#i never use studio mode

[kaen0m0re]

happy chaos art i spent 6+ hours on & his objective best 3 alt colours (04, 06, & 10)

[memorys-skyscraper]

imagine the alternate timelines where the obligatory adult male playable character in haruka's part of y5 wasn't akiyama

[deadghosy]

Hi! I hope you're doing great!

So I saw the headcannons of reader as Catnap and Dogday and I fell in love with the way you write! So I was wondering if you could do a headcannon about the reader being bendy from bendy and the ink machine?

Like the reader can draw and bring ink creatures to help around the hotel, maybe draw some decorations for the hotel? Sometimes going full on ink demon form to protect it or just pick up their friends on their back to make them feel taller

And the reader was actually an animator at joey drew studios and died, I think that would be pretty cool!

P.s I would love if the reader was wearing the same suit bendy wore in bendy and the dark revival

HAZBIN HOTEL X BENDY!READER

Prompt: a cute “little” demon becomes a resident who helps with the designs around the hotel!

Starting off. You definitely appeared as baby bendy 😘 with ya cute ass red bow or white bow. What ever you want the bow color as you showed up to the door trying to seem professional as Charlie gushes at your cuteness and lets you in.

The picture of baby bendy in the car, yeah you have that as you literally fuckin' zoom in the hallways drinking apple juice like a bad ass kid….bendy!Reader and chibi!Reader both doing races to make sinners poor😭 lil evil asses….

I imagine Angel dust and Alastor ganging up on you as a team to insult you by your height until you grow up to ink demon from with a roar.

“HOLY SHIT-” “Oh my.” They both said as you they were blew off by the power of your roar. So you felt happy seeing them shocked to see that part of you as Charlie didn’t see it and had commented how adorable you are with your suit.

Shit you are a devil in an angel’s suit‼️

You still wore the suit you had in when you met Audrey…man you miss her. But you are getting taken care of by Charlie and her friends here. Plus her father.

You help design the banners around the place! And even your small ink minions help as well.

I can imagine bendy! Reader being like “fuck it.” Because they can’t reach for the cereal and turn into normal height looking bendy and just starts to act as if it’s normal. While in the background, the crew has pure confusion on their face. Like, “what the fuck? You can be taller?”

“Yeah! Pretty neat right?” “..Im out of here…” husk says walking away as niffty goes up to you excited to talk to you about your height.

You ran over alastor’s foot once….you never speeded over 120 mph in your whole life seeing Alastor chase after you.

I imagine you going to normal height as you are just chilling with your small or long tail swinging and husk gets curious as he picks it up with his paw. “So…this ya tail right here?” You nodded reading the new paper. “So you’re a sinner demon?” “I ain’t nothin'” you said with a smirk as you disappeared in ink.

No one knows what exactly what you are. You don’t have the basic looks to look like a sinner or a hell born. So it’s kinda confusing to other.

You’re obviously a human who died to the ink as you use to animate bendy…so you’re bendy?? Does that make since because whatever you died by is your demon form….hopefully that made sense..

You once went full ink demon mode because a sinner tried to attack at you and husk while just running errands for the hotel. You transformed getting taller with the ink covering your face as you growl and slashes at them with a giant gloved hand covered in ink. And after that husk respected you more.

“Bendy/reader, can you help me make a cute star design?” Vaggie asked as Charlie was trying to make a star gazing banner. You nodded with your cartoony smile and pulls out a marker and started to draw on the air. The star in the air becomes to life as vaggie’s eyes widen.

“Uhm…oh wow. Thanks?” Vaggie says as she walks away with question marks visible while you just smile.

Y’know those dubbed comics where bendy has an accent? I feel like that’s cannon because you and Angel would be babbling about which part of city you guys were from.

I can see sir Pentious and you doing crafts as you made him an ink cartoon flower as he made you a bracelet bead with your name on it.

Lucifer will definitely play violin as you tap dance. Just a wholesome ass moment fr 💗🦆

You one time had fat nuggets in your doom buggy as you guys had shades just chilling around the hotel like bad asses✨

You miss your original family when you were alive and working. But everytime you open your eyes, you are greeted by the sweet comfort of your new family in the hazbin hotel.

You one time made an ink sculpture of your family and you tried to hold your smile but it faltered as you cry at how you missed your family as the ink sculpture melted due to your emotions.

Alastor appeared in your room seeing you sad little state as he comforted you. He had taken a liking to you ever since you joined the crew.

I can see you being childish because of your shortness so you use it to your advantage. YOU AND ALASTOR MAKE YOUR INK DEMONS FIGHT LIKE POKÉMON 😭😭

lol imagine bendy!reader making a whole like of fake ass tarrot cards to fuck with people as you have that smirk on your face.

“You’re gonna get run over toots…watch your back..” “what. The. Fuck-”

They got ran over by a mysterious person and a car….who knew who it was…it was you, you little bastard.

When the hotel has a talent and show day or night, you remembered how you animated bendy to do ballet and tap dancing. So with your information, that’s what you did. Yeah some sinners laughed..but some aplaude as they found it cute and so did your friends

You making ink blob bracelets for your friends as you can make them solid is a goal for real.

Headcannon on how you would try to make ink sculptures, but failing as you huff in anger and smash it with a full ink demon hand as the rest of your body is fine.

Headcannon of you just accidentally leaving ink footprints as you took off your shoes once 😭 niffty doesn’t complain as she likes to clean tho

I can see Lucifer picking your small body up happy for you to be so small as he has started in his eyes. And you are like annoyed at how the cast picks you up like a baby.

LMAO THAT WALMART MEME STOPPP😭😭 LUCIFER PUTS YOU UP TO THE DAMN WALMART CAMERA HAVING ALASTOR ALSO PICK LUCI UP 😭😭

I imagine you and Alastor having either a “bad ass son x calm father” troupe or a “non-biological sibling” troupe as you two get quite along

Your little ass doom buggy is such a weapon when needing to take a troubled guest in the hotel….YOU RAN THEM OVER?! 😨 ALL PEOPLE SEE IS A SMALL ASS INK DEMON HAVING A GUEST SCREAMING AS THEY GET RUNNED OVER TO THE DOOR-

So when the angels came for the battle, you were sure damn ready as you suffocated them in ink and control them into killing their own.

After seeing your full demon form, you definitely had been seen in a different light. They don’t see you as the cute baby bendy they seen you before.

Nah nah. They see you as a grown ass person as you are not in the baby bendy phase but more like the fanart type shit looks. With your charm, you definitely bring in some customers. 

HOPED YOU GUYS LIKED THIS AS THIS IS ALL I COULD COME UP WITH 🦆💗 MWAH

[maxwellatoms]

Hello Mr. Atoms, I'm an animation student in college and fan of your work. I got this assignment in which I need to ask questions to a professional in the area. Could you pretty please answer them? It'd mean a lot to me.

1- Are you happy with your career? How it's going.

2- What are your opinions, expectations and hopes about the independent animation industry that's developing?

3- What do you think about the advent of artificial intelligence? Do you fear for the future of animators?

4- If money wasn't a problem, would you still do what you do?

5- Any animators you admire and would like to mention?

Okey dokey.

1- Are you happy with your career? How it's going.

Not really, in that there seems to be no career left.

The animation industry swelled its numbers greatly before 2020. Almost immediately after that, corporate greed synergized with a pandemic to reduce animated programs and the number of people working on them to almost zero. It takes almost a year from beginning to end to make a single episode of an animated show (by the modern standard). There was nothing being made in 2020 and four years later, we''re not in a much better spot. It's going to be a long drought for (especially) Kid's TV Animation.

Recently, many of my former co-workers have hit the financial wall and can't continue, moving away after (sometimes) 20 years in the industry. I begin to wonder if I'm very far behind.

A "bounce back" a year from now would need to start today. There are still some animated shows being made now, but those are almost universally "library" properties. That means it's an existing I.P. (Intellectual Properties like Garfield/Mario/Batman/Star Wars) so as an artist you're immediately in that box. Depending on the property and the studio, it can be an unpleasantly tight box. I grew used to holding and maintaining the vision for a show, but it's less fun when it's not my vision. It's even less fun when you can't inspire someone to follow your vision because they've been so ruthlessly abused.

I'm pretty sick of how big media corporations treat their employees. If I inherit one more burnt out crew due to mismanagement, I'm gonna lose it.

Over a decade ago I fought hard to get board artists story credit for the episodes they were actually writing, and felt like I'd won a big victory for everyone. The second my back was turned, it all reverted.

Mostly... what is the point now? My career is/was developing ideas, crafting those ideas into a workable show, then managing teams of thirty to seventy people to produce a couple of dozen episodes per year. Studios actively do not want new ideas right now, and are actively searching for ways to eliminate what artists from the process. I'm not sure what my job would be under this new system, but it feels like they decided to hang onto the anxiety-inducing deadlines while removing anything remotely pleasurable from the experience.

2- What are your opinions, expectations and hopes about the independent animation industry that's developing?

It's the only way to get anything done, currently.

The current state of the industry is not sustainable. I (along with a lot of other animators I know) are trying to decide what's next, and pretty much everyone agrees that "you just have to make something".

It is (in that very specific way) a great time to be a young animator. The system was never going to treat you well anyway. If you can get something like a Hazbin Hotel happening without studio help, you can currently write your own ticket. I'm super proud of Vivsie, because that's a LOT of stuff to handle. I never had to handle my own marketing or drum up money to make Billy & Mandy happen.

There are opportunities there, but it's definitely "Hard Mode". The best idea is probably to team up with a few other people you like and like to work with.

Hopes? I hope that the young animators take over and make something new on top of the bones of the old industry, rather than just allowing that industry to patch its rotting hide with their collected works.

3- What do you think about the advent of artificial intelligence? Do you fear for the future of animators?

I suspect true AI might just peace-out like ScarJo in "Her", but we're not there yet. What we have now isn't Artificial Intelligence at all (though I do believe it may be the underpinnings of the Artificial Suconscious of what may one day become an actual Artificial Intelligence.)

The LLMs and "Generative AI" are (so far) a big dumb waste. They consume tons of energy and aren't great for doing anything creative. If you've sat down with Chat GPT for a creative writing session, you've probably run into the "out of the box" limitations which prevent it from talking about sex or violence-- which happen to be a major component of most stories.

Still, the technology has come incredibly far in an incredibly short amount of time. I imagine we're going to hit the point where we're being hazed by artificially generated political ads way before Generative AI can produce a consistent and usable character turnaround, so that'll be the test. Whatever the legal fallout is from this stuff over the next few years will set the tone.

Still, studios have a vested interest in pleasing their shareholders. Generative AI potentially has the capability of not only replacing swaths of money-eating artists, but handing that control directly to the billionaire studio heads. Mark my words: We're headed straight for billionaire-generated content.

I don't think the public at large will want to watch Elon Musk's fever dreams, so there's that. So law and general distaste might stave it off for a while, but I think there's just too much impetus for studios to continue to try to please their investors. "AI Art" is here to stay.

Eventually that will lead to millions and millions of bots generating millions and millions of songs and paintings and movies all day every day. Most of it will be utter trash. Right now (so I'm told) viewers are already burnt out, and will generally only click on what they already know. On Netflix, where there are twenty things you've never heard of and one you have, you're more likely to pick the thing that gives you comfort and gives you a guarantee you're not wasting your time. With exponentially more A.I. trash, how would you even begin to filter it out?

You'd need absolute control of an already existing distribution system. We currently have a few of those, and all of the media companies are desperately trying to merge with them to insure their own survival.

To me, the post-Gen-AI landscape looks a lot like old-school Cable, but with endless I.P. and fewer masters.

4- If money wasn't a problem, would you still do what you do?

The real question is, maybe, "What am I even doing?" These days I try to do a lot of gardening. I'm trying to learn new art skills, because suddenly twenty five years of experience managing, drawing, and writing isn't worth much. I recently worked on Jellystone until Zaslav lost 2.5 billion in the wash and had to find justification for his new yacht. The show before that? Also culled midway through to save money. The days of multi-year gigs seem to be over, and if I'm going to scrape by doing freelance, maybe I can do that somewhere else.

I'll always make art. I can't seem to help it. Ideas aren't my problem-- it's executing those ideas without the help of a structured pre-existing system. I honestly don't know if I'll ever be able to pull that off. My strengths are great, but were always supported by friends I worked with.

Can I start an indie cartoon with all of these cool friends? Sure, maybe. Most of those people have gone on to have other careers of their own and got used to being paid. Now nobody is getting paid and no one can pay anyone else. My immediate circle are all now middle-aged people with families and no jobs. Convincing them to give up a large chunk of their day for an idea that's not guaranteed to pay off is going to take some real effort.

I technically have fifteen years until I can claim my "retirement", assuming that still exists by then. That's a pretty big hole to fill with... I don't know what.

The difficult "What comes next" discussions at home are really just starting.

5- Any animators you admire and would like to mention?

There are a lot of cool animation people out there. I already mentioned I was proud of Vivsie. I was also reminded recently just how great C.H. Greenblatt and Mr. Warburton are. I know they're my friends. They're both just really upstanding, creative people who take good care of their crews.

The treatment of animation industry professionals by the studio system has been one of the most demoralizing and heartbreaking parts of this demoralizing and heartbreaking time.

---

So there ya go. If you want to look for someone whose attitude is a little more upbeat, I won't blame you a bit.

Wherever you are, I wish you the best of luck. For me, just climb up there and crush it. I would very much like to add you to #5 someday.

[kaciidubs]

Binnie's Baby Bun

❣ Summary: Ever since you announced your pregnancy to your husband, his loving treatment skyrocketed to lengths you never believed were possible. ❣  ❣ Word Count: 797 ❣ Warnings: Husband! Changbin, Pregnant! Reader, pregnancy [early stages], fluff, light implied smut, baby bumps, overall cuteness ❣  ❣ Female! Reader [No use of Y/N] | You/Your pronouns ❣  ❣ Additional Tags: Changbin is referred to as Hubby, Bin, and Binnie, Reader is referred to as Bun, and Bunny ❣ Stray Kids Masterlist ❣ General Masterlist

Ever since you announced your pregnancy to your husband, his loving treatment skyrocketed to lengths you never believed were possible.

Changbin was a lover, he was a supporter, he was a protector, but he was also the softest, kindest, and most careful man you had ever met, and those were just a few of the traits that convinced you that he was the man you wanted to spend the rest of your life with.

The days after you revealed your pregnancy, he treated you like you were a goddess walking among men; you would’ve thought he was your living servant the way he offered to do everything - and I mean everything - for you.

Not like he didn’t do it already, that is.

The first handful of weeks were met with extra kisses here and there, extra check-ins so he could have a clearer gauge on your comfort, and small things like extra snacks finding their way into your pantry.

But, when your stomach slowly began to grow and the first hints of your baby bump began to show, Binnie mode was in full swing.

Almost every morning you were guaranteed a kiss on the lips, cheek, or forehead, and an extra kiss to the small swell of your belly, paired with a whispered “Good morning, baby.”

Whenever you were together he would always, always, manage to keep a hand on your stomach - if you allowed him, of course - and if he couldn’t keep you close by, he’d always make sure to take a quick ‘baby bump break’ to saddle up beside you and rest the palm of his hand over your belly button.

“Bin, if you’re like this when I’m barely showing, I can only imagine how you’ll be when I'm in full watermelon mode.”

You sat partially sprawled out on the couch of his recording studio, the pillow you were previously laying on now replaced with Changbin’s lap, and his arm reaching down your body to rest his hand over the top of your stomach.

He laughed and leaned down to press a kiss to your cheek, “That’s why you have to get used to how I am now, Bun! I know baby bun will.”

“Baby bun?” You hummed, tilting your head to get a better look at him, “So you’re hoping for a girl?”

He shook his head, “Baby bun is just baby bun - girl, boy, I don’t care, as long as they’re healthy and you’re healthy that’s all that matters to me.”

Fresh tears stung at your eyes and you had to fight to push them away, blaming the increased hormones in your body for your sudden sensitivity to his sentiments.

“Alright, break time’s over!” Announcing his leave with his usual loud voice, he helped you get comfortable again before bending down to your eye-level, “Another hour or two and I’ll be done, then we can go get some dinner, deal?”

Smiling, you nodded happily, “Baby bun and I think that’s a great deal.”

Furthermore, in the midst of all of his soft, adoring moments, there were also moments of warm, tender love that had you overwhelmed in the best of ways.

Moments where he would watch you do your nightly routine; silently observing the way his shirt would ride up with each of your movements, revealing a sliver of the bump he would never get enough of, urging him to stand behind you and snake his arms around your waist.

You smiled tiredly at his reflection in the mirror, rubbing the remaining moisturizer onto your cheeks, “Hi, hubby.”

“Hi, bunny,” he replied in kind, pressing a soft kiss to the junction of your neck and shoulder.

Melting into his touch with a gentle sigh, you tilted your head to give him more access, your hands going to encompass his own resting yet again over your bump. “Binnie… What are you up to?”

His arms held you a bit tighter, his lips making a path up your neck and brushing against a spot he knew all too well, “Just appreciating you…”

“Hm, yeah, I can tell.” You shifted your hips, fully aware of the bulge filling his boxer briefs, “You appreciate me that much, yeah?”

Nipping at your skin, his eyes met yours in the mirror, his heard gaze sending a chill of excitement down your spine.

“Can I appreciate you more?”

“Right now?” You mused, lacing your fingers through his, “Right here?”

A low hum vibrated through him as he took you in, the scenario so familiar yet so, so different in numerous ways; you were no longer his girlfriend, no longer his fiancee, no longer just his wife, but his wife and soon-to-be mother of his child.

“Right now,” he confirmed, firm and sure, loving and supportive, soft and kind, “right here.”

✧. ┊Tagged lovelies: @goblinracha, @having-an-internal-crisis-rn, @midnightfrog625, @anyhow-everything, @bangchanbabygirlx, @sweetracha, @j-onedrabbles, @happilydeepestwonderland, @nightimescapes, @caitlyn98s, @ch4nn13luv, @ihrtlix, @sometimesleeknows, @jeonjungkookenthusiast1997, @instabull, @maximumkillshot, @bandolls, @y-ur--i, @acker-night, @dreamescapeswriting, @sunnyhonie, @specialstay, @broken-glowsticks, @s00buwu, @all4innie, @dancerachaslut

✧. ┊If your username is in bold italics that means tumblr won't let me tag you. If you’d like to be added to the taglist, fill out this form!

[7ndipity]

How They Would Win Over Their Secret Crush

Ot7 x Reader

Summary: How they would try to charm or catch their crush’s attention. Part of the 'Secret Crush' reaction series.

Warnings: swearing, not proofread

A/N: Thanks to the lovely anon who requested this! This ended up being slightly different than what you asked, but I hope you still like it!

Masterlist

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

Jin:

He honestly just keeps doing what he’s been doing? Like, all the nice little things he does ‘as a friend’ are now cranked up by like 5(we’re not going up to 10, he’s not confessing yet).

Starts making more flirty comments and jokes-but-not-jokes about how y’all look like a couple or smth, just to try and kinda plant the idea of the two of you dating for your consideration.

His approach really depends on what you’re into, like if you’re into the more classical romantic gestures, he’s suddenly showing up to your hangouts with flowers, “just cause”. He wants you to notice that he’s making an effort to treat you specially and make you happy.

Yoongi:

He’s kinda dug himself a hole, bc he’s so used to making excuses for why he was giving you special treatment that you’ve sorta just accepted it and don’t even question when he does things that aren’t quite friend-ish(I can hear him being just like “fml”🤦)

To counter his previous statements, he tries to be more pointed with things like skinship to get you to look at him like "?", but he won’t give excuses anymore. He’s just like “What? Are you uncomfortable?” “No?” “Great.” :]

Tries to spend extra time with you doing your favorite hobbies/pastimes(like when he talked about going fishing w Jin, even tho it’s not his thing), trying to show his interest in you and the things that you enjoy(and also so that you might start to associate him with that thing and how it makes you feel)

Hobi:

Honestly, as I said before, he’s such a naturally affectionate person, especially when it comes to you, so he might be at a slight loss on how to get you to look at him differently or in a potentially romantic light.

He kinda goes a little over the top with his gestures, forgetting that he was trying to be discreet, buying you little gifts, giving you petnames, etc. Basically just switches to ‘Boyfriend Hobi’ mode without saying anything, and leaving you kinda like “wtf?”

He becomes surprisingly clingy, bordering on jealous/possessive if he’s not careful. Like you even joke that he’s like your bodyguard whenever y’all go out together, which he lowkey puffs up at. He claims he’s just looking out for you, but you can tell that’s not the whole truth.

Namjoon:

He tries to spend as much time as possible with you(most likely following one of the times he kinda pulled away for a bit), inviting you to hang out at the studio, to work out together, to dinner, to his house.

The list of activities just keeps shifting further and further away from things ‘friends’ do together and closer towards more ‘couple-y’ things, like weekend trips to the beach or sleeping over at each other’s places.

He wants to try and subtly show you his more romantic sides and what it would be like to maybe date him, doing extra little things like giving you his jacket or opening/holding doors for you.

Jimin:

As I said before, he never exactly hid his feelings towards you, so his first move is making a point to drop the “as a friend” caveat he’s been trying so hard to instill in your relationship up till now.

He makes a point to pay you extra compliments, ramping up the skinship and flirting a little more obviously, buying you gifts/meals, etc. It’s basically all the same things that he was doing before, but there’s a distinct shift in his energy that gives off the feeling of ‘I like you, please fucking notice me!’

I feel like he would just start playing the hypothetical game with you, like “What would you do if a friend had a crush on you?” “Which friend?” “Idk, let’s say me.”/ “Where’s somewhere that you think would be a good first date?” just straight up asking for the handbook on how to win you over.

Taehyung:

He’s not exactly subtle bc he’s dropping compliments all over the place, but the thing that keeps him from being too obvious is that he kinda does this with everyone? But he definitely goes over and beyond for you, hyping you up constantly and refusing to let you speak badly about yourself over anything.

Becomes increasingly clingy and physically affectionate, and if you make any comments or question him about it, he’ll straight up just tell you “I missed you/ I like being around you.” He just doesn’t mention that it’s because he’s in love with you(yet).

He likes playing with the classic romance movie vibe(I always think Breakfast at Tiffany’s), taking you on random little ‘dates’, bringing you flowers when you’re down, etc to make you feel special.

Jungkook:

Subtlety really doesn’t fit his vibe tbh, so I think he’d just go all out, flirting with you super obviously, being extra affectionate and initiating skinship, treating you to little lunch/dinner dates hangouts.

Which honestly isn’t all that different from before, but like Jimin, there’s a notable energy shift from like “We’re just friends tho, nbd.” to “I am trying to woo you here, dammit!”

Pretty much becomes your giant, puppy-eyed assistant, following you around everywhere and just trying to help you as much as possible with everything, as if he’s trying to prove how nice he’d be to have around, like “See?! Such boyfriend vibes?!”

Taglist: @sopebubbles-replies @btsw1fe @this-must-be-my-tardis @whitefoxgirl @bethanysnow @coffeedepressionsoup @main-bangtansmauyeondan @feminympho @captainorangegoose @k4ngelz

[alltimefail-sims]

IDK about ya'll, but now that we have the jewelry skill that came with so many create-able assets it made me want even more interactive gameplay skills in future packs. I will say it until this game is dead; we can never have too many interactive activities for our sims, and that's where The Sims 4 has always struggled in comparison to its predecessors.

I would love to see skills/activities such as:

Bands. A whole "Making Music" GP would be amazing, one that adds in just more instruments in general, not just "rock band" instruments. There are so many jazz artworks, signs, and statues in this game so I have no idea why we have 0 brass and 0 woodwind instruments. Also, harps!! Harps would be amazing to use with the wedding pack!!! Also no marching band in High School Years? Wild! Fumble after fumble that could still be remedied with a music-themed GP. They could add a jazz band and/or marching band after school activity with this pack and maybe a band career that starts with being a garage band that is compatible with Get Famous... it could be so good!)

Rug Making. This is a super trendy art/craft activity right now and it is super cool to watch. I would love to see this done in the sims, especially if we could make cool funky custom pieces and sell them! With GTW you could literally make your own store just for your rugs like come onnnnnn!

Pottery. Again, the selling possibilities and maybe even a new art studio lot type would be sooooo awesome for our creative sims!!!

Basket Weaving. PAIN because this should have been included in Horse Ranch or even For Rent and I'll die on that hill. It's unlikely it will fit in future packs, but I'm putting it on here nonetheless.

Sewing. Especially for quilts and stuff, how cute would it be to make baby/toddler/child clothes, quilts, etc.!!!

Skateboarding. Oh how I know we'll probably never get this... but I'm holding out hope.

Adding on to skateboarding, just some more group sports and games in general like tennis and pool.

If we get cars - a mechanic skill. They could even just consider this a part of the handiness skill and create an object like from TS2 Freetime when you could buy a junker car from buy mode and fix it up!

Obviously they might not do any of these, but these are just some dream elements that I would personally love to see in game.

Please feel free to share your dream skills/activities/game additions!!!

[starryaike]

i don't know if this has been asked before but how do you do the paper effect on your art?? it looks so cool and the way you ad texture to your whole art plus the almost pencil texture if that makes sensse?? just what makes ur art style u!!

Alright, this is gonna be a bit of a tutorial and I've never done one of those, so forgive me if something's amiss

First off, check this other ask here to see what my usual brushes are, including the ones used here!

Now, I'm not sure if you were referring to this, but I do put some sort of print-like effect in my art sometimes (often in the more complex pieces). For that, it's quite simple, really.

Well, here's our finished piece, with some chromatic aberration added for good measure

What we do now is add a noise layer and set the layer mode to Overlay (ignore the fact that my Clip Studio Paint's language is set to Spanish, it's the same thing.)

After that, we set the opacity to somewhere over 10 to 30 percent (or, really, whatever you want. I usually do 20.)

Then we add another layer and paint it all with a halftone brush in black and, as well, set it to overlay.

Now all that's left to do is to set the opacity (I usually do betweem 30 and 50 percent) and It Is Done!!! Our Wonderful Piece!!!

Other Paper textures I use while drawing for backgrounds and such are:

This leaf of Paper my beloved

These watercolour textures

These paper textures

If you have any other questions, don't be afraid to ask!

[calicobigamy]

I can't be only one, right...?

I wanted to finish the game and then write this post but I gave up. I put in 100 plus hours and just could not go on once I got into act three. Maybe no one will hear my pitiful cry from the void, but I must scream for the sake of my sanity.

I was completely and utterly disappointed by Baldur's Gate 3. 

It had huge maps like an open world game yet I had no desire to explore the settings despite their beauty. It had hours of dialogue as an RPG would and yet I found myself skipping characters' responses. The game mechanic structure was inspired by DnD, a story-telling game dictated by some rules, lucky rolls and the extent of players' imagination, yet I was strong-armed into fighting impossibly stacked battles. A story-telling game dependent on the players’ attachment to their and their teammates' characters and yet this game lacked any kind of narrative consistency or depth of feeling. 

Larian wanted to make an open world RPG, based off of DND mechanics and somehow did the worst version of all three. The studio touts that Baldur’s Gate 3 has 17,000 possible endings and 2 million words, but to what end? What did this game have to say about what happens when people rise to the challenge and become heroes despite their circumstances or fall into the dark and become the monsters they were supposed to fight? What did it suggest might happen when fate deals you a bad hand but in doing so also helps you find true friends or love with the other? Ultimately, nothing. 

BG3 is so large that it ends up being incoherent. No writing or game structure decisions were made to keep the narrative tight and on theme. It urges players to choose a moral alignment, but most decisions, good or bad, seem to end up having little effect in the end. To play the game at all you have to resort to save scumming and that in turn deflates the possible impact of so many plot points of the narrative overall. 

Forcing players to save scum in order to progress through the game is terrible design in general. Statistically speaking the bosses make impossible critical hits again and again. I was playing in the game’s “casual mode” and found myself struggling to get through confrontations with bosses that were at a lower level than my own. If you are reading and thinking oh well you are probably not using tactics or spells well, etc., let’s do a little experiment…

Take your d20 (https://rolladie.net/roll-a-d20-die if you don’t have one in person). In the third act of BG3 I had an AC of 13 as a sorcerer with 100 plus HP. Roll your d20 ten times or more. How many times out of ten would your character have gotten to hit mine successfully? Unless an enemy is extremely lucky it should be unlikely that an enemy could hit my character every turn they get. And even if they do they would have to roll for damage which is only a single d6, d8, d10 or d12 plus a modifier at lower levels depending on your class. Again an enemy would have to have an extremely lucky roll to hit me every turn AND deal significant damage. During an in person DnD session that is just a bad night for my character. In a video game on casual mode that is significantly suspicious. 

So what you might say. You've made and enjoyed the fanart, memes and etc. You got your $61 worth of playtime. So many other people were fine with the game, what is your problem? 

I love video games. They blend so many artforms and tell stories in ways never done before. It is a medium unique to our current century and when historians look back they will view video games as an insight to our culture. 

It frustrates me to no end that Baldur’s Gate 3 is considered the next gold standard. Too many games have done open world and RPGs in a fantasy setting far better for Larian (Swen Vincke) to have made the design and writing choices they did with BG3. There are so many podcasts and shows that have written better stories through the DnD format. I am embarrassed for the medium as an artist and frustrated as a player. Players and the industry deserve better than to have artists, actors, engineers etc. burn themselves out creating maximalist behemoths like this game. A game that is beautiful but basically unplayable, narratively, nihilistic and incoherent. 

[maxidentscene]

you fall asleep on him

⚘ genre. fluff

⚘ members. ot8

⚘ warnings. I didn’t proofread pls forgive me lmfao

chan wishes he could stay like this with you forever, but he’s a busy man

You had fallen asleep on his lap, per usual. It was always a hit or miss with you, he took chances every time he let you rest in his lap while he worked, enjoying the feeling of your arms wrapped around his neck but he could never complain

In his ideal world, Chan would hold you like this every night, feel the way your breathing slows to a steady rhythm as you drift off farther and farther. It was one of his favorite things in the universe yet he could rarely actually experience it since he’s constantly running around

He cherishes the few minutes that he can spare whenever you do this, wrapping his arms around your frame and resting his head on top of yours. Someday he’ll get to the point where he can stay as long as he wants, but for right now he’ll use that desire as motivation to work and earn that luxury

But unfortunately, for right now at least, duty calls and he has a few tracks to work on. He can’t really do that well with you on him, so he basks in your body heat a few seconds longer before pushing his chair away from the desk

“Sorry about this, pretty,” he breathes into your ear as he hoists you up, laying you down on the couch in the studio and slipping on some headphones to protect your ears from any sudden sounds that may come up while he’s working

lee know gives the biggest glare to anyone who breathes too loud around you

As soon as Minho notices that you’re softly snoring against his neck, it’s like flames appear around him. He goes into attack mode, keeping himself still and rubbing circles into the skin of your side while scanning the room for any threats

For a while, he can remain calm and confident that no one can disturb your sleep since most of the members were out doing their own things. As soon as he heard the door click open, his eyes narrowed, quick to look for the source of the noise because he just knew they’d be loud to announce their presence no matter who it was

“Shut the fuck up,” he uttered quietly but loud enough for Jeongin to hear as the younger appeared in front of the sofa, smirking down at the two of you cuddled up like a bunch of lovebirds. “Not a word.”

Putting his hands up in defense, he backs off because the killer look in Minho’s eyes is a little too intense to mess with. He minds his own business, putting his stuff away and heading to the bedroom to leave you two at peace

This occurred again and again as more members came piling in, your boyfriend spitting empty threats when he’d hear someone kick off their shoes or slam the fridge shut harder than necessary. He’s your protector to put it simply

changbin takes pictures in every angle he can muster

The moment he realizes that you’re snoozing away on his lap, Changbin restrains himself from jumping up with glee. He’s dreamed about cute, small moments like this with you where you finally felt safe enough to be so vulnerable with him

You look too adorable, cheek slumped against his leg, arm hanging off of the couch. He made sure the flash and sound were off before snapping photos of you from the left, the right, the front. Anything to catch your peaceful face

After calming down and putting the phone to the side, he soaked up the sentimental moment, a loving smile spread across his face while he massaged the back of your neck. It made him feel a sense of pride to know that you trusted him enough to do something like this, even if it wasn’t that big of a deal

Naturally, he does everything in his power to make you as comfortable as possible during your little nap. A blanket is thrown across your figure, a pillow is placed on his lap underneath your head and the tv was turned down to avoid loud noises. “What a little baby,” he cooed down at you

He loved it though. Scrolling through the pictures was the best part of the experience, picking the best one to make his lock screen and refusing to delete any of them despite the fact that there were around a hundred taken

hyunjin doesn’t even notice that you’re asleep until you don’t respond to him

In his defense, the movie that the two of you were watching was really good. His reactions had been over the top, so heavily captivated by the storyline that he hadn’t noticed how still you were

Your weight against his shoulder was something that he got used to fast, he was free space for you to lounge around on, more than happy to accommodate you in his hold. Honestly, he just figured that you were ignoring his ooh’s and ah’s. “That’s something you would do,” he laughed at the screen, turning his head to see your reaction only to be met with your closed eyelids

He froze then and there, studying your form and wondering if he should stay like this or move so that your neck didn’t hurt when you woke up from the weird angle

Ultimately, he would’ve felt like a criminal if he had let you sleep so uncomfortably. You waking up to a sore neck all because he decided not to help fix your position would probably fill him with years of guilt. Yes, it was that serious

So, slowly but surely, he laid you on your back across the couch and propped your head up with a pillow. Throwing a blanket over you and kissing your forehead, he eagerly hit play and got back to the movie

han falls asleep with you

The both of you, just like everyone else in the shared space, were so tired from your recent travels that you couldn’t fight sleep any longer. Han had sprawled out on his bed as soon as he entered his room, stomach sinking into the mattress and head shoved under the pillow

You stared down at your exhausted boyfriend with love in your eyes. “That flight was intense,” you yawned, to which he yawned back almost immediately

“I could probably sleep for 2 years straight,” his muffled voice made you laugh in response, watching as his body visibly relaxed. You debated getting changed into different clothes, but truthfully your eyelids were getting heavier the longer you stood in front of the bed

You followed suit, laying on top of him and snuggling into his side. Wordlessly, the two of you fell into the deepest sleep that you’ve had all week. It was a sweet sight and all of the guys witnessed it, Chan being the snitch and telling the whole house to come and look at the two of you

The boys all gathered by the doorframe, impressed that Jisung could just sleep soundly despite his partner being right on top of him. Of course, they took their own equal rounds of photos and videos for later blackmail usage but they decided against being total dicks, quick to clear the room and let you get the rest you clearly needed

felix has experience, he’s used to being used as human melatonin

Talking to Felix was so easy. He made it easy to come to when you felt stressed, sad, angry because he was good at empathizing while also searching for small ways to resolve your problem. This time around, you complained about sleep

Hearing that you hadn’t slept well the past few days put a frown on his face, his eyebrows furrowed with concern. Although he wished that you told him sooner, the need and urge to help soothe you and get you to sleep took over and before you knew it, you were draped in fuzzy blankets

“I help the members sleep all the time,” he kissed the spot under your ear, pulling you close enough to smother you in the warmth of his chest. The soft sound of his heartbeat relaxed your racing mind, his fingers coming up to your back and scratching lightly. “I guess I’m so boring that it puts people to sleep.”

You snicker with him, lightly slapping his arm. “You could never be boring,” Felix smiles down at you. He loves when you say pretty words like this. “You’re just comfy, you know? Sweet and kind and warm. Like a teddy bear.”

He also happens to love your tired rambling, quick to shush you and lull you to sleep so you can stop keeping yourself awake. Once he realizes that you’ve become a bit limp in his arms, he sighs in content before dozing off himself

seungmin does not let you nap in peace

Ruthless teasing is just in Seungmin’s nature, he jumps at every opportunity that is handed to him. This one is no different, you’re fast asleep against his arm and he just isn’t having it. Maybe it was rude and he should let you sleep, but you promised that you’d watch the baseball game with him so really, this is on you

He starts by tickling the area behind your neck gently with his fingers, retracting as soon as you squirmed in your sleep, careful not to get caught. Doing it again only bit him in the ass as you shot a glare up at him, wrapping your arms tighter around him. “Stop messing with me.”

“You said you’d watch this with me,” he whispered down at you, swiping his thumb against your cheekbone gently before tugging at the skin. You whined out and decided to just move altogether, throwing yourself onto the other side of the bed away from him

Your efforts failed as he followed you over, snaking his arms around you and pressing you flush against him. “You promised!” He protested, ticking your sides and watching in satisfaction as you thrashed around in his arms, desperate to just get away from him

Annoying you was his favorite thing to do but he also knew his limits, soon retracting his hands before patting your head and pulling the comforter over you. The match didn’t matter as much as he made it seem, anyway

jeongin remains unbothered and allows you to attach to him like a koala

The bed dipped near his legs as you settled yourself down on the bed, laying your head on the back of Innie’s thigh as he laid on his stomach, his fingers moving all over his phone as he played a mobile game

It wasn’t surprising to feel you wrap your limbs around his leg, you always became such a needy baby when you were tired and he was sure to remind you every single time. “That’s your spot of choice this time?” You can hear the smile in his voice as he taps away on his game

“Mhm,” your answer was mumbled, teeth digging into his jeans ever so slightly to make him jump, eliciting a laugh from the back of your throat at his reflex. “Gonna sleep for a bit. Don’t kick me off.”

He would never. You were secretly the cutest thing in the world to him, he relished the feeling of your body heat against his as you curled up into him. He loved the way you latched to him as soon as you felt a little sleepy, it was endearing

“I’ll try not to,” he reaches down to find your hand, squeezing it gently once its in his own before bringing it back up to where he had it originally. He was your safe place and you were more than happy to let his warmth send you to sleep

taglist. @monstaxdirtywonk

[ozarkthedog]

summary: joel & tess find you beaten and bloody on the streets in the q zone. they bring you to their place to nurse you back to health but when you try to leave they aren’t so quick to let you go.

warnings: soft!dark joel x afab!reader x softdark!tess. dubcon → noncon. mention of blood/injuries. drug use. threesome. stockholm syndrome. forced drugging. no beta.

word count: 5.0k

author’s note: barely read this over, sorry, i just wanted to get it posted. first time writing for joel & tess. hope people enjoy it! title & lyrics by Depeche Mode.

☽ 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭 ♁ 𝐎𝐳𝐳𝐢𝐞'𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 ☾

There'll be times, when my crimes Will seem almost unforgivable I give in to sin Because you have to make this life livable - Strangelove

A puddle drenches your shoe as you absentmindedly step into it splashing water up the back of your leg. If FEDRA hadn’t kept you working overtime you’d already be in the safety of your little studio apartment.

Damn FEDRA and their crappy ass street lights. Barely half of them were lit leaving the damp roads dark and gloomy and perfect for thieving or worse.

You’d made a life for yourself during the outbreak, kept mostly to yourself besides working and going on illegal runs from time to time. The few runs you did were with Joel and Tess, the couple all of QZ was afraid of and knew to keep on their good side. They looked out for you whenever you ran with them and slipped you ration cards or found supplies as payment. 

A dog barks in the distance and makes you look down the road you came up. A shadowy figure looms in the distance. They’re far enough to not cause trouble but you keep moving, even a bit faster now.

Your skin prickles as a cool breeze blows by. You hug yourself to keep warm and catch a glance over your shoulder again to find the stranger has gained on you. 

Your heart lodges in your throat and you break into an all-out sprint. Your lungs burn and you pray to make it home safe as the figures booming footfalls get louder and louder.

You round a corner too fast, digging your heels into the concrete when you spot a small, dark doorway perfect to hide in. You hold your breath and wait for the stranger to pass but they never do. 

Time drags on. You wait for as long as you can, willing your heart to slow before peeking around the brick wall. 

Suddenly you’re hit in the face with your eye socket taking the brunch of the blow. 

Searing pain erupts in your right eye and you yell as you collapse against the wall. You blindly strike out at the assailant, only catching a glimpse of an old gray bandana before something hard hits your ankle.

You scream in agony as the muscle and tendons tear from the bone forcing you to fall to the ground. A lone cement step slams against your temple on your way down and you drown in a sea of black.

 The first thing you notice is the pain. 

Your right eye socket feels like it wants to cave in and your ankle pounds like it has a pulse. You sleepily blink your eyes open, wincing at the sting in your right eye before rolling over in a bed that was much too big to be your own.

You sit up with a gasp, your ankle radiates with sharp, burning pain that makes you dizzy. You hear movement to your right as you collapse back onto the bed with a whimper.

“She’s awake.” A gruff, Texan accent states from across the room. 

More movement and then a warm hand smooths across your forehead. “Welcome back to the world of the living.” 

Your brow furrows at the woman standing over you. “Tess?” 

“You got quite the shinner.” The dirty blonde muses as she traces the raised flesh that surrounds your eye. 

You wince, pulling away from her touch. “What am I doing here?”  

She purses her lips at your tone. “We found you on our way home from a run last night. Took you in and cleaned you up.” She pauses as she looks over your wounds. “A thank you would be fucking nice.” 

Your jaw clenches. “Thanks.”

“What the hell were you doing out so late?” Joel grunts from his place at the foot of the bed. His hands fall to his hips and he sets his hard eyes on you. “Well?”

You fiddle with the blankets, close to cowering under their combined stares. “FEDRA kept us late. I had no choice.” You mutter, hating that you looked so weak in front of them. Bits and pieces from the assault flash across your mind causing tears to spring to the surface and make your eyes sting. Oh, how you wish you were in your own bed so you could cry in private.

Tess gathers you in her arms despite your protest. “Shh. None of that. You’re safe now.”

Joel steps around the bed and leans his hands on the edge. “Did you get a good look?”

The warmth coming from Tess makes you sleepy and you slowly shake your head. “No. It was too dark.” You exhale, as the room spins from the energy it took to have the small conversation.

Joel pushes himself away and drags a hand over his beard clearly perturbed as he stalks into the adjoining your before you hear a door slam shut.

Tess rocks you softly before turning you on your side. She drapes herself along your back spooning your frame as you fall into a deep sleep once again.

You awake a few hours later from a light, disorientated sleep with Tess still wrapped around you. 

It was strange being so close to the woman who made others in the QZ tremble with fear. She was a beautiful woman. Whenever you did a run with them you had to shut out your thoughts about her because many times just being in her presence made you feel like a kid with a schoolyard crush.

The front door opens softly and boots shuffle across the worn floor. Joel appears around the corner spotting your worried gaze instantly. 

Joel was not a man to cross. You knew little of his life before the outbreak and you really didn’t want to know. He was a guard dog with a permanent scowl. After every successful run with the pair, you hoped to see a little smile on the broad Texan but all you got was a silent nod of praise.

Joel removes his jacket and lays it over the foot of the bed. He’s wide awake with skin flushed and sweat peppering his forehead like he just came back from a fight. He had no wounds, at least that you could see, aside from red, swollen knuckles.   

He sinks into the bed with a groan. You’re forced to face him as Tess is plastered against your back, spooning your spine with her soft warmth.

“How’s the ankle?” he whispers, rolling onto his side to get a good look at you. His southern accent soothes your nerves like a hot cup of tea.

He seems to care which is odd considering he never paid much attention to you before. Many times you’d tripped and fallen while out with them and he barely looked back.  

You tuck your hands under your cheek with a pained sigh. “Fucking hurts. Like a butt load.” 

Joel scoffs at the silly remark but a light smirk tugs the corners of his lips. Your heart is close to beating out of your chest at the sight. 

His softening eyes scan your face carefully. “How long you been awake?”

“Not sure. The pain has kept me tossing and turning.” you exhale, shakily.

“Here,” he reaches into his pocket taking out a small, cracked pill. “Take this. It’ll help.” 

“What is it?” you reach for it, cautious to not wake Tess.

“Oxy.” He states casually before popping three of the broken pills himself and rolling onto his back.

You stare at him and then at the pill. “What’ll it do?”

“Help you sleep.” He grits before giving you a reassuring nod. “It’ll be okay.”

The bitterness makes you pull a face as swallow it down and Joel chuckles. “You’re not supposed to taste it.”

“Well, I normally take pills with water.” You grimace as the pill slowly slides down your throat. 

Joel sighs through his nose as he lays his right hand on your hip and lets it rest there. “Just relax. You’ll feel better once you sleep.”

Your skin burns under the weight of his hand and from the arm that Tess has strewn across your belly keeping you attached to her.

How did you end up here? Why are they doing this? You’re a nobody taking up space in a world that easily chews people up like you and spits them out.  

“Could we cut the fucking chatter now?” Tess grumbles and hugs you tighter to her body.

“Sorry.” You and Joel say in unison. 

You lay awake listening to the older pair breathe deeply until the drug takes effect and drags you into a dreamless state.

The bed is empty when you wake up the next day. It takes a moment to remember your surroundings as the drug slowly dissolves from your system. Dishes clash in the attached kitchen and catch your attention. You see Tess popping two slices of toast out of a toaster and depositing them on a plate before turning in your direction.

She gives you a soft smile when she sees you’re awake. You try to sit up but instantly stop when your ankle throbs forcing a pained whimper from your lips.

“Hey, take it easy.” Tess says curtly, grabbing you under the armpits and easily lifting you into a seated position at the head of the bed.

She sits next to you on the bed, leaning against the wall holding the plate of the delicious smelling toast. Despite the pain, your mouth is watering. 

“Are you hungry?” She asks as she tears into a slice of toast and brings it to your lips. 

You grab at the slice but she snatches it away with a “tsk”. “I don’t want you over-exerting yourself. Just relax.” She gives you a pointed look when you roll your eyes but you give in when your belly rumbles.

“Good girl.” She smirks at your submission and slowly feeds you bite after bite of the dry toast.

“How’d you sleep?” Tess asks as she drapes an arm around your shoulder. Her warmth slightly eases your suffering making you melt into her side.

“Not so good. My ankle kept me up.” You grumble into her shoulder. “But Joel gave me something and that helped me sleep for a few hours.”

Tess rests her chin on your head and smiles into your hairline. “You should take another one. Make sure you keep up with it so the pain doesn’t get too bad.”

She leaves the bed for a moment, placing the dirty dish in the sink before coming back with a glass of water and the familiar pill except this one isn’t cracked in half. “Drink up.”

You swallow the med without thought as your ankle rages. “How many of those do you have? I don’t want to be taking your stash. I don’t have enough to pay you back.” You ask, concerned.

“Hush.” The older woman waves away your worry and plants herself next to you once more. “The pain meds help keep you relaxed and that’s all we want.” Her tone hints at something more but you’re too distracted by the pain to notice.

You anxiously play with the worn seam of the blanket, looking for the right words when suddenly you blurt out. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you and Joel.” Your face heats to a million degrees and you want to sink into the bed and disappear. 

“Hey, no need to say anything.” Tess soothes your worry with a gentle touch to your cheek. “You’re safe, now. You’ll always be safe with us.”

Her smell invades your brain and you want to wrap yourself around her. The drug invades your blood and makes your brain and coherent thought hazy. You no longer feel any pain, only the softness of Tess.

You turn your body into hers and lay your head on her chest breathing deeply. “Mmm, nice. This nice.” You mumble. “Sooo soft and pretty.”

Your head bounces against her chest as she chuckles at your drugged statement. “Yeah? You think I’m pretty?”

Her lips curl into a grin as you dumbly nod and look up at her. She gazes at your slackened features, knowing you weren’t in your right mind and kisses you anyways. A satisfied sigh puffs from your lips against hers as she deepens the kiss.

Your hands fist her shirt with a ragged moan as you simultaneously melt into the caress and feel yourself being dragged into a deep slumber. 

Tess breaks the kiss and rubs the frown of wrinkles from your forehead. “Shhh. I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

By the third day, they let you eat at the table. 

Joel easily carried you over to the small dining set and placed you in the chair as if you were made of porcelain. He propped your injured ankle on his thigh while the three of you ate mostly in silence until Tess mentioned that they had to make a run outside the QZ for a few hours.

“I can head home when you guys leave.” You suggested, taking a long sip of water as you washed down the oxy that Joel had given to you. “Best I got out of here anyways.”

Tess chuckled and shook her head. “How the hell are you going to get around on that?” She nods towards your maimed foot.

You hadn’t thought that through. 

“Well, I -” you stumble looking for an answer when Tess cuts you off. “You’ll stay here for as long as it takes for that ankle to heal.” 

Joel stays quiet but sends you a soft smile and rests a reassuring hand over your swollen limb. “I left a few pills on the nightstand to get you through the day.” He says, tenderly as he stands and carefully lays your injured foot on the seat.

“Don’t be stupid and try to leave. We know where you live.” Tess quips with a wink before she and Joel step into the hallway and lock the door behind them.  

You spend most of the day in the single chair by the window letting the sun warm your bones while you read one of the random books they stowed away. You get around with a single crutch Joel brought home the morning after they rescued you.

You hop from the tiny living room to the kitchen to the bathroom whenever you needed it. You could barely put any pressure on your swollen foot without it screaming. Those little pills called out to you as your ankle felt like it had a pulse of its own. 

You hopped over and sat down on the mattress before picking up two of the pills and swallowing them down.

You lay back on the bed with a sigh and shut your eyes waiting for the pain to diminish. The sheets smell of Joel and Tess. His woodsy musk mixed with her surprisingly sweet scent drove you mad. Being alone in the apartment without them made your body hurt.

Bright, euphoric light began pouring into your veins as the oxy swan through your system. You laugh and curl into a ball on top of the comforter. Your brain feels like a balloon floating in the air as your body warms under the effect of the drug. 

You press your face into the sheets, conjuring up explicit images of Joel fucking Tess into the mattress. His muscles bulge with every thrust as she bucks against his cock, taking him deeper and deeper. 

You longed to know what it was like to be with them. What it felt like to be under Tess’s fingers and to feel Joel’s cock tear you open.

Your cunt clenches at the wicked thought and you grind yourself against the bedspread desperate for the tiniest relief. A wanton moan falls from your lips as the pleasure takes shelter in the base of your spine.

“My, my. What did we stumble onto?” Tess muses from her spot on the wall. You jolt and let out a shocked scream at the sudden intrusion. From her relaxed stance, it seems like she’d been there for a while. 

Your face swelters with embarrassment. You can’t meet her eyes as you try to right your clothing but make a shit show of it and collapse back onto the bed. 

“Awe, don’t hide on me now.” Tess stalks over and lifts your chin. She notices your glazed eyes and smirks. “Feelin’ pretty good, huh?”

You silently nod in her hold as the apartment door opens and familiar boots shuffle across the floor. The world spins as she molds herself to your side. “Those pills can sure make someone complaint.” She draws deft patterns on your belly, catching her fingers on your exposed skin making you moan from the light contact.

You shamelessly shove her fingers toward your aching core not aware of the broad man standing at the foot of the bed. Tess presses her lips to yours as she slides her hand beneath your panties. You both groan into one another when she finds your slick petals warm and weeping. 

“Seems like you were having a good time.” Tess glides her fingers through the sticky slice of you. Your hips rise off the bed as she drags languid circles around your clit making you whimper. “What were you thinking about?”

You whine and shove your face into her neck. “Go on. Tell me.”

It surprises you how quickly you fall in line for her. “You and Joel.” Your heart beats rapidly against you profess your desires. 

“Me and Joel…” Tess drags out the words forcing you to continue.

“Making me yours.” You moan before your spine bows with a torn gasp as Tess slowly presses her fingers into your pussy.

“Such a good girl.” Tess praises with a sigh as your body curls into her touch. “Isn’t she being so good for us, Joel?” 

Your cunt quivers at the mention of the man. Was he here the whole time?  

“Joel?” Your voice is a lithe whine as you blindly search for him with an outstretched arm, grasping at nothing but air. 

 “I’m here, Sweetheart.” A large, rough hand smothers your smaller one, encasing it completely in his hold. He gives your hand a squeeze and you purr from the simple, affection. Your big doe eyes meet his ravenous ones as they watch with fascination as your features twist in pleasure.

Your mind drowns in foggy arousal but every touch from Tess sets your nerves on fire. Heat rises in your belly as she plays with your cunt, drawing lewd gasps from your lips as she scissors your channel with expertise.

“You gonna let Joel and I fuck you? Make this tight cunt ours?” Tess asks as she settles her thumb over your clit and elicits frantic moans of approval from you despite your drugged state of mind. 

A dark growl sounds from above you. In a flash, your panties are torn from your hips, and your thighs are spread wide as Joel sinks between your legs. He latches his mouth to your searing center and all-out groans. 

You whimper in shock and sink your fingers into his salt-and-pepper tresses as he drags his tongue up your slit. Joel wraps his lips around your clit and sucks the tiny nub into his mouth producing a high-pitched whine from your open mouth. 

“Fuck she tastes good, Tess.” Joel mumbles into your sticky heat. “Just like we hoped.” A thick finger slides between your petals and curves along your channel making your spine arch as he finds what he was searching for and zeros in on it.

Your eyes find Tess as she sucks on her damp, slick coated fingers. “You gonna come for us, Sweetheart?” 

You dumbly nod. “I– yes, please. Can’t stop–” You stumble and moan as the pleasure crests. His tongue thrusts into your heat and unabashedly laves at your sweet hole. 

“Come on my tongue, pretty girl. Wanna drink you down.” Joel commands. He curls his fingers deep inside your cunt forcing you to the edge as you shatter around him. You come with a ragged shout, creaming all over his fingers and bearded jaw.

You come back to yourself just as something soft and unyielding prods your folds and ever so slowly pushes into your heat. The stretch is immense and painful. You’d gone so long without sex you’d forgotten how much prep you needed. 

“Fuck- she’s fucking tight, Tess.” Joel grunts, withdrawing his hips before carefully driving back into your soaked heat. “Don’t know how long I’ll last.”

Your body jolts with every powerful drive from the older man as he fucks you open. His cock drags blissfully against your walls; grazing your cervix with sharp kisses making you writhe and gasp from the massive intrusion.

“Don’t worry,” Tess says as she runs a hand through Joel’s graying hair. “This is just the beginning.” She smiles down at your worn state before laying down and cradling your head in her lap. 

Tess looks like an angel from where you’re laying. Everything feels like a dream as the overwhelming sensations of delight escalate. Joel’s hips punch the breath from your lungs with every drive as Tess holds you lovingly and whispers praises from above.

Your clit is overused and sensitive as Tess circles the tiny pearl pushing you closer to the edge. Your cunt milks his thick length forcing his hips to stutter as he buries himself as deep as he can go.

“You look so good between us, Sweetheart.” Tess comments with a tender smile. “Come on his cock. Wanna watch you come.” She lands a rapid succession of meaningful smacks to your clit forcing your body to convulse from the rough treatment.

“Shit– shit–” Joel curses with a hiss. His cock swells as your body locks around his girth with a hoarse shout. You tumble into the dark abyss you’ve come to know since being taken in by the pair.

You wake up the next day in the usual amount of pain but now the pain registers between your legs. Worry spikes in your belly as you cup yourself, did Joel come inside you? You had passed out before he finished. He wouldn’t have been so stupid, right?

The apartment was quiet. They must have gone out. You wince as you sit up, your body is tired and exhausted. Your brain pounds behind your eyes as you hold it in your hands before spying a note on the side table next to the bed.

Tess had scribbled a short note saying they had to go on a quick run and that they’d be back around 11am. She mentioned you should take a pill as soon as you woke to ease any pain caused by last night. She signed the note with two XXs.  

Your first instinct after reading the letter was to take some of the pills they’d left for you but a nagging feeling in your gut made you pause. 

You didn’t know what to make of this situation. Sure, you had a crush on the couple but you weren’t looking for a relationship. You enjoyed being on your own despite the loneliness from time to time. Your heart couldn’t bear to lose anyone else after losing so much after the outbreak.

There was no point in staying here any longer since you could stand on your two feet. Granted putting half the amount of pressure on your injured ankle made your nerves pulse in pain. Still, you’d made it this far in the Q Zone without them, you could survive an injured foot.

You glanced at the clock, it was 9:30am. It was now or never.

Carefully, you swung your legs over the side of the bed and threw on your shirt. With shaky hands, you slowly slid your legs into your pants and grabbed the single crutch leaning next to the bed. 

Your body screams for the pain meds but you will yourself to move despite the pain. The urge to cease the pain and to quell the tremble from not having the drug in your system got louder and louder the closer you got to the door.

You twist the doorknob even though it’s locked. You give it a tug and then a hard yank but still met with resistance. Nervous energy spikes in your veins making you feel trapped like an animal in a cage. 

You pound your fists against the door, shouting nonsense at the top of your lungs when suddenly the door opens and you’re shoved to the ground as Joel and Tess step into the apartment.

“What the fuck is going on?” Tess rushes over to you looking concerned as she helps you from the floor. 

Once you have a solid footing you shove her away. She reaches for you despite your obvious animosity. “What’s gotten into you, Sweetheart? 

“I want to go home.” You state, wiping tears from your eyes with the back of your hand. “Just let me fucking go home.”

Tess sighs through her nose and looks at Joel. He looks irate as he wipes his hands with an old gray bandana. Your brows furrow, knowing you’d seen that bandana before but you couldn’t place it. You’ve never been on the opposite side of that look and now you know why so many cower before him.

“You want to leave so bad? Then go.” Joel spits angrily, pointing towards the door. 

Your eyes flick between freedom and the couple. You hated how they made you feel guilty about wanting to go home.

You don’t look back or waste another second as you rush toward freedom when suddenly your world comes crashing down when Joel yanks the crutch from your hold.

“What the fuck, Joel?” You shout as you almost fall onto the ground. You gain your balance on your good foot and state at him incredulously.

“This is our crutch.” He says before tossing it somewhere in the room behind him. “You get your own.”

Anger flairs in your heart but doubt sinks heavily in your belly. There was no way you would make it all the way back to your apartment on one foot. You grit your teeth in frustration and slam your hand into the wall.

Still, you try and break free from their prison. 

You hop quickly to the door, reaching for the frame as Joel wraps a strong arm around your midsection. He covers your open mouth muffling your screams. He slams the door shut with his foot before dragging you across the apartment not caring if you hit your ankle as you try to wiggle yourself free.

He sits on the corner of the bed with you in a bear hug, locking your arms to your side with his much larger ones. 

“Why do you want to leave? Haven’t we done enough for you?” Tess asks softly, cupping your face in her hands. “You wouldn’t survive a minute out there.”

You try to shake free but Joel was a solid rock behind you. Your face burns with frustration. “I got by fine for years without you!” Tears prick your eyes as you stand your ground. 

Tess smooths a hand down your cheek. She looks disappointed. It gnaws at your belly as you lean into her caress. “Why won’t you stay?”

You blink up at her with a sigh. “I’m indebted to you both. You know that.” You suck in a shaky breath. “But I can take care of myself.”

Tess slowly nods. She shares a look with the gruff man holding you in place before walking into the kitchen. 

You make another go at escape, slamming your elbow back into Joel’s ribs. He chuckles at your feeble attempts before tightening his grip making your bones ache under the pressure.

“Joel, please. I’ll be fine.” You plead as you turn and stare up at the bearded man with doe eyes.

He looks you over carefully, his brown eyes have turned a murky black. “We can’t chance it, Sweetheart.” He shakes his head. “We can’t bare to lose you.”

Tess comes back holding something in her hand. “You’ll feel better after you take this.” She says calmly as her fingers dig into your cheeks trying to pry your mouth open.

“No!” You cry, slamming your head into Joel’s shoulder.

Tess presses cruelly on your tendons, making you whimper as you struggle in vain against the pair.

Joel widens his legs sitting you between his thighs as he locks his booted feet around your shoeless ones leaving you open and exposed. You scream as your ankle pounds under the weight of his leg.

He easily restrains your failing limbs with one arm. “Come on, Sweetheart. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.” His chest rumbles against your back as he holds your fighting body tighter. 

Your eyes go wide as saucers when Joel pinches your nose shut. Your breath catches in your throat creating a deep stutter of a noise. 

“Just give in. Be good for us.” Joel urges as his whiskers graze the shell of your ear.

Your heart pounds against your chest. Blood boils in your lungs. There was no way out of this. 

“We know what’s best for you,” Tess warns with a sly smile. “You’ll be safe and sound here with us.” 

The room starts to spin. The lack of air smothers your nerves, and a horrid whine bubbles up the back of your throat as you feel the blackness creep in.

“For fuck’s sake.” Tess swears before releasing her grip on your jaw. “Just remember you did this to yourself.” 

The older woman sucker punches you square in the gut. You double over with a sick gag before Tess grabs you by the hair and shoves the pill in your gasping mouth.

You cough and sputter from the intrusion of the pill as she clamps her hand over your mouth. The bitterness of the pill makes you gag as it dissolves on your tongue and drips down your throat.    

“Swallow, Sweetheart. Swallow.” Joel commands softly as he rubs the column of your throat forcing the pill down your gullet.

Tears spill freely down your cheeks as the pair hold you in their arms. They set their sights on your long ago. It was only a matter of time before they had you forever.

follow @ozzieslibrary​ for fic updates!

[mebemilena]

We'll make Heaven a place on Earth

A/N: i can't watch Euphoria because it gets me stressed. I got to learn about cassie and i think she deserves some loving. let's writte fluff. Also i only write for cassie howard because sydney sweeney is an adult herself.

tittle from Heaven Is a Place on Earth, by Belinda Carlisle

Artist female reader but i guess i didn't use pronouns.

warnings: mentions of sex and nudity

-

Summary: you're an artist, you paint angels. Cassie asks you to paint her. Naked.

-

The morning sun could barely shine behind the heavy clouds, the chance of a storm hitting the city again. Cassie woke up to an empty bed and frowned. She walked around your apartment, knowing exactly where to find you, and entered the small studio, a smile already growing on her face. 

"What are you up to?", she approached you, placing herself behind you and her arms around your shoulders.

You hummed at her warmth, putting your paintbrush in the cup with dirty water you've used all morning. "Just another piece.", you said, your hand resting on her forearm.

Cassie stared at your painting, a cloudy sky with a few cupids flying around. Her eyes wandered through the angels you had made out of ink as she rested her chin on the top of your head, still standing behind you. "They don't have faces...?", she questioned.

You took a deep breath before speaking, trying not to stutter. "Well.. i was thinking i could, you know... borrow your features?", you asked, biting your lip and closing your eyes, bracing yourself for a negative answer.

Cassie didn't respond though. She moved so she could look at you and smiled, yet to give you an answer.

"I understand if you don't feel comfortable about it, i can ju-", you started but she kissed your lips before you could finish.

"I'd love to.', she nudged your nose with her own and kissed you again, her eyes holding a mischeave that could make Satan blush. "On one condition though.", she bit her lip, her eyes never leaving yours.

"I want you to paint me.", she pecked your lips.  "Full body.", she kissed you again. "Naked.", she whispered, licking your lips softly and sensually.

-

The studio held a dim light, something you had prepared earlier. You had brought the chair from the living room, together with the baby blue fabric to cover Cassie's torso and part of her legs. She got to the room but didn't enter just yet, waiting by the door as she looked inside. You seemed more nervous than she ever would.

"You've painted lots of nude women, Y/N. I'm pretty sure you can paint one more.", Cassie mocked, giving you a playful smile.

You set your brushes and inks, bringing a new blank canvas closer. You watched Cassie undress nonchalantly, it wasn't her first time. She sits on the small sofa, waiting for your instructions.

"Can you lay a little? Your back to the arm of the chair. Put your arm above your head.", you instructed, holding the fabric, deciding how it would go on your model.

Cassie followed your instructions diligently, a straight face at your words. She recognized your professional tone when you were in work mode. It made her feel professional too, like this was something in between one of her fantasies and a possibility for her near future.   She had been your model before, for the painting classes you offered when you needed extra money. She had volunteered when your usual model had a problem and couldn't make it. "You're paying me to see me naked? Kinky", she joked at that time, hiding her nervousness.

"There is nothing sexual about nude painting, really. You're gonna get sore from keeping the same position and we are gonna struggle to find the right shades of ink to match the lights.", you had explained. In fact, the experience was much more professional than she had anticipated. She was sore, indeed. And the students applauded her by the end of the class, thanking her for the effort of being there like a statue, helping them study and learn. They looked at her with gratitude and respect, not like some horny teenagers watching a big boobies woman on a porn video.

Cassie smiled at the memory, lifting her head just enough to plant a small kiss to your cheek as you leaned down to adjust the fabric. You looked at her in awe, giggling when she winked at you.

The atmosphere was light and easy, the kind of atmosphere Cassie came to love while in college, peace becoming one of her favorite feelings. She did feel at peace when she met you, letting you learn about her and showing genuine interest in knowing you too. When you started dating, she'd remind herself that love is calm and gentle. Patient and kind. Like you.

-

The baby blue fabric was mostly between Cassie's legs, creating some volume under her body, the color mimicking her eyes almost perfectly . Cassie had her breasts and collarbones on display though she laid with her back to the ceiling. The position would get tiring soon, one arm folded onto her middle and the other supporting her head. 

As you sketched Cassie, she'd try not to laugh. She remembered you saying there was nothing sexual about nude painting, but she found it extremely intimate to watch you paint her alone. She'd keep your expreions to her memory. The way you blush when you look directly into her eyes, the way you lick your lips when they get too dry. 

"Stop moving.", you warned with a smile, your eyes not leaving the canvas.

Cassie's smile grew. "I feel like we're on Titanic. We should have gotten some jewelry.", she suggested.

You were finishing the sketch when she cleared her throat, watching as your eyes left the canvas and stopped at her again, curious.

Cassie got up from the chair, bringing the fabric with her, letting it  fall at her feet on the floor, revealing every little detail of her nudeness. She said no word, just stared at you, slowly walking in your direction, captivating your eyes with her own as if hypnotizing you. 

A serpent. A goddess. A woman.

Cassie.

Her firm steps took her to you and she gently took the charcoal from your hand, bringing your dirty finger to her lips, kissing them.

Cassie made you get up from your chair, pulling you  by your shirt, walking back to her previous spot by the chair and the fabric on the floor. She sits, bringing you down with her, her lips hovering above yours.

"Make love to me.", she demanded, eyes clouded with desire. "Here, now. With your angels watching us and blushing for all the noises we'll make.", she kissed your neck, biting softly on your skin. 

It would have sounded like she was teasing you, but Cassie looked very serious.

And you'd burn this building down before denying her every wish.

[pixystixx]

Hi can you do 2023 bill kaulitz x 13 year old daughter reader where reader has a best friend who's a boy and is german-Lebanese and his name is hassan and he's tan and has Siren blue eyes and wears black glasses and he's quiet and calm and likes staring at the reader because it's his habit and he doesn't know English so the reader speaks German to him and Tokio hotel invites both of them to their rehearsal and while the boys are talking they notice the boy and reader being close to eachother like hugging and he's putting his head on her shoulder and laughing and the reader is doing something and he stares at her and the boys tell bill about both of them and what they're doing and bill goes protective mode and Georg tells him that they will get married when they grow up and (i ran out of ideas so you can make your own too)

My Little Girl

tysm for the request!! this one's kind of shortt, my bad. i'm running on four hours of sleep and i have to get up at 5 am tomorrow. lol

2023 Bill Kaulitz is f!reader's dad

Summary: You and your best friend Hassan go to your dad’s (Bill’s) band rehearsal. Your friend is very timid and quiet. During the rehearsal, you and Hassan hang out like you always do. You overhear Bill’s friends talking about how cozy you guys are with each other. Bill switches over to complete protective dad mode. (572 words)

༻❦༺

“Hassan!” you call out to your best friend, “Are you ready?” Hassan nods and smiles timidly at you. He follows you into the studio. Your dad, Bill, is already chatting with the other bandmates. His bandmates are Georg, with short, brown hair, Gustav, with even shorter, blonde hair, and Tom, with long, dark hair. Tom is Bill’s twin brother, so they'd look the same if it weren't for their drastically different styles. “We can sit over here,” you say, leading Hassan to two chairs. 

The band is chatting quietly, and silence fills the air. “What music does your dad play?” Hassan asks, pushing his black glasses up the bridge of his nose. 

“They used to play rock music, but they still do sometimes. They do a lot more pop songs now. I’ve played you some of their music before,” you ramble. While you talk, Hassan never breaks eye contact. His light-blue eyes stare into yours. It doesn’t bother you at all. He’s always done that. After you finish ranting about your dad’s music, they finally start working on a few songs.

“I forgot to do my math homework,” Hassan whispers, lips next to your ear. You laugh at him, and he frowns. 

You pull him into a hug and say, “I’ll help you with it. Ms. Kendra gives the worst homework.” You keep your arms embraced around him for a bit. You release him from the hug and stick your tongue out at him. Hassan laughs again and lays his head on your shoulder. 

“Y/N, do you want us to play your favorite song?” Bill asks, walking over to Hassan and you. You nod with a bright smile on your face. The band plays your favorite song, and you sing along with your dad. You dance around happily, and Hassan sits on the floor watching you. His eyes follow your every move. 

Even though Hassan looks happily content on the ground, you walk over to him and grab his hands. You pull him up and make him dance with you. His cheeks turn pink since he’s shy. You continue forcing him to dance to the song.

Hassan and you sit back on the ground after dancing for a bit. You two are out of breath and laughing. He lays his head back onto your shoulder as you two laugh.

“Bill, look at your daughter and that boy,” Tom laughs, pointing at you guys. Bill turns his head and shifts to a shade of pink.

“They’re definitely going to get married in their twenties,” Georg chimes in. Bill shakes his head in denial.

“No! My daughter will forever be my little girl. No boy can marry her, not on my watch,” Bill explains, practically fuming, “She’s too young to be having crushes. They’re just close.”

You and Hassan start laughing at your dad’s overprotectiveness. Bill’s face is practically the color of his pink button-up shirt. Tom walks over to you guys and crouches down to sit next to you.

“Your dad might be a little overprotective, Y/N,” Tom smiles.

“I’m so not, Tom!” Bill argues, “I just love my little girl.” 

“Dad, I’m 13 now!” you whine. Bill starts walking over towards you. Bill picks you up and throws you over his shoulder. You erupt in laughter as he shakes you around.

“If I can still pick you up like this, you’re still my little girl.”

[eoieopda]

aphelion (knj)

aphelion (n): the point in the orbit of a comet at which it is furthest from the sun.

Kim Namjoon was as perfect when you lost him as he was when you found him.

Pairing: Kim Namjoon x AFAB!Reader Type: Flashback Prequel | Genre: Fluff & Angst, Smut | Rating: M (18+) AU: Strangers ⇢ Lovers ⇢ Exes, Lacunaverse (aka Lacuna!AU) Word Count: 19K Content Warnings: ANGST ANGST ANGST; gratuitously autobiographical; POV switches; Namjoon and MC are both musicians but not envisioned as "idols"; emotional support producer!Yoongi; self-insert!OC, jinseo; panic attack implied (crying, rapid breathing, chest tightness); depressive episode implied (lack of self-care, lack of appetite); a relationship dying in slow motion (ouch.) Smut Warnings: Vaginal fingering, lil bit of biting, implied unprotected sex, reader rides it like she stole it. A/N 1: This is the prequel to Lacuna and its sequel, Redamancy. It takes place over the course of two years (2020 to 2022 — we’re pretending COVID never happened, btw) and will have month/date info. at the top of each vignette. You can read the series chronologically (starting here) but I definitely recommend reading in the order it was written (Lacuna ⇢ Redamancy ⇢ Aphelion) because I think dramatic irony is fun and sexy. A/N 2: Endless thank you's to my emotional support moots, @jihopesjoint and @here2bbtstrash for beta-reading this unabashed entry from my diary. A/N 3: To my "Namjoon" — You were the best thing I didn't get to keep. I hope you found the sun. Suggested Listening: Spotify Playlist. ⚠️ 18+ only ⚠️ minors and ageless blogs will be blocked, on sight. my content is not for you. i do not want to interact with you. please respect my boundaries.

2020/7/18; 18:23

As awful as he knew it sounded, Yoongi was grateful to have someone in his life who was equally riddled with social anxiety. That flicker of dread he felt in the pit of his stomach was easier to digest when there was a hand — metaphorical, mainly, because the real thing was the tiniest bit sweaty — to cling to whenever he had to feign extroversion. Before you popped up into his life, perpetually on vibrate mode in the way that he was, he’d ventured out of his studio even less than he did now.

With you, there had always been a silent understanding: neither of you ever wanted to attend the company events that appeared simultaneously on your calendars; neither of you ever successfully shook off the feelings of guilt and obligation that prevented you from bailing altogether; and neither had ever — would ever — consider attending without the other. Co-dependence at its finest, you wore each other like a backpack and held on tight.

One of the terms of this unspoken social contract was that, when it came time to rally for one of the aforementioned, godforsaken label parties, Yoongi rushed over whenever you put up the Bat Signal. Instead of a cartoonish symbol in the sky, it always came in the form of a text — usually with a minimum of six (6) very urgent emojis — declaring a fashion emergency. No questions asked, he showed up on your doorstep every time. Yoongi never had any valuable input to offer, but he could tell you when you looked nice.

You always did, but he tended to keep that part to himself.

When Yoongi finally arrived at your apartment this time, he didn’t bother knocking the way he used to. By now, he knew that part of your pre-party panic included unlocking your door for him whenever you sent out your SOS. So, he let himself in and left his shoes at the door. Immediately, he heard a relieved sigh waft out from your bedroom down the hall.

“Oh, thank god!”

He waited for the blush in his cheeks to fade before he continued his journey to you, willing his standard poker face back into existence before it ratted him out. 

“Do I need to call in a helicopter evacuation?” Yoongi called out to you as he padded off in your direction. “How bad is the avalanche?”

Before he could get halfway to your bedroom door, you poked your head out through the doorway. You had those pink, plastic cylinders in your hair — the ones that looked spiky and uncomfortable, but that you somehow never complained about — and half your makeup done. Even in that cactus-printed bathrobe, Yoongi wouldn’t have been surprised if you wound up with a spread in the next issue of Nylon.

You grimaced. “Admittedly worse than the holiday party, but nowhere near as bad as the Great MAMA Catastrophe of 2017.”

“So…” Yoongi teased with a tilt of his head, “Yes to the helicopter evacuation, then?”

He didn’t have time to emotionally or physically prepare for whatever awaited him on the other side of your bedroom door because you grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pulled him inside as soon as he was within your reach.

Oh, good god, kid.

Yoongi opened his mouth to express how impressed — terrified? — he was by the explosion of outfits littering every surface of your room, but he quickly realized that no words would do it justice. He opted for a trademark, flat-line smile and a quiet grunt. You grimaced a second time, knowing full well what he hadn’t said out loud

Scurrying around him, you tore like a tornado through the immediate area to clear a path for him. You were clumsy enough to trip over every stray shoe but had reflexes — shockingly — quick enough to right yourself before your stumbling could send you to the ground. Once the carpet was sufficiently visible, you gestured to the small opening on your bed with a platform boot you’d unearthed somewhere along the way.

“You can, uh —” You continued waving the shoe in the direction of your bed, searching for the rest of your sentence. Yoongi watched in real time as your train of thought left the station.

More than a little endeared by your scattered brain, he offered, “Sit?” 

“Yes!” You snapped your fingers and pointed a finger-gun at him with a sheepish smile, “That. Do that while I try to find my vocabulary. It’s gotta be somewhere in this blast zone…” 

Voice already petering off, you wheeled back around to your regurgitated wardrobe.

Yoongi dropped into the only open spot on your mattress and leaned back to rest his weight on the palm of his hand. Settled into his usual space and routine, he fished his phone out of his pocket to check the time, as if the answer to that question would make a difference. 

It was half-six.

Ugh.

As always, the pair of you would wind up late; and, as always, that would still somehow mean that you’d be the first to show up. No matter how hard you tried to avoid it — leaving later and later for every party — you were perpetually, dreadfully guests numbered one and two.

“I never know what to wear for these things,” you whined, once again a disembodied head appearing in a doorway. 

When did you even sneak off into your closet? How were you physically able to reach it?

The rest of you reappeared underneath your head. You were clutching a dress in one hand and a skirt in the other, looking like your will to live had been hung up in their place. Worse, you had that little anime pout on, which didn’t bode well for the schoolboy crush Yoongi was secretly harboring, but you didn’t say anything. You just kept looking at him, eyes all pitiful and sparkly.

“Do you want me to ask him about the dress code?” he offered, unsure if that was what you were after but otherwise at a loss for solutions.

The look of mild-to-moderate panic washing over your face caused Yoongi to sigh. He knew you were thoroughly starstruck — he’d heard you gush over Namjoon and his new release for hours by now — but maybe he’d underestimated the extent. Your relief was immediate when he waved you off and said, “I’m not going to tell him that you’re the one asking.”

Yoongi [18:30]: on a scale of sweatpants to tuxedo, how hard do i have to try?

While he waited for an answer, Yoongi glanced back up to check your status. You’d once again disappeared in the few moments he’d glanced down at his phone screen. So damn sneaky. There was a significant amount of shuffling coming from the depths of your closet. Something shifted, then you yelped.

“You okay?” Yoongi called out, primed to get up and dig through the presumed rockslide for you.

Meekly, you popped back into view with one hand rubbing gingerly at the top of your head. You frowned. “I found my snow boots.”

“Sounded like your snow boots found you, kid.”

Yoongi’s phone buzzed in his hand. He ripped off the velcro-grip gaze he held on you and blinked down at the screen.

Namjoon [18:34]: Hyung, since when do you give a fuck about trying? lol

Yoongi chewed the inside of his cheek. He wasn’t sure what information to divulge: that he wasn’t asking because he gave a fuck; that you were the one who did; or that the only reason Yoongi was having this conversation at all was because you were the one that asked him to. He settled on something vaguely truthful.

Yoongi [18:37]: fuck off, joonie. since i’m bringing someone special and i want you to meet her.

The reply was immediate and three-fold:

Namjoon [18:37]: Call me Joonie again and see what happens 🤔 Namjoon [18:37]: Wear jeans in case I gotta chase you down for that. For real, though, it’s casual. Namjoon [18:37]: Also 👀

Yoongi shoved his phone back in his pocket without bothering to reply. He wouldn’t know what to say if he did, anyway. You weren’t the kind of person he knew how to summarize in a quick text; so he’d have to let your presence speak for itself. It always did.

When he looked back up from his hands, you reappeared in the closet doorway in a flouncy little dress. He had to stop himself from asking if you’d wear it to his funeral when he inevitably dropped dead. Once he succeeded at that, he swallowed thickly and focused on the two pairs of shoes you were holding, one in each hand.

Your face scrunched up while you mulled over your options. Without looking up, you asked absently and borderline shyly, “Did he respond?”

It took a beat for Yoongi’s brain to catch up; sundress season truly was the silent killer. In the pause, your inquisitive eyes flicked up to see if he’d simply ignored your question. He fumbled, pointed to the chunky, heeled sandals in your left hand, and then shot you a thumbs-up.

You rolled your eyes with a snort and knelt down to slip into his choice without further comment. As you did, you triple-checked that the ankle strap was secured and Yoongi didn’t have to guess why: the last time you wore them out, you hadn’t buckled yourself in properly. The thick tread had snagged on a curb; and your shoe didn’t come with you when you stepped up onto the sidewalk. You waited on one leg, the other foot bare in the wind, while Yoongi returned to the street to grab what you’d lost.

When you finished your ministrations, you stood back up to your full height — now with fifteen added centimeters — and brushed your hands against the back of your dress’ skirt. The expression on your face was somewhere between exhilarated and vaguely nauseous.

You clapped your hands together suddenly and sighed, “We doing this, Yoongs?”

He rolled his eyes so you wouldn’t get the wrong idea. He was endeared by that stupid nickname but unwilling to let you know as much. Still, he followed when you led him out of your bedroom; when you grabbed a laughably tiny and arguably useless purse off your hallway console table; and when you skipped out of your front door.

“Who’s driving?” Yoongi glanced over his shoulder at you as he hit the lock button on your door’s keypad. He didn’t need to ask — you had the alcohol tolerance of a newborn baby and couldn’t assume the wheel after more than two drinks — but he knew it made you feel better when he did.

Sheepishly, you pursed your lips.

He sighed with a microscopic grin, “Garage gate wouldn’t open, so I’m on the side of the building.” Then, he shuffled towards the elevator with you in tow. Even with the added height of your shoes, your short legs still struggled to keep up with his pace. 

As soon as the elevator doors re-opened on the ground floor, you threaded your arm around his and handcuffed him to you with your elbow bent. Before he could make a joke at your expense, you raised a manicured finger and said, “Do not start with me, Min Yoongi.”

So, he didn’t. He simply opened his passenger door for you and closed it once you’d slid into your usual place. As soon as he slid into his and pressed the start button, your phone automatically hooked to his Bluetooth stereo; and he couldn’t even whine about that fact because you’d already queued up some song he’d never heard in a language neither of you knew well. True to form, you didn’t let that stop you from singing along as loudly as you could — all the way to the venue.

It didn’t take long for Yoongi to find a spot or to parallel park in it, much to your amazement. It did, however, take ten minutes of silent sitting for either of you to say a word.

“Do we have to go in there?” you asked, damn near inaudibly. 

Where you sat, your left knee bounced at a speed almost imperceptible to the human eye. Yoongi only noticed because his knee was doing the same. He exhaled the breath he’d unknowingly held hostage and glanced at the time displayed on his car’s touch screen. He grimaced. “Shit started an hour ago. How much do you wanna bet that we’re still the first people here?”

You unbuckled your seatbelt. “Even if we are,” you started as you pushed open the passenger side door, “I’m not waiting to start the clock until guest number three arrives.” You shot him a pointed look as you slid out of the car. Adjusting your dress once you’d made it to your feet, you added, “One hour of kissing hands and shaking babies, then we’re out of here, right?”

Yoongi clamped his mouth shut, but it did nothing to ward off the laughter that made his shoulders shake. He nodded firmly, let his feet hit the pavement, then let his car door shut behind him.

“Compensatory lamb skewers, as usual?” He asked once he rounded the back of the car to join you on the sidewalk. On instinct, you threaded your arm through his to keep yourself on your feet, and your feet in your shoes. “But not from that place you picked last time. I’m ninety-nine-percent sure they clean it with a garden hose at night.”

You grumbled something about never being allowed to pick the restaurant before reaching for the door handle and petulantly jerking it open.

The second your respective feet stepped over the threshold, you both froze. It was the social equivalent of rigor mortis, the pair of you standing with locked limbs and gawking at the sheer number of people inside the hole-in-the-wall venue Namjoon had chosen. Clearly, he’d intended this to be as quaint as possible. Even more obviously, management hadn’t given a shit or fuck about that goal.

“This is,” you inhaled deeply as if you’d never get the chance again, and on the exhale, you wheezed, “So much. Oh my god.”

No matter how many times his shaking eyes scanned over the crowd ahead, Yoongi couldn’t find a single person he recognized, let alone wanted to spend an hour talking to. He snapped to look at you in the same moment you turned to him.

“What an hour this minute has been.”

“Lamb skewers?”

“Yes, please.”

Just as quickly as you’d entered, the pair of you turned to head out the door. Yoongi couldn’t grab the handle before a loud voice rang out from behind, “Hyung!”

A hand clapped Yoongi on the shoulder, spinning him around and leaving his emergency exit out of reach.

“So glad to see a familiar face,” Namjoon’s grin took up his whole face, but his mouth didn’t move with his words. They were forced out through gritted teeth, pleading the way his eyes were: If you leave me here, I’ll kill you.

Yoongi glanced at you out of the corner of his eye. He would’ve asked you — not with words, anyway — to make up some excuse to get you both out of there, to grab take-out and watch Naruto on his couch, but you couldn’t answer. Your starry-eyed gaze was aimed above you, and he’d venture a guess that everyone in the room had disappeared.

Everyone but Namjoon.

Damn it.

Somewhere, somehow, Yoongi heard a record scratch.

“Oh, shit,” Yoongi coughed, suddenly aware of his obligation as a mutual friend. Gesturing languidly between you and Namjoon, Yoongi reported for duty. “Joon, this is —”

Namjoon finally seemed to realize that you were standing there with Yoongi. He tilted his head to look down at you, and as soon as he did, Yoongi watched in slow motion as Namjoon’s eyes grew three times their usual size. Your name barely cleared Yoongi’s lips before Namjoon was extending a hand for you to shake.

Somewhere, somehow, the music seemed to swell.

Am I having a stroke?

The next minute that passed felt like an hour, too, and nobody said a word. It was you looking at Namjoon; Namjoon looking at you; and Yoongi’s eyes flitting back and forth between his friends with a kind of bemusement he couldn’t fake if his life depended on it. He’d crashed-landed in the middle of a drama, and he didn’t know what else to do, so he cleared his throat and said, “Uhh — shots, anyone?”

The next hour flew by in sixty seconds, and Yoongi couldn’t wrap his brain around how that could be. He’d lost faith in the concept of linear time, he knew that much. The two people he sat next to were meeting for the first time, but there was a familiarity present that he couldn’t put a finger on. Like you were both saying hello in this life after saying goodbye in a previous one.

Throughout the conversation, Yoongi couldn’t keep his attention on the words being tossed back and forth; not even the ones he was offering up. Huh, he thought, so, this is what it looks like when people meet who they’re meant to.

“Listen —” You smacked your hand down on the tabletop, swallowing down a laugh as you faked incredulousness. You pointed directly at Yoongi, causing him to choke on his whiskey. “I don’t care if I have to read translations on an app, Nas’ lyricism is unparalleled —”

“Facts,” Namjoon chimed in with a tip of his glass. 

The way your eyes sparkled in response wasn’t lost on anyone.

Yoongi rolled his. “Okay, but from a production standpoint, we all know that —”

Simultaneously, you and Namjoon sucked in breaths. The arguments you let loose didn’t match in words, but the sentiment was the same, downright seismic in its intensity.

“Don’t you dare bring Kanye West into this!”

“Hyung, I swear to God, if the next name out of your mouth is Kanye West, I’m leaving my own fucking party.”

The eldest raised his hands defensively. “Fine, fine, fine,” he conceded. Yoongi slumped a little lower in his chair, accepting defeat. He glanced down at his phone to check the time — as if that wasn’t a lost cause — and when he looked up again, you and Namjoon had deviated down some winding tangent about the core of hip-hop being poetry.

It was odd, the way Yoongi’s stomach flipped then. Not jealousy, but fondness. Hunger, too, though that was secondary to the weird glimmer of pride he felt watching a bridge he’d unknowingly built link two spheres of his life together. There was a strange sense of clarity, to top it all off; one that changed all the question marks in his head to periods.

You and Yoongi would be friends. 

Yoongi would be at peace with that fact. 

The slightly sweaty hand that pulled you through that event wouldn’t be his; and he would be at peace with that, too.

Yoongi would grab lamb skewers on his way home and wait for your call tomorrow to hear how the rest of your night had gone without him.

With a signature, flat-line smile, Yoongi slid off his stool and slid his empty glass towards the bartender. Then, he clapped a hand on Namjoon’s shoulder. The younger stopped mid-sentence with a start and blinked up at Yoongi, whose smirk immediately dropped, deadpan.

He glanced at you and confirmed that you were too busy ordering another drink to overhear. Then, he leaned down towards Namjoon and whispered, “Don’t fuck this up, Joonie.”

Namjoon gulped. Yoongi could hear it as he turned away, letting that smirk reappear once his back was to Namjoon.

He won’t.

2020/7/18; 21:06

Namjoon’s face hurt.

There was a telltale ache in his cheeks that confirmed it: he hadn’t smiled that much, that completely, in a long damn time. At the rate things had gone over the last two hours, he wouldn’t be surprised to catch his reflection in the bathroom mirror and find wrinkles demarcating just how crinkled his eyes had been. It was a wonder he’d been able to see you at all with the way his laughter leaked over his lash lines. Then again, your grin was burned into his brain already. Given the way you lit up, he was convinced that he’d see you — just you — even in the dark.

“Stop laughing at me!” you whined with your hand covering your mouth. Though you tried to hide it, Namjoon could still see you grinning, even with your mouth full. “I feel very attacked.”

He snorted. “Not an attack, just an observation. Can’t say I’ve ever witnessed someone order a beverage they don’t like just to eat the garnish.”

Quickly, you skewered another blackberry with the end of your straw and guided it under the hand covering your mouth. When you placed the straw back in your drink, the fruit was gone; your eyes were sparkling.

“Are you just jealous that you’ve never thought to do it?” You tilted your head to the side as you chewed. The little flex of your eyebrows made his stomach flip, so he swallowed hard and wondered if you noticed.

“Honestly,” he started with a sigh. He slumped down in his seat, looking as pathetic as possible while he eyed the remaining fruit in your glass. “Yeah. Little heartbroken, too.”

“Oh?” You pouted and Namjoon was on the brink of passing the fuck out.

The hand over your mouth dropped. You shifted on top of your stool, grabbed hold of your blackberry malt, and leaned in as you scooted it across the bar to Namjoon. The smile tugging at your lips was petal soft, though the flash of bright white teeth hit him like high-beams. He was a deer; he was frozen; and he didn’t give a shit if you ran right over him.

Elbows against the bar, you leaned even further. This time, when you tilted your head to the side, your hair gave way and left your bare shoulder in his line of sight. For the first time in his life, Namjoon finally understood why something as innocuous as a short-sleeve or exposed ankle was deemed pornographic a century prior. In the year 2020, he was losing his mind over an acromioclavicular joint and some — smooth, touchably soft — flesh.

“Because I haven’t offered to share?”

Jesus Christ.

He was seconds away from biting down on his fist to keep from groaning. That coquettish, candy-coated voice of yours was a problem in and of itself, but when you looked at him from under your lashes like that, Namjoon was ready to call in a bomb threat to his own party. He couldn’t simply fuck off with you, though — not without an excuse he could sell to Bang Si-Hyuk later.

Namjoon needed an out, now. Unfortunately for him, all he could think about was biting down on that shoulder, following the curve of it with his —

He needed to get a grip. Fast.

Swallowing hard, he cleared his throat. “Exactly. Rude.”

You smirked; he winked. To keep his mouth occupied, Namjoon grabbed the spare straw from your drink and speared a blackberry for himself. Holding his prize out in salute, he nodded his head with a smirk of his own. “Geonbae!”

You smiled sweetly again as you watched him pluck the fruit off the end of the straw with his teeth; but you grinned with all you had when the whiskey-drenched berry hit his taste buds like a punch. Sour, unbelievably potent after steeping so long high-proof liquor. Every part of him clenched at once, prompting you to laugh with your whole chest.

What a perfect fucking sound.

“Shit,” Namjoon sputtered. His face unpuckered and gave way to a grin that likely rivaled yours.

“How are you not tanked right now? Seriously, I’m twice your size and can handle my liquor. That —” He waved his hand towards your glass, “— nearly knocked me on my ass.”

You opened your mouth to respond — to tease him mercilessly, he hoped — but you were cut off by the horrendous sound of Namjoon’s phone vibrating against the bar and his own empty glass. The cacophony rattled in his rib cage. Both of you flinched at the sudden interruption, leaving him to wonder if you also forgot that anyone else existed.

Namjoon glanced quickly at the illuminated screen, then back up to you. He would’ve ignored his texts in a heartbeat — indefinitely, without hesitation — but you squeezed his hand as you slipped off your stool to your feet. With your promise that you were headed to the restroom and would be right back, he gave himself permission to look back down at his phone.

Yoongi [21:43]: you tell her about that comet thing? she’s an unrelenting nerd like you. she’ll be into it.

If he could have, he would’ve kissed Yoongi through the phone for two reasons. The first of which was that, in the time he’d spent talking to you, Namjoon had completely forgotten about the one thing he’d talked about incessantly for the past month: the upcoming appearance of Neowise. The second was that, once again, Yoongi had come in clutch with a reason to bail on a social obligation.

Namjoon [21:45]: You’re a lifesaver and I love you. Yoongi [21:46]: ew

Namjoon was still chuckling when, unexpectedly, he felt playful fingertips trail across his shoulder blades. You, he quickly realized as you walked behind him and sat back down on your stool. He shivered, even after the trace of your touch was gone.

“All good?” you asked with a soft smile.

Yeah, he thought, really fucking good.

Namjoon grinned automatically. He picked up the spare straw he’d used earlier and harpooned another blackberry, not having learned his lesson last time. The whiskey hit his tongue, burned beautifully on the way down, and emboldened him.

Without hesitation, he asked, “Do you wanna get out of here? There’s something I want to show you.”

Your wide eyes blinked back at him, then they scanned the room to confirm that, yes, it was still packed with people — up to and including executives from the label. Yes, he did just offer to ditch all of them for you, consequences be damned.

“Yes,” you responded, as if that was the easiest decision you’d ever made.

Namjoon got to his feet and held out his hand to you. “Not afraid of heights, are you?” His smirk all but dissolved when your fingers interlocked with his.

“Not if the fall would be worth it.”

He didn’t know what to say in response to that statement — one so simple, made so easily as if it was a thought you repeated to yourself often. You’d stunned him, really, and Namjoon was uncharacteristically lost for words. So, you both fell into a comfortable silence as he led you out of the venue, ignoring every wayward stare on the way out. 

Even after he opened his passenger door for you and slipped himself behind the wheel, he couldn’t get over what you’d said. It took root in the back of his brain. In all the years he’d been in this industry, he’d determined that there were only two types of people: the ones who jumped without thinking and the ones who only ever did the latter. You, it seemed, were neither.

Not if the fall would be worth it.

As he drove, you hummed along to whatever played on the radio, gaze taking in the city lights. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the neon from roadside signs wash over your face as they passed. Pretty in all colors, he thought, in every light.

Five minutes passed before he realized that you hadn’t even asked where he was taking you. Maybe you’d made an assumption that you were headed back to his place, which, while true, still wasn’t entirely accurate. Or maybe you simply trusted him. Determined that he was one of those calculated risks worth taking.

Namjoon was warm all-over when he finally reached his parking garage and turned into his assigned space. By the time he rounded the back of his car to open your door for you, you were already standing and smoothing down the skirt of your dress.

God bless sundress season.

“Didn’t realize you were a fan of his work.”

He froze. Oh, fuck. 

Swallowing down the embarrassment of broadcasting his thoughts out loud, Namjoon shrugged. The corner of his mouth twitched, threatening to ruin his nonchalance. “Credit where it’s due, you know?” 

He then glanced down at his watch and confirmed that he was running out of time. When he looked back up at you, you were visibly puzzled but you didn’t question him. So, he questioned you:

“You didn’t develop a fear of heights on the drive over, right? Fall still worth it?”

Your response didn’t come in words. To his surprise, you held out your hand and stared expectantly — sweetly — at him until he took it. 

You didn’t have the key code to operate the elevator or any idea where you were headed, but you tugged Namjoon along after you as you crossed the parking garage. It was then that he noticed the sheer height of the shoes you were wearing and how carefully you moved in them. Not like heels were foreign to you, but with deliberate steps as if you expected one or both of them to make a break for it. He made a mental note of it.

After typing in his access code to summon the elevator, Namjoon gazed down at you. Trying to hide his smile again would’ve been an exercise in futility, so he didn’t bother. Without thinking first, he mused, “You know, you still haven’t asked where I’m taking you. That’s a lot of trust.”

“I mean, if my untimely end comes at the hands of Kim Namjoon of all people, my ghost will have a really interesting story to tell.” 

Your snicker made his knees wobble. You stepped into the elevator as it opened, leaving him to stand starstruck outside the doors. 

“Coming?”

When Namjoon finally regained use of his limbs and joined you in the elevator, he pressed the button for the top floor, overshooting his own by three. With every second that passed as the two of you ascended, the centimeters slipped away — overcome by what Namjoon could only assume was a gravitational pull. 

He’d orbit you if he could.

“This way,” Namjoon instructed. He gestured to the door at the end of the hall with a sign that promised roof access.

You stayed close, your hand so near to his that he could’ve grabbed it and held it a thousand times before you reached your objective. He held the door for you and watched you duck under his arm as you stepped through, damn near salivating at the way your perfume lingered in your wake.

The door in question opened to something halfway between an exposed patio and a fire escape. If Namjoon had to venture a guess, none of the other residents knew this place existed; it was exclusively for maintenance staff who needed to access the electrical meters contained in the locked room in front of you. Your eyebrows furrowed as you stared at it, understandably struggling to figure out why Namjoon had brought you to a place like this.

Sensing your confusion, he nodded his head towards a steep metal staircase which led up to the building’s roof. Staircase was a generous description, really. The only difference between those steps and a ladder was the presence of handrails and a slightly more forgiving angle.

When you caught sight of them, your confusion dissolved into surprise. You paused. Anxious eyes darted down to your heels as you shifted your weight from one to the other.

Weighing your options, Namjoon figured. Bare feet or twisted ankles. 

He offered a third and crouched down in front of you, glancing over his shoulder with a smirk. “Coming?” He quoted.

You looked at him in disbelief, like he couldn’t possibly be offering to take you up those steps on piggy-back — but he was, and he was dead serious. He said as much, and you had to bite down on your lips to keep your shy smile to yourself. As had been the case all night, your reciprocal offer was intrinsic trust.

Once you secured yourself on his back, you looped your arms gently around his neck. A quiet giggle immediately flooded his ears. Namjoon peeked at your face hovering over his shoulder and smiled when he saw that you were, too. Your laugh was music, more than anything else.

“This feels like that scene in Twilight.”

Because Namjoon has a sister, he automatically knew what you were referring to, as embarrassing as that was to admit. It was worth it, though, when he bought into your bit. You beamed like the fucking sun when he warned, “Hold on tight, spider monkey.”

He kept one hand on the railing and the other secured over your crossed forearms as he took the steps slowly. When none were left, it was just you, Namjoon, and an uninterrupted expanse of orange and pink. 

“Holy shit,” you gasped, squeezing his bicep.

He took your silent cue and ducked back down so you could return to your own two feet. 

“Beautiful, right?” Namjoon kept his voice low as if he were in a place of worship. 

In a way, he was.

You wobbled, not because of your shoes, but because you were staring straight up, spinning slowly in your spot while you drank in a fleeting, tangerine sky. As the sun continued to sink, bright white stars popped up to take its place. You seemed intent on counting them, but they couldn’t hold Namjoon’s attention — not with you fawning underneath them.

“Reminds me of home, kind of.” You matched his tone like this mattered as much to you as it did to him. “The buildings are always in the way here. After a while, I stopped bothering to look up.”

It felt natural, the way you reached out for his hand to keep you tethered. The same was true when he tugged gently and pulled you closer. You tucked yourself under his arm, nestled into his side. There was heat rising from his chest to his cheeks, but he still shivered.

Trying to keep his focus on the point of all this, Namjoon glanced down at his watch to confirm that the sun’s interference would be gone within minutes. Softly, he dropped his arm so he could place his hands on your waist. You let him turn you until you stood with your back to him; then, you followed his pointed finger with your eyes.

“Keep your eyes on the Northwest, alright?”

Playfully defiant, you turned your head to smirk up at him instead. “I’m admittedly shit at directions.”

Namjoon wouldn’t have noticed if the stars above him disappeared. For all he knew, they’d relocated to the dilated black of your pupils. There was a hint of a challenge twinkling there, too. He wasn’t known for backing down.

“This is the southeast.” Namjoon covered his fondness with a feigned frown and tapped your left hip bone with the pads of his middle and ring fingers. “The sun’s behind you.”

“I know it is,” you acknowledged. Despite that fact, you were still gazing over your shoulder at him. 

Oh. 

His eyes widened when he caught your meaning; yours crinkled at the corners. Namjoon didn’t have a single clue how you could smile that warmly without using your mouth at all.

It’s decided, he thought. Wherever this night takes us, I’m down for the ride. You lead, I’ll follow.

There was a distinct drop in his body temperature when you eventually — belatedly — followed his directions. Instinctively, Namjoon pulled you even closer so he could properly wrap his arms around your waist. Your shoulder blades pressed into his chest as he leaned down to your ear.

This time, you shivered.

“See that up ahead? Under the Big Dipper.”

You were quiet for a moment, likely searching for whatever secret he was pointing out to you. There was no room for doubt when you finally did see it because you gasped for the second time. 

Breathless, you asked, “What is that? A meteor?”

Now visible against inky black, Neowise burned on the horizon. 

“A comet,” he gently corrected you. “A new one — well, one we didn’t know about until March. It’s just now coming out of perihelion.”

At the forefront, its bright white mass led a slow charge down the sun’s gravity well. The tail was smeared behind it as if someone had dragged a paintbrush through the cosmos. Once-in-a-lifetime wasn’t scientifically accurate; and heavenly felt pretentious. Namjoon couldn’t think of a word in any language to describe the way he felt in that moment, but he prayed it would last.

You were equally awestruck. For a while, it was simple, silent wonderment as the two of you kept your eyes on the horizon. Peaceful, despite the faint blare of car horns wafting upwards from the streets below. Namjoon might venture far enough to call it perfect.

“What happens now?” You eventually asked. He glanced down at you when your voice cut through quiet, though your starry eyes didn’t register his movement. Thoroughly transfixed, you stayed still.

Namjoon felt himself frown. The answer was scientific fact, but it sounded like an unhappy ending. 

Like leaving. 

“Aphelion,” he sighed. “It’s headed for the point in its orbit that’s farthest from the sun. All that light you see right now comes from gas made by solar heat, so… it’ll grow colder the farther away it gets. Then, it’ll get so dark that it’ll be more or less invisible.”

You repeated that word quietly to yourself like you were testing the weight of it in your mouth. Aphelion. There was an undeniable heaviness to it. Namjoon wondered if you felt it, too.

He continued, “Not sure if or when it’ll ever be like this again.”

2020/7/18; 23:12

If you could have, you likely would’ve stayed on that rooftop until morning. 

The back of your dress would be even dirtier from sitting down on the concrete the way you had; and your elbows may ache a little more after additional time spent leaning back onto flattened palms, but it’d be a small price to pay. Calm like that was invaluable. Until you stared at that uninterrupted sky, talking through every thought you’d ever had with someone who understood them all, calm like that was foreign to you.

You never had the opportunity to sit still, much less settle. Never got to be quiet, never got to linger. On that rooftop, you received a necessary reminder that your universe was bigger than a schedule full of obligations. Bigger than hotel showers, each less user-friendly than the last. Bigger than drinking boba tea alone in an airport, letting life carry you like a dandelion seed all over the map. 

It was endless.

You wished that moment had been, but the news helicopter hovering nearby had said otherwise. As it turned out, television coverage of the comet was more important than your personal enjoyment of it. The loud chop of propellers against air had been bad enough; the gusts of wind those propellers kicked your way were even worse.

Even though he’d been sitting right next to you, Namjoon had to shout for you to hear him. You’d squinted as if that would make sense of the shapes his mouth had made — it didn’t. You’d heard his voice but not his words.

I need to learn to read lips, you’d thought. The problem with that realization was that the harder you’d focused on his, the more you wanted to nibble on them. And then the urgency you’d felt no longer had anything whatsoever to do with the aircraft. You hadn’t gotten the message until Namjoon stood up and offered his hands to help you stand, too.

Through the climb back down to the door, the walk up the hallway, and the elevator ride to his floor, Namjoon hadn’t dropped your hand. Now, it was taking longer than you imagined was usual for him to unlock his apartment door because the thumb of his dominant hand was still roaming over the back of yours.

“Finally!” 

His sigh was half-exasperated, half-relieved, all swoonworthy when the key — at long last — did what he’d been begging it to do. Namjoon pushed the door open. This time, neither of you had to urge the other to come along.

The second your shoes crossed the threshold into his apartment, you damn near crumpled on the ground they occupied.

Holy shit —?

Less of an apartment and more of an archive, Namjoon’s space was artfully curated. In the literal sense. Everywhere you looked, there was some painting, some exquisite sculpture. All of it was breathtaking — and shockingly breakable, which made you wonder how they’d survived ownership by someone so endearingly clumsy.

He chuckled sheepishly when he saw the way you gawked, open-mouthed, at his collection.

“You didn’t tell me you lived in a museum!” You were dizzy. “I swear, you’re going to have to get security to escort me out at closing time. I’ll stand, and ponder, and muse all day; and I’ll never leave.”

In hindsight, that sounded more like a threat than a warning.

Suddenly rushing so that you could explore more fully, you moved to bend down and undo the ankle straps of your heels. That was, coincidentally, the moment Namjoon attempted to address his own shoes. Your heads collided with a thud that made you both hiss and retract.

“You good?” Namjoon frowned apologetically. As he did, he lifted his hand to run his fingers gingerly over the bump likely forming on the crown of your head. You were too busy vibrating to do much more than nod.

Is one touch all it takes? This doesn’t bode well for you.

As if his goal was to kill you where you stood, he dropped his hand slowly, caressing the side of your jaw with his knuckle and a touch that was barely there. Deep brown eyes smoldered as they focused on you. Then, that husky voice completed the attack combination.

Knock out! Game over!

He tapped your chin with the pad of his thumb and said, “Stay here.”

As if you’d want to be anywhere else.

Before you could wrap your brain around the turn of events, Namjoon knelt in front of you. His right foot remained planted on the ground, leaving his thigh parallel overtop. Thank god for his black jeans. If you drooled at the sight of his quadricep straining against the denim, no trace would be left.

Knees wobbling, you followed his cue and shifted your weight to one foot. The other was guided up to rest against his thigh so he could address the ankle strap for you.

Is your mouth hanging open? Why is it so dry?

Your body shouldn’t have clenched the way it did at something so innocuous. Really, he was being polite. Self-preserving after your eagerness nearly left him concussed. But he must have heard your heart hammering against the wall of your chest because he looked up at you and — no, there was nothing polite about the way his eyes trailed over your body.

Nothing innocuous about his low voice wrapped in velvet saying, “You look like an angel when you look down at me like that.”

It was a miracle that you didn’t break skin with the way you pinched your bottom lip between your teeth.

You must have blacked out after the first shoe was discarded; you weren’t mentally present to notice the other one’s removal. When your soul re-entered your body, Namjoon was back to standing at full height — and he was significantly taller now that you stood barefoot on his doormat.

Incapable of eloquence, you simply peeped, “Hi.”

Either you were going insane, or there really was a faint buzz of electricity humming in the few centimeters between Namjoon’s body and yours. Something was conducting through every nerve of your body, tingling.

“Hi.”

His little half-smile made your stomach flip. You didn’t know what to say next because the only thought in your head was something between a prayer and a plea.

kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me

When the tip of his tongue broke through the seam of his lips to wet them, the only conclusion you could draw was that he’d read your mind. He didn’t listen, but the glint in his darkening eyes confirmed it: Namjoon knew exactly what you wanted and he was holding back. Instead of his mouth, he gave you his hand. 

Not bad for a consolation prize. 

His fingers slotted between yours like they were the reason those spaces existed in the first place. 

That’s the thing about magnets — they attract what they’re meant to. You didn’t need to look for him to find him. Unpaired electron that you were, you knew it intrinsically when someone was spinning in the same direction you were. Even though it’d been the furthest thing from your mind in every moment leading to the present, you couldn’t deny it now: 

You found someone that clicked.

There was static sparking in the air when Namjoon led you from the foyer into the living room. Every breath was charged, even the one that caught in your chest when you saw the full extent of his collection.

“I feel like I’m walking barefoot through the Met,” You hummed, eyes flitting from portrait to portrait. Traditional, contemporary, modern — all of it chosen thoughtfully and displayed the same way. “What’s it like to live in it?”

He paused and you paused with him. He looked shy for the first time all night. “Like I’m not alone with my thoughts, if that makes sense?”

Perfect sense.

“You’re not coming home to an empty apartment if you’ve got a piece of Yoo Youngkuk’s mind on the walls.” You gestured with your free hand  to a painting hanging to your right. It filled the otherwise neutral space with bright blues, greens, and yellows. “Gotta have some enrichment in the enclosure, or the fishbowl we live and work in will drive us crazy.”

When you glanced back at Namjoon — who was silent and completely still — he looked as if your words had punched him in the chest. Not like he was in pain, but as if the wind had been knocked right out of him. He was silent, though his mouth was slightly parted, and he blinked slowly back at you. You didn’t know what that look in his eyes meant, but it was a far cry from the lust in them before you started rambling.

Now, you had to worry about whether you’d offended him somehow. Fuck. You’d done it again, piggy-backed off someone’s statement to add the two cents no one asked for. Have you ever kept a single thought to yourself? 

You quickly pointed to a different painting.

This one, unlike the abstract pieces you’d examined so far, was earth tones in oil paints. Sitting in the center was a young woman in white, staring down at her bare feet as if one of them had stepped on something sharp.

“What’s her story?” You asked.

Namjoon cleared his throat to reactivate the vocal cords you’d seemingly paralyzed earlier. “That’s Eurydice on her wedding day. She married Orpheus, if his name rings any bells.”

It doesn’t.

“She got bit by a snake on her wedding night, which is — uhh, admittedly not ideal.” Namjoon visibly struggled to hide his smirk when you snorted in response. He continued, “She died, which is even worse, but Orpheus went to the underworld to save her.”

“Did he?”

Namjoon grimaced. “Orpheus was not great with rules.”

“Did Orpheus leave his own reception to chase a woman?” You teased with a raise of your eyebrow.

You watched his eyes darken in real time. Viper quick, he tugged at the hand he never let go of and led you right back to him. To keep yourself from colliding fully with his chest, your free palm flattened against it. His pulse raced at your touch, but you couldn’t pay attention to anything other than the searing warmth radiating off of him.

“I suppose he did.” He leaned down, nose tip nearly bumping yours. “There’s an important distinction here, though.”

Namjoon’s hand left yours, lifted up to rest with his fingers under your jaw and his thumb above it. You were sure that your shallow, useless breaths were fanning over his chin, given how close in proximity his mouth was to yours. His breath hit your lips and left them tingling.

The best you could do was whisper, “And what would that be, Namjoon?”

“Orpheus went home empty-handed.”

You didn’t mean to growl in response the way you did, but he’d awakened something feral in you, and there was no turning back. No caging it in. Just your hands gripping tight to his shirt, pulling him down to kiss you the way you wished he had hours ago. That was primal, too. All teeth and tongue with his fingers threading through your hair, and —

And he laughed. 

His shoulders shook just enough for you to notice. It was the quickened exhale of breath through his nose that gave him away, more than anything else.

“Is something funny?” You questioned him when you pulled back breathless. His eyes were crinkled, swimming with mirth. 

Tease. 

You and your now-unoccupied lips changed targets, dipping down to assault the exposed underside of his jaw. Mumbling against his skin, you urged, “Share with the class.”

He opened his mouth, and for a moment, he seemed to be on the brink of answering. Whatever words he might have found were lost again in an instant when your teeth nipped playfully where his neck met his shoulder.

“All those blackberries you ate — oh, fuck.” Namjoon groaned, even more so when your tongue flicked over the faint indents you’d left behind.

After leaving an opened-mouth kiss on his collarbone, you looked up at him from under a curtain of lashes. His head was thrown back, but he sensed your stare; half-lidded eyes fluttered down at you, transfixed. It was a look you felt everywhere, downright pulsing as it shot straight to your core.

You weren’t ready for the hands in your hair to migrate, and that fact was made abundantly clear by the tiny gasp he stole from you in the process. He reveled in it; the corner of his mouth twitched triumphantly upwards. His left hand resettled on your hip while the knuckles of his right hand brushed over the space just below your belly button.

Namjoon must’ve known he had you spellbound because his smirk was full-fledged when he pinched the fabric of your dress between his fingers. Gently, he tugged what he’d claimed, causing the hem to flutter against the tops of your thighs. You were left damn near liquified. More puddle than person, dripping dizzy under such a torturously soft touch.

He didn’t know you were kerosene until he struck the match.

“If your kiss tastes like blackberries...” He trailed off, head tilting to the side. His right hand dropped further. It hovered, red hot, just millimeters away from your core. “How sweet is the rest of you?”

You erupted in flames when his fingertips finally made contact with your clothed cunt. Clenching your desperate thighs together did nothing to extinguish the blaze, nor did the arousal that slicked the innermost parts of them. Swallowing down the whimper building in your chest, you did your best to keep cool. 

Eyebrow arched, you whispered, “Asking questions won’t get you answers, Namjoon. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

The intention might’ve been to wind up in his bedroom at the opposite end of his apartment, but the execution was short-sighted. The farthest your lip-locked staggering got you was the adjoining, open kitchen — more specifically, the kitchen island. The chilled, marble countertop forced a hiss out through your teeth when the undersides of your legs settled on it. With Namjoon’s hands scorching the tops of your bare thighs, though, you were far from frozen.

Fingers raking through his hair, you let him kiss you stupid — until you couldn’t remember how it felt not to. Whiskey-laced and wanting, you licked into his mouth with a stifled whimper and came to two irrefutable conclusions. They spun pirouettes in your brain as his fingernails scratched up your thighs and under the hem of your dress.

Kim Namjoon was made to be kissed.

Up, up, up, his hands moved slowly until you felt his index fingers hook over the waistband of your underwear. He didn’t have to ask for your help; automatically and eagerly, you dropped your hands until your palms flattened against the countertop and lifted your hips. Down your thighs, off your ankles, tossed carelessly over his shoulder, gone — accomplished with his bottom lip kept as a souvenir between your teeth.

Kim Namjoon tastes like blackberries, too.

He was panting when he finally broke away. Large hands slid under your knees and pulled you forward. Now sitting at the very edge of the counter with Namjoon’s body between your thighs, you could feel him throbbing behind too-tight jeans. You were seconds away from reaching out to touch him, but he was the quicker draw.

The tip of his middle finger slid through your folds, wading through the slick that had pooled there. He moved slowly from the button of your clit to your entrance. That teasing filled your head with static and the silence with obscenity: you cursing under your breath as your forehead dropped to rest against his shoulder; you gushing, though he’d barely begun to touch you.

“All for me?” He hummed. Namjoon’s eyes were locked on your face, as if he was collecting mental snapshots of the fucked-out expression he’d put there. “Sweet thing.”

His lips connected with the underside of your jaw in the exact moment his digit finally slipped inside of you. You were sure he felt the way your mouth fell open, even if neither of you heard your breath catching in your throat. It didn’t take much effort on his part to coax it out of you, though; just a few slow pumps, and then you were whimpering near his ear.

You had to rely on your arm around his neck to keep you tethered. If you let go, you weren’t sure where you’d end up — floating off to join Neowise in its orbit, or crashing down into a heap at Namjoon’s feet. But then he added his ring finger, and you clung to him so tightly that you might’ve wound up in his rib cage instead.

“Oh, s-shit,” you keened as his fingers curled upwards. He’d found his target and attacked it slowly, forcing you to walk towards your orgasm rather than sprint — the way you needed to. The way you were willing to beg for. “Namjoon, please. I n—”

You felt the curve of his smirk against your skin. Before you could finish asking, he murmured low in your ear, “Say less, beautiful.”

The kiss he placed on your temple was the last thing you remember before his increased pace lit the fuse waiting deep in your abdomen. His thumb pressed against your clit, winding quick spirals, and he didn’t let up until he blew your mind sky-high.

When the smoke cleared and your pieces fell back into place, you had to blink to get the stars out of your eyes. “You should’ve warned me,” you panted. Namjoon was puzzled, which only made you beam. “You didn’t strike me as the dexterous type.”

The feigned shock on his face didn’t stick for long; it was quickly replaced by a shit-eating grin that made you tingle for an entirely different reason.

“These hands are good for two things, and two things only.”

You snorted, flexed an expectant eyebrow. “Breaking shot glasses, and…?”

Namjoon shook his head. His fingers were still shining with your orgasm when he brought them to his lips. It was ridiculous how he could still look pensive with you dripping down to his knuckles.

“Making you cum, first and foremost,” he corrected you matter-of-factly, like it was an undeniable truth dictated in one of the many books you’d seen littered around his apartment — and really, it should’ve been. 

He took those glistening fingers into his mouth to clean you off of him; you couldn’t look away from his tongue as it ran down their length. You swallowed hard when he did. Then, he released them with a lewd pop that made you clench around nothing. “And making you cum again.”

You rolled your eyes, as if you weren’t still irreparably charmed by him. Namjoon bit back a grin, like he didn’t already know.

“My hypothesis may be confirmed, by the way,” he mused.

The magnetism you’d felt earlier brought him back to you again. His arms snaked around your waist so easily that you had to remind yourself — over and over — that they were strangers to you, not a home. That this was adrenaline; this was infatuation; this was one night.

You hummed in response, “Is it?”

It felt like home when Namjoon kissed you, softness laced with eagerness. Or like wax pooling on an envelope, the deed now signed and sealed.

“I’ll have to re-run the experiment, of course. Scientific method and all that.” He waved his hand, as if this was obvious. Yours landed a playful swat on his bicep that only deepened the dimple at the corner of his smile. He kissed you again and you let him. Lips still flush to yours, he mumbled, “Your pussy may be even sweeter.”

2020/7/19; 01:04

You should’ve been exhausted. Your social battery — and your physical battery — should’ve been depleted. You, an introvert and a homebody, should’ve been halfway to sleep in your own bed by now, in your own clothes. 

When you left your apartment all those hours ago, you were already prepared to hibernate for twice as long as you’d spent on the outside. That was the way it always worked. A plan you never deviated from; one you never wanted to. But you’d been firmly rooted in the moment — every moment — since you arrived at that party, and you hadn’t spent a second since wishing you were elsewhere.

Your voice cut through the music flowing from the speakers built into his bedroom walls. “I’m not buying it, that’s all I’m saying.”

You twirled at the center of the rug and watched the fabric of Namjoon’s loaned t-shirt attempt to keep up with you. It hung over your frame like a potato sack, leaving a comforting weight as the excess material spilled over your shoulders and landed halfway down your thighs. 

Funnily enough, it fit like the dress it’d replaced.

Pausing to swallow down the last sip of the soju you’d been splitting, you gestured towards him with the empty bottle. From where he sat on his bed, Namjoon raised his hands defensively. That sheepish smile admitted that he knew your offense was justified.

“You’re a musician who is fluent in English. You’re also a human being living in a society,” you huffed. “There is simply no way that you don’t know the words to this song.”

He had to cover his face with his hands to muffle his laughter. Even before he hid behind his palms, you could see the way his mirth made his eyes swim. They sparkled even more in that moment than they had in the thousand other times he’d looked at you throughout the night. Once again, you tried to convince yourself that it was due to the rose-colored glasses you couldn’t seem to shake off. 

A trick of the light.

You were doing it again, and you knew it — conflating relief and hope; confusing the temporary sense of belonging somewhere with the ability to stay anywhere. You weren’t looking for this, weren’t looking for him, because you knew exactly what you couldn’t have. But you also knew that your heart was racing in your chest, and its rhythm was starting to sound more and more like, “maybe, maybe, maybe.”

Apparently, you’d been staring. Looking at Namjoon for too long made your knees wobble more than your sore muscles did, so you had to avert your eyes when you snapped back to reality. Brushing off that odd flutter in your chest, you brought the empty bottle back to your lips, tilted your head back, and belted out the lyrics you knew he knew.

“Oh, wake me! I'm shaking.” 

You took your clumsy choreography to the next level with an exaggerated shiver. Namjoon watched through the cracks between his fingers, unable to ignore the person coming unzipped mere meters away. Undeterred, you threw the back of your hand up to rest against your forehead.

 “Wish I had you near me now.” Then, you wiggled your hips in time with the ad-lib. It was barely audible underneath the chuckling from the audience. “Uh-huh.” 

His hands dropped to his lap as yours shot straight up into the air, where you held them. The expression on his face was indecipherable when he gazed back at you. Whatever it meant, it was quickly morphing maybe into something more hopeful and — terrifyingly — committal.

“Said there's no mistaking —”

Namjoon said it on an exhale, weightless and without any effort. It sounded natural tumbling out of his mouth and into the space between you. It sounded a lot like: 

“I think I love you.”

Without missing a beat, you reeled your arms back down and set the soju bottle onto a nearby dresser. Head tilted to the side, you crossed your arms and smirked. “How sure are you? Enough to wager on it?”

He didn’t seem at all surprised by the way you bought in immediately. You wondered if you truly expected him to be. After all, you weren’t, even if a reasonably well-adjusted person should have been. Perhaps, you thought, you weren’t one of those.

Namjoon’s response came just as easily as his first admission, a perfect volley. “At least seventy-nine percent sure.” You couldn’t see the way you lit up, but you’d have liked to imagine that it matched the way he did. Quicker still, he added, “And yes, I would. All in.”

There’s that magnetic pull again. 

You skipped back to where he was waiting on the bed and crawled over the mattress to settle in front of him. Up close, you could see the sakura tint to his cheeks; it blended perfectly with the faint freckles dusting over the heights of his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. You’re beautiful, you thought, and it’s no wonder that the sun found you worth kissing.

Something about his proximity to you made you bold; you didn’t fight it. You simply smirked, “Then let’s make a deal, Joonie.”

Intrigued, he raised his eyebrows but didn’t interrupt. 

“Two years,” you hummed as you tilted your head to the side. Then, with a thoughtful finger tapping at your chin, you elaborated, “If in two years’ time you realize that you were right — and you’re one-hundred percent sure — you’ll win a prize.”

Namjoon nodded firmly. He put his hand out to shake on it, but you sat up on your knees. His gaze followed, leaving him to stare up at you as your fingers slid through his hair. You kissed him to finalize the contract, like all true devils do. 

“Deal,” he murmured against your lips.

It scared you, just a little, how melting into him already felt like a routine. Like you’d done several times already that night, you spilled into his lap with your knees on either side of his thighs. Namjoon’s arms accepted you immediately; they enveloped you, kept you anchored against his chest.

This time, it was you who laughed. 

Namjoon nudged your cheek with the tip of his nose. “What was that about sharing with the class?”

“I just — I’m not normally like this, you know? Completely unable to keep my hands to myself,” you snickered. “Can’t stop touching you.”

To emphasize your point, you removed your right hand from its place at the nape of his neck. Once your fingers were no longer woven through his hair, your fingertips traced light, languid lines, starting at his collarbone. Your eyes followed as your ministrations led you over the slope of his left pectoral muscle, down the bare warmth of his chest. 

“So, don’t.”

When your eyes flicked back up to Namjoon’s face, you got the impression that he hadn’t stopped staring at yours. Right hand trailing further down, you maintained that eye contact and watched his pupils blow when you reached the bulge in his boxer briefs. Experimentally, the pad of your index finger whispered along the length of his cock; you relished the subtle twitch you received in response.

“Is this where you want me to touch you?” You asked.

He was throbbing under your touch, growing hard once again, as if you hadn’t been at this for hours already. That didn’t stop you from driving him further wild. More breath than words, you teased, “Or here?”

With a light hand, you flattened your palm to encompass him more fully and squeezed, prompting him to curse.

“Fuck.” 

Namjoon’s eyelashes fluttered, but he seemed entirely unwilling to let them close. Desperate brown eyes pleaded with you, sending heat straight to your core. 

“Need you, pretty thing. Hand, mouth — doesn’t matter, just fuck me.”

Your fingers slipped away from the base until they resettled at the crown. Even without looking, you could feel the spot where his leaking tip had soaked through the fabric. He groaned when your fingers pulled away, though he stopped in his tracks when he realized where they were headed. 

Namjoon shuddered when your hand dipped under the waistband of his briefs and picked up exactly where you’d left off.

“How do you want it, Namjoon?”

As you stroked him, you pressed your lips to his. Slow, hungry, like you’d die before you’d get the opportunity again. 

To the best of his ability, Namjoon rolled his hips forward with each pass of your fist. And when you redirected that teasing pressure to his balls, he downright jolted, let loose some deep sound from the bottom of his chest. The sound hardly had time to dissipate before you felt the hem of your shirt lifting above your hips. 

Breaking the kiss just long enough to pull it over your head, it was gone in an instant, landing somewhere unseen off the edge of the bed. Ridding him of his briefs was a more concentrated effort. You pushed up on your knees so he could shimmy them down far enough for you to discard them entirely.

“How are your legs, pretty girl?” His palms warmed the tops of your thighs as he massaged his way from your kneecaps towards your hips. 

Dipping his head down, Namjoon nipped affectionately at your earlobe and earned a squeak from you. His low chuckle vibrated through you. He was quick to redirect himself, though the teasing didn’t end at his teeth. 

“You seem to like being bossy, but I can take over if you’re tired.”

You feigned a scowl. “Are you baiting me?” 

The wicked grin on his face answered for him, but it was quickly replaced with wide-eyed surprise when you pressed your hands against his chest and pinned him back against the pillows.

He shrugged, eyes still sparkling with mischief. “Not my fault if you take it, sweets.”

“Never would I ever have assumed that Kim Namjoon is a pillow princess.” 

You pointed accusingly at him with one hand while the other slid into the space between you to line yourself up with his cock. 

Impish grin still locked and loaded, he leaned up on his elbows until your extended finger was centimeters from his face. He kissed the tip of it chastely between his words, like his own tip wasn’t dripping with you, seconds away from obscenity.

“Hook — line —”

You dropped down on his length, and it shut him up immediately. 

Though Namjoon was certifiably, world-endingly thick, you’d acclimated well enough to the stretch of him in your time together so far. He didn’t seem prepared for you to take him to the hilt in one fell swoop, if the way his head crashed back against the pillows could be taken as a hint.

With a swirl of your hips, you grinded down into his lap. Coquettishly, you finished where he left off. “Sinker?”

“Christ,” Namjoon groaned. He squeezed his eyes shut, then followed up immediately with a sheepish laugh. “Feel like I can’t even watch you do this. You’re too fucking good — never gonna make it out of here alive.”

Pride bloomed in your chest at the compliment, even though he was prophesying his own downfall between your spread legs. 

You imagined he could feel it for himself: you weren’t any more likely to survive. Not full of him, with your slick spilling down his cock as you bounced. Definitely not with the sick sounds of your ass colliding with his pelvis, squelching with every thrust. 

There was something blooming below your navel, but this time, it wasn’t pride. A tingling heat coiled tight, desperate to snap again. You needed it, but the burn in your thighs was stronger by far.

“Joonie,” you whimpered, incapable of caring about how pathetic you knew you sounded. Your head, previously thrown back, drooped forward to find him and his flushed cheeks fighting to maintain composure.

God, he looked as fucked out as you felt. 

Namjoon focused on you immediately, attentively, and your heart leapt of its own accord. He curled his finger and beckoned you to lean forward. 

“Come here, pretty girl,” he sighed.

Less gracefully than you would’ve liked, you all but crashed into him, sweat-slicked chest to chest. Arms wrapped around you like they were made for that very purpose.

Anchored.

Dangling from the last, frayed thread of your resolve, you were damn near speaking in tongues. Namjoon pushed up onto his heels and buried himself in you — over and over and over — at a punishing pace, hellbent on unraveling both of you at once.  

Your moan was halfway to a sob. All the words you knew had been knocked loose some time ago, leaving only his name and please. They rattled around your skull, alternating as they spilled out of your mouth.

“Say less, baby,” he panted.

There was a kiss pressed to your forehead, and then there were stars bursting behind your screwed-shut lids.

2020/11/2; 07:22

Namjoon sat across from you at his kitchen island with a mug of coffee in one hand and a book he’d forgotten the name of in the other. He’d started it over an hour ago, though the two turned pages might indicate otherwise. Instead, he’d spent his time attempting to read whatever scrunched-up, pensive expression you had written all over your face.

You hadn’t said much since the two of you sat down, just pushed your sliced fruit around your plate with chopsticks that had yet to pass your lips. Every now and then, you’d hummed in response to the random thoughts Namjoon relayed out loud. Ultimately, whenever you’d realized he said something at all, your eyes widened; and you’d blinked your way out of whatever daydream you’d gotten lost in.

He loved that about you, your internal wanderlust. Even if he didn’t always know where your train of thought was headed initially, he’d board it with you regardless, find out on the way.

Eventually, you plucked a blackberry off your plate and popped it into your mouth. Your eyes were still glued to your laptop when you started to chew. Then, he suspected that the tartness of it truly hit your tastebuds. The lightbulb switched on and you were back, beaming across the countertop, warming him like a UV lamp.

“Hi,” you peeped.

Namjoon loved that about you, too. Infinite hellos sprinkled throughout his day at random; feeling like you missed him whenever you looked away, and that you found it necessary to greet him when he finally stepped back into frame. 

He lit up, too. “Hi. Where’d you go just now?”

You swallowed. Whether it was exclusively the fruit or anxiety, too, he didn’t know. That is, until you claimed your bottom lip between your teeth and mumbled, “Got a weird email from the Overlord.”

The sip of coffee Namjoon had taken while he waited for your answer was a bad idea. He sputtered, nearly spitting it out onto that book he couldn’t care about. The would-be spit-take made your brows raise on your once-crinkled forehead; your amusement was palpable, even if you did him the courtesy of not laughing in his reddening face.

“If Bang finds out you call him that, he’s gonna want it on the nameplate outside his office,” Namjoon coughed. Clearing his throat, he bumped his fist against his chest to shake loose any coffee that might be lingering near his airway. “Weirder email than usual?”

You nodded, then you waved him over to you. It was an odd thing to be grateful for, but he was glad you didn’t just turn your laptop around and scoot it towards him to read. You always took any opportunity for closeness.

When he crossed around the island to you, Namjoon threaded his arms around your waist and ducked down to rest his head on your shoulder. The second he laid eyes on your screen, he was paralyzed. You had so many browser tabs open that none had enough space to display what they contained.

Is this what the inside of your brain looks like?

“Jagi,” he started, breathing in deep to keep from laughing with his entire chest. 

It was bubbling there beneath the surface, he could feel it. Begging for composure, Namjoon buried his face in your hair. Vanilla and honey. Instantly calm, perfectly prepared to nudge you further. “How — how did you even find your inbox?” 

Just to fuck with you, he pressed his fingertips against that secret spot on the right side of your rib cage. It was the one place on your body he’d been able to confirm was ticklish.

Eventually, maybe, he’d learn his lesson. Today was not that day.

You squealed, thrashed wildly in his hold until your elbow wound up on the right side of his rib cage. It was hard enough to make your point, but way too gentle to hurt. Still, Namjoon had to capitalize on it. He sucked in a gasping breath and stood bolt upright to clutch his chest like he’d been shot.

With you watching wide-eyed, he staggered backwards — away from you, away from the kitchen — until the back of his knees hit the sofa in the adjoining living room.

At some point, Namjoon would have to shoot up a thank you to the God of Entertainment. Somebody had clearly been looking out for him when open-concept apartments came into existence. His slapstick would’ve been so underwhelming if there were doorways involved.

Flopping backwards, his limbs splayed out across the backrest and cushions. Whatever parts of him didn’t fit spilled over the edge and dangled above the floor. He froze that way, playing dead with his tongue jutting out of the side of his mouth.

Waiting, waiting, waiting…

“Hope you watered the plants before you died, Joonie,” you called out. You sounded distant, like you hadn’t gotten up from your stool. “If you left it up to me, they’ll be dead soon, too.”

Joonie.

God, the way his heart still fluttered at that. Coming from you, that nickname didn’t sound stupid, or inspire him to choose violence. It wasn’t patronizing, wasn’t followed by some shit-eating grin. It was soft. Made him soft.

Jooniejooniejoonie.

“Actually, for all you know, I’ve got a tab open somewhere with an article on how to keep plants alive.”

Namjoon heard the faint scrape of the stool as you pushed it away from the counter. Then, the soft pad of your slippers coming his way. The hints were lost once you hit the plush living room rug, and so were you — until he felt your knees slotting on either side of his legs.

You settled down on top of him with your cheek pressed to his chest and your hair tickling his nose. Bravely, he didn’t sneeze.

Hand slipping down to the small of your back, he rubbed spirals into the space between the hem of your sweatshirt and the waistband of your sleep shorts. He hummed, “What’s on your mind?”

For more than a few moments, you were so quiet — so still — that Namjoon had to wonder whether his ministrations had put you straight to sleep. If that was the case, he’d keep going, blow off his to-do list for as long as he could just to keep you like this.

This. 

Neither of you had settled on precisely what this was. 

For nearly four months, this something was one of few constants in his life. Yours, too. It wasn’t a secret that needed keeping, but whatever this was felt too important to share. It belonged to the two of you, not anyone else — with the sole exception being Yoongi, who would’ve noticed the massive, tectonic shift whether or not he’d been the one to kick it off. Everyone else, though? Non-factors, as far as Namjoon could tell.

Until —

“Label’s expanding overseas.” It came out muffled, either because your cheek was smushed against his sternum, or because you really had fallen asleep in the pause. You continued, slightly clearer, “Putting a flagship sub-label in Los Angeles to crowbar their way into the American market.”

Namjoon wasn’t surprised, not really. Si-Hyuk had been daydreaming about this leap for as long as Namjoon knew him. It was only a matter of time before he got his little contractual ducks in a row. If anything, Namjoon was surprised that it took him this long to do it — what, with American money and American awards on the table.

But he knew you, knew that you didn’t give much of a shit about executive decisions, so long as they didn’t get in the way of your decisions.

That was precisely why he knew you were bringing this up for a reason.

“The hard launch is at the end of the month, so Bang is hoping to sign some of us over in the meantime. He’s trying to boost the curb appeal, I guess.”

You sighed and Namjoon felt the rush of air leave your lungs.

Namjoon nodded carefully to avoid knocking the top of your head with his chin. He sighed, too. “To water the plants.”

You didn’t say the quiet part out loud, but he could sense your brain working overtime; damn near hear your train of thought as it picked up speed. He half-expected to feel heat seep from your head to his chest while all your synapses fired off at once. 

The warmth came from your eyes instead. You shifted so that your chin rested in the space between his pectoral muscles; and as soon as your gaze settled on his face, the crease between your eyebrows relaxed. Your pupils dilated, too, blown wide enough for him to notice the shift.

So, that’s what love looks like. 

Not merely a neurochemical reaction or some grand, Hallmark-style gesture. Love looked like you, looking at him, while a wave of patent relief smoothed out the worry digging trenches in your features. And if he had to describe how it felt, well… The only word that came to mind was home.

“Is he asking or telling?” 

Part of him wondered; the other part knew there usually wasn’t much of a difference between the two. 

Even more quietly than before, you responded, “Asking — like, actually asking.” 

The wrinkle in the center of your eyebrows reappeared, informing him immediately that you were split between the answer you wanted to give and the one you felt you should. Namjoon wouldn’t dare to make that call for you — to press down on either side of the scale — so he leaned forward and kissed you in the middle, right on top of that conflicted little crease.

“Joonie,” you started in a tone split three ways. Shy, sad, and sparked with a sense of hope that made you wary.

Bang Si-Hyuk wasn’t alone in his daydream. You brought it up considerably less than he did, but Namjoon sensed that this was because you didn’t want your motives to be speculatively linked with the prospect of profit. That would be the furthest thing from the truth. 

For you, it was about your craft — Namjoon felt comfortable calling it that —  and the million ways you could improve it with new collaborators, new ideas, new experiences.

For Namjoon, it was about you; and hoping that when you dove into life head-first, you never touched the bottom. Wanting everything you wanted to fall straight into your hands like confetti. And, if he could remain just a little bit selfish, he wanted to stick around and watch you catch them all. 

If you wanted him, too, the rest of it would fall into place, one way or another. It’d have to, because Namjoon was struggling to remember how his days passed at all without you laughing through them. Maybe he’d have to reacclimate to sleeping without your knee pressed into his back, but he was confident that he could. 

He could wait for you until this detour was over. 

He would wait for you.

Without needing to think twice about it, Namjoon kissed your forehead and smiled with his lips still pressed to your skin. It was routine, as easy as breathing when he said, “Say less.”

You both stayed there on that couch for a while, though he couldn’t guess how long. Simultaneously minutes and months, but somehow — confusingly — it didn’t feel like the clock was moving at all. He could’ve easily believed that the universe has pressed pause on the moment, but you peeped and he had proof to the contrary:

“I’d be there by Thanksgiving.” 

The realization clearly made you a little bit giddy. If your tiny gasp hadn’t given you away, your pulse would have. Namjoon could feel that hummingbird heartbeat against his own rib cage, and — shit, did that fondness squeeze his heart with a vice grip

You sat up, wild-eyed and urgent. “Is pumpkin pie just for colonizers, or are they obligated to share it?”

Fuck, he loved you.

“Joonie, this is serious.” You pouted and it was all he could do to bite back a grin. “I’ve always wanted to try it.”

He nudged your cheek with the tip of his nose and smirked, “Just do what they do.”

“Steal it?” You snorted, devolving into a fit of giggles when he began to pepper kisses down your cheek, then along your jawline.

Eighteen in total, one for every stroke.

Saranghae.

Namjoon hummed in agreement, “Steal it.”

2021/6/19; 04:11

Most people — normal people — were in bed at four o’clock in the morning. You were not most people, though situations like this were becoming more and more normal to you. Unfortunately, you’d been forced to learn that normal and easy weren’t interchangeable. If they were, you’d have gotten used to taking the red-eye by now. 

This was your third late-night flight. Not at all coincidentally, this was your third trip home since you left it for Los Angeles. You’d spent seventy-eight hours in the air, making this trip; flown more than 57,480 kilometers in less than a year.

Seven months, technically, but who’s counting?

The elapsed time seemed to run in dog years, though the calendar maintained that only seven months had passed. At the rate they slipped through your fingers, it felt like seven years of trying your best to take advantage of every break in your schedule. Flinging yourself across a black sky on a semi-regular basis, even if you’d just gotten off a tour of your own. Praying that the odd hours and lack of layovers meant your thirteen-hour trip didn’t steal a second more than was absolutely necessary.

Time, you’d learned, was a luxury you failed to properly budget for. Unable to do much else, you accepted whatever scraps you could afford. Make them worth it, you’d demand of yourself each time you landed at Incheon. Every time, your excuse would follow: I’m trying, I swear, but I’m so tired.

Instead of a bed, you were slumped in Namjoon’s passenger seat, clutching the small bouquet he’d brought you in a hand too exhausted to register the brush of soft, white petals. You’d never lose track of his fingers interlocked with yours, though. His touch was inimitable, and the warmth of it stuck with you long after it was gone.

“Pretty,” you mumbled, gaze zeroed in on the flowers. You lifted your right arm to bring them in for closer inspection. It was futile, mostly, given how bleary your eyes were. You guessed, “Baby’s breath?”

This airport ritual of his combined two of your favorite things: the careful consideration he made in choosing flowers that conveyed messages, and the dimple that appeared on his cheek when you guessed correctly. Gifting you an additional prize, Namjoon raised your clasped hands off the center console. Without taking his eyes off the road for too long, he flashed a sleepy grin at you and kissed your knuckles.

Fuck, you loved him.

He turned onto the expressway, let your hands drift back down between you, and yawned. Automatically, you yawned, too. 

As he drove, Namjoon’s sleep-drenched brain did its best to ask about all the updates you might’ve acquired since your last phone conversation. He asked about the extended play you were writing, the weird leak in your apartment, and the only friend you’d truly made in the time you’d lived there.

“What’s their name again?” He asked, visibly embarrassed that he’d forgotten. “Jisoo?”

With a chuckle, you corrected him, “Jinseo.”

He echoed you firmly under his breath, clearly determined to commit it to memory this time. Word association was apparently part of that process, you realized. Your heart fluttered wildly when Namjoon proceeded to state the first thing that came to mind about her, proving that he did listen when you talked.

“Jinseo’s the attorney who tried to slide into Yoongi’s Instagram DMs,” Namjoon stated, as if he were being quizzed. “He never looks at them. She’s been checking for three weeks to see if he’s even opened it.”

The way he recited this fact made it sound like he’d learned it from a book, rather than overhearing your friend’s complaints directly while he spoke to you on the phone. Still, he glanced at you for confirmation that he was correct. You nodded, proud.

Then, you provided the update he’d been seeking: “For the record, he still hasn’t.” 

You mustered enough energy to laugh along with him, but neither of you was awake enough to keep the conversation going. At least, you hoped that was the case. The alternative — that you’d run out of things to talk about — was worse. It was all you could think about, and now silence crept into the lulls, sitting heavy.

Namjoon was the first to speak again, after a long pause: “It’s lunchtime back home, isn’t it?”

It was an innocent question — a caring one, checking in on you — but it struck like a sucker punch, nonetheless. There might come a day that association didn’t sting, but you knew intrinsically that this wasn’t it.

Los Angeles wasn’t home, even though you’d lived there for the better part of a year. Seoul wasn’t home, either. You had no real roots in either location, continuously jumping back and forth between the two. Namjoon was home, though he was beginning to feel temporary, too.

“It’s so early for you, Joon.” You squeezed his hand. “We can go back to bed, and grab food later. I’m not hungry yet, anyway.”

A lie, but a well-intentioned one. You hoped your stomach kept quiet, kept your secret.

Though he wasn’t looking in your direction, there was a flicker of sadness in his eyes that you couldn’t have missed if you tried. You were sure it matched yours whenever the sixteen-hour time difference made you miss his calls. His schedule lately had made them fewer and farther between.

“I’m sorry,” Namjoon sighed. 

He meant it, and he emphasized as much with a reciprocal squeeze of your hand. It stung, knowing that he was apologizing for all of it, up to and including this moment; and that neither of you was at fault for any of it.

“We’ll be back in sync in no time. I’ll —”

You cut him off with a whisper and your best attempt at a smile, “Pssssst.”

Thankfully, Namjoon was stopped at the only red light that still separated the two of you from his parking garage. Otherwise, the way his alarmed eyes flitted in your direction may have had consequences.

“Say less,” you mimicked, like any of this felt the way it did before. He beamed, but his grin left just as quickly as it appeared. 

Namjoon looked away when the light changed, unaware that your face fell before you could catch it. Something that insignificant shouldn’t have had the power to make you that sad; but it did, and you didn’t know what to do with that fact.

The rest of the ride continued in silence. If Namjoon also felt like that silence was suffocating, there were no hints about it in his expression or his posture.

Does this feel easy to you? Am I the one making it hard?

He had to let go of your hand to park in his assigned space, and he forgot to reach for it again when he finished. You knew it wasn’t intentional, but that didn’t make it hurt less. Didn’t make the tears biting at the corners of your eyes any less embarrassing.

For two people as jet-lagged and otherwise exhausted as you were, it didn’t take long to drag yourselves from his car to his apartment. It took even less time for Namjoon to begin shuffling off towards the bedroom. Halfway there, he realized you weren’t still close behind. 

“Where —?” He turned his head to search for you before he turned his body fully. Ultimately, he found you hovering near the kitchen island. The relief in locating you was quickly diluted with concern. “You okay?”

Are we? Is this?

“I think I left my phone in the car.” You patted down the pockets of both your joggers and your jacket, brows furrowed. Then, you picked up the keys he’d just set down on the counter top. “Gonna run down and look for it.”

Too tired to be steady, Namjoon swayed slightly where he stood. You couldn’t help yourself. That magnetic pull tugged you over to him, pushed you up onto your toes, and demanded that you kiss him until that confused frown curved upwards. 

For a moment, you smiled, too.

“Go back to bed,” you whispered, leaving a kiss at his temple. You hadn’t meant to speak so softly. Your voice was caught wherever your breath was, and they refused to cooperate. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

He nodded, accepting a proper kiss before his bedroom-bound shuffling continued. Out of sight, you heard the thump of his lead limbs collapse back into his mattress. You felt it in your chest, which was tightening by the second.

You turned for the door, ready to run, only to stop dead in your tracks. Just ahead of you, tending to a snake bite, was Eurydice. The sight of her portrait hanging on the wall threatened to rip out the sob you’d worked to keep buried. She was all you could think about when you slipped out the door, and stumbled down the hall.

Maybe Eurydice would’ve lived if she’d never met Orpheus.

Shoulders shaking by the time you reached the stairwell, you shoved your hand into your pocket as you crumpled downward onto the concrete steps. You pulled out your phone and gripped it tight, like closing your fists around it could keep you together, too.

With the extent of your tears, you couldn’t make heads or tails of that bright, white screen. You did what you could, though, like you always did. Warbled voice bouncing off the walls around you, you found a loophole and slipped through it. 

“Hey, Siri —” 

The swirling grey, red, blue, and green at the bottom of your screen looked more like a life-preserver than anything else. Automatically, you pleaded, “Call Yoongi.”

It was a fifty-fifty chance, calling him at this hour.

He’d either be awake because he never went to sleep in the first place, or he’d have just drifted off. Either way, you were already sorry for bothering him. When he picked up on the first ring, that was the very first thing you said to him. 

Immediately, his tone shifted from the grogginess of his initial greeting. Now, he sounded worried. You wondered if you’d woken him up, but you didn’t ask.

“Hey — whoa, whoa, whoa — what’s wrong? Your plane didn’t crash, did it?”

He wasn’t trying to be funny and you didn’t mean to laugh, but you did. Sort of. It was some odd, gasping sound that felt wrong as it came out of your mouth.

“I’m fine,” you kept repeating, as if you could manifest the outcome. “I’m fine. I just — I need someone to tell me if I’m crazy, or just doing this whole thing wrong —”

“Doing what wrong?” Yoongi cut you off. “It doesn’t sound like you’re breathing properly, if that’s what you mean. Can you take a deep breath? Count to five on the inhale and on the exhale.”

You did what he said. It helped with what it was meant to, but hyperventilation had been the least of your concerns.

“Sit on the floor if you aren’t already. If you can, lean your back against a wall and flatten your palms on the ground, okay? That’ll help you feel anchored.”

Halfway compliant, you slumped against the metal railing next to you. You threaded your left arm over the lower of the two rungs and held on tight. Part of you wanted to laugh at this, too. It wasn’t much different than the safety bar on a rollercoaster; the way your stomach dropped was identical.

“I can come get you if you tell me where you are,” Yoongi continued. “That twenty-four-hour place has lamb skewers now. We can eat, and you can tell me what’s wrong.”

You didn’t know where to start. All of it, you thought, it’s all wrong.

The answer you blurted out was, “I love him.”

“I know, kid,” Yoongi sighed, and it sounded like an apology. He didn’t need any further explanation. “I know you do.”

Your voice broke when you continued, splintering painfully in your throat. It wasn’t a question you had any conscious intention to ask. It was simply shrapnel flying out of your mouth: 

“Is loving someone supposed to hurt this much?”

2021/11/13; 14:36

Your fourth trip home felt different than the rest. There was something in the air that you couldn’t quite put a finger on. Whatever it was, it’d kept your stomach in knots from the time you left your apartment until you wandered through customs in Incheon. 

It’d only gotten worse when you finally reached the sidewalk outside the airport. Your first instinct had been to cry, though not for the reason you usually did; you’d swallowed that urge with a hastily taken sip of boba. Just like he had for your three previous homecomings, Namjoon was waiting for you, flowers in hand. 

Flower, singular.

Of the two of you, he was the one with encyclopedic knowledge of floriography. Regardless, you knew enough to understand what that lone, white tulip said. It was an apology; and by now, you were well acquainted with those. Even still, you hadn’t gotten any better about accepting them because he still hadn’t done a single thing to be sorry for.

Sorry.

That word had slowly mutated into a punctuation mark over the last year. It’d wormed its way into every sentence, whether or not it had any business being there.

Hi, sorry, I was in the studio when you called. I love you, sorry. I miss you, sorry. I’m so proud of you, sorry, I wish I could have been there.

You heard it even when neither of you spoke, felt it in every bit of quiet. It sat between you on the drive from the airport to that restaurant you used to like — the one by the lake. It filled your unoccupied hands on the walk in from the parking lot, rested like a centerpiece in the middle of your table.

Neither of you ate much. You wished you’d had some semblance of an appetite, if only to fill the pit growing in your stomach. To distract from the way Namjoon’s eyes went glassy whenever he looked at you, or to keep your bottom lip from trembling.

Silent and sorry, the two of you watched the wind force waves; which, in turn, forced anchored row boats to collide with the dock.

Anchored.

There was that word again.

It’d been sitting untouched in the backlog of your vocabulary for longer than you’d care to admit. You knew its dictionary definition, of course, but it’d never been a word you’d ascribe to yourself. Leading up to last November, it wasn’t a feeling you’d knowingly craved, either. If you were honest, you might have hated it and its synonyms, too. 

Rooted. Tethered. 

They were on the tip of your tongue now, finally yours to taste. It was a bitter pill to swallow, realizing that your resistance to them had always been a coping mechanism. Your amygdala trying to intervene.

Until you met Namjoon, stability had been unfamiliar and elusive. It’d outrun you for so long, there’d only been one conclusion left for you to leap to: You didn’t deserve to catch it.

But you did catch it. You found him, opened yourself up to believing that you were the kind of person who got to have roots. For a year, you tried so hard to nurture them, loved the beautiful thing you’d grown in spite of yourself. 

You earned them, so why couldn't you keep them?

Namjoon noticed your breathing pick up. He knew you well enough to see precisely what direction your brain was spiraling in; and that you needed a gear shift. So, he hummed, “Been thinking about changing up my hair.”

“Oh?”

It certainly caught you off-guard, but you figured that was the point. You weren’t sure if you should have — or why you felt you couldn’t — but you reached up to run your fingers through it. Longer than last time, lighter.

“I’m not sure if the blonde has ever actually suited me,” he laughed. “What do you think? And, seriously, give it to me straight.”

You nibbled on your lower lip as you studied him. No matter how many times you stared at his face, you uncovered some new, favorite feature. Today, it was his irises, warmer than you remembered them being. Namjoon became more beautiful the less you saw him, as awful as that thought felt.

“I do like the blonde,” you mused. His cheeks blushed, just barely, but it squeezed your heart to know that was still a reaction you could pull from him. “But I think it would be nice to see Kim Namjoon as he exists naturally, you know? I haven’t met him yet.”

He smiled — genuinely, with his eyes and all his teeth — and it ached. 

“I’ll make a note of that,” he promised with a laugh. Then, he gestured to your largely untouched plate “D’you want a box for that before we go?”

“No, thank you.” You shook your head. It slipped out before you could stop it. “Sorry, I guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”

The corner of his mouth lifted again, less happily than the last time. You knew as soon as you saw it that his half-smile was an apology, too.

2021/11/25; 19:59

Over the last week, Jinseo Kang had spent more time in your apartment than in her own. The spare key you’d given her at the start of your friendship was intended for emergencies, and while this wasn’t what either of you had in mind back then, that was the only word she could use to describe the state of you now.

In twelve months of knowing you, she’d gathered enough trivia about you to fill a memoir. Of the facts she’d collected, two came to mind immediately whenever Jinseo thought of you. The first was that you were a workaholic to a borderline clinical degree; so resistant to rest that the mere thought of being unproductive gave you hives. The second was that, despite the cursed hours you kept, you were never not in contact with Min Yoongi.

Since you’d flown back from Seoul, you’d done neither. 

Jinseo didn’t have to ask to know what happened; you didn’t need to say a word. In fact, you hadn’t — not that she’d heard — since you touched down at LAX, two days ahead of schedule. The only reason Jinseo even knew to pick you up was a direct reply on Instagram that didn’t look a thing like she’d hoped. Worse, the only way she’d been able to recognize you in her passenger seat was by the signature, mint green headphones clenched tightly in your hands.

Immediately, she’d noted the absence of your smile. That was a seismic shift, in and of itself. As was the case with those pastel headphones, that smile of yours wasn’t something you’d ever be caught dead without. Part of you never got off that plane, she’d thought then. Looking at you now, crumpled on your couch, Jinseo knew better. A piece of you was missing long before you boarded that return flight in the first place.

From your kitchen, she glanced over at the heap of blankets, though she didn’t know why she bothered. You hadn’t moved, hadn’t done much of anything since you shuffled out of bed at two o’clock in the afternoon. Still, she had to check for proof of life. Proof that you were still there, somewhere, even buried.

Illuminated by the television screen and underscored by A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, there was movement. Half-hidden by a pile of knitted throws, she spotted the top of your head. Like it did every other time she saw the tangled bun sitting crooked there, her heart sank. I know you’re in there. I’ll find you, I promise.

In the absence of an instruction manual, she’d have to make one. This was a crash course — what to do when love dies in slow motion — and Jinseo was flying by the seat of her fucking pants. Maybe she didn’t know how to pull you out of this pitfall you were trapped in, but she could hold your hand and refuse to let it go.

So, that’s precisely what she did.

Before making her way to you, Jinseo grabbed the dish she’d been preparing off the counter. Spare fork in hand, she rounded the kitchen island and made a beeline for you. You didn’t react when she reached you, unless you counted the way you hugged your knees a little tighter to your chest. Jinseo certainly didn’t; she would’ve sat directly on your feet if you hadn’t cleared the space.

This close to you, she could see the way your jaw was still clenched. Going on eight days now, it was impressive, in some sick way, that the unrelenting pressure hadn’t left you with a mouth full of dust. See? She wanted to grab your knee and shake it, make sure you heard it loud and clear: Look what you can survive!

She didn’t, though. Jinseo simply held out the plate in her hands and stared at you expectantly until you sensed her gaze on you. Red-rimmed and glassy, your eyes lifted to meet her face and she was not going to cry at the sight of you. Nope. Swallowing thickly, she glanced pointedly at the plate, then back up to you. 

You were unfazed, barely conceding a blink. You didn’t even look down.

Please, sweet bean. Please eat something.

She tried again, nudging your knee with hers. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

For whatever reason, that holiday greeting was the only thing to reach you in a week. Finally, you looked down.

Jinseo hadn’t finalized her expectations prior to this moment, but the short list had included an eye roll, a groan, something. Even if you didn’t reciprocate, she would’ve been grateful for a response of any kind. Her list hadn’t included you bursting into tears over a piece of pumpkin pie, but that’s exactly what she got.

Charlie Brown can go fuck himself. There’s no such thing as good grief.

It was a reflex, dropping that plate onto the coffee table like it’d bit her. With her hands now free, she grabbed your shaking shoulders and pulled your limp body towards her until you all but collapsed in her lap. Even then, she squeezed you tighter.

I will not let you shatter. I will not let you slip away.

The two of you stayed there, just like that, for however long it took you to let go of the tears you’d stockpiled for eight straight days. And when you were finally quiet — finally still — Jinseo thought for sure that you’d finally fallen asleep.

“I think I hate him.”

Your voice was weak from lack of use; so much so that Jinseo could barely register that you’d spoken at all. Once she did, she didn’t know where to start.

Quietly, she asked, “Namjoon?”

With your head in her lap, Jinseo felt it shake. Again, you surprised her.

“Yoongi,” you whispered. God, you sound so broken. “I can’t stop thinking about it, and I know it makes me a bad person, but I’m so fucking angry at him. I went to that party because he begged me to. I wouldn’t have — I wasn’t looking for him.” 

Your voice cracked. “I wasn’t looking for him, for anyone. I’ve lost everything, and I don’t know what to do now. I’m so angry that it hurts.”

“That’s grief, sweet bean,” she corrected you gently. You sniffled, glanced up at her from the corner of your eye. “Not anger. Grief is just love with nowhere left to go.”

At this, you sat up more fully than you had in eight days, albeit looking more hollow than you ever had. Face tear-stained and bottom lip quivering, you croaked, “I don’t know what to do with it all.”

“Call Yoongi,” Jinseo hummed as she squeezed your knee. “If you need a place to put all that love you have left, then write one.”

2022/7/7; 00:00

Namjoon couldn’t remember the last time he had a day go the way it was supposed to; and frankly, he was getting sick of his own shit.

That morning had started off fine. 

Scratch that. 

It started off as well as he could possibly expect it to, waking up in an empty bed with no kneecap pressed into his spine. He drank coffee at his kitchen island, alone, and ignored the blackberries he’d unwittingly scooped onto his plate with the rest of his fruit. Dumped them in the trash before he lost his mind over a berry. Read half a book and remembered none of it. 

All things considered, Namjoon was doing just fine.

Unfortunately, things started going off the rails somewhere around sundown. He and Yoongi had wrapped up the last track on Namjoon’s upcoming release; and for once, Yoongi agreed to leave his studio. Agog and aghast, Namjoon dragged his favorite recluse to every sordid bar in that pocket of the city. As he piloted his tailspin, Namjoon repeated one thought, over and over:

Any dive he stumbled into was better than an empty apartment.

As he spiraled, he drank enough to blur the image of you, which was plastered on every television and burned inside his brain — but not too much. Namjoon learned a long time ago that he couldn’t sleep if he went to bed alone, so he made a habit of not doing that. After all, he didn’t have to like himself; he just needed to live with himself.

Whatever her name was, Namjoon only fucked her because she looked like you.

Her presence on your side of the bed might’ve summoned you because, when he finally checked his phone, your name was tied to a missed call. Better — or worse, he hadn’t decided — there was also a voicemail. The thought alone left him dangling precariously between wanting to cry and needing to vomit. Phone in hand, he staggered toward the bathroom before he’d made his choice.

Closing the door behind him, Namjoon leaned back against the wood. Everything was spinning, though none of it could be attributed to the whiskey he’d had several hours prior. This was all you.

You and that gravitational well he couldn’t ever seem to leave, trapped at his furthest point from you and growing colder all the time. Darker, too.

Aphelion, he remembered with a humorless laugh, not sure if or when it’ll ever be like this again.

Fuck!

Namjoon startled himself when he slammed his hands down on the counter, less due to the involuntary action and more due to the fear of breaking his phone. In a panic, he glanced down. It was perhaps the one thing left that he hadn’t shattered.

Typing in the code to his voicemail felt like disarming a bomb, given how urgently his fingers moved. He needed it, whatever it was that you deemed important enough to say to him. Needed you, but this was the closest thing he had, and that was fine.

“Hey, Joonie. It’s me — well, that much is probably obvious, I guess? Uhh — Anyway, Yoongi mentioned that you finished cutting the album today. I just —”  

Namjoon’s racing heart stopped dead in its tracks. You’d paused for so long that he feared the recording stopped there. Thankfully, you started up again, taking his pulse along with you.

“I just wanted to say, congratulations. You’re — I’m sure it’s incredible,” you sighed, “I hope you’re proud, and I hope you’re doing well.”

He was neither of those things. It’d been months, and it still hurt to breathe whenever he thought about you. He thought about you all the time, asleep or awake, no matter what — or who — he attempted to distract himself with. No matter how much of himself he lost track of in the process.

You were all he wanted, all he wants, all he’d ever want.

Namjoon caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Purposefully avoiding his own eye contact, he looked up, just above his crumpled brow. That bleached blonde hair still didn’t suit him, now even less so than when he asked for your opinion that day by the lake. He made a note of what you’d said, just like he'd told you then. It’d been sitting inside his medicine cabinet since the day after his whole fucking world exploded. 

Jaw clenched, he broke the magnetic seal between the mirrored door and that bottle of black dye.

likes are always appreciated, but it's feedback that means the most — whether that's in a comment below, PM, reblog, tags, etc. tysm for reading ✨

tagging: @borahae-k @i-purple-buff-bunni @pamzn @myimaginationsrunningwild @nonbinary-demonbrat @jihopesjoint @cyanide-mustard @xjoonchildx @bbyorchid @persphonesorchid @quarter-life-crisis2 @zelchena @withluvjm @firesighgirl @whatthefsposts @iadelicacy @chimmisbae @cowboylikeyoongi @sailoryooons @axialitae @ugh-yoongi @minholykingofkorea @kookstempo @gimmethatagustd @Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhintothevoid @yoongiphoria

want to be on my permanent bts taglist? sign up here.

[jadeazora]

I never understood why Gen5 was underrated back in the day, or fans who still say it's the worst. Like, you're telling me:

A completely new Pokedex with more Pokémon introduced than even Gen1? Sure, there's definitely some lackluster species, but with such a large quantity introduced, not everyone is gonna be a winner. (Gen1 also has the same issue with a lot of lackluster species, but gets a pass since they're the originals.) It forced the player to experiment rather than rely on old staples, which was a pretty cool risk.

Hidden Grottoes, which were a fun way to acquire Pokémon with Hidden Abilities. I remember getting a Sheer Force Bagon > Moxie Salamence from one. So much fun to use, iirc it had a beneficial nature for it too.

The best story and character writing from the mainline series at that point. (By Pokémon standards.) They even actually had the Gym Leaders and Champion actively help you, and that climax when they show up at N's Castle to help the player against Plasma was glorious.

A bunch of pretty decently well-written rivals. Hugh probably the least of them, but he's willing to throw hands with Plasma, so that's fun. But there's Cheren, who has his motives for becoming stronger questioned over the story. Bianca, who wants to prove herself to her overprotective father. And N, commonly is seen as one of Pokémon's best characters, having grown up and fed propaganda his whole life, having his whole viewpoint challenged once he meets the player, and growing and throwing off the control of his abusive father over the course of the games.

The literal most unhinged and vilest villain of the series, up to that point. (Up until they gave us some stiff competition with Volo.) Plus the implications that Ghetsis would have murdered his son (he saw N as nothing but a warped freak, and his Hydreigon was built to solo N's team).

Half of the region to explore as a postgame, or even in B2W2, the White Tree Hollow/Black Tower unlocking, a challenge that's capped off by the game giving you a free Shiny Gible or Dratini, and the PWT. It was WILD at the time to fight every Gym Leader almost and Champion, plus Giovanni.

Actually giving more of a reward for players who complete their Unova dex with a Shiny Haxorus (in B2W2.) That's so much cooler than just a diploma.

Difficulty modes. The implementation was bad and weird, yea, but fans have still been begging for difficulty modes for years.

This troll motherfucker:

The PokeStar Studios. A lot of the battles are fun little challenges. (There's even a Lv99, Ghost/Dark-type with Wonder Guard as an opponent.)

S-tier player designs, especially Hilda and Rosa. The latter is popular enough among fans to have received merch in a line focused on the series' most popular characters.

Memory Link, rewarding the player for playing the past game, allowing them to connect and catch N's Pokémon.

All that, and it's the worst? 🤨 Meanwhile, poor Gen6, particularly XY/Kalos, is sitting there and was completely shafted by GameFreak and left incomplete despite having a ton of untapped potential. 😣

(No offense meant to those who dislike the games. We're all free to our own opinions. For me tho, there's so many cool features that they outweigh my complaints.)

[missjoolee]

just thinking about an au where Julie works for her Tia's housekeeping company. they have contracts with one of the prominent labels in LA

it's a summer job maybe?

but she's getting the hang of dusting, cleaning glass, collecting trash and recycling, restroom maintenance, breakroom scrubbing, the works

when one day, one of the higher ups at the company seeks out her Tia for an unorthodox tasking

They need someone to go to an apartment and clean it up ASAP

Tia selects Julie because she knows she can trust her to work unsupervised as well as she can get the T-E-A later after the workday is over.

Once inside, it's got the musty smell of a place that hasn't been entered in a while and there is a light layer of dust on everything, including a very nice sound system connected to a high-end combination cd/tape/turntable with impressive library of cds, records, and the occasional tapes

Deciding that she doesn't have to work in silence, and whoever lives here won't be back before she's gone. she picks out a record to jam out to while she cleans, then throws open the windows she can and gets to work. She washes the linens, dusts, scrubs the bathroom, dusts, wipes down the kitchen, dusts, and when she finishes with all of that she can vacuum!

As she dusts in the living room, there are guitars on the wall and she can't help but notice 2 are missing

when one record ends, she switches it to something new, excited by the selection whoever lives here has curated

it's honestly hard to pick what's next but then in the CDs, down in the S's, she notices a rare gem from the music world!

They have Sunset Curve's first ever EP

It's a no brainer, she puts the CD into the tray and hits play as she picks up the rag she was using to wipe out the refrigerator. The guitars sound out the beginning of Now or Never and she's leaning inside the fridge, the french doors splayed open as she sings along to the song when a loud THUD startles her out and THERE IS A MAN and she is YELLING, and then he is yelling

and that is how she met Luke Patterson of Sunset Curve, freshly returned from their european summer circuit, as she explains to Flynn later

Once they'd stopped yelling, she had apologized, rushed to turn the music off and explained that she was almost done and to "please, settle in and pretend i'm not here. I will be gone in 10 minutes"

and he had, looking dead on his feet, probably from the time change (also very stunned from hearing a wrecking ball of a voice singing his lyrics from inside his fridge, but she doesn't know that) and then she was gone.

time passes and she keeps working the normal duties from the contracts at the company, only once did she see Sunset Curve and she did an about face and took an alternate route to the task she was doing.

but then Toby gets tendonitis or something and now Tia needs someone to cover the part of the building that features all the studios for the different bands in LA that are signed to the label and it has to be someone trustworthy because they might see or hear music that CANNOT be leaked or the whole cleaning service loses the contract. So trustworthy niece gets picked

Given a schedule each week of what bands will be in and when (ish) she is able to clean unobtrusively for the most part

It's the end of the day and she just needs to gather trash from the rooms that were used that day when she gets a bit thrown off by the set up in SC's studio. Everything is pushed to the edges of the small room and a keyboard is set up front and center.

Looking for where they'd moved the trash can, her eyes keep flicking back to the keyboard and she can't help brushing her fingers over the keys gently before she leaves. Only for someone to be in the doorway, making her jump!

It's luke and he apologizes for startling her but she is in "oh crap oh crap don't bother the clients" mode and so she apologizes and skidaddles out of there

and then and then

Suddenly on the schedule of when bands will be in, there is a request for her to clean SC's room at a specific time during the lunch hour that day. and when she arrives, the rooms is well, not spotless, but cleaner than it should be and there is a note on the keyboard saying to have fun for an hour maybe

and it keeps happening?

julie starts taking luke up on the opportunity to play around on the piano

and then suddenly luke is there but like "don't mind me, keep doing your thing!" and she very much does her own thing but that is grilling him about what is happening annnnnnnnnnnnd

they get closer as time passes

and eventually it becomes helping luke with a song which then becomes working on a new song together

and then excited about the song, luke shares it with the guys and they begin workshopping their instruments into it and Julie happens to hear it happening and thinks that Luke just used her for the music and stole the song they'd been working on for his band

so she stops showing up during that hour, instead working in a room somewhere else where he can't find her

annd she avoids him in the hallways, always turning and going the opposite direction if she sees him or the band

and finally Toby's arm is doing better and can come back to work so she is quick to relent the studio section back to them

Tia notices she doesn't even hum while working anymore and then one day she is cleaning a conference room, and

The door opens behind her. Reggie and Alex walk in. She can't run out, so she just keeps wiping down the windows.

"Did Luke do something wrong?" It could be just his friends trying to help a guy out but there is steel in alex's voice that lets Julie know that they will 100% be on her side if she told them Luke did anything royally stupid and offensive.

"No."

"Oh...okay. Do you think you'd want to write with him again?" the question is unsure. like alex doesn't know if he should even ask it.

Now Julie is mad. "I'm not paid to write songs. I'm paid to clean. I don't have time for this."

"a shame. That was a killer song you two wrote" Reggie hesitantly says.

"yeah. I heard you guys playing it. Hope it does well on your next album" she fails to keep any of her anger out of her voice. and since she doesn't want to get fired for fighting the labels talent, she grabs her supplies and leaves out the secondary door.

and then the guys realize that Julie may have a misunderstanding about what's going on with the song she wrote with Luke

but before luke can fix it, SC has to travel again, this time to Australia and then Canada.

so it's at least 3 weeks before they are back in LA

I don't know how this ends. How does Luke make things right with Julie? Any ideas? Would love to see your thoughts.