#i hope no one ever reads my posts. sorry if i think he’s the silliest little guy.

[afterthefeast]

the serendipity of. only the movie so less of my beautiful autistic lesbian. but. so much freedom for big finish. so charley

[columbiastapshoes]

so if a modern version of frank-n-furter, janet, columbia, and magenta from the rocky horror picture show formed a riot grrrl/rock/sometimes other genres girl(ish) band would that be crazy or what?

AU TIME YIPPEEEEE!! made this one with irl friend @hatsunerandal a while back and i’ve been meaning to post about it i just keep forgetting LMAO so yeah!! band au!!

this band is called the transsexual pussycats because. yeah.

we have everyone on vocals, janet on drums and guitar, frank also on drums and guitar (they switch which one does which (that was a lot of rhyming)), columbia on bass, and magenta also on guitar and keyboards :D

“don’t be cringe about it” NEVER. COLUMBIA IS SCENE NOW RAAAAHH 🦅🦅🦅🦅

janet’s style is just. lana del ray vinyl. and magentas goth and franks punk yaaay!!!

irl friend and i have put together a total of. 4 albums i think? and i am almost done with the fifth one! our process is just. find already existing songs, plop them in a playlist, and then write paragraphs about who sings what and who wrote what and what they wrote the songs about etc etc! quite a fun process if i do say so myself :3

albums 1, 3, and 4 were done by me, album 2 was done by irl friend!! their names are “mcpussy meal” (we almost named the band mcpussy but after i said “old mcpussy had a farm eieio” we changed our minds), “lord of the lesbian jellyfish”, “one girl, 69420 women”, “honestly,” and the fifth one which im not quite done with is “rose blood”!! we’re slaying with the names as u can see! the songs mostly stick to a rock/riot grrrl sound, but they can also do some more pop/hyperpop or electronic songs, and i felt REALLY silly and added a folk song to rose blood :3

now. u might be asking. where is the rest of the cast? what part do they play in this au? well!! for one thing columbia and eddie broke up (she’s with magenta now i love lesbians) and she has written at least one song about him per album 🫶 but other than that he’s out of the picture, along with pretty much everyone else…

EXCEPT FOR BRADLEY MAJORS.

i told my friend about brad in this au and they just said “brad def has groupie energy that 1000% works” and i think about that a lot LMAO he’s not actually a groupie he’s just their biggest fan ever even though he doesn’t even listen to their style of music. he attends every concert, has all the merch, is basically just so embarrassing about it i love him dearly. he’s also in a qpr with janet and dating frank yahoo!! i fucking LOVE the brad/janet dynamic in this au because all of her concert outfits are so slutty and so pink and after the shows and after hugging her aggressively he’s like “you’re wearing so little are you cold :( wear my jacket i don’t want you getting sick” and in one of the songs she is quite literally screaming her lungs out and im just imagining him watching that at a rehearsal and being like “Yay!! :-D” he’s the silliest ever actually

it’s also a canon event that the band got interviewed by that one guy with the hat who goes WHO ARE YOU i hope u know who im talking about if u don’t im so sorry that was so vague

ok those are the basics!! if ppl see this and enjoy it feel free to ask me questions about it i love talking about my silly guys so very much and thank u so much for reading this far 😭😭

[dashielldeveron]

anon from mid december here! god i love winning. ANYWAY much to observe. i love the through lines of government assigned chapstick flavours and the defining moment that makes the soulmate connection work in every chapter. i love that immediately after posting you cited your sources on tenkos characterisation. very funny very charming and you are very right. i adore the mcs vibes she knows so much about so many things with a 50/50 chance of it being useful and she’s MESSY and she’s FIGURING IT OUT and her relationship with tenko teaches her to give herself grace. they’re just so sweet on each other it brings me endless delight as does touyas lil cameos. he’s a dirtbag and he’s a comedian and hes warmed up to the ducks and i want to put him and his fucking HOOVES in my pocket. i’m sure i will return with more thoughts at some point but for now. very delicious to me. WAIT NEW THOUGHT THE FUCKING INVENTORY KEY THING WAS AN EXAMPLE OF THE SOULMATE CONNECTION GOD YOURE GOOD. AND THE GOGGLES sorry i’m re reading the chapter as i type this

ASLDKJFA;SDFJKL;A YOU GET IT!!!!!

oh my god the DUCKS. i needed someone to notice the ducks oh my GOD. he BUILT them a HOUSE in his little art project garden he has a duck for SOME reason in dnd what a LOSER. like he's bonded so hard with them he wanted a fictional one, too!!! like. imagine touya just carrying a duck around in a purse like a small dog. both of them v v v judgy. enemies to lovers duck edition

lololololol "government assigned chapstick flavours" you canNOT tell me that these very kissable boys are only using, if any at all, generic unflavoured chapstick lol. it is STUPID how long i've had "post-canon tomura wears burt's bees tropical pineapple chapstick bc he specifically wants something that Tastes Good" stuck in my head; i'm so glad it's finally in fic and that you've been keeping track asdjfkl;

and yeah i wanted to reblog the shigaraki meta that i'd been considering!!!! bc while i was rereading the manga for this route, i realised that everyone, from police to heroes to villains to students, just make Large Assumptions about shigaraki, and they just Say Things about him. and everyone around them just takes it as fact??? it's like. we the audience are being told things about shigaraki, but they don't match up at all with how we see him act. i am hoping that this is intentional on hori's part, esp. with how heavy-handed shig commentary has been by other characters in the last few chapters, to make the point of "midoriya is the only one who's ever Looked and shigaraki and Perceived." bc, like, AFO and the pro heroes objectify/dehumanise tomura but in different ways. i worry. but so much of what we're shown of shig just doesn't match up with what characters say about him!!! it's odd. i really like him, despite being Told That He Is an Object, specifically one of destruction.

goddddd reader in this route is messy and i have a lot of compassion for her. i think she should allow herself to get angry more often. but i think that gifted kid burnout and basically moving back into your parents' house and people judging your "bad" life decisions even though they can't Know what you're going through--it's a touchy subject, tinged with shame and confusion and insecurity of identity, and tomura, i think, is experiencing his own flavour of that, since he doesn't get to be the Greatest Evil VIllain version of himself that he had in his head for so long and now is Just Some Guy. i didn't want reader to have a saviour complex but i wanted her to Care So Hard, and i hope that came across, esp. since her caring so hard also works with her own insecurities.

also yessssssssss YESSSSSS the KEY the GOGGLES it was there in front of them the whole time!!!!! but they weren't looking for it!!!! bc when soulmate bonds are words and marks, who the fuck is gonna be looking for a soulmate bond in just some weird triviality????? lolololol i talk about wanting to handle tomura with care but gave him the silliest soulmate bond thing. i like how useless it is, because it's, like, tomura doesn't need to be useful rn, either.

godddddd i'm so glad you sent me an ask so i could talk about thissssssss. i'm SO fucking glad that you're noticing details like this and having fun with them!!!!! i am, too!!!!! i love tomura and you and i hope you are having a good 2024 so far!!!! xx.

[kass-storycorner]

I really loved your ghost fic with Xiao. But it left me curious to have a second part in which they finally find the way to communicate. Whenever is just to say goodbye and having reader going to the afterlife or getting stuck there forever in an eternal solitary pseudo-company together is up to you, I just want to see them talk 😭

awww, thank you! I'm so glad you loved it (though I am sorry for the sad feelings haha). And I was really struggling to find a way to end that orginal story in the beginning, which is the reason why it ended that way oops. Well, now here is the follow up for it. Compared to the small bit I wrote for Xiao... I mean not even compared to it, this is the longest fic I've posted on here so far? Ah, well. I just had so much fun with it.

Idea/Prompt: a follow up to Xiaos part in this post

Genre: a bit of Angst and Hurt, more comforting than the first part, but if the ending is a happy one is up to you!

Characters: Xiao (Zhongli as side character, mention of Hu Tao, Verr Goldot, a new character I made up that did not get a name)

Format: Text

Word count: 5593

Content warning: mentions of blood, spoiler-y for the second act of Zhonglis story quest and the same spoilers warnings as for the OG post! this is not proof read, I started writing this at midnight and its 5am now ahha fml

The Ghost of you Part II. - To the end

yes we are keeping the mcr names

“Xiao”, he felt an uneasiness in his body upon hearing his name. Where was he? Looking around, Xiao saw he stood in a field of flowers. When did he come here? He had no recollection of it at all. Confused he furrows is brows, worry filling his heart and then- “Xiao.” There it was again, that voice calling out to him. Speaking his name softly, voice filled with affection. Where did it came from? He walked around the field, no end of it in sight, looking for that voice calling out to him. The longer he searched for it, the more his heart was filled with dread. “Xiao.” This time the voice came from behind him and when he turned around, he saw you, holding your hand out to him and smiling. “(Y/N)”, Xiao looked at you in disbelief. Was it really you standing in front of him? Your laugh pulled him out of his trance. “Xiao, why are you standing there like a pillar? Come, take my hand,” and at that you wiggled it a bit, signalling him that you're waiting for him to take it. “(Y/N),” Xiao repeated, standing still and looking at your hand, then to you. “What are you doing here?”. Again, you laughed as if what he said was the silliest thing you ever heard. “What do you mean by that? Xiao,” you shook your head and then you shoot him a bright, warm smile. “You wanted to come here, remember? Now come, take my hand and dance with me before the music stops.” Dance? Music? At first Xiao did not understand what you meant, but then he heard it. In the distance, the low sounds of a flute, a sweet melody that sounded strange but all too familiar. “Xiao”, he heard you whisper his name, speaking so gently. Slowly, he was still a bit hesitant, he reached out for your hand, taking it in his. A smile came across your face at the touch of your hands. With a swift motion Xiao was pulled into your arms, you both at first staying still in that embrace. “Xiao, lets dance, okay?”. With that you both started to waltz around the field, Xiao not knowing how he knew to dance like this, but somehow, he did. The dread that started to spread in his chest earlier was now gone, replaced by the feeling of love he felt for you. Still, there was something tugging at his mind, telling him something was amiss here. It felt familiar, yes. However, it also seemed to be strange to him at the same time. Though Xiao tried to push the nagging feeling away, wanting only to enjoy this pleasant moment with you. Which is why he at first didn’t notice how the sky darkened above them nor that the music had stopped a while ago. As you both stopped to dance, still holding each other in your arms, he heard you call out to him again. “Xiao”, the sound of your voice was filled with pain and when he looked at you in his arms the light behind your eyes was gone, your face stiff and emotionless. At the sight of your dead eyes, he wanted to part from the embrace, but he couldn’t let you go. Xiao saw the blood, saw the bruises and suddenly he was on his knees again, you are laying in his arms. He wanted to cry, wanted to say your name but he couldn’t. It was as if there was no air to breath so he could speak. And then – “Xiao.” His name. “Xiao.” Again. “Xiao.” Over and over again he heard how his name was spoken, but with every whisper of his name the voice became more distorted, louder. Until he cowered in pain at the sound of it, wanting it to stop, wishing for it to stop. “Xiao”.

With that Xiao woke up, his body covered in cold sweat and his breathing erratic. Another nightmare of you, another nightmare of something he wished the both of you could’ve done but never did – because of his shortcomings. Xiao sat atop of a rock, looking over the forest in which your ghost continued to wander aimlessly around. He had been watching you for a few weeks now, trying to figure out what kept you here and how he could help you. However, Xiao was clueless at what could be the cause of this. It was clear to him now that he couldn’t help you, he needed to find someone who could. Looking down at the forest, seeing your ghost wander around between the trees, he softly whispered. “I will be back soon, I won’t leave you again for long, I promise.” There weren’t many people Xiao could ask for help. Back when you were alive Xiao wasn’t the most social, wanting to keep his distance from humans. After you died this habit of his, avoiding others, only worsened. So, the only person Xiao could think of to ask for help in this matter was the same who saved him from his servitude as a bloodhound. Zhongli spend most of the last hundred years among the people of Liyue, but for a few decades now he lived in a remote house. It was now the door of said house Xiao knocked on, knowing that although he could easily enter the house, Zhongli preferred it for him to knock. “Ah, Xiao, it is nice to see you,” Zhongli greeted the adeptus. As Xiao entered the house and followed the tall man into his kitchen, it was a standard practice of Zhongli to drink a tea with anyone who visited, he couldn’t stop to notice that the notebooks scattered around the house grew in number. “So,” Zhongli began his question, “what brings you here? From your troubled look I can tell you didn’t come for the tea or my company.” With that Xiao didn’t waste any time on more formalities, explaining his predicament to the former Geo-Archon. “Mmmh, I see,” he replied, taking a sip from his cup. “I fear I might not be much of help in this case, although I have some knowledge on the topic of the human afterlife, I can’t think of a solution to this. However, it might be best to go ask Hu Tao on advice, as she is way more… let’s say, perceptive when it comes to the dead.” How bothersome, Xiao thought at the mention of Hu Tao. “Zhongli, Hu Tao is long dead”, was all Xiao could say. It happened more frequently now that Zhongli seemed to forget things, small ones but also important pieces of information and this filled Xiao with unease. He didn’t like it that the erosion of Zhongli already was set in motion, thinking about that one-day Xiao might have to face him in battle should he lose all sense of self and sanity. Neither did Zhongli enjoy slowly losing his memories of the past – although he wrote down as much as possible, it bothered him that he had to even rely on his notebooks. “Ah,” Zhongli replied, setting his cup down on the table and with a troubled look, “I seem to have forgotten something again. Would you please help my memory, when did this happen?” “One thousand years might have already passed,” Xiao saw how much it stirred Zhongli up that he had forgotten the passing of a friend. “She had a good life, right? I’m sorry for asking, but I somehow can’t seem to remember much about her later life.” “Yes,” Xiao answered, thinking about the 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. There weren’t many humans he tolerated or even enjoyed being around, but Hu Tao was one Xiao always was fond of. She was also the one at the Parlor that day you died, when Xiao came in with your dead body in his arms, he hoped he might find Zhongli maybe he could do something about it, but… Xiao knew there was nothing anyone could do. Hu Tao understood his pain, without a word she showed him where to put your body and prepared your funeral, without even asking for a single Mora. “Then, “Zhongli pulled Xiao out of his thoughts, “maybe you might find help with the new Director, her family always had some knowledge about that human afterlife that’s even a mystery to me.” With that

Xiao said his goodbye to Zhongli and made his way to Liyue. The city of Liyue changed over the last thousand years a lot, but the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor was still one of the constants in the city. Xiao couldn’t remember the last time he visited the city, though it must have been a few hundred years ago for sure. He just never really liked it and since, what the humans called a ‘industrial revolution’, the city was even more crowded and overwhelming for Xiao. “Welcome to the Wangshen Funeral Parlor, how may I help you?”, a young person greeted Xiao as he set foot into the building. At the enthusiastic way the person greeted him as he entered a funeral home, Xiao was sure this was one of Hu Taos descendants. He barley could imagine anyone else be so happy surrounded by death. “Are you the director?”, Xiao asked in his usual stern voice. “The 107th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, yep that’s me!” “I may need your assistance.” “Wonderful, I’m always happy to help- oh well, not happy as I am happy for your loss, my condolences by the way, but in happy as I am happy that I can be of help. So, what do you need help with? We have some wonderful new coffins out of a wonderful wood, really they are also very comfortable, not that comfort is that important for someone who’s dead, but I thought it might be also of interest to say that they are really comfort-“, ah yes, Xiao thought, definitely related to Hu Tao. “I don’t need a coffin”, he interrupted the young director. “Oh, um… what can I help with then?”, they asked and then Xiao explained everything to them. At first, he wasn’t sure of the director would be of help, most humans have long forgotten the existence of the gods and adepti, as most of them died or lived a life among humanity, but sure enough the director did turn out to be well versed with the forgotten knowledge of the world. “So, you say the ghost is just roaming around those woods? Nothing else happens?”, the director asked, sitting in their chair in the back office of the Parlor, and they had their hand on their chin, looking like they were thinking about something “Will you be of help now or why do you keep repeating the same useless questions?”, Xiao became a bit impatient now. He just needed to know if someone was able to help you. Without even answering the question the director stood up from the chair and walked towards a bookshelf, pulling a big and old looking book out and opening it up on the table. “Mmmh, from what you’ve described it seems to be nothing to grave, they don’t seem to have become an evil spirit just yet, moreover it seems like they are just one who got lost, though it is surprising that after such a long time the spirit didn’t just turned into something malicious. Normally for most human ghosts it takes a few hundred years until they go insane and well, you know all too well what then happens with an evil spirt I guess.” Xiao was aware what happened to the evils in the world, because it was mostly him. Though he didn’t like to think about it what it would have meant if you- no, he didn’t even want to finish that thought. “How do I help them?”, he didn’t care about any of the other information, he just wanted to find a way to help you. The director pointed at a passage in the book in front of them and continued. “What we have to do is easy if you think about it, I just need something that belonged to the deceased they held dear, a few materials like Qingxin flowers, around twenty should be enough, and the next part is more tricky if you don’t know the deceased that well, which shouldn’t be a problem here, but we need to, well you need to, speak some words that you know are important to them. A story or something like that, sometimes even the voice of a loved one is enough to help to guide the spirits back. Though I will definitely have to accompany that spirit to the border, just to make sure it won’t happen again, you know getting lost, because I can’t guarantee this method will help a second time.” Xiao was quiet. Something that belonged to them, when the director said

those words, his hand immediately flew up to the necklace with the small pendant he wore. Xiao wasn’t the most adept with words, he rather enjoyed listening to what you had to say to him most of the time. He enjoyed the sound of your voice; it was so much more pleasant than his own. One day, Xiao still remembers it so well, your voice said something he did not expect for you to say. “Xiao, I love you.” It took him by surprise, standing on the balcony of the Wangshu Inn, watching the night sky… he suspected that you liked him that way, he did too. Oh, but how he hoped that you wouldn’t say anything about it, like he planned too. Your openness scared him. The idea of being loved scared him, for what was there to love about him? He didn’t want to be a burden to you, his karmic debt, his burden – he feared it would all just make you hate him one day if he let you see it all. That night, after you said these words, Xiao disappeared without a word from your sight. He wasn’t far away, but he wished back then that he teleported out of his hearing range. The sobs that came from you after his departure broke Xiaos heart. After this he avoided you, which wasn’t too hard because you did the same thing too. But with every day that passed when Xiao didn’t see you, hear your voice, his heart grew heavier. Asking himself if he really did do the right thing. Verr Goldet approached Xiao a few weeks after your confession, inquiring why now you didn’t come to the Inn anymore. Xiao did not answer her question, but Verr was a smart woman and at the look in his eyes she understood. “Don’t give up someone you love, only because you are scared of the love you both feel for each other, Xiao”, was all she said. This was the final push for Xiao to finally get over himself and embrace the feelings he felt for you. He didn’t know anymore where the idea came from, but he decided to gift you a handmade necklace along side his confession. Xiao was scared that it might be too late for telling you that he felt the same. However, he knew he had to do it and he wanted to give you something that showed you how he felt too. So Xiao collected the material all around from Liyue, creating a metal necklace and using a small piece of Cor Lapis, your favourite you told him once, as the pendant. With that he looked for you, finding you sitting in the middle of a flower field. “(Y/N)”, he said, stopping himself from continuing when he saw how you jumped at your own name. “Xiao! You scared me!”, you quickly stood up and turned around to him. Xiao wasn’t the most adept with words, he enjoyed listening to you – but you stayed quiet after facing him and you kept quiet when Xiao came closer. “I-“, he began, but unable to speak the words he so wished you to hear from him. Instead, he took your hand and put the necklace in it. “I- I made you this,” was all he could say, feeling how fast his heart pounced in his chest. The look in your eyes, Xiao saw the love you felt for him in them. “Xiao, I-“, he saw how you viewed the necklace in your hand, tears starting to form at the corners of your eyes. Before you were able to finish the sentence or let the tears fall down, Xiao took your face in his hands and kissed you. Yes, he wasn’t the most adept with words, but he learned that he could show you how much he loved you in other ways.

From that day on you wore that necklace every single day, never taking it off since Xiao but it on you after the shared kiss. You joked that it was a physical representation of your love for each other, though Xiao felt like you actually meant it. And somehow it really was. Xiao remembered how that necklace was still around you neck when he took your body to Hu Tao, he remembered that it was covered with your blood. He didn’t even think about taking it off you. It was Hu Tao who gave him that necklace after your burial and since then he hadn’t taken it off. It was the last thing he had of you, the last reminder of your love for each other and every night after your death, when he cowered in pain because of his karmic debt, the cool touch of the stone on his skin helps him to stay sane. Just like the flute he heard even long before he met you.

When Xiao and the director arrived at the forest, they collected the flowers on their way, he could see your ghost again. Walking around, calling for him. His heart breaks every time he had to witness your suffering. “Okay, we have the flowers… do you have something that belonged to them with you, Xiao?”, the director asked, and Xiao shifted his focus from you to them. Slowly he took the necklace off, feeling somehow so vulnerable without it, and gave it to the director. “You know where they start their walk and end it right?”. Yes, Xiao knew that. He had watched over your ghost for the past couple of weeks and noticed that you were walking in circles, without even knowing so it seemed, starting from the place you died and ending up there again. Although your body was buried in another part of Liyue and already long gone, taken back by nature, you stayed here. Where you died. Xiao wished he had come here earlier. Together with the director Xiao made his way to the place where your life ended and your endless suffering in a sort of limbo started, laying down the flowers and the necklace. “And how is that supposed to help them now?”, he asked, not sure how any of this will work. “Like I said, we put down something that belonged to them and was important because they will gravitate to the feelings still connected with that object. The flowers are helping, because they built a bridge between the living realm and what state they are in. Now we just need some words that they have a connection with, in the past it used to be certain prayers because people kept using them a lot, but you know it honestly doesn’t matter what you say, it just needs to be connected to them in some way. Maybe their favourite story or a lullaby, there are many possibilities.” “A lullaby, huh,” this was something Xiao hadn’t thought about in a long time. “Xiao, are you alright?”, he heard your voice from across the dark room. It was the middle of the night, normally he would be out killing monsters, but for tonight you were able to make him sleep with you. When you found out that he never sleeps you were shocked, though he tried to calm you saying that an adeptus didn’t need to sleep. “Maybe you don’t need to,” you told him with a stern look, hands on your hips, “but it will be good for you too, believe me!”. And somehow, after each of you confessed the feelings for the other, you were able to make him sleep next to you some nights. Just for that night his karmic debt plagued Xiao. He sat in front of your window, trying to keep his distance from you, not wanting to disturb your sleep and he didn’t want to worry you. “Xiao?”, you asked again, but instead of an answer Xiao growled in pain. Suddenly you were beside him. “Don’t”, he said through gritted teeth as you tried to touch him. “You’re in pain, let me help you.” He saw your worried painted face, ashamed that you had to see him like this. “It’s fine, I’m used to it. Don’t worry.” “Don’t tell me not to worry when I see the person I love most suffering,” and with that you took his hand. “Please Xiao, let me help you.” Even when he wasn’t in such a weakened state it was hard for Xiao to refuse you and now – all he wished for was your comforting touch. You led Xiao back to bed and when you noticed how he had a fever you quickly prepared a cold and wet towel for him. As you both lied down in bed you took Xiao in your arms. “I don’t know if this will help,” you began after a short amount of silence, “but when I was a child my mother always used to sing this lullaby to help me fall asleep. She even continued singing it when we were older and got sick… it always helps me feel better and at ease, shall I sing it to you?”. Xiao only gave a small nod, not believing it would help when you sang that song for the first time. But it did, you soothed his pain and helped him fall asleep. From that night on you would sing it more often to Xiao, he never asked for it but you somehow always knew when he wished to hear it, especially on the nights when is karmic debt caused him great pain. That lullaby became

another sign of how much you loved each other – the necklace was Xiaos gift, the song yours.

Now there he stood, in this forest that once was just a plain field, the flowers and necklace to his feet singing that lullaby. Xiao never sang it when you were alive, he never sang at all. No matter how much you begged him to sing for you, this was something he always refused to do. Thinking about how beautiful your voice sounded, he never wanted to soil this song with his voice.

It felt like you screamed for Xiao for hours and hours on end, but your voice doesn’t hurt. Where were you? What had happened? In your head you repeated and repeated the last things you could remember again and again. You were walking in the fields, wanting to collect some crystal flies for a commission. Then you remembered that you were attacked, who or what attacked you slipped your mind. However, the fight was tedious and hard… and then you called for Xiao. That’s it. That’s all you could remember. But where was he? Where was Xiao? Didn’t he say he would always come when you called out for him? Why didn’t he come now? You feared that he was still angry with you, though you didn’t know anymore why he even should be angry with you in the first place. The two of you had a fight yes, but… was that it? You spend so much time apart, did he just decide you weren’t worth his time anymore? Did he maybe stop loving you? Those thoughts filled you with dread and you wanted to cry, cry at the thought of Xiao not loving you anymore, but somehow you couldn’t. So you kept calling for him, over and over again. “Xiao,” you screamed. “XIAO!” And then you heard something, at first you weren’t sure what it was, but there was a noise. You stopped calling out for him, trying to focus on where the sound came from, following the direction. It got louder and – was that Xiao singing? The closer you came towards the sound, towards Xiaos voice singing that lullaby… your mothers’ lullaby, the lullaby that became yours and Xiaos. Which he always refused to sing, no matter how much you pleaded. The closer you came you started to remember the things that happened more clearly. How you didn’t want to call for Xiao at first that day, how something hit you in your stomach and how you felt the blood gusher out of you. Yes, you remember how you couldn’t stand anymore and all that was on your mind was Xiao, you wanted to see him again. Just once. You wanted to tell him how sorry you were, how stupid it was for you to fight and how stupid it was to wait this long to call for him. You wanted to say this to him, all of it. But all you remember you said was his name. “Xiao.”

He stopped singing, his head flying up seeing your ghost stand right in front of him. His name. You just said his name. “Xiao,” you said it again, this time he heard you say it clearly and you looked right at him, not through. “(Y/N)”, it came more out as whisper. This is what he wanted. He wanted you to see him, to get out of that limbo, but why does it still hurt as much? “Ah, seems like it worked, great!”, the director interrupted the moment, looking at Xiao and the ghost of you. “I ummm- I’m gonna leave the two of you alone for a while, so you can talk things out, say your goodbyes, yadayadayada.” With that the director walked away and it was just you and Xiao.

“I-“, Xiao began, but somehow his voice failed him. What was there to say? What should he say? “Xiao,” he heard the hesitance in your voice. “Xiao, I am dead, right?”. He couldn’t stand looking at you, his eyes avoiding yours as he gave his short answer. “Yes.” “I see,” you replied quietly. You slowly started to remember the nights you stood on the field, waiting for him to come. “Why,” you weren’t sure if you wanted an answer to your question, “why didn’t you come? After, you know… I- I waited for you. I called you. Why-?”. “I felt guilty. It was my fault, if I just hadn’t tried to push you away again, then you wouldn’t have died, I’m so sorry,” his voice was so quiet, but you could hear how he tried to hold back the tears. “Xiao,” at hearing his name again he looked back at you, you now seeing the tears that pooled at the corner of his eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have pushed you… and I should have called for you earlier. But Xiao,” you saw how the tears started to fall down his face, “it wasn’t your fault.” He couldn’t hold it in any longer, Xiao fell to his knees, hands in his face and crying. “Please,” he sobbed. “Please, forgive me. I should have protected you that day, I should have come here earlier and see what was happening… please, forgive me.” You walked towards Xiao, reaching out your hand, wanting to touch him. Wanting to take him in your arms, but you couldn’t. It broke your heart. “Xiao, please, please look at me,” he did, his eyes red and filled with his tears. “There is nothing to ask for forgiveness for, you did nothing wrong Xiao. It’s alright. I’m sorry for leaving so soon, for running away that day we had this stupid fight. I don’t even know what it was about…”. “I don’t know either”, Xiao admitted and somehow you had to laugh a bit at that. None of you ever remembered why you fought even in the first place, all of this nearly felt so normal. But it wasn’t. Xiao wiped away the tears from his eyes and stood up again, this time to be able to face you. You looked just like he remembered, except for the see-through part but… your smile hasn’t changed. Even if this was a sad one. “Xiao, how much time has passed since I died?” That question surprised him. “Around…”, he was hesitant to tell you the truth. Should he really tell you? “Xiao,” and you looked at him and he knew that he couldn’t hide the truth. “A thousand years perhaps.” Thousand years, you thought. For thousand years he walked around with this guilt, for thousand years he kept that necklace that still was on the ground… for thousand years he lived his life, still mourning you it seemed. “Did you get over me?”. Again, another question he didn’t expect. Why were you asking him this? Did he get over you? “No, every single day since you died you were on my mind, I couldn’t forget you and I do not wish to. I can never get over you.” This wasn’t the answer you hoped for. “Xiao, I’ve been dead for thousand years. Even if I hadn’t died that day, I would have died on another one. Thousand years compared to what, sixty? Maybe seventy years if I had lived a full life is nothing. Humans are weak after all, aren’t we?”. You didn’t mean to stir him up with your last comment, it was more intended as a joke, alas a sad one, but somehow you struck a nerve within him. “No, they are not. I always said that, but I was wrong (Y/N). I don’t understand how you human can live your life, knowing that you will die, that those you love will inevitably die. How you can idly sit next to people you care about forgetting important things, things about themselves, struggle to remember who they are, seeing them die… and you move forward. I watched over you humans for such a long time, protecting you and I still- I don’t understand how. How can they love again? Where does the strength come from to keep moving forward?”, Xiao’s voice was full of pain, you heard it clear as day, seeing how tears rolled down his face again. You felt that there were even other things weighing heavy on him, not only you, but you knew that you couldn’t comfort him. That this was

something he needed to figure out himself. “Xiao, you will learn. You will understand it one day, it just takes time.” Your voice heavy with sadness and oh, how you wished you could take him in your arms, wipe his tears away and kiss him.

Before Xiao could reply anything in return the director disturbed the two of you again. “So, are you ready now?”, looking directly at you. “No, but I stayed here for far too long now, didn’t I?”, a sad smile coming across your face. You really didn’t want to leave, but you knew you couldn’t stay any longer. It was time. “I will come with you as far as I can,” Xiao had wiped his tears away and stood now right next to you. If you still had a body your shoulders would touch.

Xiao and the director accompanied you to the border of life and death in silence. Before you crossed it you looked at Xiao. He looked so sad, as if he was to lose you a second time. “I wish,” you heard him say, “that you could stay just a bit longer. I know it’s selfish, but I just wished you could have stayed by my side forever. But you can’t stay, and you shouldn’t.” “Xiao, I feel the same. I wish I could have spent eternity with you, but I can’t and it okay. I just want to ask you for one thing, one last promise before I go, okay?”. Xiao looked at you with a heavy heart. “Yes.” “Promise me you will try to find happiness for yourself again, okay? Promise me you will love again, please. Don’t stay alone.” Silently Xiao looked at you to then finally say “I promise.” “Thank you Xiao,” Archons, you wished you could take his hand. “Now then,” you said looking in the directions you had to go. “Time to go.” “(Y/N)”, you heard Xiao say before you left. “I love you.” “I love you too, Xiao.” As Xiao and the director left the border, he stayed quiet, the atmosphere being quite sombre. “Maybe,” the director pulled Xiao out of his thoughts, “there is nothing behind the border and they stopped existing completely. But maybe their soul will now find a way back to you, just in another way? Who knows,” and with that the director left. Xiao didn’t know if he believed that you would find a way back to him, but as it started to rain and as it fell down on his skin, Xiao felt now lighter as if a heavy burden was taken off of him. With that he started to move forward again.

[watchmegetobsessed]

With you - Harry Styles

❄️ FANFICmas 2020 ❄️

Read more about FANFICmas here!

fanficmas week 2! i really hope you guys are enjoying the holiday content! updated the fanficmas post with the title of next week’s fic and im working hard on more content, hopefully i’ll have more time when i finish school next week. take care!

word count: ~2k

masterlist

Getting into a relationship so close to the holidays is a pain in the ass. There are just so much unexplored territory, it makes an already stressful time even harder. What do you buy them? Do you spend it together? Do you take them home to your family? Do they want you to meet their family? There really should be a manual to answer all these questions, because it really works up your anxiety.

When you made things official with Harry just a short month before Christmas, you didn’t think about all these things, but once you were able to see from the pink clouds around you, realization hit you hard. These were all crucial questions and you were afraid to ask them straight. What if you disagree on one? What if you want him to meet your family, but he feels rushed? The two of you only dated for a few weeks before he finally asked you to be his girlfriend. You could jump and scream from happiness, but then you realized what it means for the holidays and now you are stressing out.

Harry however knows you well enough to notice that something is off, so one evening, when you’re on the phone he softly asks.

“Love, everything alright?” you hear his soft murmur through the phone.

“Yeah, why are you asking?” you say, trying your best to sound convincing.

“Because the moment I brought Christmas up you started giving one word answers. You know you can tell me anything, right?”

Your heart aches, he is such a sweetheart. You can’t just put it all aside hoping for the best, you need to be mature and just communicate your fears. Hopefully, he won’t think you’re crazy for stressing on such things.

“I’m just… a little anxious about the holidays.”

“Okay, talk to me. What’s gotten you feeling that way?”

“I’m just not sure what we should do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we haven’t talked about what happens on Christmas. Do you want me to meet your family? Do you want to meet mine? Do we celebrate together or meet after the holidays?”

You hear a soft chuckle on the other end of the call and you huff to yourself. Good to know, he finds it entertaining.

“Love, don’t stress about it, alright? We can talk about it now. But there’s no wrong answer, okay?”

“Do you really mean that?”

“I do. I know it’s our first Christmas together, a kind of important step, so I just want to make sure you’re comfortable with whatever we come up with.”

“You are literally making it so hard for me to comprehend that you’re real when you are so caring and loving Harry,” you mumble in the phone, earning another chuckle from him. Moments like this, when he acts like a real prince charming just makes you unable to wrap your head around the fact that you are dating this man. He is your boyfriend and you are his girlfriend. Unbelievable!

The two of you talk it through and come up with a plan for the holidays. Dinner at your parents’ on the 25th, lunch with his family on the 26th and then ice-skating in the evening, just the two of you.

Now that you have cleared it all, you just worry about one thing: not to do anything during the holidays that would make him want to leave you right away.

Dinner at your parents’ goes by smoothly, it’s not a surprise Harry wraps both of them around his fingers, you were kind of expecting it beforehand. Besides, your mom was already so excited to meet your charming new boyfriend, he doesn’t even have to try that hard through the evening.

Now lunch with his family has been working up your anxiety, but when Anne greets you with a warm hug and some sweet words about how grateful she is to finally meet the girl her son has been gushing about, your nerves fade and you let yourself enjoy this time with them. They are all so welcoming and you really hit it off with Gemma, already making plans after the holidays, just the two of you.

“Already getting rid of me, babe?” Harry teases you softly and you just kiss him with an innocent look.

After family time at the Styles home, Harry drives you home to get changed and pick your skates up before dropping by his house to do the same. You arrive to the skating rink a little after five, the sun has already dipped down below the horizon, the Christmas lights all around the place are setting the mood for the evening.

“I’m warning you, I’m not that good of a skater,” you tell him with a nervous smile as you finish up with your skates.

“S’alright, I’ll look out for you,” he smirks, making your heart flutter in your chest. He holds out a hand for you and you gladly take it, balancing on the blades a little wobbly. It’s been quite a few years since the last time you skated and you surely became a little rusty. You can only hope you won’t embarrass yourself that badly, wouldn’t want such an awkward memory from your first Christmas spent together with Harry.

“Hold onto me all you want, Love,” he tells you when he is already on the ice, helping you step into the rink as well. Your ankles aren’t holding up too steadily, so you take up on his offer and cling onto him for dear life.

You manage to get on the ice without smashing your face against it, so you give yourself a point for that. Harry seems to be comfortable in his black skates, gliding on the ice easily, always looking out for you to help or catch you if you might fall.

It surely takes you time to get used to moving around on the ice, losing balance quite often, but Harry is always quick to catch you just in time, saving you from falling.

“You are getting better, babe,” he smiles at you proudly when you are only holding one of his hands, trying your best to move forward, people passing you in a faster pace, but you are just happy to take it in slower.

“Sorry to hold you back. You can go a few rounds without me if you want,” you tell him, knowing well he would easily be able to circle the rink smoothly like a pro.

“I’m perfectly fine, don’t worry about me, Love,” he smiles at you and he sounds genuine. Returning the smile you try to inch closer to steal a quick kiss, holding onto his hand you manage to reach him, but right before your lips could meet his, a guy speeds past you so suddenly, he scares you, making you jump and easily fall out of your balance you worked so hard to keep all along. Harry’s arm immediately flies around you, trying to keep you steady, but it’s all dead business.

You launch forward, not able to hold yourself up, collapsing against Harry, who desperately tries to keep the both of you standing, but he doesn’t succeed. The two of you fall to the hard ice and though you mostly land on Harry, it’s still painful and you can only imagine what it feels like for him.

“Oh shit!” you gasp when you finally realize what just happened and that you’re lying flat on Harry who is grunting underneath you. “Harry, I’m so sorry!” you whimper, already feeling the embarrassment crawling up on your cheeks, heating them up. Of course you have to be so clumsy to pull Harry down with you when you fall.

Eyes falling to Harry’s face you see that his expression is quite pain twisted and looking down at him you try to find where he hurt himself.

“Wha-what hurts?” you frantically ask as he opens his eyes, staring up at the sky, seemingly holding his breath.

“Don’t panic, Love, but I think my wrist is broken,” he huffs out and you gasp at his words. You carefully get off of him and your gaze finds the hand that’s probably injured, but you can’t see much, his coat and sweater still covering it.

You manage to hold your tears back as you and Harry somehow push yourselves up from the ice and make your way off the rink. He is holding himself up like a soldier, not even whimpering at the pain he is surely feeling, but you can tell it’s painful as hell. You help him change into his boots, then change yourself as well, pack everything up as you head out to the car. This time you’re clearly driving and sitting in the dark car you need to bite into your lower lip to stop yourself from crying, but you are not even the one who is injured.

You just can’t believe he broke an arm because of you. How pathetic are you really? This evening will surely haunt you for years.

You feel Harry’s gaze on you while you drive, and you’re pretty sure he can tell how shaken up you are, but he chooses not to comment on it and you’re more thank thankful for that choice.

You park down at the hospital and walking in you are faced with the holiday chaos of the ER, that basically looks like hell. The place is packed, nurses and doctors are rushing from one point to the other, patients are waiting everywhere, children are crying and it’s a whole mess.

You check Harry in at the nurse station and the nice lady asks the two of you to wait until his name is called. Harry spots two empty chairs in the corner so you make yourselves comfortable there for the wait ahead of you.

He can tell you are blaming yourself and shutting yourself down, but he surely doesn’t want you to think it’s any of your fault.

“Hey,” he softly breathes out catching your attention. “What’s going on in your pretty head?”

You let out a tired and frustrated sigh, rolling your lips into your mouth.

“Just that I’m such a loser, breaking my boyfriend’s hand on our first Christmas together.”

“You did not break my hand, okay? It was an accident, Love.”

“Yeah, but I fell on you and that’s why it happened. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted nothing to with me after this,” you mumble under your breath, but Harry is shocked to hear your words. Moving up his healthy hand to cup your cheek he turns your face to force you to look into his eyes.

“Okay, this is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard from you. Why would I want to break up with you for this?”

“Because… I’m a clumsy loser?” you whisper, feeling the tears stinging in your eyes again. “I’m so not the right match for you, anyone can see that,” you huff sadly.

“Stop this, I hate seeing you doubt yourself. Because it makes me feel like I don’t worship you enough, that I don’t show you enough how crazy I am for you.”

“You are?” you mumble with wide eyes.

“Oh, absolutely,” he chuckles, running his thumb across the soft skin under your eye. “And this is going to be the funniest and best story to tell later. I can’t wait to tease you every year about it,” he smirks smugly at you, and though you want to roll your eyes at him, your heart is threatening to jump out of your chest. He is planning to spend more Christmases with you!

“I’m sorry this is how our first Christmas turned out to be. In a crowded hospital waiting room,” you huff your apology and he just smiles down at you sweetly, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead.

“It doesn’t matter where we are. I just want to be with you.”

[emsylcatac]

[Posting it in a separate post because Tumblr still hates us with asks and read more aha]

Tagging you here so you know I answered: @fightyspidey​

Aaaah i remember telling you I’d get down to your ask in a while and well, it’s been indeed a whole while haha! But here it is!!! Hope you’ll like it!!

* * * * *

Chat Noir was frustrating. Adrien was frustrating. She never imagined she would catch herself thinking that one day.

And yet...

“You’ll be safe here,” he said,

sweetly.

“I’m so sorry this akuma has decided to target you, Marinette,” he put her down,

sweetly.

“I’ll come and check up on you afterwards, I promise,” he added while smiling,

sweetly.

Marinette sighed, watching him vault away towards the akuma before calling on her own transformation and running after him.

And she couldn’t really blame him—she had fallen for his sweetness, after all. For Adrien’s sweetness. And it was Chat Noir’s sweetness that, despite what her head always claimed, had made her heart beat a little faster and her cheeks a little redden that faithful evening on the rooftop. If only she had known at the time.

But now, right now, it wasn’t Adrien’s sweetness that she wanted to see in her partner. Well, that wasn't exactly true. She loved it and she wanted it. But she also wanted the banter and the stupid puns and the over-dramatic acting and—

Marinette released her transformation and groaned into her hands. She had headed straight back where Chat Noir had left civilian-her after the akuma, hoping to arrive before him.

Oh, yes, Chat Noir had been as in shape as ever, bouncing and smirking and laughing at the akuma. But Chat Noir didn’t know that Ladybug was Marinette, and Chat Noir didn’t know that Ladybug knew that he was Adrien. It was a mess.

Marinette was a mess. And even more of a blushing and stammering fool with him now, her brain very usefully supplied.

Maybe it was why he was acting so sweet with her, even as Chat Noir now that she knew his identity. Maybe she only had herself to blame, really.

“Hey, I’m back, just as promised,” a voice startled her thoughts.

She was met with Chat Noir’s kind smile. “Was everything alright for you? I hope that I wasn’t too long, I had to take care of the victim after the fight.”

“Oh no, you’re fine—I mean!—it’s fine! Not that you’re not fine, just—ugh, kill me now.”

He chuckled, almost politely, the kind of refrained laugh she now knew to associate with Adrien. Adrien in public. Adrien surrounded by people.

Not Adrien when he had been alone with her and had handed her his umbrella. Not Adrien when he was Chat Noir and—just not Adrien when he was Chat Noir.

He was frustrating.

“Don’t worry, Marinette, I understood what you said. Do you want a ride home? I know that you can walk, but we could be faster!” And he was smiling at her, expectantly. Sweetly, again.

Where was the wink? The borderline cocky smile? The puns and the dramatic tone? The “Oh, what would you say about a ride home with its city’s finest super-hero, Mademoiselle?” followed by a wiggle of his eyebrows?

She must have pulled a face or have taken too long to answer because his smile slowly became shy and uncertain.

“Why do you act like that?”, she blurted out, and oh god Marinette, not like this!

Adrien blinked, clearly not expecting this. “Sorry, like what?”

“Like that. Like...like Adrien.”

He frowned. “Hum, because I am Adrien?”

She sighed. “I know! I mean—all shy and nice and... Not that you’re not nice as Chat Noir, just...”

She was making no sense and was probably being mean, wasn’t she?

“Marinette,” he said, clearly not getting her point, “I don’t understand... I’m just as much Adrien as I’m Chat Noir...” He had his brows furrowed now.

“I know that’s not what I wanted to imply or—”. She groaned. “Look, what I mean is: ever since I found out your identity, you have been acting all shy and kind with me—which isn’t a bad thing! It’s just that...you tend to be, you know, more outgoing. As Chat Noir, at least.”

She looked up to see his face. A small “oh” was pulling at his lips.

“I mean, not that we never had awkward encounters while you were wearing the suit before,” she cringed at the memory, “but...you were also more...inclined to pun or act a little bit more...silly,” she ended with a grimace, not sure she had found the right words.

Adrien stayed silent, absorbing this information. She waited nervously, hoping that she hadn’t been too blunt or that he hadn’t taken it too badly.

He bit his lip, and she saw his expression slowly morphing into a sad one. And it was one thing to see Adrien pulling this face—it had already broken her heart more than once. But seeing it on Chat Noir, who was almost always cheerful, her support, her partner...it was something else. It was heart-wrecking. She suddenly felt awful for being the one to have put it here.

“It...it’s just that...It’s just that I’m not really used to someone knowing my identity, I think. And we’re friends but...I guess, because we know each other when I’m not Chat Noir, I would feel a little bit awkward or...I don’t know, you also said that you didn’t really like my jokes so maybe I was afraid that you would think I’m weird...” He sighed, before meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess, aren’t I?”

Marinette couldn’t take it anymore. She threw her arms around him and gripped him tightly. She heard him yelp in surprise but didn’t pay it any mind.

“If you’re a mess,” she said in his ear, “then we’re both idiot messes. I know..I know we’re not as close as you and Nino are,” and she knew it was a lie but she couldn’t exactly say that to him, “but you can...you can make as many jokes with me as you want, understand?”

She felt him nod just as he wrapped his arms awkwardly around her. “You can act dumb with me and I’ll be stupid with you. I’m stupid, you know? I’m the silliest person you’ll ever meet!”, she assured; she felt him chuckled, and it almost sounded like a sob. Was he crying? She was sure that she was starting to, by now.

“A-and you can pretend your ego is as big as a whale who just swallowed a pachyderm, if you want—”

His teary laugh cut her ramblings. “Hey, that’s not nice for either of the whale or the pachyderm.”

She chuckled but went on as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “—even if I know it’s not true, but you can pretend it is and you can be dramatic. I want to be dramatic with you, too. I mean, you know I can be theatrical, right?”

“Right,” he laughed. Probably remembering this awful episode that she tried so hard to forget at Musée Grévin, but who was after all a part of their story now. Maybe she shouldn’t have made an allusion to it. But in this instant, she didn’t regret it.

“Good.”

They slowly untangled themselves and looked into each other’s eyes. His were still slightly teary and it was making her even more emotional to see it. Hers must not have been much better.

“Thank you,” he said after a while. “For talking to me about it. And for what you said. You’re amazing, you know that?”

She was sure that she was blushing furiously now, but she didn’t really care. She smiled widely at him and mustered the bit of courage she had left. “Of course! And...you’re amazing too, you know?”

He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed at the praise. “Hum, thanks. Weeeeell,” he clapped his hands together in front of him, “how about I get you home by the highest ranked transport in all of Paris, young and fair Lady?”, he said still a bit awkwardly, but she appreciated the effort.

“Why why, thank you, oh mighty hero,” and oh god she sounded just as awkward, “I would love if you did!”

“Then hold on tight, and enjoy the ride!” And with that, he lifted her up and vaulted in the direction of her house.

Maybe getting such closure with him would lead to her accidentally spilling her own identity; maybe he would simply recognise her as their friendship would blossom and slowly venture into banter territory. But Marinette couldn’t really find it in herself to mind.

(spoiler: Marinette’s identity didn’t even last two days after that—her reactions to his teasing were too familiar, from what Adrien said).

[mikroparadise]

Sanctified (M) | JJK

↠Synopsis: Jungkook’s been away on tour, and you’ve really missed him. But when you try to show him just how much, he doesn’t reciprocate the way you’d like, and it makes you question whether the problem is you.

↠Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

↠Word Count: 12.8k+

↠Genres: Angst, Smut, Fluff if you squint really hard

↠Warnings/Tags: punk rock!au; alcohol and marijuana use; explicit language (cursing); a sprinkling of an existential crisis; thigh riding; slight body worship; edging/orgasm denial; oral sex (m receiving); unprotected sex; creampie; multiple orgasms (m&f receiving); rough sex.

↠ Original Request

↠ Masterlist

↠ Read It On AO3

↠ A/N: I can’t believe I wrote a thing! Thank you so much for giving it a read! I really hope you enjoy it! I’m sorry it took so long, I’ve been posting for a few weeks saying that it would be done in a few days but life kept getting in the way. But it’s here now and I’m excited to finally share my first fic with you! Please tell me what you think, send me asks, leave a comment, anything. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated since I’ve never written a piece of fiction before! I’m excited to know what you think!

Also a HUGE thank you to the lovely lady who beta read this story for me, she is so freaking amazing and nice and helpful, and she really saved my ass with this one lol, and also to my best friend who helped me along the way and kept it real with me.

Sanctified: “declared, made or believed to be holy; free from sin.”

“….And that’s why George Nakashima is the best woodworker of our time.”

You stared blankly at your best friend as he took a gulp of his no longer neglected beer, dumbfounded as to why he decided to regale you with the wonderful story of his favorite furniture craftsman, and something about “the soul of the tree”.

“Did he really just spend 20 minutes talking about your guys’ boujee new coffee table?” you said as you turned to your other best friend, Yoongi, who also happened to be a bartender at the bar you were currently sitting in.

“Namjoon’s been enthusiastically domestic whenever he gets drunk lately.” Yoongi placed a fresh shot of rum on the bar in front of you, chuckling to himself.

Namjoon looked so melodramatically heartbroken that you were afraid his face would get stuck that way permanently. “I don’t think I appreciate being character assassinated by my best friend AND my boyfriend! And I am not drunk.”

In what you assume was an attempt at acting dismissive, Namjoon crossed his legs while leaning back and tried to take a swig of his beer. All of this simultaneous movement would have required too much coordination for even a sober Namjoon, so you watched as your friend’s elbow missed the bar, and in the process of trying to catch himself, spilled beer all over his face. 

You fought to contain yourself, sucking in your lips hard enough to turn them blue. Yoongi burst into an absolute cackling fit from behind the bar and you absolutely lost it, laughing so hard that you had to get off your stool and stabilize yourself.

“I’m gonna pass out!!” you yelled as you slapped the seat of your stool repeatedly.

After a minute your laughter died down, and you looked up to see Yoongi bent over the bar, eyes screwed shut and gummy smile on full display, silently shaking with the aftershock of his outburst. When he straightened up you looked at each other for a moment, as if to tell each other telepathically to get your shit together before you try to console your friend. 

You both turned to look at Namjoon, who you were forced to admit looked so pathetically adorable slumped on his stool and dripping in beer that you didn’t know if you could hold a second wave of laughter, and you could sense that Yoongi was fighting the same battle in your periphery. Trying to distract yourself you picked up the shot of rum from the bar and put it to your lips. As you were about to take your shot, you looked at Yoongi and Namjoon, who seemed to be trying not to laugh again, their lips pursed and struggling to contain their giggles. Just as you knocked your head back to let the sweet tingly liquid past your lips, they both burst out into a laughing fit again and you nearly spit your shot all over them as a surge of laughter erupted from your chest.

Eventually all three of you started breathing at a normal pace again as you wiped the tears from your eyes and Yoongi reached under the bar, grabbing a fresh towel for Namjoon to dry himself off with and handing it over to him, all of you still giggling slightly. 

“Oh my GOD!” You fanned yourself with your right hand, as your left attempted to keep your sides from splitting at the seams. “That was too perfect! Looks like you’re cut off Joonie-bug,” you chided, poking at the dimples in his cheeks.

Namjoon swatted at your hand, pulling away from your intrusion. “Isn’t there a punk rocker boyfriend of yours that can come get you or something?”

“He should be here soon actually.” You pulled out your phone to check the time. 

12:00 am.

You looked up from your phone to scan the bar, with its red walls and stained glass light fixtures that glowed with low light.

It was a pretty large establishment. It had a line of pool tables along the left side of the bar, a moderately sized dancefloor with tables along either side, and a small stage at the far corner for a live band. You’ve been coming here for a long time, ever since Yoongi, whom you’ve known since elementary school along with Namjoon, applied for a bartending job here a few years back. It was almost homey to you, and you enjoyed spending your time here with your friends, even on nights when there was nothing special going on, much unlike tonight.

Tonight’s live act had the place packed to standing room only. The band playing was none other than ‘BTS’, a relatively popular rock band, whose heart throb frontman and main vocalist Jeon Jungkook happened to be your aforementioned “punk rocker boyfriend”, whom you haven’t seen in months. The band was coming back from a tour overseas today and this show was their last for the summer.

The band’s instruments and equipment were on stage, but no actual band members. They’d be coming straight from the airport so you had no idea whether they were even here yet or if they were late, since Jungkook hadn’t really been able to text or call you much in a few days. You didn’t know why, but you didn’t think much of it since you knew that you’d be able to finally see him tonight regardless. All you knew was what time the show was supposed to start, so you decided to wait out at the bar with Namjoon and Yoongi instead of waiting alone in the run-down, tacky green room behind the stage all by yourself.

You looked back at your phone to check the time again when you heard a *tap tap tap* coming from the speakers. When your eyes hit the stage this time, you saw the broad shouldered, chestnut haired manager of BTS, Kim Seokjin, standing at the front-most microphone on the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please! They’ve just come back home from their first world tour, where they sold out every single venue they stepped foot in! Here at ‘The Speakeasy’ for an exclusive show, I present to you, The Badass, The Talented, The Sanctified! Put your hands together for B T S!!!”

The crowd erupted into cheering and screaming as the band members of BTS started to file onto the stage.

First up was the drummer, Jung Hoseok. As you watched him glide over to his drum set and sit down, grabbing his drumsticks and twirling them around his fingers, you were reminded of why he always got on stage first: that man was pure sunshine. Sure, he was wearing almost all black with raven hair to match and had tattoos all down his arms, but when he entered a room you could swear the lights got just a little bit brighter. Hoseok got every crowd excited just by him being there. He radiated absolute warmth as he beamed out at the crowd, waving to as much of the audience as he could, and you could almost feel your skin start to sunburn, when the purple haired guitarist hopped on stage.

Park.

Jimin. 

If there was any man who made being in someone’s presence a personal attack, it was Jimin. It just wasn’t fair how much of a flirt this man was. It had always been that way. You remembered meeting him the for the first time like it was yesterday. Before Jungkook could even finish telling each other your names Jimin had already wasted no time in running his eyes up and down your body, like he could see right through your clothes. He licked his pillowy lips, took your hand and planted a kiss on the back of it, and drawled out “It’s nice to meet you, sweetie,” with a wink. Jimin had absolutely no shame, and that was when he was just being a muggle. When Jimin got on stage? Forget about it. You’d sometimes had to warn girls in the front row of their shows to try and not get pregnant.

He got to his spot on stage, looked out at the crowd and playfully stuck out his tongue before turning around to grab his guitar off it’s stand. It took everything in you not to yell “Stick your tongue back in your mouth boy!” and you ended up just murmuring it to yourself instead. 

Right behind him walking onto the stage was one ocean blue-locked, ethereal bassist named Kim Taehyung, and ethereal really was the only word that could describe him. Both in physical appearance, and in personality. He was so beautiful. His facial features were perfect in every way imaginable, and yet whenever he hung out with everyone off stage, he’d sometimes make the silliest face he could possibly muster, seemingly out of nowhere, or would just come out of left field with the most outlandish statement he could think of at the moment, and his duality really made you question whether he was human sometimes. He put the strap of his bass guitar over his shoulders, plugged it into the amp, and freestyled a short riff, his long fingers dancing along the chords with ease.

Just when you thought the crowd couldn’t get any louder, there he was. Jeon Jungkook’s curly mop of raven hair emerged from beneath your line of sight, followed by his big doe eyes and his signature smirk, and the entire bar went absolutely apeshit cheering for the frontman they all came to see. When you could finally see him standing full stature on stage, suddenly it felt like it was too hard to breathe, your heart beating so fast that the sound of blood rushing past your ears almost completely muffled the sounds of the crowd. The feeling was euphoric, finally being able to see him in the flesh after six months of being away from him. You had missed him so damn much.

The beauty and grace of the other 3 band members had nothing on Jungkook. Not to you anyway. He had the body of some ancient God of War that you read about in mythology, the voice of an angel, and when he would touch you it felt like your lungs were about to fly out of your body and take all the air with them. Needless to say he was absolutely breathtaking.

Jungkook adorned himself with his guitar, leaned into the mic with a smug smile that showed off his bunny teeth, and yelled out to the crowd to prepare themselves for a kick ass show. 

The crowd roared with “hell yeah’s” and “fuckin right’s” and huge smiles spread across the band member’s faces, everyone on stage exchanging smirks and nods with each other in satisfaction.

“LET’S GET IT!!” 

On cue the instruments onstage and the members holding them came to life with the opening chords of the first song of the night.

‘Dionysus’ was growing to be your favorite BTS song, and it made a killer opener. You’d become quite fond of the drinker’s party anthem after hearing it open up every show since its release a year ago. It really brought out the inner rocker in everyone, no matter what genre of music they preferred.

Namjoon was the perfect example of that very phenomenon. A staunch hip hop enthusiast to the outside world, he’d never once admitted out loud that he actually enjoyed coming to BTS shows with you and always insisted that he only accompanied you to show support for you and your boyfriend, though it didn’t take a genius to see the truth. Like clockwork, when you looked over at Namjoon when the song opened, you saw him pound his fist on the bar precisely two times at the same exact part that he always did. You cast your eyes over to Yoongi, who was already waiting for you to look his way, because he was watching for Namjoon’s signature move as well, and the two of you shared a knowing smirk.

“I thought you only had ears for Yoongi’s music, Joon!” you yelled over the noise.

He shot you a playful look that said “don’t test me”. 

You smirked as you shook your head. “Top ten anime betrayals!” you declared.

Namjoon playfully punched you in the arm, so you feigned death for a moment, falling limp onto the bar and letting your tongue flop out of your mouth. 

Yoongi placed a new shot of rum in front of your face, making you straighten right up.

“Took you long enough! You’re not getting a tip!” you teased. You took the shot, the liquid tingly and sweet on your tongue. 

You loved the witty banter that Yoongi would indulge you in. But the way he smiled at you, mischievous intent clear in his eyes, you dreaded where he was going to take the conversation. 

“I beg to differ!” Yoongi glanced over at his boyfriend with a smirk. 

“You’ll get more than the tip if you behave!” Namjoon winked at him, the smile slowly quirking up on his face showing off his dimples. 

“Ok can you guys not eye fuck while Yoongi’s still working? You’re gonna get him fired and I don’t want you guys to have to move in with me because you spent your life savings on a coffee table complete with soul!”

“Wow, good to know you’re willing to help in a crisis!” Namjoon said sarcastically.

The band went through their set, and you watched as your boyfriend and his band mates practically brought the house down with their sheer stage presence alone as they ended their performance. Even after all the band practices, rehearsals, late nights of Jungkook singing to you and riffing on his guitar to try to get a song just right, and the countless live shows you’d attended, BTS performances had never once ceased to amaze you. The members had amazing chemistry onstage, topped with incredible talent, and no one show was exactly like the other. You were so mesmerized that you didn’t even realize the show was over until you saw Jungkook and his band mates hop down from the stage one by one and disappear into the sea of people. You were searching through the heads of the people in the crowd trying to get a glimpse of Jungkook when you felt a soft slap land on your shoulder. 

“They’ve out done themselves again.”

You looked over your shoulder to see BTS’s number two fan (after you, of course) standing behind you. 

“Jin! It’s good to see you again!” You threw your arms over his almost abnormally wide shoulders and gave him a hug, which he quickly reciprocated. “How was the tour?”

“It was great! The boys have quite the fanbase overseas. I almost had to add more dates, the people couldn’t get enough.“ 

"I know the feeling,” you said.

You were about to turn around to ask Yoongi to pour some shots for everyone, when you feel it. The heat. Like literal, physical heat. When you tried to look over to where you’d last seen the band disappear into the crowd, your view was blocked by Jungkook, heat waves rolling off him and glistening with sweat, followed by his three equally sweaty bandmates.

In the year and a half you’d known Jungkook, you could always count on him being physically hot to the touch. The man was like his own space heater. It had saved you a mentionable chunk of money during the winter, that was for sure. So especially after performing, of course he’d be so hot that you could feel him from 5 feet away. You ran the rest of the way over to him and practically tackled him to the ground, throwing your arms over his neck and moving in for a kiss, one that you’ve been waiting six months to give him. When your lips met his, he reciprocated with a sweet and tender kiss, which caught you completely off guard. You had expected something eager, something primal.

You’d fantasized about this moment for the past few weeks, all of the drama that would unfold. Thinking about him devouring you with his eyes, grabbing and holding you so tight that you couldn’t breathe, not that you would be able to anyway. Thinking of you getting home and not even being able to wait until the door was closed before your desire overwhelmed you, letting him have every part of you right in the doorway. So far, this was not at all going to plan, and you hoped it wouldn’t stay that way by the end of the night.

You pulled away from him to look into his eyes. He wasn’t looking at you in any type of negative way, but the fire in his eyes that you had imagined would be there just wasn’t.

“Hi baby.” he said with a soft smile.

“Hi Kookie.”

You searched his eyes for a few moments longer before turning to greet the rest of the band.

“Guys, that performance was amazing!” you said as you made your rounds, giving hugs to the other men around you. 

“Did you miss me, doll?” Jimin’s hand lingered on your waist a bit too long, as per usual.

You gave him a hearty slap on the chest as you backed away toward the bar. “Umm, I missed my boyfriend. I will admit though that it’s nice to see all three of you again,”  you simpered.

You made sure to put extra emphasis on the ends of your sentences. After all, who else was there to keep his ego in check? He only cared what women thought about him and you have the only vagina in your friend group, so that duty lay solely with you. You knew that on some level he was only joking around when he acted like this, mostly because you’d seen how he acted when he was trying to hit on a girl he actually liked. Plus you knew him to be far too loyal to actually put the moves on his best friend’s girl. Even still it was fun to shoot him down without mercy.

You turned around to face Yoongi who was about to take his apron off.  Luckily Yoongi’s connection to the band had earned him an early end to his shift so that he could celebrate BTS’s return with you, partly due to the fact that Jin probably wouldn’t have booked this bar for the end of their tour if Yoongi didn’t work here, and his boss knew it.

“Before you clock out can you pour us a round of shots? We’ll wait for you so we can take them all together!”

“Pick your poison.” Yoongi took his hands off the strap to his apron and smoothed it back down.

“I don’t care as long as it’s strong.” You winked.

Yoongi chuckled and turned around to grab the shot glasses and libation when you heard Hoseok protest behind you.

“Who said the rest of us are willing to wait? I’m ready to get this party started!”

“I did, you didn’t hear me just now? Besides, it’s not like you need to pregame, Hobi. You’ll be out of it before we even get back to Jin’s.”

Jimin and Taehyung both slapped their hands over their mouths and turned away so that their friend couldn’t see them laughing at his expense.

Hoseok’s smile faltered a little at your insinuation. “I–I’m not a lightweight, if that’s what you’re implying!”

This only sent Jimin and Taehyung further over the edge, trying their hardest to not fall on the ground, laughing as silently as they could muster.

You just stood there in front of Hoseok with your arms folded over your chest, almost challenging him to try and prove you wrong, but Jin interrupted your playful banter to announce that he was going to go hail cabs for everyone to take back to his place.

“I’ll go with you,” Jungkook turned around and started towards the door behind Jin to help him go fetch your cabs. Before you could ask him to stay with you at the bar he’d already disappeared into the crowd. 

You watched him as he walked out the door and into the warm summer night, staring at the door unblinkingly as it opened and then closed. You must have been staring at the place he disappeared through for a while because when you looked over at everyone else, their eyes were glued to you, likely confused as to why you went dead silent all of a sudden after you’d just spent a few minutes jabbering away with them.

You clapped your hands, shaking your head as if that would banish the anxiety that was plaguing you. “Alright guys! Grab your shots!” 

Yoongi came around to your side of the bar after abandoning his apron behind the counter somewhere and sat next to Namjoon, who didn’t waste a second giving his boyfriend a kiss.

Taehyung, Jimin, and Hoseok closed the distance between them and the bar and each took their shots in hand.

You reached out and grabbed Jungkook’s shot for him as well as your own, and you swirled the spirits around in the shot glass, staring into it as if it would tell you your fortune.

‘Why does Jungkook seem so off? Did I do something wrong? Is he not as happy to see me as I am to see him? Maybe all that time apart ruined us for him, maybe he didn’t miss me…..’

“Ahem!”

You were pulled from your inner monologue when someone coughed very loudly in your direction. You must have been gone to the world again for the second time tonight.

You looked up to see Namjoon staring at you with a cocked head, and he motioned you with his eyes over to Jin and Jungkook, who reappeared while you were lost inside your head.

“Oh!” You chuckled nervously and handed over Jungkook’s shot.

“Shall we all toast to something?” Hoseok asked, bright smile having returned to his face.

“I’ll go first!” Jimin pushed his way to the center of your circle. He looked right at you and you rolled your eyes. “To beautiful women.”

Groans at various levels of done-ness broke out from everyone else in the group.

“Fine then.” Yoongi put his arm around Namjoons waist and looked him in the eyes. “To beautiful men.” 

“To art.” Taehyung raised his glass.

“To being an amazing and handsome manager and CEO.”

“To the soul of the tree” Namjoon glanced at you out of the corner of his eye and smiled.

“To bringing down the house!” Hoseok acted out a short interpretive dance of a literal building collapsing that made you burst out laughing.

“To getting fucked up with your closest international rockstar friends!” you shouted, raising your glass high above your head in victory.

Everyone looked over to Jungkook who had yet to make his toast. He looked around at everyone in the circle in front of him, each person silent and waiting, like they were standing on the edge of a precipice waiting in anticipation for Jungkook to give the go ahead to jump. After a pause that seemed like it took a decade, Jungkook smiled and said “To BTS!”

“To BTS!!!” You all clinked your glasses together and knocked your heads back.

As soon as the liquor touched your tongue you regretted not specifying to Yoongi what liquor you had wanted for the shots, and it took all your willpower not to start heaving. You managed to swallow the fire liquid and keep it down, and you whipped around to face Yoongi who had a wicked smile stretched across his face.

“Yoongi!!! Tequila!?!?” You gagged, animatedly waving your arms above your head.

Yoongi seemed to find this hilarious and immediately doubled over laughing. 

“Ah fuck, Hobi’s already turning red!” Taehyung pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose in apparent annoyance, but you could see that under his hand he was biting his lip to fight back his laughter.

“Well we better get in the cabs while we still can then! Let’s take this party back to my place!”

The short 15 minute cab ride from the bar to Jin’s penthouse apartment had been agonizingly uneventful. Everyone else decided to let you and Jungkook have a cab all to yourself, and absolutely nothing exciting happened. Not even so much as a makeout session. Most of the ride was completely silent, with Jungkook just staring out the window almost the whole time. Sure he was holding you the whole time but you thought it was odd of him to be so silent and it unsettled you. So upon arriving at Jin’s, you decided to try and not let it bother you by getting ultra drunk, because when had that ever not solved your problems?

You were about 2 shots of brandy and 3 blunts in when the thought occurred to you to try and get Jungkook riled up. He’d been keeping to himself all night while the rest of you played drinking games (which you’d been absolutely conquering, much to everyone else’s dismay) and you wanted to let him know just how much you’d missed him, in every way. So at the close of the game you were currently playing you concluded it was time to make your move.

“Alright guys, I’m tapping out for now.”

“What!? Come on girl, where’s the fun in that!?” Hoseok hiccuped as you got up from the table and made your way over to the couch where Jungkook was playing on his phone.

“I’m…pacing myself…” You motioned your eyes over to Jungkook and then back to Hoseok, hoping he wasn’t too far gone to catch your drift.

He flitted his eyes back and forth for a few seconds, and then you could see it clicking on his face. “Ohhhhhhhh…gotchu..” Hoseok winked dramatically at you.

You walked over to the couch and plopped down, snuggling up to Jungkook as he put his arm around your shoulders.

“Hey baby” Jungkook turned and planted a kiss on your temple.

“Hey. Whatcha up to over here?” you asked, peering down at his phone.

“Just playing a game I downloaded while we were in England. It’s pretty fun.”

“Don’t you want to come play with us? We were gonna play Cards Against Humanity next.” You nonchalantly put your hand on his thigh. You could still feel how firm it was even through his leather pants, and you thought about how much you wanted to just straddle it and beg him to let you ride his thigh until you came undone.

“No, I’m fine out here. I’ve been with them all day everyday for six months, I could use a break.” Jungkook kept his eyes locked on his phone.

You began inching your hand higher up his thigh, closer and closer toward what you craved so badly to finally touch. You weren’t trying to actually start anything with him, you just wanted to tease him a little bit. Get him hot and bothered so that the real action would start as soon as you got home. Maybe even in the cab. You craved him so badly after your six month dry spell that you wouldn’t have even minded him flipping you over on the couch and going to town right in front of everyone. You just needed him, and you needed him to know it.

Jungkook seemed completely unfazed by your advancing hand until you scooched up and began nibbling on his neck, right where it met his collarbone. The reaction you got out of him was the exact opposite of what you were hoping for.

Jungkook leaned his head away and gently pushed your hand off his thigh. “Not now babe, come on.”

“Sorry, I just missed you.” You sat completely up, praying that the couch cushions would open up and allow you to sink all the way through.

“Yeah I missed you too but I don’t feel like doing anything right now, especially not in my manager’s living room. Ok?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’m just gonna go back over there.” You quickly got up from the couch and grabbed a bag of weed on your way back to the dining room, where Jin and Namjoon were setting up the card piles for Cards Against Humanity. You were definitely going to need to get more toasted to make this work.

You sat down in your previously abandoned seat, grabbed your blunt wraps and started breaking up a bud while Namjoon and Jin finished setting up the cards and pouring everyone a starting shot of Ciroc.

“We’re already smoking a blunt you know?” Taehyung said through his held breath, having just taken a toke of said blunt.

“Yeah, well……” You zoned out as you began to stuff the herb into it’s wrap. “Since when is sharing one blunt with seven people fun?”

Something about your dulled tone must have set everyone on edge, because a hush fell over the table at your response.

“Um….did something happen over there?” Jimin inquired in a hushed tone. You could see genuine concern in his eyes as he gazed at you from across the table.

“Yea, that was kinda quick.” Hoseok cocked his head to the side.

“Guys, I’m fine. I swear.” You faked the best smile you could, but out of the corner of your eye you saw Yoongi and Namjoon exchange a look that told you they weren’t buying it. You looked over at them, and Namjoon quirked his eyebrow up at you, to which you shook your head, just slightly enough for the pair of them to notice without alerting the rest of the group to your telepathic conversation. Namjoon and Yoongi have been your best friends for close to 20 years now, of course they’d know you were faking, but you’d have to talk to them about it later, and they knew you would. You finished rolling the blunt and lit the end, taking your two puffs and passing it to Jin.

You started to play Cards Against Humanity with the drinking stipulation that the losers of a round take a shot, and though the game succeeded in lifting your spirits a bit, it still couldn’t keep your mind off of the man sitting in the living room all by himself. It was like you had completely forgotten about your dilemma until whenever there was a lull or a moment of silence, allowing your brain to kick up the emotional sediment you had thought to be settled already and bringing it back to the surface. You wanted to know why he was acting so out of character and if it had anything to do with you. This tour had been their first world tour, so this situation was completely new to you and you had no idea how to deal with it. It felt like it was eating you alive from the inside out and you didn’t know how to stop it, or if the flesh eating monster inside you would get it’s fill and leave you be.

After a particularly funny round, in all his flailing Jimin somehow managed to knock a bottle of vodka off the table, sending it toppling onto the floor and shattering into oblivion.

“Ah, fuck,” Jimin managed to say in between giggles.

Jin looked back and forth between the bottle and Jimin. “I’m not cleaning that,” he deadpanned.

Jimin just stared at him with pursed lips, giggling like a schoolboy.

“I’m really not,” Jin reiterated, trying to exude at least a sliver of authority over the situation. He looked around the table for support, but everyone was suddenly very interested in the cards they were holding, or straightening the stacks that remained. Jin huffed as he stood up from his chair. “Goddammit,” he mumbled, chuckling to himself under his breath.

The intermission gave you the perfect opportunity to go back into the living room and try again with Jungkook. You stood up from your chair and walked over to the couch where Jungkook was lounging with his head lolled back onto the headrest. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly ajar, but you thought nothing of it. You straddled his lap and ran your hands down his chest. His muscles were taught and firm and it made your mouth water.

Jungkook’s head slowly lifted, his eyelids heavy as he gazed up at you. “Hmm? What’re you doin’ babe?”

“Showin’ you how much I missed you,” you slurred out. You trailed a hand down to Jungkook’s groin, and your heart rate increased as your fingers made contact with his bulge.

Jungkook cocked an eyebrow as he glanced down at your hand on his crotch, before looking at your surroundings. “Are you kidding me?” Jungkook sighed as he flopped his head backward for a moment. “How many shots have you had?”

“Enough.” Your other free hand was playing with one of his nipples when Jungkook grabbed you by the waist, hoisted you off of his lap and placed you next to him on the couch.

“Did you forget what I told you earlier? I don’t want to get busy on my manager’s couch, especially in front of everyone.”

Your heart sank into your stomach at his rejection. You made to get up when Jungkook grabbed your wrist.

“That doesn’t mean you have to leave me alone you know? I’m just not trying to fuck you on this couch,” Jungkook appealed. “You can still hang out with me out here obviously.”

“I’m playing a game though,” you said, confused as to why he wanted you to stay but didn’t want to be touched.

“Right, fine.” Jungkook relented and let go of your wrist so that he could rub his eyes.

As you staggered back to the dining room table you thought you heard Jungkook grumble something under his breath, but you couldn’t make it out, so you just ignored it and plopped back down in your seat.

Jin tossed the paper towels he used to clean up spilt vodka in the trash and settled into his seat as well. “Alright guys, we should probably make this our last round. Hit me with your best shot.” Jin picked up a black card. “War! What is it good for?”

Grateful for the distraction from the failure of your second attempt to excite Jungkook, you glanced at your hand and immediately knew exactly which card to use. You plucked out the card that said ‘An M16 Assault Rifle’ and slid it over to Jin.

Jin finished collecting all the white cards from everyone, shuffled them up and began reading them aloud.

“War! What is it good for?” Jin flipped the white cards over one by one and arranged them around the black card. “An M16 Assault Rifle. Historical Revisionism. All of this blood. Civilian casualties. A slightly shittier parallel universe. Sweet, sweet vengeance.”

Raucous laughter broke out among everyone at the table. Jimin crumpled over onto Taehyung, grabbing onto his shirt to keep himself from falling off his chair, and Taehyung was laughing so hard that his boxy grin was wide open but with no sound coming out. Jin’s windshield wiper laugh only made everything funnier, and you had your arms wrapped around your middle, praying to God that your spleen wouldn’t rupture. You laid your forehead on Hoseok’s shoulder for support, which didn’t do much to keep you upright because he was clapping his hands like a happy seal, and Namjoon had gotten up from his seat and started jumping around like a kangaroo, while Yoongi just rested his forehead on the glass of the tabletop while his shoulders shook up and down in silent laughter.

“How did everyone have the absolute perfect card for this?!” Jin wiped tears from his eyes as he looked over the cards again, still giggling like a madman. “Umm….okay who had ‘A slightly shittier parallel universe’?”

Hoseok began clapping like a cute little seal again. “Ha ha ha! Yes that’s mine!!” Hoseok announced as he began doing a little victory dance and plucked the black card from Jin’s hand.

“Damn!” You slumped back in your chair still giggling, before sitting back up and taking your last loser’s shot along with the other five sore losers.

Now that the game was over you decided it might be a good idea to check the time. You pulled out your phone and pressed down on the lock button but you were met with a dead battery symbol flashing in the center of a black screen. So, late-o’clock probably.

“Everyone is more than welcome to stay here for the night.” Jin said as he stretched his arms over his head.

“Well I kinda want to go home, if you know what I mean.” Yoongi said from his spot tucked cozy underneath Namjoon’s arm, whose shoulder Yoongi was using as a pillow.

“I second that motion!” Jungkook piped up from the living room and you almost jolted up out of your seat. You convinced yourself that the spirits in your bloodstream were to blame for your frantic thoughts. 

‘Does that mean what I hope it does? Has he just been playing hard to get all night? Calm down, compose yourself. Breathe in, breathe out. In, out. Shit! Not THAT in and out! Okay, breathe in, breathe out. You can make it till you get home. Breathe in, breathe out. Okay, act normal…’

“Well of course the couples want to go home. Us bachelors can have a sleepover without you then! We can stay up late, swappin’ manly stories, and in the morning…I’m making waffles!” Taehyung burst out laughing at his Shrek reference. 

“Kookie can you call us a cab? My phone’s dead.” You were surprised how even your voice came out considering how fast your heart was pumping.

“Already did, it should be here soon,” Jungkook said as he made his way toward the table. “Let’s head downstairs and wait.” Jungkook held his hand out to you with a soft smile, and you took it and stood up from your chair, hoping that he couldn’t feel you shaking ever so slightly, or that no one heard your breath hitch when your skin met his.

You grabbed your purse from the table by the door and turned around to say your goodbyes to everyone. Just before you turned back towards the door you saw Namjoon and Yoongi wink at you in unison and you winked right back at them. And then you were walking out the door, holding hands with Jungkook as he led you down the hallway, catching you every time you drunkenly stumbled over your own feet or lost balance, and then into the elevator and out onto the street to the waiting cab.

You were having trouble getting your key in the door of your shared apartment with Jungkook, thanks no doubt to the significant amount of alcohol in your system. Each second that ticked by that you were stuck outside seemed like it stretched on forever. You just wanted to get inside so that Jungkook could help you ease the throbbing in between your legs that had been building the entire cab ride home in anticipation. Feeling the dampness in your panties was becoming agonizing.

You finally managed to find the keyhole through your warbled vision and opened the door. As soon as Jungkook closed the door and clicked the deadbolt shut you felt your desire finally come all the way to the surface, tingling across your skin and tightening in your chest, like your body knew it was finally time for release, and you felt a fresh wave of arousal soak through your jeans. You couldn’t wait another minute to finally welcome Jungkook back properly. You turned around and walked over to Jungkook, placing your hands on his firm chest (partly for balance if you were to be honest) and leaving a trail of kisses and nibbles from his pulsepoint up to his sharp jawline.

Jungkook let out a quiet, breathy moan, but tried gently to push you away. “Not now, let’s go to bed.”

“Kookie please,” you whined as you brought a hand up and threaded your fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, giving it a soft tug.

“You’re drunk, let’s just go to bed. Come on.”

“But baby, I need y-”

“I said let’s go to bed. You’re drunk. I’m tired. Please just come to bed with me.” Jungkook reached up and removed your hand from the back of his neck. His tone wasn’t laced with anger but you could tell, even in your intoxicated state that we was growing a little irritated.

You looked up into his doe eyes that were pleading with you to give it a rest.

“Come on” Jungkook held his hand out to you and smiled that adorable bunny smile. You took his hand and followed him to your bedroom where you both stripped down into your underwear and climbed into bed together. Jungkook draped his arm around your waist and nuzzled his face into your hair.

“Goodnight babe. I love you,” he said wistfully as he placed a kiss on the back of your head.

“‘Night Kook. Love you too” Your needs would have to wait until tomorrow.

It had been a week since the night of the party and still nothing. Try as you might, you had been completely unsuccessful in seducing your boyfriend. God, even just thinking that made you feel like an insecure teenager, but you couldn’t help it. Your anxiety was reaching a fever pitch, and every day that passed that Jungkook rejected your sexual advances, the more knots your insides tied themselves up into.

That’s why you were on your way to The Speakeasy tonight, to talk to the two friends you knew would be able to help: Yoongi and Namjoon. Yoongi had texted you this morning telling you that you could meet them at the bar before it opened, so here you were. You looked out of the window of the cab, watching the clouds roll by against the pink and orange painted sky above you. Tall buildings would occasionally obscure your view of the clouds as the cab rolled down the street, and you’d look into their windows thinking that there are people in there living their own lives who didn’t even know you existed. It made you think about if your problems really mattered on the grand scale. Before you could spiral down the rabbit hole any further your cab came to a stop and you decided to save the existential crisis for later.

You paid the driver and made your way into the bar, which was virtually empty, except for the blonde and pink heads at a table in the back. You made your way over to the table as quietly as you could and snuck up behind your friends. 

“Mwah! Mwah!” You planted a loud kiss on the tops of Namjoon and Yoongi’s heads, startling them both as they whipped around to face their attacker.

“Oh, it’s you.” Yoongi sighed with relief.

You chuckled as you sat down across from the pair and grabbed the cocktail  Yoongi had already prepared for you. 

“So what’s wrong?” said Namjoon, concern written all over his face.

“I don’t even know….” You took a sip of your drink, pondering on where to even begin.

“Well how about you start by telling us what made you upset at Jin’s last week?” Yoongi asked, raising an eyebrow at you. 

“Ok, well, I went in the living room to try and, uh, rev things up with Jungkook, if you know what I mean, and he totally rejected me. And then when we got home it was the same thing!" 

"Go on.” Namjoon’s brow was furrowed in concentration, nodding along to what you were saying.

You began nervously stirring your drink, pushing the ice to the bottom of the glass with the little black straw and letting it float back to the surface before submerging it again. You decided to just put the drink down, it was distracting you. “Well it’s been the same all week! No matter when or how I try he just won’t fuck me! It’s been six months, I’m getting a little desperate here!” you said, definitely far too loud.

“Thank God we’re not technically open yet,” Yoongi snickered. 

Namjoon giggled, covering his mouth.

“Guys! Not helping!” You threw your arms up before slumping down and dropping your forehead against the table. “Please just help me.”

“Alright Drama Queen, let me ask you this. Has he been cold to you at all?” Yoongi began questioning you. 

You had to think about it for a second. He’d been affectionate since he’s been back. He did cuddle with you at night when you slept, he’d given you plenty of soft kisses, but whenever you’d make a sexual advance, he’d always seem slightly irritated. That was what was driving you up the wall: it’s not like he was being a prick, he just didn’t want to have sex with you and you had absolutely no idea why. “No." 

"Has he been aggressive with you at all when you try to initiate?" 

"No" 

"Have you ever considered that maybe you’re overreacting?" 

At this you ripped your head from the table to look at Yoongi square in the face. "Why would I be overreacting? It’s blatant sexual rejection, I have a right to be upset!" 

"Honey, have you ever considered that maybe there’s a deeper reason why he’s not indulging you?” Namjoon piped up from his seat, his arms folded over his chest, leaned back in his chair.

“What are you trying to say?”

It seemed Namjoon could hear the worry in your voice and he rushed to ease your mind. “I’m saying that maybe he just wants to relax for a bit. He’s been working almost every day for six months, thousands of miles from home. He’s probably tired." 

"There’s no way that’s it." 

"And you know that how? If you know what the problem is then why are you here?” Yoongi sat forward and put his elbows on the table. He was challenging your logic, or lack thereof, and if you were forced to be honest, it was working. 

“Well Tae, Jimin and Hobi didn’t seem very tired at all, so how could you be so sure?” You thought you had him there, but Namjoon, ever the voice of reason chimed in with a rebuttal.

“Jungkook’s the leader of the band. There’s a lot of responsibility and extra work that comes with that, especially on tour, that the other guys just don’t really have to deal with.”

“Is that really it then? He’s just tired? He’s had a whole week to rest though,” you said.

“Well, I mean, that’s not all of it, Joon’s just being too nice to say the rest.”

“Yoongi,” Namjoon quipped.

“Have you tried to do anything other than fuck him this whole week?” Yoongi questioned you.

“Ummm..” He had you stumped.

“Out of the last seven days, how many of them have you tried to seduce him?” Yoongi pushed on before you could answer his first question.

“….All seven of them.”

“And you’ve paid no attention to any of his signals that might have told you he wasn’t up for it, for whatever reason?”

“Evidently not, asshole.” you jested, followed by a burst of laughter from all three of you.

“So what do I do?” you asked after you’d stopped laughing. You looked back and forth between the men, hoping that they could help you. 

“Honey. Your main problem now is the same problem you’ve always had: you don’t talk when you have an issue with something,” Namjoon started to say when he was cut off.

“That and he’s probably pissed at you by now,” Yoongi interrupted. “Just ‘cause you think men only think with our dicks doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings.” Yoongi batted his eyelashes at you with a pout, his hands laid over his heart.

“Yoongiiiii,” Namjoon whined, before laughing at his boyfriend’s brashness. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is you stuff down your anxiety and pretend it doesn’t exist while it eats you from the inside out. All you have to do is talk to the poor guy! And you know I’m right.” Namjoon reached over and took the drink you’ve been fostering from your hands. “Go home, sweetie.”

“Maybe you’re right…”

“Oh, he’s definitely right. And so am I.” Yoongi smiled his gummy smile and motioned you toward the door with his head. “So go, and let’s us know what happens,” he said with a wink.

The door closed with a soft click as you entered your apartment. The light that still lingered in the twilight sky outside was casting elongated shadows all over the walls; for some reason none of the lights were on in the apartment. You dropped your purse and keys on the table by the door, kicked off your sandals and made your way toward your bedroom. When you rounded the corner to the hallway you saw the bathroom light shining from under the door, and you were halfway there when the door opened and out walked Jungkook.

He had a towel wrapped low around his waist, his torso completely bare. His golden skin was still dripping with water from the shower, and he was ruffling up his dark shaggy hair with a towel. He smiled wide when he noticed your presence. His bunny-like grin tugged at your heartstrings hard, meanwhile you felt an ache between your thighs that was growing more unbearable the more your eyes raked over Jungkook’s half naked body. It was like your entire being was trying to rip itself in half.

“Hey babe!” Jungkook sauntered over to you and gave you a sweet kiss that lasted nowhere near long enough.

“Kookie, can I talk to you about something?”

“Yeah, of course.” Jungkook cocked his head to the side.

“Umm… I’m not sure how to start this…” you trailed off, wrapping your arms around your shoulders. You remained silent far too long for Jungkook’s liking. 

“Are you ok?” Jungkook’s big doe eyes were wide open as he took a step closer. 

You had to turn your head away. The close proximity was killing you, and you had to get through this. “Sort of…” you murmured. You risked a glance up at his face to see his eyes light up with absolute panic.

“Tell me what’s wrong.” Jungkook reached out and grabbed your shoulders, and electricity shot through your skin from his warm touch.

“Why won’t you sleep with me?” you uttered, barely above a whisper.

“Excuse me?” Jungkook shook his head in surprise.

“I said ‘Why won’t you sleep with me?’” you answered, this time at a higher volume than necessary.

Jungkook’s hands dropped from your shoulders as he backed away from you. He put his arms across his chest and stared at you for what seemed like forever, his mouth slightly ajar.

“Will you say something already?!” Boy, did that come out wrong.

“Are you being for real right now?!”

“Yeah I’m being for real!”

Jungkook pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe this is seriously the only thing you care about.”

“Well I’ve been coming onto you for days and you’re just not having it!” You knew it probably wasn’t a good idea to start yelling, but you’d been holding it in so long that you figured ‘Fuck it, might as well let it all out.’ 

“And why do you think that is? I just got back from tour, have you heard of a thing called jet lag?” Jungkook asked sarcastically. 

“It’s been a whole week Kook! You trying to tell me you still have jet lag?”

“Does it matter if I do? Because from what I’ve seen you don’t care about how I’ve felt the past week in the slightest, so why would you care now?” Jungkook threw his arms up in frustration. 

“How about how I feel?! You’ve been rejecting me after we haven’t had sex in months, and you haven’t let on about why you’re rejecting me at all!” You were getting angry now, and you could feel all the blood rushing to your face as you waited for his reply.

“Why is it so hard for you to just be considerate of the fact that I just wanted to rest? I told you more than once I didn’t want to do anything! You sound so selfish right now!” Jungkook took a step forward, and you could see in his face he was becoming just as angry as you were.

“Well what about the night of the party?”

“What do you mean ‘What about the night of the party?’”

“I heard that moan! When I was kissing your neck? You liked it and you pushed me away anyway! What the fuck is up with that?!”

“You were piss drunk! Excuse me for not wanting to fuck you while you’re barely even there! Especially after I told you more than once that night that I was tired. There seems to be a recurring theme here,” Jungkook countered.

You were at a loss for words, and after a few tense moments Jungkook continued to unload on you.

“What I don’t understand is why you have to keep pushing it! The only thing you’ve wanted since I got back is sex! You didn’t want to spend time with me at Jin’s, you’d rather just get shitfaced with MY friends. You haven’t tried to spend any real time with me at all! It’s like you only missed my dick, not me! And this whole time I’ve actually been being pretty fuckin’ nice about it! I’ve been pissed off for a whole fucking week and not once have I taken it out on you!” Jungkook was seething, his breathing becoming heavier. Now you could see the fire burning in his pupils, you just wished it had been under better circumstances.

“So you’re pissed that I want to have sex with you?! What kind of sense does that make? Does that mean that you don’t want to fuck me at all? That this whole week you haven’t wanted to fool around even a little?!”

“Of course I want to!  What, do you think these past few months were easy for me?! You’re not the only one here who hasn’t had any form of sexual contact in months you know! Do you know how hard it is to listen to your friends fucking in the other room while you’re on the other side of the world from you’re girlfriend? So of course I want to! It’s just kinda hard to get in the mood when I feel like the only thing you care about is my dick and not the whole me!” Jungkook’s whole body was so tense that he was shaking.

“Ok, fine! Sure, let’s just say I was wrong, or was being selfish. If you were tired and jet lagged, or I pissed you off, all you had to do is tell me!  And you didn’t. You just pretended that I didn’t have feelings too! That makes you just as guilty as me.” You stepped closer to him, his height unable to intimidate you. If your rage wasn’t (thankfully) blocking out your desire you didn’t know if you’d even be able to speak. How long that would last you had no idea, but you weren’t going to let the opportunity pass you by. You weren’t backing down.

“I’m not wrong. You should have taken the hint.” The slightly softened look on Jungkook’s face when he finished speaking told you he was just grabbing at straws, so you knew it was time to go in for the kill.

“Oh! Mr. Sanctified can never be wrong! Jeon Jungkook is a God among men, how could he possibly make an error!?” you spat sarcastically, your words laced with venom as you pretended to speak to an audience around you, waving your arms around patronizingly.

Jungkook rolled his eyes at you, clearly fed up with your little performance.

“I was wrong, and so were you,” you hissed, punctuating your point by poking him in the chest.

Jungkook stepped closer to you once more, his face now a mere inch away from yours, and you could feel the heat radiating off his body. Once again the close proximity snapped you out of your thoughts, and all you wanted to do was reach over and touch his taut abdominal muscles.

“Oh my God, fine! I was wrong too! What more do you want from me?!”

“I want you to fuck me already!!!”

There was silence. Neither of you spoke for a few incredibly long seconds. Every little sound around you slowly amplified in your ears as you stared into his heavy-lidded brown eyes: your heartbeat thrumming in your chest, Jungkook’s quickening breaths, the clock on the wall that marked each second that ticked by while the both of you stood there, your bodies so close to touching and yet so far. The inches felt like miles. You wanted something to happen but the tension was so thick you didn’t know if you could actually move. Your arousal began dripping down your thighs, having already soaked though your lace panties. This was absolute agony. 

Jungkook’s eyes darkened. By the time you noticed his lips move back to bare his gritted teeth Jungkook surged forward and pushed you back the few feet between you and the wall and pinned your arms above your head, ravenously biting and kissing at your pulsepoint and pressing his body against yours. It sent you reeling, thrashing your head back against the wall as a guttural moan ripped from your throat. He knew right where your most sensitive spots were and he was not going to take his time getting there.

There was nothing gentle about Jungkook’s movements. It was purely carnal as he removed one of his hands from your wrists and wrapped it around the back of your neck, pulling you into the most intense kiss he’d ever given you. Your teeth clashed, your tongue entangled with his, trying to taste every part of his mouth like it would be the last kiss you’d ever have. 

When he pulled away you immediately felt empty, panting and gasping for air as you gazed at him. He was looking deep into your eyes, his breathing heavy and labored. You squirmed, desperate for more contact. 

“Is this what you wanted, babygirl?” Jungkook sultry deep voice rippled through your body as his hand snaked up the hem of your dress, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.

“Yes. Oh fuck, yes,” you panted out, having now lost all ability to compose yourself.

“I think we need to get these out of the way.” Jungkook let out a deep growl as he hooked his fingers through your panties and ripped them clean off your body. “I hope you don’t like this dress.” Without even waiting for you to respond, Jungkook let go of your wrists with his other hand and ripped your dress right down the middle and let it fall to the floor at your feet.

You stood there in front of him, almost completely bare with the exception of your bra. Jungkook’s gaze wandered all over your body, his eyes leaving tingles raking across your skin wherever they went. The anticipation was unbearable; your breathing was erratic and completely out of your control.

“Take that off.” Jungkook motioned for you to take off your last remaining garment with a nod of his head, and you quickly obliged, unhooking the clasps and tossing it to the side.

Jungkook rushed forward again, pinning your arms out to either side of you against the wall. His voice dripped with honey as he brought his lips to the shell of your ear and whispered. “Tell me what you want to do, babygirl.” Jungkook bit down softly on your earlobe and you nearly collapsed at the sensation, his breath fanning across the skin of your neck only intensifying your pleasure and your breaths were coming out in short puffs as you struggled to speak.

“Please let me ride your thigh.” you whined.

You could feel Jungkook smirk as he kissed the side of your neck, just under your ear. He straightened up and took off his towel, which had formed a tent from his erection, letting his cock spring free. The bulging veins running down the length of his long shaft were almost visibly throbbing, and fresh precum had started to bead at his tip. 

For a moment you almost regretted not asking to get on your knees and please him. You almost felt selfish for asking for your own desire, but Jungkook grabbed your wrists again and pinned them above your head, and suddenly you forgot what you were thinking about as he slotted his leg between yours, giving you full access to what you wanted.

“Ride,” Jungkook drawled as a cocky smile spread across his face.

You immediately started grinding your hips against Jungkook’s thigh.The friction from his taut leg muscles flexing against your clit was overwhelming, and you began to roll your hips more feverishly against it, letting your slick juices spread across his hot, golden skin, all the while letting out wanton moans that made Jungkook’s cock twitch.

“You’re so fucking needy.” Jungkook brought a hand down to massage one of your breasts, before dipping down and taking your nipple into his mouth, flicking the bud with his tongue. He alternated his attention between both of your breasts, swirling his tongue around the sensitive skin and then removing his mouth with a pop, and your hips stuttered as you whimpered his name over and over like a mantra, your eyes screwed shut.

“Look at me, babygirl.”

You snapped your eyes open to see Jungkook staring at you with the intensity of a supernova. You could feel your orgasm approaching, pooling at the bottom of your stomach, ready to overflow.

“Please let me touch you” you mewled, desperate for him to let go of your wrists so that you could run your hands along his body.

Jungkook chuckled, shaking his head. “No, you don’t get to touch me yet. Keep going baby.” He began to let his free hand wander along your skin, exploring the curvature of you hips and ass and sending shivers up your spine that only accelerated your oncoming orgasm.

You kept grinding your hips against his thigh, your clit so sensitive that each flex of his muscle threatened to throw you over the edge. Your moans were reaching peak volume, being so completely enraptured that you were unable to contain it, and your body was drenched in sweat.

Jungkook leaned forward and licked a stripe up your neck to your ear, making you writhe and whine in ecstasy, and he whispered one singular word.

“Cum.”

On command your orgasm rushed over you. Electricity shot up through every nerve ending in your body, every muscle in your legs tensing and beginning to shake from the sheer force of it. You threw your head back in rapture, allowing your cries of ecstasy to escape your chest of their own accord.

You breathed deeply, albeit shakily, as you slowed the rolling of your hips, riding out the remnants of your orgasm. 

Slowly your limbs started to feel like jello, but just before you could sink down the wall and bask in your post-climax bliss, Jungkook grabbed you by the waist and hoisted you further up against the wall, pressing his body against yours and wrapping your legs around his waist. He began leaving sweet, soft kisses along your shoulders and chest, nibbling on your breasts and laving his tongue over the spots to soothe them. His movements were slow and gentle, a complete 180 from what had just transpired. Jungkook was the undisputed king of aftercare. God, you missed him so much.

Jungkook began rubbing soft circles on your thighs where he was holding you with his thumbs, occasionally grabbing a handful of your flesh and massaging it with his strong hands. You let out long, breathy moans at his ministrations, revelling in all of the sensations that were making your skin shiver in absolute bliss.

You realized that he’d let go of your hands, so you ran them along the breadth of his shoulders and down his chest, letting your nails lightly ghost across his skin.

Jungkook whispered your name into your skin, shivering at the sensation.

You wished that this would never end; that you and Jungkook could stay like this, worshipping each others bodies forever. This was euphoric. This was paradise.

You brought your hands up his neck and pulled his face to yours. Your lips met in a soft brush of skin, the embers of your passion slowly igniting and engulfing you as your tongues danced along the insides of each other’s mouths, growing more and more fervent as the seconds ticked by, the both of you whimpering and whining into the kiss

Jungkook wrapped his muscular arms around your waist and peeled you away from the wall as you reached up and threaded your fingers through his long raven hair, tugging on the strands. He walked you over to the living room and placed you on the couch. The moon was shining bright through the open curtains, casting an almost mystical glow on Jungkook’s skin as he removed himself from you and started kissing his way down your body toward your glistening cunt.

But you wanted to please him. You’d barely gotten to touch him so far, and you so craved to. Jungkook had reached your stomach when you decided it was his turn; if you caught him off guard you’d be able to overpower him enough to pin him to the couch.

In one swift movement you managed to flip him over on the couch, and you slid your body down off the furniture and onto your knees so that you were eye level his magnificent, beautiful cock. Just as your knees hit the floor, you had an incredible idea that made you giddy with excitement. You were going to take revenge on him for all of the rejection of the past week.

You looked up into his deep doe eyes that had widened in shock at your boldness. You smirked to yourself at your successful plan, knowing that he had not expected that at all, and that he had no idea what you had in store for him. It was your turn to get even. It was time to make him sweat.

“Babe, what are you doing?”

“It’s your turn Kookie.” Your voice was sugary sweet as you rubbed your hands up and down his muscular thighs. You licked a stripe up the underside of his cock and swirled your tongue around the head with feathery light pressure, before licking up the precum that was dribbling out of his tip.

Jungkook’s eyebrows furrowed as he bit his lip to hold back a whine. This was going to be fun.

You continued leaving kitten licks all across his shaft, and Jungkook began running his fingers through your hair. Then, unprovocted, you instantaneously took his entire cock into your mouth all the way to the base, and buried your nose into his taught stomach, eliciting a cry of pleasure from Jungkook as his head fell back against the headrest of the couch and his fingers tightened in your hair. You swallowed while his cock was still buried in your throat, and it began to throb against the walls of your mouth.

Jungkook’s breath was ragged as you started to bob up and down, occasionally stopping to lick a stripe up from the base of his cock, or to spit on it to make everything messy. Delicious breathy moans and whimpers were leaving his lips that only goaded you on further.

His thighs started to tense and shake. He was close.

“I’m gonna cum,” Jungkook whined.

As soon as Jungkook spoke, you gripped the base of his cock and squeezed, and you removed your mouth from him and sat back on your haunches so that you could watch his reaction.

Jungkook’s eyes snapped open in panic. “What’s going on?” Jungkook panted.

“Shhhh, baby, calm down.” You felt devious as you crawled forward toward his messy, throbbing cock again. You placed your tongue back at his base and repeated the process all over again; licking, sucking and swallowing on his cock until you felt him getting ready to cum again. Once again you pulled completely away and left his orgasm hanging in the ether.

What you saw when you looked up at him this time had your heart racing in excitement. Jungkook was totally wrecked. His body was drenched in sweat, his hair was matted to his forehead, and his breathing was frantic. If it hadn’t been so long since you’d been together it might have taken a few more times to make him look like this, but it made pride swell in your chest that Jeon Jungkook, long haired international rock god, looked this fucked out because of you.

“Baby, please,” Jungkook whined. He looked so desperate as his chest rose and fell in rapid succession and his cock throbbed, “Please let me cum.”

You smirked as you crawled up from the floor and straddled him. Jungkook’s cock was pressed up against his stomach, and you began to roll your hips against his head, allowing it to slide across your clit.

“Mmm, fuck,” Jungkook whimpered, rolling his head back

“Look at me Kookie.”

Jungkook looked up at you, the sweaty fringe of his bangs hanging in his eyes, and bit down on his lip.

You pressed your forehead to his as you reached down and lined his cock up with your entrance. You slowly sunk down onto him, savoring the stretch inside your pussy, and you both sighed out in pleasure. You pulled Jungkook into a tender kiss as you bottomed out, and you began grinding your hips up and down tantalizingly slow.

Jungkook pulled away from the kiss to look into your eyes and gritted his teeth. His hands snaked down to the flesh of your ass and squeezed, guiding your hips as you continued to ride him.

The feeling of finally having Jungkook inside you was other-worldly. It sent warm tingles across your skin with every stroke. How had you functioned this whole tour without being able to have him like this? It was like Jungkook was custom made just for you.

Jungkook’s moans were getting louder and more desperate sounding and you still hadn’t even sped up yet, trying to drag out the slow grind of your hips, to feel every single inch of him. You contemplated getting off of Jungkook one more time, but as if he could read your mind, Jungkook stopped that thought in its tracks.

“Don’t you dare think about edging me again.”

You placed your hands on his chest, fanning your fingers out across the smooth skin. You were about to push yourself up when Jungkook wrapped his arms around you waist to hold you on top of him.

“Please baby, I’m so close.” Jungkook began rutting up into you, keeping the pace you’d already set. The addition of his rolling hips made it so that he was hitting your g-spot, and you leaned down to bite on his shoulder to stifle your moans.

Jungkook’s own thrusts were getting sloppy. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was close.

“Where do you want me to cum, babygirl?” Jungkook whispered in your ear.

“Inside me,” you mewled. Your second orgasm was rapidly approaching and it was getting hard to try and form coherent responses.

Soon after his request, Jungkook’s hips stuttered and his thighs tensed as his orgasm flooded over him. Strings of hot cum filled you up as you helped him ride out his orgasm, his face buried in the bruised flesh of your neck to muffle his cries of euphoria, before exhaling a deep, shaky breath.

You laid there on top of him for a few moments, content with the fact that you’d only get to cum once, but vibrations against your skin caught you off guard. Jungkook was…laughing.

Jungkook chuckled into the crook of your neck for a few seconds before uttering a string of words that made your stomach drop, because it reminded you that there was a critical piece of knowledge that you’d overlooked.

“You’re gonna get it, now.”

The critical piece of knowledge you’d forgotten, was that Jungkook can stay hard.

It was at this moment that you knew, you fucked up.

With a growl Jungkook pushed the both of you onto the floor. Your back hit the floor with a soft thud, and Jungkook folded you in half as a wicked grin stretched across his face. He lined himself up and entered you with a snap of his hips, pushing his cock in all the way to the hilt and causing some of his cum to squeeze out.

“Your pussy looks so fucking good filled up with my cum.” Jungkook pulled all the way out and plunged back into your pussy with enough force to scoot your body up the floor. Cries of pleasure erupted from your chest as he set a punishing pace, crashing his hips against yours hard and fast.

You lost all concept of time and reality, knowing only the feeling of Jungkook inside you, his growls and moans, your sobs of ecstacy, the wet sounds of your bodies smacking together, and the feeling of a second orgasm poising itself to explode through your body.

Jungkook’s hips started to stutter and become sloppy as he reached down between your bodies and began rubbing circles on your clit. 

You arched your back off the floor, all of the sensations growing too much for you to handle.

With a few more expert thrusts, Jungkook threw you over the edge again. Your eyes screwed shut and your mouth hung wide open, your climax so powerful that your whole body seized up as electricity shot through your nerves.

“Fuck!” Jungkook groaned as your walls convulsed around his cock, sending him into the throes of his own orgasm, painting your walls white as he emptied himself into you for a second time. He rode the both of you through your highs until your body went completely limp, basking in bliss. 

Jungkook pulled out of you and reached up to brush the wet hair out of your face. His eyes softened, and he gazed at you lovingly, smiling at your completely fucked out state. “Better?”

A loud laugh erupted from your chest. “Yeah, much better,” you chuckled.

“Good.” Jungkook knelt down between your legs to admire the cum that was slowly dripping out of your pussy. He took a finger and tried to push it back inside you, but there was so much that it ended up forcing some of it back out. “You’re not allowed to clean this, understand? You have to sleep filled up with my cum tonight.”

“Ok Kookie.” You nodded your head lazily in acknowledgment and patted the piece of floor next to you, signaling Jungkook to lay down.

Jungkook crawled over to you and laid down, allowing you to rest your head on his chest as he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you close.

You melted into his body with a sigh.

After a few moments of silence a question popped into your head. “Why were all the lights off when I got home?”

Jungkook chuckled quietly. “If we’d made it to the bedroom you’d have found out.”

You perked you head up so that you could see Jungkook’s face. “What do you mean?”

“I set candles and stuff up in the room. Figured maybe our minds would clear up if we both weren’t so fuckin horny. But you had to go and be impatient like usual,” Jungkook said with a smirk as he stared at the ceiling.

You laid your head back on his chest, your eyelids becoming heavy. “I’m sorry about being kind of a bitch.”

Jungkook’s chest rose and fell underneath you as he took a deep breath. “It’s ok babygirl, I’m sorry too.” Jungkook gave you a tender kiss on the top of your head. “I love you.”

“I luh- you…too, Kookie,” you mumbled as sleep started to overtake you. The last thing you heard before you slipped into dreamland was Jungkook chuckling at your sleepy voice, and the ringtone you had set for Yoongi’s contact.

The gossip would have to wait until tomorrow.

↠ Masterlist

[asking-jude]

The submission’s given e-mail address is no longer active, so the submission has been posted both publicly and anonymously in hopes that the user may find and read it. 

anonymous asked: 

I think I have been dealing with depression for maybe fifteen years or more since high school, but what I am about to spill my guts about is going to sound like the silliest thing.

The first thing I want to say is that I am autistic.

There was a time when I used to hang out with the wrong crowd online. This was a really nasty hate-group that mostly was active in the gaming community. It’s a very long and complicated story.

You see, all of this started over a videogame franchise in particular that I love to death. Things began to change when one game did not meet quality expectations, so to speak. When this game was released, everyone started backstabbing each other over their own little idea of the “purest” form of this videogame. I tried to stay clear of it at first, but I was soon suck into the drama after foolishly listening to one passionate voice, I’ll just say. I spent a lot of time with this guy and I thought we shared the similar goal of restoring this franchise to its former glory. He even said things like “patience is everything.” Wouldn’t you know it, though, he turned the other way and blamed everyone including the videogame for ruining his life just as quickly. To this day, I have sworn to never forgive him and have since left him. I decided on that after vocally challenging him, wherein he immediately sent his attack dogs after me.

Truthfully, it wasn’t just this one guy, but multiple other individuals as well. There was this one British guy who had not a single nice thing to say about anyone or anything concerning the videogame or its fans, labeling them all “pricks” every ten seconds. Every video on his YouTube channel involved him projecting his bitterness onto everything around him and how it all needed to conform to his worldview. It all climaxed when he sent a video to the videogame’s creators saying they needed to give up on their dreams. There was another bully I also had to deal with in this same group.

Believe it or not, it continues to this day. People are still fighting each other about whether my favorite videogame franchise should live or die. A few days ago, though, something in my head snapped, and I have been wondering how I can let go of all this drama and gossip, and have learned that this franchise never needed “saving.” I’ve learned to except failure as the next best thing, but the people in that group who continue to spread hate have not. They’ve even gone so far to say that my favorite game is the “cringiest, most autistic thing to ever exist.”

I’ve told this story to other people, but they always tell me to go get therapy. To me, that feels like a stigma.

I want to start writing comics, but these incidents have left a traumatic mark on me. I’m scared that if I fail, it’ll happen all over again.

What should I do?

asking-jude said: 

As it turns out, bullying within the gaming community is unfortunately a rather common occurrence. According to this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40092541, about half of the people that play online games experience some sort of harassment or mistreatment by other players. I appreciate you coming to Asking Jude about this, I am sure there are many others that experience bullying through video games as well. It’s sad that some gamers choose to become disrespectful over a hobby that is meant to bring people together. I am sorry you had to experience that negativity towards a game that you love. I encourage you to continue playing it if it’s something that brings you joy. 

I also recommend leaving the group chat full of bullying and negative comments. Just because they don’t like that specific game or the franchise doesn’t mean it is bad or that you have to feel the same way. I can completely understand why this experience has been traumatic for you. People tend to think because they use a screen name or say things through a microphone or in a forum that they can get away with saying whatever they want. However, describing the game as autistic is super offensive. Autism is not an insult and shouldn’t be used as a slur towards something someone doesn’t like. 

It is also a shame that one of the group members went so far as to send a negative video to the creators. Again, people think behind a screen they can say whatever they want without consequences. But the creators are still human, and I am sure they worked really hard on the video game. I can see the correlation between the criticism they faced and why you are hesitant on creating your own comics. 

Accepting criticism isn’t an easy thing for most people to do. You are valid for being scared about sharing your original work with others. It’s a completely normal response to have a fear of your work not being enough. However, you’ll never know what could be if you do not try. Here is an article I found about turning the negative criticism of others into motivation: https://everydaypower.com/dealing-with-criticism-opportunity/

Despite what others may think, I hope you choose to make comics. Even if you decide you do not want to share them, I think it would be a really fun and creative outlet for you. Art is often considered to be therapeutic. And who knows, it might become a passion of yours! But I do hope one day you choose to share your art. The most important thing is that it makes you happy. 

When it comes to therapy, I do believe it could help you with your feelings of depression as well as your worry about what others will think of your art. However, if you do not think it will benefit you, there are other ways to work on these feelings. This article provides ways other than therapy in which you can manage feeling depressed: https://www.webmd.com/depression/features/natural-treatments#2. Just know if you ever did decide you want to go to therapy, there is nothing wrong with that! 

I believe in you and I wish you the best with creating comics!

Emily 

Asking Jude needs YOUR help! Donate pocket change here and save our safe space.

[city-of-angel]

Dear Self,

Hi. Bonjour~~

How are you? It’s been hard lately yeah? Are you still thinking about negative thoughts? I bet you are.  (PS : Suddenly it’s raining outside after so much days dry and clean on the floor TT.TT)

There’s few notes that i want you to remembered. As usual, it might be easier to said, lighter to wrote but surely heavier to done. But let’s begin from the beginning. The highlihts about who you were before, what you’ve been thru and who you’ve become. 

Chapter 1.

Do you remember when you were a little girl . You were always be a happy girl. You love to being a center of the attention. You love to sing and dance. And everyone’s been so proud of you. Your brother loves you so much and he likes to hold your hand everytime you’re going out to school or somewhere else together. I know you’re questioning something in your head about how did it happened then? The distance and the boundaries. It might be something that you cannot understand at your young age. Maybe something happened that makes your relationship with him makes you more  distant and far. It’s nothing compared bout what happened to your parents. After time passed, there’s major change that happened about how they talk and how they treat you, and make you change the perspective about how you see a family . But let’s we talk this in another page since it will take a really long page if we break it down here,and  to remember it will be exhausting again to you. In short, you are a believer. You are always believe everything’s going to be okay. You believe in goodness and the magic of time. Everytime , someone or a condition knock you down, you always get up, put your dang pretty smile and prove them that nothing’s gonna change you, you will always be the person who have faith and sided with grace ,kindness, and forgiveness. Everytime, But not until what happenned at July 2019 rite? After all these years,  You kind of questioning about what you did ? Yes, the world has cheated on you. Because the world never be fair.You start to challenge to be as selfish as them, as rude as them. But since you are a natural person. You just can’t and you start over again . But again this time, you STILL believe it wourld work. You believe it wouldn’t failed. But then it would. Again. In the most harsh and worst way ever. 

Chapter 2.

Remembered that day when everything teared you up. You thought it was a for a while, for one case only, You never knew and never imagine about what coming after is really coming. You keep wondering why did i deserve this? What did i do wrong? Did i really do wrong? Is this really my fault? You keep blaming yourself over and over again till you believe that you are the one to blame. But back again , after one and two case ended. There’s come another hurricane that make you want to yell and scream “ Why again? Why me? “. The rage, the sadness , the unfairness comes right in hand wiithout early notice and it’s shaking your world like ..really shaking your worlds. Your perspective changed, the way you see things changed, Everything that you believe is not real anymore.  And your eyes opened, and you know rite since the very first place , you knew that you needed this to grew. Then you get up again, back into your feet, doing many activities, meeting new people, being a happy girl. You thought it was a over, The sorrow is over, the tears is done. But after all the shock case is shown, it left with you with such a deep blank whole . Make you questioning again about what should you do? Where’s your direction? Can i do this? I won’t do this? It’s a simple questions for an adult like you. But you lost your point of view, your principal, your grip, your anchor, mostly your truth about life,  everything that you believe is questioned you back, since you don’t believe anything real is really real, don’t believe kindness will won, you don’t believe anything at all. Not sometimes believing that you are really worth this world, Not believing anyhting at all. That was very tough but see you still wake up right in the morning, put your clothes and smile? That was very hard, but you know there’s many people to love to see your face and hear your laugh. Many people waiting for you to chat them back, to call them back, to meet you in the middle of the rain.  So how you can say that you are not worthy? You are so loved. So you know. You are so loved by many. 

Chapter 3.

You don’t need to stop crying nor stop feeling pain. You must go through so you can be free. Take a look back into the past 2 months. There’s so many things that you should be grateful for. Mostly people who’s been there for you and boost you up.  So say thanks to them:

- For F

   ‘ Thank you for being true. Thank you for being such a good company from the beginning, answering phone, chating back, being honest, thoughtful. F i never thought that you will be so open to me and telling me all the truth i need to hear and i already told you every dark side,dark memory that makes me realize that i am now in the right path. Thank you for being my ear and eyes. Thank you for listening and answering and mostly for your time. Really’

- For V

‘ You are a miracle. You’re such a good person and strong woman. I learned so much from you . And in the end, you are a miracle that solve one of my problems. When i look back , i never thought THAT will lead to THIS. You know? Who knows? That we solved each other problems. Thank you for always worrying about me. Thank you for being there all the time . And accept me in my worst‘

- For N

‘ You are my twins. You are always see me before i can see myself. Thank you for understanding the deepest, darkest, silliest, scariest of my thought. Thank you for holding my hands, reminding me of God, grace and patience. You are so pure and you make me want to keep my grace’

- For M

‘ My longtime friends and a person who always have a special place in my life. 10 years and finally we met again. Even we’re not sharing so many things but you saved me that day when you drove right away to my town. You are a natural person, seeing you and talking with you again is such a moment to remember to me. “

- For LIMA + New Friends at New Office

‘ You are gold guys, Your joke made my day. And your sillyness cheer me up, I am so sorry in the first place that i am not opened up to you. It’s hard for me to talk to a new person. But we meet like you destined to boost me up. You guys make me smile. All day . And that’s gold to me.So thank you so much.”

- For Happy Girls.

‘ Mi moms, mi sist. Thank you for teaching me how to be a great woman. You both are a true warrior. Looking back of what you both been going thru in the past maybe not compared with what’s happened to me. So for that, i am so grateful that you trust me as your little sister. You are both my wings on my each side. “

- For Communities

‘ Too many people so i can’t mention it one by one . But thank you for having me back, I miss the crowd, audiences, clap and you guys so welcoming me back. It make me realize that i am so loved and i can still doing many things, many pleasure and after what happened ,the world will not stop rite? Show must go on. ”

- For A

‘ You are a treasure. You tolerate me so well until i keep feeling guilty inside my head. Surely i can’t go pass thru this without your point of view, your thoughts, and your wisdom that make me realize about the truth that i want to reach. I will be forever grateful and forever thankful, and hoping someday i can share your wisdom to another people and i can become someone truly blessed like you. I believe we have met before? Didnt we? Many thanks. “

- For T

‘ Mon garcon!! Thank you for being such a random new friends. You always there when i want to meet. You never define me , You never try to read between the lines. You make me feel i deserve a good company without any persona at all. It might be seems nothing to you. But since we just met not so long ago. You spark my mood day by day. Each time and everytime and surely God bless you and Thanks really not for trying to define, judge , guessing or read me at all .“

- For Moms, Dad, Bro , Sis

‘ Thank you for understanding me about i’m going thru even i’m not sharing many details. I feel guilty and horrible because part of this plan is your dreams too for me. I am so truly sorry.And  I love you so much’

POST CREDIT.

Dear Self, Remember you want to be known as the original you. You dont want people to see u like “ Oh look at that girl, I understand that she become like ‘that/in worst way” because she’s having a bad past bla bla” . 

But you want to be remembered as “ See her, look how bad what’s she going thru and still she keep her grace”

What a beautiful word. Grace. It’s not only define nice , good or beauty. But it’s a Grace.

Today is the big day for you. BUT not really that big since you’re not really took interest of it for the past 2-3 yearsXD

But Happy Belated Birthday to You :) You deserved all the love in the world and see what’s people has done for you. That you should be grateful. You are so loved. Remember that. You are so loved.

[justa-mysticmess]

I was wondering if you could do an ex's to lovers thing with the RFA+V and Saeran/Unknown? Like they dated and broke up for whatever reason but started falling in love again?

hello dear anon :) it took me a while but i had fun coming up with the silliest scenarios for breakups and how they make up. i was aiming for humor because because it was unspecified. and seven’s got too angsty idek why but it happened though i posted a lighter version of it x3 i really hope this is not too far off from what you were expecting love ^^;;

Yoosung

okay. this boy honestly feels so embarrassed when he realizeswhat’s happening

especially considering the break up was totally his fault andover such a silly matter too!

he had actually prayed to thank god when mc hadn’t left the rfacompletely after yoosung had chosen his games in heated bout over mc

and now he doesn’t know what to do

before he actually confesses again to them

he’s not scared of rejection, because even if mc does it, theywill be mature about it and do it kindly

what he’s scared of is mc actually forgiving him and ending uphurting mc again

the second party after their break up is very successful andeverybody is so proud because it was the biggest they have had yet andeverything went so well

they are all talking excitedly and mc is hugging jaehee inexcitement and considering the occasion, jaehee is also hugging them back andseven joins the hug and pulls yoosung with him and yoosung yells i love you somuch mc you’re amazing!

it’s kind of awkward for a moment, the big hug feeling stiff nowand yoosung realizes he could have said ‘we’ instead of ‘i’ but mc isstarting to smile and seven is on the floor with laughter and jaehee gives hima stern look with a well deserved ‘you have it too easy. do not mess upthis time.’ and mc hasn’t said anything yet but he’s starting to feel lesshorrified and more awed and he feels his throat close up but he has to do itright this time. 

if you will have give me one chance, i will do my best to makeyou the happiest person mc! i will never speak before thinking again either!i-i’ll give up lolol if i have to! mc rolls’s their eyes and says he doesn’thave to quit lolol, just be more careful

Jaehee

oh dear! this girl feels so guilty for having ended thingsthen  just because she had been paranoidand worried it wasn’t the right time

sure they had both been having personal struggles but everythingwas lovely between them and slowly the other stresses in their lives would besorted. but jaehee hadn’t wanted to risk having a bad fallout with mc

jaehee has all of those problems sorted out now, and with hervision cleared she sees just how bad it had been to break up then, no matterhow much she had thought it was the right thing. she had just assumed doing theright thing hurts sometimes

it’s surprisingly mc who approaches her this time

they are timid and almost spend a good 10 minutes stalling

but jaehee is patient and wishful and a little scared

when they finally stutter out how they still have feelings forjaehee and only dared to approach her because jaehee seems to be much morerelaxed now and she has been saying and doing things when they were togetherand she liked mc like that

jaehee almost smiles when mc stutters to a stop because theyrealized they were blabbering

but mc looks like they’re about to cry or run away or bothand despite feeling relieved at the cute display, jaehee grabs mc’s shakinghands in a firm grip and waits till they look her in the eye

the words come surprisingly easy to jaehee as she answers mc’shalf asked request and confirms that yes, jaehee still likes mc like that andyes, she never stopped liking mc like that throughout and that yes! she wouldlove it if they got together again

Jumin 

poor jumin was always very expressive of his emotions andfeelings when it came towards mc

he couldn’t be blamed completely because a lifetime of hidinghis emotions he suddenly learned to share them with someone

there was no holding back on his part

and maybe because he hadn’t learnt to read others emotionsproperly yet he never noticed mc getting sad/upset

he did notice that mc was not very open with their feelings anexpressions, always seeming kind of reserved but jumin was not too upset andwas willing to wait

though he did have a talk or two with mc to see if mc actuallyneeded help or something but mc always playe dit off with a smile telling himto not worry

until one day mc actually had a mini meltdown and broke thingsoff with jumin

that day he learned mc was actually very emotional and thusimpulsive! The reason for break up? mc felt jumin was too sweet and giving anddeserved someone who could show love and give as openly as jumin did

cute as it was, it was jarring for jumin to hear all that from ateary mc and he couldn’t stop them  andsuggest them to cool down before they rushed out

they actually make up in about a couple months because mcmanages to admit they were running from all the feelings jumin made them feeland that they felt smothered by all the love they were getting because theycouldn’t give

and jumin understands somewhat and is always careful from thenon to not be too intense with mc and is successfully elarning to get a read ontheir emotions now so he doesn’t say something that is seemingly harmless butmay be too much for mc

Zen

it was zen who dumped mc

mc was shocked and by the time they could speak zen was alreadygone

honestly zen had thought having taken such a big step would bedepressing and help him fall into characters more easily

it had been depressing. but it sure as hell hadn’t helped himperfect his roles as he had thought

the worst thing was he had become so used to mc so quickly hewas starting to get really bad , not even wanting to get out of bed most days

mc would avoid him in the chatroom and they were good at it too,because it had been months since mc had come into the chat at the same time aszen

it is surprisingly jaehee who confronts him and tells him tosettle whatever matter is between mc and him because she wants his flawlessperformances back. of course she is more worried about zen and mc as rfamembers but she doesn’t vocalize it yet

is actually surprised when mc agrees to meet him. lowkey knowsit’s because because v asked them to meet him, but tries not not let it botherhim too much

just as zen starts to talk about how he is sorry and how hefeels, right there in v’s studio because a public place was a bad idea,mc interrupts his speech with a single word, ‘why?’

and zen doesn’t need them to clarify because he damn well knowswhat they mean by that. and the guilt is suddenly twice as heavy as beforebecause it really completely sinks in that damn it! he had not even explainedthe reason to mc

but he knows from the look in their eyes that they won’t listento any excuse he has unless he answers that question

so he answers honestly, no matter how stupid and trivial itsounds now. mc is really not impressed to have been dumped because zen himselfdecided that he couldn’t give mc enough time and attention and that they wouldbe better off without each other- each being able to at least get one thingright in life. their careers

zen apologizes profusely and mc reluctantly agrees when he asksthem out again because he is so sincere and it’s not like they’ve gotten overzen yet

Seven 

this boy was so torn! 

on one hand  the love of his life, his mc, had given him a news which would be the happiest news for normal people. 

and perhaps mc somewhat knew what his reaction would be because they were timid and looked almost scared when they told him

but it was like his brain shut down completely as the meaning of what mc said settled in

he immediately broke up with mc

there was no way he could ever be trusted with not one, or two, but three lives! especially one that would be completely helpless and at anybody’s mercy!

mc knew that but even after having just found out about their pregnancy, they refused to not keep the baby. they said as much to him before they packed up their stuff and were leaving

seven took their bags and walked to the garage , knowing mc would follow

the car ride to jumin’s was silent and tense and the body guards let them in, already having been instructed by jumin

he did the right thing. mc would be taken much better care of here than with him this was probably best for them

or so seven tried to tell himself

the guilt was always there in the back of his mind and it honestly didn’t let him sleep. it was just what he deserved, he thought, to get even lesser hours of sleep than he already did

it was really his fault though. all of it. if he couldn’t have been careful, he must at least take responsibility. The process was slow, but seven was warming up to the idea of apologizing and asking mc back. he could try! he could be better than his mom

only, it’s almost a month and he hasn’t heard from mc since 

his stomach in knots and heart in his throat, he races in one of his babe’s to jumin’s and rushes to the apartment

he parks in time to see mc trip over an obstacle he doesn’t see in the blur 

he rushes out but mc has already hit the ground 

seven has never driven that fast and he’s never seen mc that pale but they’re at the hospital within minutes and mc’s being rushed to er

only when the doctors says that everything is fine and that mc might have a concussion does he feel he’s able to breathe

mc looks shocked at his choked question about the baby, but he focuses on the doctor’s response, that the baby was safe for now, but it was been quite dangerous

saeyoung is surprised he is so relieved and he just kneels beside the hospital cot and apologizes again and again to mc and mc actually says it’s okay. that it’s not his fault. he has never been so sad and so happy at the same time

vows to take care of them both and always keep them happy if mc would give him a chance

mc says they don’t have the heart to keep his baby from him but that he must keep his word

he didn’t know he could cry from happiness

V

poor sweet man was devastated

mc’s birthday was coming up and v was panicking because mc had given him the perfect gift for his birthday

and he couldn’t decide what to get them

if he knew what mc liked, he would have bought the whole list

the problem was! he did not know what mc liked

and it was such a shame for him to not know; of course he could just ask them, but that would give him away

so in fit of angst he broke up with mc

…though a phone call

is so sick of the sadness and guilt and can honestly not even start to forgive himself

what has he done

mc hasn’t even called once and it has been months

one day he gets a visitor at a strange hour

he thinks he’s hallucinating when he opens the door to mc but they just push past him and walk into his place

when he comes back in, they are seated on the couch with a business like air about them

jumin would be proud, v thinks

‘jihyun, you’re not a baby, sweety’, mc starts , and okay this is serious because they called him jihyun and not v

which means they are pissed, despite their polite, almost friendly tone

v takes a seat as they give him a pointed look and clears his throat

looks awed when mc tells him they had given him some time to clear his head and get his thoughts in order because he had sounded so stressed when he had made that call

and to tell them what he felt or what problems he was facing

just after saying that they looked at him curiously, because ‘are we still dating? or was that break up-break up?’ 

jihyun has honestly never felt so relieved and he just wraps mc in a hug because thank you so much, and yes of course we are dating!

 Saeran

it was so crazy for saeran

did he care about mc? yes

did he love them? maybe?

how was he supposed to know when he had never known love all hisdamn life

he also didn’t want to be tied down or depend on mc

but he didn’t want to say it out right

because he knew he would phrase it harshly if he did

so he kept canceling their dates

and mc was persistent because it was after the 6th cancelleddate that they called him, sounding upset and asking him what was worng

not if something was wrong,saeran noted felt a swell of pride at their perception

but he gave a distant answer and mc sounded more upset and askedhim to just answer honestly

‘you want an honest answer?’ saeran snapped ‘well, it goessomething like this: i don’t wanna be tied down, and I certainly don’t wannadate you’

he expected an angry explosion or maybe even for mc to burst outcrying

he did not expect them to hang up as soon as the words left hismouth

he felt somewhat guilty because he obviously really hurt mc, buthe figured it was okay since this way they would have more time to ‘heal’

whoever said that time makes everything better was a fuckingliar and saeran would punch him

because instead of feeling better as days passed after the breakup, saeran kept feeling wrose

when it wasn’t the guilt eating away at him, it was all thoughtof mc- mc this, mc that, how mc liked their egg, how mc hated when their coffeegot a bit too sweet but couldn’t drink it without sugar either, how mc always letsaeran sleep 20 minutes more

it was excruciating

he especially hated when his damn brother would ask about mc notvisiting any more

as if to rub salt to his wound

what he couldn’t understand was how the heck had mc become suchan important part of his life without him having noticed? important enough tohave left a gaping hole and that made saeran feel empty even when doing onlywhat he wanted to all day

his meddling brother started inviting mc over a lot and it wasso awkward because

they were right there

one such day saeran had locked himself in his room when assholesaeyoung barged into his room and pulled him by the hand till he was on thecouch in the living room

and mc was already there and saeyoung conveniently left on anerrand so they could talk

it was awkward but mc asked how he’d been doing and the nextmoment he found himself spilling everything to her and he couldn’t shut hismouth if he tried and now his voice was getting wobbly and mc was getting tearyeyed and this was torture he just wanted to hug mc and hold onto them all day

…turns out he did shut up once he realized he had said the lastpart out loud

at least it made mc laugh

bonus: saeyoung came home to see saeran and mc cuddled up tight andwarm

[asusirwritesalot-blog]

First post- Why The Witcher 3 is my favorite game.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS FOR THE WITCHER 3. IF YOU HAVEN’T YET PLAYED THIS AMAZING GAME, GO PLAY IT! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

As I rode Roach along the scattered path leading into Velen, the string ensemble in the background immediately created an ominous, uneasy feeling. The murky swamps stared at me from the background of the picture, almost like I was watching a film. The camera was placed at the bottom of the hillside, granting me, the player, a view of my character in his new surroundings. The foreground of the picture contained a huge oak tree with sprawling branches, surrounded by tall, untamed grass. The first thing I noticed was the dark group of bodies that hung from the many branches of the tree. I had only been playing for an hour or two, and already I had my own opinion on the poor souls who hung in the swamp, as well as the men who hung them. The Witcher had somehow taught me how to fight, how to interact with the world, how to explore, how my choices affect the game, and who my character was while still feeding me tidbits of a story that gripped my mind like a classic movie or novel.

That’s something I can’t say for a lot of games.

Many of you may be familiar with film critic Roger Ebert. While his scholarly articles on film are unquestionably a great resource, and the man knows what he is talking about, I won’t lie when I say that much of my respect for him was lost when he claimed that ‘Video games can never be art”.

See: http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art

While I could spend all day disputing Mr. Ebert’s arguments, and why I believe that almost everything is a form of art, I think it is clear that, at the very least, SOME video games are artistic in nature, and therefore, are art. While I personally believe that even the crudest, silliest games are art, I will only argue for The Witcher 3 in this particular case.

I have a background in theater- technical, non-musical, and musical. The thing that first drew me to theater was the way that it combined many other forms of art, such as music, dance, visual art, and acting. Now, I don’t know Mr. Roger Ebert personally, but I would have a hard time believing that he would ever argue against the artistic merit of theater. After all, cinema is a byproduct of drama, which has been around much, much longer. Without thespians, cinema wouldn’t exist.

However, given that theater is most certainly artistic in nature, and given the list of other art forms in it incorporates, we can see that ALL of them are present in The Witcher 3. The game contains an amazing soundtrack by Marcin Przybytowicz and Mikolai Stroinski. The choreography that exists in the game’s combat is more impressive than most dance I have seen. The visuals of the game are, of course, astounding, despite not being over the top in terms of color or design. Simply looking at my blog’s header image will show you how visually pleasing this game is. And, of course, the acting, specifically the 300 hours of voice recording, is top notch. These 300 hours of recordings equates to roughly 450,000 words, or about 4 novels. Far longer than almost any movie script. The main character, Geralt, who was voice acted by Doug Cockle, has almost 70,000 lines of dialogue in the game.

Now, I would never argue that quantity = quality in terms of voice acting, but I think anyone who has played the game would concede that the voice acting is top notch. Of course, my above arguments do not even mention the countless other aspects of the game that are artistic, and amazingly done. I particularly enjoy the facial animation in The Witcher 3. There were many instances of it that were truly hilarious or emotionally moving.

That’s enough on the artistic merit of this game. If I haven’t convinced you yet, you probably won’t be convinced. Now I just want to talk about why it is my FAVORITE game.

I’ve been playing games since I was very young. My accreditation for writing about this topic is up to you, so I will leave it here. I have not played the first two Witcher games, but I certainly plan on it. I have extensive playtime in other popular RPG series, such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Pillars of Eternity, and Final Fantasy. I have also played my fair share of action games including many shooters, the Diablo series (which I will most certainly write about in the future), Path of Exile, Overwatch, several MOBA games, and the Batman series by Rocksteady studios. Of course, the games mentioned here are only a snippet of my gaming experience. My current playtime in The Witcher 3 is 287 hours, which included 2 playthroughs of the main story and 1 of each expansion (which are also top notch in nearly every way).

Without further ado, here is why The Witcher 3 is my favorite game: It is one of the only times in my life that I have admitted I was completely wrong. I am a damn stubborn person. My parents got on me a good bit for it growing up. I always had trouble admitting when I was wrong, and I still do sometimes. I had a friend named Sam in high school, who was just another guy in my group of nerdy stoner friends. Personally, I had often found Sam quite annoying (Sorry if you’re reading this, Sam, I still like you). If there was something that Sam liked, I kind of intrinsically wanted to not like it. I remember that I really enjoyed the song “Clint Eastwood” by the Gorillaz when I first heard it. However, I soon learned that it was one of Sam’s favorite songs and promptly stopped listening to it. Was that douchey of me? Probably, but it is what it is.

Naturally, when The Witcher 3 was released and Sam constantly ranted about how good it was, I refused to believe him. “Is it as good as Skyrim”, “I’ve never even heard of it” and “Graphics don’t make a game good” were a few of the arguments I used against him. It wasn’t until the game had been out for 3 years and I hadn’t seen Sam in a good long while, that I finally ended up buying the game on sale.

Good god, I was so, so wrong. I will preach for this game like it’s the bible and I’m a crazy redneck from Alabama who never quite figured out what they wanted to do with their life. Seriously, just listening to the soundtrack sometimes gives me chills. The creators of this game have said that The Witcher 4 is NOT coming. Why? Because, as they say, they currently don’t think it’s possible to make a successful sequel to The Witcher 3. And I agree.

It is possible to find many errors in the game, or little things that could have been done better. But that is true for everything in life. The reason that The Witcher 3 is so damn good is because it does everything, every little thing, extremely well. The story is engaging, as are the characters. The soundtrack fits in perfectly thematically and is not distracting. The visuals are stunning. The UI is clean, simple, and polished. The game has very few bugs. The amount of content is ridiculous. Your choices in the game actually have meaningful results. The game even includes Gwent, which is a minigame that was so good that many players joke that the actual gameplay was the minigame. I could go on for days and days about why The Witcher 3 is so good, and I’m sure I will return to it several times in future posts.

I hope that I am able to convince at least one person to give this game a try with my short little article. I promise you, it is worth every penny.

Please feel free to share, and comment on my writing, whether it be a stylistic choice you liked or disliked, or something I said that you agree or disagree with. I would love to discuss this topic further.

[internet-content]

Ok I'm actually really excited to hear that you didn't like Jurassic world because I didn't either and I want to have a more articulate and informed way to tell ppl why I don't like it other than the "unnecessary and forced romance" point and "it just lost the magic" I was just super disappointed w it and I want to hear more abt your opinion on it. Sorry if this is kind of rambling btw

no worries! for those of you who did not read the tags on this post a couple nights ago, I said:  #I did my capstone on this!!#jp is so explicitly and awesomely feminist#(even though it only has 1 human female character)#the other part of my capstone was that jurassic world is shit garbage its shit it sucks and I fucking hate it

first off I want to correct myself, I said that sattler was the only human female but HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT LEX

these are the bullet points of my 14-page senior project (you asked for it):

jurassic park subverts the male gaze (the dinos do basically all of their murdering when they’re unseen or partially obscured, esp. in the “clever girl” scene; this could be down to spielberg’s famous “less is more” approach to monsters to enhance their effect but still)

this one’s a little more of a stretch but isla nublar, the dinosaurs, and nature in general are all coded as female in the context of the film, and humanity as a whole is coded as male. humanity (who is attempting to impose restrictions on the island and life itself by putting up cages and commercializing everything) is inarguably completely and utterly defeated by the dinosaurs and the island, the protagonists barely get away with their lives and hammond is the only jurassic park employee to see the end of the movie. (female-coded) life finds a way. asshole

also the female characters (ellie and of course LEX) are hugely expanded from the novel (where lex was a whiny younger sister stereotype with no redeeming traits) and ellie probably takes more direct action towards saving the humans than any other character. not to mention that most of the heroic male characters are killed, injured, or too old to contribute anything of value (looking @ you hammond, whose masculine god-playing was the cause of this whole shitstorm in the first place; “dinosaur eats man, woman inherits the earth”). also the book ends with the island getting firebombed and all the dinosaurs fucking dead but spielberg wasn’t having it

jurassic world is on the other hand a rampaging sexist dumpster fire which specifically subverts most of jp’s feminist ideas. owen is in charge of the raptors, when they defy him they are killed (this is the movie where a velociraptor is unceremoniously blown the fuck up for daring to violate her master’s control, in a moment that is an echo and inversion of the “clever girl” scene, i’m pretty sure that prior to this the only thing capable of killing raptors was the t-rex)

claire fucking dearing. hhhh. I won’t go into detail about everything (you can go through my sources at the bottom if you want) but this character is constantly belittled for…basically everything she does, no matter what (even when she saves the kids’ lives they want to chill with chris pratt like fuck no he’s a dick in this movie) but ESPECIALLY egregious is how much everybody (her sister, owen, the kids) wants her to be a fucking mom, she’s “defrosting ice queen” personified but it’s like the movie wants her to be defrosted through sheer brute force (alan grant was forced into a paternal role in jp but that was due to circumstance, not so much his brother on the phone weeping and begging him to quit his dumb job and focus on the important things like babies) she’s basically on the verge of tears this whole movie and it’s not hard to see why, it’s really uncomfortable to watch it while paying attention to how the other characters treat her. the 3.5 inch heels aren’t even worth mentioning tbh. oh also there’s also a moment where owen is pressuring her to prove that she’s worthwhile in a survival situation (my paper was called “sexism in survival situations” after the scene in jp) and she does so by…removing her top. hhhhhh I could go on but there’s more than just this one fucking character wrong with this movie

remember zara, the assistant who’s forced to do the mothering while claire goes and TRIES TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE DOESN’T FUCKING DIE thus leaving her nephews to hang out for 4 HOURS AT MOST? (this unforgivable transgression is what prompts judy greer to call her up WEEPING) well you might remember that she lets one of these asshole kids out of her sight and they go on a……..guided tour in a bulletproof glass dome. and then endanger themselves by straying off the path into an area clearly marked as not for access. so I’m pretty sure zara weeps too as a result of this and then later on she is torn apart by like 20 different dinosaurs over the course of a full minute. and a lot of people already know this but it’s just so worth mentioning: this was the first time a woman had been killed onscreen, EVER, in a jurassic park movie. it lasted 60 goddamn seconds, twice as long as it took the main villain of jp (wayne newman’s character) to be killed. i mean. you can just imagine the filmmakers going “you know what? it’s time for a woman to die onscreen, i think that’s what the franchise needs” like

owen grady (chris pratt) really is a pervy piece of shit in this movie, constantly hitting on claire, esp bad since at the end they fucking make out for no goddamn reason. chris revealed in an interview that the first kiss with her after they fight the pterodactyls was unscripted, and a total surprise for bryce dallas howard (colin treverrow, the director, was also there and he confirmed this). I think there’s another interview where she addresses it and she didn’t seem to mind really so ymmv but that’s at least a little icky idk

this movie has more characters overall but the amount of female characters who contribute anything goes down from 2 to 1. it’s been over 20 years but we can’t have 2 women who push the plot forward, okay, whatever (the characters I’m not counting are the lady in the control room who literally friendzones nick miller and zara, who did nothing wrong and died too soon. i liked merlin. she should fire her agent)

god and there’s so much more wrong just with the structure of jurassic world, the characters, the cgi, the themes, everything about it just falls apart under even the smallest bit of scrutiny, I could turn this into a generic shitting-on-jurassic-world post but it’s already long enough

I might’ve gotten a little carried away but like… jurassic park honestly isn’t even in my top 10 favorite movies but I’m so angry about jurassic world. I really hope the person who sent me this anon actually follows me and I didn’t just write this for nothing lol. jurassic world is so bad. its so bad.

“sources” (these are mostly subjective movie reviews that I used to help me form my arguements, this whole post is basically subjective so who gives a shit): Chris Pratt/Colin Treverrow interview, Jurassic World’s Mother of a Problem, ‘Life Finds a Way’: Monstrous Maternities andthe Quantum Gaze in Jurassic Park and The Thirteenth Warrior (it’s ch. 1 in this doc), The Perma-Pump: Jurassic World’s SilliestCharacter, The Death of Zara Young, or: How I Learned toStop Worrying and Hate Jurassic World, Jurassic World Has A Serious Woman Problem

[cathcacen]

Tethered

Still naming Learei drabbles after songs XD

Tethered by Sleeping at Last

“You'll be balance when i waver. I'll be warmth when you are shivering cold. You'll be patience when i've had enough of this waiting game. I'll be the anchor cast below.”

Lear misses a date, but also needs to make sure Rei knows he’s alive and well. Rei realises with a little sleuthing that she does, in fact, have the means to check on Lear.

He doesn’t show up. She spends the entire weekend in Santorini by herself, anxious and concerned; she doesn’t have a way to contact him, nor does she think he'd appreciate having his focus broken by something as trivial as a date. Especially if he’s been called away so suddenly he can’t even get word to her.

It has to be something important, she tells herself. I hope he's okay.

By the time she gets back to her apartment, she's come up with at least seven different scenarios for why he hadn't showed up. The first is the most terrifying - that Sagen could be lying dead somewhere, and she would have no way of ever finding out.

She doesn’t want to think on that, so she concentrates on her unpacking. Despite the anxiety bubbling inside, she’d made the rounds of the island on a rental moped, trying out the local cuisine and chatting with some other tourists. She’d bought some local souvenirs for Sagen - Greek spice rub, thyme honey, fresh baklava, and a jar of luscious, fat Kalamata olives. There are some photographs of the villa they had rented - whitewashed with a bright blue domed ceiling, square windows, and a soft, baby blue door that opened onto a sunny balcony overlooking the glimmering sea.

The movies don’t do the island justice.

She puts aside Sagen’s souvenirs and finishes off with her unpacking and laundry. Her flight had put her back home with plenty of time to spare, so she’s just wondering what to do for dinner when a soft knock brings her to the door.

Sagen is standing there when she throws it open, at once sheepish and apologetic. “Sorry I didn’t call.”

She lets out a breath, and can’t muster up the energy to be angry. Relief floods her senses, and she throws her arms around him, burying her face into the crook of his neck and shoulder.

There are words that linger at the tip of her tongue, begging to be said - thank goodness you’re safe. I missed you. I was so worried about you.

Instead, she chuckles, the sound coming out less convincing than she would’ve preferred. “It’s okay, I got the bed all to myself.”

He grins broadly at her, and she steps aside to let him in. Only then does she see the paper bag he’s holding, the cork of a wine bottle only just visible from the top. “I’m sure you made the most of everything we’d planned. Did you see Nea Kameni?”

“Yes, and I took some photos for you too.” Out of habit, she glances out, checking that the corridor is empty before closing and bolting the door. “I wanted to go to Therasia for the hot springs, but I ran out of time.”

Sagen finds the stemmed wine glasses in her cabinets with ease, then sets about uncorking the bottle. She recognises the label from her second night in Greece - a light, tangerine-and-flower white. “We’ll go together next time.” He hands her a glass, clinking the mouth of his glass to hers.

“Exactly how did you get a Moshcofilero if you weren’t even in Greece, hm?” She peers at him, but takes a sip anyway. It’s as delicious as she remembers.

“I know a guy.”

“You know many guys.”

He gives her a smug sort of smile as he takes a seat on one of her bar stools. She rolls her eyes, but goes to him anyway. “This one in particular has a taste for uncommon wines. I was going to bring you to taste this label, but it would appear you’ve already had some.”

“Not my fault you booked us that wine-tasting daytrip and failed to show up for it.” She swirls the wine in her glass, then takes another sip. “I got you some food, anyway. It’s good you showed up before the baklava went bad.”

Sagen squeezes her briefly before turning around, reaching for his paper bag. “I can’t stay long, but I brought dinner. You hungry?”

She watches as he pulls out an assortment of fillets - whitefish and shellfish, and a few small boxes of assorted salad greens. It’s his way of making up for lost time, she knows - charm and apology in one. He’s done it before.

She falls for it every time. “Starving.”

It’s a slow day; she’d spent it updating the files of her current patients on the encrypted server where the medical histories of military personnel were stored for easy access. She’d brought a leftover piece of baklava - the last - back to base. It’s all but lost its crispness by now, but it’s no less tasty and the memory of Sagen cutting into it brings a smile to her face.

He’d cooked them up a delicious dinner, and they’d eaten it outside in the balcony. She’d showed him the pictures, from the volcano to the marketplaces and temples and vineyards - then they’d deleted them, out of habit. While she cleaned up after, he’d dug into her cupboards for the artisanal spiced tea she kept around for him, sweetening the pot with the Grecian honey after. Then they’d lounged about for a little while before he’d had to leave.

Got somewhere else to be, he’d said. She’d recognised the shit-eating grin.

Something clicks inside as she chews and swallows. Throughout the course of the night before, it had been clear that Sagen was favouring his right side. He’d hidden it well enough, but there was a wince, a bit of a grunt, when she’d hugged him too tightly - and then again when she’d nuzzled into his side post-dinner.

Out of respect and a desire to let him play out his planned show, she’d neglected to ask.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t look into it. She washes down the last of the baklava with her coffee, then types his name into the page. The history she’s after is password protected, but she’s been listed as Sagen’s primary doctor in the military since before his four-month hospital stint, so her passkey gets her through with no red flags raised. A cursory glance at the latest updates show he’s mostly had minor procedures done at her base - stitches, overnight observation, antibiotics for infection, and a case of mild pneumonia that had resulted in a week of infirmary time with lots of chicken alphabet soup.

He’d spelled out the silliest things with his pasta. Elevator. Spidermonkey. Ice cream. Steak sauce. Limoncello. Cicero.

The last one had had the entire infirmary in stitches. Enema.

She scrolls down to the very end of the page and reads through the latest notes. Her breath hitches and she has to stop herself from crying out.

Sagen had gotten into trouble after all. The new notations are the work of a civilian General Surgeon - a certain Doctor Schaefer, currently employed in the hospital nearby her apartment in town. She grits her teeth, swearing through them. GSW through the left side - there had been no injury to his vital organs, but the bullet had lodged itself in one of his metal ribs. The fool had gone and gotten himself shot, admitted, and into surgery during her flight to Santorini.

She’s not even surprised.

Damn it, Sagen.

There’s a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that corresponds with the feeling of bereftness coupled with genuine terror. For one brief moment, her mind slips into the dark place - one where she opens Sagen’s chart to find out he’s dead. She shakes away the thoughts and gulps down more water - her mouth has gone dry, and she’s suddenly very aware that it could happen for real. And beneath the underlying thread of terror is the realisation that he had snuck out of the hospital to see her.

She doesn’t even know whether to be touched or angry, and settles on exasperated. According to the records, Sagen is meant to stay in the hospital for another two days, so she packs up her things, clocks out for the day, and takes a bus downtown to ‘check on her patient’.

A few nurses at the hospital are familiar with her, so none of them question her presence there. She makes her way to Sagen’s private room without much trouble. He jumps when she strides in, with all the grace of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but recovers spectacularly.

“Tah dah!” His voice is light, the words coming out in a sing-song manner as he opens up his hands and arms. As if he’d meant all along to be found in all his hospital-bound glory.

“How the hell did you manage to get out of a camera-filled hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest?” She shuts the door and closes the blinds, then sits on the chair beside his bed, scowling.

Sagen chuckles heartily; he doesn’t look at all unhappy to have been found out. If anything, he actually looks pleased for the company. “The same way I managed to cook you dinner and give you snuggles after.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Determination and painkillers.”

“You could’ve just called.”

“But then the baklava would’ve gone bad.”

She levels a flat look at him, and he grins back at her. “It’s not funny, you idiot. You could’ve torn your stitches open.”

“Good thing I was going to see a doctor, then.” Sagen drums his fingers lightly upon his sheets, then reaches out to brush her cheek with his fingertip. “Come on, give me some credit - I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Some things can’t be helped.” She puffs up her cheeks, grumbling. “But how would you like it if I just didn’t show up one day? And then you come home from Alexandria or something to find out I’d gotten shot and didn’t tell you.”

“That wouldn’t have happened.” Sagen’s smile takes on a lighter cast. They always keep it light, even when they’re discussing heavier subjects. It makes it easier to pretend. “Because I’d want to find you and steal you away anyway, so chances are I’d be able to prevent your getting shot.”

She leans back in her chair with a sigh. “Have I ever mentioned how unfair it is that you know exactly how and where to find me, whereas I literally have no idea when I’ll see you again?”

He lays back against his pillows, his eye softening for only a brief moment before the careless, good-natured cheer returns. “You found me today, though.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” She meets his eye. You’ll find me, and I’ll find you. “And now I’ll know where to look if you don’t show up again.” She has to admit it’s a pretty convenient trick - one she’d overlooked before. “That’s if I can count on all the other doctors you’re seeing to be accurate with their charting.”

Sagen quirks a smile. “Well, if they’re all as reliable as my cute lady doc, I’d say you’re all set.”

“Sure.” She rolls her eyes, but can’t help the smile that breaks forth. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out a foil-wrapped sandwich and hands it to him before getting to her feet. “Try not to sneak out again.”

He takes the sandwich gleefully, then pulls her down for a quick peck on the lips. “No promises. Stay out of trouble, Naveau.”