feel so good?” She said letting her hands roam her body forgetting Randall was even there or simply not caring. Years of sagging skin became tight all over her body but none more evident than with her boobs which in an instant perked up as if suddenly inflated.

“I did this, or rather the chocolates are doing this. They are turning the clock back on your body.” Randall said finding himself unable to tear his eyes away from the changes he was seeing. It was working even better than he expected. Somehow his concoction was even turning back time on her clothes, making her stuffy formal suit into a rather slutty version of their school’s uniform.

“You did this? Wh-why would yooooou... oh god this feels amazing I don’t want it to stop!” She moaned as the changes reached their peak internally as well as externally. Her pussy suddenly felt fresh and new enough to give her a miniature orgasm that signalled the last of the changes had finished. She let out a sigh of pleasure and relief as she caught her breath. Randall could see in her eyes that a spark that had been heated down over the years had suddenly been lit aflame once again.

“Wow I can’t believe this, I look just like I did when I was 18. I look so young and sexy again. Why did you do this?” She said taking a moment from admiring her youthful body to address Randall.

“I did this for you, for us. You always said that you wished someone like me was around when you were young so I did just that, made you young again.” Randall said full of excitement and hormones at seeing how hot his future girlfriend was.

Before Ms. Nice could answer though Randall’s bully James burst in. James was all muscle and all menace and routinely bullied anyone he could in the school. Ms. Nice herself in the past would reprimanded him for being a thug but as she looked upon his sudden explosion into the room something repressed in her was awakening.

“Hey loser I’ve been looking for you. Give me those answers for science class or I’ll...” James said trailing off noticing Ms. Nice also in the room. He took her in head to toe as if he was evaluating a meal. For her part Ms. Nice instinctively did as she always had with men who checked her out and but her lip.

“This loser bothering you babe?” James said with a disgusted look on his face as he eyed Randall.

“Well actually she-“ Randall began before being cut off by Ms. Nice.

“Yeah actually, this creep said he said he was going to make you shit your pants with these chocolates and he was going to do it for me to prove his love. I don’t even know him.” She said with a matching look of disgust for Randall who looked immediately taken aback by her. Before he could say anything he recieved a swift kick to the stomach by James and feel to his knees.

Instantly Ms. Nice felt all her teenage desires and emotions return to her. She felt herself undeniably being turned on by the bad boy James and loving the pain he inflicted on Randall. It was this obsession with bullies that earned her the nickname Miss Nasty, a name she was only to proud to adopt.

“Oh fuck yeah beat him up baby, make him pay and I’ll reward you.” She said cosying up to James and squeezing his dick over his pants. He obliged by giving Randall another swift kick.

“Mmmm again.” Miss Nasty purred in James’ ear. She was delighted to feel his dick stiffen when she did. As he kicked Randall again she began to moan.

“You’re a bit of a kinky bitch aren’t you? I like that.” He said grabbing her tight into a deep kiss which made her horn ire than she had been in years. She needed release.

“Quick feed him the chocolates and kick him out of here. I want you to fuck me on the teacher’s table.” She said handing James the chocolates and pushing everything on the table off so she could get on.

Taking a handful of chocolates in his hand he shoved them into Randall’s face and made him chew until he swallowed. Once satisfied he threw Randall into the hall and locked the door.

“Oh fuck I love what a bad bastard you are and you’ve made me remember what a mean bitch I used to be. God it feels so good to be nasty again.” She moaned kneeling on the desk that was once hers and ripping off her clothes, letting James attack her with a youthful vigor she had missed.

Hours later when they would emerge from their lust filled location neither would notice the sticky residue on the floor outside the room, the remaining evidence of Randall’s sudden age regression.

Model: Capri Cavanni

[skullsandwineglasses]

Love and Redemption Review

Overall, I have to say that the story was really good, maybe even better than the popular xianxia romances that came before it like Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Love and Destiny, and Ashes of Love. The romance may be comparable to AOL, but as a whole, the plot in L&R was more interesting and cohesive.

****SPOILERS AHEAD FOR LOVE AND REDEMPTION AND OTHER XIANXIA DRAMAS****

Plot

What sets Love and Redemption apart from the other 3 xianxia romances is that Love and Redemption also feels like a quest/adventure story, while also delivering a gut-wrenching, star-crossed romance plot. What’s interesting about L&R is that the main focus is on the mortal realm and the FL and ML’s current mortal incarnation, as opposed to the heavenly realm and their immortal identities.

The actions of the mortals have consequences across the 3 realms, as opposed to other xianxia romances that only use the mortal realm as a temporary stage for the leads to fall in love. The other 3 xianxias that I mentioned all opened up in the heavenly/celestial realm first, while the mortal realm was just a brief trial that the leads have to endure before returning to the immortal realm. The moral realm in L&R therefore feels livelier and more eventful, and the mortals have more agency and are not easily influenced by celestial beings. Whenever a celestial being does come down to the mortal realm, their powers are limited and are they are bound by the rules and restrictions of the mortal realm (which means that celestial beings can’t use their powers to mess with the emotions and decisions of mortals). 

The drama opens up with a tournament being held at the FL’s sect and members from all the other sects are arriving for the tournament. When the FL and ML meet, they are on equal footing (well, equal in terms of status as disciples, but not so much in terms of magical prowess). It’s like when you were in high school and you meet the visiting basketball team from a rival school, and then end up becoming friends with them.

Love and Redemption also takes the audience through a mystery. What is the true immortal identity of the FL? What’s her relationship to the Star of Mosha? Is she the saviour or the doomsday harbinger? Does the ML have an immortal identity too? Why do they have the same birthday? The drama keeps us on our toes because we learn about the truth and the history of the characters as they’re discovering it, as opposed to the other xianxia dramas where there is very little mystery and few plot twists.

Because of this mystery, the drama is tight and well-paced, since a new piece of the puzzle is always being revealed. Just when you thought that the mystery is solved, there’s a twist, and you realized that the twist was set up from the very beginning of the story, but you just missed it. 

The story also doesn’t stray from the main leads. Yes, there are subplots (as all dramas do), but the subplots here are brief, and they usually relate back to the main leads. Unlike in AOL where the later half of the drama derails and focuses on the two other supporting couples, while the main leads only get about 10 minutes of screen time. 

The Male Lead - Yu Si Feng

Before starting the drama, I read a lot of comments about how much whump and emotional torture the ML goes through and how much he sacrifices for the FL. I thought this was an exaggeration. I mean, Xufeng in AOL went through a lot of Jin Mi too, (and you could make the same argument for Ye Hua in TMOPB, or Bai Zi Hua in Journey of Flower), so I was a little hesitant about the premise since it’s such an old trope, and I was doubtful that it could top the sacrifice that other MLs have done in other dramas. 

But reader, boy was I wrong. Yu Si feng is the definition of limitless, unconditional love. I lost count of how many times he almost died for the FL (not including the 9 times she killed him in their previous 9 lives). He’s spitting up blood and stabbed in nearly every episode. Episodes 37-47 were the hardest to watch because of the escalating chronic angst and misunderstandings between him and Xuan ji that caused irreversible damage to their relationship. Even when she tries to kill him and tells him she regrets having ever known him, he still drags himself back to rescue her. To quote Si feng himself, it’s not a question of whether or not it’s worth it, but it’s a question of whether you are willing to do it. And Si feng is as eager and willing as ever to sacrifice everything for Xuan ji. 

I mean, even Xufeng in AOL and Ye Hua in TMOPB snapped at the FL’s cruelty and aloofness at one point, but Si feng seems incapable of ever being angry with Xuan ji. Even when Si feng purposely tries to avoid her, it’s out of protection for her, not out of anger for everything she’s done. Like??? Si feng is impossibly perfect, even by the impossible standards of xianxia. 

Cheng Yi plays Si feng to a T. He conveys a different type of pain in every crying scene, and so Si feng basically experiences like 59 different types of crushing pain, and you feel it in your bones every time you watch it. The man’s eyes speak volumes.

While it would be easy to say that Cheng Yi carries the drama with his portrayal of Si Feng, the actions of the ML would be meaningless if there were no romantic interest that he was doing this all for.  

The Female Lead - Chu Xuan Ji

Some people may feel that Xuan ji isn’t worth Si feng’s devotion. But, I would argue that the first 37 episodes shows us that she is definitely worth it. 

Xuan Ji is similar to Jin Mi from AOL in that she is incapable of feeling or understanding love. Because Xuan Ji was born without her 6 senses (and also without a real heart, unbeknownst to the other characters), she’s naive and juvenile. But despite not having feelings, she’s still able to care completely about others. She cares about her sister, her father, her sect brothers, and Si Feng. She’s fiercely protective of them as they are of her. To the best of her limited abilities, she is devoted to people as much as she can be. 

Because of her sensory deprivation, Xuan Ji is really curious about the world. She wants to be like everyone else, to feel like everyone else, in hopes of being able to properly reciprocate people’s love for her. She envies people who are able to cry because she thinks that’s an unhindered way of showing love. She regrets not being able to cry when her mother died. Xuan Ji is therefore a self-aware character, unlike Jin Mi, because she knows her shortcomings. She wants to be able to feel, understand, and share pain. 

As such, she’s quite an active character because she has this goal of reviving her senses, which has ripple effects for the other characters in the story since they become a part of her journey, whether by choice or by force. 

Why Si Feng fell for Xuan Ji

Xuan Ji and Si Feng are very opposite characters, and not just because of the obvious difference in their personalities. Si Feng is a boy who feels too much (we later see that he gets his persistent sentimentality from his father), but was taught his whole life to suppress his emotions (I mean, the mask both literally and figuratively prevents him from emoting). Si Feng wants to express his feelings, but cannot. 

On the other hand, Xuan Ji is allowed to be as expressive as she wants, but she is empty on the inside. Xuan Ji represents everything Si Feng wants to be and is expected to be: free and emotionless. 

In this mortal incarnation, SF has responsibilities to everyone, from his spirit beast to his sect. Xuan Ji is the only one who doesn't ask or expect anything of him and yet, for someone who can't feel, she's always thinking of him. she stands up for him, she brings him snacks to comfort him when he’s being punished, she helps steal back his mother's hairpin. These are very simple gestures, but they mean the world to him (no one else has done these things for him before, and he doesn’t understand why she would unconditionally do these things for him), and that's why he's so quick to risk everything for her. Thus ironically, Si Feng actually learned about unconditional love from Xuan Ji. 

He’s never known love, warmth, or friendship in his lonely years growing up in the Lize Palace. And so, when you’re just a 16 year old awkward, hormonal, and introverted teenage boy, it’s easy to fall for a selfless girl who invades your personal space and has no sense of propriety. 

Why Xuan Ji fell for Si Feng

We see that her love is gradual. She falls in love with him without even realizing she’s fallen in love. She cares for him as a friend at first. After all, like she said, Si Feng is the first friend she’s made from outside her sect. But soon, her caring for him surpasses that of what she feels for her sect brothers. Si Feng teaches her about the world, from what different food tastes like, to naming colours. Si Feng doesn’t infantilize her like her sect brothers do. Her sect brothers are either dismissive or protective, like Ming yan, but she is able to find a proper confidant in Si Feng who is willing to be patient with her and listen to her. 

Their 4-year separation when they each undergo training and achieve a boost in their abilities, only made Xuan Ji’s heart grow fonder. She misses Si Feng, and is frustrated to see that things are different between them when they meet again. She doesn’t understand why he’s so cold and distant, and all she wants to do is close the distance between them. 

It’s a meme that Xuan Ji is the one who wears the pants in the relationship. She’s assertive and bold, and I think part of the reason why she fell for Si Feng is because he gives her that space to be best and biggest version of herself, whether in the heavenly realm or in the mortal realm. She’s also fascinated by him. A person outside of her sect who has an endearing personality unlike anyone else she’s seen. He piques her curiosity, and so she’s drawn to him. He’s as much as her romantic and sexual awakening as she is his. 

It’s apt that their ship name is the combination of their last names “Chu Yu”, which sounds similar to the words 初遇, which means “first encounter”. Not only is this drama about capturing the feelings of first love, but Si Feng and Xuan Ji have also had 10 different first encounters because of their 10 reincarnation tribulations. 

The Romance

It’s actually quite fun and endearing to watch because both Xuan Ji and Si Feng are playing hard to get, which frustrates the hell out of both of them. Xuan Ji is trying to win back Si Feng and convince him to stay, while Si Feng himself is trying to win Xuan Ji’s heart, and she doesn’t even realize it. They’re both trying to woo each other, but they’re both being resistant, intentionally and unintentionally. 

I have to admit, though, that the first few episodes were slow. 

There aren’t major sparks during the first meeting between the leads. She just falls out of the sky into his arms, and he’s flustered by her sudden appearance and clinginess. The love story didn’t feel “epic” during the the first 4 episodes because it didn’t feel like there were any stakes. These were just 2 young disciples from different sects who had a stereotypical meet-cute. It was like watching a high school coming-of-age romcom. 

Things start to get serious when Si feng is forced to wear the lover’s curse mask, meaning that he cannot love, or else every time he’s hurt by the one he loves, that mask will release a feather to his heart and he’ll feel unbearable pain. When all the feathers are released, he’ll die. This means that he has to stay away from Xuan Ji, but obviously, the drama can’t let that happen, so he’s constantly thrown into situations with her, he can’t stay away from her, and he ends up falling for her harder and harder against his will. 

Xuan Ji trusts Si Feng completely and unconditionally (until episodes 37-47 that is). She is willing to go against her father and sect in order to protect him. She’s willing to sacrifice herself to save him. She’s willing to go rogue with her powers for him. When no one else trusts him, she does. 

This makes Xuan Ji a very cathartic character to watch because she isn’t frustrating at all. She isn’t easily influenced and has her own views. She doesn’t share the same prejudiced views as the elder sect leaders. She is willing to disobey if it’s the right thing to do. She immediately clears up misunderstandings, like the one between her and Ming yan. We see her gradually become more mature through her increasing protectiveness over Si Feng. 

I think because we see this rational and loyal side of Xuan Ji, we’re able to have a higher tolerance for her ignorance and mistakes later in the drama (but only barely). 

The Reincarnations - What Does it Mean to Love a Soul?

Si Feng fell for Xuan Ji 10 times in the mortal world, not including the very first time he falls for her when they were immortals in the heavenly realm. 

I explained why I think Si Feng fell for Xuan Ji is this 10th reincarnation, but why did he fall for her in the past 9 lives? In the flashbacks, we see that in each life, Xuan Ji is cruel and heartless, and she still had the same unforgiving and ruthless demeanor as when she was the god of war. Is it because Si Feng’s soul is always going to be automatically attracted to Xuan Ji’s soul?

Because we only see brief glimpses of the past 9 lives (more specifically, we only see the ending of these lives), we don’t really know how they met or how Si Feng came to love her in each life. But, I would assume that there was something about Xuan Ji in each of her reincarnations that attracted her to Si Feng and completed him. Also, we know that Xuan Ji is capable of tenderness. As the god of war, she disliked fighting. As Mosha, she cared about Bailing. So, while Xuan Ji’s nature might be violent and cruel, I think that with each life, she learns about love and sincerity. If we assume that the flashbacks of the 9 lives are in order, then it would seem like Xuan Ji becomes more and more affected by Si Feng’s death with each successive lifetime. In the first life, she is completely indifferent to his beheading. but we see that she begins to become affected in the later lives, but tries to shove those emotions aside because they’re foreign and unfamiliar to her. 

We get even less context for how Si Feng might have fallen for the god of war in the heavenly realm. We only know that Si Feng was the Jade Emperor’s son, and only gained a celestial anamorphic form after 10, 000 years. His true form is the Golden-feathered bird. He’s always appearing by the god of war’s side to listen to her vent, but the god of war only sees him as a stray bird who comes by to visit occasionally. Why did he fall for her? Did he empathize with her loneliness? Maybe she was his only friend, like he was her only friend, but she didn’t even realize it. 

We also see that Si feng loves Xuan ji no matter who she is or what form she takes. Her gender doesn’t matter to him, and gender was never even an issue in the drama. The drama doesn’t give an explanation for why Bailing created a female body for the god of war (besides that he wanted to disguise Mosha’s appearance), but it also doesn’t matter. It’s a non-issue, and I love it. We just need to accept it, because the “why” isn’t important.

Xuan Ji has 3 different identities: The Star of Mosha (Luo Hou Ji Do), the god of war, and Xuan Ji the mortal. The god of war and Xuan Ji have the same “soul”, and that soul came from the glass of Mosha’s imprisonment lamp, and also from Mosha’s altered corporeal body. So, she is a part of Mosha, but has also become her own entity. 

To Si Feng, all 3 identities are Xuan Ji. The memories, emotions, and experiences of all the identities are what made Xuan Ji Xuan Ji, and so he loves all of them. 

But what made Xuan Ji finally crack so that she’s now able to love Si Feng in this 10th reincarnation? I think it has to do with her upbringing. We see in her previous 9 lives that she had a troubled upbringing filled with scheming and violence. So she was consumed by the darkest side of humanity and Si Feng couldn’t pull her out. But in this life, she grew up with an abundance of love, which made her want to learn how to love, which allowed her to open up to Si Feng. In this way, the drama shows that Si Feng alone isn’t enough to redeem her, but it took the love of her friends and family to help her grow a heart. 

The Angst

Okay. So. Si Feng has probably suffered more than any male lead in xianxia history. I think someone said that he has a martyr complex. But, I’d like to break down the type of angst that are present in dramas. 

There is angst that is harmless, and there is angst that is damaging to the relationship. 

Harmless angst is usually angst by external forces. Like parents who don’t allow their kids to be together. Like in AOL when Xufeng mistakenly thinks that Jin Mi might be his sister so he can’t be with her. In L&R, this kind of external angst happens when Si Feng mistakenly thinks that Xuan Ji likes her 6th sect brother Ming yan. Xuan Ji isn’t purposely hurting Si Feng, but it’s an unintentional misunderstanding. 

Damaging angst is when the couple turns against each other and become enemies. This happened when Jin Mi kills Xufeng and says she never loved him (which technically is true since her heart was re-sealed so she didn’t even understand what love was when she said it). In L&R, this happens Xuan Ji sides with her sect and attacks Si Feng when he reveals his demon form. This happens again when they confront each other outside the Lize Palace and she announces that she’s done with him and breaks ties with him. This happens again when she stabs him, says she regrets having ever known and loved him, and proceeds to try to stab him again. In Love and Redemption, Xuan Ji keeps saying hurtful things to him. There’s not just one moment of betrayal, but a constant onslaught of betrayals over 10 episodes that make the relationship feel like it’s entered a point of no return. 

The masochistic side of me likes love/hate relationships and damaging angst. I grew up with it. TVB dramas have a lot of it. My favourite is the angst in Raymond Lam and Charmain Sheh dramas like Drive of Life and Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion. But despite over 20 years of watching dramas, I was still not prepared for the pain and suffering in Love and Redemption. 

The good news is that they make up fairly quickly, though some may argue too quickly and easily. 

What I Enjoyed

Other xianxia romances usually only have 1 mortal reincarnation. This has 10 reincarnations (even if only shown briefly), and I love that. The leads have already had such a rich history together, but they don’t remember, and so the romance is about them falling in love all over again in this life, while also slowly remembering the love they had in their previous lifetimes. 

The world-building was also compelling, and the supporting characters were great. They were the voice of reason and talked sense into the main leads to help move the plot forward. I also liked how the ML and FL each had their own personal relationship with the supporting characters separate from each other. For instance, Ming yan has a childhood friendship with Xuan Ji, but he also develops his own friendship with Si Feng. Wu Ziqi was once Mosha’s helper, and also knew the god of war, but also forms his own friendship with Si Feng. Zi Hu is also friends with both Xuan Ji and Si Feng. Having separate friendships with the leads means that the supporting characters are unbiased. They’re not likely to help the ML more than the FL or vice versa, but they’re able to see both sides of things. They help the leads, but they’re also critical of them, and is therefore able to help the leads make rational decisions. It reminds me of the friendship dynamics in Avatar where the characters have unique relationships with each other. Like Toph has her own relationship dynamic with Sokka and Katara, which is different from Aang’s relationship dynamic with them. 

It goes without saying that Si Feng is the best part of the drama. He plays an emotionally repressed character, so it always feels like the heavens opened up when he smiles, and Xuan Ji seems to be the only one who can make him smile. SF's best moments are when he shows moments of vulnerability, like when he begs Xuan Ji not to cut ties with him, or when he's so happy to the point of disbelief and he's afraid of it being true that he begins to slightly quiver, like when he kept asking XJ if she was really the one who took off his mask. You can see him break down and not being able to contain his emotions and how much he’s desperately yearning for his love to be reciprocated. 

I like that the FL has the same personality throughout the drama. I'm always annoyed when the FL's personality takes a 360-degree turn when she has a sudden "awakening" when her past life memories come flooding back and she instantly matures and becomes jaded. In Love and Redemption, Xuan Ji stays her bubbly self, even when she’s burdened with responsibilities. Hell, even when she becomes a mother, she’s still aloof and playful. In episode 52 or so when she burns her leg and refuses to leave Si Feng’s house, she acts like a helpless little girl again. Si Feng tells her that such a small injury wouldn’t even faze someone as powerful as she is, but she reminds him that he once told her that even if she didn’t feel pain, her body would know the pain, and so she should always tell him when she’s hurt. I just like this throwback to the earlier episodes to show that while Xuan Ji has grown and matured, she’s still the same person who wants to be loved and pampered. 

Weaknesses of the Drama

Xuan Ji is a really multi-faceted and complex character (because of her villainous tendencies), but Crystal Yuan doesn’t completely deliver in all of her performances of the character. Crystal Yuan is great when she’s acting cute (though it reminds me a lot of Zhao Liying’s acting in Journey of Flower, even the voice actress is the same actress), but I feel like Crystal Yuan’s crying scenes are a little lacking. Also, Xuan Ji is a character who is often in moral and emotional conflict because she starts to feel emotions that she doesn’t understand since she’s never felt them before, but sometimes Crystal isn’t very convincing when trying to convey this internal conflict. For instance, in the scene when she thought Si Feng was getting married to Ah Lan, I thought that her devastation at seeing that should have been a bit more palpable. I mean, you finally found the love of your life after searching him for over a year and now he’s in front of you, about to get married to another woman. There should be more pain, anger, regret, disbelief, a battle of emotions unfolding on the face. There should have been more deflation, more staggering. I think back to when Tang Yan was watching Luo Jin get married to someone else in Princess Weiyoung, or when Jin Mi was watching Xufeng propose to Sui He in AOL, and the desperation and shock was subtle, but still so strong. You could feel the drop in your own stomach when sympathizing with the female character. 

I also obviously disliked how Xuan Ji didn’t believe Si Feng. But I would have understood why she didn’t believe him (even when he logically explained his innocence) since there are so many people pressuring her judgment, but what I can’t get over is how she had it in herself to physically hurt him. And she already hurt him before too, so she knows how much it pains her to hurt him. She already regretted the act before. But because she mistakenly thinks that he killed Hao Chen, she decides that she needs to kill him? Does Hao Chen mean that much to you that you’d be willing to sacrifice Si Feng in order to avenge him? That was my breaking point for her character. 

I didn’t like how Hao Chen’s arc was resolved. For 1000 years, he thought he was right and never had any regrets. He was obsessed with controlling his friend Mosha to the point of killing him and sealing his soul away. He then created another being, became possessive over that being to the point of falling in love with it (without admitting it), and then follows his creation down to the mortal world, and wrecks havoc on the mortals, especially Si Feng. And when Hao Chen learns that he can no longer control or redeem Xuan Ji, he decides that he needs to kill her in order to prevent Mosha from coming back. But then suddenly, because of a few words and visions from the Jade Emperor, he immediately has a change of heart and sees the error of his ways. It’s just so anti-climactic. Yuan Long’s ending was also underwhelming. I just wanted the good guys and bad guys to fight it out without divine intervention. 

While I sympathize with Si Feng and agree that it's like watching a puppy get kicked over and over again, he honestly gets jealous way too easily and is too insecure. He also keeps everything to himself and sucks at communicating. We blame Xuan Ji for being too quick at jumping to conclusions, but Si Feng also jumps to conclusions too and causes unnecessary pain for himself. 

Overall Impression

Overall, despite the frustrations, I really liked the consistency of the drama. It flows as one complete narrative and all the subplots are well intertwined with the main plot. With other reincarnation xianxia dramas, you could divide the story into distinct arcs, but it’s harder to do with this one since you have arcs that overlap and transcend other arcs. There’s the mask arc, the god of war arc, the reincarnation arc, the demon identity arc, the Mosha arc, etc. Before one arc is completed, another arc is introduced.

If you’re looking for a be-all-end-all, til the end of time and end of the world romance, this is it. While it has many similar tropes to other xianxias like AOL, I think this executes the tropes better. Although if you’ve already watched AOL or other xianxias, you might be more immune to the angst (even though this drama is angstier). But if you watch this drama first, I think it sets the bar pretty high for other xianxia dramas.

The chemistry and sexually tension is also through the roof (and the BTS will have you raising your eyebrows - are costars normally that flirty and touchy feely on set?)

So yes, this drama does live up to the hype. More meta posts to come because I’m still going through withdrawal. 

(Just checked the word count on this review, and it’s over 4700 words. I’m clearly an obsessed mess). 

Other meta posts:

Recurring details and motifs in Love and Redemption

Similarities to other stories in movies and literature