#i have the fun experience of having multiple periods in a month several times a year 🙃

[butmakeitgayblog]

i don’t have a uterus so forgive my ignorance but… 2 weeks??? 😭 i thought it was one wtf have i been lied to

That absolutely is a lie pushed on society by big pharma and the industrial complex (don't fact check me on this) I mean everyone is different snd everyone has their own fun little insanity inducing ~quirks~ to their cycle, but most people I've known who have periods usually have the week or so leading up to the period where you are either extremely hungry or hate the sight of food, ya bloat, boobs are sore, ya get so fucking horny that a bitch gets close to licking their own phone if someone hot enough scrolls through. And none of that covers potential skin issues, sleeping issues, depression issue, etc.

Then the actual period begins 😒 which is a whole other clusterfuckery bag of systems to deal with. And they say 2-7 days. If you just felt like you heard an echo in the distance, that was the feral wildbeast screech of every person who is on day 9 of their period. Who thought they were done and went back to regular clothes only to fUCKING START SPOTTING AGAIN 😤

And none of that even begins to account for anomalies like endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndrome which can lead to even longer periods, more frequent periods, intensely painful periods (think stabbing pain. Burning pain. Feeling like your lower intestines are being wrung out like a wash towel.)

And we do this every month. While working. And cleaning. And cooking. And being general useful members of society.

My point in all this being, everything you've ever learned as a "generalized rule" about periods is a gotdamn lie and just, just listen to people who have periods when they say it's hell and we deserve to nap, complain, and eat our little treats in peace

[strawberry-seob]

I'll Go ✩ kjs

🍓pairing: afab!reader x jongseob, and afab!reader x intak

🍓genre: au, fluff, age gaps (reader is older), slight hurt/comfort, minor love triangle, caregiving/caretaking elements/moments, slow burn, falling in love with your sibling's best friend

🍓rating: teen & up audiences (but please see author's note below)

🍓 summary: jongseob is your younger brother shota's long-time best friend and now that you’re all adults, you begin to see him differently

🍓warnings: alcohol use, smoking (cigarettes), swearing/language, mentions of menstruation/menstrual care, accidental head injury/hospital visit

🍓word count: 35.1k (split into multiple chapters within this post)

🍓author's note: i wrote this fic as a series on ao3 so that readers could have a choice to read the smutty parts or avoid it, based on their preferences. i probably won't format a fic like this again but since that is how i did this one on archive, i will be posting the other two nsfw parts separately (they will be a progressive continuation starting from the end of this story's last chapter)

Chapter 1: I'll Go

It had only been a year, but so far, being adult roommates with your little brother Shota had proven to be nothing if not interesting. From his terrifying sleep walking, to the “science experiments” in the kitchen, and his habit of staying up all night playing video games with his best friend Jongseob, there was never a dull moment. It was way more interesting and fun than living alone ever would have been. This was especially true, given your age difference: at nineteen, Shota was wild and crazy in a way that you remember being several years prior. You had chilled out, but you affectionately doubted whether he ever really would.

Despite the messes around the apartment, living with Shota was a generally positive experience. On a certain afternoon, however, a scheduling mishap on his part turned into one of the more awkward situations you’d encountered, and you were still trying to figure out how you felt about it.

Early that Saturday morning, you’d woken up with a heaviness in your belly that only meant one thing: that time of the month.

Although usually very careful about tracking your periods and keeping the house stocked and ready for when it was supposed to come around, life had gotten chaotic enough lately that Mother Nature had brought your monthly gift mostly by surprise. You hadn’t started bleeding yet but you knew you would soon, so you swallowed a couple painkillers on an empty stomach (a bad habit you’d picked up due to your debilitating cramps), slapped a pad in your underwear, and crawled back into bed in the fetal position.

You woke again later that morning to the sounds of obnoxiously high-pitched giggling coming from the living room. Ugh. Another thing you’d forgotten was that Shota had invited Jongseob over to hang out for the day to work on homework (which would inevitably end up being 99% video games, and 1% homework). They were both attending the same college and thus had the fortune of taking some of the same classes and being able to help each other with homework. Jongseob was the kind of person to whom school came naturally, while Shota needed quite a bit more help most of the time, so you were at least glad he had a friend like Jongseob who was willing to help him so much.

From the sounds of it, however, it didn’t sound like much homework was actually getting done. You groaned and crawled out of bed, barely able to stand up straight due to the cramps. You gave yourself a cursory glance in the mirror and almost jumped at the sight of yourself. You were used to Jongseob being over all the time and didn’t really care about what he thought, but you decided to run a quick brush through your hair anyway and throw on a sports bra under your t-shirt. Actually, nope, fuck that, the sports bra was coming right back off. Way too tight.

You shuffled into the kitchen and started the electric kettle, pulled out your favorite pottery mug, and a raspberry leaf teabag. You’d always been told that it was good for menstrual symptoms and couldn’t really tell whether or not it helped, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. Jongseob walked into the kitchen and jumped, letting out a hilarious yelp, his hand over his heart dramatically. As much as your stomach hurt, you couldn’t stop laughing.

“Cut it out, y/n,” he whined, “I didn’t even hear you come out here. Wait… you okay?” he asked, his voice taking a slightly more serious tone. You realized you were gripping the counter with your other hand as you poured the steaming hot water into the mug. “Ah, yeah. Just don’t really feel great this morning.”

“Ah shit, you better not get me sick,” he replied, making an X with his arms in your direction playfully, then turned to pour himself a bowl of Shota’s cereal. “Don’t worry,” you said, rolling your eyes. “Not contagious.” He raised a confused eyebrow in your direction but didn’t press the issue.

You looked over at him again. “I like your hair, by the way. It suits you.” You could see the back of his neck tinge ever so slightly pink, as he reached a hand up to one of his wavy bleach-blonde locks and tugged on it self-consciously. The color contrasted nicely with his light pink hoodie. “Oh. Uh, thanks,” he muttered, not looking at you. You smiled to yourself and looked down at your tea, still steeping. As you’d gotten older, one of the things you were trying to work on was sincerity. But you were usually so sarcastic and Jongseob was so shy that it just probably ended up coming off as weird or even teasing. Oh, well. You had to start somewhere.

You heard Shota’s phone ring from the living room, and he answered. “What do you mean, where am I? Noooo that wasn’t today, was it? Okay, yeah. No, I’ll be right there, sorry!” and as he hung up, you and Jongseob flinched as your brother let out a dramatically shrill scream. He then leaned into the kitchen casually, hands on either side of the doorway, as if nothing had happened. “Uh, so! That was Jiung. I didn’t realize I had dance practice today. Haha! Well I did, but I didn’t realize that today was today, y’know?” he smiled sheepishly, trying to look as cute as possible.

Jongseob smacked his arm playfully, scolding him, “Dude, you can’t keep doing this to me, I have so much homework to get done and nowhere to do it. And I don’t wanna have to go to the library again!” Jongseob lived in the university dorms with a very rowdy dorm partner who cared way more about hooking up, smoking weed, and blasting his shitty music than about anything academics-related. Not that Shota was the quietest person in general, but he knew when to be quiet, and Jongseob appreciated that.

“Wait, you guys,” you interrupted. “Jongseob, why don’t you just stay here?” you offered. Jongseob and Shota both looked back at you, their eyes wide. Jongseob opened his mouth to say something, but Shota was quicker. “That’s a great idea! Welp, that settles it, buddy. You’ll be fine without me, you’re here often enough that you basically live here anyway.” Jongseob let out a little yelp as Shota pinched his side, and he smacked his arm again, trying to ignore his friend’s flippant response.

“Y/n, are you sure you’re okay with that? I don’t want to impose,” he complained, scratching the back of his head self-consciously. Shota butted in, “They’re fine, they would have never said anything if they didn’t mean it.” You were ready to argue when you realized he was actually being serious. Like now, every once in a while your brother said something that shocked you because it made you realize how well he actually knew you.

“He’s actually right. I really don’t mind, I’ll probably just be in my room, but just let me know if you need anything. Plus, you do basically live here half the time.”

“Okay, I will. Thanks, y/n,” Jongseob smiled, his crooked canines showing for a moment. You remembered him getting bullied for them when he was younger, but as an adult, they were more charming than anything. He and Shota had both resolved to not get braces when they were younger, and even though you would never tell them to their faces, you thought their smiles were adorable.

Shota hurriedly changed into some joggers and an oversized t-shirt, grabbed his wallet and phone, and rushed out. “I’ll be back in a few hours!” he yelled without looking behind him as he slammed the door. You sighed with a smile, looked at Jongseob and shrugged. He smirked and headed to the table to start on his homework. You removed the teabag from the mug, tossed it in the trash, and you’d almost made it to your bedroom when you were hit with a devastating wave of cramps across your low abdomen that radiated into your back and down your legs. You hissed in pain, bracing yourself in your door frame, and heard the faint squeak of the dining room table chair on the hardwood. “Y/n? You good?”

“Ah… yeah. I’m fine,” you replied with gritted teeth, trying not to let your voice sound as strained as it felt, but to no avail. You cringed as you heard a louder creak from the chair sliding on the floor once more, and soft footsteps approaching. “You don’t sound fine– o-oh my god!” Jongseob exclaimed as he rushed towards you, reaching out to steady you but hesitating, his hands hovering, not quite touching you. You cursed inwardly, realizing what you had to do.

“Okay listen, I know this looks bad, but–”

“Are you kidding? You can barely stand, y/n! Do you need me to take you to the hospital? Shota took my car to practice but I can order an uber or something, or–”

“Jongseob, you really listen to me. I’m fine,” you responded firmly. He looked back at you like you were crazy, his hands still hovering, unsure if you were about to collapse. “It’s my fucking period, okay?” 

“Your–” Jongseob started, then paused, realization coloring his face a bright shade of pink. Here we go , you thought to yourself, already exasperated. He pulled his hands back, looking to the side, then back at you. “Okay, but. I mean… are you okay , though? You look like shit, no offense.”

You laughed, stiffly walking into your room and curling up on your bed, as he remained in the doorway. You looked up at him sideways. “You know what, if you’re offering… would you mind heating up my heating pad for me? I think it’s in the hutch, and it just needs two minutes in the microwave, and you gotta flip it halfway through.”

“You got it, dude,” he replied with a mock salute, rushing back down the hall and nearly killing himself tripping over his too-baggy jeans. You giggled quietly and rolled onto your back, legs bent for comfort, and slapped both hands over your face, sighing deeply. This was weird. Right? You guessed it could be worse. But with that thought, another cramp crashed through your body, wracking your hips with pain, and you turned your head to the side, moaning into your pillow as Jongseob walked in. He hesitated for a moment, not used to coming into your bedroom, but seeing the way you obviously weren’t about to stand up and take it from him, he walked over and handed it to you. “Here you go. Sorry about your, uh. Sorry you gotta deal with all this,” he said awkwardly.

“Just one of the many blessings of having a goddamn uterus, my friend!” you replied, laying the heating pad across your lower abdomen and sighing at the relief it brought. You looked up at Jongseob and he glanced to the side as soon as you made eye contact. There was a pause of silence as he looked down at the floor, fidgeting with his oversized hoodie sleeves. “Yeah. Um. Is there anything else I can do? Like, to help?” he asked. 

“Yeah, go get a gun and shoot me,” you responded, your voice monotone. He laughed, his voice bright and slightly raspy. “Okay sure, will do,” he said, shaking his head and closing your door as he stepped out. Before the door closed completely though, he paused. “I’ll be in the dining room. Seriously though, let me know if you need anything. ‘s the least I can do since I’m a guest. ” 

“You’ve way surpassed guest status, dude. But okayyy, thank yooouuu,” you replied, dragging out the words and trying to sound annoyed, when you were in fact relieved that he couldn’t see you smiling. Living with Shota, you didn’t really know what it was like to be taken care of in any way. That guy was such a baby that you were constantly in parent-mode. 

This wasn’t bad. It was a little weird, but it wasn’t bad.

After about an hour or so, you dragged yourself out of bed and into the bathroom. Opening the bottom cupboard, your face fell. No. This cannot be happening. You rummaged through the space, knocking everything over, opening every drawer and cupboard imaginable in the bathroom, with no luck. Your pad and tampon supply had completely run out. Why the fuck hadn’t you just started using a diva cup? You cursed yourself inwardly. 

You rushed out into the living room, hand on your lower back (which was still on fire), and rummaged through your bag, because surely there had to be a stray hiding somewhere, right? Right?! 

You sighed, frustrated. Jongseob looked up absently from his textbook at the table. “Whatcha lookin for?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” you retorted, a mischievous smile on your face. He frowned, quickly realizing. “Ah, sorry,” he replied, looking back down at his book, his ears tinged red.

“Nah it’s all good. I just really didn’t want to have to go to the store today, but that’s what I get for not paying attention, I guess.”

He looked back up at you, worry pulling at his features. “You’re going to the store? In your condition?”

“Not like I have much of a choice! Motherfucker. When it rains, it really does pour. You want anything while I’m out?”

Jongseob stood up. “I’ll go,” he said. 

You burst out laughing. “You? You’re gonna go to the store and buy my tampons? Don’t make me laugh, Jongseob. I appreciate the offer, but it’s all good. I got it.”

His face reddened at your response, but he stood his ground. “Y/n, look at you. You can barely walk. Just let me go, it’s not a big deal.”

“You don’t even know which ones I need!”

“Just… text me a photo of what the package looks like,” he replied quietly. Your face softened. He was really serious about this. And this shouldn’t have embarrassed you this much, but it did. Plus, he was right. You’d been determined to go to the store on your own but you were literally bracing yourself on any surface you could find, just to be able to walk around the house. Plus, you felt like you might have an accident any moment. Whatever happened, it needed to happen soon. 

You dug around in your purse some more, pulled out your credit card, and handed it to him. And for the first time today, you felt your own face heat up. “Okay. Thanks, I really owe you one. I’ll text you what I need.”

“Cool,” he responded, a triumphant smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth but not quite making it. You assumed he was more excited about winning the argument than doing the task at hand. He grabbed his phone and keys and was out the door before you knew it. You headed to the bathroom to take photos of the empty packages of pads and tampons in your cupboard, then walked out into the hall and stood in the empty, quiet apartment for a moment with mixed feelings of warmth, relief, and embarrassment. But then, feeling another wave of pain and nausea coming on, you headed back to your bedroom to lay down.

About half an hour later, you heard the apartment door open, the sound of what could only be Jongseob removing his clunky shoes, and the muffled sound of a plastic bag. Your body relaxed in relief, as you’d become more and more uncomfortable as the time passed. You heard footsteps, followed by a couple gentle knocks at your bedroom door. 

“Come in!” you yelled weakly.

“Hi, um, here’s the stuff,” he began timidly, peeking in. “Do you want me to put it in the bathroom, or–”

“Can you just bring it to me?” you whined. “I’ll put it away, don’t worry about all that. And thank you again, so much. You really didn’t have to do this. I feel weird,” you slapped a hand over your face, peeking up at him. 

“Ah shit, please don’t. I don’t wanna make you feel weird. It’s really okay,” he replied, walking cautiously up to your bed and setting the bag on the floor. “I feel it’s the least I can do for just kinda hanging around here all the time. It’s no big deal at all.” There it was again, that flush spreading across his cheeks. You thought about how you’d been trying to be more sincere, less of a shithead to both him and Shota; and you wondered if he’d been trying to do the same. This softness that he was showing you, it wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility, but it just wasn’t something you were used to. Not from him.

“Well… thanks. You’ve really made my life a lot easier today,” you responded. He smiled, bowed his head slightly and rushed out, shutting the door softly behind him. You opened the bag and your jaw dropped at the sight. Not only had he gotten both the pads and tampons you needed, but he also grabbed your favorite chocolate and jelly candy. Your eyes watered. When had Jongseob grown up to be such a sweetheart?

You pulled out your phone, not feeling like walking all the way out to the dining room:

y/n: seob!! the candy, are you kidding me? :’)

js: hehe ur welcome

y/n: i know i said I owed you one, but like… for reeeeal. This is fucked up

js: meh, it was your money. I just saw it at the checkout and thought you might want some

y/n: [cry emoji] [heart emoji]

js: [salute emoji] [tongue sticking out emoji]

You went to the bathroom to take care of things, then returned to your room. Feeling much more relaxed than before, you laid in bed once more, snacking on the candy lazily. You could feel your pain medication wearing off, but were too tired to get up and take some more, so you kept scrolling on your phone until you drifted off to sleep.

Your nap was perfect, until suddenly, it wasn’t. Crushing pain in your lower abdomen and back cast waves of nausea throughout your body. You curled up onto your side in the fetal position, trying to find some semblance of comfort, but nothing you were doing was helping. The pain was becoming severe, but you felt like you would scarcely be able to get up. Barely awake, you began to groan in pain, tears threatening to spill, and that’s when you heard the knock on the door. 

“Y/n? You okay?” 

Oh, great. In the haze of your nap, you’d almost forgotten that Jongseob was still here. You moaned a weak response that didn’t really come out as words.

“I’m gonna come in, okay?”

“Kay!” you yelled, eyes squeezed shut. Jongseob walked in a little less cautiously than before. “What’s goin on? What do you need?”

You tried to answer, but were dealing with a cramp so severe it had taken your breath away. You groaned into the pillow. 

“Do you need medicine?”

You nodded, eyes still squeezed shut. 

“Heating pad?”

You nodded again.

“Okay hold tight,” he replied, rushing out. He came back not long after with the heating pad all warmed up, a couple painkillers, and a glass of water. He gave you the heating pad first, so you could lay it across your abdomen, and handed you the painkillers and water. As soon as you took them, you laid back down on the bed, wincing in pain. You hadn’t had a period this bad in a while, and although you’d technically be fine, you were in so much pain you couldn’t think. Your breathing was rapid and you held onto the heating pad for dear life, when you felt a light pressure on your back. 

You hadn’t noticed that Jonseob had sat himself on the bed next to you, but there he was, rubbing gentle circles into your back. At his touch, the tears that were threatening to spill finally came. Not surprisingly, this caused Jongseob to panic. 

“Oh… oh my god I’m sorry, I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked frantically, pausing his movements. You shook your head “no,” and realizing that this situation was way beyond the weirdness of before, just decided to give in to the comfort that was being offered. You grabbed his hand and moved it down to your lower back. 

“Right here. It hurts so bad. Please don’t stop,” you hiccupped pathetically. He hummed gently and began hesitantly, most likely because your shirt had ridden up to expose the skin of your lower back. With the agony you were in, you couldn’t be bothered, but he pulled the back of your shirt down to cover your skin and continued the gentle motions. Your breathing slowed a little, and you leaned into his touch. 

He began humming softly, and as the pain meds started to kick in, your body started to relax more, and, grateful as could be, you felt like you might drift off to sleep again. “Seob?” you said drowsily, your voice wet with barely dried tears.

“Yeah, y/n?” he asked quietly.

“You’ve been so sweet today. But please don’t tell Shota about this. I’ll never hear the end of it. You probably won’t, either,” you said with a wry laugh. Jongseob laughed heartily in response, breaking through the tension in the room with a breath that he seemed to have been holding. 

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it.”

Chapter 2: Don't Go

Over the next several weeks, you noticed Jongseob coming over a little more often than usual, if that was even possible. He’d started spending the night most weekends and even some weeknights. You’d have to start charging him rent, you thought, laughing inwardly. As if you could ever do that. He constantly complained about how broke he was, and every time you asked him why he moved into the dorms instead of trying to move in with you and Shota, he always offered some lame excuse about the requirements for his financial aid or not wanting to burden you, or he would just change the subject entirely. You really didn’t mind him coming over so much, you just wondered what his thought process really was. It didn’t make any sense.

Meanwhile, winter was coming to an end, and with it, winter term at Jongseob and Shota’s university. One Saturday morning as you were all in the common area, Shota blurted out, “We should do a movie night. To celebrate the end of the term.” You looked up at him from your oatmeal, and Jongseob, sitting next to him on the couch, just replied, “Okay dude, let’s do it. When?”

“Tonight!”

“Tonight?” you and Jongseob both blurted out at the same time. Shota appeared completely unfazed, his eyes glued to the first-person shooter game that Jongseob had been playing with him all morning. “Yeah! Tonight. I’m pretty sure the guys from school should all be available. I’ll text them.” You and Jongseob glanced at each other and smiled. He shook his head and looked back at the television screen. 

“Do the guys from school include Keeho?” you asked, and Shota hissed underneath his breath as his character suddenly died. Jongseob laughed triumphantly at his victory, causing you to restrain your own laughter. His laugh was so funny and shockingly high-pitched, and when it was loud, it almost always caught you off guard. Shota looked over at you. “Yes,” he said blankly, his eyes showing zero understanding of the nuance of your question. You nodded. “Cool. He’s really funny. So I was just wondering.” 

“Yeah, he’s funny. Do you like him?” Shota responded dryly, pulling out his phone nonchalantly. Oh boy, that backfired. “No!” you replied immediately. “Not in that way. I thought. I mean…” you hesitated, suddenly wanting to be swallowed by the floor. “Don’t you?”

“Don’t I what?”

“Like… Keeho?”

Shota looked over at you, dark eyes huge and round, face blank. He was so damn cute, but you wished he was able to pick up on subtext a little better. “Yeah, of course I like Keeho. We wouldn’t be friends if I didn’t.” You looked at Jongseob, but he was just scrolling on his phone, clearly tuning out the both of you. 

“That’s not what I…” you sighed. “Nevermind,” you said with a chuckle, “just let me know if there’s people coming over tonight so we can get ready.” At that, Shota’s phone chimed and he held up an index finger obnoxiously, still looking at his phone. “There is indeed, people coming over tonight!” he yelled, jumping up excitedly and tackling Jongseob on the couch, eliciting a string of screaming and profanity that had you laughing uncontrollably. 

“Alright you little freaks, my only request is that you help clean this place up before everyone comes over,” and at this, they reluctantly stopped their play fight and got to work.

Several hours later, you heard the first knock on the door, and you opened it to find Intak and Jiung, each armed with a 6-pack and a bag full of snacks. You welcomed them in warmly, and before you had a chance to shut the door, Keeho and Taeyang darted up the steps and made their way in as well. 

Shota made a beeline past the other guys towards Keeho and hugged him, laughing and hanging around his neck long after a normal hug would have been over. Yep, here we go , you thought to yourself. Keeho didn’t seem to mind the attention, you noticed, as he kept one hand firmly on Shota’s back and the other free to gesture dramatically while he talked to the others or to sweetly fix Shota’s bleach-damaged bangs when they got tangled over his forehead. You smiled at the affection shown in this group, but made a solemn decision to keep an eye on Keeho. Shota was the most important person in the world to you, and you wouldn’t be able to bear seeing him get hurt.

“Hi,” a voice beckoned behind you, and you turned to look up at Jiung, smiling at you sweetly, his dark, sharp eyes contrasting fiercely with his blazing copper locks. “Sorry, is it okay if we put these beers in the fridge?”

“Of course!” you beckoned him and Intak towards the fridge, helping them move things out of the way to make room for the drinks. Taeyang was still talking and laughing with Keeho and Shota near the entryway, but you noticed that Jongseob was still on the couch, joining in the conversation every now and then but mostly scrolling on his phone and looking a little out of place.

Most of Shota’s friends at school were in dance or some other music-related field (all of the guys who came over tonight were on his dance team), but Jongseob was an English major, making it so that he had some overlap with Shota’s classes but certainly not as much as the other guys. You knew Jongseob was mature and didn’t get jealous too easily, but something about the sight of him being the only one on the couch tugged at your heart, so you took a seat next to him, plopping down with so much force that it jostled him. 

“Sup,” you said, opening a not-yet-cold beer. “Sup,” he half-said, half-laughed, shoving his phone back into his pocket. You offered him your beer and watched out of the corner of your eye as he took the first sip, wincing a little at the bitterness, but recovering quickly. He took another drink, this one a bigger gulp, and you smacked his thigh playfully. “Agh!” he yelled, rubbing his leg, as you got up to fetch another. As you sat back down next to him and opened the second beer, he offered you a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Thanks.”

You rolled your eyes at him playfully, sipping your drink, as the rest of the guys started to congregate closer to the living room. It had been a while since you and Shota had had people over, and you were reminded of how small your place was. With just the couch and loveseat, there probably wasn’t enough room for everyone. 

“Ah shit, do we need to grab some floor cushions or a chair from the dining room?” you started, but Intak and Jiung urged you to sit, reassuring you that everyone would fit just fine. 

Shota sat Keeho down on the loveseat next to him, while the other three guys squeezed onto the couch next to you and Jongseob. Jongseob had been seated at the far left side of the couch, so to your right sat Intak, Jiung, and on the very right side Taeyang, who was squeezed so tightly against the arm of the couch that he ended up sitting on the floor between Jiung’s legs. You began to stand up again, stressed about the hosting situation and kicking yourself for not preparing better.

“Taeyang, can I please get you a pillow, or–” 

“Ma’am!” he screamed too-loudly, eliciting an eruption of laughter from the rest of the guys. Taeyang had such a pretty and elegant face, that it contrasted hilariously with his near-constant ear-shattering yelling. “Please sit down,” he demanded. “My ass is cushion enough. I’ll just lay on top of all of you if I get uncomfy.”

“Okay, okay, suit yourself” you laughed, holding your hands up defensively and realizing you were no match for the most diva-esque of Shota’s dance friends. You didn’t love being referred to as “ma’am,” but Taeyang was so funny that you could let it slide.

Shota turned on the TV and started scrolling through the movies when you realized you didn’t even know what movie he’d planned on making everyone watch, but when he landed on an incredibly disturbing horror movie and started it gleefully, you realized you wouldn’t have even needed to guess. Despite looking like an actual cherub, your brother was obsessed with all things horror, to the point that you weren’t even sure if he watched any other genre.

The movie started and you tried getting comfortable, but found it embarrassingly difficult to ignore the seating situation. Despite Taeyang’s gracious decision to sit on the floor, you were still squeezed snugly on the couch with the other guys, tightly enough that your thighs and arms were pressed against Jongseob on your left and Intak on your right. The contrast between the two was distracting: Jongseob on your left was not much shorter than Intak but he was so much smaller. He was wearing a cozy gray sweatsuit but you could feel the smallness of his body underneath it, his arms thin from spending all his spare time reading and writing. You could also tell that he was trying to make himself small, to give you as much space as possible – despite how futile that was.

Intak, on the other hand, was large, solid, and muscular, dressed in fitted jeans and a boat-necked black t-shirt that dipped slightly to display his defined collarbones. He wasn’t quite manspreading, but he certainly seemed to feel comfortable taking up space, his hand resting on his thigh, and consequently touching yours passively. Once you’d noticed this, there was no paying attention to the movie. You tried your hardest, but ever since Jongseob had rubbed your back when your period cramps were about to kill you weeks before, you’d realized how embarrassingly touch-starved you were. 

You figured, however, that Jongseob probably just saw you as an older sister. Intak, on the other hand, had flirted with you on more than one occasion, and he was absolutely stunning. Still, something about the situation had you feeling slightly uneasy, a feeling that went away gradually with each beer. 

The movie ended up devolving into everyone taking a drink every time Keeho or Taeyang screamed (which honestly just sounded like an excuse to get really fucked up really fast). You’d been taking tiny sips, but it didn’t seem like the others had, since Shota was basically laying on Keeho at this point, Taeyang was screaming at Jiung to rub his shoulders and Jiung was clearly about to snap; plus, Intak had started to brush his hand up against your thigh a little more carelessly, and Jongseob… wait, where was Jongseob?

He’d gone to the restroom but that had seemed like a little while ago. So either he was shitting his brains out, or…

You got up from the couch quickly and headed towards the bathroom. Knock knock knock , you tapped on the door quietly, trying not to alert anyone else back in the living room. “Seob? You okay?” you asked quietly, your face pressed to the door. The only thing you heard on the other side of the door was slurred murmuring, which was concerning. You tried the door handle and it was unlocked. Cracking the door just a tad, you announced, “I’m gonna come in, okay?” The only response you heard was a defeated-sounding groan, but it didn’t sound like a protest, so you carefully tiptoed through the door and latched it quietly behind you. 

The sight you saw next was one of the most pitiful you’d seen in your entire life, and it made your heart lurch painfully in your chest. Jongseob was hugging the toilet bowl, sitting with his legs to one side. He had stripped down to his white undershirt; he’d lost his sweatshirt and it was hanging halfway out of the bathtub. You could see a thin sheen of sweat on his arm, on which was resting his head, the ends of his hair sticking to the back of his neck uncomfortably. 

You walked over to him and got down on your knees, your legs a little wobbly, as you realized that you were a little drunker yourself than you’d realized. “Sorry Seob, I should have made sure you were drinking water. You okay?” He nodded into the toilet bowl and groaned, still not looking up. But in the next moment, he retched, and seemed to only be dry-heaving; you realized he’d probably already vomited everything in his stomach. You felt a sudden surge of melancholic protectiveness, and began rubbing his back. You could feel his shoulder blades poking out; he was so small, and as it dawned on you that he was probably a hopeless lightweight, you made a mental note to yourself to never let him drink around you again without you keeping an eye on him.

Bang Bang Bang!

The sound of someone pounding on the door made you jolt. “Occupied! Use the one in my room!” you yelled, and heard sloppy-sounding footsteps headed towards your room. That must have been Shota. You turned your attention back to the mess before you. Jongseob hadn’t moved from his position, his head still resting on his arm. You wondered if he was asleep, and with your other free hand, you began to run your fingers through his hair gently, pushing it out of his face. His hair wasn’t yet long enough to “hold up” while he puked, but you figured this was some kind of equivalent. 

After doing this for a few minutes and making yourself sleepy in the process, you got up, grabbed an empty glass from the counter, and filled it with tap water. “Okay buddy, are you ready to sip some water?” you asked, to which he answered with a vehement shake of his head “no.” You sighed. “What about rinsing your mouth out, at least?” It looked like he was about to shake his head again but he paused and turned slightly towards you, accepting the glass of water. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes glanced at you for a moment to accept the water before taking a sip and spitting the water into the toilet. “There you go,” you encouraged, taking the glass from him. 

He put his arms back up on the toilet seat and rested his head there again, but this time turned towards you. He made eye contact with you and started giggling, which made you giggle back, but you didn’t know what you were laughing at. You were just still a little drunk. “Y/n,” he whined, his voice low, raspy, and tired, as he closed his eyes again. “Yeah?” you replied, smiling and ruffling his hair. “Thisis… ssoo embarrassing.” You couldn’t help but laugh again, at his slurred speech, but also at the situation. “Eh, it happens to the best of us, don’t sweat it,” you reassured him, patting his back lightly. 

Head still resting on his arms, he opened his eyes and looked at you sideways again, but this time he didn’t say anything, he just stared, a goofy smile on his face. You noticed that the flushing in his face brought out his freckles, and this realization made your throat a little dry for some reason. You took a sip of the water and cleared your throat. You looked back and he was still staring at you. You made your eyes dart to the left and right, then shrugged. “What?” you asked him, feeling more and more self-conscious by the moment. He giggled. “Nothing,” he replied, still smiling. 

“Okay funny guy, I think it’s time to get you to bed,” you announced, motioning towards him but generally unclear on how you were going to make this happen. “Just leave me here, y/n,” he argued. “I’ll sleep in the tub. Plus, I might throw up again.”

“You are not going to sleep in the tub, dude, you’ll wake up unable to move your neck and it’ll be my fault for letting you. C’mon, you’ll be way more comfy in a bed. Here, hold onto me,” you instructed him as he slung an arm around your shoulder to help you half-walk, half-carry him out of the bathroom and towards Shota’s room. But when you arrived at his doorway, the door wide open, you found Shota in bed, limbs tangled with none other than Keeho’s, both of them fast asleep. It dawned on you that if anyone else had stayed over, they’d likely be taking up the couches.

You sighed. “Okay change of plans,” you said, leading him to your own bedroom instead. You opened the door, led him inside, and plopped him down onto your bed. You helped him get under the covers and were about to go back out to the living room when Jongseob wordlessly grabbed your hand. 

You paused and bent down towards him. “Seob? You need anything else?”

“Don’t go,” he responded sleepily, eyes closed, clearly half-asleep if not fully asleep at this point. You’d been so stressed out seeing him this sick for the first time that you were nearly powerless against his request. You ran your free hand through your hair, weighing your options and unsure of what to do, when Jongseob yanked you into bed. 

There was no way he knew what he was doing, you thought, and you were a little worried about what would happen in the morning, but right now you were tired, still buzzed, and not in the mood to fight, so you got under the covers and let him cuddle up next to you. You laid on your back as he turned towards you, slung his arm around your waist, and pressed his face against your arm. You stared at the ceiling, stifling laughter at the absurdity of your situation, while trying to ignore the way your heart rate sped up. It was probably just the alcohol, you thought, as you drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 3: Waking Up

You woke up the next morning to the sensation of your head pounding. You opened your eyes, looked at the ceiling, glanced to your left and nearly jumped out of your skin. Jongseob was curled up towards the wall away from you, his hair sticking out in all directions, lightly snoring. You looked down and you were fully clothed; he was too. You clutched your chest, letting out a huge exhale of relief, as the previous night’s memories started to come back to you. 

You gingerly crept out of bed, trying not to disturb him. Thinking back on how sick he'd been, you figured he would be asleep for a while. You grabbed a glass, filled it with water from the bathroom, and quietly set it on the nightstand with a couple aspirin and a piece of ginger candy. You left the bedroom, latching the door gently, and headed out to the living room, passing Shota’s room on your way. You glanced in as you walked by: sleepy Shota, but no Keeho. The rest of the place was empty too, so you figured the guys had all gotten up a little earlier and headed home; it was late in the morning, after all. 

As you started picking up beer cans and prepared to make breakfast, Shota wandered down the hall, looking at you sleepily. “Good morning, party animal!” you teased. He groaned and smiled, rubbing his face. “So… you and Keeho? Last night?” you inquired carefully. “What about us?” Shota responded, confused. You gave him a look. “Dude. You guys went to bed together.”

“Oh yeah, that! I was in a cuddly mood – you know how I get when I drink – and there was no room for him in the living room since Jiung and Intak took up the couch and Taeyang took the loveseat.”

“Oh. So… just… friend stuff?”

Shota looked at you, more confused than ever. “Y/n, you get so weird whenever you talk about Keeho. Are you sure you don’t have a crush on him?”

You laughed, annoyed at how dense he was. “Trust me, I’m good. I don’t think I’m his type.”

“You never know!”

“Oh, I think I might…” you muttered under your breath, quietly enough that he couldn’t hear you. “Oh, about last night. Shota, I’m gonna tell you something… and you have to promise not to get all weird about it.”

“No promises, but what’s up?” Shota asked, his curiosity piqued. At that moment, you heard your bedroom door open, and you both looked in that direction. Shota looked at you, his brows furrowed inquisitively, and before you saw him, you both heard Jongseob yelling down the hall, “Y/n? Why was I in your bed?”

Shota’s eyes widened. “You did not ,” to which you exclaimed “I swear it’s not what it looks like!” and as Jongseob entered the common area, Shota gave him a horrified look, which was all the false confirmation he needed to start panicking. “O-oh my god, don’t tell me we–”

“You slept with my sister , dude? Really?” Shota demanded. He didn’t look mad, just in abject shock. Jongseob’s face looked like it was burning up, and this nightmare of a conversation had moved so quickly and chaotically that you hadn’t been able to get a word in, but you were fed up.

“Both of you shut the fuck up!” you yelled, a little louder than you meant to. Shota’s head snapped towards you, his eyes large and focused. You immediately regretted your volume; he hated it when you got angry. Jongseob looked in your direction but couldn’t seem to make eye contact with you, his face still on fire. 

“Jongseob, listen. You got really sick last night. I was going to put you in Shota’s bed but Keeho was there – I know, I know, stay focused, that is not what we’re talking about right now,” you snapped as Jongseob stifled laughter and glanced in Shota’s direction before turning his attention towards you again. “So I put you in my bed and I was gonna go find somewhere else to sleep, but you yanked me into bed like a clingy little monkey. Nothing weird. We just slept.” 

Silence hung in the air for a few agonizing moments. “Y/n, why didn’t you just say that?” Shota asked innocently, a guilty smile forming on his face. You darted over to him and put your hands on his neck, mock-strangling him, as he screamed and pretended to be murdered by you, and Jongseob’s laughter broke the tension in the room even more. 

Once you’d wrestled Shota to the floor and then forced him and Jongseob to begin cleaning up the rest of the mess in the living room, you started on breakfast burritos for the three of you. As Jongseob bent over to pick up one of the cans, however, he held his hand to his head, grimacing. You tried not to notice, but felt yourself watching him a little more closely since last night, feeling a little more protective than usual. “Seob? Did you take the aspirin I left on my nightstand?” you asked. His eyes darted towards you, looking embarrassed. “Ah, um, no, I didn’t realize that was for me.” You smiled, rolled your eyes and waved him off in the direction of your bedroom, and he shuffled off down the hall. 

You pulled a bag of frozen hashbrowns out of the freezer and poured some into a preheated pan, stirred it around with some cooking oil, and popped a lid onto it to let them soften up. Shota headed to the bathroom as Jongseob came back out. To your surprise, he took up the space next to you and started helping with the prep, chopping the block of ham that you’d pulled out. He didn’t normally help you cook breakfast when he was over, so this was a nice change.

“Hey,” he began.

“Uh, hey?” you said, looking over at him with a confused smile. He didn’t look at you, and kept his eyes on what he was doing. “I wanted to thank you. Y’know… for taking care of me last night. I feel really bad about it, and pretty embarrassed. You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.” You could see the tips of his ears reddening, and grabbed one of them playfully, eliciting a surprised yell from him. “Back it up,” he yelled, “or I’ll touch you with my ham hands!” he held his hands out to you menacingly and you put your hands up in surrender, laughing. 

“Listen, don’t feel bad. It’s fine. I said this to you last night, and I’ll say it again, but… it happens to the best of us. I’ve been there before, so I know how nice it is to have someone looking after you,” you reassured him. He looked at you with an expression you couldn’t quite place, his melancholic brown eyes filled with a mixture of gratefulness, shame, and something else that took you slightly off guard. “Plus,” you continued, deciding to step out on a limb with what you were about to say.

 “You’re pretty cuddly. It could have been worse.”

Jongseob’s jaw dropped and he looked like he was about to say something, but just covered his face and dropped into a squat, a low scream muffled by his hands. You laughed triumphantly, ruffling his already-messy bleach-damaged hair. However, although you’d meant to tease him , you felt your own face heating up, and felt grateful that he wasn’t looking at you.

You went back to cooking, as Shota came out and sat on the couch, started up the gaming console, and yelled at Jongseob to come join him. Jongseob squinted his eyes at you and you stuck your tongue out at him teasingly, before he left the kitchen. 

The rest of the day went as normal, the three of you just hanging on the couch, until Shota heard his phone chime and let out a small gasp. You wondered if it was finally Keeho’s confession.

“Y/n?” he looked over at you.

“Yeah?” you answered, raising your eyebrows at him and smiling expectantly.

“Intak… wants to know if I can give him your number.”

You stared at him. Jongseob looked at Shota, then at you, brows raised. You glanced at Jongseob, then back at Shota, whose eyes were wide, waiting for your response.

 “U-uh, I mean, sure? Why not, right?” you replied. You couldn’t think of a good reason to say no. You were single, and apparently he was too (you’d hoped so, based on the signals he was putting out last night), he was attractive, really attractive. He seemed nice. 

“Yeah, I mean, it’s up to you entirely,” Shota responded, his face a blank slate. You furrowed your brows, annoyed at his lack of emotion on the matter. “Well, you know him better than I do. Do you think it’s a good idea? Are you comfortable giving him my number?”

Shota looked down and bit his thumbnail for a moment, appearing to be deep in thought. He looked back up at you and smiled brightly. “Yeah. He’s a good guy. I don’t see why not.” You glanced at Jongseob, whose face seemed to fall ever so slightly at Shota’s endorsement. But he looked away right as you caught this. “What’s the problem, Seob? You think he’s too young for me?” you teased. Intak was a couple years older than Jongseob, but still several years younger than you. 

“No!” he insisted, his ears turning pink as he scrolled on his phone casually. You eyed him suspiciously, then looked back at Shota. “Alright, just give it to him I guess.”

“Okayyy,” Shota sang, texting Intak back furiously. 

The remainder of the afternoon dragged on lazily, with the guys playing video games on the couch, and you restlessly moving from the living room to the kitchen to your bedroom, wanting to be productive but feeling too tired from the alcohol the night prior. Later that evening as you scrolled in bed, you received a text from an unknown number. You smiled and opened it, a gentle flutter in your stomach as you’d guessed correctly: Intak. 

You texted back and forth with him for a while, just light smalltalk at first. He asked how you were feeling after last night, you asked how he got home and apologized for disappearing in the middle of the movie. You left out the part about Jongseob getting sick and sleeping in your bed, wanting to protect his privacy, so you made it sound like you were the one who wasn’t feeling well. He said he thought you were really pretty, and that he’d love to take you out sometime, causing you to blush and hide under the covers even though you were completely alone in your room. 

As you drifted off to sleep, you felt giddy, but slightly off. You assumed it was just the nervousness at the prospect of talking to someone after so long. 

Yes… that had to be it.

Chapter 4: Settling Down

You and Intak had continued texting almost nonstop since that evening, and had settled on going to see a movie the next weekend, Friday night. He’d asked which movie you wanted to see – you said you didn’t care – and the both of you therefore ended up settling on an action movie that you really didn’t care for. It was, however, fun. Intak was a perfect gentleman: he picked you up, paid for and carried the snacks, and when he dropped you off, he didn’t ask to come inside. At the front door of your apartment, he did, however, lean in to kiss you. 

This caught you by surprise, but it wasn’t totally unwelcome. You closed your eyes and leaned into it. His lips were slightly chapped but soft nonetheless, and the kiss was over before you knew it; chaste, and quick. You smiled at him, your face warm against the cool spring night air. He smiled back bashfully, looking to the side and biting his lip. “Text me?” he asked. “Yeah,” you responded quietly. He touched your arm briefly before heading down the stairs, as you walked into the apartment. 

You stepped inside, the smile still plastered on your face, but the moment you walked inside, you regretted not controlling your face better: Soul and Jongseob immediately started to roast you. 

“Oooooooo, who’s got you smiling like that?” Soul yelled from the couch, wiggling all his fingers at you teasingly. Before you could control it, you could feel all the blood rush to your face and Soul started laughing maniacally. You made eye contact with Jongseob and he gave you a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, but he didn’t say anything, just looked back at the TV and giggled quietly next to Soul. 

“Leave me alone ,” you groaned, unable to stop smiling, now thoroughly embarrassed as you opened the fridge door aimlessly, mostly to make yourself seem busy. You collected your thoughts and your body suddenly noticed the constricting sensations of your date night outfit, which you couldn’t wait to get rid of. You hurried to your room and changed, coming back out in baggy sweats and a tank top, headed to the fridge, and opened a beer. 

You took a long, cold gulp of it in the kitchen, then walked over and sat down on the couch next to Jongseob who was sitting cross-legged, his loose olive-green shorts bunching past the knees, and an oversized black band t-shirt pooling in his lap. You’d noticed his dark roots had started coming in, and thought the contrast against the blonde actually looked nice. 

“So?” Jongseob asked, catching you off guard, as you turned to look at him and he was giving you a mischievous smile, his eyebrows raised. “So what?” you responded, sincerely confused. “What movie did you guys see? How was the date?” he asked, looking at you like you were crazy. For some reason, Kim Jongseob asking you how your date went made you feel strange, as butterflies threatened to break through your ribcage and you felt your face heating up again. You recovered quickly, though. 

“It was good!” you answered, trying your best to look and sound casual. “We saw that new Godzilla one, I can’t remember the name of it. Lots of carnage and explosions and mayhem, Soul would have loved it.” Soul’s eyes stayed glued to the television screen, his fingers working furiously at the video game he was playing, and whined loudly, “Dammit y/n, I really wanted to see that one!” 

“Just because I saw it doesn’t mean you can’t also see it, you little weirdo. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it,” you responded, laughing at his immature reaction. Jongseob’s eyes went back to the TV, his questions stopping there. You felt like he wanted to ask more, but didn’t want to press. Something in his demeanor tonight was confusing, and you couldn’t quite figure out what it was. But something seemed off.

The next morning you came out to the kitchen in your pajamas and saw that Jongseob was already in the dining room doing homework. It didn’t look like Soul was awake yet. “Good morning!” you greeted him cheerfully as you started the electric kettle. “Morning,” he responded, sounding heavily distracted, his back hunched as he typed furiously on his laptop. 

You knew he must be in focused-writing mode, because he was usually much friendlier when you came out, so you decided to leave him be. You popped a couple slices of whole wheat bread in the toaster and continued making your tea. Jongseob sighed audibly, catching your attention. You looked over at him, his chin propped in his hand, expression looking displeased. “Everything okay over there?” you asked cautiously. 

“Yeah,” he replied, unconvincingly. “Actually, Y/n, would you mind doing me a huge favor?” he asked, turning towards you inquisitively. You looked back at him, wondering what it could be. “Uh, I guess? What’s up?” you answered hesitantly, bringing your breakfast to the table as he angled his laptop in your direction.

“It’s this piece I’m working on for my poetry class. I keep going over it again and again, but there’s something off about it. I don’t like it. It felt different in my head, and I’m not sure what the problem is. Will you read it and let me know what you think?”

“Oh yeah, for sure,” you replied, relieved that it wasn’t really anything serious. You did a quick scroll through the document and it was pretty long, about a page and a half. You scrolled up to the top and started reading. About halfway through, you realized it was a poem about unrequited love. Something in your chest tugged. The idea of Jongseob longing for someone and them not returning his feelings made you feel a little sick to your stomach. Did this poem come from personal experience? Or was he just drawing on other inspiration, trying to come up with something for the class?

Realizing you had stopped paying attention to what the lines said, you subtly started over, but not subtly enough to avoid alerting Jongseob. “Ugh, is it that hard to get through? See, I tried to make it flow well but I’m worried I keep overthinking it and–” 

“No it’s not that,” you interrupted him, “I think I’m just still waking up. I don’t read a ton of poetry so I gotta get myself into poem-reading mode. But also…” you hesitated for a moment, “..this piece is kind of a bummer. Don’t tell me someone’s got you brokenhearted, dude.”

Jongseob flushed deeply but played it off immediately, clearing his throat and immediately replying, “Oh it’s just for the assignment, I’m drawing on a bunch of different stuff, don’t worry ‘bout it.” You laughed in response, noting how pink his face got. You weren’t convinced, but decided against pushing any further.

As you started over and continued slowly through the poem, you reached the end and realized you knew what he meant. The last bit of the piece fell a little flat, like the emotion throughout didn’t quite carry through to the end, or like something was being left out. You read the last third again, and rested your chin on your hand, fingers drumming on your cheek thoughtfully. “Okay, I see what you mean. It’s totally this last chunk. It almost feels… dishonest?”

“How do you mean?” he asked, scooting his chair next to yours, brows furrowed and angling the laptop towards him slightly and studying the screen as he strained to read the section you referenced. You tried not to react to his face suddenly being so close to yours, as you used the trackpad to highlight the beginning of the part that seemed off.

“Like, starting right here. It kinda feels like it switches to something a little too analytical. Like, I dunno, like the poem is trying too hard?” You scroll up to the beginning of the poem. “See, the way it begins and the way it flows into the middle, you’re describing a feeling in a way that feels very emotional. Like the reader can really feel what you’re feeling. There’s a certain rawness to it.” 

“Mhm, okay,” Jongseob responded, nodding his head as he continued listening to your feedback.

“But right… here,” you continued, hovering the cursor on the second page near the end, “it’s like you back away emotionally and start getting a little too smarty-pants about it. Don’t get me wrong, the writing is still really good but it just suddenly becomes so much less personal-feeling. Like in the first part of the poem you’re describing the feeling of falling in love, but then in the very last part you try to be clever about the unrequited feelings, instead of continuing with that vulnerability. And… I dunno, I guess that could be intentional and still make a lot of sense artistically, even more so, but it just doesn’t flow. It loses that rawness and just doesn’t feel as honest.”

“Mmmm,” Jongseob hummed in response. He rested his face in his hand and leaned back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other, still staring at the screen. He ran his hand through his unstyled hair, barely achieving anything as it flopped right back down into his face. “Okay, yeah, that’s good. I see what you mean. That’s super helpful. And uh, sorry to bum you out so early in the morning,” he added with a shy smile, canines peeking out just barely as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Hey, no worries, happy I could help. Your writing is, like, really good. I know I’m not great at compliments and I basically just tease you and Shota nonstop, but… you are seriously talented.”

Jongseob smiled, bowing his head shyly. “Thanks, y/n. That means a lot coming from you.” 

You fought the urge to come back with a sarcastic response and just opted for ruffling his hair and getting up from the table. In the kitchen washing your plate, you paused and turned back towards him again. “Hey, Seob?”

“Yeah?” he asked, not looking up from his laptop.

“You know you can.. Uh… like, if you need to talk about anything. Or whatever. You know I’m here, right?”

Jongseob looked up at you, his eyes wide and filled with a mixture of embarrassment and affection. “Thanks. Yeah, I guess. I appreciate that.” You smiled back at him, finished up in the kitchen, then headed to the couch to read a book. But not long after, Jongseob joined you, gently plopping down on the couch next to you. Wedging one foot on the couch to get more comfortable, he opened up a book of his own and started reading. 

Your throat felt tight and you found it difficult to focus on the words on the page, having to read the same paragraph over and over. Something about the scene made your heart feel so… full. And warm. You managed to calm down and savored the moments of peaceful parallel reading before Shota woke up to start filling the house with playful noise.

Chapter 5: Let's Go

The next couple months were mostly a blur, with Intak (and the rest of the guys, really) coming over nearly every weekend to do everything from watching movies to playing video games or board games, or sometimes just sitting around with some beers and talking shit. 

Even though spring term had begun and everyone had a mostly full course load, they all still made time to have fun on the weekends, which you respected. It’s not something you had found yourself doing when you were working on your undergrad (which led to some serious burnout), and like your past self, there was only one person in particular who ever missed these hangouts: Jongseob. 

As the year had progressed, you’d noticed that he’d become increasingly diligent with his coursework, constantly typing away on his laptop, or laying on the couch with his nose stuck in a book. On the weekends, he was the first person up and the last person you saw before going to bed, his face always lit up by his screen – which, you’d noted, had the brightness turned all the way up and would probably result in him needing glasses before he graduated. 

Meanwhile, you and Intak were casually dating at this point. But despite the dates, the constant texting, and the few late-night flings, you found yourself not feeling particularly intimate with him. You hoped he’d feel the same, because you’d hate to make things weird in the friend group. Not that Shota wasn’t already doing that with Keeho – whatever it was that they had going on; you tried not to think about it too much. But with Intak, he was such a romantic, and for now at least, you wanted things to stay casual and simple.

At the same time, you’d noticed that Jongseob had started to become a little more distant. It made sense, since he was so busy with school, and since you’d started seeing someone. But for some reason you couldn’t place, for a reason that eluded logic and that you felt deep in your gut, you didn’t like it. You’d felt like the two of you had become closer for a bit, and then he had started to withdraw. He didn’t smile as much. And he seemed so overworked. 

For that reason, on a particularly sunny Saturday, with Shota gone at an extra-long dance practice with Intak and the others, you decided to take Jongseob on a surprise picnic. 

On one of the nights that Jongseob had surprised you by staying up with everyone, you were all playing a drinking game which included a mini version of “never have I ever,” during which it was divulged that Jongseob had never gone on a picnic before. Everyone started babying and teasing him the moment he divulged this information, lamenting that his youth had been wasted on studying, although he hadn’t seemed to mind – he didn’t realize what he was missing, after all.

You’d gotten all the supplies the night before, complete with food and snacks, drinks, playing cards, and a frisbee. You didn’t own an aesthetically pleasing picnic basket and even considered buying one, but they were so expensive and you already had a cooler and other bags to carry the supplies in, so you decided to be frugal and skip it.

After taking a quick shower, you threw on some light makeup and a comfortable outfit and headed out to the living room. But shit , your heart was racing. You suddenly felt incredibly dumb, staring Jongseob down as he lounged on the couch in his pajamas, reading a book for one of his classes. He looked up, glanced down at your outfit, and blinked a couple times before saying, “Morning, Y/n. You look nice. What’s up?”

You fought the heat that crept into your face as you responded, “Get dressed, bitch, we’re going on a picnic.”

He blinked a couple more times, his mouth hanging open, then closed, before he burst out laughing. You put a hand on your hip while you waited for him to finish; you acted annoyed, but it was nice hearing him laugh so hard after how quiet he’d been lately. 

He looked back down at his book and then glanced up at you, your hand still on your hip, your eyebrows raised expectantly. “Oh shit, you’re serious. Uhh, sorry, I don’t think I have time to–”

“Yes you do,” you interrupted him, walking over and snatching the book out of his hands, making sure not to lose his place. He made a low whining noise of annoyance and threw his head back on the couch, defeated, staring back at you from under his too-long bangs. He stuck his bottom lip out and tried blowing upwards to get them out of his face, but they just landed right back in the same spot, covering up his eyes again. 

“Seob, you’ve been working yourself to death lately. I know you have a lot to do, but you’ve gotta take a break every now and then.”

“I do take breaks!”

“Doom scrolling on your phone in between homework sessions isn’t a break,” you retorted, and he rolled his eyes. You continued, “You need to go outside. Bring your work if you have to, but you’ve gotta get some fresh air and relax at least a little bit.”

At this suggestion, his face softened as he appeared to realize you weren’t going to let him get out of this. “Okay, fine,” he moaned, standing up from the couch as he headed towards Shota’s room to get dressed. “Hurry up,” you yelled down the hall at him as you started packing everything into the cooler. 

He came back out after just a minute, dressed in a white oversized long-sleeve button-up, some denim shorts so baggy and long that they might as well have been pants, and a pair of white high-top sneakers. Your eyes drifted downwards and noticed nearly half the bottom buttons on his shirt were left undone, and narrowed your eyes, wondering if it was on purpose or if he’d only half dressed himself amidst his morning sleepiness. Before you had the chance to interject, he pocketed his phone, sweeping a portion of the shirt aside, clearly aware of its unbuttoned state. Weirdo , you thought stubbornly, shouldering the cooler. 

“You ready?”

“Let’s go,” he responded with a sweet smile, his book bag slung over his shoulder. He’d left his hair mostly unstyled so it hung limply around his neck and nearly covered his eyes. You envied him for how effortlessly cute he looked – now, and all the time – especially when you always had to make an effort to look put-together. 

As the two of you got into your old reliable Honda and started heading to the park near your apartment complex, your mouth went dry as it dawned on you that you and Jongseob never really went anywhere together without Shota. You took a nervous sip out of your water bottle. You’d been so confident about it before, so adamant in your mind that it wouldn’t be weird, but you found yourself struggling to come up with what to talk about, so you turned on the radio and both of you listened together in silence. Jongseob stared at his phone for most of the drive casually, and you wondered if he felt as awkward as you did. Probably not, you thought, as you breathed a sigh of relief once you approached the parking lot for the park. 

“You ever been here?” you asked him as you pulled the cooler out of your trunk. “Nope, never have,” he responded as he scanned the area, taking it all in. The park was well-maintained, boasting multiple healthy and shady trees, lush green grass, and even a duck pond off to one side. There were picnic tables scattered about, and a walking path, but you decided to spread out the patterned blanket underneath one of your favorite shady trees. 

He plopped down cross-legged on the blanket as you set down the cooler, opened the lid, and started setting everything out. In just a few minutes, you had a fully stocked charcuterie board ready to go, along with sparkling strawberry lemonade and a variety of sweets on the side. You knew Jongseob didn’t like bread very much, so you’d skipped the baguette that you normally would have gotten and opted instead for crackers, cheese, cured meats, pickled vegetables, and everything in between. 

As you set it all out, you felt a sudden rush of shame at the lengths you’d go to prepare something like this just for Jongseob, and realized that it would probably be best not to tell Shota – he’d be way too jealous. You reluctantly looked up at Jongseob and his eyes were wide and shining, glancing from the food up to you. “Y/n, this is crazy. I mean, it looks so good though. You should at least let me pay you back for some of it.” 

“Nah, bro, you’re good,” you responded as nonchalantly as you could, avoiding eye contact and filling a mini plate with food. You poured him a clear plastic cup of lemonade and handed it to him, and once your eyes met his, he continued. “Why, though? Why are you doing this for me? Please don’t get the wrong idea,” he immediately added as you opened your mouth to respond, and he continued, “I just feel bad. This is really nice. Thank you.”

“It’s really okay, please don’t feel bad. I just wanted to have a picnic,” you lied through your teeth, “and I knew you’d be laying around at my house so I wanted some company.”

“Oh, so I’m here to fulfill your own selfish purposes, huh?” he laughed, sipping the lemonade. You grinned arrogantly, but couldn’t keep up the charade fully. “Well, yes, partially. But it also seems like you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. I know you’re busy, but the way you’ve been so withdrawn this past month… it just…” you thought for a moment about what you were going to say next, his eyes on you curiously as you rubbed the back of your neck and looked out to the pond. “The way you’re constantly working and rarely taking a break these days, it makes me think of my more stressful undergrad days. I didn’t have anyone looking out for me and I got really burnt out. I didn’t know how to rest without feeling guilty.” 

At that last comment, Jongseob’s face flushed slightly pink and he tried to suppress an embarrassed smile. You could tell you’d struck a chord, so you continued as he shoved an entire macaron into his mouth, seemingly now comfortable with being spoiled. “I understand the pressure of feeling like everything you do has to be your absolute best. But trust me, it doesn’t. And I know that seems so backwards, but it will pay off in the long run if you make some small sacrifices to protect your sanity.” He chewed quietly, contemplating your words. 

When he looked up at you, you gave him a reassuring smile and you both relaxed into a comfortable silence while you ate. After a few minutes, Jongseob said, so quietly you could barely hear him, “Thanks, y/n. I don’t really have anyone else looking out for me like this. I don’t say it often enough, but I appreciate you, so much.” Your throat went dry at the compliment and you started coughing and reached for your drink. Your coughing fit died down and when you looked up at him, he was staring at you, holding back a laugh. You both burst out laughing in that moment, and you felt his barriers come tumbling down. 

“Why the fuck are we so bad at sincerity? I swear to god, every time I’m around you and Shota I feel like I have the emotional maturity of a middle schooler,” Jongseob admitted, voice raised, and you started laughing harder, feeling relief as the tension of the situation began to melt. 

To further get the jitters out, you felt like now would be a good time for frisbee so you pulled it out of your bag, pulled Jongseob up to his feet, and started throwing the disc back and forth. The game eventually ended prematurely when Jongseob accidentally threw the frisbee into the duck pond, far enough into it that there was no way of retrieving it. He apologized profusely and insisted he would buy you a new one as you both threw yourselves onto the blanket in the shaded area once again. 

“Damn, Jongseob, I knew you weren’t much of an athlete but I didn’t know it was that bad,” you teased him relentlessly, since every time he had thrown you the frisbee before losing it in the pond, you had to run every which way to retrieve it since he was hopeless at throwing it straight. He laid back and lifted his arms to cover his face and groaned, pushing his bangs upwards and out of his face, which was now coated in a light sheen of sweat. He took a deep breath, apologizing again. 

He then turned onto his side with surprising quickness, his head propped up on his fist, and trained his eyes on your face. “So, you and Intak? How’s that going, if you don’t mind me asking?” His face lost confidence with each moment of silence you spent thinking about how to reply. “Oh also, you can tell me to fuck off since it’s none of my business and you are in no way obligated to–”

“Oh my god stop , it’s fine,” you said with an appreciative smile and pushed him gently. “Uhm, me and Intak,” you mused, looking away thoughtfully, crossing your legs the opposite direction and snacking on some of the leftover food. “Things are going fine, I guess. No complaints. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” he replied swiftly, his mouth downturned and shaking his head nonchalantly. “Was just curious. So he’s a good boyfriend? You’re happy, right?”

For some reason these questions knocked the breath out of you and despite how normal they were, you suddenly felt conflicted about how to answer them, so you just replied automatically, “Oh, yeah, he’s great. We’re great. Everything’s great.”

“Cool! Yeah, that’s good” Jongseob answered, pressing the issue no further, his eyebrows raised inoffensively, attempting to show you he truly didn’t want to be nosy. He rarely asked you stuff like this, so it had caught you off guard, but you were particularly disturbed by the fact that your first instinct was to feel conflicted, rather than confident, when answering his questions in the way you had. 

You truly had no complaints about Intak. He was kind, funny, and very thoughtful. He did everything right, he was considerate, and he never made you feel uncomfortable. So why, why , did you start to feel that funny feeling in your gut when Jongseob asked you about it?

“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that, I was just trying to make conversation, are you okay?” Jongseob asked, concern straining his features. You realized you’d started staring off into nowhere and biting the inside of your cheek nervously, and felt immediately regret that you’d probably made him feel like he upset you. “Oh shit, I was just zoning out, you’re totally fine,” you responded, shaking your head vehemently, waving your hands back and forth erratically. 

“Okay bro, as long as you’re sure,” he said, not looking convinced, but picked up one of his books and started reading, one arm up under his head for support. You’d brought one of your own books as well because you knew he’d probably want to spend part of the picnic getting at least a little work done, and laid on your stomach parallel to him, propped up on your elbows. 

It had been only around ten minutes before you heard a faint snoring coming from right next to you. You smiled, turning quietly to find Jongseob’s book resting on his face. You took a moment to take in the scene, noting the way his shirt had ridden up just enough to show his belly button, the tan skin of his stomach smooth and soft looking. One hand rested on his chest and you were surprised that it, too, looked very soft, his fingers long and delicate.

You stifled a giggle. The guy probably hadn’t done a day’s labor in his entire life. No, his work was all done with that wrinkly brain - his hands completely callous-free. But it wasn’t just that. They were so…pretty. He was pretty. You were only just now realizing this, only just now seeing him as more than your little brother’s friend. You felt oddly guilty entertaining these thoughts, but there was no harm in looking, right? 

You decided to ignore your conscience as you laid on your side facing him and stared at the way his chest rose and fell with each soft snore. You felt warmth deep on your body, spreading through each limb. You were glad he’d agreed to come on this picnic with you. You were glad that the two of you seemed to be becoming actual friends, connected by more than just Shota. You were glad. You were…

… waking up to the calming scent of a bright, botanical, masculine cologne, your face touching something, your arm around someone, you were …

…

…

… you were waking up turned on your right side, your face pushed up against Jongseob’s arm, your left hand resting on his chest. You sucked in a sharp breath and sat up in a panic, accidentally pushing on his chest for leverage and eliciting a fit of coughing from him as he laughed at your reaction. Your stomach hurt and your heart was racing. 

You sat up, disoriented, and looked around. It was still light out, but you couldn’t tell what time it was. You turned back towards Jongseob and he was in the same position lying down, eyes trained on his book, but now suppressing a devilish smile. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” you apologized, feeling a shameful heat rise to your face. “How long was I out for?” 

He looked over at you, his face neutral as he looked up to think for a moment. Eyes back on you, he responded, “Not that long, but I’m not 100% sure since you were sleeping when I woke up. Don’t worry about it. You’re pretty cuddly, so it could have been worse.”

Your jaw dropped in shock, flabbergasted that he would use your own line against you, and he laughed, a positively evil twinkle in his eye and his crooked canines on full display. He was such a little shit sometimes, but you guessed it was karma for teasing him that one time he drunkenly slept in your bed. Your face got warmer at the memory, and you did your best to suppress it as you smacked him playfully in response, pretending to be mad. He didn’t fight back though, bunching up his shoulders and cringing away from your attack as he continued reading.

Not long after, the both of you packed everything up and headed back to the apartment. The drive home was quiet, but comfortably so. You were surprised at how peaceful you felt, even after the embarrassment of falling asleep on him in the park. Jongseob was so different from Shota, especially when the two of them weren’t together, and it dawned on you that you deeply enjoyed his company. Being around him was just so easy and comfortable. 

The two of you walked into your apartment to find Shota back home, and your stomach did a little flip as you saw that Keeho and Intak had come over as well. Intak immediately jumped up to help you with the cooler, fussing enough that you couldn’t fight back, while Shota interrogated you from the couch, demanding to know where the two of you had been.

“Oh, y’know me, just got done taking Jongseob’s picnic virginity,” you responded flippantly, and as soon as the words passed your lips, you desperately wanted to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Intak’s face fell in confusion, contorted in grief, Shota looked at you, completely disgusted, and Keeho burst out with an ear-piercing string of laughter. You looked at Jongseob, whose face was unreadable but visibly embarrassed, and as Keeho’s laughing slowed down he said “Aww, baby’s first picnic! Cute!”

Intak’s face relaxed in relief as he said “Oh, that’s what you meant?” You shrugged, and said “Yeah, sorry,”  feeling just as confused about it as he was. Why did you say the dumbest shit sometimes? You looked over at Shota with pleading eyes and he just shook his head at you but was finally smiling, as he turned his focus back to the video game that he had been playing when you walked in. “Well, did you have fun?” Intak asked as he put his arms around you and pressed his lips to your forehead. You should have found the gesture sweet, but for some reason it felt oddly territorial, the vibes not quite feeling right. You slid out of his hold and smiled sweetly. “Yeah, the weather was great today. It was super relaxing. How was dance for y’all?” you replied, making smalltalk as Jongseob settled on the couch next to Shota, his face still unreadable. 

You kept your eyes on Jongseob and as he looked over at you and offered a weak smile that didn’t reach his eyes, Intak put his arms around you once again from the side this time, and kissed the top of your head. “It was good, just exhausting,” he said, leaning into your body. 

You kept your eyes on Jongseob’s, and he stared back at you for what felt like the longest moments of your life, and then he was looking back at the TV, and Intak was showing you the moves they went over in dance practice that day, and your heart felt weird in your chest.

Chapter 6: Please Go

Knock knock knock!

The sound jarred you from your concentration, nearly causing you to poke your eye out with your mascara wand. “ What ?” you screamed in the direction of your closed bedroom door. “Can I come in?” you heard Shota yell. Weird, you thought, since he rarely tried coming into your room. 

“Sure?” you responded, confusion in your voice, and you heard the door open and latch gently behind him. He shuffled through your bedroom to where you were standing, leaning towards your bathroom mirror and working on your eye makeup. “What’s up?” you asked him without taking your eyes off your own reflection, face probably looking ridiculous as you made that ugly expression everyone makes when putting on mascara.

“Would you, uh… can I… um… well, I was just thinking…” Shota stumbled over his words, and sounded unusually nervous, which caught your attention. You paused and looked over to see that his cheeks looked hot, and your protective instincts took over. “Hey, man, what is it? You okay?” 

He laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head. “Yeah I’m fine, it’s nothing bad. I just wanted to know… if you would mind… helping me with some makeup?”

Your expression went from momentarily shocked to a devious smile, and you couldn’t help walking over and hugging him. “Of course I wouldn’t mind,” you responded, arms wrapped around him tightly. “Go grab a chair from the dining room.”

That night, you and the guys were going clubbing. Clubbing , of all things. It had been Intak’s idea, an idea that Shota and Keeho were both fond of, but you were surprised that Jiung, Jongseob, and Theo had agreed to go. They were much more reluctant to go out, preferring to stay inside most of the time, away from large crowds. You found your own preferences falling somewhere in between the two groups, but despite your nervousness about going dancing with a bunch of, well, dancers , you were excited to see what the night would bring. 

Shota dragged a chair into your cramped bathroom and sat down in it, his hands resting in his lap, looking up at you with the most pitiful puppy eyes imaginable. Your heart melted at the sight. “So,” you began carefully, not wanting to scare him away, “what did you have in mind?”

“I dunno,” he replied, shrugging and looking at himself in the mirror.

“Are we thinking full face, or something more natural, or something more grungy–”

“That one. Grungy. Just maybe some dark stuff around the eyes,” he responded, quicker than you expected. You smiled, pulling out some eyeliner, brushes, and a couple other things you wanted to possibly experiment with. 

Not long after, Shota was looking in the mirror at his fully smoked-out eyes and trying in vain to suppress a smile. Your reflection smiled at his as he made eye contact in the mirror with you. “Not to toot my own horn, but you look really good,” you said with a wink. “But there’s one other thing I want to try if you’ll let me.” He sat down eagerly, awaiting the next step. You rummaged through your makeup and found a pinky-nude lip stain and some thick, glittery gloss, and applied them to his lips in that order. 

When he looked in the mirror this time, his eyes widened in shock. “What do you think?” you said quickly, “we can remove it if it’s not really the vibe.”

“No no, I love it,” Shota responded, angling his face back and forth in front of the mirror to catch the shimmer from the lip gloss. “It feels weird, but I like the way it looks. Thank you,” he said with a smile that was uncharacteristically shy. “No need to thank me, dude. You’re so damn pretty though, everyone’s gonna want a piece of you.” He laughed, pushing you gently, denying it adamantly. “Whatever… now go get dressed!” you demanded, and he scurried out of your room, a smile still plastered on his face.

You finished your makeup and threw on a pair of mid-rise baggy jeans, the waistband of your briefs peeking out of them, and paired it with a white crop top and oversized leather jacket. Maybe a little heavy for spring but you could take the jacket off if it got too hot. You looked yourself over in the mirror, and, as satisfied as you were going to be, headed out to the living room; it sounded like someone had arrived, anyway. 

Everyone had agreed to meet up at the apartment, and the first person who arrived was Intak. He was dressed in black jeans and a black fitted t-shirt tucked in, a silver belt buckle adorning his hips. His hair was styled immaculately, as usual. He looked, in a word, perfect. You greeted him with a hug and a quick peck on the cheek. You exchanged compliments and had begun to casually talk about the day when Jongseob came out of Shota’s room, dressed in an outfit that was simultaneously so inherently him , but also seemed like it might have been outside his comfort zone? You wondered about this, fighting the blush that crept into your cheeks.

He was wearing a white fitted t-shirt with red accents, low-rise dark-red baggy pants, and white sneakers. However, the pants were so low-rise and the t-shirt was so small that it exposed the tan skin of his tummy, just above his waistband. You knew he was usually fond of baggy clothes and had never seen him wear a shirt that was so, well, revealing. The sleeves hugged his small arms and the rest of it accentuated his narrow waist in a way that felt so feminine, and contrasted with the masculine confidence with which he walked up to you, hands shoved in his pockets casually. His hair was wavy and disheveled, no doubt an effortless-looking style that, in fact, had to have taken a considerable amount of effort. 

“Nice fit, bro!” you said, trying to act normal. He gave you a blank look in response, and just the shadow of a smile. “Thanks bro, you too,” he responded, his voice flat. You tried not to care, but it hurt. Jongseob had been distant since the picnic, which confused you, since it had seemed like you’d grown closer at that time. The image of him making eye contact with you while Intak kissed you flashed into your mind but you shoved it away. The distance could be caused by anything, and for all you knew, he was going through something that had nothing to do with you.

The rest of the crew finally showed up, including Keeho, who absolutely fawned over Shota’s makeup, hyping him up in a way that made you realize why he’d asked for it. Your heart swelled, and you were suddenly aware of how excited you were for the night out with everyone.

The club that Keeho had chosen was loud, colorful, and chic. The decorations were beautiful, you could feel the music in your gut, and the drinks were concerningly strong. You made a mental note to pace yourself, but didn’t hesitate to take a couple warm-up shots with the group before you all headed to the dance floor. You danced with Intak, embarrassed at your lack of any real skills, but encouraged by the warmth of the alcohol that had loosened both your body and inhibitions. He was incredibly easy to follow though, despite how fluidly he moved. 

Meanwhile, Jiung and Theo had started a dance battle in the middle of the floor. Jongseob was watching them, drink in hand, fully entertained, and Shota and Keeho were … well, you thought you’d known where they were, but it took you a moment to spot them. They were off to the side of the crowd, and your jaw dropped at the way Shota was grinding into Keeho; you looked away and laughed to yourself. You were glad that they were clearly having a good time. 

After a couple more songs, you told Intak you were tired and went to sit at the bar, and he went to join Jiung’s and Theo’s dance battle. Not long after, Jongseob came to sit next to you. “Hey, stranger,” you yelled over the music at him, and he winced, giving you a tight smile. “Hey. Are we good?” you asked, abandoning the hesitation that you might have had a couple drinks ago. 

“Yeah, we’re fine,” he responded, shrugging. “Why?” 

Your eyebrows knit together, slightly frustrated at his aloofness. “You just seem, I dunno. Like you’re avoiding me, lately. Did I do something to piss you off?”

He sighed, looking at his drink. “No, it’s not that,” he responded, without offering further explanation as he continued staring into his drink.  

“Aw, c’mon, you can tell me” you urged, pushing his shoulder gently, but he shied away from your touch. “Hey y/n, knock it off. I’m not some kid that you can just push around,” he snapped back, but immediately looked horrified. “I’m sorry, I didn’t–”

“Is that how you think I view you?” you interrupted, unable to mask the hurt in your voice. 

“No!” he replied immediately, then continued, “Well, fuck. I…” he sighed, rubbing his face, clearly exasperated. “I dunno… I guess after the way everyone babied me when they found out I hadn’t been on a picnic, and then the way they responded after you took me on one, it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Your face fell, and you felt yourself sobering up immediately as you realized exactly what he meant, and why he felt like this. How could you be so stupid and insensitive? You opened your mouth to reply but Jongseob’s face went from sadness to panic as his gaze focused on something past you and he started to stand from the barstool. You looked behind you but didn’t see anything, and snapped back towards him. “What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Shota, I swear I just saw him rushing to the bathroom, I should–”

“Yeah, please go,” you responded as he abandoned his drink and jogged briskly around the corner. You sipped your own drink, feeling your heart sink. Not only was Jongseob mad at you, but now Shota was probably sick and you’d have to take care of him tonight. You groaned, pounding the last of your drink and promptly ordering another.

“Damn, long week?” a familiar voice asked from your other side, as you looked over to see Theo joining you at the bar. He looked gorgeous tonight, which was really just his baseline. He’d worn a pair of fitted black jeans and a beige sweater that showed off his defined collarbones; he’d also been growing his black hair out this past year and it reached his shoulders at this point. He definitely intimidated you the most out of all of Shota’s dance friends, you thought, his dark eyes piercing into you as he awaited your response. 

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” you replied dryly, sipping your drink as you noticed a text notification pop up on your phone, which was sitting on the bar. “Ah shit, sorry Theo, I’m not trying to be rude but I need to check this,” you said as he waved, dismissing you. 

js: hey, it sounds like something might have happened with shota and keeho? idk the details yet, he won’t tell me which is p weird. :/ but he’s crying. i’m tryna comfort him but he won’t let me in the stall :(

You pocketed your phone without another thought. “Goddammit, I gotta go see what’s going on with Shota. Would you mind watching my drink?” you asked Theo, to which he wordlessly replied, pulling your drink towards his. 

You speedwalked around the corner, stressed beyond belief. Shota was crying ? About Keeho? What the hell happened?

You burst into the men’s bathroom past the urinals to where Jongseob had his face up against a stall door, trying to coax Shota into talking to him. But Shota just continued saying “Please, go.” You heard sniffles coming from behind the stall door and ignored the looks you got from a couple of the men at urinals; you didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything at this moment, other than what had happened to your little brother.

“Shota? It’s me, can you let me in, buddy?” you asked as softly as you could, your voice strained with worry. The sniffles paused for a couple moments, then the door quietly unlatched, opening up to reveal Shota’s tear-streaked face, his makeup an absolute mess. His lip quivered as you stepped into the stall and pulled him into a hug and held him while he sobbed quietly. You looked over at Jongseob who gave you a knowing look, as he shut the door behind the two of you and, you were sure, stood watch.

“Shhh,” you cooed, stroking Shota’s disheveled hair. “You’re okay, you’re okay.” He whimpered in response, and after a minute or two of being held by you, his breathing finally steadying, he said, his voice still shaky, “I’m so stupid.”

“Shota, don’t say that, you’re anything but stupid. Annoying, yes, chaotic, even more so, but stupid… not even close,” you retorted, pulling away and wiping his tears away but smudging his makeup even more. “Do you want to tell me why you feel like that? Will you tell me what happened?”

He looked to the side, clearly embarrassed, and his lower lip trembled again. His shoulders slumped, as he explained the way he’d been dancing with Keeho until Jiung and Intak found them and commented on the way they’d been dancing together. 

“Yeah, he’s all over me, it’s so cute; he must like me or something,” Keeho had told them, laughing it off casually, likely not realizing that Shota was just barely in earshot. This was all Shota had needed to hear to know that not only did Keeho not return his feelings, but to add insult to injury, Shota had made a complete fool of himself.

“I thought… that I’d read the situation right. Why would he dance with me like that if he didn’t feel the same?” Shota asked, face crumpling again, and you pulled him into another embrace as he cried. Meanwhile, your stomach was in knots, and a hot rage burned in your chest. You squeezed him tightly, eyes starting to wet. “You stay here, I’ll be back,” you said with a scowl that you couldn’t hide, and Shota immediately knew what was happening.

“Wait, y/n, please don’t – I don’t want to –” he pleaded, but that’s all you heard as you stormed out the bathroom door and back into the noisy club. You were disoriented, the stress of your earlier conversation with Jongseob entirely eclipsed by the protective wrath coursing through your body at the knowledge that someone, Shota’s friend , of all people, had made him feel so rotten. Had laughed at him, humiliated him.

As you stormed towards the dance floor, you heard Shota far behind you. He was clearly trying to catch up to you and stop you, and it sounded like Jongseob was following close behind him, but you were too angry to care. Shota had always been such a pacifist. You had to protect him, because he wouldn’t protect himself. You wouldn’t allow him to be treated this way, even if he didn’t have the strength to fight back.

You spotted Keeho casually dancing with the others. “Hey, asshole,” you yelled at him, and he whipped around towards you, face full of confusion, likely not even entirely sure you were talking to him. But before you got within enough range of him to really let him have it, you felt your foot go out from under you as you accidentally stepped into someone’s spilled drink, and everything went black.

Chapter 7: Don't Go (pt. 2)

You woke to the beeping sound matching up to your heartbeat, and immediately noticed a dull ache in your head as you slowly opened your eyes. It took a few moments for the room to come into view but the first thing you noticed was Shota draped over the left side of the bed, seemingly asleep… not your own bed, though. A hospital bed? You looked to the other side of the room and saw another familiar figure sitting in a chair, staring at his phone, blonde curls shading his face as he slumped forward. 

You sighed, groaning quietly as you slightly adjusted your position on the bed and his head snapped up to look at you, eyes looking exhausted. In less than a moment though, he was on his feet, hovering over you but clearly unsure of what to do. 

“Y/n, hey, how are you feeling?” Jongseob said, his eyes wide, full of fear. “Do you need anything? Water? Are you in pain?”

You smiled at his concern. “Nah, my head hurts but I think I’m okay. What the hell happened?”

“You slipped,” he replied, mouth downturned. “Your head hit the floor. Hard. Be careful of the left side of your forehead, they had to give you some stitches.” You instinctively reached your hand up and gently touched the bandage covering the wound, wincing at the sensitivity. “H-hey, I said be careful,” he said, snatching your hand gently away from your head. 

In that moment, the door opened quietly and Intak peeked in. You looked back at him and smiled, releasing Jongseob’s hand, and Jongseob stepped away from the bed, allowing space for Intak to come closer and see you. 

“Oh my god, hi baby,” he said, his face marred with worry as he brushed your hair back gently and kissed the side of your head opposite the bandage. “How are you feeling?” 

“Head hurts but otherwise I feel alright,” you replied, noting out of the corner of your eye that Jongseob jolted like he remembered something, and rushed out of the room. “What happened?” you asked, trying to remember what had led up to your head hitting the dance floor. 

“Well, it looked like you were on your way to kick Keeho’s ass,” Intak began, and at the mention of his name, it all came flooding back to you and you stopped hearing the rest of his words. Jongseob being upset with you, then Shota crying in the bathroom. What Keeho had said about him to the others. The blind rage you’d felt as you marched out to confront him.

“Where is that fucker?!” you demanded, sitting up a little, but moving gently enough not to wake Shota. Intak grabbed your shoulders and rubbed them in an attempt to calm you, looking worried that you were going to leap up out of bed. You glanced at the IV in your arm and considered removing it. “Don’t,” Intak interrupted your thoughts, giving you a pitying but understanding smile. “Everything’s fine, we got it worked out. Keeho’s been, uh, spoken to,” he said, giving you a nervous smile. 

“What? How? No, it needs to be me, I need to—“ 

“Jongseob did it,” he cut in. You blinked once. Twice. “I know,” he said with a smile. “I was shocked too, but damn. I didn’t know he could yell that loud.” Jongseob had yelled at Keeho? You asked Intak to explain from the beginning, and he told you that while Shota had ridden in the ambulance with you, Jiung had driven everyone else to the hospital. 

The moment Keeho, sitting in the front seat, had made a comment about you being clumsy, it was like something had cracked in Jongseob. He had immediately started laying into Keeho, telling him that this situation was his fault, that if he hadn’t been flirting with Shota and then talking shit about him behind his back, you wouldn’t have come rushing out like that to confront him. 

Your heart swelled as you listened to Intak’s story. You couldn’t remember a time when you’d ever heard Jongseob shout in anger. The fact that he’d done it for Shota’s sake didn’t surprise you, but for your sake? You felt the edges of your psyche softening and your muscles relaxing. 

Intak continued, recounting that after they arrived, Jongseob ordered Keeho to make it up to Shota, which had apparently happened. Once it had been confirmed that you were safe and stable, Keeho admitted to Shota in front of everyone in the empty hospital waiting room that he’d had a crush on Shota and that he was just trying to look cool in front of them, and he asked Shota’s forgiveness. 

“I’ve never seen Keeho do something like that and honestly never thought I’d see the day, but I think he legitimately thought the little guy was going to kill him,” he said, laughing, and inwardly you winced. Little guy. Baby’s first picnic. You reminded yourself to have a conversation with Jongseob later and apologize, realizing much too late that he probably hated people talking about him, and to him, like that. 

“Yeah, well that ‘little guy’ has bigger balls than the rest of that group if he’s the only one who stood up to Keeho like that,” you replied, your tone sharper than you’d intended. Intak looked taken aback and a little embarrassed, despite the fact that he wasn’t even involved. “Yeah, of course, I agree,” he said, flushing slightly. “What Keeho did… that was really messed up.”

“Is Shota okay? How did he respond?” you asked, looking down at his sleeping form affectionately. Intak replied, “He seemed really embarrassed at first and the whole thing was painfully awkward, but they went off to talk privately and came back hand in hand, so I think he’s okay.” He winked. You smiled and sighed, feeling conflicted but relieved. 

The next moment, there was a knock on the door and a doctor walked in with a nurse and started asking you questions, so Intak backed out of their way. You noticed Jongseob had come in behind them. Did he leave to tell them that you’d woken up? 

Intak squeezed your hand before stepping out of the room, wanting to give the medical team space to work. Your doctor began a neuro exam, explaining that it seemed you’d sustained a mild concussion but that your scans had otherwise been normal. After completing the exam, the doctor left the room, but before the nurse left,  she gestured towards Jongseob, and said, “You should be grateful to have people like this in your life. This young man stayed by your side constantly, making notes about any activity he noticed while you were asleep. Any time your vitals seemed the slightest bit off, he came running out to us and asked us to check on you. Plus, he knew all your allergies and even some of your meds. He’s a keeper,” she said with a wink, exiting the room. 

Jongseob looked at the wall, face clearly burning up at the mistaken suggestion that he, rather than Intak, was your boyfriend. “Seob…You did all that? For me?” you asked, feeling your throat tighten with emotion. He fixed his gaze on you, face full of a mixture of emotions that you couldn’t place. Sadness? Relief? Affection? 

“Of course I did,” he said, offering no further explanation, eyes still boring into yours. 

You cleared your throat nervously. “I also heard what you did for Shota. What you said to Keeho.” 

“Yeah. It needed to be said,” Jongseob replied, a hint of anger in his voice that didn’t reach his eyes. 

You reached a hand towards him and he raised an eyebrow inquisitively, but placed his hand in yours, and in the next moment, you were sitting forward and pulling him towards you into a tight embrace. His arms hovered for a moment before wrapping around your back gently. You buried your face in his chest, eyes squeezed shut, and held him there. 

“Thank you,” you whispered after a long pause. He didn’t respond for several moments and you started to worry, but finally he replied, his voice low and soft, “It was nothing.” 

As you released him, Shota began to stir. He looked up at you with sleep still in his eyes, face looking ghastly, makeup smeared even more than before. “Y/n, you’re awake,” he said with a sleepy smile. “How are you feeling? Are you doing okay?” 

The questions were getting repetitive but you couldn’t say you minded. You’d felt very loved since the moment you awoke. “Yeah, I’m doing fine. Just a mild concussion, but otherwise all my tests apparently came back normal,” you replied, giving him a reassuring smile. 

“Good, you scared the shit out of me,” he said, leaning over to hug you. “Is everyone still out there?” he asked, looking at Jongseob. “Yeah, I think so. I know Intak’s out there and last I checked, the rest of them were as well.” 

“Wait, what? Tell them to go home and get some sleep!” you insisted, not realizing that Jiung, Theo, and Keeho were all outside the room as well. Jongseob laughed. “They’ve all been too worried to leave; plus, they feel horrible about the entire situation… especially Keeho.” You narrowed your eyes at this last comment and looked at Shota, who blushed and looked down sheepishly. “Yeah, you’d better bet he’s on thin ice, Shota,” you scolded, to which he nodded, understanding. “But if what Intak said was true, I’ll withhold my judgment. For now! If he hurts you again, it’s game over.” 

Shota nodded again but couldn’t control the shy smile that had overtaken his face. “Okay, enough, go see him,” you said, giving him a little push from the bed, and he blushed, walking out of the room. You turned towards Jongseob, who suddenly looked like he felt incredibly out of place, and he turned to leave. “I’ll, uh, go see if Intak wants to–”

“Don’t go. Please,” you argued, grabbing his hand and stopping him in his tracks. He stared at you for a moment, before pulling his chair up to the side of the bed and sitting. “Okay,” he replied quietly. You cleared your throat. “About what you said to me earlier at the bar–”

“Just forget it,” he interrupted you, firmly but not rudely. “I feel like such an asshole for moping so long the way I did. It’s just stupid. It doesn’t matter. You just need to work on feeling better, so please don’t worry about me.” 

You could tell he’d been ruminating about this, the way it all came spilling out. “Okay, I hear you, but I’m still gonna say this,” you replied, grabbing his hand and forcing him to look at you. “You are one of the coolest, most intelligent, and most thoughtful and talented people I know,” you began. His cheeks turned pink and his eyes darted to the side, but you continued, “It is never okay for you to feel like anyone around you is belittling you. If you ever feel like that again, I am begging you to please tell me.”

His eyes searched the room, looking anywhere but yours, before finally making eye contact. “Okay, fine, whatever you say,” he responded reluctantly, and you gave his hand a firm squeeze before letting it go. You laid your head back and took a deep breath, suddenly feeling drowsy. You looked at the clock and it read 4:18am. “Dude, you should get outta here, go get some sleep. I’ll just get a taxi when they release me” you insisted, feeling the heaviness of his fatigue from where you laid. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head adamantly, then propped his arms on the side of the bed and rested his head there. It wasn’t long before sleep took him, the room soon filled with nothing but the sound of the hospital monitor beeping and the sound of his light snoring. 

Before you knew it, you were being woken up by the nurse with your discharge paperwork; you were finally getting to go home. He went over the instructions with you and made sure you understood that you needed to take it easy, get lots and lots of rest, and come back to the hospital if you developed any concerning symptoms. Jongseob was awake at this point as well, no doubt listening intently to the nurse’s advice. 

You sat up and sat on the edge of the bed carefully, hospital gown bunching uncomfortably around your lap, and you looked around the room as Jongseob grabbed the plastic bag with your belongings that he’d stowed underneath his chair and handed it to you. You thanked him and went to stand, but felt a little dizzy when your feet touched the ground and needed to brace yourself on the bed. He held his hands out for you to steady yourself and you laughed, embarrassed. “They said this would be normal at first but damn, how annoying.” 

“Yeah,” Jongseob responded, face concerned. “Wait here, don’t move,” he said as he left the room in a rush. You held onto the edge of the bed for support. A few moments later, Intak came in, eyes wide as he approached you. “Jongseob said you… needed some help?” he said, blushing slightly, and that’s when you realized: he’d asked Intak to come in and help you get dressed. You laughed, face turning red, and nodded. “Yeah, sorry… I got up to get dressed but it looks like I’m still a bit wobbly on my feet.” 

He nodded agreeably and helped keep you steady while you got dressed, taking special care not to stare; truly, such a gentleman. As he walked you out, his arm hooked in yours, you took in the sight of the waiting room: Jiung was sleeping in a chair, head leaned back and arms crossed; Jongseob was showing Theo something on his phone; and Keeho and Shota were sleeping in each other’s arms, Shota straddling his lap like a baby. Entirely inappropriate for a medical setting, but it was the middle of the night and nobody’d come to make them stop. You figured they routinely saw much worse than this.

Jongseob and Theo awoke the others once they saw you walking out and they all started fretting over you, Keeho standing back nervously. Once you made eye contact with him though, he bowed his head deeply. “I’m really sorry, y/n.” Keeho was usually so goofy and unserious that it made you uncomfortable seeing him so serious, but you let him continue. “I feel like this was partially my fault, so I really wanna make it up to you. Whatever I can do, whatever you need, I’m–”

“You’re fine, just be good to my brother, or else you’ll find out what I was gonna do if I’d made it across the dance floor,” you said with a wry smile. He gulped, nodding and bowing his head again. “Yeah yeah, I hear you. Understood,” he responded as Shota subtly grabbed one of Keeho’s hands in both of his own, and snuggled up against him. Your smile softened. You were just relieved that they’d finally figured out their bullshit.

Back home, Intak tried convincing you to let him stay the night but you insisted you were fine; Shota would be there and Jongseob already planned on spending the night as well. Intak seemed disappointed but didn’t push the issue. “Text me in the morning, okay? I just need to know you’re okay,” he pleaded, and you agreed, kissing him sweetly. 

You thanked Jiung for driving everyone home in his exhausted state, and thanked him, Theo, and Keeho for staying at the hospital to make sure you were okay. You’d never felt so cared for in your whole life and although you felt incredibly guilty, you couldn’t deny some buried part of yourself relished the attention. 

Shota and Jongseob helped you up the stairs, Shota to your side and Jongseob behind both of you. Once inside, they followed you around to the point that it was almost becoming too much to bear. You were starting to feel more steady on your feet and less nauseous, but they insisted on seeing that you made it to bed safely. Once you were in your pajamas and under the covers, Shota and Jongseob came in and made sure your phone was plugged in and charging, painkillers with water on your nightstand, and told you to make sure you left your door cracked so they could check on you. 

You rolled your eyes at how pushy they were, but it was truly so sweet, so you just went along with it. As they headed out, you asked Jongseob to hang back for a second. Shota gave him a questioning look but left your bedroom as Jongseob came over to your bed and you patted it, inviting him to sit down. You sat up, sleep shirt draped over you much more comfortably than the hospital gown had been, and pulled him into another tight hug. “Thank you again, for everything,” you spoke into his chest. 

A few seconds passed and you waited for him to let go, but he didn’t. More seconds passed, and as your heart sped up, you could feel his racing as well. He rested his chin on your head and stroked your hair a couple times, making you feel like your bones were made of rubber. Uh oh , you thought, as your body screamed at you to let go, to end contact, to push him away. 

He let go before you were able to, his face flushed a pretty pink. He looked down and then up at you. “I told you. It was nothing,” he said softly, then promptly sat up and before shutting your door, said “Sleep well, y/n.”

The door latched and your body was throbbing; your head from the concussion, and your heart from…whatever that was. You decided it would be a question for your tomorrow self as you drifted off into a fitful sleep.

Chapter 8: I'm Gonna Go

The rest of the weekend went by without much drama: you’d texted Intak in the morning, as requested, to let him know you were alive, Keeho took Shota on their first date (complete with showing up to the door with a dozen roses – he was keenly intent on making it up to him), and Jongseob had taken to cooking for you and doing mostly everything around the house since Shota was a little distracted by his new relationship. 

When the week began, you weren’t sure if you’d be able to go to work, but you managed just fine. Jongseob was back at his dorm, Keeho was over nearly every night, and before the following weekend came, Intak asked to come over. This was unusual for him, since you usually only saw him on the weekends, but you certainly didn’t mind. 

The two of you decided to use the living room to watch a movie while Shota and Keeho hung out in Shota’s bedroom. “No Jongseob today?” Intak asked as you scrolled through the streaming app looking for something to watch. “Nah,” you responded, “he doesn’t actually live here, believe it or not,” you said with a laugh. “Definitely here every weekend though. Our place is way better for studying than his dorm, since he’s got noisy roommates.”

“Ah,” Intak responded thoughtfully. “So… he just comes here to do homework?”

“I mean, yeah. And to hang out with Shota, a mix of both. They’ve been best friends for years so this is kind of a second home for him. He’s a good guest and a sweet guy, so I don’t mind.” 

“Makes sense,” he said, and as you turned towards him, his neutral face shifted quickly into a sweet smile, his brown eyes shining. You smiled back at him and the both of you descended into a comfortable silence as the movie started. It was an intense romance, full of drama, passion, and steamy sex scenes. 

However, about halfway through the movie, you felt your phone vibrate. You glanced at it out of habit and would normally ignore it, but you saw that it was Jongseob, asking how you were doing. It probably could have waited, but you worried that he’d get concerned if you didn’t respond quickly enough, so you pulled up the text to respond to him, your stomach doing something weird. You pushed away the feeling, pushed away the memory of the long hug the prior weekend, shoved it all deep, deep down without a second thought. 

js: hey y/n, how are u feeling? have u needed to take any painkillers lately?

y/n: nah, i’ve actually been okay. thank u for checking on me! you’re the best.

js: whatever dude, just stay away from slippery floors :P

y/n: u don’t gotta tell me twice… lol

You slipped your phone back in your pocket, looked back up at the movie and felt Intak’s eyes on you. You looked over, and he looked… sad. Sadder than you’d ever seen him, his mouth unsmiling, eyes larger than usual. “Hey,” you said, turning towards him. “Are you okay?” 

“No, I’m not,” he replied, turning away as he sniffled loudly. Fuck. What could be going on? you wondered. You put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed it reassuringly. “Baby, what’s wrong?” you asked, horrified at seeing Intak upset like this for the first time. He was usually all smiles, his demeanor relaxed, without a care in the world.

Intak swiped a stray tear and looked down at his lap, then over at you, lip trembling, then got himself under control. He took a deep breath and smiled bitterly. “Sorry,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I don’t really know how to say this, but I’m just gonna go for it.

“Y/n, I don't think this is going to work out. You and me, I mean,” he blurted out, and you felt like you’d been slapped. “I can tell that you’re not as into me as I’m into you, and that was fine at first, but I don’t think I can handle being second best in your world.” Second best? you thought. What was that supposed to mean? 

“I’m sorry for just ending it like this but I need to protect myself before I fall too hard for you. I like you more and more each day and I can tell it’s not the same for you. I’m not mad, just disappointed. It’s not your fault, it’s just how shit goes sometimes,” he said, another stray tear slipping out. 

You felt frozen, a lump in your throat, and although you wanted to say something, needed to say something, anything…no words came. The worst part was that you knew he was right: you had known early on that this relationship would need to stay casual at most, but you were still disappointed that you’d hurt Intak in the process. You didn’t anticipate it ending this way, but you weren’t sure what you expected in the first place. You supposed that you just selfishly wanted the attention, and the companionship. 

You finally snapped out of your self-pitying trance and swallowed the lump in your throat. “Intak, I’m really sorry. I think… you’re not wrong,” you began, and he nodded, face sullen but understanding. “I really like you, but it’s true. I do think something’s missing, and it’s not your fault in any way, so please don’t beat yourself up.” Your head throbbed and tears wetted your eyes. Why was this so hard?

You pulled him over to you and he laid his head in your lap, sniffling quietly. You ran your fingers through his dark hair gently, trying to soothe his pain. “For what it’s worth, you’ve been an absolutely perfect boyfriend,” you said, grasping at any attempt to make him feel better. He laughed wryly, responding, “I appreciate it, but that doesn’t really help.” He sat up, and continued, “I’ll be fine in a little while, and I hope we can still be friends if you want. But right now, I think I’m gonna go.”

You nodded, understanding, and he grabbed his jacket quietly and left. You remained on the couch, and stared at the wall blankly, the movie still playing quietly on the TV screen. You weren’t sure how you felt. Numb? Sad? Relieved?

In that moment, Shota and Keeho came out of Shota’s bedroom, laughing, and asked nonchalantly, “What’s up? Where’d Intak go?”

You wiped your eyes roughly and gave them a weak smile, and said, “I think I just got dumped.”

Chapter 9: Don't Go Pt. 3 (Please Stay)

You woke up Saturday morning with that familiar ache in your lower belly. Recovering from a concussion, got dumped two days ago, and now my period comes? Great, real fucking great. A lazy ray of light came through the bedroom window, illuminating the walls, the piles of clothing on the floor, the clutter that had built up over the past two days while you wallowed in self pity. You ran your hand across your stomach gently. It wasn’t clear whether the weekend coming was a good thing, or a bad thing. On one hand, work had sucked ass. But on the other hand, it had at least kept you distracted.

You still couldn’t quite tell how you felt about your relationship with Intak ending. Your brain still felt fuzzy about it, and you couldn’t tell if it was the concussion, your emotions, or both. You laid and stared at the ceiling, taking a deep breath and blowing it out, long and slow. It hurt, but this was probably good. 

The situation with Intak was supposed to be casual from the start, but it had sounded like it had become more complicated for him. You felt relieved, but sad. You’d enjoyed the date nights out (and in), the long conversations, the way he always checked on you and was interested in what you had to say about, well, everything. You hadn’t deserved him, and he deserved more; someone who would love him. Maybe he’d started falling in love with you…

And with that agonizing thought, a wave of pain and nausea rode through your middle, forcing you out of the comfort of your bed. You pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and an old t-shirt and hobbled out into the kitchen. You pulled out your mug and started prepping the raspberry leaf tea, leaning against the counter and sighing. You fought the urge to just go back to bed but worried that it would just make you feel worse. You figured you should at least get something in your stomach, get some painkillers going, get the heating pad, all your routine comforts.

You looked around and noticed the dishes had been done and the house had been decluttered. The work of Jongseob again, no doubt. Ever since your hospital visit, something between you and him had shifted. He’d come over Friday night as he usually did, but like the previous weekend after your accident, he’d come over with groceries and forced Shota to help him cook dinner for you. Most of the time, Shota was pretty awful about chores, so you found that you had to take care of most of it or kick his ass trying to get him to help. However, Jongseob had basically begun to take over completely – funny, because he didn’t even live there, but it was nice nonetheless.

He didn’t know about you and Intak yet, and you weren’t really sure how to tell him. Maybe Shota already did? you wondered idly as you flipped the heating pad and added another minute to the microwave. As you pulled out the teabag and threw it in the trash, the door to Shota’s bathroom opened up, and out walked Jongseob, freshly showered. His hair, bleached and straw-like, stuck out in most directions, and he wore a black tank top with his usual gray oversized sweatpants. He didn’t wear tank tops often, and it struck you, like it usually did every time he wore anything form-fitting, how tiny he was – the bare skin of his arms soft-looking and tan, and his collar bones prominent above the hem of his shirt.

“Oh hey, good morning y/n,” he said, seeming slightly startled at your presence in the kitchen and beginning to fix his hair self-consciously –but  to no avail; it just ended up getting more and more tangled and he gave up, smiling awkwardly. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked, cutting in front of you to grab the heating pad out of the microwave as soon as it went off. Okay bro, calm down , you couldn’t help thinking.

“Uh, thanks,” you said as he handed it to you. “Been better, but at least it’s the weekend. Sometimes when it rains it just pours.”

“What do you mean? Are you having any headaches? Is your vision okay? Have you tried calling the doctor, or do you need to go back to–”

“I’m fine, I just don’t feel great is all,” you butted in, suddenly feeling surprisingly impatient with the conversation. “I do have the headaches from time to time but they said it was normal. I just didn’t need mother nature to arrive at the same time, if you know what I mean.”

He looked at the tea and the heating pad and a look of realization dawned on his face. “Ah, shit, sorry. Yeah, I guess I should have realized.”

“No worries,” you said with a smile as you sipped your tea. “Not your job to keep track of my cycle, dude.”

Heat crept up his neck into his face as an awkward silence hung between the two of you, the refrigerator making a low humming noise.

“Um, is.. Shota here?” you asked, attempting whatever you could to break the silence. 

“No, he spent the night at Keeho’s last night,” Jongseob answered. “Is… that okay?”

You didn’t follow. “What do you mean? Is what okay?”

He swallowed. “Like, that I stayed here last night. You were already sleeping when he decided he was going over there, so we didn’t have a chance to ask if that was okay. You know, like, me staying over here overnight without him,” he said, hands in his pockets, looking down at his feet, then to the side, anywhere but your face.

“Jongseob,” you began, catching his attention and finally getting him to look you in the eye. “You’re my friend too – not just Shota’s. I don’t give a shit if you stay overnight, with or without him. In fact, I’d just as well switch the two of you out, given the way you’ve been helping out around here lately. Hell, tell him to stay at Keeho’s forever and you can have his room,” you retorted with a mischievous smile, rolling your eyes, and he burst out laughing, the thick tension dissipating from the room.

“It’s more than just that,” he said, swiping a tear from his eye after finishing his laughing fit, “I don’t know how to say this without making it sound strange, but I didn’t want to… make things weird for Intak. Like, I dunno if he’d have a problem with something like that.”

You had just taken a sip of your tea and started coughing at this statement, your cramps acting up in response to the abdominal contractions, and you felt like you’d die for just a moment. Jongseob waved his hands apologetically, saying, “Sorry, I dunno what I just did, but I’m sorry!”

You laughed bitterly and waved your hand dismissively, sipping some tea to quell the burning in your throat. “No, it’s just that uh… there’s no need to worry about that. Intak and I are done.”

The finality of the statement burned in your throat and you took another sip of your tea, studying Jongseob’s face as you divulged the information, curious to see if it would look like he already knew, if Shota had gossiped about it to him already. But the shocked look on Jongseob’s face indicated that he had not; that this was news to him.

“Shit, um, I didn’t know. Sorry,” he said, crossing his arms and looking down at his feet.

“It’s all good, just still a little fresh,” you responded, and he nodded sympathetically, then looked back up at you. “Are you… okay? Do you like, want to talk or anything?”

“I’m good, thanks though. Think I probably need to just lay down for the time being.”

“Okay, well you know I’m out here just working on homework, so whatever you need, just let me know.”

“Thanks Seob, I will,” you responded, nodding appreciatively.

You headed back to the bedroom and felt a swirl of emotions as you crawled back under your comforter and placed the heating pad across your lower belly, sighing at the relief brought by the warmth. One moment you felt elated, the next you felt guilty, and the next, you felt like you wanted to sleep for 72 hours and wake up a whole new person with a new life. None of it made any sense. 

You opened up your laptop and started watching a random movie, but the first hint of anything sad in the movie pushed you to tears, and you pressed pause. You wiped at your eyes and took a few steadying breaths. What the hell was wrong with you?  

You scrolled on your phone for a little bit, trying to distract you, but the feeling gnawed at you.

  Loneliness. 

This was the first time you’d really spent any alone time in many weeks; since the accident, since the breakup, since before you even started dating Intak… and it felt absolutely terrible. When did you become so needy? 

Knock knock knock!

“Come in,” you said, feeling defeated, as Jongseob poked his head in. “Hey, just checking in. Does your heating pad need re-heated?” 

You smiled. The guy would make someone a very happy girlfriend someday, you considered, but immediately, your stomach felt funny at the thought. You tried to ignore the sensation as you stared blankly at him, noting the way his almost-dry hair hung across his forehead, the curve of his mouth. Had his lips always been that full?

“Hey… you good?” he asked, concern marring his features as you realized you’d just been staring at him like an idiot. You blushed fiercely. You’d just been looking at him, really looking at him. Were you so lonely that you were at risk of crushing on your baby brother’s best friend?

“Nah, but I’ll be fine,” you forced out, trying your best to choke out your disturbing thoughts, horrified at the state of your own mind. “But yeah, if you’re offering, this thing has definitely run out of heat. Thank you,” you responded, pulling the heating pad from out of the covers and offering it to him. “Sorry about the mess,” you said as he walked in, trying to avoid stepping on the scattered piles of clothes, shoes, trash, and everything in between.

“Don’t be sorry, it’s your space,” he responded matter-of-factly. “Do you need help cleaning, though? If you want, I can–”

“Dude, you’re not about to clean my room for me,” you responded with a shocked laugh, appreciative but embarrassed. 

“I’m just saying, if you needed me to, I would. You’re hurt,” he said, equally matter-of-factly, and walked out of the room with the heating pad in hand.

You’re hurt. 

You rolled the statement around in your mind, chewing on the inside of your lip absentmindedly. You supposed he was right, in more ways than one. Maybe you should just stop bitching internally and accept the pity, you wondered. Tears pricked behind your eyes. Stop, stop, stop , you demanded of yourself, hearing his footsteps approaching down the hall and rubbing at your eyes fiercely. 

He walked in cautiously and crossed your room to hand you the heating pad, and before he left, you swallowed the lump in your throat and managed to say, “Hey.”

He stopped in his tracks, turning towards you, eyes inquisitive. “Yeah?”

This was so embarrassing . Were you really going to do this? You needed to grow up, needed to stop relying on others so much for comfort, needed to give yourself space to be alone, to be single, you needed to–

“Please stay,” you said, in the form of a statement, rather than a question. 

“Oh I’m not leaving, I’ll just be out here, okay?”

You covered your eyes with a hand, embarrassment threatening to swallow you whole. “No, what I mean is… will you stay in here? With me? I really don’t wanna be alone right now.” You peaked through your fingers at him.

His eyes widened as he looked around the room, no doubt looking for somewhere to sit and do his homework, when you scooted over to the wall, leaving a space on the bed for him. 

He blinked a couple times, seemingly frozen for a second. “Um… yeah, sure. I can do that,” he responded, and backed out of your room, presumably to grab his stuff. You began to regret your request as the moments passed but once he came back in, your nerves settled down, and you reflected on the way Jongseob had become a surprisingly comforting person for you.

He sat on the edge of the bed and it squeaked quietly as he bent over to sort through his books. Setting his coffee mug on your nightstand, he scooted back against the wall and crossed his legs, getting comfortable against your too-many pillows. I should really get a headboard, you thought.

“Thanks, and sorry,” you muttered, feeling bad but inwardly pleased that he’d agreed to join you. “Oh, it’sno problem at all,” he replied, giving you a warm smile. You proceeded to open your laptop and popped your earbuds in to resume the movie that you were too much of a baby to finish beforehand. 

But for some reason, it didn’t make you as sad, now. You watched in silence as Jongseob read through one of his many textbooks, his body shifting frequently to stay comfortable. However, his position eventually devolved into laying down, and as you took out your earbuds, the movie finished, you looked over to find him near the edge of the bed, turned towards you, fast asleep. 

You reflected on the fact that he seemed to have a habit of sleeping near you, and your heart warmed. You wondered if that meant that he was as comfortable around you as you were around him. With that thought, you pushed your laptop forward on the bed, past your feet, and laid down on your side to face him.

He held his arms against his chest, his head propped up on one of your pillows. You scanned his face, listening to the calming, steady sounds of his breathing. His hair had finally dried and flopped across his forehead, unstyled and messy. His dark brows were relaxed, and his eyes occasionally darted under his lids, his lashes long, dark, and pretty. You studied the texture of his cheeks, noting the way his mild acne scarring had faded over the years. His nose, however, was still small and cute like it always had been. And his mouth…

Your heart quickened as your eyes followed the plump lines of his mouth, his lips a soft shade of pink; it hung open slightly but he was breathing through his nose, so he wasn’t snoring. Not this time , you thought to yourself with a smile. You watched the way his bare shoulder rose slightly with each relaxed inhale, blinking away sleep from your eyes. 

You just needed a few more moments of this, you thought, but in that moment, Jongseob’s sleepy eyes blinked open lazily, momentarily startled to see your face so close to his. His brows knit together, but he smiled. “Y/n, you’re being so creepy.”

You giggled quietly and poked his stomach, causing him to jerk into a protective position and yell harshly. He held up his hands in defense, laughing. “Hey, hey, if you’re gonna force me to do my homework in bed and then let me fall asleep, you can not tickle me. That’s where I draw the line. Especially because I can’t fight back! You’re too fragile right now!” 

You smiled evilly, not sure what had taken you over, and reached toward his ribs, but he was too fast – he grabbed your wrists tightly and despite your every attempt to break free, he maintained the firm grip and laughed as you struggled. He was much stronger than he looked, and your stomach did a little flip. Jesus, you said to yourself, get ahold of yourself, you pathetic loser.

As you had these thoughts, the energy in the room shifted, and soon, the only sound that filled it was the sound of heavy breathing, both yours and his, as he loosened his grip on your wrists and you surrendered, putting your hands up. His breathing slowed to normal, and as you both lay there facing each other, he broke the uncomfortable silence.

“So. What happened with you and Intak?”

You blinked a couple times, looking past him to organize your thoughts, not expecting him to ask so bluntly. “He, uh, didn’t think things were going to work out,” you said, your smile turning to a frown as you remembered the tears in Intak’s eyes as he broke things off with you. Guilt flooded your conscience.

“Why not?” Jongseob asked, his eyes fixed on you. You were surprised at how nosey he was being, since he usually didn’t pry. But you relished in the closeness that you seemed to have regained with him. You hadn’t really been able to talk to anyone about it, at least not in detail. 

You sighed. “I guess, put as simply as possible, we just weren’t right for each other.”

Jongseob scrunched his nose up at this explanation, clearly unconvinced. You sighed again. “If I’m honest, he was really great, but, you know that feeling you get when you know someone is just the person for you? Like you know it, deep in your gut?” you looked at him for signs of understanding and his face was unreadable for a moment so you quickly added, “well, maybe you haven’t experienced that before. You’re still young,” you added with a teasing smile and he frowned slightly, blushing furiously. 

“No, I know what you’re talking about,” he said, his usually high-ish pitched voice taking on a softer, more husky tone. Your mind raced for a split second, but you didn’t give it the opportunity to get away. 

“Okay, yeah,” you continued, pushing a lock of hair out of your face. “So that feeling, I never really had it with him from the beginning, and we even agreed to keep things casual. I think,” you chewed on your lip for a moment, contemplating, “I think I kinda knew. Like, I knew there was an expiration date for us.”

Jongseob blinked at you, looking mildly surprised. “Oh. Did he know that?” 

The question felt like a sucker punch, even though you knew he didn’t mean it like that. He was just straightforward, and it was a reasonable question to ask. “Well no, but I also think I wanted to just wait and see where things would go, you know? Shit, I feel like this is making me sound like a complete asshole, and maybe I am—“

“That’s not what I’m thinking right now, don’t worry,” he cut in, and you appreciated it, nodding in understanding. 

“So, the other night, Intak just kinda dropped the bomb out of nowhere, and said he felt we needed to split up. Said that he felt that he liked me more than I liked him, and… something about not wanting to be second best to me? I can’t remember exactly how he worded it, but I’m still unclear on what he meant.”

Jongseob eyed you thoughtfully, then said, “Did you ask him to elaborate?”

“I didn’t get the chance. He left pretty quickly after that… it seemed like his mind was made up.” 

Jongseob hummed in response, looking at the wall for several seconds before propping himself up on his elbow and looking back at you with a serious expression. “So what you’re telling me is that you’re a cold, evil heartbreaker.”

Your mouth dropped open as you prepared to defend yourself, the words stinging momentarily, before he couldn’t stop holding back his smile and started laughing at you teasingly. You pushed him abruptly and he almost fell off the bed, flailing his arms to keep his balance and laughing even harder. 

“Hey,” you scolded, “it’s not funny!” But you started laughing in tandem and the bitterness, sadness, loneliness, and pain began to leave your body as you doubled over in laughter. Or so you thought, as tears started spilling down your cheeks uncontrollably, much to your surprise. Jongseob’s smile turned to horror as he automatically put a hand reassuringly on your shoulder. 

“Hey dude, knock it off,” he pleaded, shaking you lightly, which made you cry even harder, unable to control the sobs that wracked your body, your hands covering your face. And before you knew it, he was pulling you towards himself awkwardly. 

Unable to get his arms around you while the both of you were laying down, he dragged you up into a sitting position as you wept, holding you to his chest and shushing you softly. Your hands remained in front of your face as the tears continued, more slowly now, your breathing starting to regulate. Meanwhile, you felt one of his hands flat against your back, while the other petted your head soothingly.

“Sshh,” he whispered, and as he released you and you wiped your face with your t-shirt, you laughed shakily. “Jesus christ, sorry. Dunno where that came from… guess I just needed to release some pent-up emotion or something.”

“Probably karma for tickling me,” he responded with a sly grin, and you pinched his arm, eliciting a yelp as he slapped your hand away and sat across from you, legs hanging off the bed.

“And I’d do it again!” you yelled, laughing weakly. 

His face sobered slightly. “You sure you’re okay, though?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s weird, I guess nobody really did anything wrong, but I still feel like an asshole because he’s the one who got hurt.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. Intak’s solid though, I’m sure he’ll be okay. Hell, I heard that before he started dating you, he was a little bit of a whore, so hopefully he’ll be back in the game in no time.”

It dawned on you that you hadn’t really known that side of Intak. Not that you cared, but it had just never really come up. You smiled, hoping Jongseob was right. “I hope so, I just want minimal weirdness, you know?”

He nodded, and turned his head towards the door as you both heard the front door unlock and open and the apartment flooded with noise from Shota and Keeho. “I’m gonna go say hi. You need anything from out there?”

You shook your head and got under the covers as he grabbed his stuff and exited.

Oddly enough, you felt that one weight lifted from your chest, while another settled there in its place. You sighed and laid there, mustering the energy you’d need to venture out and join them.

Chapter 10: I'll Never Leave Your Side

“What the hell is up with you?” your boss scolded, leading you into his office. You sat down in the chair across from his desk and ran a hand through your hair and sighed, frustrated and not looking forward to this conversation. “I’m sorry Jeremy, I think I’m just still moving a little slowly after my accident a couple weeks ago.”

“Well I can’t afford for you to be moving slowly. Figure it out, y/n. This isn’t acceptable and you know it,” he snapped back immediately, staring you down. You hated the way he cared more about money than the human beings doing the work. 

“Or get a doctor's note. I don’t care, just don’t show up like nothing’s wrong, expecting everyone else to pick up your slack,” he said as he stood up, motioning towards the door. Tears threatened to spill but you kept your composure, refusing to let him see you cry. 

“Sorry, okay. I understand. I’ll do better,” you responded dryly with a curt nod, and left his office, hands shaking. You had about half an hour left in your shift and could barely get anything done, your brain more a mess than it usually was. 

You loved almost everything about your job: your clients, the flexible scheduling, your co-workers – you’d spent most of your adult life thus far dreaming of a career like this. You even enjoyed having to dress in business casual: your normal wardrobe tended to be much more on the casual side of things, so you enjoyed experimenting and seeing how much of your own personality you could inject into the drab dress code. 

However, the one thing that you hated about your job – and it wasn’t a small thing – was your boss Jeremy.

Jeremy was the kind of person who loved having authority. In some ways, he was great for the job – always taking the lead and being able to make difficult, split-second decisions. But in every other way, he was a thorn in your side, always nitpicking, never giving his team the benefit of the doubt. He seemed to be exceedingly comfortable correcting and scolding others, in a way that made your skin crawl. 

You wished that he didn’t have so much power over your emotions, but the way he treated you like some expendable machine, especially when you were getting over a head injury, hurt. Badly.

After clocking out and holding everything in, you cried the entire drive home. In the parking lot for your apartment, you sat for a while and dried your tears, trying to get your eyes not to look so puffy before grabbing your bag, slamming your car door shut, and heading up the stairs.

“Hi, y/n!” Jongseob greeted you the moment you walked through the door, catching you off guard. Normally it wouldn’t have been so jarring but your shitty day had made everything overwhelming. “Hey,” you replied, throwing your stuff down and grabbing a beer out of the fridge. 

“Tough day?” he asked, and as you looked over at him for the first time today, you softened just a tiny bit. His hair hung in limp waves and he wore a purple long-sleeved t-shirt with black pajama shorts, and was sitting on the couch, perfectly cozy, his eyes wide in concern as he waited for your answer. 

“Yeah, you could fuckin’ say that,” you replied, a little more curtly than you meant, and took a long sip of the beer. “My boss is getting on my ass for how much my performance has dipped since my concussion, and I’m so sick of it. I don’t understand how I’m expected to work at exactly the same level while I’m dealing with all these headaches and random episodes of dizziness and fatigue. Sometimes my vision even gets all wonky and I have to take a break from looking at my computer screen. But of course, he doesn’t give a shit about that, he just cares about money.”

Jongseob stood up. “Wait, you’re still dealing with all of that?”

“Yeah but that’s not the–”

“Y/n, when’s the last time you talked to a doctor? You should probably have someone check you out just to be safe,” he interrupted, a concerned look on his face that you ignored.

“I’m fine, I’m sure it’s normal, I just wish people would be patient with–”

“But how do you know it’s normal if you don’t get checked out just in case? I dunno, it just seems like–”

“ Enough!” you yelled with enough volume it made him visibly cringe, and you immediately regretted it, but your frustration was overwhelming and you didn’t know how to stop. “I’ve had a shitty enough day with one man breathing down my neck, I don’t need another.”

Jongseob’s eyes widened in shock and he looked taken aback for a moment, then hurt. Shit, shit, shit , you scolded yourself. “Jongseob, I’m sorry, I didn’t–”

“No, I get it. I’m sorry. Heard,” he replied quietly and picked up his stuff, heading to Shota’s room and closing the door quietly. You realized that, like last weekend, Shota was likely at Keeho’s again, so his room would be empty. You took a long drink of your beer, sat at the kitchen table, and sighed into both of your hands. 

He was the last person who’d deserved that, and you needed to apologize, but you would also have understood if he was mad and didn’t want you around at the moment. You sipped your beer, disappointment and regret souring your stomach and forcing you to stop drinking it. 

You took a couple long, deep breaths. You’d been frustrated by Jeremy’s blatant disregard for your health, and then came home to get frustrated by Jongseob’s obvious concern for it. It was completely backwards, and you knew it. 

You supposed you just wanted to be listened to, and that was fair, but it didn’t excuse the way you’d yelled at him. The expression on his face as you’d shouted flashed into your mind, and your chest tightened. You’d felt like you’d been in some sort of trance, blinded by your frustration and exhaustion; and now that you’d had a moment of quiet, you were nothing short of horrified at your behavior. It had been so unlike you.

The apartment became eerily quiet, filled with nothing but the ambient sounds of the traffic outside and the low hum of the refrigerator. You stood up, walked over to the kitchen sink and dumped the rest of your beer. Setting the empty bottle on the counter, you ran your fingers through your hair and groaned, squeezing your eyes shut. He probably needed space, he probably wanted to be left alone, he probably didn’t want to see you right now: all thoughts that ran through your head as you walked down the hall and lightly tapped on Shota’s door.

“Seob? Is it okay if I come in?” you asked, softening your voice as much as possible to be less threatening. God, how could you have been such an asshole to him of all people?

He didn’t answer, so you cracked the door just barely. “I’m coming in, okay?” you said, and as you opened the door wider, your heart shattered in your chest. 

He was sitting on the edge of Shota’s bed, face in his hands, bent over slightly. Fuck, what have I done? you thought as you rushed over and knelt on the floor in front of him. “Oh my god Jongseob, I’m so sorry for yelling, I was such a complete and total asshole,” you insisted, rubbing one of his arms, unsure of what to do. You’d never seen him like this before, and you wanted the floor to swallow you whole. You didn’t deserve him. He hadn’t deserved this.

But he shook his head adamantly and took his hands away from his face, wiping the tears from his eyes with a couple efficient swipes. “It’s not that, I just… fuck –” he began, but tears started to spill again and he wiped them away as well as he was able. He took a deep, shaky breath and exhaled, closing his eyes, then opened them and looked at you, his face looking determined, all the while his lower lip still trembling.

“You have no idea how fucking scary it was to see your head hit the floor like that, y/n. To see the ambulance take you away and not know if you were going to be okay, if you’d wake up, if you’d–”

He paused, voice cracking and tears brimming at his eyes again, and your hands found themselves on his thighs, rubbing reassuringly. “Hey, hey, it’s alright. It all turned out okay, right? I’m fine, okay?” you kept repeating, but he was inconsolable at this point. 

 You stood up onto your knees and pulled him forward into an embrace, his thin body clutching onto you desperately, chin resting on your shoulder. You rubbed circles into his back with one hand and began stroking his hair with the other. He continued shakily, “I was so relieved when you woke up at the hospital, I– I never realized until then how much you mean to me. I dunno what I’d do if anything happened to you, I just don’t know how I would cope.”

Your heart felt like it had stopped, and it suddenly became clear to you – the reason he’d resorted to taking care of you the moment you left the hospital, the way he kept obnoxiously doing trivial tasks for you, all the overbearing comments and questions about your symptoms. He’d been traumatized, seeing you get hurt. He was doing all this because he cared for you, not because he thought you were weak, not because he wanted to make you feel bad about yourself, but because he was worried about you. Truly, sincerely worried.

Soft sobs escaped his body as you held him firmly. “Seob, listen to me,” you said softly into his ear. “I’m so sorry for not listening to you before, but you have to trust me. No matter what happens, I will be fine. I’ll go to the doctor, I’ll get some more scans or something just to be safe. I promise, I’ll never leave your side. Do you understand me?” 

He nodded gently, hugging you even tighter.

As you pulled away slightly, not knowing how he would react to this gesture but feeling you had no other choice– you pressed your lips to his cheek, letting them linger there for a moment, trying to instill in him at least a fraction of the calmness you were trying to give him. Without a word, he kissed your own cheek in response, and pulled you ever closer to him, arms wrapped around you again tightly. Your heart beat wildly in your chest, feeling like it would burst. Before now, you’d never experienced affection this intense, this protective, this overwhelming before. 

And then it hit you. That feeling… it was love . 

You’d fallen in love with Jongseob, and you would do absolutely anything to keep him from feeling pain like this, even if it meant swallowing your pride and letting him fuss over you. Tears stung your eyes as you pulled away from him slightly and swiped your thumbs underneath his eyes to wipe the tears away, your mouth trembling. And then, it happened. One moment, he was looking deep into your eyes, and the next, his lips were against yours. His mouth didn’t move –  he just stayed there, mouth barely pressed to yours, his hands making their way to either side of your face, holding you gently. So, he must have felt it, too , you thought, as you closed your eyes, a tear slipping out of one of them.

Chapter 11: Please

Your hands gripped the loose fabric of Jongseob’s shirt at his sides. He pulled back from the kiss slightly, the taste of his tears wet on your lips, his hands still cupping your face gently. You opened your eyes to look at him and his eyes were shining, filled with a mixture of apprehension and desire. He sniffled quietly. “Can I… try that again?”

You nodded. With one shaky hand, he pushed a lock of hair behind your ear and with the other, he guided your face up again to his, knees parting to allow your body to come between them, closer to him. Your grip on his shirt loosened and you flattened your hands against the sides of his waist, putting less distance between your body and his, your stomach doing somersaults as he kissed you a second time. You wanted more, wanted to throw all caution to the wind, but you held it together, not wanting to overwhelm him.

This kiss was less anxious, his lips parting to press against yours more firmly this time, his breath quickening as you kissed him back, mouth moving in tandem with his, noting the way his lips were even softer than they looked. Your head felt light. Your hands slid around to his back and as you pulled away from the kiss, you pulled him into a tight hug. 

Shota’s room was silent other than the sounds of both of you breathing. Your heart was still racing and your mind had gone completely blank, so you just held onto him for dear life, scared to ruin the moment, scared for what it all meant, scared for what came next…

The moment was cut short, however, as the sound of the front door opening shocked the two of you apart and you looked at him, horrified. What is he doing back home already? you mouthed to Jongseob. I don’t know, he whispered, equally disturbed. 

You sat back on your heels on the floor and Jongseob put his feet up on the bed, both of you trying your hardest to look like nothing weird was going on, like you hadn’t just been hanging out in your little brother’s bedroom, locking lips with his best friend. 

Footsteps approached the cracked bedroom door and Shota took one step inside and froze, staring at Jongseob, then at you. He raised an eyebrow. “What are y’all doing in here?” he asked, not angrily, just confused.

You stepped in to save the day, laughing nervously. “Sorry Shota, Jongseob was just hanging out in here and I came in to ask him about a book I’m reading. Are you home for the night already? Thought you were going to Keeho’s for the night.”

You cringed inwardly, hating the way that last part sounded, like you’d been hoping to have the house to yourselves. He eyed you thoughtfully, then said, “Yeah, I just forgot to bring a change of clothes,” he responded, walking over to his dresser and digging out some joggers, a t-shirt, some underwear, and socks. 

“What, you mean you’re not gonna just borrow his clothes?” you asked, sticking your tongue out. He grimaced at you, responding, “Not a chance, you know how much I hate sharing clothes.” You did know, fully, but had decided to joke about it anyway to keep the focus on him. Since you weren’t the best liar, you didn’t want him to ask any more detailed questions about what you’d been doing.

After Shota left, you forced yourself to look up at Jongseob and he looked worried, gaze fixed in his lap, fidgeting with his fingers restlessly. You stood up on your knees and climbed onto the bed to sit across from him, legs crossed, and grabbed his hands, thumbs swiping over them soothingly. 

He kept his eyes cast downwards, and said in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” and your heart sank. The sting of rejection started to spread through your body as you prepared yourself for the worst. 

“Why not?” was all you could muster in response, your throat tight. He glanced up at you, looking surprised, and his eyes softened but you could see pain, real pain, in them. His voice firmed, as he said a bit louder, “You just got out of a relationship.”

“So?” you responded, keeping your eyes on him. He needed to understand. 

“You probably think I’m too young for you,” he said a little more quietly.

“If that was true, do you think I would have let you do that?” you asked, voice serious.

He looked to the side thoughtfully, a frown still marring his features. “I dunno. Maybe. You’ve been lonely and I–”

You silenced him by leaning forward immediately, kissing his mouth softly, just once, and sitting back down. He froze, his cheeks colored scarlet, and looked at you with questions in his eyes. 

“Jongseob. This is kind of unfamiliar territory for me, and I don’t really know how to navigate it any better than you do.” You paused, shocked at the way this was just starting to spill out. This buried part of you that you’d denied, pushed down, never explored. 

“I care about you. More than as a friend. And I think you feel the same way,” you blurted. 

A shy smile appeared on Jongseob’s face, breaking through the anxiety and doubt. “Well that second part is pretty obvious,” he replied, blushing again. You couldn’t help smiling back, relief spreading through your body. His hands were still in yours and you held them up, kissing them one at a time, then setting them back down in his lap. 

“This could get complicated, though. I don’t really know how anyone would react to… us. If you know what I mean. You being Shota’s best friend, the age gap, all that stuff.”

Jongseob’s face sobered. “Wait, back up. Us? As in… like, you wanna date me?”

“You dummy, what else would that mean?” you teased, and for the first time since you’d gotten home, you heard his laugh, bright and adorable, the tension visibly leaving his body as he covered his mouth with both hands. 

“Unless of course, you don’t want to,” you said with mock seriousness. “I would understand. I mean, there’s plenty of girls your own age at college, it would be easy enough to–”

“No no, I want to,” Jongseob cut in, putting his hands up argumentatively. “I mean. If you do, too. I don’t care about the complications, it doesn’t matter. Let me be your boyfriend, y/n. Please.”

Please.

You were glad to still be sitting on Shota’s bed, because if you’d been standing up, your knees probably would have buckled. 

You realized after probably too many seconds had passed that he was staring at you, waiting for your response, fear clouding his eyes with each passing moment. Your face was already burning up so it wouldn’t be convincing, but you decided to look up and pretend to think about your response.

“Hmm,” you hummed in a sing-song voice, then looked back down at him. “Okay, deal,” you replied, holding your hand out to him. He rolled his eyes and grabbed your hand, not shaking it. 

“You can be a real asshole sometimes, you know that?” he said unconvincingly, a lovesick smile plastered on his face. You smiled back, heart feeling like it could burst. “I know, but I can be very sweet, too,” you replied, and pulled him in for another kiss.

Chapter 12: It Was So Simple in the Moonlight

“Where did you say the green onions were?” Jongseob asked, crouched in front of the fridge, searching behind plastic containers and all your various sauce bottles. “Produce drawer. Might be under some stuff, though,” you replied as you massaged marinade into diced pieces of chicken. 

After you’d talked a little more, Jongseob had agreed to cook dinner with you. It felt so suddenly domestic. He’d helped you cook plenty of times before, but this time was different. The shy smiles, the way he’d linger closer to you than usual. 

As you rinsed the rice in the sink, his arms made their way around your waist from behind and he rested his head on your shoulder. You let out a small surprised gasp and stiffened at the touch, then tried to relax, still getting used to it. He giggled, kissed your cheek, and went back to the counter to chop the veggies. You continued, unable to hide the smile glued to your face, but in all honesty, you didn’t want to hide it. Not anymore. 

Once the meal was finished, you both had decided to eat in the living room and watch a movie. Jongseob’s pick was Notting Hill , which surprised you. “Didn’t know you were into rom-coms,” you said, inquisitively. He shrugged, responding, “Usually they’re not my thing but this one’s different. It’s sort of a comfort movie of mine, I’m not sure why. We don’t have to watch it if you’re not into it, I just–”

“We’re watching it,” you said with a smile, and he smiled back sheepishly, and you both ate at the coffee table, sitting on the floor before finishing your meal and moving up to the couch. 

About a quarter of the way through the movie, Jongseob turned towards you and stared at you for a moment. “Y/n? Can I hold your hand?” You replied by immediately slotting your fingers between his, your hand enveloped in his and resting on his thigh. Your positions devolved from him fidgeting with your fingers in his lap, to you leaning on his shoulder, until eventually you were sat up straight with him laying on his side, his head nestled in your lap while you played with his shaggy blonde hair. 

You couldn’t remember your heart ever feeling this full, in your entire life.

As the movie ended, Jongseob stretched his arms overhead in your lap and yawned, twisting to lay with his face up to look at you. You pushed his bangs out of his face. “Nice forehead, bro,” you said, and bent over to kiss it. He smiled, canines showing. Cute. 

“Are you gonna keep calling me bro even when we’re dating?” he asked, eyebrow raised accusingly, still smiling. You considered for a moment, then responded, “Yeah, probably. Was there something else you wanted me to call you, though?” 

At this question, his face blanched and he shook his head adamantly. “Nah, I was just messing around.” But you were like a shark with blood in the water. “No, you bring up a good point. I should probably call you something else sometimes, at least to mix it up. Sweetheart? Darling? Angel?” You looked at his face to monitor his reactions, but he maintained a stubborn pout, arms crossed. 

“Hmmm, okay. Baby ?”

Jongseob’s eyes widened and his face reddened but he tried to maintain his expression, and you knew you had him. “Mmm, okay, noted,” you responded with a conniving smile, and he rolled his body towards you and pressed his face against your belly, groaning. You ran your fingers through his hair playfully, beaming at your success. 

As you laid there, his body relaxed and you leaned your head back on the couch, fingers still in his hair, thoughts and emotions swirling erratically. You were glad that just for tonight, Shota was gone, and the two of you could exist like this in peace. Before reality set in, before you had to have the conversations, or lack thereof – you weren’t sure yet how things would happen. You laid there in silence, various thoughts, ideas, and worries running through your head, and eventually you realized how late it had gotten. How long had you been sitting here like this?

“Baby,” you whispered, waking Jongseob from half-sleep. He inhaled deeply, then turned his head up towards you, opened his eyes and smiled lazily. Your heart swelled. “Let’s go to bed,” you said, and his sleepy smile turned to an anxious expression. “Y/n, I dunno if I’m ready to–”

“Sleep,” you cut him off, laughing quietly but understanding his concern. “Just to sleep. Is that okay?” 

His gaze softened, his relief obvious, and he nodded his head and smiled. 

Jongseob headed to Shota’s room to change, and you headed to yours and threw on some loose black boxer shorts and a baggy gray t-shirt. You finished washing your face and brushing your teeth and when you came back into your room, Jongseob was sitting on the edge of the bed, similarly dressed in plaid boxers and an oversized ratty t-shirt. You felt your body heat up, suddenly wondering if this had been a good idea.

Although you were dressed basically the same, you felt surprisingly self-conscious, wondering if you should have worn a tank top instead, or some cute pajama shorts, but as you were having these thoughts, Jongseob looked up at you and smiled. You felt your defenses go up and immediately resorted to sarcasm. “What are you lookin’ at, buddy?” you asked, fists up playfully.

“You,” he replied without skipping a beat, and your stomach did a flip. “You’re so beautiful,” he continued, “and I’ve wanted to tell you for so long.” 

Your jaw dropped and your brain floundered, searching for something, anything to say in response, but you just covered your eyes and mumbled, “Thanks,” then joined him on the bed. 

You got under the covers with him and you faced each other, smiling dumbly. “So are you,” you finally said to him quietly, feeling incredibly lame. You wanted to tell him how perfect, how stunning he was, all the time, every moment of the day, but you just didn’t have the words right now. 

“So,” you began, knowing this conversation would have to come sooner or later. “So?” he responded.

You sighed. “Obviously, Shota is the first person I’d want to tell about this, and I assume it’s the same for you.” He nodded in agreement, and you continued, “But I’m not sure I want to tell him just yet.”

“Why not?” he asked, not argumentatively, just curiously.

“I just,” you began, trying to find the words. “I guess I just don’t love the way it might look. Shota’s like, the least judgmental person I know, but I still worry. Like you said, I just got out of a relationship, and I dunno, it might look like… you’re taking advantage of me? Or vice versa? Ugh, I don’t know if this is making sense or if I’m making too big of a deal out of it.”

“Nah,” Jongseob responded. “If it’s important to you, it’s not trivial. I don’t really care either way, but if you wanna wait, I’ve got no problem with that.” You smiled. It didn’t surprise you at all how patient and sweet he was being, but it still made you incredibly happy.

You spent the next hour talking about anything and everything: shared memories, childhood nostalgia, your shitty boss, his current classes. At some point, however, his eyes started getting heavier and heavier, and you could tell he was forcing himself to stay awake. 

“Okay sleepyhead, which spoon do you wanna be?” you asked.

“Which spoon do you wanna be?” he replied.

“I asked first.”

“This is your bed, you should choose.”

You scoffed. “This is my bed so I should be able to make you choose.”

“Y/n, if I confess to you how badly I want to be little spoon, you can not make fun of me or I will become a fork.”

You slapped your hand over your mouth, stifling laughter – not at his confession, but at how dramatic he was being. “Oh my god, turn over,” you ordered, and he flipped over away from you with a huff. 

You shifted towards him and rested your face behind his head, inhaling the scent of his shampoo as you wrapped an arm around his waist and rested your hand on his chest. He put his hand over top of yours and gripped it tightly as you pushed your body flush against him, your bare legs intertwining with his. 

Well, this isn’t very relaxing, you thought as you laid awake, heart pounding, body burning up. You wanted to be closer to him, wanted to flip him around and kiss him deeply, wanted to–

At that thought, you began hearing soft snores coming from him, and you could have melted. You smiled into his hair, kissing the back of his head, the side of his neck, the part of his bare shoulder that was exposed by the loose collar of his t-shirt. Eventually, you drifted off as well, face pressed up against him, happier than you’d ever been.

Chapter 13: Brother's Blessing

Over the next couple weeks, you and Jongseob narrowly escaped being discovered by Shota and Keeho as you try to keep your new relationship undercover. 

Shota and Keeho had started alternating weekends spent with each other, so the following weekend, Keeho stayed over, which made the apartment fairly crowded with Jongseob staying there, too. Jongseob had discussed the arrangement with Shota and said that he didn’t mind staying at his dorm, but Shota insisted that he stay like he always did, since Keeho would be sleeping in his room anyway. 

Both Friday and Saturday nights, you’d wanted so badly to have Jongseob stay in your bed, but it had been your own idea to keep the relationship a secret for the time being. You knew it was a good idea, but as nighttime descended, you were kicking yourself. 

The best you could do was wait until Shota and Keeho had gone to bed, then go out to the living room to hang out with Jongseob on the couch. It was nerve-wracking since Shota’s bathroom was next door to his room and both of them had to enter the hallway anytime they needed to use it; they could come out and catch you at any moment. 

Although you yearned for the time that you’d be able to stop hiding, part of you loved the thrill of it – cuddling, talking, and making out on the couch with the constant threat of discovery looming. You couldn’t deny that it was at least a little bit fun. 

On the second night of that weekend, you stayed up with Jongseob on the couch until nearly two in the morning, both of you getting carried away with whispered conversations, heated touches, increasingly needy kisses. It was such a relief to be able to spend time with him like this after pretending all day, even if your eyes stung from staying awake. 

You were laying your head on his shoulder as you both watched a movie quietly, talking all throughout it, when Shota’s door opened, causing you both to jump and separate in one dramatic movement. You hoped he hadn’t noticed, as he walked out to the kitchen and froze, noticing you two on the couch through sleepy eyes. “Y/n? Whatchu doin out here?” he asked, speech slurred and sleepy. 

“Uh, couldn’t sleep,” you lied through your teeth, and Jongseob snickered quietly. Shota scowled, eyes barely open as he filled a glass with water from the tap and gulped it all down at once, then belched. “Jongseob couldn’t either, huh? Okay, weirdos…” he mumbled as he shuffled back to his room and shut the door. 

You looked at Jongseob and made a face somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Oops,” you whispered, and he giggled quietly, his face lit up by the soft ambient lighting from the TV. You loved seeing him laugh. “You have the absolute best smile,” you told him. 

“Ah, you like these bad boys?” he replied, hooking a finger into his mouth and baring one of his sharp, crooked canine teeth. You laughed at how funny he looked. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”

He took his finger out of his mouth and gave you a shy smile. “Ah… Well, thank you.” Affection for him flooded your body and you tackled him, slapping a hand over his mouth when he started laughing too loudly at being tickled. Eventually, neither of you could stay awake and when he began to drift off on the couch, you kissed his forehead and returned to your bedroom. 

Just one more week, you told yourself. I can make it at least one more week.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the next week, you took some time off work to go to the doctor for a follow-up appointment to make sure your ongoing symptoms weren’t anything to worry about. Jongseob insisted on going with you, and you weren’t sure which one of you was more embarrassed when the medical assistant asked if he was your little brother. 

Fortunately, you were able to get some repeat scans within the same week and everything checked out normal. You’d texted Jongseob the moment they came in.

y/n: guess whose noggin is normal and brain bleed-free?

js: oh my god that’s so good to hear

y/n: [sunglasses smiling emoji] [finger gun emoji]

js: y/n i swear to god

y/n: yeah i guess it is good news huh

js: i’m literally in class about to cry happy tears

y/n: :( wait stop, are you for real??

js: yes!! sorry that i care about your fucking wellbeing and that you’re incredibly important to me!

You sat in the break room, smiling so wide at your phone that your face started to hurt.

y/n: you are the absolute sweetest. i’m sorry for worrying you

js: whatever dude. thanks for getting it checked out. i know you probably did it to shut me up but i just feel a lot better

y/n: [sunglasses smiling emoji] [finger gun emoji]

js: sigh

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the next weekend approached, you knew Shota probably had plans to stay at Keeho’s, so you tried to catch him on Thursday night. You texted him to make sure he was free, and told him you wanted to hang out and have dinner. He agreed, no questions asked, and as soon as you sent the text finalizing the plans, your stomach started to hurt. You figured it would probably go fine, but it didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking.

You came home from work and walked in to find him already working on dinner. “Hey, thanks, Shota, you didn’t have to do that,” you said, secretly pleased that he’d already gotten started since you were starving. He looked over at you from where he was chopping vegetables. “Y/n, you really baby me a lot, you know that?” he said, an accusing smile on his face.

You smiled back in shock. “You’re goddamn right I do. You know what, you can finish this on your own, right? There’s actually this video game I really wanted to play–”

“No no, you can still help!” he replied immediately, laughing nervously. “That’s what I thought, punk,” you said with a sly smile as you washed your hands and joined him.

Once you’d both gotten settled at the table, your heart started to pick up pace. You cleared your throat as Shota took his first bite. “So… this thing with Keeho. How’s it going?” you began. Although it wasn’t the primary reason for your request to sit down and talk, you had still been meaning to check in with him about his new relationship as well.

“It’s good,” he replied, mouth full of food. You smiled fondly at him, glad he’d been able to find a boyfriend despite his ass-backwards manners and many, many peculiarities. He chewed and swallowed. “Yeah, he uh, he’s really great. I’m glad I gave it a chance.”

You nodded, happy with what you were hearing. “Good, that’s good. So he’s a good boyfriend? No regrets, right? You know I have a low threshold for kicking that guy’s ass,” you said, clenching your fists dramatically. He laughed and covered his mouth cutely. “Yes, he’s a really good boyfriend,” he replied, looking down and smiling thoughtfully. “I feel like ever since the incident at the club, he’s been spending our entire relationship trying to make it up to me.”

“Good! He should!”

He giggled at your honesty. “Yeah, if I’m being completely honest, it makes me feel a little bad but I do kind of enjoy it. Is that fucked up?”

“Not at all,” you replied immediately. “He should be treating you like royalty every single day. If he doesn’t, you’d better let me know.”

Shota smiled and nodded shyly. He was usually so sassy, and it was adorable seeing him be this vulnerable, talking about his boyfriend. You still had your doubts about Keeho, but as long as Shota was happy, you couldn’t really complain. 

And now, for the elephant in the room, your brain announced intrusively, and you picked at your food, suddenly nervous.

“So, Shota. There’s something that I wanna tell you, and, I’m open to whatever you have to say about it.”

He looked up at you from his food, eyebrows raised curiously, waiting for you to continue. You cleared your throat. “I’m, um. I’m seeing someone.”

He nodded. “Okay? That was fast.” His bluntness stung, but you expected it, and you knew he wasn’t saying it to be rude; he was just speaking his mind. “Do I know them?” 

“Him. Yeah, you do.”

Shota stared at you, growing impatient by the moment. “O…kay? So?”

Your hands began to sweat and you rubbed them on your work pants, avoiding eye contact with him. “What, are you back together with Intak or something?”

“No…”

“Y/n just tell m–”

“It’s Jongseob.”

He blinked once. Twice. Silence hung thick in the air and the room felt stuffy. You looked down at your plate, waiting, waiting, dreading Shota’s response, his scolding, his objections.

But the sound of his laughter split through the air and you looked up, confused, as Shota started cracking up. “No way,” he wheezed. “You and Jongseob? For real ?”

You sighed. “Yes,” you replied blandly, feeling a blush creep up your neck as you fought an embarrassed smile. He fell into another fit of laughter and you wanted to roll your eyes but didn’t; you were simply relieved that he didn’t seem mad. 

“Damn, I knew you were a cradle robber but I didn’t know you were that much of one,” he blurted out, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. You must not have been able to control the look that you made at that comment, because his face immediately sobered. “Shit, that came out a lot ruder than I meant it. I was just teasing, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Nah, it’s all good, I kinda deserve it. Well. I mean, I dunno. I definitely didn’t develop feelings for him on purpose. Feels like something that just happened to me,” you said, and hid your face into your hands, letting out a muffled scream. “God, why is this so embarrassing?”

Shota giggled. “Because you’re dating your little bro’s best friend, you pervert.”

Your jaw dropped, horrified, but he was laughing again. Okay, this could have been a lot worse, you thought. You could handle the jokes, and they were at least expected. 

As Shota’s laughing subsided, however, he took on a more serious tone. “You don’t think this is a rebound situation, right? Like, after your thing with Intak?”

“No,” you replied immediately, and he seemed relieved at the quickness of your answer. “No, not at all. I think I’ve been in denial about this for a minute, but I haven’t really explored it that much. One thing I know for certain, though, is that this has nothing to do with the situation with Intak. I promise.”

Shota nodded. “Okay. Okay, that’s good. Because… shit, I actually don’t know if I should tell you this.” He thought about it for just a moment longer, and then continued, “Ah, fuck it. He’d probably end up telling you anyway. When we were all kids, he had a pretty huge crush on you. I thought it was just a childhood thing, but now I’m wondering if, maybe… it never went away?”

Your throat went dry at this information, and you just nodded, thinking. 

After a few moments of silence, Shota sighed and cleared his voice. “Okay, serious talk time. I’m only gonna say this once, because you know how much I hate being confrontational.” You nodded, encouraging him to continue, his intense eye contact burning into you. 

“Just know that …you need to be really careful. Jongseob looks up to you, and you’re in a position where you could probably hurt him pretty badly.” You winced at this comment, but you knew he was right. “With Intak, I honestly couldn’t care less, and I’m sorry if this is blunt but I figured that wouldn’t really last long since the two of you don’t have that much in common, but with Jongseob? I dunno that he can really do casual, when it comes to dating. Especially not with you.”

You felt tears prick at the back of your eyes as you felt the pressure of the situation, but there was one thing you were certain of.

“Shota… I… love him,” you said, tears slipping out of your eyes. His face dropped at your change in demeanor, eyes round and shining as he nodded, listening to you intently. “Okay, okay. Good. I mean, shit. I’m sorry, did I say something to hurt your feelings? You don’t think I’m mad at you, right?”

You shook your head adamantly and wiped the tears away. “No no no, don’t worry, it’s not you. You’re being the best friend possible right now, and the best brother. It’s just… hearing you say all that, it just made me realize how much I really do love him. And, I haven’t told him this yet, so please don’t say anything, but…” you rubbed your eyes again, taking a deep shuddering breath. “It’s just overwhelming, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so protective of someone before, other than you of course. I can’t imagine messing around with him, you have to understand I could never, ever even imagine doing something like that to him. You have to understand,” you said and began to cry again, and he reached across the table and grabbed your hands. 

“Okay yeah, I hear you, I understand. I’m glad, y/n. It’s okay. Please stop crying,” he said with a nervous laugh. You and Shota didn’t cry in front of each other often at all, so he didn’t seem to know what to do other than pat your hands awkwardly.

After talking a bit more, Shota brought up something that you knew would come up. 

“So, I know I said I didn’t really care about the situation with Intak, but… I still think you need to tell him. Before you tell the other guys.” You nodded, agreeing with him. 

You wiped the remnants of tears at the corners of your eyes and pulled out your phone immediately to text Intak. “Wait, don’t tell him over text! That’s so uncool, y/n,” Shota scolded, and you showed him the text that you had just sent him, asking him if you could meet at a coffee shop to talk some things over. 

You rolled your eyes at him. “C’mon Shota, you know me better than that,” you said, and he shrugged. “Sorry, just had to make sure.” 

The next moment, Jongseob came through the door, having just gotten out of a late weekday class. This wasn’t one of the normal days he would have come over, but since it was the day you had wanted to talk to Shota, he’d made it work. 

“Hey guys,” he said with a strained smile. “Hey,” Shota responded. “Hi,” you said, elated to see him but feeling the tension in the room suck out all the air. You cleared your throat. “I’m gonna…”

“Sure, okay,” Shota responded knowingly as you made eye contact with Jongseob, gave him a reassuring smile, and headed to your room to give them some privacy to talk. About half an hour later, you heard a knock on your door, and you answered it to find Shota on the other side. “C’mon,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the common area. You complied and walked out to find Jongseob on the couch, staring at his phone while the TV played some video that Shota was forcing him (and soon to be both of you) to watch. 

You looked at Shota, and he gestured towards the couch. “Oh my god y/n just sit down and chill.” You looked at him, confused. “Wait, so that’s it?” 

He plopped down on the couch and grabbed a handful of Doritos, shoving most of them into his mouth. “Unless y’all have any more secrets, yeah, we’re good. Just don’t be weird. Hold hands, do whatever you need to do, I’ll get used to it.” 

You sat down on the couch next to Jongseob and he gave you a sweet smile, melting any remaining anxiety that you had. He pecked your cheek lightly and took your hand in his, as Shota proceeded to show both of you his latest YouTube fixation.

As the evening continued, you couldn’t help thinking about what Shota had said, and taking his words to heart. Every time you looked at Jongseob, you felt a renewed sense of protectiveness towards him, the love nearly pouring out of you. It took so much self-control not to say it. You knew you couldn’t tell him now, so soon. Your confession would have to wait. 

But it didn’t make it any less real.

Chapter 14: Clearing the Air

Later that night as you cuddled in bed next to Jongseob (who had decided to stay the night, even though it was a weeknight), your phone lit up on the nightstand, and you reached over him to grab it. 

tak: hey, y/n, thanks for reaching out, i hope you’ve been doing good. i’m down to meet up and talk, just let me know when and where

y/n: great, i really appreciate it, and likewise. how about this Saturday at 10am? that coffee shop we used to go to? 

y/n: or wait, is that weird :/

y/n: shit, nevermind, you choose

tak: lol it’s all good, that coffee shop is fine. see you then

y/n: ok!!

You sighed and put your phone back on the nightstand. “Everything okay?” Jongseob asked in the dark, rubbing your side. 

“Yeah, just made plans to meet up with Intak Saturday morning and talk.”

“Mmm,” he responded and kissed your shoulder. “Are you nervous?”

“Nah, I think it’ll go fine. Just something that I need to get over with, I guess.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

A long silence ensued, and something flickered across your mind.

“You don’t feel weird about this, right?” you asked.

“About what?”

“Oh, you know what. About me going to get coffee with Intak and tell him about us. That doesn’t make you uncomfortable, right?”

“No!” he said a little too loudly and you smiled. “Just… don’t go falling for him again, or whatever,” he muttered, and you burst out laughing. 

“When I have you to come back home to? Not a chance,” you replied, kissing his cheek over and over again.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey, y/n,” Intak said in a friendly tone as he approached your table. “Hi Intak,” you said with a nervous smile as you stood up and hugged him. He looked good, like he always did, but you were relieved that he seemed happy, nearly glowing. What a relief , you thought.

Once you'd both ordered and sat back down again, you took a deep breath and began.

“Okay, first of all, I wanted to apologize for…” you looked down and chewed the inside of your lip, thinking of how best to phrase what you wanted to say. “For, I guess, just not being very emotionally honest when we were together. I think I knew, deep down, that things between us wouldn’t last – nothing to do with you, just a gut feeling – and, I guess I didn’t really know what I was doing with you, or why.”

He raised his eyebrows, brown puppy-dog eyes widening in understanding, as he nodded, encouraging you to continue. “Nothing about it was your fault, though. You have to know that. You’re attractive and sweet and attentive and you absolutely deserve someone who will fully appreciate you. But anyway, I’m sorry for how things ended up, the last thing I wanted was for you to get hurt.”

Intak smiled sweetly and nodded again, his eyes full of compassion and empathy. “Hey, it’s really okay. I’m doing fine. Nothing to apologize for.”

You let out a huge sigh of relief and smiled back, bowing your head slightly and taking a sip of your drink. “There was… another thing I wanted to talk to you about today,” you began tentatively.

He sipped his drink casually. “Okay? Sure, what’s up?” he responded, looking curious.

“I’m, uh… I’m dating Jongseob.”

His expression didn’t change. Shit, he’s mad, you thought immediately. He looked to the left, then the right, then back at you. “Yeah. Okay? And?”

You blinked at him a couple times. “Um. Okay wait, what do you mean?”

He stared back at you, confused. “I mean, I guess I just don’t understand what you wanted to talk about. Are you guys doing okay? Is something wrong? Like, do you need anything?”

This got more confusing by the second, and you took a deep breath. “I wanted to let you know because of how recently we broke up. And, you know, he’s someone that you know. I just wanted to be open and honest with you about it, and let you know before the others found out. Because… I know how it looks, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

He furrowed his brows together and smiled. “Y/n… I honestly assumed you would get together with him the moment I dumped you. Felt like I was doing you a service, actually, by breaking things off… so you could finally be with him. I figured you didn’t have the guts, or something, to tell me.”

Your face went hot and that last comment offended you, but he quickly added, “I know, I wasn’t really giving you the benefit of the doubt. It’s just, I saw the way you looked at him, and the way he always stared at you, and it was just… so obvious? To me, at least. And to Theo. Especially after the hospital. If I’m honest, I felt like boyfriend number two in that situation. Not that you shouldn’t have people who care about you and want to take care of you, but damn, he kinda made me look bad. Not that I can fault him, but still.”

He laughed and ran a hand through his hair, leaning back in his chair a little. Your stomach churned at the thought of him and Theo talking about you like that but you knew you couldn’t fault them. It’s not like they’d technically been wrong, but it still made you feel so stupid.

“I also want to make it clear that I didn’t necessarily think you were cheating or anything, but I could just tell your heart wasn’t really with me, and it got too difficult to deal with,” he added, face taking on a more serious expression.

Your chest panged with guilt. “Yeah, that makes sense. That’s totally fair. I’m really sorry.”

“Hey, it’s all good. Obviously I was disappointed but I’m not going to try to force something that isn’t meant to be. You’re a really cool person and I’m glad you’ve uh, finally figured out who your person is,” he added with a chuckle. “I have a tendency to get a little involved when I start dating someone so, even though we had agreed that things needed to stay casual, I think I just got too invested and that’s on me. Not your fault, it’s just the way things happened.” You nodded, a smile of relief tugging at your lips.

After talking about something other things and catching up in general, the conversation becoming much lighter and more comfortable, a thought occurred to you, and you blurted:

“Wait, so you’re telling me that I was one of the only people who didn’t know that I liked Jongseob?”

“Seems to be that way,” he replied with a kindhearted laugh, sipping his drink. “Wait,” he added, “I even told you that I didn’t want to be second best in your world. What the hell did you think that meant, y/n?”

Your face burned up. “Honestly, I didn’t know and I was too afraid and in shock to ask, so I just let it go without a second thought. This just gets more embarrassing, huh.”

He laughed heartily as you put your elbows on the table, covered your face with your hands, and groaned. As you smiled, and finished your drink, he cleared his throat.

“So…on this topic, I should mention. I’ve actually got a date with someone tonight. So I really mean it when I say, don’t worry about me. I’m cool if you are.”

You smiled and your mouth dropped open in momentary shock, eyes wide, then you fist bumped him and he burst out laughing as he returned it. 

“That’s great. I’m happy for you,” you said, voice taking on a more serious tone.

“For us ,” he added, and you nodded, standing up from the table and giving him another hug before you parted ways amicably.

Chapter 15: Going Places

You walked through the front door of your apartment with Shota, arms aching from all the heavy plastic bags cutting into them.

“Y/n, we are a one trip household , he’d screamed at you outside the car as he piled more bags onto your wrists, his own arms flexing under the weight of the ones he was already holding. Once inside, you lowered them to the ground as carefully as possible, but you were unable to avoid the loud clank of the glass bottles as you set them down. 

It had been Shota’s idea to host a party for the end of the school year, with your usual group (which you hadn’t seen since you and Jongseob had started dating). Your household was supplying the drinks, Jiung and Theo volunteered to bring snacks, Keeho was bringing chicken, and Intak was bringing his new girlfriend. 

After you’d both set the bags down and Shota had gone to his room to change, you looked around and noticed the house looked immaculate. You turned the corner into the kitchen to find Jongseob finishing up the dishes and hugged him from behind, smiling into his back and hooking your hands around his waist. “Thanks for cleaning,” you said, voice muffled by his shirt.

“No prob. Do we need anything else before tonight?” he asked, turning off the water as he put the last dish on the drying rack.

“Nope,” you replied, releasing him so he could dry his hands, then pulling him in for a hug, rubbing his back briskly. “I’m gonna go get ready, come on.”

He held your hand as he followed you to your room and you both got ready; you changed into baggy blue jeans and a white short-sleeved button-up, while he put on a pair of black baggy cargo pants and a fitted baby tee with pink text. As soon as you saw him, your mind went blank and your hands made their way, completely outside your control, to his tiny waist. 

“ Damn, ” you whispered as he giggled and pushed your hands away; you went to the bathroom to start on your makeup, fully in a daze. He joined you about halfway through to do his hair, putting it up in little half pigtails (using some of your tiny clear hairbands), and you truly could have disintegrated at how cute he was. 

After fighting weakly and losing rapidly, he let you dab some pearly eyeshadow on his inner corners and headed out to the living room as people started to arrive.

Taeyang and Jiung arrived first, arms fully loaded with bags of snacks that they set on the counter. As you pulled out large bowls to put them in, Taeyang leaned his ass against the kitchen counter next to you, arms crossed, and looked down at you with a piercing gaze. He was so beautiful, hair even longer than last time you saw him; he looked positively vampiric, with his dark hair, pale skin, and dark pink lips. Was he wearing makeup? You wondered, but then realized he’d just asked you a question.

“Hello, Earth to y/n?” he yelled over the music, and you smiled, embarrassed. “Sorry, what?”

“So? You and blondie?”

Your smile dropped. “How did you–”

“Intak told me because he’s such a little gossip, but I just wanted to verify it with you because I’m nosy.”

You laughed, dropping your guard a bit. “Ah, I see. Well, the rumor’s true,” you replied, shrugging your shoulders. 

“Cool,” he responded, leaving to go join the others. That was it? You sighed in relief. You weren’t sure why you were expecting Taeyang to be mad, but you were just relieved he wasn’t. Or else, as far as you knew, he wasn’t.

Keeho arrived next with the chicken, which everyone started to dive into without waiting for Intak, and shortly after, Intak walked in with his girlfriend and introduced her to everyone, beginning with you. Her name was Lily, and she had dark round eyes, full lips, and beautiful dark hair; she was drop dead gorgeous, and you weren’t surprised. The two of them were a match made in heaven, a bisexual dream. 

An hour or two later, everyone was at least a few drinks in, and getting rowdier by the minute. Shota wouldn’t get out of Keeho’s lap, Jiung and Taeyang wouldn’t stop screaming at each other over Mario Kart, and you and Lily had basically become best friends. 

At the end of one of the Mario Kart matches, Shota jumped off of Keeho and started dancing, which made Jiung get up and started dance battling him, which resulted in your downstairs neighbors calling the cops because there was so much screaming that they couldn’t tell if you were hosting a party or if a mass murder was taking place.

After the cops left, Shota took off his shirt and started showing everyone the wall run that he’d perfected, adding to the footprints that already marred your white walls. You pulled out your phone and added magic erasers to your shopping list before going outside your front door with Jongseob to smoke. 

Neither of you were smokers but you sometimes couldn’t help yourself when you’d been drinking, so you always kept a pack on hand, just in case the feeling struck (like it did, now). You lit a cigarette, sucked in the acrid smoke, then leaned towards Jongseob’s face to allow him to light his from the tip of yours. Your head felt light and pleasant, and he looked so impossibly sexy, cheeks flushed from alcohol, pigtails a mess, the skin of his lower belly showing. 

After his next exhalation, you leaned in and kissed him, sloppy, needy, and slow. He leaned against the railing outside your door while you pressed into him and wrapped your arms around his shoulders passively, body feeling heavy. He giggled into the kiss, and you felt his smile against your lips, as he pulled away slightly and murmured something. 

“What?” you asked, voice barely a whisper, and he flushed more deeply, kissing you again. You pulled back again. “Baby, what did you say?” you asked again, becoming worried.

He giggled again, looking down. “I love you?” he said quietly, his tone raising at the end of the statement, almost making it sound like a question. But his face fell immediately as you stared at him blankly. “Sorry, I’m drunk, I shouldn’t–”

“I love you too,” you blurted out, eyes brimming with moisture as you kissed him again, more softly this time. You felt like your body was melting into his as he held you there, lips pressed to yours, hands dangerously low on your hips. You kissed him again, again, and again, then pulled him into a tight hug, burying your face in his chest as he kissed your head. 

You jumped as the door flung wide open and Taeyang screamed, “Oh my god, ” and made a gagging noise as he came out to join you. You separated slightly, giggling uncontrollably. He scowled at you both. “Y’all look like a coupla high schoolers. Give me one of those,” he said, holding his hand out, and you handed him a cigarette and a lighter. 

Taeyang was somehow both friendlier and sassier with the alcohol in his system, and proceeded to very casually talk with both of you in a way that he hadn’t done before. He asked you about how you’d been feeling since your injury and you were happy to report that you were finally feeling mostly like your old self again; you then used that opportunity to bitch about your shitty boss. He and Jongseob talked about finals and everything school-related. 

The conversation flowed from smalltalk to deeper topics, and soon the three of you were multiple cigarettes in, drunkenly rambling about ethical, political, and social issues. As Taeyang was on a particularly fiery rant, the door opened and out walked Intak and Lily, who jolted slightly at Theo’s volume.

“Hey guys, we’re taking off,” Intak said, bowing his head slightly and smiling at the three of you. He and Lily hugged you one by one and headed down the stairs. You glanced at your phone and realized that it was late . 

The three of you went back inside and Jiung was laying on the living room floor, eyes closed. Taeyang pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Goddammit Jiung, don’t make me carry you out of here.”

“Keeho and Shota went to go have sex or something. Everyone else abandoned me,” Jiung said, eyes still closed, his voice completely deadpan. The three of you felt bad but couldn’t help laughing as Taeyang helped him up and headed out the door to catch their ride. 

You shut the front door behind them and hopped on the couch next to Jongseob. The house was a disaster, but that would be a problem for tomorrow. You leaned on his shoulder; it had been a while since your last drink but you were still pleasantly buzzed, your throat mildly sore from the cigarettes.

Jongseob took your hand in both of his and cleared his throat. “Hey, y/n, I’m sorry about earlier, if what I said was… if it was too much. I was drunk, and not really thinking.”

Your heart sank, and you turned to face him, face crestfallen. “Wait. Did you mean it, though?”

He glanced away and nodded, looking ashamed. “Of course I did. No doubt about it. But, I just don’t want you to feel obligated to say it back,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding eye contact with you.

You guided his face towards you gently, forcing him to look into your eyes, his own eyes looking vulnerable and nervous.

 “I love you, Seob, so much. And I would never say that if I didn’t mean it. Do you understand?”

He smiled wide and nodded, leaning into your hand on his cheek as you brushed your thumb against his face affectionately. 

“Okay,” he said quietly, and you pulled him in for a gentle kiss, feeling more excited for your future than you’d ever been before.

[mariacallous]

In early 2006, Russian Pvt. Andrei Sychyov had his legs and genitals amputated from frostbite after he and at least seven other conscripts were forced to squat in the snow for hours during New Year’s Eve celebrations, during which they were brutally beaten. It took three days for him to get any medical aid. In 2018, Pvt. Artyom Pakhotin had the word petukh—meaning rooster (figuratively, “prison bitch”)—carved into his forehead as a punishment for smoking in the barracks. Two weeks later, he killed himself with his AK. On Oct. 25, 2019, conscript Ramil Shamsutdinov opened fire on fellow soldiers, killing eight of them, after what he said was a prolonged period of beatings and threats of rapes.

Every six months, approximately 130,000 Russian conscripts are called up for their year of service, where most of them will face sadistic hazing. In Russian, it’s called dedovshchina, a brutal internal army regime that began in Soviet times but is thoroughly embedded in modern military culture. Western militaries have worked hard to reduce bullying and hazing in the ranks with some, but not complete, success. But in Russia’s army, dedovshchina is a unique cultural staple and a formative part of the military identity. It’s a process that leaves Russian soldiers brutalized and traumatized; it in turn teaches them to inflict pain on others.

Multiple sources, both those who served in Soviet times and those with experience in the modern Russian Armed Forces, have described this hazing to me as not just a byproduct of service but as a deliberate part of Russian military indoctrination. (I interviewed these sources during my history studies and early journalism work on this subject and reached back out to many for this piece.) The same attitude is expressed all over the Russian internet. In 2006, as Lenta.ru reported, the then-prosecutor-general of Russia, Vladimir Ustinov, even admitted in a speech to President Vladimir Putin and his prosecutor colleagues that he “is unable to do anything about the criminality in the armed forces.” 

The survivors of this hazing say the main goal is to break young men. They are turned into submissive, intimidated, and obedient drones who will not ask unnecessary questions nor show any independent thought or initiative. The methods are brutal. Take punching the plywood, used as a so-called toughness training exercise and also as a form of collective punishment. Service members stand in formation in a single line at attention. An authority figure passing by the formation hits each of the standing service members in the chest with the butt of an AKM assault rifle until the bolt jerks in the frame. Soldiers who’ve been through this say that it leaves your chest black and bruised for at least a week. 

Then there is staking the moose, especially prominent in the Russian Air Force. The soldier puts his hands on his forehead with the palms facing outward, like a moose’s spread antlers. His abuser hits the center of the crossed palms with his fists, or a rifle butt, or a stool, or whatever else is on hand. The task of the “moose” is to remain standing. Failure to do so will, undoubtedly, result in even more severe beatings and other punishments. There are various versions of this, such as “suicidal moose,” where a far-off wall is chosen and the conscript is forced to run toward it as fast as possible until their “antlers” slam into it. If they don’t run fast enough, there are more beatings.

Not all punishments are physical. In a blog called Army Diary of a Conscript 2012-13, the author, who just goes by “Sergei,” writes: “It is one thing when you are awakened at night by a blow on the head with a stool, after which you get bullied just for ‘fun,’ and another thing, for example, when younger conscripts are sent to hard and dishonorable work in the first place. The difference is in the goals—sometimes suffering and humiliation is the main purpose, and sometimes it is a side effect.” 

Another former conscript posted about his experiences in a link that’s now only accessible through waybackmachine: “Fear. Misunderstanding. And fear again. To the point of shaking at the knees. It’s a strange feeling. I’m surprised it’s so prevalent. We weren’t ‘guests for three days’ in the old army tradition. We got picked up and beaten senseless the first night.”

“Guests for three days” here means the unwritten rule once adhered to in Soviet times, where the conscripts were treated with overplayed kindness and politeness for three days, before the horror began, just to see what kind of people they were and how they would act in stressful situations. Such niceties have largely disappeared.

But those are just the regular methods. Some of the ways to dedi, or break, the young conscripts are genuinely disturbing—and those who’ve served seldom want to talk about the worst experiences they’ve had. This isn’t surprising, because oftentimes it’s on the same level as the worst punishments in the prison culture, and parallels incidents in today’s police torture cases in Russia. There are cases of rape and being forced into prostitution and threats of such. Then there are abuses like the infamous sitting on a bottle, often used by Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen units to punish those who oppose them. It’s all about humiliation—some of it imitated from the ponyatiya, the sadistic regime of Russian prison culture. 

As the name, literally the “rule of the old-timers,” suggests, dedovshchina is based on the superiority of veterans to rookies. While there’s always been bullying, going back to the tsarist military, Soviet dedovshchina began right after World War II, when the army was still swollen by the wartime call-up. Of course, the military command realized that hazing was a foolish idea, but the army severely lacked manpower, due to the immense number of casualties it had suffered, and there was little appetite for cracking down on soldiers. Due to the lack of manpower, prisoners were also often transferred to the army, which led to the spread of their own unwritten laws, the ponyatiya, among the armed forces.

Veterans who had survived a war that killed 8.7 million of their comrades and around 19 million Soviet civilians were not interested in peacetime military affairs and everyday chores like washing floors or cleaning. Nor did they care much about proper dress code and discipline. Their officers had often served with them in the war and tended to treat them with well-earned respect—so these veterans instead delegated all the daily work to the fresh recruits and also took it upon themselves to teach them proper discipline and the ethos of the army, severely beating them in cases of disobedience. And then the veterans demobilized and the previous victims took their place, creating a permanent cycle of violence. 

This only intensified after Leonid Brezhnev’s 1968 reduction of the term of service in the army from three to two years. Since the Soviet Union had become a stagnant bureaucracy, the reduction had numerous flaws and was implemented carelessly and haphazardly. Those who had already served one year had to continue serving for two more, while the new recruits had to serve for only two years. This caused resentment in the older recruits and hatred in the younger, so the older service members began to amplify the violence and humiliation they inflicted upon new recruits, who then did the same to subsequent conscripts. 

After the introduction of the one-year system, in another half-hearted attempt at military reform in the mid-2000s, these term-based beatings became less formalized. However, this didn’t mean a stop or even a general decrease in violence, just a change in the reasoning and pace behind it. Today, the older service members just beat up whomever they like. A soldier used to take beatings for a year and then spend another year giving them to the fresh recruits. Now a conscript does both for six months apiece. Once-organized violence has become general brutality. 

Another form of hazing is zemlyadstvo: hazing on national or regional grounds. It started when the various nationalities of the Soviet Union—and today the Russian Federation—formed cliques and clustered together to collectively deal with “outsiders.” The nature of zemlyadstvo has not changed much since the Soviet era—save for the general disappearance of some of the nationalities, like Georgians and Armenians, once involved. But there are still plenty of minorities inside Russia, and they’re particularly targeted for conscription. It is disproportionately the minorities, especially those from the eastern regions, who bear the brunt of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Despite selling itself as an international workers’ paradise, the Soviet Union was anything but. Russian culture was always pushed to the national republics as a superior one, and if you weren’t seen as properly Russian, then you’d often be treated as a second-class citizen. We in the Baltics were always “evil Nazi sympathizers,” with Estonians especially portrayed as slow and dim-witted. There was a range of ethnic slurs: Caucasians were chernye, “blacks,” or “black-assed”; Central Asians were cherka, “blockheads”; Ukrainians were nothing but khohols; and so forth. Those attitudes have persisted, producing conflicts between the ethnic Russians, who tend to view themselves as superior, and everyone else.

For some groups, these were essentially protective alliances, shielding members from the brutality. My late father told me that, in his unit, people from the Baltics used to hang out in the vehicle workshop, doing all the necessary work there, while those from the Caucasus took over the canteen. That spoke to their power, since it was always warm there and they had access to extra food. Neither of these groups spent much time in the barracks, thus avoiding the dedovshchina that took place there. Teaming up in this way was vital, because otherwise Russian racism led to minorities being subjected to the worst bullying—as in the tragic case of Shamsutdinov, an ethnic Tatar from the Tyumen oblast who snapped and shot his comrades.

This case blew up all over the Russian internet at the time. My interviewees agreed that because he had an “Asiatic look,” he must’ve been treated extra harshly by the ethnic Russians. “He must have jumped higher than his place,” a Russian sailor currently serving in the North Sea told me on the phone. “Must’ve tried to complain to someone about the beatings or dared to stand up to someone. Bad idea. For the army, they (the non-Russians) are meat. They’re far from Moscow or Saint Petersburg. Nobody cares when they die.” Today, the attitude of Russian superiority beaten into soldiers feeds into the racism of Putin’s war, where Ukrainians are portrayed as subhuman.

To some extent, dedovshchina thrived during peacetime in the absence of anything else to do—and traditionally it diminished during war. However, as Putin fuels and supports hate groups within his own country for political reasons, it’s only getting worse. One traditional aspect that hasn’t changed about brutality, however, is that it tends to play out in violence against civilians. Ukrainian civilians suffer war crimes from brutalized Russians, just as Chinese suffered from the brutalized imperial Japanese. That, too, was a militarized society, where people were taught that their lives belonged to the emperor. Training was brutal, and beatings—for very little reason or none at all—were often. And those who endured became brutal and desensitized themselves, capable of justifying any cruelty. Similar parallels can be drawn with the South Korean Army of the Vietnam War, whose ultra-harsh internal discipline and brutal training produced its cruel treatment of the Vietnamese.

And the internal violence in the Russian army has gotten worse—even before the brewing ethnic tensions are taken into account. There are reports of those who want to refuse fighting in Ukraine, or just misbehave in the Russian army, being beaten by the military police and then being put in torture pits for days. The soldiers who are returning home are committing crimes, and violence in Russia is becoming ever more normalized. 

This is nothing new—statistics published by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1992 showed that, in 1989, when the Soviet-Afghan War ended, the overall number of recorded crimes grew by 31.8 percent. Obviously, the last returning soldiers weren’t the only cause for this, but they certainly played their part. And then came the 1990s, when veterans of the Chechen wars played their part in creating the peaks of murder reached in 1994 and 2002. 

Another generation will be put through the wringer of Russia’s self-inflicted misery. Russian opposition journalists are already talking about how Russia has changed and what it’s going to be like to live there after the war. But none of this brutality, nor the hate groups and crime that have spawned from it, is going to go away easily.

[faunastanza]

Thread into Althar

Thread into Althar, by Azlyn, Razca, Yurayana, Yevelle, Myandery, observed by Shizukan Despite how insanely overinvested this whole blog is in this comic, I don't actually check on Floraverse that often since it updates so sporadically. Like I said some time ago, sometimes months or even a year can go by before an update happens. Imagine my surprise when I did a periodic check on it as usual and saw that there were TWO updates!! Wow!! I went to check Glip's twitter for further context as Charlie Brown approaches the football every time, and of course, I landed flat on my back. Glip did have a doc they wrote up about how they regretted keeping someone on their discord from committing suicide because they were annoying though. This isn't a new sentiment for Glip at all - they've previously told people they'd be better off dead several times. Their total unawareness of how bad it makes them look is a bit striking though. "You said you don't care about Glip's real life, why do you keep checking their twitter?" It's true that I don't care about Glip's real life, I just want to know what's going on in their insane webcomic because it has some kind of sick hold on me, but the annoying thing is that Glip's real life is constantly bleeding into their comic. Is this character an actual villain, or are they someone Glip was mad at in their discord? Is this a plot development, or a veiled metaphor for a callout about them? Is this a character or is it just Marl or Pengo or Sila again? You constantly have to ask yourself these questions as you read the comic. I suppose it does make for a unique reading experience. For fun, here's the recent info Glip posted that may or may not influence this update or future ones - one of the mods on their discord got outed for being a pedo and a zoophile and was banned. This seems to happen a lot on their discord for some reason, it's so weird!! They're also in a feud with someone who knew the pedo who made a zine about their discord being a cult and claimed Glip was trying to human traffic them. "Who cares, this is unrelated drama" IS IT?? IS IT REALLY??? You can never be sure!! You'll just have to keep it in mind whenever you read a Floraverse update from now on!! They apparently also have a podcast of sorts where they talk about "the truth" of what goes on in the discord and such but the episodes are like three hours long and I feel like listening to them is taking things too far. I already know I'm staring into the abyss, I've got to have limits. Also, three+ hours??? I already spend way too much time thinking about all this crap as it is. Anyway, this is "by" a bunch of people but it's just the characters that are in the RP. We know Glip and Pengo are in the RP but how many other people, I don't know. They have multiple characters running around after all. We're introduced to a dude in a sombrero and a Hot Topic looking critter.

and an unpalatable muffin

Sombrero's name is Myandery and the Hot Topic thing is Shizukan. Myandery notices that Shizukan has a little compact from Teslic Yard and asks if it's supposed to have that. In response Shizukan holds the compact out out to Myandery, who remembers that Shizukan can't speak. It takes the compact while Shizukan whirls its arms around to make threads, just like in the title!!

 buy me on a shirt

Shizukan whipping its arms around serves as a way to scene change via the compact, so we're going to be hopping around a bit. We see Azlyn/Orobas finally! She's asking everyone for help with a ritual to help someone "whose name was injured". If you remember way back when, one of the ways to protect yourself from an angel was to repeat your name and occupation over and over. I'm assuming that's related but it's not explained so, who knows.

She says that his name was very important and that without it, we "lost him" for a while, but if they give him a new one, he'll come back. She says that we can find a new name for him with enough love, since love is about reaching out and inviting in. Azlyn says that Gaap is asking for letters of love, condensed into glyphs (Andre can't read, remember). She says the first part is writing out the letter, not just imagining it in your head but writing it for real. She says that she wrote one, but it's a little unorthodox.

Her letter is clearly about Amdusias, although she doesn't remember her apparently. She says that she knows her voice and her face, but when she thinks about it they disappear, like notes to a song she can't remember (Amdusias taught her a song and told her not to forget it, but she always does). She talks about how important Amdusias is and how she matters to her, and that even if she can't remember/doesn't know who she is, she knows something's missing and she mourns not being with her, whoever she is. She wonders how they'll meet and what binds them together so strongly that she remembers shadows of her even now, without fully knowing her. She gets teary, wondering when she'll meet her and that all she can do is wait. She then says she's a fortune teller, and a side effect of that can be prophetic dreams, so this letter is for someone she hasn't met yet.

Where this is on the timeline is unclear, and we're possibly in another frequency entirely so shrug!! We last saw Amdusias having nightmares or something on Trebol and when she woke up Orobas wasn't there, so who knows. I like this scene though and getting glimpses of Orobas and Amdusias again. Reminders of a simpler time and better characters in this comic's history...

where is my big-handed girlfriend

We cut to a brief glimpse of the Worthworm on the Andre painting, then Shizukan shifts the scene again. We meet a dude who looks like a cross between a snake and a mantis. This is Razca, one of the heads of the other religions. She talks a bit differently and capitalize random nouns. She's heard about Gaap's request for letters and want to address her congregation about it.

beware the heart tail Razca says that it might be hard to think of a good feeling to send out for Gaap's request, so she wants to talk about her own feelings in hopes it'll inspire their congregation to think about theirs and decide if they want to do Gaap's request or not.

Razca talks about loss and deaths in her family and how it feels to grieve and miss them every day. This is also well done and genuine, which makes me suspect someone other than Glip wrote it.

it sounds like she's talking about death but it could just be someone who left but eh, negligible difference Anyway, Razca says that because she wishes she could have that person back so much, the chance to bring someone back is very precious, so she's going to help Gaap as best she can. She says that some believe that people who've died should be allowed to rest, but she sees it as a chance for a new beginning and that if the ritual works, she wants to be part of it.

We get a brief shot of Andre when he burned Beleth to death, although in this shot he's burning an open door. Shizukan then cuts to a white uniqorn somewhere. A dog comes in and says that the Synemetrics are on the move, and asks the uniqorn if he has thoughts about Gaap's call for assistance. Turns out that the uniqorn is in charge of Psia'ago, or Pengo's religion I assume. He says that if people in Pengoism want to help out Gaap then fine, it's their call.

looks kind of like a mouse

The dog asks if Yevelle is also going to help, but he say he's hesitant to talk about love, and he thinks talking about love for a ritual is disrespectful. The dog, whose name is Hilo or Milo but the font is so weird I can't tell, let's go with Milo, asks if it's because Yevelle is afraid of being hurt. This question pisses Yevelle off as he says no one can hurt him. Milo is unimpressed, so Yevelle asks if saying "I am afraid" would please them. Milo says they just want to know what Yevelle is actually feeling.

Yevelle says he's asking his people to help constructively if they do decide to help Gaap. He hopes that the people of Althar will respond with love untainted by malice, as love tainted with malice can be hard to unravel if sweetened enough. Glip's mentioned malice a few times before, in particular saying it was what broke the Mask of the Sun and led to all those insane mspaint VNs a while back. Could be related, could not be related. Just making a note of it.

Milo turns to leave for their nightly rounds, as Yevelle instructed. Yevelle comes over to put their hood up for them, chiding them not to do anything he wouldn't do, and Milo jokes back while calling them Vel, so these two are either friends or an item. My money is on the latter.

We get a brief cut of Nuez looking at Phesund in her ugly fullbody paintbrush tail form. Shizukan tries to move the scene again but something wrong happens and there's static instead. We then get a goofy news report on the whole business from an unknown person. They call Gaap the "high priestident" which I kind of like ngl. The newscaster, a sun looking thing with a goofy face, says that the Payayan temple is near the Synemetric one, saying it's an eyesore, and brings us inside. There's a stripey cat walking around.

seems like they have consistent trouble with the word "president"

The cat tells Belnono (lol) to knock off the fake newscasting. Belnono is this ridiculous looking "dog" made out of leather straps and what appears to be a flat sundial for a head.

what

The cat's name is Yurayana and she is proportioned a bit like a triangle.

tapering up to a point Belnono has a moon counterpart called Belauna because of course. An unknown figure says something to Yurayana but we don't know what. The two dogs bicker about correlation and causation as Yurayana continues down the hallway. Yurayana tells them to knock it off since she's trying to focus. They ask if she's going to send a glyph, with Moondog sure that she will since she's good and kind and loyal, and Sundog expressing skepticism. This makes Yurayana snap at them angrily to be quiet, which scares them. She walks off in silence and the dogs follow her.

We get a brief shot of what looks like the plague doctor from last time approaching Nuez but she has a lot of weird wingy things around her.

no eyes and fire? lame

It looks like she might be protecting Phesund (birdform) from the plague doctor. Shizukan seems to regain control and switches everything back to Azlynobas. She talks about how to turn your letter into a glyph. Basically you think about your letter and then draw whatever shapes come into your mind.

The screen goes dim and Myandery asks if Shizukan came out all this way just to show it this. It tries to move its strings around but nothing happens, so it nods. Myandery says that the faces all looked familiar and asks if Shizukan knew it'd see familiar things. Shizukan shakes its head, then nods.

Myandery says their former teacher was in there, someone who used to be known as Andrealphus before Myandery came here (to Althar I assume). It says it knows that Andre is an important figure in Synemetricism and that its friend said Andre was an Arch Magni. Myandery then says that its friend used to be an angel (you can cure that??) and was responsible for "asking a question" that put us (not sure who the us is here) in Undertown, where angels hang out. It's where Glip and Pengo had that talk but I'm not sure if its where all the mspaint vns happened or not. Who knows.

funkopop coming soon

Myandery says it saw Dr. Curse (the plague doctor? but I thought it was that tv thing) and Nuez, who it says helped it with the ritual that "put intentions" into the collar around Shizukan's neck. It then apologizes if the collar is hurting Shizukan. Shizukan gives it a few looks and then waves goodbye and leaves.

We cut to Mel's house sometime later, and it turns out Mel was the beecat. They're with some kind of bizarre looking bird thing and a big egg. They say a synemetric came by talking about the ritual. The bird is TALwire- what??? Why is TALwire a bird??? WHat???? What???

if i open my mouth too wide my eye hurts When did this happen??? Oh, right, in the RP no one got to see I assume. Great! Great. That's great. Mel shows TALwire a glyph and says that they said stuff that sounded like "what you saw" but the paper has more details. They give a bunch of dates that's just when the RP starts. She refers to Andre as the "to-be-named one" and basically explains what you have to do to fill the RP prompt of writing a letter/glyph to Gaap.

Mel then says the bees were acting different and they got a weird feeling from them. They say the dance the bees did reminds them of when they left a fire on when they didn't mean to for a few hours. The fire didn't hurt anyone but it could have been worse. They say it also reminds them of when a Zweitru came to the door which reminds them of ANOTHER fire that sparked and scared them. They thought a lot about fires and the importance of ponds and water. Deep stuff.

The Zweitru came back later and told them about a Zweitru turning into an angel, but the Zweitru were annoyed everyone was making such a big deal about it, like it didn't matter much to them. They figure that they felt like people were more eager for an excuse to be mad at Zweitruity than worried about the new angel. You'd think the incredibly stupid name would be enough of an excuse to be mad but hey.

Mel then says they've been rambling and asks if they should go to Razca for help. TALwire says sure. They bring the egg. And then that's it! That's the end!!

What about all the Mesund Phesund Phesomme Deca stuff from the last VN? You fool. We'll never know. Glip mentions in the description that this has a glimpse of Teslic Yard (where? where myandery and shizukan were?) and again begs you to join the discord in BOLD. PLEASE JOIN!! PLEASE JOIN!! You can talk about the update too!! You don't have to RP!! PLEASE JOIN!! PLEASE JOIN!!! (don't join)

[transsexual-dandelions]

Do you think it's weird that mickey makes me feel like gender envy to a point? I've always gone back and forth on gender identity. The majority of my life I've been fine and felt like myself as my birth gender (female) I went through a period of time for a few years where I identified as non-binary, and then that didn't feel right anymore and I just kinda fell back into presenting as female, and I've been okay with that. But ever since finding shameless I have realized how much I am like mickey, and I find myself picking up mannerisms from him and when I dress more like masculine or androgynous, I am incredibly happy. But I'm also still happy presenting as female like 98% of the time???? I'm so very confused lol I use she/her pronouns, but I wouldn't be offended is I was referred to with they/them either. Does any of this even make sense? Wah sorry to ramble in your messages lol.

First, thank you for trusting me with this <3 I’m very honored, exploring your gender and presentation can be a very vulnerable thing

Second, I don’t think it’s weird! And it does make sense!

Something I think that everyone should know is that gender and sexuality can be very fluid, and sometimes you might just have the wrong label for the same feeling or have that feeling change over time. For example, there was a time I was a lesbian. I didn’t think I was one and was confused, there was a point in time where I was a woman who liked other woman! And somehow I reached the opposite end of the spectrum, a gay guy who likes other guys! On the other hand, I thought I was bi when I later realized I was ace, because “oh equal attraction” but zero attraction is not the same as equal, for me, anyway. I do hope that makes sense.

You gender presentation and expression are not the same as your gender itself, which both makes it easier and infinitely more confusing. Sometimes it’s an indicator of who you are, and sometimes you’re just gender nonconforming and enjoy different presentations, and both are valid! And your presentation doesn’t have to match your gender itself! You can present extremely feminine, pass as a woman, and use they/them or he/him! Or as masculine as you want and pass as a male and use she/her!

Also! You can be several things! You can be both! Or multiple! Sometimes it’s complicated! You can be a guy who’s a lesbian! Or a girl who’s a gay guy! Or some other infinitely nuanced thing! Gender and sexuality contain multitudes! You can be two “contradictory” things!

If that’s something that appeals to you, I’d suggest reading about drag queens and butch lesbians more! And drag kings! I can find some things for you, if you’d like

To me, pronouns were the easiest but most time consuming thing to figure out. I just, switched between some amount for a few months and took note of how what made me feel. It’s ok when people casually refer to me with they/them or she/her, if they don’t know me it doesn’t really bother me, but well I’ve been out for five or so years and I still get super excited when someone calls me “he” or uses my name. And well, no experience is universal.

Also!! Perhaps look into pronouns behind the trinary! Have fun! You can make whatever pronouns you want! I love and will support neopronouns until the day I die! And nounself pronouns! Once you stop looking for cishet approval, you’ll feel a lot better! I love xe/xem! It’s comfortable! You’re also allowed to have only certain people use certain things for you! I love using it/it’s! But well, only when queer people do it! Especially trans! Because there’s that knowledge of knowing they understand to some degree, shared experiences and a deeper understanding of gender.

Gender euphoria might feel different for everyone, for me it’s very giddy and excited and generally !!! For others, I could imagine it as coming home after a long day or something comforting, your favorite sweater.

There’s the age old problem of not knowing if it’s gender envy or attraction, I’ve decided to ignore that for me because my gender and sexuality are so tied together? Like my gender IS gay guy and faggot yk? It’s just infinitely Queer, and my queerness is very radical to me

I don’t know the right words to explain it, besides it’ll just feel right and you’ll just know it eventually. It just Feels Right in my bones to be a trans masc genderqueer gay guy, and not a masculine straight girl.

Please please please don’t forget you can change it however much you want, forever. There is no limit!! I’m giving you permission to play fuck around and find out as much you want or feel the need to!

I hope this was helpful!! I just rambled a lot, reading about other people’s experiences and perspectives helped me figure out mine, especially diverse ones. There’s no rush or deadline to have this figured out by, take your time and I think it’ll hit you when it’s supposed to. Feel free to ask me any questions, I’m always willing to talk more !! I also might have book and reading recs tucked away if that’s something you’d be interested in!

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 3: The Fall Guy

I left work an hour early today to just hang around outside and have a coffee and do some writing. It’s been hot all week but cooler today and tomorrow and I wanted to enjoy a brief period of ‘nice’ weather before it gets gross for 4 months. I think this was a good idea although honestly it was sort of chilly and I didn’t have a jacket, and also everyone at work was just hanging out and functionally having a party at circulation so it’s not like I really would have been doing anything if I stayed the whole day. But still.

Then I was last-minute invited by a former co-worker to go out to a movie with her and her family. So I said yes; I like the movies but almost never go. We went to see The Fall Guy. I had never even heard of this film before and I literally spent 30 seconds looking up what it was about before going, but I really, really loved it. I’m not really an action movie person either but the stunts and action sequences were so good—I think I like them best when they’re really heavily choreographed, sort of like dancing more than just random fighting. This is why I like the fighting sequences in TOS so much; because they’re not really ‘realistic’ fights. Obviously this was several orders of magnitude more complex, but it had that same feel like someone really thought this out very well and was invested in it looking good and being like a work of art you could truly appreciate. And I did appreciate it! All of us left the theater saying ‘yeah, stunt people SHOULD get Oscars!’ (They should, though.) Similarly, the plot was very well-constructed. I love call-backs; I love when one-off little details from the beginning make up big plot points later on; I love meta jokes; they’re all so satisfying.

It was so funny, too. I wasn’t sure about it in the intro sequence, but then after the little prologue, it got better fast and when I heard the prayer hands emoji joke I was basically sold. I think it was just the timing of it. That earned my trust totally. All the jokes landed at the exact right place and there were multiple times I just lost it with laughing, like the extended sequences with the fire stunt. That scene is before the main conflict of the movie is even launched and you’d think maybe it would slow the plot down too much but it wasn’t totally worth it.

Also I think I’m in love with Ryan Goslin now. I decided this before the movie even started, during the little intro he and the director did about like texting in the theater and so on. When he looked to camera and addressed the audience… boy. Then he followed that up with two hours where his character did all these sick stunts but also cried to Taylor Swift and shot out one-liners everywhere and was totally cool and charming and also kinda bloody sometimes. I’ll clean your wounds, handsome.

I’m glad I saw it in the theater too, not just because the stunts and action sequences were so big and fun and played so well on the large screen, but because the audience was so expressive. People laughed, but they also gasped, clapped—one person said “No!” in a very audible way at a critical moment. Like it was just a fun movie to see as part of a community with a bunch of strangers.

The popcorn was good too. I didn’t… really eat dinner so much as I ate kind of a snack beforehand and then the popcorn. I can’t really decide if I’m still hungry or not. The only thing I didn’t like about the experience, which wasn’t really the movie’s fault, was that I had a large thing of water and I had to piss SO BAD for like a solid half hour at the end. And the movie has a lot of false endings so I kept thinking ‘oh it’s about to wrap up, there’s not much more…’ and then there was another climax. But that’s kind of my fault more than the movie’s. So overall a really great experience; I had fun.

[writing-with-olive]

Tracking goals with a bulletin board instead of a planner

I don't know how helpful this is going to be to everyone, but switching away from using a planner was an absolute GAME CHANGER, so I'm going to share my system because it's not as intuitive as a planner, but at least for me, it's much more effective.

This got kinda long(ish) so the following is under the cut:

why I switched from using a planner to using a bulleting board

what kind of goals I set with this system

measuring success

how it actually works (how to set it up, and use it to actually track goals)

affordability (spoiler alert: it’s better than most planners)

First of all, why did I switch?

My biggest issue with using a planner was that I wasn't seeing my goals often enough. In the closed pages of a book, they are very nicely hidden, and goals I can't see are goals that don't exist. This took me, oh..... five years to realize (starting when I first tried setting and tracking goals), but once I did, everything suddenly made sense. As far as I can tell, the more often you're interacting with your goals, the more likely you are to complete them. 

What kind of goals do I set?

I track goals quarterly, which means I set new goals at the start of every three months (January, April, July, October). This is pretty effective, as I can set ambitious enough goals that I have to actually work to meet them, but there's enough space for setbacks like "I don't wanna" and "Oh look! Life!" without completly obliterating my chances of being able to finish. Quarterly goals are also pretty standard, at least for corporate America (idk about elsewhere, but it seems fairly likely).

In terms of content, I set several goals for the following catagories:

school/academics (if you don't go to school, work-based goals could go here instead)

social media and writing (most of my social media presence revolves around writing, so I kinda lump them together)

personal/private goals (home-based, tasks that I need to set aside more time to do, family, etc)

self care/habits I want to build (take a walk daily, eat breakfast, screentime limits, read books, etc)

This quarter, I have five for each section, which means twenty goals overall. That's a lot. (I'll get to my metric of success in a sec) The benifit though, is that pretty much all of the most important parts of my life are accounted for, meaning that it's not about making time for my goals, it's about structuring my day so that the bulk of it focuses on one goal or another. Whenever I'm bored, I can see what I have on my goals list, and I'm usually able to find something that's interesting to me in the moment. (This method of spreading out goals to cover multiple facets of my life is heavily inspired by Jenna Moreci's goalsetting method)

How does success work?

(The stuff above was adapted from Jenna Moreci. This part is lifted wholesale from what she does.) I have a lot of goals. Because of that, it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to be able to complete all of them, and setting that expectation is a great way to end up failing, and lacking the motivation to do much of anything. Therefore, a successful quarter is completing at least 50% of the set goals. It's still a challenge - I still have to complete 10 goals in 12 weeks, but it's doable. A success is listed as a win, whereas not completing 50% is a loss. Since I am a competitive person by nature, putting it in a win/lose dichotomy is an excellent motivator. 

This is great and all, but how do you actually set it up?

Okay this is the fun stuff! So it would seem like the board would get pretty crowded pretty quick, but it actually doesnt. 

I do all of my tracking on notecards. Each card holds five goals on them, which I write in pen, and I mark my progress by highlighting a progress bar on top of the row I've written my goal on. This means I can tell at a glance what goals I have the most or least progress on, and approximately how far I have left to go. I don't have to get bogged down by writing out fractions/percentage completion, which would definitely clutter things up. 

To set my board up overall, I used string to block out four columns, each with header labels: Quarter, Week, Day, and Other.

The quarter column is where I list all of my goals I've set without breaking it down into little pieces. I have four notecards in this section, each with five goals apiece. It's the way I track how far I am toward completing the whole goal. Since some goals take most of the quarter to complete, I only update the progress bars once a week. 

The week column also has five notecards, but broken down into pieces I can accomplish in a seven-day period. Usually, I set it up, so that the goals on each card directly correspond to the goals on the quarter goal card to it's direct left. You can mix and match which goals you work on any given week, but it's effective for both keeping everything organized, and also for making sure I'm not neglecting anything. I also make sure to label each of the week goals what it's the week of (for example [W- Mar 4] would indicate that this is a weekly goal card, and also that it's the week of March 4th). This is useful in case I want to go back and see what I was up to at any given time. 

The day column looks a little different in that there are only two notecards. This is to help limit what what volume I'm trying to take on, because one of the biggest demotivaters is seeing a giant pile of work and knowing there's no way to finish it in the time you've got. Usually, I align the first card with the top row established by my quarter/weekly goals, and I write out five things I want to achieve during the day based off what I've written in my top two weekly goal cards. The other card is on the third row, and corresponds to the third and fourth weekly goal cards. As a very strict rule, I don't give myself more than four hours of work each day (this excludes going to class). I've experimented with other timeframes, and I've found going over that number means my chances of doing what I've set out to do plummet if I assign myself more. 

The Other section is where I keep all of my past week/day notecards. On top, I have my weekly goal notecards in one of those triangular paper clamp thingys (I have been informed that these are technically referred to as binder clips), organized in chronological order, with the most recent at the front. Below that, I have my daily goals. This way, I have my progress easily accessible (this comes in useful for proving that yes, I did do the dishes three times last week and yes, it's your turn)

How affordable is it?

Actually really affordable. Yes, it takes up more wall space, but you can get a bulletin board for about $20-$45 depending on where you shop (sometimes they cost more, but usually you can find one in the given range). Notecards cost on average about $3-$4 per 100 card pack (which lasts about two months if you use front and back). Thumbtacks cost about two to three dollars, and a small ball of yarn costs about three to seven dollars. This means tracking for the first quarter costs about $35-$60 dollars, but every quarter following is between $4 and $7. 

For comparison, most quarterly planners, cost about $25-$35 dollars per quarter.

Over a year, that adds up to:

 $50 - $80 for a bulletin board tracker

$100 - $140 for quarterly planners

Over two years, it adds up to

$65 - $100 for a bulletin board tracker

$200 - $280 for quarterly planners

Anyway, that got pretty long, but maybe it'll be helpful to you!

[keeptheotherone]

Mecation: Day 1 

Thursday

I once read social media described as an indulgence of the fantasy that others are interested in the details of our lives. I’m indulging in that fantasy this week by blogging about my Mecation under the guise of travel blogging ;)

If you follow me in even the most casual way, you know I’m a nurse. While I’ve enjoyed the vast majority of my 23 years as such, I don’t recommend it during a pandemic. The last 18 months have been the second-worst mental health period of my life, demoted to that position not because of the mildness of my symptoms but simply because at 15 I didn’t have the experience or perspective to realize my life was not, in fact, ruined forever.

COVID increased my personal vulnerability as a high-risk patient and made my job immensely more difficult in countless ways both small and large, but the worst part of the pandemic for me (so far) is it took away all my coping mechanisms precisely when I needed them most. Massage, pedicures, dinner out with friends, travel ... all gone practically overnight. Pre-COVID I travelled all the time--home to my parents’, long weekends by myself (Mecation!), annual visits to BFFs, conferences, tourism, the beach, my birthday, writing trips, international trips ... I always had at least one trip in the works, usually one booked and one (or more!) in the planning stages. 

When COVID started, all my close friends and family except for two lived out of state. One of those two was out of town but close enough to get together, but the other was a few hours’ drive away. I’m single and live alone; it was the most isolated I’ve ever been in my whole life. 

With my bestest friends over 500 miles away, I still feel that way sometimes. I haven’t seen them in a year. If it weren’t for COVID, it would only be 7 or 8 months (I’ve gone every January or February since ... forever). Then again, if it weren’t for COVID, I wouldn’t have been there last September; one had been hospitalized and I needed to see she was all right with my own two eyeballs. I expect it will be at least another 7 or 8 months before we get together again, bringing the total to about 20 months. One year we saw each other 5 times in 9 months, our personal best since college. 

I was alone on Christmas. Oh, I’ve spent December 25th on my own before; I’m a nurse. I’ve worked the night of the 24th or the 25th (or both), or whatever combination that didn’t leave enough time off to drive home. But I’ve never spent the Christmas season without my parents. Sometimes the week before, sometimes the week after, sometimes at my place instead of home, but always together. But last Christmas COVID was raging, the vaccines had just come out but were only available to first responders (I got mine on the 23rd), and my elderly parents didn’t feel safe to travel. So I spent Christmas without family.

Travel was not just a break from my daily routine and the stress of nursing; in many ways, the biggest benefit travel made to my mental and emotional health was giving me something to look forward to.  Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and ohhh, I was so heartsick last year! Not being able to travel meant I couldn’t visit my best friends of almost 25 years (more than half my life!). Not being able to travel meant I couldn’t lean on my dad or be hugged by my mom. Not being able to travel--and not knowing when I could travel--left this gaping hole in my future, and I had nothing to fill it with. 

I tell you this not to throw a pity party but to explain the significance of the trip I’m on right now. It is only my third this year: my dad and I spent a week in the mountains in February (my depression and anxiety was so bad then that was treatment, not vacation), I took a friend to the beach over my birthday, and now I’m a couple hours from home at a nice spa hotel. (I’m not counting my nephew’s graduation, which was emotionally challenging for multiple reasons, or helping a friend move from Florida. Moving is never fun.)

I started planning this trip in the spring ... May, maybe? You know, after the vaccine rolled out to everyone and case counts were dropping and it looked like we were gonna lick this thing and have a quasi-normal summer by the Fourth of July (yes, I’m American. That date is a proper noun here.). I had switched jobs in November (don’t ask) and gone on mental health leave December 29th, so I felt I owed it to my unit to put in about six months of work before taking any significant time off, especially since I came back at 24 hours instead of 36. That meant September.

I knew what I wanted to do: 4 or 5 days at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean. I’d been before and loved the freedom of not worrying about every little expenditure (what can I say, I’m cheap), and a few days of Vitamin Sea sounded perfect.

Then came Delta.

All right, maybe going out of the country isn’t the best idea, I thought. Don’t want to end up with expensive reservations and then your destination closes to Americans, or you make it to your chosen island but can’t get back home. But I didn’t want to fly (ugh, airports!), I didn’t want to drive (rest stops and restaurants and gas stations), and while I thought about taking the train, it didn’t seem much of an improvement (and maybe a downgrade) on flying.

Then a friend mentioned a sleeper car, and I thought yes! That could work! I’ve never been to New England, I want to go to Boston, that area of the country has low case rates and the highest vaccination rates, this has potential! 

Then I looked at the CDC map. There were only four states that didn’t have high transmission at that time (early August, I think; I’d had to wait for confirmation that my time off had been approved): Michigan, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire. All four had substantial rates of transmission. Hardly ideal, but one thing I’ve learned this year is sometimes you have to make compromises to protect your mental health. It is true it doesn’t matter if you’re happy if you’re dead; it is also true it doesn’t matter if you’re safe if you want to kill yourself. (I’m not suicidal, I am receiving treatment, don’t anybody panic.)

So, now I’ve settled on Maine or New Hampshire by train via sleeper car (Michigan is too far for a 4-5 day trip and RI--meh). Well, as I got deeper into planning, turned out Maine or NH were awfully far too. Far enough I would have to overnight in a major city, which pretty much defeated the purpose of isolating in a sleeper car. Then I found out there were no sleeper cars on either train route.

So, now vacation is 5 weeks away and I’m back at square one. The Deep South, Texas, and Florida are imploding. Pediatric cases are rising--kids are sicker and make up a higher percentage of cases than they did last year. Scuttlebutt from my ICU colleagues is it’s bad--17/30 MICU beds are COVID and they’re all vented. SICU is being nicknamed “the ECMO unit.” The hospital has 18(!) ECMO machines and 12 are in use; the float nurse who tells us that didn’t even know we had 12 because she’s never seen that many in use at one time. Hospital-wide our numbers are equivalent to early February (we peaked in January). There were six--SIX--pediatric rapid responses in one day. 

And I’m going to travel.

It’s a big deal ... a big accomplishment, really, because of what it says about how I’m successfully managing my anxiety. April 1 was the first time I’d been inside a grocery store in more than a year ... and that wasn’t my idea. It was late April or May before I was comfortable eating in restaurants, even with the falling case count at the time. I’m still not sure if I’m managing my anxiety or reacting to the pressure by going to the opposite extreme (I have a history of that), but I know I’m less stressed, less anxious, have fewer obsessive thoughts, fewer physical symptoms, and am learning to live with this disease. 

So, here I sit at a marble-topped 5-foot-wide desk in my queen/queen hotel room at the end of a productive and enjoyable day. I slept in, completed the big goal of this weekend’s to-do list that I honestly thought would take several days, unpacked and organized my room (I arrived yesterday evening), reorganized my Favorites Bar and Bookmarks on my Mac, had an 80-minute aromatherapy massage, enjoyed a shower in the spa afterwards and even blow-dried my hair(!) before wandering around for a while to get the lay of the land and get some steps in (this place is huge!). Then I changed clothes and took myself out to dinner for my favorite food, Italian. 

That’s me in the picture up top, all dressed up :) Actually, I probably look pretty normal to y’all; like most people with depression, my personal hygiene sunk to new lows in the last year and a half, and as a low-maintenance person to begin with, that’s saying a lot. I bought that necklace as a bridesmaid and am not sure I’ve worn it since; this spring was her 10th anniversary. Yesterday I took out the cat-shaped earrings Dad gave me for Christmas. (Yes, they were gross. Yes, I cleaned them. Yes, I’m wearing them again now.) Just wearing a nice top, fixing my hair (no ponytail or claw-clip bun, my staples), and adding jewelry was a big deal ... especially since “no one” was going to see me. I did it just for me, to make myself feel good. And I did. (That’s another small pleasure COVID took away from me--lip gloss. If I wore any makeup at all, it was lipstick or gloss. Utterly pointless when you’re masked whenever you’re in public.)

I took my laptop to dinner and edited a couple chapters of my new Charlie/Amy fic (previewed during #ktoo turns 10), ran a couple errands, and headed back to the hotel since I don’t like to be out late by myself in an unfamiliar city. Forgot I put my receipt envelope in the backseat pocket and reorganized the glove compartment looking for it, then gathered a bunch of returns into a bag in the trunk. Hung out writing in the lobby until my Mac threatened to die, came upstairs and tidied up, put on my jammies, and talked to you guys :) 

[rwbyconversations]

Rooster Teeth Glassdoor Crunch/Overtime Accusations #AnimatorsFirst

EDIT: Georden Whitman, former creator of Nomad of Nowhere, has come out and publicly confirmed the Glassdoor reviews are true.

Original story:

Rooster Teeth’s Glassdoor reviews have recently made serious allegations against the company, with people who work for the company claiming that the company engages in practices involving heavy crunch periods, a resistance to providing benefits, eighty hour work weeks, a management team trying to justify crunch and unpaid overtime that, according to some, led to as much as a third of RWBY and gen;LOCK’s recent seasons being made effectively for free. 

Below are screencaps and exact quotes from the pages. Any emphasis made is done by me.

From May 23rd this year, as written by an employee with three years experience at RT:

Cons

Program scheduling department has no idea how to time budget for animation, has resulted in unnecessary, preventable crunch Company takes on projects that are too big for it to manage effectively Not the highest pay compared to Anim Guild standards Open office space, gets noisy

Advice to Management

Management has been using a weird method to try and deescalate hard feelings about crunch. They’re acting like counselors who are “there to talk” and to try and find “coping mechanisms” to deal with crunch. This is a terrible idea considering that none of them are trained counselors as far as I’m aware, but more-so, they’re obviously going to be biased in favor of what they want from us. It makes me want to communicate with them even less. This past review, my manager criticized me for having “negative energy” during a terrible crunch period where we were working over 80 hrs s week, and told me I should “look for the silver lining” which is just bad advice. Advice to management is to stop pretending you know anything about mental health and also be less passive - fight harder for your team.

From May 13th, an employee with a year’s experience at Rooster Teeth:

Cons

The management is terrible. Artists are lead on with the promises of "full time employment and benefits" dangled in front of them without ever being addressed and ultimately are never given, there is no paid overtime, artists had to fight for their right to time off between productions, and good luck getting any form of benefits despite them being plastered on the wall.

Advice to Management

You're not a group of guys playing halo in your apartment anymore. Please run your business and look at what's happened to it.

From June 11th this year, from an employee who has been working at the company for five years:

Cons

- Extremely poor management (Some of it is negligence, some of it is just accidental from the sheer amount of work. Upper management is also extreme bro/friends club.) - Insanely high expectations (animate a 10-14 min episode in 2 weeks) - Very low compensation (I've worked here for years and make entry pay. Some people have gone MULTIPLE years with no raise) - No overtime pay (Every season of RWBY and GL gets about 1/3 or less made for 'free' because no one gets paid over time and it's not uncommon to work hundreds of hours of overtime) - Toxic work environment (there are a lot of cliques, complaining and even making fun of other people and depts here. It never gets punished so it always happens. Not professional)  - You know something is going right when after many complaints HR reminds everyone you have "unlimited" mental health doctor appointments... I could honestly go on and on like an emo on Myspace in 2007 but I'll reign it in. I'll leave it at this since I've seen many fans read these and be skeptical. It's not great. You can deny it but there is a lot of evidence if you just accept it. And the reason you work here is cus you get stuck and are promised "It'll get better". The work is low quality (hard to get jobs elsewhere), pay is low (can't save money) and life/work balance is a joke. We have a bit of balance now but it's only for a couple months out of the year when production isn't in full swing. Then it's back in the meat grinder.

Advice to Management

You NEED to listen to the workers and make hard decisions and actually fight for better conditions. It's been far far too long of "it'll get better" or "we know what to do next year". This isn't sustainable and I think we all know it. But someone has to be the guy to say "no" when things aren't good enough. If you don’t say no, hundreds of people suffer. Please.

From May 18th:

Cons

Crunch has gotten to an unacceptable level. Productions have been completed with over half of total hours unpaid overtime, especially impacting the comp and editing department. Management cares more about their ego than the quality of the work they put out— letting the crunch caused by their irresponsible decisions fall solely on the shoulders of the artists while they enjoy a forty hour work week. Pay is laughable compared with the amount of mandated, unpaid hours of labor. No career advancement, and contract workers are given empty promises of full time employment before being shown the door once production is done.

Advice to Management

Stop saying the crunch issue is “getting better” or that you’re “working on it”, and start actually owning up to your mistakes.

From May 19th:

Cons

-A lot of employees brought on, if not all, before the last development cycle were promised permanent positions after a 90 day trial period. As those dates approached those artists saw no change, asking their leads what was going on. The guidance from higher ups was vague at best, and some felt like they had been forced to lie to employees during the interview process. - A lot of processes went over-scope due to poor planning. -Lack of actual production experience in the management side of things is no longer something that can be glossed over as the company tries to take on more industry vetted employees. -Crunch is extreme and overtime is not compensated for, nor is that time given back in any fair amount.

Advice to Management

-Clear and concise communication -Re-structure your upper level management

From May 12th:

Cons

Crunch here is out of control. No Paid OT. Expect to work A LOT for free. 70-80 hour work weeks. Mandatory 10-12 hour work days sometimes with no days off. Management is more interested in telling you what you want the hear as opposed to the truth.

Advice to Management

Fix the crunch issue and stop saying 'we're working on it'.... because you're not. Layoffs are certain. Will layoff bad employees and good employees in the same breath, completely eliminating any reason to work as hard as you're required to do. Fix your transparency issue and stop overworking your employees otherwise your reputation will severely suffer.

From April 5th:

Cons

-No paid overtime. -Crunch is a major problem in the animation department due to unrealistic deadlines, poor planning, and indecisiveness. (Mandatory 10 to 12 hour days for multiple months are common.) -Stress levels are often very high due to harsh deadlines -Some of the producers tend to lie. -Promotions are used as a morale booster, not actual career advancement. -Hardly any time for Professional Development -Professionalism can be a bit scarce (for example people would draw penises on the boards throughout the studio)

Advice to Management

-Management needs to seriously figure out how to deal with the crunch issue. A question was asked at an all hands meeting: "How are you going to handle crunch this year?" Instead of giving a clear answer, the head of the RT animation department completely dodged the question. If you don't know how you are going to tackle a problem, try saying, "I don't know. I will get back with you ASAP." Then actually pursue a solution to the problem. Dodging questions makes you look shady and untrustworthy. -Improve production plans and make sure you have enough resources to complete your projects. If you are going to work on two shows at the same time, then you need to double ALL of your teams along the pipeline, not just one. If you can barely get one project done with your current resources, you certainly cannot finish two. If you can't get the resources needed to complete the projects, then it's probably best to keep them small or to simply not do them at all. Pushing your teams beyond the breaking point is not the wisest decision. If you continue with your overambitious ways, it will backfire in the long run. Telltale Games' closure and Bioware's Anthem debacle are examples of what's to come if you do not improve your production practices and get crunch under control. -Get more training on how to manage people. There are plenty of programs out there that can help management understand how to work with various types of personalities. There were some situations where I noticed that some leads and producers simply did not know how to talk to a person when there was a problem. Despite all of the criticism I just wrote, I feel the majority of who work at Rooster Teeth Productions are decent people. However, the management is just terrible. Put some of that ambition you have into fixing your problems internally instead of putting it into meeting those unrealistic deadlines.

From March 25th:

Cons

- Massive amounts of unpaid overtime. All while touting the importance to the company of a life/work balance. They promise to give you the time back, but it will be impossible to take. - Management is just a joke. They can’t schedule or stay on track to save their lives. Total amateur hour. - Zero followthrough on promises made. How about a pizza party? - Pay much lower than standard. Don’t expect real raises. Promotions with increased responsibilities don’t come with comparable pay bumps. - Most promises of advancement and opportunities are hollow wishful thinking. - Almost zero followthrough with meaningful investment in employee education. You can access a Udemy account and that’s about it. - Management will blame the artists instead of taking responsibility and will even through people under the bus to cover themselves. - Internet celebs are more valuable than artists.  - Their awards are called “cockbite of the month/year” and it’s what they call their employees. You may not want to be called that but that’s too bad. It’s their culture. A few guys draw penises everywhere to be funny. - Not very much diversity in management. Feels like you need to be a straight white male to be appreciated.

Advice to Management

Hire some actual seasoned industry professionals to upper management in Animation. And demonstrate there are some consequences for them, instead of taking it out on employees.

From April 11th: 

Cons

-Overtime, and hours will cause any person to slowly become something they don't like. -Management is typically made up of "talent" and treats other employees poorly, not to mention 0 years of previous managerial experience. -Management also blames other employees for the problems they create, and don't show actual leadership. -Echo chambers within management. -Stress levels incredibly high -Lack of professionalism

Advice to Management

-Get rid of "talent" in managerial roles, it's clear they're costing the company serious problems and money. The ones who end up being hurt are the employees who knew and constantly warned about problems ahead of time that were ignored. If the company stays the same a huge incident is bound to follow. -Try to respect creatives that aren't "talent" within the company as well. It's clear management doesn't and goes against the entirety of the company's "core values." those who have had previous industry experience should be listened to and considered instead of being shrugged off and given responses like "Well that's just how we do things." -Collaboration doesnt seem to exist for a majority of managment here. If this one massive change happens the company could really grow far and do much more than create crude content with a lack of care/heart for the final product. -If people are able to sleep and have a normal schedule more thoughtful input will also happen, and your content can only get better. -A multitude of people and lives have been hurt from management at this company, from in house employees being mentally abused to freelancers that are ghosted. So many immature and poor practices have taken place within the animation department I'm amazed a lawsuit has yet to happen. -Management should be leaders not bosses.

It’s almost darkly funny that most of the positives are just “They give you free food on Mondays and the people are nice.” 

But these are all from just the last year alone. Most reviews from before the start of 2019 don’t speak of crunch barring one from April 2018, one from March 2018 and one from June. This is a problem that has been affecting Rooster Teeth for at least an entire year, and since the start of the new year, the problem has magnified tenfold. Most reviews mention that the heads of departments are aware of the crunch and unpaid overtime but refuse to do anything about it beyond offering platitudes or dodging the question on what the company is going to actually do to fix the crunch problem.

Crunch is a problem plaguing many companies, especially in the western hemisphere. In gaming development there’s a story nearly every month about what apathetic upper management think they can get away with by forcing employees to spend dozens of hours every week slaving away on their product. I hoped that Rooster Teeth would not be one of these companies, but I am saddened to see that they were not. 

Crunch’s negative effects on mental and physical health have been well documented, alongside the basic fact that crunch isn’t worth it and doesn’t work. Employees forced to crunch are unable to work as well as employees who are well rested and have time to go home to their families. 

To anyone working these impossible crunch hours at Rooster Teeth right now, I hope your suffering ends soon, that eventually basic human empathy wins out and hours are lessened while you receive your just rewards for your work.

For @roosterteeth? This is appalling and a slap in the face to the fanbase you conned into thinking that you were a company that cared for everyone within as a huge family. Your entire management team should be ashamed of the environment you signed off on. No profit margin is worth the suffering you have subjected your crew to. Shame on you. 

As a fan of RWBY, it disgusts me that a product I enjoy was made through blood, sweat and tears. And as a fan of RWBY, I wish to make a public call to the fanbase, be it on Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter or Youtube. I want to make a public statement to Rooster Teeth that we are willing to wait longer for new shows if it means that they are made ethically. I can’t in good conscience support a product if it was made by putting the workers through hell. Maybe I can’t change anything on my own, maybe ultimately we’ll just be ignored, but I refuse to stand by and stay silent on the matter, maybe even get Rooster Teeth to make changes in their workflow (I won’t say “I hope they respond” because they seem to respond in-house to complaints about crunch without ever actually changing anything) 

I encourage you to share this around as much as you can. Share the accounts of the Glassdoor reviews as far and as wide as you can. We love and enjoy media, we love the people who make it- the animators, editors, writers and voice actors, and we as a community want them to not have to resort to RT’s seemingly unlimited mental health coverage or “find a coping mechanism to deal with crunch.” As much as it pains me to admit, I’d rather see RWBY die instead of seeing continue to be made on the back of crunch.

Thank you for reading. Again, I encourage you to share this around as much as you can. Let your voice be heard if you stand against this. 

[satoshi-mochida]

Tobyfox has provided a status update on the second chapter and beyond of Undertale sequel Deltarune in celebration of Undertale‘s fifth anniversary today.

First, here are the latest screenshots from Deltarune‘s second chapter:

Get the full update below.

Introduction

Hi everyone.

If you’re reading this, you must have been sticking around for about five years.*

I want to express my gratitude for everyone that has supported and encouraged me over this time.

Thank you.

I’ve said it many many times before, but I didn’t expect the simple game I made to receive so much attention. Because of that, many interesting things have happened, and now I can even spend my time making another game.

It seems both of us received a lot of happiness from this occurrence.

If it’s okay, I would like to keep striving to do things that make both of us happy.

Let me know what you think about that.

*Since the Undertale demo released in 2013, the game has really existed for 7 years. It’s already been more than 25% of my life…

Deltarune

I will make another.

I am making a game called “Deltarune.” It is the second game in the Undertale series.

The game will be released in many “Chapters,” the first of which I released two years ago on Halloween. Since that time, I’ve been working hard to figure out the rest of the game.

However, it’s a game that’s much harder to make than Undertale.

Graphics are more complicated and several times more involved.

Systems are more complicated.

Exposes the weak points of my creative and artistic ability.

Plot is much harder to tie together (more characters, more important locations).

Significantly more content than Undertale in one playthrough (especially cutscenes).

I have only made one game ever.

Unlike Undertale, this is the type of game that would normally have many designers working on each aspect of the game.

A story writer, a composer, an audio director, a map designer, a battle designer, a minigame designer, and an overall director. Instead, all of those roles end up handled by me.

The good news is that a few months ago, I completed a significant milestone regarding the game’s design. I completed readable outlines for every chapter in the game, including first-pass dialogue for almost all the cutscenes, examples of the music, etc.

Although certain details are still hazy, the flow of the game and all major events and battles that take place are now clear.

In summary, I largely spent the past two years writing, composing, designing, and drawing. However, that’s not the whole story.

We had actually attempted to develop the game since the time too. Development started around March 2019 and a 99% work was spent on investigating engines alternate to GameMaker, which I used for Chapter 1.

Without getting into the details, I decided a few months ago to go back to GameMaker after all. It still felt like the best fit for the project. So using Chapter 1 as a base, we’ve started creating Chapter 2 since May 2020.

A lot of progress has been made since that time. I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bugtesting, and porting).

I feel very confident. And the strange thing is, even though we ended up using the original engine, I don’t regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game’s story and characters better.

I’m glad that I’m making the Deltarune that I have now and that we are making healthy progress.

Deltarune Status Estimate

■ Chapter 2 (04.15.20 – 08.13.20)

Phase 1: Design

Main Design: 100% (dialogue, etc.)

Initial Setup: 100% (stuff involved setting up people to make the game, adding debug tools, documentation, etc.)

Phase 2: Implementation (05.01.20 ~ 08.13.20)

Art: 90%

Cutscenes: 80% (90% are started, needs 2nd pass)

Bullet Patterns: 70% (enemies are mostly completed, bosses are about 40% done, needs 2nd pass)

Non-Bullet Battle Elements: 30% (Some ACTs are done and enemies are fightable, but interactive ACTs need to be completed and polished and the bosses aren’t programmed outside of bullet patterns)

Audio: 80%

Maps: ??% most are started or placeholder, most need 2nd pass. NPC interactions are completed in all spots where written.

Other: 65%

Phase 3: Finishing

Balancing: 0%

Bugfixing: 0%

Translation: 0%

Porting: 0%

(Honestly, a lot of stuff FEELS like 80% to me, but the truth is that what’s there is quite rough now. Polish ends up taking a lot of time, so the real actual time value may be around 50% done…? We’ll see what happens. It’ll be a lesson for everybody.)

■ Chapters 3 and Beyond

Phase 1: Design

Story and General Game Progression (first-pass): 100%

Cutscene Dialogue (first-pass, lacking cutscene instructions): 95%

Map Design (textual): 70% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Map Design (drawn): 0% (this takes a lot of wrist energy so I don’t do it until we start programming)

Enemy Design (conceptual): 90% (all bosses are known)

Enemy Design (bullets / visual): 80% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Music (concept): 95%

Music (completed): 50%

Visual Design:BG Concept (first-pass): 75%, Important Character, Bosses (first-pass): 100%

Phase 2

Sprite Art: 20%?

Other Content Creation: 0%

Phase 3

Release Readiness: 0%

(These numbers can be somewhat deceptive though. My true design style is to reach the moment where we have to make something, then suddenly think of something different at the last minute. This is always how it’s been with me and my work. It feels like no matter how much I plan, everything comes down to what I think of at the last second…)

Team and Disability

You may have noticed from my phrasing, but yes, there is a team helping me create the game. Other than me, there are about three active team members working day-to-day, with a few other people pitching in from time to time.

Their roles of the main members are overall content implementation and organization, bullet pattern implementation (part-time), and art (Temmie). Other than designing, I still have the role of system programmer.

I’m extremely grateful to have a team helping me carry out my design especially because of my disabilities, which have also made development more difficult.

Although I have long suffered from wrist and hand pain, about five months ago my wrist was the worst it’s ever been. I could not play the piano, use the mouse, and barely could use the keyboard. I navigated everything through voice to text.

Through weightlifting, exercise, and various equipment I have been able to somewhat increase the stamina of my wrist to an extent. Various solutions have included trackball mice for each hand, using voice to text whenever possible, using a foot pedal to click the mouse, etc.

Now I can use the mouse and keyboard for a certain amount each day provided I take frequent breaks. I wish I could work without stopping. Once the world situation improves I would really like to take physical therapy again and/or investigate surgery to repair my wrist.

Future Plans

Once we finish Chapter 2, I would like to use it as the base to create future chapters from. After gaining experience from this chapter, I think making future chapters will be easier.

Part of me wonders if we could make the game faster if we increased the size of the team and did something insane like create multiple chapters in parallel. However, another part of me understands that, adding more people doesn’t guarantee that the game will be created faster if it’s not done properly. I’m already just barely avoiding becoming a bottleneck on development even with a team of this size, due to my physical limitations.

To that end, I am interested in making a list of people that could potentially help me make the game. I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to ask anyone to help, but I think if I could find just 1 person that works well with me, it’s worth asking.

Chapter 2 is proceeding at a good pace, so if we do take anyone on, it will probably only be for Chapter 3 onward. So please understand that anything you send in may not have an immediate result.

People I Am Looking For

Feel free to send in your portfolio if you have the following qualifications:

Worked in the game industry before

Worked under NDA before

Have professional references

A degree of creativity while also being okay with just following directions

Fluent in English

People I Might Actually Use

Music Transcription / Basic Arrangement (Part-Time)

I usually start making songs by playing the piano and singing. An important step after this is to take this basic outline and transcribe it into melodies and chords. Though there are not too many remaining songs to transcribe, it would still help my wrist to have someone else start this process for me. Although I know many musicians, I’m sheepish to ask for help to them, because the main role is actually just to help me compose my own music…

Helpful qualities:

Good at transcription.

Can stand listening to me sing.

Optional: can use an old version of Fruity Loops.

Bullet Pattern Programming (Part-Time)

I’m looking for someone to help me program bullet patterns into the game. These people will work from text and visual designs to create fun battles that match the feeling of the game. I already have one person helping with this, but I think a second person would help a lot. You have to be able to use Gamemaker Studio 2 to manipulate objects on the screen / okay with using pre-existing scripts to accomplish this.

Helpful qualities:

Sense of fun and understanding of player perspective and gameplay balance. This aspect is [many times] more important than programming ability.

Reliable.

Able to make patterns based off of visual/text instructions.

Fine working with a poorly made battle system.

Able to sprite bullets.

Good visual / timing sense.

Minigame Programming (Part-Time)

There are a few minigames and small interactive events in the game, which appear in and outside of battles. These could take any kind of form… who knows what I’m thinking! Have you made a game before?

Helpful qualities:

Same sense of humor as me.

Some level of spriting ability is useful.

You have to have made a game that is fun.

Ability to work together with me.

Unlikely to Hire, But Send Me Your Information Just In Case

Cutscene Programming (Part-Time)

Besides the battles, the largest amount of content in the game is definitely the cut scenes. You will have to understand Gamemaker Studio 2, but the majority of the work is simply using a scripting system that I created to make characters move around the screen. The most important quality you can have here is not programming ability but the ability to efficiently use the system in order to create scenes with a good sense of humor, timing, and emotion.

I’d strongly prefer to hire someone I know to do this because it involves the story. So I most likely won’t hire anyone else.

Helpful qualities:

Can take text instructions and impart a proper sense of timing, humor, and weight to them.

Fine working with a custom scripting system (or smart enough to make something better that makes the game easier to make).

Art (Part-Time)

Sprite art—Temmie has already drawn a massive amount of art for the game, and continues to do so. And I actually already have a few other artists that have helped me that I’m more than happy to keep working with if things become more overwhelming. So currently I actually don’t need any more artists.

However, personally, I’d really like to build up a portfolio of available pixel artists and even concept artists. It’s not as if this is the only game I will make during my life. Anyone chosen for this game needs to be able to match the style of the game, but I’m interested in seeing people with different styles as well. Knowing that I have different options can open my mind up to different creative pathways.

Helpful qualities:

Can take bad looking sketches and turn them into art that looks good (magic).

Don’t mind if your work gets completely drawn over or thrown out.

Anyone that can draw cute or cool poses is good.

Uninterested in seeing people that have an art style outside of the scope of the game.

Write (Full-Time)

Someone needs to transform into a new wrist for me.

Helpful qualities:

Flexible.

Doesn’t hurt.

Musical sense.

That’s everyone I’m looking for. The only other kind of person I might hire would be a single jack-of-all-trades type that can do any sort of things such as cutscenes, bullets, or even system programming, with a good degree of visual flair. (But if you can do those sorts of things, aren’t you busy making your own game already!?)

Anyway, I’ll show you the e-mail now. Just make sure you read these rules first:

Don’t send in e-mails about anything else!

Don’t send to other team members, Fangamer, etc. about helping out!

Got it? Then please send your information to this e-mail address:

deltarunejobs@fangamer.com

Since Fangamer will be sorting through the e-mails for me, we’ll stop taking e-mails at the end of September so they don’t get overwhelmed. Ultimately, I’m only looking for one or two people, and to make a list of the rest of the potentially helpful people in the world.

Undertale is available now for PlayStation 4, Switch, PS Vita, and PC via Steam and GOG. Deltarune Chapter 1 is availble for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Deltarune.com.

[gimmeromance]

GimmeRomance FAQ:

Question: Who are you? Answer: We’re five romance authors who also read a lot of romance -- specifically we are @christinaroseandrews, @roselarkpublishing, @caitlynlynch, @thebibliosphere, and @meiedwards. Between us, we read everything from inspirational romance to erotica and in pretty much every subgenre. We also read a lot of non-romance.

Question: Why are you doing this? Answer: We love romance, and we’re doing this for fun!

Question: How long will it take you to answer my ask? Answer: As long as it takes. We strive to answer all questions as quickly as possible, but all of us have other jobs. If we can’t answer your ask, we’ll send it out to our audience!

Question: But I don’t know if you got it! Answer: Don’t resubmit it, it actually slows down the process. Instead, if you haven’t seen an answer in a month, shoot us a message asking us if we received it.

Question: Why can’t I ask my question anonymously? Answer: Too many of us have had bad experiences with anonymous questions, sorry! If you don’t want to be identified, let us know in the ask and we’ll remove your tumblr name so our readers can’t see it.

Question: Your askbox is closed so I can’t ask a question! Answer: Sorry, but our mods only have so much time! We close and reopen the askbox periodically, so keep an eye on our blog!

Question: Can I become a mod? Answer: We’re not looking for mods currently.

Question: Why is this book only available on Amazon/Why do you recommend books on Amazon? Answer: Some books, particularly those in Kindle Unlimited, are only on Amazon. And Amazon, like it or not, is the major retailer for ebooks. Amazon also has the best search engine for finding specific tropes/types of books, and we do use that to assist in finding recommendations.

Question: Why do you use Books2Read links? Answer: Because they list multiple sites, so you can find the book wherever it is currently available.

Question: Why do you use affiliate links? Answer: We’re sticking it to Amazon. Affiliate links don’t take money from the authors, they take money from Amazon’s share of the sale price. By using those links, you’re taking approximately 4 cents of every dollar from Amazon and giving it to us.

Question: Do you accept book recommendations to read? Answer: Our average TBR list is over 1000 books, so no.

Question: Will you read my book? You’d really like it! Answer: We might really like it! But seriously, we’re too busy.

Question: Do you take asks about fanfic, or recommend fanfic? Answer: No. We will recommend PUBLISHED romance only - it may be self-published, but the book will be out there available on Amazon and/or other major book sites.

Question: How do I tell if a book is good? Answer: Read the reviews! Just because we told you about a book doesn’t mean it’s necessarily an amazing book. Check reviews for trigger warnings, info on other issues.

Question: Do you include trigger warnings? Answer: Sometimes, if we know about them. But we cannot and will not guarantee to mention every trigger. We have not read every book. In addition, we may miss triggers or not realize they’re specific triggers. Please read the reviews to see if anyone else noticed your specific triggers!

Question: This book you recommended has problematic tropes! Answer: All books have problematic tropes depending on who you ask. 

We haven’t necessarily read every single book we list. While we do have a wide range of readers, we’re all still limited time-wise, so our sources may vary. Our lists are books that fit the ask, not necessarily endorsements of books we personally liked. We try to avoid books that are overtly concerning (pedophilia, Nazi romance, Slaveowner romance, etc.). But everything is problematic to someone.

In addition, books published prior to 2000 are often going to be pretty problematic to our modern eyes. Georgette Heyer was a racist antisemite, but we may still recommend her books because they are classics. There's a ton of “the hero must rape the heroine” in a lot of early romances. They were problematic then, and they are problematic now, but to erase them from the library of books is to erase history. So go in with the mindset that these books were written in a different time and some were even progressive for their day. Similarly, books published before 2010 can be iffy (heck, it still can be iffy). The real shift in publishing came with the rise of indies. Say what you will about Fifty Shades of Grey, but it legitimized indie publishing and caused a revolution in publishing that's still going on. Therefore, take any book published before 2010 -- and especially any book published before 2000 -- with a grain of salt. 

Question: What do you consider POC? Answer: While we understand that the answer varies depending on where you’re from, we tend to default to what @writingwithcolor considers POC.

Question: What do closed door and open door mean?  Answer: We have five categories. They are erotica (sex is integral to the story), open door (sex is shown), closed door (sex is implied but not shown), no sex, and unknown (we don't know how much sex there is).

Question: Why do you use the word ‘queer?’ Isn’t it a slur? Answer: Queer is a reclaimed slur, and we use it because it’s all-encompassing of the gender and sexuality spectrums. Several of our mods are queer and prefer the term to self-identify. Anyone trying to tell us that queer is a slur and we shouldn’t use it will be blocked.

---

This post will be updated as needed.

Last Updated: 05/10/2021

[lideria]

Get to Know. | YangYang

Request: hiiiii ! i was wondering if it was possible to ask for a fluffy yangyang shows y/n around his hometown? sorry if that isn’t specific enough :( you have full creators freedom thank u so much ❤️

Author’s Note: So this is what it is, I tried my best, I swear I did. This was a concept I had never written before because usually I don’t.. write very descriptive things.. which is where things like this fall in- but I took on the challenge heheh On another note, this piece was cut in half as I haven’t been all too emotionally stable these past 3 days, so my apologies if this isn’t as good as what you hoped for. (And I know I have this excuse often, not being emotionally stable, but my condition really challenges me every single day and writing is the only thing that helps me forget about it a little, so please bear with me.)

Warnings: I THINK NONE? I guess if you’re German this might be like.. a bit weird. Mostly descriptive. There might be not-too-accurate representations, definitely contact me if you think something needs to be changed. Plus, English is my second language so there might be errors.

Word Count: 2.418 short-ish but long-ish

Genre: Fluff and literally nothing else

Hope you all enjoy, and I hope you all have a great time 💚 Stay safe, healthy, and happy xx

“You know what people say you should do if you wanna get to know your partner better?” YangYang asks you one night as you lounge on the bed together, looking at your phones, hardly speaking— waiting for the sleepy mood to come and hit you both so you could go to sleep. His voice sounds nowhere near tired, unlike you, whose eyes are barely open. “Mm I don’t know.” You mumble, even though you had not heard what the answer was to the question.

“Getting stuck in traffic or traveling together.” Answering the question for you, he turns his face towards yours to be met with your profile. Maybe only a quarter of your profile since your head was covered with the hood of your hoodie. “Neither of us has a car,” He adds brightly.

The words start to make sense only after a questionable silence. When you do, a feeling of surprise washes over you as you turn to face him as well. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Oh I don’t know,” The words leave him in a rush with a chuckle as if he is trying to laugh it off. But he is not, because he keeps speaking. “But I definitely don’t mean that we should rent a car when we could fly if you know what I mean.”

You roll your eyes and shake your head, getting under the blanket and putting your phone aside. “Just go to sleep.”

To your horror, YangYang had been serious about his quick little fact check.

In two weeks’ time, he had barged into your apartment holding two plane tickets with a smile so wide on his face. Not only that, but he had told you to clear out your schedule for the upcoming break— because he would be taking you around anywhere and everywhere he had on his mind (and truthfully, anywhere and everywhere your budgets would allow for you to visit).

The concept came with its multiple ups and downs. Ups, you would be visiting four countries in four weeks without that much strain on your wallets and would have the chance to see places you have always wanted to; downs, most of the flights being layovers of all sorts so the prices would not have a great impact to your finances. And then there was a grey area, which held the fact that two of these countries were ones YangYang had lived in before.

There was nothing wrong with visiting places he had lived in before. This would give you an incredible chance of getting closer to him— perhaps on a level you would not quite be able to reach without doing exactly what you were about to do. It would provide a crystal clear window into his life before you, something more clear than his words probably ever could be. However, the idea still made you feel nervous to some extent. Most likely because of its intimate background, you felt like the magic of it could crumble with one wrong move.

But you do not give into that feeling. Having fun is the least you could do. Not that you have much other choice, anyway. Because YangYang, with lack of a better word, is an actual toddler about this whole ordeal.

The morning of your first flight that leaves to Taiwan, he meets you at the subway station you had agreed on with an excited smile on his face. One that does not falter even though the rain is about to soak him, and even when you pull him under your umbrella as you mutter if he is asking to get sick from the first second.

You share your earphones on the long ride to the airport. Checking in comes and goes in a blink of your eyes, but you barely make your way to the gates in time after spending way too much time in the food court and the duty free shops.

The plane is gigantic and crowded, which makes sense considering YangYang had said he could hardly find seats beside one another while purchasing the tickets. You get the aisle seat and he gets the middle— which would have been perfectly fine if the middle aged man sitting in the window seat did not keep excusing himself to the lavatory every other minute. Thankfully the flight is a relatively short one and not a red-eye because if it had been you are certain both of you would have lost your minds while cuddled up to each other over the armrest.

Taiwan is fun. YangYang takes you around everywhere he could remember spending time in, which does not end up being that many since he had only been a child while he lived here. He takes you to the ‘cliché’ tourist attractions (as he had quoted) around the island such as the temples and museums and the remnants of the Dutch colonization, and to the places that his mother suggests him take you that are more on the natural side, like geysers. You get to see the beautiful beaches and the parks and the people, more often than not walking around with their pets, the beautiful campuses and the nature, people riding around in their bikes and the crowds commuting on foot. The two of you take photographs, some only of sceneries, some you take of him and he takes of you, and some he kindly asks strangers of any age to take of you as a couple.

You do not dare to tell him, but his tourist-guide-like antics of teaching you about the history and trying to figure out exactly where you will go at what time is extremely cute to you because you love it. You love that he gets so serious about where he is from and wants to share every bit of it with you.

As per your traveling habits you pick up several souvenirs and get some of your favorite photographs printed, which end up being from the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas you had taken on a foggy day— something YangYang says the both of you could play with the colors and lighting of before printing. The two of you like to edit pictures, especially together, after realizing (early on in your relationship) that neither of you are that good in photography but are interested in it, at which point you took on a challenge to do better with each other’s support.

YangYang makes you eat the local food, which is one of your favorite parts about the whole time you spend there, and he does not hesitate to make you try things that you probably would not have tried if you were traveling alone. You end up falling in love with the food and the various teas this island has to offer, only maybe not the Chodofu.

A week in Taiwan goes by really fast that by the time you have to leave, you do not realize that you had ever even been there. It all feels like a dream and a part of you feels emotional; the two of you had been so extremely happy in Taiwan that staying there for longer really would not have bothered you, if it was not for your schedules.

“We have to come back,” You tell YangYang as you lean your head on his shoulder at the gate, waiting for your overnight flight’s boarding to start. He chuckles airily at your sleep deprived voice, making your head bounce a little. “You like it here?”

“I love it here.” The answer makes his smile widen. “Great weather and great people. And great surroundings.”

“Eh, I don’t know about great weather. I’d prefer it to be dry but that’s not something we could have in these months.” Shaking your head on his shoulder, you ignore what he says. “You’re just being ungrateful,” You say matter-of-factly, but he knows you are joking. “What more can you ask for when you have this many great things? You had me too.”

He plants a kiss in your hair after a moment’s pause, and mumbles. “You’re right.”

YangYang and you had tried to organize your trip in a way it would make sense, really. The two of you had looked at flight routes to determine where the other two countries you would visit could be, but the flight routes were mostly over Russia— so unless you wanted a tour of southern Russia you would have to hold off. And although the idea of Central Asia and Russia also interested you, the flight tickets would be expensive, when they would be much cheaper from Seoul. So in the end, the route became a zigzag of countries of your shared interests before flying over to Düsseldorf, the last destination of your trip.

The two countries in the midst of your trip had been a daze, most probably they were new experiences for both of you rather than only one of you. Most days you found yourselves to be extremely exhausted from getting lost countless times and in turn walking around so much, and from the language barrier that sometimes troubled you, and just getting to know whole new cultures. Not only getting to know them, but also adapting to them in the short period that you are there.

Sometimes there were instances where one of you were feeling more spent than the other, and in those instances you hyped each other up— by persuasion of food, music, affection, or other things— and in a few instances downright jumping on whoever’s lying on the bed and bear-hugging them until the subject had no choice but to get up.

Yet, two weeks pass by quickly with the density of your packed schedule and before you know it, you land in Düsseldorf airport.

And something in YangYang changes immediately.

As you pass through immigration and buy tickets to go on public transportation he looks more relaxed and in his element, like how he had been in Taiwan, yet somehow different. He actually knew the location of your Airbnb for starters, which gives you an immediate grounding and reminds you that this is the place of the better part of his rememberable childhood and adolescence.

When he takes the keys and speaks German to the house owner like it was the most normal thing he could ever do, it awes you, because yes you had known about his life in Germany but you did not see him speak German all that much. So it is wonderful to you that he can speak so many languages fluently (with a few mix-ups in between).

His behavior changes the feel of the trip as well. The way he is so laid back makes the days in Düsseldorf feel, well, daily. As if you had been living there with him. Because YangYang knows exactly where to take you this time, not counting the tourist attractions or other wonders.

In that city he knows where he should take you for a fun session of thrift shopping, making sure to take you to his favorite places, and his favorite restaurants. He actually runs into people, which is mind blowing. You encourage him to meet up with his friends and forget about just taking you to places at some point, which makes him really happy that you would even think of that, and he does what you say.

YangYang introduces you to his friends, most of whom can speak English since he had gone to an international school before, and the feeling of inclusivity warms your heart. By getting to know his friends here you feel even closer to him after seeing his home country and now, for the lack of a better word, his hometown. You get to see the way he laughs when he is here, you get to see his emotional changes, and how his thought process changes, and how his behavior changes. Although everything changes he is still YangYang— still him who makes witty jokes, who likes laughing all around, who likes jumping his leg up and down to the rhythm of the songs, who is a people pleaser and a mood maker.

And it makes you fall for him even more, if it is even possible. Perhaps what he had said before the trip started, getting to know your partner better because of traveling, was true. And in all honesty you wanted to travel more with him; run through the crowded airports in search of wherever your gate is, buy even more small jars of Nutella from duty free shops so you could taste test them to see the variations in the flavor and decide which country’s is the ultimate winner, sleep on the uncomfortable floor with your heads on your backpacks— anything. As long as the two of you get to be this happy together.

One sunny day in Düsseldorf around a couple days before your departure, after gathering even more souvenirs for your collection and he takes you to his favorite place that served fries (which, in Düsseldorf, there were a lot of those), he stops abruptly on the street after hearing the sound of the music.

He urges you to hurry up with his hand as his eyes widen and he skips in his place a little, and you do, walking to the source of the music and stopping when he stops right behind a crowd. You both can still see the middle, where a group of people maybe your age or maybe a couple years younger, are dancing.

“Why did we stop by here?” You ask. You cannot recognize the song and you are almost sure it is not in any of YangYang’s playlists, so you are genuinely curious.

YangYang laughs with what must be longing. “This is where I used to dance,” He does not look at you, eyes fixed on the group that kept dancing on with some handwritten signs and big speakers behind them, eyeing the white square that surrounded them. The square for street performers. Dancers, singers, anybody— but there was an unwritten pact for the days of the week on what kind of performer would be taking it and who, through endless group chat conversations of local artists.

He takes your hand into his and laces your fingers together without prying his eyes away, with you looking at his ever so bright face, one that you got to see for the first time. “Where everything started for me.”

[squip-filth-archives]

Feel free to not answer this if it makes you uncomfortable, I completely understand! In general, what’s it like to have DID? I know all systems are different (in terms of like communication, etc), but I’m curious because there aren’t many descriptions online. Thank you if you answer this, and even if you don’t, thank you anyways! Hugs to everyone, and fist bumps if you don’t like hugs! -🕯

ALRIGHT this is a Very long and rambly answer so buckle up! please ask me to clarify if something doesn’t make sense. i told myself ‘okay i’m gonna keep his as short and sweet as possible’ And Then I Did Not

anyways! below the cut;

as you said, all systems are different! everyone’s experiences vary wildly, even across members in the same system-- for example; i, eli, experience things differently than charlie does.

for me personally, it’s... a mixed bag. it’s not all terrible, and it’s not all great.

i consider myself to be fairly lucky. all of the peeps in my system view one another as a sort of wacky family. lots of other systems Don’t view everyone as a family. here though,, everyone does their best to get along? there are squabbles now and then but everything runs fairly smoothly overall which is Great

dissociation is,, something. most people dissociate to some degree-- i.e.; ‘oh i zoned out while i was driving, how’d i get here?’ but those with DID dissociate to a very high level as a result of childhood trauma.

there’s a lot of it. some days are worse than others, and on a very dissociated day i’ll end up getting huuuge migraines. if someone is really close to front or if there’s a lot happening between peeps In The Brain, i get lightheaded, and if that lightheadedness continues it builds into this pressure and i end up with an awful headache. and dissociation in general can range from ‘i feel like me but slightly to the left today’ to ‘i don’t know who i am, my reflection is wrong, everything around me is fake’.

it can be distressing. sometimes i’ll have been out about driving and when i come home, as i pull into the driveway, i’ll be overwhelmed by a thought that’s like ‘this isn’t my house. this isn’t mine, this is wrong, where am i?’ and someone on the inside will reassure me that it is right, i’ve been living there for months-- it’s just my memory is so distorted and i may be being heavily influenced by someone else with different memories than mine.

that’s another thing-- we don’t always know who’s fronting or how many of us are existing in front at once. (note: ‘fronting’ = controlling the body.) there’ll be a feeling of ‘i am not eli but i don’t know who i am’ or there’ll be rapid switching between multiple alters or there will be several alters blending together and it just leads to this confused state where everything is distorted and thinking too much about Identity leads to a panic attack of sorts. it can be scary. the body will wake up and not know who’s in control. we’ll be driving and someone else will switch out and briefly panic because they are now piloting a body that’s in control of a vehicle. 

whoever is in front can be heavily influenced by the emotions or presence of another alter. one of the boys gets anxious very very easily, and if he’s nearby, whoever is in control of the body at that time will feel that anxiety in our chest. one of us experiences heartache frequently, missing the life he remembers, and whoever is in front will feel that. we are susceptible to each others’ emotions. it’s difficult to figure out sometimes who’s feeling what and why.

on that topic-- a lot of them have their own memories. some of them just remember stuff from living In This Body, but some of them, those who are introjects of preexisting characters, have memories of families and homes and lovers that never technically existed-- like charlie. he remembers the friends he made here, but he is Alive. he has free will, and the people he made friends with are just characters being controlled by a human from miles away. everyone has different amounts of memories, and some are more emotionally impacted by them than others.

memory as a whole is weird. i, eli, don’t remember anything from before 7 years old. from there, it’s patchy and incomplete, with large chunks of my life just missing. this is a self-defense mechanism, and if i don’t remember something, it’s because my brain is keeping me safe. but it’s still disconcerting to not remember whole periods of your life.

it’s not all bad though, not at all! it can be fun. it can be relieving. we do our best to cooperate with one another and have a good time. we help each other in the best ways we can. 

and there are fun and kinda weird little things like.. okay. a couple weeks ago i was drawing one of the peeps, and i was like ‘what the heck kinda shoes do i do here?? loafers????’ and i received a Single word from him; “Oxfords.” and that was it. and i was like. alrighty then, guess we’ll go with those bad boys

i’ll receive thoughts that aren’t mine, which is sometimes funny or cool and is sometimes disconcerting. someone will pipe up with a random scientific fact that i don’t remember every learning and it ends up being true. i’ll receive,, ‘memories’ or projections of a scene on the inside, like someone took a video or picture of something that happened between some peeps and uploaded it to my personal memory bank. 

also there’ll be conversations like ‘oh fuck where is that thing who took the thing’ and someones in the back is like ‘oh sorry it’s by the fridge’ or ‘i ate it, don’t worry about it’ or ‘it’s in your pocket already’ and so on

AND! BRO. ordering food or drinks or going to the store is wack! i’ll be like ‘okay i am getting a dr. pepper’ and i am flooded with ‘i want a cherry coke’ or ‘just drink water no more sugary drinks today’ or ‘get me an energy drink’ and i’ll end up with like four different beverages in my possession at any given time

and some people like foods that i hate?? like. i don’t really like fresh blueberries. but charlie Loves them and will eat a million of em in a single sitting.

and my brother has even said stuff like ‘i like how you sometimes laugh at my stupid jokes and then other times you just look really disappointed in me. like it’s different depending on the day’ and i’m like. yes. oops

also, charlie and a couple others help me at my job. if i get overwhelmed, someone easily takes over to help customers or fill in the blanks of whatever orders i’m missing. if lots of cleaning needs to get done in a short amount of time, someone else will front and laser-focus on the tasks at hand and not get distracted by anything.

ultimately, everyone here helps me just,, exist. we help each other live in a productive and loving way. and while it can be frustrating or scary or exhausting sometimes, i genuinely don’t think i’d give them up for anything in the world. yes, they’re there because of some shitty life circumstances, but they are the best possible result of said shitty things i could ever hope for. i really, truly love them. again, we’re like a weird little family. now matter how bad it gets with them, they still improve my life monumentally. i wouldn’t trade them for anything.

now! this has been very disorganized and rambly?? and there are most likely things i’m missing here, but here’s a sort of answer for you! thank you for being polite, and you’re welcome to ask further questions if you’d like.

-eli (charlie co-con)

(,,note: co-con basically means ‘in the passenger seat’. if i’m fronting, i’m in the driver’s seat. if charlie is co-con, he’s in the passenger seat; i am in control of the vehicle (body), but he has input of what to do and where to go and he can see what’s going on.)

[gascon-en-exil]

Mercilessly Judging the Men of Fòdlan: The Empire

It’s been a long time coming, over eight months in fact, but now that it may be assumed that the last of the DLC has been released and the fandom as a whole has settled comfortably into its various camps I think there’s no better time than now to answer that burning question: how raunchily, outrageously gay can the male cast of Three Houses possibly be? For those unfamiliar with this fun little series of mine, I’ve been applying my extensive knowledge and experience of gay male sex and hookup culture to the men of Fire Emblem, originally as a way of reckoning with the refusal of the games themselves to provide me with any worthwhile self-insert M/M content. I stand by that premise for FE16 - you all know how absolutely nothing appeals to me about m!Byleth or his prospects on that score - but in the years since my first outing of merciless judgment with Awakening that idea has expanded into something broader, an imaginative modern AU of sorts where all these guys are into men (if not always exclusively) and willing to put themselves out there in the lewd and semi-anonymous world of hookup apps in search of their preferred carnal delights.

A note on organization before we begin, as this material is too long to cram into one post. Excluding Byleth (as Avatars and their spawn always are for this project) there are twenty-one playable male characters in Three Houses. This makes for an even threeway division to preserve the eponymous conceit of the game, but not a particularly neat one. Aligned with the Adrestian Empire I therefore have below the male Eagles, Crimson Flower-exclusive Jeritza, former Imperial noble Hanneman, and...Seteth, because he’s the closest thing to a non-self-insert lord figure in Silver Snow and because he had to end up somewhere. As I said, not very neat.

The Kingdom

The Alliance

Hubert

His profile is sparsely filled out and his photo less than promising, but the select few who catch his eye will be treated to a courteous (if mildly acidic) barrage of introductory messages and polite requests to meet over coffee or a light lunch, no dick pics or requests for same in sight. It’s only after the exchange of small talk has passed that someone - could be you, could be him - brings up why he has kink as a listed interest, opening up a Pandora’s box of horrors as he casually shows you some of his photo collections. Asses red from whips and floggers, scrotums stuck through with pins, barbed cock rings, electrified nipple clamps, and ghastly shots of the man himself, his mouth dripping with blood over a fresh bite wound on his teary-eyed partner’s shoulder. He is, he explains, a Dom at heart - and the rougher the better. What he doesn’t explain and likely never will is that all that pain play and torture porn neatly covers for the fact that he’s less endowed and less skilled in that area than he’d be willing to admit, or that he harbors a secret longing to be Dommed himself, probably by someone close to him who has no interest whatsoever. He takes his career very seriously although you’ll never learn exactly what that entails, but you have a sneaking suspicion that whatever it is enables all those coldly violent impulses he displays in the bedroom.

Favorite erotic tea time subjects: CBT, vore, femdom

Favored gift: stiletto heels, for use on his face

Ferdinand

Within a minute of talking to him you know his full name, what prominent public figure(s) he’s related to, and where he plans on going with his life, in an overwhelming display of lack of concern for keeping his private life private that would be worrying if he didn’t pair it with an indefatigable self-confidence. The type of gentleman who expects flowers and opened doors and one person to pay for a whole date and coy blushing about going back to his place for some tea, but what unfolds afterwards may be surprising to anyone who wasn’t picking up on the subtext during the night out: that you’re dealing with a toned and vigorous vers/bottom who longs to lie back and be taken care of but absolutely will never turn down a challenge or request no matter how much it demands of him or how expertly he will be able to rise to the occasion. Long practice and some truly enviable thighs (he’s a noted equestrian, and loves showing off his album of favorite horses) let him milk a cock for hours - nearly as long as the subsequent pillow talk will be. It’s little wonder more than one of his lovers has had the idea to gag him...or to fuck him somewhere outside his bedroom once they go in and find the walls plastered with posters of his favorite pop and stage divas staring at you. Prime trophy husband material, wealthy and well-connected and fetching on anyone’s arm, but there’s no question that he’ll only be truly happy if he’s with someone who can challenge him to step out of his unusually large comfort zone: socially, professionally, or sexually.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: edging, crossdressing, fisting

Favored gift: a horse cock dildo, for his much-lauded huge hole

Linhardt

A master at genuinely negligent ghosting, it’ll take a minor miracle to actually arrange a meeting with this guy. Either he never answers, or he does but only to snap at you because he’s busy and only even logged into the app because his mind wandered for a second. Still, he draws a lot of attention from those into geeky twinks. Is not into foreplay, and can scarcely be bothered to maintain interest long enough to even stay hard unless you get lucky enough to hit on one of his subjects of recent fascination. Never offers to do anything in bed, and will in fact pick up his phone to browse through Wikipedia and Reddit while he’s being penetrated. Calling him out for his appalling lack of manners will get nothing more than a wry snort and a quick summary of whatever’s currently got his attention. Never cums, doesn’t seem to want to cum, and guys creative enough to try to ride him are often disappointed that he’s more likely to grumble that all that bouncing on his pelvis is making it impossible for him to catch a power nap. Just about the only way to fully get him invested is to get really weird - introduce him to some fetish he’s never thought to try. Incest kink, breeding kink, role reversals, elaborate roleplay...the more cerebral the better, because the physical stuff tends to put him off (especially blood play, which is his hard limit). Needless to say most aren’t up to that task, and so he’s nonchalantly left a trail of frustrated and disappointed men in his wake.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: somnophilia, historical roleplay, mpreg

Favored gift: a long-lasting vibrator, so he can stick it in and let it work while he’s otherwise occupied

Caspar

No amount of headless torso pics and carefully scaled dick pics will be enough for his ego, but encountering him in person will reveal that he’s not so much vain or delusional masc4masc as really, really compensating for something. This manifests as a deep-rooted resentment against guys taller than him or, ahem, better-proportioned, but his preference of sexual partners does not reflect his prejudices - which is fortunate for him given his measurements. Loud and energetic in all things, and it shocks no one that he’s a screamer in bed but also can’t last for very long once he really gets going. Lucky for everyone that his refractory period is unusually brief, although that leaves him deflecting odd inquiries into whatever substances he may be on (he’s clean and always has been, hard as that is for anyone to believe). Likes to top for the workout, but he won’t say no to riding a good dick. Has an unexpected sentimental side he’s not very good at expressing except indirectly, in the same way that he’s apparently oblivious to his casual innuendos. It will take someone very patient to put up with him, but the reward is (probably) worth it for the body alone provided he’s got a sufficient outlet for all that energy. Would be perfect for an active poly relationship or long-term FWB situation so no one guy has to manage him alone, but he’d have to be at the center of any such arrangement lest his numerous insecurities rear their heads. Is not into incest kink.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: post-workout sex, multiple orgasms, autofellatio (he wishes)

Favored gift: condoms a size too big for him, because even safe sex should be an opportunity for bragging

Seteth

He doesn’t share nudes, and says upfront that he’ll block anyone who asks or opens conversation with one. Seems to be genuinely interested in friendship over anything else, although he’s not great at small talk in text and would rather chat over snacks on a park bench or at one of the numerous community events he likes to organize. Is a family man through and through: devoted to his loved ones, quiet in his hobbies, and unusually spiritual in an orthodox church-going way. You start to wonder if he’s even into men or if his presence on the apps was just a very strange fluke, but he holds his handshakes just a little too long and progresses quicker to hugs and quietly intimate arm touches. Discussion of his prior love life is strictly off limits, but many months down the road when you finally get invited into his bed it’s clear that he’s no blushing virgin and is adept in the use of fingers, tongue, and cock for fully satisfying his partner. He might even bottom, although he’ll blush about being long out of practice in that area which suggests a wealth of untold stories by itself. He also may be, somehow, the only man in existence who knows what intercrural is and how to do it. Blessed with stamina far beyond what might be suggested by his age (which he only reveals several weeks into your acquaintance, another point of embarrassment for him), your encounters are far more likely to end with a phone call from one of the innumerable people who look up to him and depend upon his reliable if fussy sense of duty than it is from him tiring out. Fond of fishing, and known to take dates out to cast a line and then maybe have some naughty fun afterward. Does not appreciate being called a daddy, but he’s been known to accept big bro as an occasional slip-up.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: discipline, incest kink, scalies

Favored gift: your STI testing history, because he doesn’t mess around with that stuff

Hanneman

A polite if unassuming silver daddy, with no sugar for the obvious escorts but the cushy professional post and generosity to make him appealing to a less openly mercantile sort of young man. His chosen field is not an easy subject for light conversation, but damned if he doesn’t try his best regardless. His favorite tactic might be finding some way of applying his work to something about his date, no matter how tenuous the connection or how unwelcome the observations. Not super fit and doesn’t get out much so as the night is winding down he’s not good for very much other than intermittent blowjobs and even more languid handjobs, although a truly dedicated partner might coax something more out of him with help from a little blue pill or two...and maybe some poppers, because he’s old enough to remember when everyone used those. Despite his reputation for mildly inappropriate perving on guys young enough to be his sons - some of which he acquired in a professional context, with some of his favorite anecdotes of past trysts involving junior lab techs/TAs/secretaries/others among his subordinates - he’s not actually averse to fooling around with men closer to his own age, although he’s more awkward about it since he’s a bit out of his element when he’s no longer the only experienced voice of wisdom in the room. Either way, if there’s one thing he hates it’s sloppiness, whether in one’s personal or professional life. As a result he avoids bars like the plague and has little patience for drunks. Contrary to this fastidiousness however his advances in his career are such that he may one day do something radical and ill-advised in the pursuit of knowledge; one only hopes that the various skeletons hiding in his closet don’t come back to haunt him - with regret or harassment lawsuits or who only knows what else.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: medical kink, teacher/student, cock milking

Favored gift: consent to video encounters, for future reference

Jeritza

The kind of rough trade all your friends warned you about...except he’s not rough trade, not really. Deeply troubled and disarmingly attractive is a deadly combination, and he thrives in a medium where one-word responses and explicit pics are considered perfectly commonplace. Encounters with him are quick and rough and nearly anonymous, always in the dark and with little opportunity to see or interact with him apart from the hands grasping you to him and the admittedly impressive cock jabbing into you from whatever angle he can manage. He’s had the threat of assault charges or worse thrown at him more than once, but it’s never made him any more considerate or careful. To the very rare individual who keeps returning for more the most explanation he’ll ever provide is that he becomes someone else when pursuing sex, someone hard and violent and not at all like the person he insists that he is. This is something he ties into some deep-seated trauma, but there’s something distinctly insincere about the underlying psychology as if it were only an excuse for an abuse fetish run wild. Pretty much all of his tricks ghost him at that point, wanting to get as far as away as possible from a true crime drama just waiting to happen. Curiously enough if he ever does find a long-term partner it won’t be with the expected extreme masochist - expect them only to show up in a police report one day, with extremely gory pictures - but with someone who can match his lustful bloodlust with more of the same and who is totally comfortable throwing around death threats that at some point transform into only moderately disturbing innuendos. 

Favored erotic tea time subjects: masks, blood play, asphyxiation

Favored gift: anything sweet he can lick off your body...because it’s either that or viscera

[tazzykiki]

I’m tired, angry and bored so here we go! A messy list of fucked up Public School Things that may or may not be a universal experience:

The Lunches were a mix of good and horrible:

I was usually fine with the lunches because they were pretty decent and, like, yay food! But looking back they were just, so wrong????

Like in my middle school lunches AND breakfast were a mess. I got food poisoning like once or twice from the breakfast and the lunch was pitiful. At one point they just stopped cooking the pasta and left a bunch of uncooked, powdery noodles in a plastic box like anyone was gonna grab them and be like “mm yes! my favorite! hard noodles!”. Like what the actual fuck.

The pizza was also in a box, none of the toppings were labeled so it was a gamble on what type you would get, and most of the time they were burnt. In HS the pizza was fine but it tasted fake as hell and I’m pretty sure they just took some rubber and put cheese on it.  

My HS lunches were better but even then it was just, really concerning how limited and odd the food was. Luckily we didn’t have to pay except for like cookies and stuff smaller than your hand that costs like $2 cuz they want to “promote healthiness” despite feeding us what is basically prison food.

The class sizes were horrifying: I’m sorry but what person can teach 30+ rowdy kids and be perfectly fine??? Not to mention this was the norm the whole day! Imagine grading all those papers, keeping track of every student, and making sure they all shut up long enough to teach. And that’s just for the teachers who actually care.

Like a class size should be a max of 20 with a few exceptions. Do you know how stressful it is for everyone involved? Not to mention, 30 kids was considered SMALL!! Some classes had 40, even 50 STUDENTS!!!! WHAT THE FUCK.

We never had enough books, or supplies, or anything. Usually by the half point of the year, half the books would be missing or destroyed and it was a mess. In HS the Drama and Music teachers had to deal with like, one class of 10-20, and then like 5 classes of 40-50(all mixed grades too). And you know what’s even more fucked up? There was only one of each teacher.

There was one drama teacher. Who btw deserves the world and legit cares about her job and students. I honestly hope she quit and went somewhere better. She had to put up with 40+ screaming kids, grade all of those assignments, deal with insult and harassment(she was plus-sized and white. So she couldn’t talk back, would get insulted, and more.The only white people allowed to be sassy in that school were funny white men that were laid back), and had barely enough supplies to get by.

There was one music teacher. Who also deserves the world and legit cares about her job and students. She had to deal with 40-50, almost 60+, kids. The majority of them being sophomores and freshman, with bits of seniors and juniors. She taught music, taught band, and organized events and performances. She is, I believe, the first and only music teacher in that school and that’s just so fucked up. Like imagine being one person and having to manage hundreds of students like that.

There was only one digital arts teacher but I have no idea what they did since you can’t choose what class you attend. I just know it was constantly crowded, never really applauded, and they weren’t involved in a lot of things.

Oh yes how could I forget the art teacher! Yeah no there was no art class that involved drawing and painting. Apparently that class was scrapped years ago and has now turned into a JROTC locker! :D Speaking of JROTC:

JROTC and Sports had too much support and that’s a serious problem:

Hey maybe it’s because I’m an art kid and I hate exercising(because every attempt to do so was met with laughter, humiliation, and the ridicule of my body even though I can’t control how my body grows and changes), but man did JROTC and sports(specifically football) have way too much attention.

We had not one, not two, but FOUR ENTIRE JROTC CLASSES! Classes training you to be in the military, specifically Air Force. Classes you HAD to take unless you wanted to be in gym(never had the class but from what I’ve heard, there were about 50-70 kids, mostly male, filling up that class and they didn’t do anything but play ball or whatever. All of course, taught by one guy).

Somehow this program had enough support for uniforms, 4 different classrooms, supplies, several teachers(all of whom were in the military at one point[they were chill except for the freshman teacher who called you a whiny baby for being in pain]), and more. 

Not to mention, every so often military people would come by with pretty pamphlets and fun little strength tests and have kids to sign up to newsletters and shit and ask them to join the military when they graduate so they can get free college and happy fun times!! :D

Football was given way too much attention, even over the other sports, and I absolutely hate it. Every month was about  football, football, football. So much money went into football, so much support went into football. Yeah yeah yeah follow your dreams or whatever the fuck they tell you on Disney Channel, but there was too much support on this one sport that involved kids breaking their heads open. 

Please please give me ONE valid reason why this irritating-ass sport had so much attention while art students, craft students, theater students, music students, students who want to work in literally any other field that doesn’t involve science or sports had to fucking scrape every tiny little chance they could from the crumbs that were left behind. PLEASE tell me why I had to join a completely different program that was hella exclusive and restricted to Juniors and Seniors that had a certain skill-level just to have a proper arts class while football players got a cool fancy bus, a shit ton of gear, and praise every single day(seriously their pictures and trophies were everywhere). 

Why is it that they get scholarships and full rides for throwing a ball around and bashing their brains open while I had to fucking destroy my hand and scramble around for some shit like $200 which I wouldn’t even get because I don’t have the skill to paint the mona lisa or whatever. Anywayyyy~

Hey what the fuck was up with the rules? Sorry kids but if you’re reading this, everything they tell you on tv about high school is a lie. Unless you watched the Dora the Explorer movie, then that was actually pretty accurate.

Hey is it weird we had metal detectors and legit police officers(who were armed) in our school? Is it weird that we had to wear plastic, see-through book-bags, that weren’t even given to us for free and were so weak that they had to get rid of that rule because they would break after like 2 months? Is it weird we were all stuffed into a nasty, sticky, pest-ridden, staircase right in front of the main doors in the morning because we weren’t allowed all the way inside for whatever reason unless it was for a club(i.e. sports)? Is it weird that we were all trapped in the lunch room by security guards because they didn’t want kids roaming the halls even though they already did? Is it weird we weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom and were always told “you should’ve went your last class” when your last class didn’t let you? Is it weird we weren’t allowed to use the bathroom and were always told that “you should’ve went during the transition time” even though the transition time was only 4 minutes and the hallways were so crowded that it’d be time for class by the time you’d get there?

Is it weird that when we were allowed to use the bathroom, all of the bathrooms were locked and only one on the other side of the school was open, and the majority of the stalls were broken? And they kept the bathrooms locked, even after school, because they didn’t want kids skipping class even though they still did?

Is it weird that if you didn’t have a belt(if you were male), or a part of your uniform, you would be prevented from going to class if there were no more temporary uniforms?

Is it weird that if one kid did something bad, the entire class would be punished and class time would be wasted and the point of punishment would be lost because the teacher wanted a taste of power or whatever?(hey one time in 8th grade, both classes had to stand in one long ass line for about half an hour because someone was talking and it was treated like it was a joke. this took up our breakfast time too)

Other Shit: One time my HS got like $20,000 and instead of using it to fix at least one thing, they wasted it on useless flatscreen tv’s and SAT “tutors” that taught us 3rd grade english & math, how to annotate(I swear to fucking god one more person try and teach me how to underline a motherfucking sentence---) and did absolutely nothing to help us. Meanwhile the football players were living like kings.

We had a strange assortment of teachers, ya’ll know about my junior and senior english teacher. But did I ever tell you about the freshman JROTC instructor? She was so much fun~ I remember one time!!! ooh this is a good one :DDDD!!!! that I was in so muuuuuch pain that I was crying and couldn’t move! and guess what!!!!???? ooh! ooh! guess! She called me a whiny baby and said I was overreacting!!!! omg? She was so right tho, I was totally overreacting to being in immense, insufferable, pain that no one even attempted to be concerned about~~ 

Oh here’s another good one: I used to cry a lot! It was horribly embarrassing and not fun~ I was either sick, on my period(which according to the multiple doctors I had to be rushed to, was normal and the intense pain was hereditary), or having an emotional breakdown~ This lasted from 5th grade to Senior Year of HS! :D

One time I was in a lot of pain, 7th grade I believe, and cried for a whole hour straight. What did my teacher do? Have me sit in class while everyone went to like social studies or whatever, talked with some teachers, and then complained about how I “cried and cried and cried for an hour straight” with no concern whatsoever. BTW the nurse was never there and even then she was kinda useless.

Don’t even get me started on the several times I was on my period and was actually screaming in pain and was still looked down on because a student screaming and hollering in pain is no cause for concern obviously~ Really surprising how a lot of the male teachers and staff were more concerned then the female ones, especially the science teacher who has a uterus, has multiple daughters, and the audacity to say I’m ~overreacting~. I’m so happy our teachers and schools have our priorities in order.

Note: If you’re horrified by this. Good. You should be.

More misc things: My HS had a shit ton of roaches, water bugs, and whatever those long disgusting things that walk around on the walls and fall off once you see them. Art meant nothing to them. Teacher sanity meant nothing, student sanity meant nothing. The principal was great and I blame whoever’s “funding” schools and working behind the scenes.  I know this was more about personal stuff, but like a lot of things like large classes, lack of supplies, lack of empathy from teachers, constant pests, horrible food, stupid rules that hurt us more than helped, really weird exposure to cops and military, and too much focus on one subject is super common in public schools and I really really want it to stop.

[eponymous-rose]

(I’d rather this not be reblogged, just in case!)

I’ve had a funny conversation a couple of times this week, once with my cousin and once with my physical therapist, so I thought it might be fun to go over this: when I mentioned I wasn’t teaching this quarter, they both stared at me in shock and said, “And you’re still getting paid?” To be fair, I absolutely would’ve asked the same question before I started. This job is so weird I never would’ve guessed what all falls under it! 

So here’s a little glimpse into what goes on in this particular professorship:

So, hey, there are different ranks of professor. I’m an “assistant professor”, which is about as junior as it’s possible to get, but I won the dang lottery and somehow finagled my way into getting the words “tenure-track” tacked on before that. This means that over the next six years, everything I do will be scrutinized (culminating in a "summary” of several thousand pages reporting on every single aspect of my job performance), and at the end of it, after about nine months of progressively higher-ranked people in the university voting and deliberating, I have a chance to be granted tenure, which comes with a promotion to associate professor rank and Extreme Job Security. The criteria here are basically being able to prove that I’m one of the foremost experts in my field in the country and hitting research/service/teaching goals, and I’ll talk a bit about that in a second here. Promotion (often many years later) to full professor requires proof of being one of the foremost experts in the field on the planet.

Also, if you don’t get tenure, you get fired after that six-year period. Some universities are dicks and hire three or four assistant professors for every tenured position they want to fill and just fire the spares after getting six years of work out of them. My university has an extremely high tenure rate (mainly because anyone who seems unlikely to make tenure will either have some sort of intervention on their behalf, be granted an extra year to make up the difference, or will be asked to quietly resign before deliberations start), and my department hasn’t denied anyone tenure in decades.

So! What the hell do I do? Well, universities in the U.S. that are particularly research-heavy are referred to as “R1 universities”, which is the situation I’m in here. This means that the majority (often the vast majority) of my time is not spent teaching: it’s all about doing research, to the point where I will not be teaching more than one class simultaneously. In my field, that research can look like a lot of different things:

There are indeed people who work with beakers and range hoods and snazzy lab coats: these researchers in my field might be doing stuff like growing snowflakes in the lab and using that information to figure out the conditions under which different kinds of snow can form. Also there’s chemistry? I don’t know this side of it too well. Professors’ roles here, apart from the science, include ordering the right equipment (which includes getting quotes from various suppliers) and hiring lab technicians and folks to keep the equipment up and running.

Some folks do intense numerical modeling: if you’re studying the atmosphere, you can’t just try your experiment on one Earth and compare how it’s different on another Earth, since we only have the one, so what we do instead is use the most powerful supercomputers on the planet to create simulations. These can be as detailed as looking at the flow of dust in the millimeters above the ground, or as broad as simulating the whole atmosphere of the entire planet (or other planets!). On top of the science, these professors often have to negotiate for supercomputer time (a precious commodity), purchase massive computational resources (e.g., a server room hosted locally), and sometimes hire dedicated I.T. support just for their research.

I work a lot with large datasets: if we have information about the conditions under which tornadoes happened over the past 15 years, what patterns can we pick up that forecasters might be able to use? What is physically, fundamentally different about tornadoes that happen in different places? This kind of stuff really just needs a decently specced desktop machine and some know-how, and a lot of research in our field involves sitting and thinking. Also in this category is the pure math and physics work in the field, where people bury themselves in impossible-to-solve equations to try to figure the best way to wrench them into things we can solve. This is probably the closest to what most people think of when they hear “research”.

Fieldwork. Think Twister. Coordinating large numbers of people, who may be on the ground, driving, in the air, in the ocean. Also, coordinating instruments that might be stationary or might be buoys or drones or something else. We’re a public university; we don’t have the cash to buy our own airplanes, so profs in this scenario have to rent time on research aircraft owned by organizations like NASA or NOAA, or rent time on boats, or hire folks to develop and build new instruments. Massive amounts of organization goes into this, and all stages from inception to execution are generally overseen and organized by the professor.

When any or all of these approaches come up with groundbreaking results (you’re expected to have that kind of result happen a couple times a year), it’s time to write a paper and get it published in a prestigious academic journal. That process can take between four months and a year, depending on a bunch of different factors, so often a professor is juggling a few different projects in different states of done-ness.

What you’ll notice in all this is that professors generally have to come up with the money to do this stuff. New profs generally get a starting budget to get them off the ground, but most of that winds up wrapped up in personnel and start-up costs (e.g., buying computing resources or space for a lab). For the rest of it? Grants.

Grants in my field right now are a bit of a mess: it takes months to put a proposal together, it’s chaotic and complicated as hell, and there’s only about a 10-15% success rate, so you can do the math on that one. In my field, grants range from “small” ones supporting a few years of the pure-science stuff (typically a few hundred thousand dollars that mainly goes toward paying several people’s salaries over several years, but also covers things like journal publication fees - it costs several thousand dollars to publish one paper in an academic journal) to much larger ones supporting field campaigns or long-term projects (rarely, several tens of millions of dollars if you’re talking projects with multiple aircraft and such). I get paid for nine months of the year, and have to come up with the remaining three months’ salary on my own. 

The other thing, though, that grants pay for is graduate student salaries! My department pays students quite well (more than enough to afford the rent on an apartment here, which is saying a lot), and also provides full benefits and a complete tuition waiver. Grad students in my field are essentially in an apprenticeship situation: they pick an advisor and work with that person for typically about seven years. During that time, they have to hit certain milestones (nine months of classes, plus a few courses sprinkled throughout the remaining six years, giving presentations, passing exams, doing a defense, writing a dissertation---essentially a book of their research results), and if you’re thinking this is putting a horrifying amount of power in the advisor’s hands, you’re absolutely correct. The imperfect but step-in-the-right-direction solution my department’s adopted has been to give each student a committee of professors, where one leads the research but the others are always available for new ideas or to resolve problems or speak up on behalf of the student. Students are also strongly encouraged to take a year or two off from their main research project to work with another professor, either here or elsewhere, and explore new research ideas.

Professors are responsible for teaching their students what they need to succeed, and our department has famously exceptional graduate students and graduate student mentorship: profs teach students how to do research (often guiding them through a Master’s project, then letting them take the reins and backing off to an advisory role for the remaining years of the PhD), which includes having them publish their results as the lead authors of their own scientific journal articles. Profs also pay to send students to conferences to showcase their research and introduce them to the people who’ll help them in their future career (one of the reasons I traveled a bunch this quarter was to meet some folks who might be good contacts for students who don’t want to just shoot for a job in the US). Some students will get to go on field campaigns, flying on research aircraft or, I dunno, driving tanks into tornadoes. Some will be more interested in non-academia pursuits and might spend some time shadowing insurance analysts or taking extra entrepreneurial classes in the business school or working hands-on with forecasters during the height of severe weather season. It’s our jobs as professors to know the job market, to know the right people, and to know our students well enough to help them get where they’re going. This department takes this Very Seriously, to the point where it eclipses research as our Top Priority, and the general understanding is that getting a grad student position here sets you up for life.

So! Part of my job this time of year is recruiting graduate students based on my budget. For some folks, that means actively advertising wherever possible and getting super involved in the visiting student weekends (we fly prospective grad students out here to visit before they make their decision, and there’s always a fair number of students who haven’t settled on an advisor yet). Some folks are absurdly lucky and study fields that are considered particularly cool and interesting, and the top students actively seek them out and will cold-call or send e-mails or introduce themselves at conferences (look, turns out it’s hilariously easy to sell someone on “come study tornadoes!” and even a newbie like me has to choose between several particularly strong candidates). Either way, the graduate student hiring process involves a lot of internal debate---we’re not a huge department, so we typically can only send offers to a little under 10% of the folks who apply each year---that mainly centers around making sure each student has a supportive research “home” waiting for them here, based on funding and how much time each faculty member might have. Professors need to coordinate grant budgets (or startup funds, or stopgap funds in the increasingly common situation where no grant money could be secured for a given year) to make sure students have any equipment they might need (cool stuff like supercomputer time, servers, equipment to take to the field, accessibility aids, but also mundane stuff like office space and desks). We also have to coordinate with the university to make sure international students can get here and stay here under the correct visa status.

Right now, I only have one graduate student, and he’s currently undergoing the barrage of first-year coursework, but we meet weekly and he’s started playing around with some data analysis and reading some of the big papers in the field (he’s coming in from mechanical engineering, so the math is familiar but the vocabulary is funky). I’ve developed short- and long-term learning goals for him, culminating in putting together a proposal for his master’s research in June, then converting his early results to a scientific journal article to help him hit the ground running, because he’s brilliant and he’d be able to pull it off without breaking a sweat. 

I’m also on the committees of two second-year Master’s students, so my responsibilities there include reviewing their proposals and, in one case, helping her put together an application for a major fellowship that would put $100,000 toward her education, which means she wouldn’t be beholden to any given research grant and could study any topic she liked. I’m also co-advising a postdoctoral researcher---his primary advisor is a specialist on snow, which is his area of interest, but I’m a specialist on some of the methods he uses to study snow, so I’m consulting with him on that side of things. I’m also working with a couple of particularly motivated final-year PhD students who want to run a multi-day Python and machine learning workshop for the department. Heck yeah.

Apart from research and advising, another facet of being a professor is the nebulous category often just referred to as “service”. Volunteer work, essentially. Right now, I’m reviewing scientific journal articles, typically 2-4 at a time (down to one right now, although I anticipate a flood right before the holidays). This is all done as volunteer work, but it’s honestly the easiest way for me to keep up with the latest literature, because yeah, you can’t just sit in a room and think if you don’t know what everyone else is thinking about. And when even a small field has a dozen or so major academic journals putting out a couple dozen articles each a month that you have to stay on top of... reviewing can be a great way to get the highlights. Sometimes I also get to review other people’s grant proposals, which is really helpful! Still, I wish journals would pay us for this work---someone did a poll on Twitter and found that folks in our field spend on average about 6 hours per review. That adds up!

I also tend to help out with conferences, either doing logistical stuff like deciding what the major topics are, and who gets to speak when (and who probably shouldn’t be given a microphone...) or coordinating the judging of awards for student presentations. That sometimes involves weird event planning stuff like trying to find a venue and speakers and transportation for a formal dinner, or hiring caterers and dealing with competing hotel quotes for room blocks, or cold-calling reasonably famous people and asking them to volunteer their time (or offering them an honorarium) to Skype in to a room full of people.

I’m also on a few national committees that are working to define the priorities of some of the big professional organizations: mainly I work in my particular subdiscipline, but also with diversity/equity/inclusion and early-career support. Some of that is as simple as running social media accounts or helping to design surveys. I’ve recently been assigned to help audit a major organization’s commitment to diversity, which could be pretty interesting. It all sounds like a lot, and a lot of it’s coming to a head lately just because of conference timing, but it usually slows down to one or two hours a week of work in the off-season. I like this kind of stuff because it’s a relatively low-effort way to meet scientists all over the world that I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.

We’re also hiring a new faculty member right now, which is... hilariously complex. Every aspect is basically done by committee and the entire department has to agree on who to interview and, eventually, who to hire, because hiring someone for this position is potentially choosing your coworker for the next 30+ years. Interviews are two-day endurance training for the poor candidates, who get face-to-face meetings with every member of the faculty, on top of more specialized interviews. We’ve had about 120 competitive applications thus far. It’s... a lot.

And just because I’m not teaching actively right now doesn’t mean teaching isn’t eating a lot of time: there’s some fun logistical set-up to do! For instance, the class I’m co-teaching starting in January features a lab where we take all the students over to the engineering buildings to set up some instruments in a wind tunnel. Gotta make sure we’ve timed it right so they can actually give us the wind tunnel! We’re also coordinating the timing and the schedule so that both instructors are actually around for the parts of the class they’re teaching. For three of the five weeks I’ll be teaching, I have the previous instructor’s materials to work with, but the other two weeks are all new material (and a lot of ad-lib based on how students do with the first chunk of the class). I also haven’t done anything related to this class since I took a comparable class over a decade ago, so, uh. Better study up.

In the spring, I’ll be teaching an entirely new class that’s never been offered by the department before. That involves building a syllabus, figuring out what each lecture will be about, coming up with contingencies in case some lectures get cancelled, writing exams and assignments and lectures and (since it’s a programming class) making sure everyone has access to the necessary hardware and software and data for the big final project. And, because I’m me, I’ll also be coordinating the whole thing with a special office in the university that does long-term testing of teaching effectiveness---they’ll send someone over to spend a few minutes chatting with the students midway through the quarter, then work with me on recommendations and improvement. I figure it’s a new class being offered for the first time, so we might as well get in on the ground floor of longitudinal pedagogical study. Also, I don’t actually know this programming language yet. Little more studying to do, there.

So... yeah. This job is absurd. It’s a million different jobs, the vast majority of which I’ve had no training for. And I adore it. Nobody cares where I am or what I’m doing at any given time, as long as I get results and as long as my students are succeeding. As someone who loves nothing more than bland, repetitive tasks repeated over and over again, it’s not exactly in my wheelhouse... but I love how hard it makes me think, and I adore being pushed this far out of my comfort zone and knowing I actually have the resources and the know-how to succeed. Every single day is something completely new and exciting and bizarre. Hell, every hour. It’s pretty fantastic, and utterly terrifying.