#in the meantime. love y’all. anyone who reads this and anyone who doesn’t. y’all are important no matter who you are. you deserve to hear it

[jankwritten]

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[tomdutch]

Hey um I know there's a large chance that you most likely won't see this, but I just have to say this. When you had first spoken up about leaving the fandom I was confused as to why because I didn't really realize how dry it was becoming. I just wanna say how utterly correct you were. It has declined even moreee since your leave (not saying you caused it or anything). I sometimes find myself comparing the notes/reblogs from Tom!peter fanfics to the tasm!peter ones and the difference is astounding ( it has me wondering if anyone even knows that Tom!peter exists). It's really sad, the fandom honestly can't be revived, like where is everyone??? I have so many questions about the decline of content in the fandom ( I know the interactions from the readers played a huge part, but I also feel like there may have been other factor that lead to this.) Did everyone in the fandom just grow up or something?? Anyways, I miss you lots and hope you are doing well and your new fandoms are treating you right.

wow this was a doozy to read but in a good way 😭 the delusional main character side of me wants to think my absence had an impact of any kind lmaooo but to be honest, the fandom was already in really bad shape.

lack of reader interaction personally wasn’t that big of a factor for me, i was incredibly lucky and am still grateful for the consistent feedback and love y’all gave me and i still sometimes look through reblogs on my fave fics for writing inspo :”) it meant so much to me and i look back with so much fondness on all the fun times we had with more interactive series, especially break my heart.

not to sound like i’m giving a ted talk, but what drove me away more than anything was the toxicity of the fandom. granted all fandoms have a certain level of it, but this one was really, truly bad in 2021-2022. there’s only so much consistent harassment and suicide bait a girl can overlook while still feeling welcome and excited abt this space 😭 when i look back at that stuff now i’m honestly shocked so many people stayed as long as we did.

rabid shipping culture aside, i personally feel like the mcu spiderman franchise took a big hit in no way home that drove a lot of ppl away. obviously they couldn’t keep going forever with a 30 year old guy playing a 19 year old, but their creative decisions in nwh are questionable at best to me. the end of mcu peter’s story was so final and abrupt that, combined with how flip-floppy the writers were abt a follow-up trilogy with new characters and a time jump, didn’t leave much room for fanfic to carry on. they quite literally erased mcu peter as a character and individual from the mcu itself lmao it would be pretty hard for people to write copious fanfics about a guy who has no one bc no one knows who he is and his family is dead as hell.

that being said, i really am sorry you feel like it’s difficult to enjoy and share your passion in this space. that feeling sucks and i hope that, if you write fanfic, the lack of engagement and content doesn’t stop you from being creative and sharing what you wanna share. trends and fandoms come and go in waves, you never know when a piece of media or an actor has a revival in the general public. i don’t know what roles tom has going on but if you feel inspired to engage in them when the time comes, i’m sure there will be ppl there to interact. you’re never too ‘grown up’ to enjoy fandom, especially not one as iconic and timeless as spider-man in all variations. if there’s a character, there’s ppl out there creating art for them.

in the meantime, i hope life treats you kindly as well and thank you for your ask :”) if you ever wanna chat with me, i’m still active on my main, or if you’re more comfortable here i still check in on this blog every other month 💛

[empress-of-snark]

Hey! Sorry in advance for the long ask but I recently read your friends au fic (LOVE IT – it’s actually what I didn’t know I needed) and I am so looking forward to Jancy getting together! I’m a sucker for slow burn. I’m loving watching Nancy slowly realizing her feelings now that Jonathan is with someone else. Jonathan fell first, but I have a feeling Nancy is gonna be the one who falls the hardest. 😍 Idk your timeline but I hope she realizes her feelings a few weeks/months before they actually get together – it would be great to watch her have to deal with her jealousy towards Charlie once she actually knows that she’s jealous. 😂 Although hopefully she won’t be quite as mean as Rachel was! And I’d love to see the gang’s reaction to the switch of Nancy being the one pining hopelessly after Jonathan. I hope you’re able to work in the scene where Chandler accidentally tells Rachel about Ross – ooh and that great episode where Rachel gives Ross sex advice that ends up with her telling him exactly how she’d want to have sex with him.

Also, I must say I wasn’t expecting to be as big of a fan of Charlie as I am. But any person who recognizes what a great catch Jonathan is is an A+ in my book. She definitely knows about Jonathan’s (and Nancy’s) feelings but she still makes an effort to be nice to Nancy even though Nancy keeps shutting her down. I felt so bad for Julie in the show, so I’m glad that Jonathan isn’t the kind of guy who’d do what Ross did. I hope Charlie and Jonathan end things amicably.

Don’t you DARE apologize for a long ask—they are always the highlight of my day!

It’s been so fun to write for Jancy because I feel like they’re a kind of overlooked couple in canon (and Jonathan in general isn’t a typical fan favorite, though I’ve been simping for him since day one). I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments and opinions on how their story is playing out in my fic!

For instance, the general reaction to Charlie is actually not at all what I expected—I tried to make her likable (because he’d never date anyone who wasn’t nice), but I assumed y��all would hate her on principle because she’s delaying the Jancy endgame. Instead, everyone is 100% supportive of Jonathan getting some love in the meantime until Nancy gets her head out of her ass lmao

It’s definitely not gonna be a messy breakup. You’re absolutely right that Charlie is at least on some level aware of what’s going on between Jonathan and Nancy, and she’s not the type to be bitter about that kind of thing. It won’t be anything like the Anthony/Nancy breakup lol

And I totally agree that Julie really gets the short end of the stick—she’s so sweet and honestly a good match for Ross! IIRC, doesn’t she end up with Russ, Ross’s doppelgänger? 😂

Thank you so much for reading and taking the time to send such a sweet ask!! I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!!

[ultimate-quartz]

Swamped by schoolwork but just wanted to update y’all with my crazed four swords resurgence: I outlined an entire 40+ chapter fanfic & can start writing when my real world work is done. Expect this monstrosity to begin in the spring :4

[foenixs]

*crack knuckles* i’m in mx mood, thanks a lot fiona, can i please get a reaction where y’all in public and just chilling and then 👀 you touch them out of nowhere 👀 hmmm, let’s say in a restaurant and while you two waiting for food, he’s talking about his days and you just,,,, touch him. ☺️ i wanna see them boys gets flustered when you casually touch em in public skdhdjsms FOR ALL THE BOYS PLS *grabby hands* THANK YOU 💖 -cheating 🕺🏻

Monsta X reaction to You Touching Them in Public

note: sorry this took so long to upload^^ you even got renamed in the meantime but here ya go

includes- sub!Monsta x x dom!reader (Minhyuk's part if for a female reader, the rest is gender neutral), public play

if you like my fics please reblog them with a nice comment or tag

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shownu

You sneak up behind him, letting your hand slip under his shirt and rest on his chest as you bend down to leave a kiss on his cheek. He jumps to the side, your cold hands surprising him, diverting his attention from the mobile game he was playing.

Letting out a laugh you turn his chin with your pointer finger, laying a deep kiss on his lips. He wants to pull away, knowing that you two could get caught at any moment, but he couldn’t. Your lips tasted like cotton candy and your breath fanned against his cheeks like a warm summer breeze.

You let one hand dance around his nipple, lightly twisting it between two fingers as your other hand glides down to his crotch. Massaging his bulge, he groans into the kiss, one hand cupping your cheek to deepen the embrace.

“Uhhh- hyung?”, Shownu jumps up in fright, his red face turning to look at Changkyun, who was standing in the doorway with a raised eyebrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wonho

Your hand lays still on his thigh under the dinner table as you stroke a conversation with Shownu. It was a simple touch of claim, but it drove him crazy beyond belief. He was twisting in his seat, sweating, his hand coming to rest on top of yours to calm himself down.

When Shownu bends his head down to eat, you throw a questioning glance over to your boyfriend. He could read the judgement in your eyes and smirk and he knew it was hopeless to fight his desire.

“I drank too much water, I’m gonna go to the toilet”, he declared, getting up from his seat.

He knew you couldn’t stand when he escaped your grasp, but his boner grew harder to hide and he’d rather take your punishment over the embarrassment of cumming in front of his friends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Minhyuk

imagine you're changkyun

It was a game between you two, seeing who could embarrass the other more in public. You’d pull his pants up so his bulge would get accentuated and he’d do the same to your shirt.

You were waiting for the perfect opportunity as he stood in line in front of you to order a coffee at Starbucks. Right as he steps towards the counter you squeeze the fabric of his jeans, but instead of laughing like he usually does he falls dead quiet, forgetting how to talk as the barista loudly clears her throat.

You step up next to him, ordering for the both of you, noticing the deep shade of red that his cheeks were tainted in as you give him a questioning side eye. Your gaze falls down upon his pants and you notice the growing reason for his embarrassment. His bulge was more prominent than usual, the outline of his hard cock being more than visible in his tight pants.

Quickly picking up your order you drag him out of the store, both of you having learned a valuable lesson.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kihyun

It was really his fault, he had been teasing you all day, from licking his lips to grazing your butt with his hand. He did everything to get you to snap and you had enough of his silly games.

Hugging him from behind while he was waiting backstage for a performance you place on hand right around his neck, choking him as you breathe into his ear. He gulps down, trying to escape your grasp as he doesn’t want anyone to notice what you were doing, but you tight grip keeps him close.

“Don’t ever tease me in public again or I will fuck you so hard you’ll pass out.”

You could feel him shivering under your grasp, the warning turning him on more than he’d like to admit. Pulling away you chuckle as he tries to readjust his pants.

Your words lingered in his head and he had to mentally slap himself to stay focused on the lyrics as he was performing with a boner in front of thousands of people.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hyungwon

He couldn’t stop goofing around, making everyone think he was high, as your hand rubbed him over his jeans. Though he was trying to deflect the attention from what you were doing to him, his unusually loud demeanour had the exact opposite effect.

Everyone was staring at him, making him melt into the seat further as your motions grew blunter and faster with every minute. He had to use all of his strength not to moan out your name.

Feeding him with your free hand you find a way to shut his mouth so the other members would go back to talking amongst themselves.

You lean against his shoulder, nestling your nose in his hair so the members couldn’t see you whispering in his ear.

“Why so nervous Wonnie? I’m barely getting started.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jooheon

He was drowning in your attention, eating it up like it was his last meal. Every touch of you made him feel loved and gave him a sense of belonging. No matter here you were, he needed to have your hands on him, holding his hand, stroking his thigh, brushing through his hair.

If you ignored him for too long he’d take your hand and move it to his lap, showing you how much you affected him. He twists his head, throwing you a pout as you massaged his bulge just a little too slowly.

Worries about getting caught? Never. He loves it when you make him cum right in front of his members.

He’s so easy to break, so easy to control. Every little touch drives him insane and makes him crave more as he melts into you.

“Please, touch me more, I’ll behave and not make a sound, I promise.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Changkyun

Two people could play the game he started. He was rubbing over his neck all day, reminding you of the activities of last night. The hickeys that were barely covered by his shirt were exposed to your sight as he tucks on the fabric.

You walk up to him, placing one hand against his chest as you push him into a wall, leaning in to whisper against his lips. Your right hand moves down his body to grab his cock firmly, having him groan out and sink down into your palm.

“You love being a tease, don’t you?”

It was a rhetorical question, but he smirks anyway.

“Oh baby, you might be confident now, but you have no idea what I’ll do to you as soon as we get home. This time you won’t be able to cover up the marks that I will place so generously on your body.”

-

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masterlist

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taglist:  @euphoricsunflowers, @vanillaknj, @mingiibabieee, @sub-hoshi-enthusiast, @soya-zz, @coeurbreak, @mellowriting, @submissive-bangtan

[xmyshya]

Shoved it: chapter V - Pop Shuvit

summary: You don’t like skaters. They’re unruly, misbehaved and rude. But this one encounter just might change your view. genre: fluff warnings: tooth-rotting fluff (seriously, make a dentist appointment), slow burn, mutual pining betas: @vanille–kiss​ you have no idea how much I love you and how grateful I am for everything that you do for me a/n: Written for ANILYSIUM (former HQHQ) Server Collab with the prompt “Meet Ugly”. Check the event’s masterlist here! This is the last part - honestly it makes me kind of sad... Thank you so much for reading <3 series navi: masterlist | previous wc: 1.7k

“Do you trust me?”

You don’t know what to answer because yes, you do, but is it alright to admit it? You nod anyway and grab his hand, and Suna pulls you up to stand on a skateboard. In theory he keeps it steady with one foot on it, you still have your doubts though. Oh well, word has been said.

“Stand still. And relax.”

Easy to say when he proceeds to stand on the board too, and he’s so close, and he has an arm around your waist, and he looks so good in his ripped jeans and checkered flannel, and he smells so nice, and you can feel his warmth on your back…

“Ready?”

You shake your head but he only chuckles; his body shifts and yours follows due to the grip he has on your waist, and the board rolls slowly. It feels weird, a little bit scary, so you clutch his forearm, making him hold you tighter in response. He’s silent until your muscles relax a little against him.

“I’m gonna speed up a little.”

This time you’re not affected as much. You suppose it must be difficult to maneuver like this, when Suna has to take additional weight and cubature of a passenger into account. But he’s not complaining, and neither are you.

“Let’s try a bit of turning.”

“Okay.”

Somehow it’s not so scary anymore, it’s getting exciting. Every twist and turn of his body pulls you too, every tilt creates a wobbly curved shift. It’s so fun.

Hearing you giggle makes his cheeks flush. Rin tries to convince himself it’s because his passion is liked by one more person, but the truth is… he loves the sound. Just like he loves the scent of your hair, and the warmth of you being so close as he guides you. He loves it so much, too much, that he feels like needs a break.

***

“Okay, your turn.” Nice diversion, Rintarou. “To move forward, you need to push with the backfoot, you brake by placing your backfoot on the ground, and turn by shifting weight from your toes to your heels.”

“Could you uhm… hold my hand?”

The diversion went to hell. He reaches his hand out anyway, his heart doing somersaults when you place yours on top. You look so cute with this wide grin, shiny eyes and a tiny blush. Even more so when you’re focused and determined, like it’s the only thing that matters in the world.

Right now, Rin doesn’t even mind running for you if it means not letting go of your hand, if it means seeing your face light up like this. His chest swells up with pride, it’s his hobby that brings you joy, it’s him who teaches you, and you’re riding visibly smoother and more confidently with every try.

“Suna?”

“Yeah?”

“When could we have lesson two?”

Oh god. He fell in love. Hard.

Back at home you can’t stop staring at your palm; the ghost of his touch still burns and tickles your skin. It’s incomprehensible why you did that, why you asked him to hold your hand. All you know is that you want to feel it again.

And maybe even more than that. You miss being close to him, the arm secured around your middle, the breath fanning your ear, his warmth, his scent, his voice… him. You miss him so much, despite seeing each other merely 2 hours ago.

Oh god. You fell in love. Hard.

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

“Okay, ladies and gents, today ‘m gonna teach y’all to ollie!”

Atsumu, ever the showman, exclaims with hands on his hips even though it’s only you. You can't help but snort as Osamu facepalms, and Suna only raises a brow. This will be exhilarating.

“So first, ya gotta pop yer board like this, and then slide yer foot up, and then push it forward. Remember - pop and drag. And repeat.”

“On it, sensei!”

The blond is very pleased with your nickname - his grin is wider than ever, and eyes glint with more mischievousness than usual. He’s doing this exercise with you, to both keep you company and to display how it should be done.

“Don’t stroke his ego like that, or he’ll be even more insufferable.”

Osamu huffs, making his twin gasp in offence and roll away. Now you’re here alone with two spectators, great. What makes this situation even worse is their silence, which makes you spiral into thoughts. Are they not saying anything because you’re doing well? Or because it’s so bad? How long are you supposed to keep doing this?

“Now try doin’ it in one swift motion.” The silver haired boy speaks, his twin nowhere to be seen. “A think ya’ve done this enough.”

First few attempts make you lose your balance a little, with no time to stabilise yourself in the middle. But it gets easier with time, each sequence smoother than the last one, until both boys hum in appreciation.

“Oi, oi, oi, what are ya doin’ with ma student?!”

Atsumu is suddenly back, and he’s not pleased with someone taking over his role. His brother is quick to talk back.

“Then maybe ya should take care of her, ya scrub!”

“Well, well, ya seem to be doin’ well!” The blond decides to ignore the response. “Now try to jump.”

“What?”

“Jump, ya know… like this.”

You’re still standing there dumbfounded, not really understanding how this is supposed to work. Osamu tries to weigh in, but Suna stops him and says to just wait and watch. It’s horrible, it’s not working, you can’t even lift off the ground, not to mention land back on the board.

“How can ya not… It’s the simplest thing! Look, like… like this.”

Blond Miya gets irritated, the other two boys nearly fall from the bench from laughter. Osamu finally decides to save the day.

“Move, ya idiot.” He shoves his brother to the side. “Listen, when yer standing like this, ya jump and pop the board while in the air. Yer other foot slides up to level it, and then ya land.”

Oh, this makes so much more sense. You succeed on the second try, making Atsumu groan and others cry from laughing too hard.

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

Rin is right next to you, in a secluded part of the park. The two of you are the only people around, which is both weird, because it’s such a warm day, and desirable, because at least you don’t bother anyone. And no one bothers you.

“Let’s start with the shove, yeah?” You nod. “First place your feet like this, stick your toes out a bit more, good. Now, you push the backfoot straight back, your frontfoot barely lifts off the board - that’s the key. Then the board makes an 180, and you land.”

He watches you try and fail, but it’s not like you make some serious mistakes, you just need to figure things out - how much force to use, how high to jump. So he starts mindlessly shoving his board around, staying close in case you need him.

Honestly he’s impressed with how quickly you’re able to learn, your eagerness and determination being a balm to his heart. He just wants to hug you, hold you close with his eyes shut, and breathe. Nothing more, just breathe.

In the meantime you managed to work out the part he had shown you - maybe it’s not perfect yet, but enough to step up your game. He tells you to do the same, but moving, a small but significant upgrade.

Suna has been watching you closely for a long while now, your skin burning wherever his eyes lingered. The alley you’ve been occupying is hidden in shade, but it does little to soothe the fire. You need a break, even if it’s for just 5 minutes.

Water bottle buried in the ground (not entirely, obviously) is pleasantly cool when you dig it out. You wish you could submerge yourself in it, maybe this would help. Thin streams of the liquid flow down your scorching skin, a contrast of feelings gives you goosebumps. Okay, you cheer yourself mentally, time to continue.

And you do, for the first hour landing on the ground instead of the board, having it upside down (how? It’s a mystery), or rotating it in weird angles. Rintarou is patient, observes your every move and offers suggestions that do help. Three hours later your efforts are deemed worthy of the next level.

“So now you have to combine that pop from the ollie with the shove, and you got it!”

“Easy to say…”

Rin laughs and goes to lie down on a grass, placing his backpack under his head, so he can still see you. You start moving, and call it instinct, call it intuition, one can even call it clairvoyance, but he already knows you’re going to fail.

He sees it all in slow motion, how you come close to where he is, how you flick your ankle and the board spins, but the angle is wrong, the pace of the rotation is wrong, everything seems wrong.

The least he can do is to minimise the harm; you’re right in front of him when you land awkwardly and tumble forward, right into his stretched arms. The impact makes him fall on his back with you on top, his arms secured around you.

“Oh god, Suna, I’m so sorry, I-”

You’re blushing like a tomato, your eyes widen in terror but you’re so damn adorable that his heart clenches painfully. He smiles as he brushes some loose strands off the way.

“You should watch where you’re going, could have hurt someone.”

It’s now or never.

His lips are so soft, you think before you even register why you can feel that. But when you realise… the time comes to a halt. The whole world ceases to exist, it’s just you and him, his arms embracing your figure, and his lips on yours. It only lasts for a few seconds before he pulls away and whispers

“...you punk.”

Taglist: @kageyamas-love @mikasbloodbag @underratedmage

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 278: MOMO IN CHARGE

Previously on BnHA: Deku and Kacchan were all “SIR, THAT’S OUR EMOTIONAL SUPPORT SENSEI” and got really ferocious and made a very passionate attempt to blow Tomura up and it was great. It basically did nothing, but it was still great. AFO was all “COME HERE LIL BRO”, and Tomura was all “silly Sensei, you can’t just take over my mind and body just like that”, and he was very confident of this despite there really being no evidence to back it up, but okay! Gran was all “time to make the fandom mad at me” and grabbed Tomura by the collar and yelled at him about Nana a bit, and then Bakugou and Endeavor made an even MORE passionate attempt to blow up Tomura, which may or may not have done some actual damage. The chapter ended with Gigantomachia battling Mt. Lady, just kinda out of the blue, which is FINE, but she had better be all right, though!

Today on BnHA: Everyone is all “WAUGHH IT’S GIGANTOMACHIA” and running around freaking out about it. The U.A. alums all kick some ass, and pretty much everyone else not from U.A. does jack fucking shit. Mt. Lady, who I plan on naming all of my future children after, does her best to stop Machia but he keeps flinging her aside. Kamui Woods is all “here I come with Midnight to put Gigantomachia to sleep!” and is PROMPTLY FUCKING MURDERED!? by Dabi because he’s a flammable tree man, and so Midnight falls all the way to the ground and is badly injured. So then she’s all “well I better call the most competent person I can think of to fix this mess” and dials up YAOYOROZU FUCKING MOMO, who proceeds to take charge LIKE THE BOSS SHE IS, and mobilizes the rest of the kids. And honestly I have more faith in them than in any of the adults at this point, so yeah, you know what? Let’s do this.

so I am possibly a bit spoiled on this chapter because I did a “top five predictions” post earlier this week, and someone replied to that yesterday on Thursday saying that they were mostly correct. I don’t know exactly how close to the mark I was though, and in any case most of the predictions were just “so-and-so shows up, probably”, so it’s not too bad. we’ll see how it goes!

OH THANK GOD MY BABIES ARE SAFE

I mean, CLEARLY they’re all about to be in horrible danger, seeing as Jirou is about to inform them of the whole “THE BIG GUY EVERYONE WAS AFRAID ABOUT WAKING UP WOKE UP” thing, but in the meantime at least Kami and Toadette and Honenuki made it back to the group safely

also Kaminari’s use of “Jirou-Jack” here is fucking inspired and I want him to teach a class on nicknames. isn’t he the one who coined “Yaomomo” as well? this boy has a gift and it needs to be appreciated

so Jirou is all “SOMETHING REALLY BIG IS COMING”, and actually she says “INSANELY HUGE”, which if anything is still an understatement, hard as it is to believe

WOW

“A BAD GUY IS HEADING THIS WAY?? SOUNDS LIKE IT’S TIME TO ABANDON THE CHILDREN IN THE WOODS” kjlfakh okay you know what?? fine!! you weren’t even going to do anything anyway so let’s not pretend!!

holy shit it’s like Mt. Lady isn’t even there

look at those speed lines!! goddamn. I just felt this huge rush of empathy for Mt. Lady though. like can you imagine growing up with this super-destructive quirk, and managing to become a hero with it against all odds, and having to put up with the manga making fun of you all the time just because sometimes you have a tendency to DESTROY A LOT OF STUFF, but it’s not like you can help it!! but the upside has always been that when your quirk is on, you are fucking UNSTOPPABLE though. so even though it’s been a hell of a rough ride for you, it’s worth it because you’re a complete badass and the number of people who can beat you out in terms of sheer physical strength is probably in the single digits. and you’re working really hard too, and lately you’ve been moving up through the ranks and actually becoming a damn fine hero if I do say so myself (and I do), and it’s like, about time though?? like finally, finally it is all starting to come together for you. and then this snarling trashrock person suddenly comes stampeding along and you put your all into trying to stop him, and it doesn’t even do a damn thing. like, holy shit. that’s just not fucking fair and YOU DESERVE BETTER, MT. LADY

anyway so she’s still hanging in there for now though so let’s check in with our villain squad riding on his back

lmaooo they’re all “I don’t even understand what is going on here”

YOU GUYS, THIS IMPLIES THAT THEY WERE ALL PLUCKED OFF THE GROUND BY THE SCRUFFS OF THEIR NECKS AND THEY HAD ABSOLUTELY NO SAY IN THE MATTER OMG. like I’m picturing Spinner being held by his cape pinched in between Machia’s thumb and forefinger, and awkwardly trying to lecture him like a mom with his hands on his hips all, “BAD GIGANTOMACHIA! NO! NOOOUAGH -- !” and cutting off with a yelp as he’s dropped onto his back

and I am glad they got Toga some clothes! I like to think Gigantomachia grabbed those for her as well. so thoughtful

wow Skeptic actually wants to go back to Re-Destro??

color me legit impressed. I underestimated your loyalty my dude. and let me also just take this moment to extend my gratitude toward Horikoshi for leaving the rest of the MLA out of it because good fucking riddance to them, goodbye forever hopefully!!

I guess they’ll be needing Skeptic’s quirk down the line for some reason? maybe he is meant to be like a new, less out-of-control Twice. smdh y’all out here trying to replace your dead buddy like a pet goldfish

who is this “they” Dabi is referring to

do you mean the heroes? lol yeah I guess they’re pretty distracted by the literal fucking kaijuu you’re currently piggybacking on

SIGH

“the Jakku team must’ve made a mistake” BOY, I’LL SAY. you know what, don’t even talk to me about that yet. it’s still too fresh. suffice it to say that your suspicions are correct and things in Jakku are not very daijobu right about now

anyway here’s a closeup of this bubble person just cuz

they are everything and I want them to be my friend. also there’s a squid person a few paces behind them who can probably do anything a squid can do. or they might actually be a shark person, actually. I don’t know. either way I love them

GETEN PLEASE GO AWAY

WE ARE PHASING OUT THE MLA!! MOVING FORWARD IT’S ORIGINAL LOV ONLY!! I’M SORRY BUT YOU DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT. we already have an ice character so shoo

OH DAMN MY MAN CEMENTOSS HAS HAD ENOUGH OF HIS NONSENSE TOO AHHHH YESS

1) hey so Cementoss is legit terrifying who’d’ve thought

and 2), did Cementoss always have a mouthful of gigantic perfect teeth each the size of a slice of bread, or is this just something I’m only noticing now because I’m behind the curve. either way, let me just say sincerely, DKJDLKFJLSKJG

RE-DESTRO YOU GO AWAY TOO!!

@waywardfacegarden​ you asked the other day which are the characters I actually dislike, and this is one of them lol. he’s just a big ol’ prick, and on top of that has the audacity to not even be interesting in any way so as to balance it out. anyway so apologies to any Re-Destro stans out there but I basically spend every panel he’s in hoping that someone will punch him in the face hard enough to finally make him shut up

anyway so my man Edgeshot is here though, finally!! but of all the people for him to fight! this is a real predicament for me. the most soothing character in the series contrasted with the character who grates my nerves the most. Edgeshot’s sexy ASMR voice is gonna be drowned out by all of RD’s punching and self-important ranting in the anime and I’m lowkey devastated but I’m gonna pull myself together and read on

SPEAKING OF SELF-IMPORTANT RANTING

Edge, if you can liberate us from having to put up with his insufferable ass once and for all I will be so grateful to you. can you do this. please. for me

and it looks like some other boring MLA villains are following along behind Machia so I’m gonna need someone to kick their asses as well. please

-- YESSSSSS

okay so now I see what that comment on my prediction post was referring to lol. I did indeed have my fingers crossed that these two would show up again, and sure enough! THE GANG’S ALL HERE YAY

and Mt. Lady is being sumoed aside!

anyone want tonight’s lotto numbers. during this brief fleeting moment of having my predictions be actually credible, I would just like to say that Hagakure is the U.A. traitor. thank you and goodnight

OH NO KAMUI IS WORRIED

HE LOOKS SO PANICKED?? OUT OF THE BLUE I SHIP IT SO MUCH?? I keep forgetting they’re on the same team and stuff and wow, I need to calm down

LOL MIDNIGHT IS ALL “NO TIME FOR SHIPS!!”

I wonder if her quirk will actually be enough to take him down? this is something I’ve been itching to see for a long time, actually. just how powerful is she? we know her quirk is more effective on males than females, but is anyone actually capable of resisting it? imagine if she really did just knock Gigantomachia out after all of this buildup. that would be some god-tier shit omg, DO IT

(ETA: I am just going to assume that since Horikoshi had to go to elaborate lengths to take her out of the fight, this means that her quirk really was capable of knocking them all out. another tragic case of Too Badass For The Plot. y’all better respect Midnight.)

YESSSSSSSS

is she stripping. you know what -- don’t think about it. I won’t let you ruin this for me Horikoshi. Midnight’s gonna be a badass because the ladies are fucking ruling this arc and that’s all there is to it

NOOOOOO

DABI GET BACK HERE I JUST WANT TO TALK!!

oh thank god, she’s all right. BUT KAMUI ISN’T THOUGH DLKJSFLKSJDG??!

did Kamui Woods just... die

(ETA: okay but for real, is there an actual curse in effect on the Billboard Top Ten right now, though?? did one of them accidentally disturb the tomb of some ancient king??)

...

( ･ั﹏･ั)

oH MY GOD!?!

NOOOOOOO WHY ARE YOU SO QUICK TO SLEEP ON MAJESTIC, LET’S SEE IF THEY CAN DO IT!! GIVE US MAJESTIC GOD DAMMIT

(ETA: Horikoshi is seriously just yanking our chain at this point. when Majestic finally does show up, he or she better have the coolest fucking quirk of all time, that’s all I’m saying.)

okay how badly injured is Midnight here, though?? she just fell all that way?? DO I NEED TO BE REALLY MAD. I CAN WORK MY WAY UP TO IT PRETTY QUICKLY, JUST SAY THE WORD. I’M ALREADY HALFWAY THERE HONESTLY. WHERE’S KAMUI WOODS

!!!!!!!!!!!

AND JUST LIKE THAT MY ANGER EVAPORATES INTO THE NIGHT, YESSSSSSSSS!! MOMOOOOO

holy shit. “a quirk that can stop that thing,” she says. and goes and calls YAOYOROZU FUCKING MOMO y’all I am barely holding myself back from SCREAMING right now I...

you guys

you guys. if Midnight and Yaomomo team up to take down Gigantofuckingmachia using some sort of MOMO MADE A MACHINE TO SPREAD MIDNIGHT’S QUIRK strategy, or whatnot?? I will fucking die on the spot. you can end the manga right there. Kacchan you can keep your quirk I don’t even care

“IT MIGHT BE AGAINST THE LAW” lmaooooo insert John Mulaney “WE’RE WELL PAST THAT” gif here. holy shit. listen, that is fine. if anything it’s even better

WHAT THE FUCK

DO I NEED TO START GETTING REALLY MAD AGAIN!?!?! FUCKING WHIPLASH, IS WHAT THIS IS, BUT YOU JUST TELL ME WHAT SORT OF OVER-THE-TOP REACTION IS NEEDED HERE AND I’LL GO FOR IT

(((( ;°Д°))))

[GRABS HORIKOSHI BY THE COLLAR] listen, you. if you only just now, for the first time ever, gave us a lady hero actually mentoring another lady hero, which we have somehow NEVER HAD BEFORE in almost three hundred chapters, only for you to then KILL OFF THE MENTOR IN THE MIDDLE OF HER GODDAMN SPEECH TO THE MENTOREE, I will... there’s... I’ll... okay, listen. DON’T. THERE WILL BE A RECKONING. CAPSLOCK SUCH AS THIS WORLD HAS NEVER WITNESSED!!

ヽ(#ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ┌┛

I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO REACT TO ANYTHING IN THIS CHAPTER AND I’M LOSING MY MIND OVER IT

so the other kids are all “what the fuck” and “so Momo’s in charge??” which, YES!!! IT’S THE ONE GOOD PART ABOUT ALL THIS SO DON’T YOU DARE QUESTION IT

MOMO NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE CRIPPLED BY YOUR ANXIETY, YOU CAN DO THIS GIRL I BELIEVE IN YOU

hell, it’s not even just an “I believe in you” thing, because it’s not just belief, it’s fact. you motherfucking can do this, you are the most capable and brilliant student in 1-A, you just gotta have faith and let yourself shine!!

so now there are some more panels of Machia running and the villains and heroes fighting, blah blah blah. and Momo screwing up her face as she makes her decision...

YESSSSSSSSS

my baby girl is all grown up and TAKING THESE MOTHERFUCKIN REINS and MOMO I WILL LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU JUST SAY THE WORD!!

lol she’s all “Jirou use your ears and scientifically calculate how long it’ll take him to get here”, and Jirou is all “I can literally fucking see him, he’s gonna be on top of us in like two seconds” WELL OKAY THEN

thank god there are no adult pros left to fuck this up. is that weird that this is a real and honest and completely sincere thought that just ran through my head? like, at this point if any of the adults were around I’d just be afraid of them dying honestly. but with the kids I actually feel real hope that they’re somehow gonna do this. of course it helps that unlike the adults they’re pretty safe from being killed off

also! way to represent the entirety of class 1-B there Honenuki lulz. sorry, The Rest of Class 1-B

OH MY GOD

MT. LADY I WILL LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU AS WELL!! YOU HAVE MY LOVE AND FEALTY!!

I’M STANNING HER SO HARD I’M GONNA EXPLODE SOMEBODY HELP!?!

JIROU SAYS THAT MACHIA HAS SLOWED DOWN!! YOU GUYS I’M ABOUT TO GET “MT. LADY FOR PRESIDENT” TATTOOED ACROSS MY FOREHEAD

lmao at Shouji using his power of “putting some extra eyeballs on my arms” to inform everyone that Gigantomachia is Right Over There and Very Big

good job Shouji

oh my glob I have so much love for Momo right now that it can’t even fucking be contained. brb wildly flailing my hands around a little to try and release some of this excess excitement

maybe Momo can be president instead and Mt. Lady can be the vice president

NO THE CHAPTER IS ENDING I’M NOT READY

AND JUMP IS ON BREAK AGAIN NEXT WEEK TOO, FML!!

okay!!

Kaminari is so fucking brave right now I just want to crush him in a hug?! we know he’s still scared!! look at his eyes!! and he was freaking the hell out earlier too, and now the situation is much worse! but he doesn’t give a fuck because his friends need him! he is ready to be a hero, my little baby boy is all grown up and I’m so proud??

Mineta’s face in the bottom right corner is everything. I know, I know, boooo Mineta, but that’s still the best face anyone has made in the entirety of this manga

Tetsutetsu’s out here all “I humbly request to also represent class 1-B” and Momo is all “okay fine I guess we can have two of you guys”

can we all just stop for a moment to appreciate how KamiJirouMomo is alive and well. like, we had interactions between all three of them in this chapter, in all possible permutations? do you know how happy this makes me?? I am vibrating with joy??!

I really can’t stress this enough -- I have no clue at all what these little soda can things are (anesthetic, I guess??? you know, like how you sometimes buy cans of anesthetic at the supermarket?? what do you mean you don’t do that??), or what they’re gonna do with them. I have like negative clues. but DAMNED IF I GIVE ONE SINGLE FUCK. the next chapter can be them all fucking hurling them at his face for all I care. THE DETAILS OF HOW SHE KICKS HIS ASS DO NOT MATTER!! GOOD MORNING TO YAOMOMO AND YAOMOMO ONLY!! MY MOMO ACADEMIA

[pbscore]

Howdy, folks! 🤠

So, after a long time without doing some artistic projects, I would like to finally announce that I am open for commissions!! Whooo!! 🎉 🎈🎊

I’m currently an unemployed, queer and neurodivergent, Afro Latino person, who lives in a rural area without a lot of options, looking for a full time job, preferably in my field but beggars can’t be choosers lol. In the meantime, in order to make some money to keep myself afloat, I want to start doing commission work!

For the icon commissions, I will make either a simple line work or full color drawing for the first 7 people who email me their commission requests. All icon commissions will be $5, regardless of the type of drawing I do (meaning, if you just want something simple or something detailed, it will all be the same price)!

For some examples of my work, simple line work and full color work, here are some recent pieces I’ve done:

Commission Info:

Please send what you would like me to draw for your icon to my work email: jackiedeanrodriguez@gmail.com! I will accept payments through my PayPal (I finally fixed it!!) here: paypal.me/paranormalprairie. Feel free to be as specific as you’d like with what you’d like to see in your drawing but keep in mind that I will have some limitations and that the way I draw has its own unique style, like any other artist. If something doesn’t look right or I forgot something important that you had requested, let me know (through my email, as well).

NOTE: please do not repost my art without credit. My art is very important to me and I work hard to make it, like any other artist. If you’d like to share my art, just make sure you link to either my tumblr, my Instagram (@ ghiblifriend), or my TikTok (also @ ghiblifriend). Also, do not use my art as your own. It’s ok to be inspired by people but stealing art and passing it off as your own is not ok and actually hinders you’re own growth as an artist.

What I will draw:

- Animals

- Humans (it could be yourself, your favorite celebrity, or an original character of yours)

- Fictional ships (READ MY DNI BEFORE YOU SEND IN ONE OF THESE. I have very strict rules about this particular point.)

- Plants/Nature

- Places or objects of importance to you

- Cartoon/Anime characters

- Movie/TV show/Comic book characters

- Monsters/Aliens/Mythical Creatures/Cryptids

- Furry Characters/OCs

What I will NOT draw (so, please be respectful and don’t ask me to do it):

- NSFW stuff (whether it is explicit or suggestive sexual content doesn’t matter, I’m not gonna draw it)

- No more than 2 characters in one image

- No ‘real life ships’ or anything like that (I’m lookin at y’all Kpop stans with this one 👀)

- Gore (like, actual flesh and organs being displayed)

- General gross stuff: p*dophilia (this includes any gross fictional ‘ships’), inc*st, abuse of animals or people, racist/antisemitic/homophobic/transphobic/ableist/misogynistic stuff, or anything else that I probably have in my DNI (check the pinned post at the top of my blog)

If anyone has any further questions, comments, or concerns that I have not addressed in this post, send me an email about it to the one I’ve provided above! As long as you’re respectful when addressing me, I will be more than happy to listen to what you have to say.

Alright, that’s all for now. Thank y’all for being so supportive of my art these past few months, y’all. If you love my art but can’t afford a commission right now, know that I love you dearly and don’t expect anyone to shell out money for me if they don’t have it. I would certainly still appreciate y’all reblogging this for anyone who might be interested in doing it, though!

Thank y’all very much! 🐻🌻

[magioftheseas]

Take It Like A Man!!

Summary: An alternate scene in which Nidai does It to Matsuda in Chapter 26 of Super Danganronpa 2: Matsuda Yasuke’s Battle of Despair and Wits.

Rating: T+

Warnings: It’s suggestive. Also blood that was in the original fic. There’s specifically a nosebleed.

Notes: Y’all should’ve seen this coming. I don’t know how Nidai became a secondary love interest in this AU but he is one so he’s gonna get his own gay af bonus scene with Matsuda. It’s only fair. Sorry, Owari.

Read this fic among others HERE

Main story is HERE

Commission? Donate?

“KATSUUUUU!!!”

Owari took off in a dash towards him. Her arms spread out and she propelled herself forward with a leap. Matsuda quickly side-stepped out of the way, and she smashed into the ground.

“Oogh! Urgh!” Owari spat out dirt and grass. She rubbed at her face, voice coming out as a nasal whine. “The hell did you dodge for?! Dirty coward!”

“No,” Nidai said, laughing as he walked up. “Pretty smart on Matsuda’s part! With his frame, he would’ve just crumbled under ya! This is why dodging can be just as effective as throwing a punch! Letting gravity do all the work! Gwahaha!”

Owari let out a groan of frustration. “It’s so cowardly!”

“Sorry if having self-preservation counts as being cowardly,” Matsuda retorted. “Even though pride doesn’t mean shit on death’s bed.” He pauses, noticing the dribble of dark red down Owari’s lip and dripping off her chin onto her shirt. He grimaced, realizing. “You’re bleeding. Come on.”

Owari blinked up at his hand. A grin split her face and before Matsuda was able to fully register the fucking awful mistake he just made—she snatched his wrist and yanked him down, trapping him with a headlock as she furiously rubbed her fist to his hair.

“Shouldn’t have let down your guard, Katsuuuuu!”

Nidai laughed heartily at the sight. Matsuda decided that next time—fucking next time, he was just going to let Owari bleed out and leave her for dead. Especially if she was going to bleed on him. On the clean lab coat he just fucking put on.

He furiously smacked her arm and it probably hurt him more than it hurt him. She dropped him and he unceremoniously smacked into her lap as she cackled. Nidai lifted him up by the scruff of his coat and settled him back on his feet.

“It’s nice that you two are getting along,” he said as he dusted Matsuda off, cheerfully and willfully oblivious to Matsuda boiling with unrestrained ire. “That said, Owari you should go with him to get your nose bandaged. It’s important to take care of your body.” Pausing, he seems to notice Matsuda’s stiff shoulders and moves to squeeze them. “And Matsuda, you should let me do it.”

“You’re gonna do it with him, too?!” Owari exclaimed. “I thought I was special, old man!”

“Matsuda clearly NEEDS it!” Nidai bellowed back. “Do not be so SELFIIIIIIISH!!”

Yeah. Sure. Matsuda thought, twitching. Scream right next to my fucking ear. God. This is why I hate jocks.

Unfortunately, he was now in a situation where fleeing wasn’t an option. Another reason why jocks were the worst. Too dumb for emotional manipulation, too unyielding for any physical backlash from a guy who skipped every gym class to bury his nose in medical texts. There was basically no way of dealing with them.

Matsuda sighed loudly.

“Right. Anyway.” He shuddered when Nidai squeezed his shoulders again. This time had more of a damned effect, proving the power of those strong hands. Damn that meathead. “I have—places to be. I’m going to the pharmacy so I can bandage up the rabid chick’s nose in the meantime if...” Another squeeze. Matsuda bit his tongue to muffle any responding groan before smacking Nidai’s hand. “Stop that! I... Urgh...”

Inventory is important... Inventory... Inventory...

 “Will you come back and let me do it?” Nidai asked with utmost seriousness. Hating himself for feeling his face get hot, Matsuda bit down harder on his tongue.

I did get some lotion from the MonoMono Machine...

He really did get all kinds of weird fucking items. Particularly the lotion in question with its tacky bottle and perverse branding. For rubbing aaaaaaaall over your bear body, upupupu. Something like that. He would’ve tossed it on that offense alone, but it was actually pretty high-quality lotion...

And wouldn’t it feel really nice?

“I guess...there are bandages in my cottage...” He ended up mumbling. “But I still gotta go to the pharmacy...”

“Bwahaha!” Nidai patted his back. “Then you’ll go after! For now... To your place, YEAH?! MATSUDAAAAA?!”

Owari was fuming at him, cheeks an impressive shade of red considering the blood still flowing from her nose.

“Yeah,” Matsuda croaked, electing to just ignore her. “My place.”

--

Well. They were in his cottage and he did get the first aid kit for Owari first thing, but—it was feeling a bit crowded. And he didn’t have a door for his bathroom. He shouldn’t give a damn, he really shouldn’t but...

“Owari, you don’t mind stepping out, right?” Nidai asked gruffly, cracking his knuckles. “The point of it is to get Matsuda to relax. It’d be better if we were alone.”

Owari sighed heavily, pinching her nose as she did.

“I gueeeeeeeeess.”

Still huffy, she still tossed them once last glare before heading to the door. She slammed the door shut hard enough to rattle the hinges. She almost fucking broke it.

Matsuda fumed next except Nidai clapped his hand down on his shoulder. He jumped, staring up stupidly at Nidai’s grinning face.

“Let’s get started. Now!” He bellowed, “STRIIIIIIIIIP!!!”

“She can still hear you,” Matsuda hissed, but he shed his coat anyway. Annoyance couldn’t compete with his resolve and now that he had Nidai in his cottage, he’d be fucking damned if he didn’t see it to the end. “Just don’t shout so fucking much. We can be professionals about this.”

Nidai chortled, but that fire in his gaze burned and burned as Matsuda undressed. Tie. Dress shirt. Pants. Nidai’s gaze swept his frame, but that was an inferno that Matsuda wasn’t going to get caught in right now.

Even if he still felt a little flustered about it as he went to lie down face first on the bed. Only in his underwear. He heard the rustling of Nidai taking off his own jacket.

“There’s lotion in my coat pocket,” Matsuda mumbled before he forgot. “It’s hard to miss. Shaped like a certain shitty bear.”

Nidai harrumphed but he dug out the lotion anyway. He inhaled sharply.

“Ah! This is GOOD stuff! Owari likes it a lot!” Nidai sounded very, very fucking pleased. “Alright, Matsuda! The road to a brand new world is gonna be SLICK!”

Brand new world, huh? He listened to the bottle being popped open. He felt goosebumps rise on his skin despite the temperature being the same as always. It wouldn’t be the first fucking time he was almost naked like this. Unfortunately, it was impossible to pretend that this was just like any physical.

“This your first time?” Nidai asked, and Matsuda doesn’t have to look to know he’s coming closer. He can hear it in those heavy steps. “Has anyone else ever had ya like this?”

It’s not helped by Nidai almost whispering for once. As if he had to be careful with the weight of each word.

“Don’t think so,” Matsuda grumbled. “I’ve just never really have the time.”

Why the fuck am I so embarrassed about this?

He tries not to flinch when the bed dipped significantly under Nidai’s weight. He forced himself to calm the fuck down when he felt Nidai’s smooth, slick hands on his back.

“No good,” Nidai growled. “You need to take time out for yourself.”

Nidai’s thumbs pressed hard into a knot just under his shoulder blades. Matsuda muffles a yelp and he wonders if he should grab a pillow or something—except that isn’t going to fucking work because his body needs to be straight and flat. Dammit.

Nidai worked down his spine and he was helpless. Each twinge was strange, but he still loosened under the ministrations, relaxing more and more. Sparks of pleasure had him groan in relief, and he wasn’t even bothered by the weird ‘ratatata’s being grumbled under Nidai’s breath.

“You like it, don’t you?” Nidai asked, voice low and husky. “Now you won’t be able to live without it.”

God, he’s so fucking ridiculous.

So much so that Matsuda can’t help but laugh.

“Do you have any idea how you fucking sound right now?” He almost chokes on a sudden purr when Nidai kneads his lower back. “Fuck, that feels really nice.”

Sometimes, he can’t help but be a hypocrite, sighing and humming in a way that was almost obscene. He felt himself quiver with a particularly deep press into his nape, and Nidai chuckled softly under his breath.

“That’s it. Feel the POWER of the Ultimate Masseur, NIDAI NEKOMARUUUUU!!!”

“Stop yelling, keep massaging,” Matsuda snapped. He sighed again when Nidai didn’t halt in rubbing down the knots in his shoulders. “Oh fuuuuck, that’s it...”

With each knot kneaded out, it was a lifetime of stress melting away. He could’ve dozed off like this and indeed, he did give in a little and for once in his life, he just—stopped—thinking.

After a while, his eyes fluttered open. Nidai’s hands weren’t on him anymore, but he still felt the other’s weight situated on the corner of the bed. Pushing himself up, Matsuda did in fact feel his body much easier to move. Looser, even. He stretched with a soft whine, and—there. A flinch. From the other party.

When he turned, Nidai flashed him with a broad grin.

“There’s still work to be done on your shoulders, but I didn’t want to disturb ya!” A hearty laugh, but one that seemed more breathless than before.

“You can keep going, then,” Matsuda said immediately and would’ve flopped back down had Nidai not pulled him back.

“Just like this is fine,” was muttered into his hair and those large hands gripped and squeezed his shoulders. In a more cranky state of mind, Matsuda would’ve groused about the sudden strangeness in the atmosphere.

But, Matsuda was feeling pretty compliant. It was clear now how Nidai managed to tame Owari. All Nidai had to do was press his thumb like so into the knot under Matsuda’s nape and Matsuda would jump off a fucking bridge for this.

For now, he just hummed in contentment as Nidai works his magic once more.

Until there’s another pause.

“Ahaha. Haha.” Did Nidai’s laugh sound a bit dry? “You said you had to go to the pharmacist, right?”

He had almost completely forgotten.

“Urgh.” Matsuda groaned as the reality of the situation settled right back in his head. Like a fucking infestation of cockroaches. “Fuck, right.”

“We can continue again later,” Nidai was saying. “Even if you’re not one of my athletes, you’re still...”

He trails off. Matsuda is too busy retrieving his clothes to comment on it, but he does notice the meathead coach’s sudden sheepishness.

He’s not...?

Nidai’s blush darkened when he glanced back.

The reality of the situation settled in. Nidai looked away.

...it’s nothing. It’s just the circumstances that are strange. Don’t—don’t be fucking stupid and look so deeply into something like...

He needed. To get his damn shoes.

But when he swings down to retrieve them, he realizes his door has been opened.

And Owari is fucking glaring at him from the crack.

“What the FUCK?!”

And maybe, just maybe, Matsuda was a little too fucking flustered after all. And maybe he flung his shoe a little too hard. Owari may have taken it like a champ, but like a fucking idiot, she took it to the fucking face. Right on the damn nose.

“You were taking so LONG!” she exclaimed, completely undeterred with her stained bandage. It’d have to be replaced, she was probably bleeding again. “I won’t have ya completely monopolizing the old man’s IT!”

Nidai broke into uproarious laughter and Matsuda cursed himself out for expecting things to play out any other stupid fucking way.

This really isn’t the place for it. So, don’t fucking think about it. If this was a story, it’d be a fucking horror, not a romance.

“Right,” he griped. “To the fucking pharmacy, then.”

He just needed to get dressed. It’d be like nothing ever happened. Nothing at all.

At least it was a lot easier to move now.

I’ll have to see that brand new day again. Preferably soon. And then... I don’t know, maybe things can be normal?

The events transpired as normal. As expected. Whatever.

(But, no, he never got the chance to experience it again. But if he knew it’d be the first and last time on these stupid fucking islands, it wouldn’t have changed a thing between him, Nidai, or even Owari for that matter.)

[jankwritten]

I posted 9,419 times in 2022

That's 9,419 more posts than 2021!

246 posts created (3%)

9,173 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@kindofapieceofshit

@paddooo

@theonlycabbage

@archive-of-our-own

@theradicalace

I tagged 4,098 of my posts in 2022

#pjo - 460 posts

#jason grace - 431 posts

#hoo - 369 posts

#nico di angelo - 277 posts

#percy jackson - 178 posts

#leo valdez - 134 posts

#jasico - 105 posts

#annabeth chase - 90 posts

#omgcp - 75 posts

#piper mclean - 72 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#in the meantime. love y’all. anyone who reads this and anyone who doesn’t. y’all are important no matter who you are. you deserve to hear it

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Jason and Nico being able to unmask around one another for pretty much the first time ever is one of my favorite things about them. Like no matter if their relationship is romantic or platonic or if they're even just acquaintances, I feel like there's always this prevailing sense that the two of them get each other better than most people get them. They also both suffer the same "curse" of identity - they want people to see them for who they are, but people tend to only see them for who their parent is. They hear Jason Grace and think son of Jupiter before they think anything else. They hear Nico di Angelo and they think child of Hades before any other thought comes to mind. These two are the only people for each other (that they know of so far, anyways) who hear their names and think friend, or dork, or nerd about temples first.

Sure, I understand that they didn't always start out that way. Jason in canon had a LOT of issues to work through when he was on the Argo - he had his memories wiped, he was in a relationship with a girl he wasn't sure he really remembered, he was being told to be a leader even though Percy also wanted to be a leader, and so he treated Nico the way he did because it was what everyone else expected of him. But then he saw Nico open up, or more he saw Nico be forced to open up, and he realized that he didn't have to obey what everyone else thought anymore. He saw this guy who was struggling, who was hurt and hated and he saw himself in that guy, and he wanted to help.

I just think Jason and Nico's relationship is so fucking awesome. The one that they tend to have in fanon, anyways, I haven't reread HoO recently enough to form an opinion about their canon relationship. I think it's fucking awesome that we have these two characters that, to us, bond so well.

238 notes - Posted April 29, 2022

#4

currently writing an AU where Chiron convinces Sally to take Nico home after the summer camp session is done because despite all they've tried, Nico isn't getting better mentally and it's clear that the atmosphere around camp is inhibiting him (kids still treating him like shit, his own feelings of inadequacy regarding his parentage, the way it reminds him of waiting for Bianca and Percy to come back only to learn Bianca would never come back, etc.)

So Sally Jackson takes Nico home with her and Percy, and Percy is PISSED. Like beyond angry, will not talk to Nico and is a total dick to him most of the time because he's a 17 year old boy who's finally going to see his mama again and NOW HE'S GOT THIS SHITTY LITTLE FUCKING SIDEKICK who he's still not TOTALLY convinced isn't in love with his girlfriend despite Nico literally coming out to him. In this AU Percy is definitely still dealing with a lot of his own trauma and none of it in a super healthy manner - hence, he hates Nico.

At least, that's how it was supposed to go. Now Percy and Nico have bonded into essentially being brothers. They wrestle in the backyard so often Sally has taken to spraying them with the garden hose when they're being too rowdy. They bicker and fight over whose turn it is to walk Mrs. O'Leary. They end up having to go to the same school (Nico kept getting kicked out of the other ones) and Percy defends Nico from people being dicks while simultaneously being a dick to him (but lovingly).

I love it when AUs get totally out of hand from what I originally wanted them to be and I elect to make this Jason Grace's fault for becoming Nico's boyfriend when I wasn't paying attention. Jason put Percy and Nico into a get-along shirt.

also Nico and Annabeth become good friends because she's around a lot and she finds him an invaluable resource on the topics that she can never wrap her head around, things that are too old to even really be in any online databases - things that Nico can access by speaking to the dead. They start off being very iffy about one another but by the end they are also Practically Siblings.

309 notes - Posted May 10, 2022

#3

I think that Jason has a stuffed animal that one of his guardians in New Rome have to him when he was a baby. A wolf or a fox or some other dog/cat-like creature - maybe even a stuffed hellhound or something, something that he rediscovers on accident while in the 5th Cohort’s barracks, something that makes him sit down on the floor holding it in his hands and cry, for some reason, something he can’t even remember but he knows was important to him once upon a time.

460 notes - Posted October 9, 2022

#2

Okay so the last time I read HoO was in middle school, like JUST before blood of olympus came out, so ofc i have a very bad memory for the details of certain scenes but like this 100% happened, I thought that maybe i didn't remember it right or something but. I mean it's right there so.

1,190 notes - Posted September 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

See now I think it would be really funny if IN CANON Hermes was Lin Manuel Miranda. Like in the show he is still the exact same as he is IRL. Hermes wrote Hamilton. He got bored of listening to Apollo prattling on about Broadway so he went out in disguise as a mortal and Did That.

That’s the only way I will accept him as Hermes, is if THAT is the reason.

4,711 notes - Posted November 7, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

(Tumblr telling me how to use tags makes me want to throttle somebody KAMDKCKMSNF BUT THIS WAS FUN TO SEE)

[ajokeformur-ray]

Hey can I get some headcanons of your relationship with your F/O parents bc y’all are such a cute family dynamic and I wanna hear more about how you all interact🥰💗

and @arianatheangelworld 

asdfghjkl; omgggg~ you’re all gonna kill me asghj 🥺😭😭thank you darlings omggg ~ 🥰🥰🥰💗 I hope that you all enjoy this, it’s always so bittersweet but also so comforting and fun to explore my dynamic with my parental F/Os and, well... isn’t that the point of it all?💖 Thank you thank you thank you for supporting and enabling me omggg ~ 💙😊

Word count: 3, 184 (holy shit I am so sorry... not😂)

It’s a quiet life, but there’s lots of underlying tensions beneath it all.

By quiet, I mean because I spend my days in my bedroom studying (not so far from reality, these relationships😂) but there are underlying tensions because no one in the household knows who Edward Hyde really is - it’s a secret between my parents and I. 

What that means is that it’s tricky for Papa and myself to spend time with one another if other members of the household are awake - as far as they are concerned, Father is my parent and so is Mama, and Papa has no part in that. So as you can imagine, questions would be raised if Papa and I are caught spending too much time together (plus, this is set in the Victorian Era, so you can imagine the scandal of an unmarried twenty-three year old woman spending lots of time alone in a room, unchaperoned, with a man old enough to be her father...)

This is why Papa and I only have our time together late into the night, when said members of the household have gone to bed and it’s only my parents and I who are awake. It’s safer for all of us that way - it protects Father and his name, his reputation and his career, which in turn protects the household members from being turned out onto the streets due to a lack of employment and this in turn protects Father’s family, who always come first.

From the moment I wake up, my parents are there. As you’ve probably gathered from previous posts, I sleep with my parents a lot so it isn’t unusual for me to wake up with one of them. Rare and special occasions mean that I get to wake up with Mama and either Father or Papa. 

Mama’s always up by five in the morning or she’ll fall behind on her chores so if she’s the one I slept with in the night, then I’ll get up when she does. She always insists that I go back to bed and that I go to sleep, but I rarely do. I much prefer to have those early hours with her so that I can help her with her chores and maybe, if I’m very lucky... I’ll get to be the one who takes Father his breakfast tray so that I get to see him early in the morning and so that I can crawl into his bed and get me some extra cuddles before I start my day.

If I sleep in with Father, then the opposite happens and I’m woken up when he gets brought his breakfast tray (7 AM on the dot!), and of course I end up getting up when he does because even though he won’t kick me out of his bed, he also knows that if he leaves me to my own devices in a soft, warm bed, I’ll end up falling asleep until noon and then I’ll beat myself up about it, so he makes sure I am awake and up before he’s done with his breakfast (and if Mama knows I slept in with Father, she’ll bring me some breakfast too!) to save me any emotional distress. 

Father always wakes me up gently... up until a certain point. He will shake me gently while saying my name, which usually gets a sleepy groan from me. Then, it’s onto talking, with his voice going from a whisper and increasing in volume until he’s just above his normal speaking level. He never raises his voice at me and we all know why. If that doesn’t work, then Father will just “accidentally” pull the covers off of me. He isn’t subtle, but he also isn’t mean about it, and if I do genuinely need some more sleep, then he will let me have that. But for the most part, he makes sure that I’m up once he is on the nights I’m in his bed.

I never ever get to wake up with Papa. It just doesn’t happen for various reasons. Firstly, because Papa’s constantly moving around like a lion stuck in a cage and he loves me dearly but not enough to stay in one place for more than a few hours unless he’s already sleeping. Secondly, because he can’t be caught in my bed or vice versa by anyone other than Mama to protect Father’s name etc. Thirdly, I may wake up to Papa crawling into my bed or easing himself in his own if I fell asleep in his bed, but I don’t ever get to start my day with Papa. Our time is night time and that has to be non-negotiable. It does upset me if I wake up in an especially needy mood, but Father and Mama will get me through the day in the meantime.

Mama likes to sneak me items of Papa’s or Father’s clothing to wear when I go to bed. She’s not supposed to but Mama is sleight of hand and I can be quick when I need to be. She and I often have silent conversations in a crowded room and all it takes is for Mama to “accidentally” make a noise, like a quick scuffing of her boot on the floor or for her knuckles to make a noise against the wooden table and I just look at her.  Mama catches my eye and then gives me A Look before she turns back to her ironing. I walk past and at the point where our lower bodies are hidden by the ironing board, she stuffs an unironed shirt in my hand (usually Papa’s) and I walk off, the shirt stowed away under my arm and then placed for safe-keeps under my pillow for the night time. Sometimes it might be one of her night-dresses, but I am comfier in either Papa or Father’s clothes.

There are so many secrets between myself and my parents which are kept from the other members of the household. Between all three of us, we manage it as best as we can, though I have no doubt that the others think we're a little odd. 😊

There are periods which are weeks long where Father is so busy in his laboratory that no one sees him. It's communication .via. letters on the stairs and that's all anyone hears from him. Mama and I worry immensely but Father's always been this way and all we can do is be patient and wait for him. He's a workaholic and he often makes himself sick from all of the working and everyone in the household knows what to do when these times arise, which are getting more frequent as Father gets older.

In especially bad times, even Mama won't be able to get through to Father. I get upset if that's the case, because if he shuts away the one person he loves above all else, it's a serious warning sign. Mama and I have a pact that if she can't get through, then I will. Father is always so protective of me, and now it's my turn to protect him. I take this very seriously, understandably so, and I wait up until two or three in the morning, so late that even Mama's gone to bed and is sleeping. I wait in his study for that time, reading one of his old medical journals, and then I go downstairs, out the back door, and into the laboratory.

It's freezing in there because there's where Father used to carry out dissections and lectures back before his illness (never canonically diagnosed but it's believed to be depression or similar) got worse, so I always take him his old smoking jacket (which doubles as my blanket when I take naps in his study). By this time in the night, Father will be so tired and sleep-deprived that he's more likely to be honest with me, and it's for this reason that I also stayed up so late - Father will assume I'm unable to sleep because I'm so worried about him, and while that's true, it's also because I know him well enough to know what time of night is best for an intervention. Yes, it's slightly manipulative on my end of things, but I am my Papa's daughter and it's with good intentions so I don't linger on this thought for too long. It won't do me any good and my Father's most important. I'd do anything for him.

I find Father where I knew he would be - scribbling in a journal by candlelight, his fingers covered in ink, his hair a mess, yawning every few seconds. A cold plate of mutton is left forgotten by his elbow, only half eaten. I'm just like him when I study so I don't lecture my Father on his bad eating habits -he and I have the same work ethic so I would be a hypocrite to tell him off for something he usually tells me off for. I announce myself by putting his smoking jacket over his shoulders. Father pulls the jacket around himself with a shiver and I smile. You're welcome.

"You should be in bed, Erika." Father frowns in disapproval and I almost want to call him out on his hypocrisy.

"So should you," My tone is sharp with worry and frustration and Father takes a moment to look at me - I never speak to him like this. "Mama's really worried about you. So am I. We haven't seen Papa for weeks, and we - " Just like always, my anger turns to upset and I move away, trying not to cry.

"Erika." I turn back to my Father and I see that he has tears in his eyes, too. He's hurting and even though he's been trying to find a cure for years, he's never been able to find one which really helps him. "I am sorry, I - my work, it is. Well, let's not discuss the details." A pause. Neither of us know what to do, even when there is no one to see or hear us. "Come here." He pats his lap and I make a happy noise, which makes him smile. I love sitting on my Father's lap - it's been something I've done ever since I was a child and it always makes me feel so safe.

I go and I sit on my Father's lap (and have a quiet cry - he knows but he doesn't say anything about it because he doesn't want to embarrass me) and he continues to work, but as the hours drag on and we both get increasingly tired, Father knows that the time for working is over. On these nights when I manage to find my Father in his own mind and pull him back with just my presence (and my very existence is a reminder of what he holds most dear), I also spend the night in his bed.

"Thank you, Erika, for..." Father trails off, but I know what he's saying to me.

I snuggle into his bed, feel my Father kiss my forehead and whisper his love, and then I sleep.

The night is half the battle - getting Father to take a break tomorrow morning will be an even bigger battle, but by then Mama will be awake and we'll work together to save Father from himself.

It's not the first or the last time, but all of us in the family have our Own Moments which require special attentions and solutions, and we love each other even harder during those times.

The reunion with Papa after getting Father to take a break from his weeks of working always makes me cry, too.

Over the years, it's become almost a... tradition, of sorts, for Papa to greet me this way after a long separation.

I could be doing anything - reading in Father's study, writing in my bed, studying at my desk - and all of a sudden, out of nowhere -

"Erika."

Whispered so casually, so quietly, but my entire body freezes. I know that voice anywhere. I drop whatever I'm doing, I tear up, and I turn, slowly...

Papa's smirking at me, a cold and calculative look in his eyes, but I'm not afraid. I'm not even nervous. Anyone else would make me step back with this look, but not Papa. No.

"Oh, my - Papa!" I step forward into his embrace and I melt into the parent I've been missing most of all. I cry, of course I do, and Papa says nothing about it (he and Father aren't so different at all, once you get to know them, though I'd never tell them that. Or Mama. It's a thought I keep entirely to myself.) because he doesn't see why he should need to; he only holds me tighter.

I can almost hear his fond eye roll and it makes me smile.

"It's difficult to understand someone who is entirely incapable of asking for what he most wants, wouldn't you agree? You're the only one he listens to," our daughter.

There is pride in Papa's voice but just like always, I can hear what he doesn't say, just as he hears what I don't say. It's just how it is between us; Papa and I have a level of understanding between us which we don't have with anyone else.

That night, Papa sleeps in my bed with me. I'm never ready to say goodbye to him, or goodnight, either. The following conversation is a nightly ritual because of this:

"Just five more minutes, Papa?"

"I'll be here tomorrow night. you know that. Sleep, child."

"But - "

"Erika."

A warning. No one else receives warnings from the Edward Hyde and lives to tell the tale. So I listen.

"Fine." I know he will be with me tomorrow night. "Stay with me 'til I fall asleep?"

Papa sighs, rolls his eyes, and pointedly lays down, watching me the whole time. I couldn't hide my smile if I tried, so I don't even bother to - Papa taught me to show my emotions and to not hide them.

"Goodnight, Erika."

"'Night, Papa. Love you."

A kiss on the top of my head, and all else fades to black.

My parents and I are very physically affectionate with one another and it's... unusual, especially if you consider the fact that it's in the Victorian Era, but the members of the household find it touching. They get hugs and affection, too! Even if they don't necessarily know how to react to it, they still do get their hugs in the morning and late at night just before they all go to bed (which is between 10 and 11, whereas I go to bed anywhere from midnight to 3 AM).

If I have a nightmare or a bad dream, I am at total liberty to climb into any bed in the house, but of course I make a beeline typically for Mama's bed. She knows nightmares well and she'll simply hold me until I feel safe, and then she'll hold me some more because I get clingy and I don't like letting go. There's been times I've cried because she let me go before I was ready for the cuddle to be over (though those times were when I was much younger) so now she just lets me decide for myself when I've had enough.

With the way I sleep with my hair in two braids, I always get a mass of tangles at the back of my head. Always. I hate it and it always makes me hesitant to brush my hair, which is now midway down my back (so I can’t not brush my hair every day), because I know it’s gonna hurt me. I’ll brush the front parts of my hair and I’ll try to brush the knots out, but it hurts so I stop and I don’t want to brush my hair. 

A part of me is always tempted to just leave it, but at the same time I know from previous experience that hair knots can and will get worse, so during these times I’ll take my brush to Mama. She’s always so gentle, not just with me, but also just in her nature. 

She is such a tender-hearted person and I admire her so deeply for that. She’s incredibly busy so typically I’ll leave brushing my hair until the evening, when she has more time to help me. I don’t always ask her for help with my hair, so when I do, she knows immediately that it’s because I really can’t do it myself.

“Mama, there’s a - I have a knot. Can you help me?”

A small smile and she goes to get her wooden comb. It’s gentler on knots than my own hairbrush, which pulls more than it needs to, and we both know it. Mama is so gentle that it barely hurts me, and within minutes she’s done what I’ve delayed all day.

“How do you want it tonight, Erika? One braid or two?”

I fondly roll my eyes - like she needs to ask. My smile is in my voice as I ask for two, and Mama and I get to spend some time with one another quietly enjoying each other’s company.

Sometimes I return the favour by helping her brush out her hair, but she’s incredibly self-sufficient and she largely prefers to do it herself. Which is fine... I’ll find other ways to help her!😊

“Thank you, Mama.” My words are doubled up with a tight hug, and then I’m ushered off to bed because it’s late and she’s exhausted.

I technically have three parents and each one fulfills a different need for me, so all together, they meet all of my needs and I try, I try to be a daughter that they can be proud of, that they can respect and that they can love unconditionally. I try so hard every day to live in a way to honour their places in my life.

There's nothing I wouldn't do for my parents. I would die for my parents, to give them a happy ending, to give them the time to be together, but in many ways... I am that happy ending, even if things aren't perfect. It's a fight sometimes to keep secrets exactly that, but we make it work. We have to.

I tell them each and every day that I love them, I hug them and cuddle them and help them out where I can, because they deserve the world.

They are my parents and I am very grateful to and for them. They have made me who I am today and they'll be with me forever, no matter where I go or what I do or who I become. I just hope that they'll continue to walk with me for the rest of my life, because I wouldn't be alive without them... in more ways than one.

[thorne93]

The Stars Made Us (Part 23)

Prompt: In this world, you’re one of the “lucky” ones who got a soulmate, but what if the universe gives you more than you bargained for?

(Prompt challenge – You live in a world where your soulmate can write on their skin and you will get the writing on your own and vice versa. Where they can wash away the ink on their own skin, however, the writing is forever scarred onto your skin until you meet face to face)

Word Count: 2638

Warnings: angst and language throughout

Notes: This was supposed to be for @sorryimacrapwriter​​​​​​​  and their challenge like a year ago, I think? I still loved the prompt though and have been working on this story for quite some time. This aesthetic was made by @dontshootmespence​​​​​​​, thank you so much! Beta’d by @like-a-bag-of-potatoes​​​​​​​, couldn’t have done it without you, as well as @carryonmyswansong​​​​​​​ and @arrow-guy​​​​​​​ and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo​​​

Also, I’ve never really liked the whole soulmate AU thing idea, but this felt so right and it was amazing to write. I hope y’all love it too!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another day of practical training and you were observing in the courtyard on the sidelines. Mordo was instructing everyone but Stephen just wasn’t getting the hang of it. After several minutes, The Ancient One stepped into the area and requested she be alone with Stephen. Mordo obliged and the class followed him inside. You stayed off to the side, watching. 

“My hands,” Stephen said in defeat.

“It’s not about your hands,” she countered.

“How is this not about my hands?” he defied.

“Master Hamir?” she requested. 

Master Hamir exposed his hand, and then an arm with no hand. He was able to cast the magic and spells, with no hand at all. This clearly dispelled all of Stephens’ preconceived notions of his failings. 

“Thank you, Master Hamir. You cannot beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its current, and use its power as your own,” she advised.

“I… I control it by surrendering control? That doesn’t make any sense,” he said, the frustration clear in his tone. It was the same frustration you heard every night when you tried to teach him, or after every session he had with Mordo and he wasn’t any better than before.

“Not everything does. Not everything has to,” she insisted firmly. “Your intellect has taken you far in life. But it will take you no further. Surrender, Stephen. Silence your ego and your power will rise. Come with me,” she ordered as she formed a portal. 

The two of them walked through and you frowned. You went down a few steps to see where they’d gone. It looked snowy. 

Suddenly you heard her say, “Surrender, Stephen, and then she returned… by herself and the portal closed. 

Your eyes went wide as your heart raced. You ran forward to stand beside her. 

“Wha--Where is Stephen?” you asked, panicking. 

“On top of Mount Everest.” 

“Mount Everest? Oh, okay. Uh, and how is he supposed to get back?” you wondered, trying to keep the panic out of your voice. 

“On his own. He must surrender to the power, just as you did.” 

“That’s different, I just focused really hard.”

“You downplay your intellect and your abilities to everyone you know. It isn’t a nice characteristic, Y/N,” she noted. “You didn’t just focus, you believe in a power bigger than yourself. When you found out you had a mate, you didn’t doubt it for a moment.”

“Well no, why should I?” 

“Why Indeed. Stephen needs to gain the same faith and courage you do. That’s all.”

“What if he freezes to death in the meantime?” 

She didn’t respond, her eyes trained forward as Mordo came down, asking about the new recruit. You stood between the two, wringing your hands nervously, your chest tightening as you waited. You didn’t have a sling ring on. You couldn’t get to him. Besides, even if you did, maybe this tough love exercise is what he needed.

After another ion seemed to pass, finally, a spark outlined tunnel opened and Stephen fell through. You fell to your knees, your hands going all over him to ensure he was alright. He held onto you, relishing in your body heat. He felt positively ice cold. But he did it. 

You were so proud of him, you hugged him tightly. 

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

As soon as he got a hot bath, he asked you to help cut his hair. He was ready to move on, and this was a symbol of moving on. He was done with the pity party. You helped cut his hair much shorter to his liking, and quite honestly to yours. Then you worked on shaving him, but when you got to his chin, he stopped you, telling you to leave it. Once you wiped away the cream, he worked some trimmers over the leftover goatee and mustache. 

“Damn, Strange, you clean up nicely.”

He smirked. 

“Is this how you looked at the hospital?”

“No facial hair,” he noted, “but for the most part, yes.” 

“I like it,” you said sincerely, with no hint of jest. You nodded as you admired him from the side. “It suits you, very well.” 

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

After a while, he wanted to progress in the program much more quickly. He requested books on astral projection from Wong, but he refused. Being a tempestuous, he broke into the library via portals and took the books he wanted. 

As Wong had said, no knowledge is forbidden. 

Before long, Stephen was starting to read in his sleep. He used his astral form to take up the knowledge while he rested, giving him 24 hour access to literature he needed. 

Things progress quickly for him regarding his sorcery. Meanwhile, you read from the library, took notes leisurely, shopped in the nearby markets, and watched Stephen. Watching him learn was like watching Mozart write concerto. Once or twice he caught you staring at him. 

“Didn’t anyone tell you it wasn’t polite to stare?” he deadpanned.

You smirked and laughed, turning back to your laptop to write another email to Charles. When you weren’t looking, Stephen smiled to himself as well. 

One day, you were in the library, getting Stephen’s next round of books, but he was busy training for the day, so you thought you’d get a jump start on them. He ended up training well into the evening and you fell asleep at the table in the library. 

When he couldn’t find you, he got concerned, only for one of the other students to call to his attention that you were in the library. The two of them walked over and she pointed at you. Stephen was relieved to see you. He walked up and admired you for a moment. 

Not just how peaceful you looked but what you meant to him. You had once said that out of everyone he knew, colleagues, friends, everyone, you were the only one to stay. Even Christine up and left after one too many Strange Tantrums. Not only did you stay, but you fulfilled every role he needed in his life at the drop of a hat. Maid, cook, nurse, friend, confidant. You convinced him to come here, you trained with him every night, and you didn’t have to. You could’ve let him come on his own, face it by himself. You could’ve left once he got settled in. You could’ve done your own business while he trained. 

But you were with him every step of the way. And while Christine was nice, and bent over backward for him, she wasn’t you. She didn’t risk a relationship with another soulmate, just to save someone else. You did though. You were wholesome, good, and kind. You were tender, but firm. Fierce, but soft. Loving, but 

And he was in love with you. 

He picked you up and you groaned, your head lolling back as he carried you bridal style across the courtyard to your bedroom. He got you undressed and crawled in bed beside you. He wrapped his arm around you, feeling the love and freedom wash over him. 

Now, he just hoped you felt the same. 

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

He informed you that the Ancient One said that if she told him any more than he didn’t already know, that he’d run from the temple in terror. You said that was an odd thing to say, but perhaps they guarded many secrets of the world. But it did make you wonder what exactly was going on.

Stephen had moved into the more physical part of his training - learning to fight. 

You , as always, sat in the corner of the courtyard sipping tea, reading, and observing Stephen as he trained. This never made him feel put on the spot or insecure. Quite the opposite, as a lover of all things that stroked his ego, he quite liked having an audience. 

You studied him, his movements, what Mordo had taught him and other masters. And just like with the magic, you trained every night with him. Sometimes Mordo even allowed you to train with the other students because he felt self-defense is good general knowledge. 

One morning, you were getting ready to go to the kitchen to grab lunch with Stephen. As you started to walk out, Stephen said, “Uh, hold on, one sec.” 

“Why? Something wrong?” you asked, your brows furrowing. 

“No, no. Uh, how would you feel about going out to eat?” he asked. 

“Sure, where were you thinking?” you wondered. 

“How about dinner on the beaches of Bora Bora?” he inquired as he opened a portal and before you was the most magnificent sight you’d ever seen. Pinks and blues paint the sky as a warm, inviting beach had gentle waves lapping on the beach. The salty mist of the ocean wafted in at you through the open portal. 

A table with two chairs and candles were directly in focus of you. 

You turned to him in awe. “I--Are we allowed?” you wondered.

‘Yes, I actually asked permission,” he informed. 

“You? Asking permission? I’m in disbelief.” 

He rolled his eyes while smiling. “Would you like to join me or not?” he questioned, knowing full well you did. 

“Yes,” you quietly answered. 

The two of you walked through the gateway, and the smell of the ocean hit you, making you feel relaxed instantly. Stephen walked you over to the table, pulled a chair out for you, then took a seat himself. 

“How exactly did you manage to pull all of this off?” you wondered. 

“I called down here, after getting permission from the Ancient One, and informed them we’d like a beach side reservation for two at this time.” 

“How did you know I’d say yes?” 

“You’re a hopeless romantic, that’s how,” he informed with a smirk that made his eyes light up and you couldn’t argue with him. 

“What did you say to the Ancient One?” you asked as a waiter came by to fill your glasses with lemon water. “How did you convince her to let us come here?” 

He bobbed his head. “I promised to stop opening gateways in the library to steal from Wong. And, Kamar-Taj isn’t a prison, Y/N, we can leave anytime we like. Or you, should you desire to leave at any point. We’re allowed to leave the temple.”

“Well yes, but using your sorcery for frivolous trips like this …”

“I may have also mentioned how… trying I’ve been to you. How awful I was when you first arrived at my apartment and how I have yet to make up for all the things you’ve done for me. Knowing that we’re soulmates and that you and I haven't done anything else to upset the balance at Kamar-Taj--”

“Other than you stealing library books. I told you not to do that. I order you to give those back,” you reminded sternly. 

“Right, other than my petty borrowing, we have been perfect students. She didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t steal away for an hour or two.” 

“That was very kind of her, and thoughtful of you. Thank you for this.” 

He made a face of dismissiveness. “Oh, it’s nothing.” 

You shook your head, laughing. “Is it nothing because you’ve been here with another girl, perhaps? A repeat offender?”

“Are you trying to see if I’ve taken Christine here?” he asked, eyeing the menu.

“Her, or any one else.” 

“To assuage your jealousy, no. I’ve never taken anyone here. Christine and I never left New York together, let alone go anywhere exotic. No, I’ve actually been here by myself. A little graduation present from my family.”

“Oh, that must’ve been nice. A family vacation out here.” 

“Wasn’t a family vacation. They sent me alone.” 

“Oh,” you said, sounding sorrowful and embarrassed. 

He put down his menu. “It’s okay, Y/N. You had no way of knowing. But yes, my family and I are not close. They’re rich and after the passing of my sister, we all grew rather distant.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” 

“Well, it’s been many years now. Let’s not dwell on it,” he encouraged with a smile. “So, what looks good to you?”

“Uh, a lot, actually,” you said, picking up the menu. 

“Same. Typically, the only tough choices I ever have are ordering from a menu,” he mused. 

“Really? What about letting me stay? Was that a tough choice?” 

“I didn’t choose that, you barged it,” he retorted with a bit of whimsy.

“Oh, like you couldn’t stop me or call the cops. You wanted me to stay. Why I’m not sure. I mean, I know now why you were so upset, but back then… why did you let me stay?”

He let out a small sigh, setting his menu down. “Because, for some inexplicable reason, the moment I saw you, I felt… better… whole.. I’m not entirely sure. When I was with Christine or any other woman for that matter, I never felt as if… I wanted to let them in. I never wanted them to see me weak, fail, hear about my past, my family. Any of it. When Christine tried to care for me, I resented her for it. I didn’t want her or anyone else to know how broken I was, inside and out. But for some reason, when you saw me, I looked in your eyes and sort of thought ‘everything’s going to be okay’.”

Somehow, you’d leaned close into him at the table, getting enraptured in him. 

“I knew you weren’t going to think less of me, and since I was at rock bottom when you met me, I thought the only place I could go is up. For some reason, I took a leap of faith with you that I’d never done with anyone else. You seem to make me do that. Do things I wouldn’t normally do, take risks I wouldn’t normally take. Believe in things I never thought possible.”

“I had no idea I had that effect on you. I thought it was only me,” you noted in amazement.

“Well you do, and while I haven’t said officially, I do want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I hope I can return the favor one day.”

“I hope you return the favor for many days,” you breathed. The second it was out of your mouth you realized what you had said, and the implications behind it. 

The more time you spent with Stephen, the more complicated things were with you and Charles. You loved both of these men, equally. Both were set to complete your soul. But you knew one day, you’d have to choose. One man for one lifetime, that’s how it worked, right?

One day, you would have to pick a man to live with, marry, spend the rest of your life with. 

How do you do that when one half of your heart loves one, and the other half loves the other? 

“I do too,” he said with a bit of a grin. 

The two of you ordered and chit-chatted about his training. Eventually conversation flowed into your younger years of college and friends. You had told him about Jenny, a topic that really hadn’t surfaced much. You couldn’t imagine what Jenny would think of your life right now. You made a note to reach out to her to see what she was up to. She was giddy with excitement when she found out you had one soulmate, when she found out you had two, she would absolutely flip. 

He told you funny stories about the OR, you told him some wild stories about your patients. The two of you seemed to be in stitches all night before returning to the temple to go back to the daily grind of training, but the rest of the day, you spent it as if you were in a honeymoon phase.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[roguish-gallery]

I just love these rogue headcanon questions so here is another! beach day head canons! what are they all doing on beach day together!

OFC!!!! This was so much fun to do, thank you for the request!

Rogues + Beach Day HCs!

Bane:

He’s just trying to have a good time but… he can’t help but feel as if he’s being watched….

He may not think he’s doing anything sus, but dudes got stacks on stacks on stacks. SO MUCH BEEF. people will be ogling at him. He’s not a big people-person, so he’s a little shocked at the amount of people calling him over to play volleyball, or why so many moms are asking if he could help them put sunblock on that “hard to reach spot”. No, he will not rub lotion on your back, Linda. Your husband is literally right there. idiots.

Eventually, he just grabs his towel, some beer from the cooler, and he finds a quiet, secluded spot to tan or he goes out to swim.

Catwoman:

Selina easily puts the most effort in her beach outfit, but that’s hardly a surprise. 

She looooooves setting up her towel close to random groups of moms so she can listen to the gossip. She doesn’t know who the FUCK they’re talking about, but that arguably makes the tea even better. Susan did WHAT with her poolboy? Unbelievable, what a bitch.

Anyone who catcalls her will get their tires slashed before they leave. No one knows how Selina is figure out which car is the right one... but they decide to not question it

Clayface:

Have you FELT the heat??? Have you SEEN the water?? All that fucking SAND??? This literally sounds like hell no fucking thank you.

He spends the day wandering around the nearby stores and bars. He has a genuine soft spot for tourist traps that sell kitschy souvenirs, and he can literally spend HOURS in one shell shop alone.

He WILL go home with at least one hideous mermaid clock and that’s a promise.

Harley Quinn:

Harley is living her BEST life. She brought ice cream, she brought a boogie board, she misplaced her flip flops so she had to borrow an extra pair of Ivy’s, (but Ivy didn’t get mad so it's alright). The beach trip was more than likely her idea, and if it wasn’t, Harley most certainly was responsible for getting the other rogues to come.

The QUEEN of beach volleyball!!! She’ll literally just join any group that’s playing and will absolutely wipe the floor with the other team!!! She quickly becomes super popular amongst beach-goers.

She tries soooo haaaaard to convince her friends to get more active because they’re either reading, sleeping, or not even ON THE BEACH. Some of them humor her, but the others just double-down on whatever they were doing prior.

Joker:

He literally spends the entire day bullying people. He’s kicking sandcastles, getting sand in people’s picnics- he doesn’t care.

When he’s not being a public menace, he’s out trying to surf. He’s frustratingly competent. No one knows where he learned how to surf.

Because he’s an IDIOT he thought his chemical-bleached skin was too good for sunscreen. Wrong. 

Killer Croc:

He literally can’t go swimming in a somewhat crowded area without some teen mistaking him for a sea monster or some shit. It really sucks, because Waylon is the best swimmer of the rogues, and he genuinely enjoys getting into the water (He does get to venture out for a few hours once it gets dark!)

Actually, CAN Waylon even do anything at a public beach without freaking people out??? What the fuck???

In the meantime though, he’s content to take a nap because the sun feels fantastic on his back and the sand is warm and ough,,,, snzzzzz,,,,,snnnnzzzzz,,,,,

Mad Hatter:

He tags along with Basil and they go explore the shops together. He doesn’t particularly care for the beach, but unlike SOME PEOPLE (Eddie) Jervis doesn’t sit around and bitch about it, so he looks for something to do.

Jerv eventually gets bored, so he spends the rest of the day doing some light people watching. There’s SO many different hats in one place! It’s fascinating!

He 100% falls asleep at around noon and he has to get woken up several times to reapply sunscreen before his white pasty-ass burns.

Mr. Freeze:

Penguin:

(I was very tempted to just link the robot chicken DC special where Oswald convinces half of the Legion of Doom to strip at the beach but! I shall not! Also… realistically, I know that Oz would Literally Rather Perish than take his shirt off somewhere public.)

As usual, he has to be the responsible one. He brought sunblock, reminded everyone to bring their towels, and he brought extra towels because he knows people will forget. And yes, even though he was teased relentlessly for it, he DID provide the beach umbrella.

He’s got a nice shirt, some Gucci shades, and a pair of beach trousers. He will NOT get in the water. “Harley, I am serious. Do you know what’s in that water? I will not get these clothes wet.”

He just wants to read a book on the sand and relax. Please let him rest. please.

Poison Ivy:

Finally… she can get some proper tanning done…

The only reason she’ll get up is if Harley is drowning, or if she needs some backup on a volleyball match. The MOMENT she isn’t needed, she’s going back to sunbathe.

She’s been around the other rogues long enough to know that half of them won’t properly apply sunscreen and it’s for that very reason that she refuses to share any of her hyper-potent aloe vera. Play shitty games, win shitty prizes.

Riddler:

HE IS WHINING CONSTANTLY WHY DID HE TAG ALONG??? ITS SO HOT OUT AND HES SO SWEATY AND THE SUNSCREEN IS SO OILY AND THE SUN IS TOO BRIGHT SO HE CANT LOOK AT HIS PHONE SCREEN AND AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

Surprisingly tho he does venture out into the water to cool off, but once he gets completely wiped out from a wave he crawls back to where The Umbrella and The Cooler are located and sulks there for a while. EVERYONE saw him and laughed.

He eventually decides to do the one thing he KNOWS he’ll enjoy doing, and he moves his towel next to where Oz is sitting, and they spend the rest of the day idly chatting. He perks up later when he gets to help with the grill during dinner.

Scarecrow:

At first, he GENUINELY doesn’t understand how he got talked into coming. There’s nothing for him to do except read (Which he could have just done at home)... Maybe if he walked along the shore he’ll find a beached jellyfish. Or a dead body… Alas, no such luck. What a terrible day… 

That is… until he comes across the seagulls. He is fascinated. No, enamoured with them. They have so much potential… for anarchy… he’ll find a flock and feed them bits of his sandwich until more join in and they start to follow him around… and then he’ll throw the rest of his food into a large group of beach-goers and watch the ensuing chaos.

After that, this literally becomes the best day ever. Jon has a smug fucking grin, and he’s openly nice to the other rogues. He gets himself a BIG ASS frozen margarita with salt on the rims AND a novelty umbrella. He REFUSES to explain his good mood, but the others begin to suspect it may have something to do with the influx of people leaving the beach at around noon.

Two-Face:

Harv’s burnt skin is very sensitive to heavy sunlight, so he’ll just throw on some sandals and he’ll hop around the bars near the beach and watch some sports. Once it gets darker and cooler, he’ll rejoin the rest of the rogues.

Once it gets dark? Guys? Barbeque. King. He’s got the grill. He’s got the meats. He’s got the cooler of beer. He is unstoppable.

He used to be That Dude With The Guitar back in college (y’all fucking know who I’m talking about, every campus has one of them), so mayyyybeee,,, if the mood strikes him,,, he miiiiiight pull out his old uke and play some tunes. maybe.

[ohmyhera]

the tragic ending to an already tragic tale

T/w:mentions of r*pe,m*rder,p*edos, and Zeus saying some uncomfy things. Please proceed with reading this at your own discretion because this is chalked full of angst, more than I usually write for y’all so be careful.

“Nico-”

“You’re keeping it, now stop talking”Nico hissed. Will huffed and pulled the jacket—Nico’s jacket, tighter around his waist. It was cold, and they were wet and nothing seemed to be going as planned. The clouds grew darker and seemed to cover the sky completely only adding to their plight. Will paled, he didn’t do too well without the sun. His eyes fluttered towards the sky and he shuddered. The longer it was gone, the weaker he grew, it was his Achilles heel, the reason why he wasn’t allowed out on quests. He was a liability. Now, as the sky grew dark, and the clouds grew heavier, so did his fear. He wasn’t just a liability, he was Nico’s liability. And that made him feel even worse.

They were treading dangerously into no man's land, with the sun gone for gods know how long Will didn’t have access to his powers. Any of them. So that also means he was no help, he was as useful as a human who could barely shoot an arrow, and they didn’t even have arrows thanks to the Artemis girls accompanying them on the trip. They’d gotten split up about yesterday which already spelled bad news. Will knew it was the Gods doing, split up the team and they’re easier to pick off. It was practically the first rule in the book of killing a demigod. 

They could have taken refuge in the underworld but Will wouldn’t—no, he couldn’t survive down there. Thanks to his unique skill set he would quite literally die if he stepped foot down there, no sun equals no Will. He frowned, he was completely useless—

“Shut up”Nico said. It was said so casually that Will actually went to apologize, but Nico shook his head.

“You’re thinking too loud, it’s stressing me out”Nico said. Will titled his head a bit.

“You can read my thoughts?”He said. Nico’s mouth quirked up in his own attempt at a smile and he shook his head.

“No, but I can read your face. You won’t be any good out there if you’re distracted”Nico said.

“If we ever get to where ‘there’ is”He said, folding his arms. He wasn’t sure if it was the cold or his nerves causing him to tremble, but here he was, trembling. He should have just stayed at camp, but his big mouth opened on its own when Nico volunteered to go. They all looked at him funny but sent him out regardless, they’ve never seen him fight but that also meant they didn’t have proof that he couldn’t. And he can! When he’s not seconds away from collapsing against a tree. He was starting to see doubles and quickly blinked his eyes, and it helped. Until it didn’t. He found himself walking slower,his heart beating faster and Gods it was so cold…

“Will...Will!”

The trees above him spun and he hit the ground with a thud. 

“Fuck!”Nico said through clenched teeth. He threw himself to the ground and grabbed the blondes wrist feeling for his pulse. He felt it pulsing faintly, almost as if he was frozen. He bit his lip and squinted at Wills body, yellow tendrils of spirit floated around frantically trying to find a way out. He let out a shaky breath, Will wasn’t dying, he was just unconscious and his soul was in shock. His soul...his soul was in…

“Shit!”Nico shouted and pulled off his backpack searching for anything to keep his body warm. There was nothing in there but his sword,Wills arrow and some ambrosia. They really needed to start packing better. His mind raced and his body froze, if Will's soul went into shock he might not come back the same, he might...they might...Nico shook his head and pulled the blonde into his lap. He wasn’t going to let that happen, he wouldn’t. He folded his body over Wills and tried to remember something,any incantations that Will or the Apollo kids have ever said. He tried desperately to keep his body warm in the meantime.

But then it started to pour.

Harder than Nico had ever seen in both the lives he lived, this wasn’t an ordinary storm, this was foul play. This was the Gods doing. Nico gasped as the freezing water pelted the two and his mind soon knew nothing but anger. He knew not to provoke the Gods, he learned that from watching Percy get his ass handed to him more times than he could count, but now he knew. Now he knew how it felt to have the Gods slowly but surely try to take everything from you.

“What the fuck do you want from me Zeus!”He shouted towards the sky, Will's pulse was getting slower and he could feel his own pulse in his throat. “Tell me what you want you bastard! Call off the storm and face me! Are you scared or something!”

He felt a gust of wind behind him and resisted the urge to whirl around and choke the god. He didn’t have much time to think before the god was standing before him. No, Nico thought as his stomach dropped, that was too easy, it’s a set up.

“Well now, who do we have here?”The god said.

“Nico,son of Hades,”He said, surprised that his voice didn’t waver. “I said call off the storm”

“From the mean words you used, you’re in no position to be making demands”The god said.

“You don’t think anyone is in a position to do anything”He spat, “What’s your damage, Zeus? Don’t you have enough people to fuck with? Or is there not enough people to fuck? Are you getting bored again with your concubines? You feel the need to interfere on a simple fucking quest!”

He was red hot mad now. All he wanted to do was stab the god until he bled or sparkled or combusted or whatever it was that they did when they no longer existed. The god looked at him in disgust before flicking a finger and suddenly, Nico couldn’t breathe.

“You demigods—no no, you Hades brats think you have the right to talk to me anyway?”The god fumed, “I am a god! I can wipe you from existence,bring you back and do it all over again until you’re begging me to die!” He clawed at his throat but he wouldn’t give in, it felt good to get under his skin, to piss him off.

“But I won’t do that” he released the binding on the brunets airways and once again nico fell on top of Will—shit, he needed to save Will. Zeus seemed to ponder and shook his head.

“No I won’t do that or your daddy will wage war”The god said, “I don’t know why he cares for you brats when you do nothing for him, you hate him, you’re disgusted by him but yet he still loves you”

Nico felt his eyes sting and he quickly blinked it away, he wouldn’t fall for this.

“You rotten little halfbreeds don’t deserve his love, you do nothing but train up the next generation of miscreants and then die a hero”The god scoffed, “A hero, please. We haven’t had heroes in centuries. Aeacus,Amphion,Arcas, all my boys”

“I didn’t summon you here for you to bitch at me”Nico growled, “I summoned you to get an answer to a simple question, and no I don’t fear you, I don’t think you’ve met me but everyone who's ever crossed my path knows i’m not afraid to die young.”

“You’re an imbecile,”The god said.

“You’re a pedophile,a rapist,a murder-”Nico started, this time the god actually did choke him. The brunet was lifted far off the ground and he was face to face with the god he wanted to kill the most right now.

“If you’re going to disrespect me, say it to my face”The god said. 

“Let go of my throat and I'll disrespect you all day long”He wheezed, he was thrown to the ground without a care. His body hit the dirt with a thud and he bit back a groan, he wasn’t letting zeus win this one. He peeked over at Will, at this point he only cared that his soul was still in his body. They’d cross the other bridge after Nico finishes giving Zeus a piece of his mind.

“Stop fucking with me and answer my question!”He spat.

“You have a cursing problem”The god said offhandedly.

“You have an impregnating problem”He said, “you hate us so much then stop creating us, use a condom!”

“You’re lucky I'm not killing you where you stand”The god warned.

“Stop making promises and just do it already!”Nico exploded, “Kill me Zeus, just kill me!” “I can’t!”The god shouted back, “your father would wage war and i’m tired of war!” “Then stop causing them!”Nico shouted, “And stop changing the subject! Call off this damn storm and tell me who’s hiding Hermes so we can both go back to not seeing each other's faces!”

A wicked grin grew across Zeus’ face and Nico gulped, yup, definitely a setup.

“Nico, son of Hades. If you were really trained right then you’d know there’s always an ultimatum”The god said. As soon as he heard ultimatum his body ran cold, fuck.

“Name your price,”He said quietly.

“Not so bold now are we?”The god grinned, “Seems like you have something to lose”

“Just name your price!”Nico snapped.

“Your temper needs work”The god warned.

“That’s rich coming from you”He huffed, but it went ignored.

“I’ll tell you where Hermes is being hidden and even how to get there if…”Nico followed the Gods eyes to Will who was still unconscious. His eyes widened and he shook his head quickly, no.

“No, not him”Nico said, “He’s got nothing to do with this”

“I’ve made my ultimatum”The god said, “He’s pretty,he’s blonde, why wouldn’t I want him?”

“No!”Nico growled. And the god laughed, Zeus laughed.

“It hurts having the one you love ripped away from you doesn’t it?”The god howled.

“I’m not in love with him!”Nico shouted. “Then why are you playing martyr!”The god said, alight with fury. “Besides, it doesn’t take a god of love to recognize attraction”

“Take me”Nico said, the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“Take you?”the god questioned, “Why would I take you?”

“I will do whatever you want,”He said through clenched teeth. “Take me and do what you see fit, but I want a new ultimatum”

“Humor me”The god said.

“Fix him”He said, “Fix him, give him the information for the quest and make sure no harm comes his way”

“That’s asking a lot of me”The god said, “You have to sweeten the pot”

“I am Hades' only son in history!”Nico shouted, “I would be a rarity on mount olympus, parade me around like some exotic pet, I don’t care! You wanted something the other gods never had and that’s me!”

“Cocky aren’t we?”The god said.

“You know it’s true”Nico panted, his chest rose and fell rapidly. “Take. Me.”

“Hmm”The god said, “That does sound pretty good, promise you won’t try and run away?”

“I promis-”

“No”The god said, “We’re making this deal...on styx”

There was a clap of thunder and the rain only intensified. Nico felt his life flash before his eyes. Christmas with mama and Bianca,the lotus hotel,his first few years at camp half-blood,Bianca’s death,the crush on Percy,meeting Will, his 18th birthday and how the Apollo cabin sung so loud it woke the mermaids in the lake,the way Will smiled so wide it reached his eyes as he smeared frosting across Nico’s nose. He was stunned into silence, all he could do was nod.

“I need that in words”The god said.

“I swear...on Styx”He whispered, another clap of lightning sounded and a pair of golden handcuffs appeared around his wrists. Immediately the clouds retreated and the sun was shining more brightly than ever.

“Well”he looked at Zeus, “Are we going?”

“No”The god said, “You’ve got someone to say goodbye to”

Nico’s eyes flooded with realization, “You bastard!-”

“Nico?”Will said in that sleepy voice, “What happened? Did I fall asleep?”

It really was a set up, this was planned, this was entirely planned and Nico fell for it. Split up the team and they’re easier to pick off. It was practically the first rule in the book of killing a demigod. 

This was just the beginning. This was the first move in Zeus’ cruel game of chess.

“You won’t be seeing your Nico for a long time”The god drawled, “Also you really should have confessed your feelings for him earlier because now he’s all mine”

“W-what!”Will stuttered, whirling around. “Nico?”

“He practically begged me to take him”The god continued. “I would feel pity for you if I had any pity at all”

“That’s not true!”Nico shouted and immediately felt a surge of flaming hot pain sear through his body. He wailed and his knees buckled from underneath him as he waited for the pain to subside.

“Tsk tsk”The god said, “Techically you did and Styx doesn’t like a liar”

Nico felt tears roll down his face and he was still screaming. He tried to complete the quest, he tried to keep Will safe but he failed. He did everything he could and he still failed.

“I would say I hate to break up young love but that wouldn’t be true, would it be my new pet?”The god said, “What was that you called me Nico, a bastard? A pedophile,a murderer, a rapist?”

All nico could do through the pain was nod.

“Well i’m all those things”The god said, “but so. much. worse”

Fuck Zeus,Fuck Styx and fuck the gods, he should have converted to the Egyptian Pantheon a long time ago. He looked up to see Will practically frozen in his spot, tears of his own streaming down his face. He wanted to reach out but even the thought of it sent another wave of pain coursing through his body, even his mind was shackled to Zeus.

I love you, he thought defiantly. I love you, my heart belongs to you, my heart bleeds for you, I’d do anything for you—each thought sent a new wave of pain shooting through his body.

“I’m sorry”He croaked. It was the only thing he could say. The last thing he saw was sorrow in Wills eyes, and the once bouncing soul come to a sharp stop and crack. Will’s soul was broken. 

And it was all his fault.

A/n hey guys, I’m alive! That was different than what I usually write but I hope you enjoyed it!

[ddaenggtan]

forever rain | knj | m

Being dead isn't anything exciting. Just a lot of walking the same halls of the same apartment day after day after day. Things change when the new tennant arrives, though. Kim Namjoon isn't anything you could have expected; not the way he's so careful and gentle with his plants because he breaks so many other things, not the way his friends joke that he's psychic because you refuse to let him get in the face one time, and certainly not the way he comes home after literal months spent moving things away from table edges for him and announces that he knows he's being haunted and he has some questions for you. You didn't know ghosts could fall in love, but he makes you feel alive again, like you're standing in the rain while thunder crashes around you. You should've known nothing good would come of falling in love with someone living, though. You should've known that heartbreak was the only way this could end...that the rain doesn't last forever. 

part of the Love Yourself Collab, please please please go check out the other fics. Everyone involved is so freaking talented and I have been vibrating out of my skin with how excited I’ve been to read all of these. 

pairing | kim namjoon x reader (unspecified gender, even!)

word count | 18.8k | cross posted to ao3

genre/warnings | ghost!reader, slight fluff, hard angst, literally the most angst ever it gets fluffy for a bit but litERALLY this is an angst fic, major character death, unprotected sex (idk what the etiquette for ghost sex is but you should still wrap it before you tap it fam), depictions of terminal illness (v mild), mentions of blood (several, but not graphic), major character death, allusions to violence, namjoon is a klutz whats new, depictions of terminal illness, major character death, i added that tag three times pls dont read this if you aren’t comf with mcd bc i literally tagged it three times so y’all would definitely see it, also probably have some tissues ready bc i cried while writing it so 

a/n | this is, to date, the saddest thing i have ever written in my entire fucking life. formal apologies to this joon bc oh my god you poor soul. i’m not kidding when i say you might cry, because i’m a big baby wuss and cried while writing the fucking outline when i first decided to write this for the collab so like......rip my own heart. i was really honored when i was approached about the LYA collab, bc like,,,,,mE? WHAT? and i was really nervous because i’ve never been part of any collabs in any fandom ever, and to have to do something like forever rain and mono as a whole justice, like,,,,,,, *screaming* y’know?? so i went on mono lockdown and just had the whole thing on repeat and was like “alright. what emotions does this make me feel.” and i eventually settled on the loneliness and isolation that he expresses, and feeling like no one understands what you’re going through, but that ultimately the album as a whole and forever rain give off this feeling of like. things get better, you’re not as alone as you feel, and you just gotta get through the bad stuff to find the good stuff. basically i just got really in my feels about it and was like ‘lets make myself cry ahahaha’ and,,,i dID i cried several times while planning and writing and editing bc im a Soft Bitch and don’t read much angst for that exact reason lmao. so buckle tf up y’all, this a helluva ride!! 

Of all the things you'd heard about death, all the different possibilities that existed in the world, the one thing you hadn't been prepared for was the boredom. You hadn't been prepared for any of it, really, too surprised by your own demise to plan at all, but even if you'd been able to, you don't think that this is what you would've counted on. An eternity - or however long ghosts existed - of being stuck in the same studio apartment you'd lived in when you died. The same walls, the same floor, the same view out the only window of the alley beside the building. It's boring and lonely and boring.

You've found more creative ways to entertain yourself as time passes. First, you started by figuring out just what being a ghost meant. You can't really communicate with anyone, haven't figured out how to make sure everything you say is heard, but you can manipulate objects pretty easily these days. The most difficult thing is becoming fully corporeal - completely visible and able to interact with things at the same time. It's hard enough to be visible, and you aren't really sure what the point of it would be when it would just scare whoever's living in your apartment; that's the last thing you want to do, run them off when they're the best source of amusement you've found.

You won't lie, you were a little offended when the first tenants moved in after you. It was difficult to watch your things get packed up and moved out by your friends, hard to lose all of the little things you loved in your apartment, like the shitty bead curtain you'd gotten as a gag gift or the photo collage of all of your loved ones. It's frustrating to not know how they're all doing these days; the one time you got brave enough to fuck with a laptop to check on them, you nearly broke the thing, and you haven't tried since. Still, it seemed cathartic for them to clear out your apartment, and it was a bittersweet sight, but you tried to focus on the positive side of it.

And then the couple moved in.

Not only did they fuck like rabbits - which is something you're going to stay pissed about, because there's no satisfaction to be had by you anymore, and it's the one thing you can think of that would be endlessly entertaining - but the couple was also grossly obnoxious. They had zero respect for your apartment , or you, and while one could argue that they didn't actually know you were there, it still made the sting of losing your entire life that much worse. You spent you don't know how many nights hovering awkwardly in the bathroom while they fucked, would constantly wander in to see them going at it on the kitchen counter at ass o'clock in the morning, and once you came in to see them tossing actual literal eggs at the ceiling like the absolute fucking weirdos they were.

So, naturally, you got a little mad. How dare they treat your apartment like that? They had no respect, but they were going to learn it real quick if they were going to live there with you, whether they wanted to or not.

They didn't last long after the first night of slamming cabinets and squealing hinges, but the thrown picture frame of their family was the conclusive end to their stay.

There have been others, since then. They haven't all been terrible, not like that first couple, but most of them have been sub-par roommates, and if you decided early on that if the rest of your immortal life is going to be locked in one shitty apartment with the absolute worst view in the city - because no one wants to see the drunken hookups and potential body dumps that take place in that alley - then you're at least going to share said apartment with someone nice to exist with.

You release a heavy sigh, staring at where your hand disappears through the shower wall. You've taken to testing the boundaries of the apartment again; you already know what the result will be, learned in the first few hours that you're stuck here, but you can't help trying when you get really bored. You just got distracted fucking around with the pipes in the meantime, because you're literally too bored to even focus. It's part of why you miss the last tenants so much, because you weren't ever really bored with them around.

A single mother and her two kids, crammed into a much-too-small apartment because it was all they could afford, and they were the light of your un-life. One a budding teenager that wrote angsty poetry who loved your trick of making things float around, and one an adorable toddler who adored playing peekaboo with you and coloring, and a mom that was too busy to notice anything out of the ordinary. It was like having a family again, made you feel useful when you could pull the meat out of the freezer for her to make dinner with or scratch a quick 'do your homework' on a steamy bathroom mirror. It was fun and it made being dead that much more bearable.

You really should've known that letting the toddler draw the two of you would be a bad idea, especially since there were several artistic liberties taken. It's not your fault the kid thought you'd look cool with fangs and bloody holes instead of eyes and claws that reached the floor. It was art, it was supposed to be a little different from reality. Still, you can't blame her for seeing the picture of her kid and 'my new best friend' and immediately calling the landlord. And a priest.

So, perhaps you gave the apartment a bit of a reputation. Maybe it's been a couple of months since the mom moved out and took your two buds with her. There might be the possibility that you've been the slightest bit salty about losing your friends and you've been extra-ghost-y whenever someone comes by to view the place in an attempt to make yourself feel a little better. Can you really be blamed for that? You just want a decent damn roommate for your life after death, and if that means putting the potentials through a little bit of a test, then so be it. You only feel a little bit bad for the landlord.

The creak of the front door pulls you from your thoughts, and the echo of a voice makes you narrow your eyes. Your first instinct is to slam some windows to scare off whoever's in your apartment, but you repress the urge. You'd die of boredom if you could die again, and whoever this is could provide a few hours' entertainment at the least.

You pop your head through the bathroom wall to see what's going on, and wow , who let an actual giant into your apartment? Fucking with the pipes could definitely wait for this guy.

"I know it's last minute, yeah," He says into the phone that's held carefully between his cheek and shoulder. His arms are loaded down with boxes and he's angled away from you just enough that you can't see his face, but he's tall and broad and wearing what looks like the world's comfiest sweater, and you want to badly to wrap yourself up in him. "But you know Joon needs the help. Don't pretend you aren't constantly willing to put off your thesis, I know for a fact that you went out to look at stationery with Tae last week, and everyone knows that's the most boring thing on the planet."

He's quiet, listening to the soft crackle of a voice from the other end. You slide through the wall completely, hovering as close as you dare to try and hear what the other person is saying. Tall, Broad, and Comfy scoffs.

"He can stare at one sheet of paper for at least ten minutes, Yoongi. Do I need to remind you of the time he spent an entire fucking hour debating which set of holiday scrapbook to buy because, and I quote, 'this one has the really nice rose pattern on it that would look great with the invitations, but, oh, look at the pinstripes in this one!'" His voice morphs into what you guess is an approximation of whoever Tae is, and you laugh at the high-pitched, nasally tone.

Tall and Broad spins, eyes narrowing as he looks around the room, and fuck , he's literally gorgeous. You've never seen someone more attractive in your life or your death and it would probably knock the wind out of you if you actually had breath. Comfy McGorgeous turns back around and sets the stack of boxes in the corner, continuing his tirade about Tae and stationery while simultaneously trying to talk Yoongi into coming, you assume, to help Joon move. You don't know who any of these people are, but they're already proving to be the most entertaining bunch that's ever graced these walls.

The door to your apartment flies open, making both you and Boyfriend Material whip your head around.

"Christ, Jin, you couldn't hold the fucking door open for us?" Someone grunts. Beauty Von Softness - or, Jin, as you should probably refer to him - winces and strides over to do just that as two more guys stagger in with a couch suspended between them. The second they're in the door they drop it to the ground and flop onto it, panting and sweaty.

"Listen, I was busy trying to get our resident hermit out of his cave to help us carry some of this shit," Jin spits back. "And you all know what it's like getting him out and about."

"Did you tell him that there's pizza after we're done? Because I've found that food is the best motivator for him," the guy closest to the door says. His hair is soft-looking and long and you wish you could pet it.

The other guy, the one who cursed Jin out and has the softest pink hair you've ever seen, laughs. "Jeongguk, you always think the best motivator is food."

"Well, yeah, because it is."

"For you, maybe. Other people require actual rewards."

"But food is a reward," Jeongguk mutters into the fabric of the couch. Jin tsks and smacks As Yet Unnamed on the back of the head.

"You're lucky I hung up on him when you bombarded your way into this place, or he'd definitely not come help us," Jin says as he leans against the back of the couch.

Unnamed starts to say something else but is cut off by someone running straight into the end of the couch. They all shoot to their feet, spouting apologies as the three of them maneuver the couch into the apartment properly.

"Sorry, sorry, Jimin distracted us from properly finishing our job," Jeongguk says quickly. He looks to the stranger with a small apologetic smile, and you're pretty sure if it were humanly possible, there would be actual literal stars in his eyes.

"Oh, it's okay, Jeonggukkie. I should've been looking where I was going." New Challenger walks straight towards where you stand, and you realize seconds before it's too late that he is not aware there is a massive stack of boxes in his path. Instinctively, you shove them to the side with your foot. Tall And Oblivious sets his boxes down without any trouble, none the wiser about any of it, and the three near the couch are too busy bickering in hushed whispers to have noticed you doing anything.

The newcomer straightens and turns to look at them all with a bright smile, and you think you might actually see The Light in the way his cheeks dimple. If you thought the other three were beautiful - which they are, no doubt about that, you're seriously wondering why the hell a bunch of supermodels are moving stuff into your apartment - then this guy is easily an Actual Fucking God or something. His brown hair is soft and shiny, his smile is warmer than the sun, and you're fairly positive that for the first time since you died, you feel goosebumps along your arms.

"Seriously, Namjoon, we should've realized you'd be up soon. You stay, start unpacking while we go get the rest of the furniture." Jimin shoves Jeongguk out the door while he's speaking, ignoring the taller's complaints, and Jin just shakes his head at the sight.

"Yoongi'll be here soon, he's finishing up another draft of his thesis. Hobi and Tae are stopping to get the pizzas and then they'll be here, too." Jin's voice is calmer than it was Jimin and Jeongguk, more soothing, and it makes you curious. Not only because of the tone change, but because you know Hobi, he owns the building and is the one who rented you the apartment when you first moved in. One of your favorite things to do is scare him when he comes by to make sure everything’s ready for a viewing.

"What? No, I said I was gonna pay for pizzas!" Namjoon looks distinctly more upset about this than someone should over not having to pay for pizza, at least in your mind, and it only makes you more curious.

"Yeah, but you also just moved out of your old apartment because it was too expensive, and had like an hour to load everything into a truck, so you're gonna let their trust fund asses pay for pizzas. We're seven adult men, and Guk could eat an entire horse and still be hungry. I'm not letting you pay for that."

Silence hangs in the apartment for a while before Namjoon gives a soft thanks to Jin. They share a smile before Jin makes his way back out. You follow each step, shadowing him all the way to the door before you're stopped. You lean your entire body forward, struggling against the invisible barrier keeping you inside, and the force of it nearly slams you back into the wall when you sag in defeat.

You aren't sure why you try anymore, but you know yourself well enough to admit that you're not going to stop until you can at least make it to the hallway.

Whatever you expected Namjoon to be like as a roommate, however unknowing he is about the situation, you don't think you could've guessed what he's actually like.

Out of the seven boys you saw the day he moved in, he's the only one living there. Not a complete surprise, considering it's a studio apartment, but you remember when there were nine people living there at one point, and there was barely room for anyone to breathe even if it had been pretty consistently amusing. Still, for one person, he's got a ton of stuff, and it's a shock it all fits. His bed is massive and comfortable and the best place to lay during the day because it's shoved between the brick half-wall and the large windows that take up one wall. The area's supposed to be for a dining table, you think, but you'd had your bed there, too, and the familiarity is nice.

His couch is small and old but manages to fit five of them, and it's a pleasantly jarring difference from the coffee table that looks like - and might actually be - an old steamer trunk. The exposed brick wall you love holds his mounted TV, a feat that took Jeongguk and Yoongi a solid hour and a half because they kept stripping the screws, and it's got one of those 8-cubicle bookshelf things under it that stores a frankly obnoxious amount of books.

He's got mugs for days, an adorable if odd collection of figurines and mini-statues scattered around the apartment, a strange obsession with some reclaimed wood shelf he's got hanging above his bed, but the absolute highlight of it all is The Wall.

It took them three hours to get it installed and set up the way he wanted, between the placements and the thick wooden shelf they’re perched on with supports and a small safety bar along the edge to keep them from falling off, but along the entire windowed wall and partway after it turns the corner runs a long shelf absolutely covered in plants. There are some elsewhere, like the one he keeps hanging from the bathroom ceiling and the couple in the kitchen, but most are on The Wall. Each one is in its own special pot, each a unique color with a name painted carefully along it, and most of them look half-dead. They're all distinct and unique from each other and they all surely have different needs and ideal conditions, but you'd never guess because Namjoon is so wholly committed to them all. He takes time every day to water them and prune them if he needs to, he checks on them constantly. He even reinforced the safety bar for the ones that sit beside his bed, so there was less chance he'd accidentally knock them around while sleeping.

It's fascinating, watching him tend to them. He's so careful and gentle, with absolute precision in every moment. He cares for his plants the way some people would care for a pet or a child. He doesn’t believe any of them are past caring for, slowly nurses all of them back to health and frequently turns up with more he’s saved from some department store. The most endearing thing, though, you decide as you sit curled among the haphazard blankets of his bed and watch, is the talking. It's every day, for as long as it takes him to care for the plants, and it's the cutest thing in the world. He's talking to some succulent as you just stare at him, filling the comfortable silence of the apartment with his soft, soothing voice, and you wish he could hear you when you talk back to him.

"I know they mean well, but at some point, I've just gotta live my own life, y'know? I can't study something just because everyone expects me to, and I can't pursue some dream just because people think I'd be good at it. I've gotta do what's right for me, don't I?" His tone is positive and bright, a contrast to the gloomy sky that casts shadows across the apartment.

You float over, hovering beside him to look at the plant he's lovingly stroking with his thumb. It's in a pretty periwinkle pot, with the name 'Mang' painted in careful but shaky black handwriting. It's not your favorite - that's the one in the bathroom that hangs over its light blue bowl, a quickly scrawled 'Koya' on the bottom - but it seems to be one of Namjoon's personal favorites based on how often he talks to it specifically.

"I think it's nice you do things for yourself," You tell him. He doesn't react, unable to hear you, but it's nice to hear your own voice after so long. You slide one of the plants - Chim, in a small yellow bowl - to the side and away from his elbow, and he doesn't notice. "You know yourself better than they do. You should trust yourself."

He keeps mumbling to Mang, something about everyone following their own dreams and doing what they need over what people want or expect, when you lay your hand over his.

Thunder cracks through the sky and the first raindrops hits the window as your non-existent skin hits his, and it's the most real thing you've felt in a long time. It's as if the scent of ozone and electricity is in the apartment itself, crackling in your hair and filling your nose with the overpowering scent of the sweet summer rain. You can almost feel the water hit your skin, the way the wind whips at your hair, and it's so intoxicating that you almost miss the sharp inhale from the man beside you.

He's not looking at his plant when you look up, but instead at the window in front of the two of you. You glance at it, and for a fraction of a second, you can see yourself in the reflection. The glimpse has you jerking towards it before you can stop yourself, desperate to know if something has changed. You haven't seen your reflection since you died, not in the mirror or the window or the toaster, and maybe, just maybe, it means something's changed.

Your hand stops against the glass of the window as you reach forward. You can't feel the cool of it under your palm, but it's no less a barrier for you as it would be for Namjoon. Something in you breaks as you watch the raindrops race each other to the ground.

"Ah, I forgot the forecast called for rain today," he mutters, eyes focused on the lightning that streaks by. He doesn't react when your fist slams against the glass, nor when you let out the scream that's been building in you for however long it's been since you died. You're so close, not even a hair's breadth from feeling something new yet familiar for the first time in so long, and you can't. You're still stuck in these four walls, unable to even reach the air outside.

You just want to feel the rain again.

You move dejectedly away from the window, ignoring the way Namjoon shivers as you pass. The temperature in the apartment has dropped considerably, you think, between the storm and your own mood. You can't tell, really. You haven't felt warm or cold or hungry or anything since you died that isn't the oppressive loneliness of life after death.

A dry sob tears itself from your throat and you hurry to hide in the bathroom as Namjoon turns to look around him. He mumbles something you can't hear and after a few minutes, he returns to tending to his plants, leaving you to your tear-less cries in peace.

It becomes quickly apparent to you that Namjoon should really have a roommate, if only to save him from himself. It takes a few weeks for you to realize this, but luckily he seems to narrate his life as he goes through it - which is overwhelmingly adorable to you, and you refuse to acknowledge that - and that means that you hear it every time he goes, "Ah, Namjoon, be more careful next time," or "Oh, shoot, that's not, fuck, I gotta buy more eggs now." It's painful to watch, even for you, and at some point, you just couldn't take it anymore. No one else is around to help, but someone needs to you, and clearly the universe means for you to be that someone.

It's a full-time job, protecting him from himself. You've saved countless mugs, pushing them farther away from the edges of counters and tables, and been just in time to shove bowls or vases an inch over so that his elbows glide harmlessly past them. It's almost exhausting, if you could get tired you would, but it's worth it, you think, as you catch the bookshelf under the TV as it tilts. You slide it gently to the floor, glad that Namjoon is distracted by how close he came to losing a toe to notice.

Because that's the other thing about this tree of a man: he's the most oblivious person you've ever fucking seen. It doesn't matter what it is you do, whether it's bouncing his spray bottle of water so it doesn't break on the hard floor or shake the counters so that the knife he's about to drop on his fucking hand falls the other way, he doesn't see a single fucking thing. You'd think he was blind if he wasn't so attentive to the way his plants grow. He notices nothing and you're glad for it because you really aren't sure what he would do if he knew you were going around haunting him just to keep him alive. You just want to help, want to keep the soft smile he wears more often around for as long as possible.

You don't dare to look into why you want that, too afraid of what you might find there.

It's also just fun to watch him and his friends, relaxed and unreserved. You never had many friends when you were alive, just a small handful that you really truly loved and whom you miss every day. Watching these seven boys fills you with nostalgia and a strange sense of joy because they really are some of the funniest people you've ever been around.

Like now, with four of them sprawled on the couch while Jeongguk and Hoseok make themselves comfortable leaning against the bookshelf under the TV - which has been bolted to the wall since it almost broke Namjoon's foot - and Namjoon watches them all from his bed since it's the only other place to sit. There are beer bottles scattered around and decorating the half-wall that separates the bed from the room proper, everyone is varying levels of drunk, and you're curled up close to Namjoon, leaning against the wall so you can stop him from knocking over any of the bottles nearby because you know him too well at this point.

"I'm just saying, I don't understand why they made him so over-powered in the new movies, because he's supposed to be some kid from Brooklyn! Giving him the high-tech suit essentially strips him of the friendly neighborhood persona that he's always relied on!" Jeongguk has been ranting for a while about the newest release in the Spiderman franchise - apparently, he's part of the actual Avengers now, which is a shock to you since the last thing you heard before you died was that the franchise was canceled until further notice or something.

"And I'm saying that if they didn't give him the suit then it would've made no sense how he was able to do those things," Yoongi responds. You're pretty sure he's just arguing to be contrary at this point, because you remember him telling Namjoon the other day that he prefers DC over Marvel.

"Garfield's Spiderman could do those things," you mutter, "And he didn't have a fancy suit."

"Okay, then how do you explain Andrew Garfield's version being able to do that stuff? He doesn't need the suit, he never has!" You preen at the way Jeongguk echoes your thoughts. "I'm telling you, I don't care how good the relationship with Holland's Spidey and Iron Man is, by giving him the tech and the advancements they did, they've undermined everything that Spiderman is supposed to be about."

"Jeongguk come off it, everyone knows Garfield's Spidey was just all bad writing. I mean, what kind of person can do all that stuff, realistically? He's the one that really needed the Stark suit." Taehyung's voice is slurred and quiet, definitely as drunk as the rest of them. 

"What-! No! I could do half of that without being bitten by a weird science spider!" Jin scoffs at Jeongguk's words. 

"Yeah, sure, Guk. The same way you can do that bottlecap challenge."

"Bottle cap challenge, and yeah, I could!" The youngest stands and you don't bother to hide your grimace. 

"This isn't going to end well, is it?" You ask. No one acknowledges you, too busy finding something Jeongguk can kick the cap off of as the boy readies himself. He's steady on his feet but his face is red and he can't seem to stop giggling. 

"If I do this, you gotta call me SpiderGuk from now on, okay?" He says. No one agrees, but it doesn't stop him from laughing again and doing a couple of roundhouse kicks to warm up. 

"Okay, okay, Joonie doesn't have any regular water bottles, but we found a screw-top beer in the fridge so ya gotta use that," Jimin says as he stumbles over with said bottle. Jeongguk just nods, an adorable focused expression on his face. Jimin holds the bottle in the air, and you can already tell his grip isn't tight enough to keep the bottle still when Jeongguk kicks it. 

The next ten seconds happen in slow-motion. Jeongguk's leg flies out to kick but his drunken body isn't able to handle the sudden shift in balance, and he slips. His foot hits the bottle slightly too low, and it goes flying out of Jimin's weak grip into the air. Everyone in the room watches as it hurtles straight towards Namjoon's face, and you react out of habit and instinct, catching it in one hand before you even realize you've moved. 

Everyone freezes, staring at where the bottle hovers in front of Namjoon's face. You're the only one able to see your fingers wrapped around it. A shock jolts through you at the realization of what you've done and you drop the bottle as if it burned you. Fuck, they were all going to freak, then Namjoon would move out and you'd be stuck alone once more. You should've just shoved him out of the way, what were you thinking, you're so fucking stupid-

"Dude," Hoseok mutters from where he's perched on the arm of the couch. "Holy shit, Joon, you're fucking telepathic." 

Yoongi rolls his eyes and smacks his chest. "Telekinetic, you fucking-"

"Holy shit, you've got fucking superpowers!" Jeongguk squeaks. "Do it again!"

Namjoon isn't even able to get a word out before there's a book flying at his face, and you panic. You can't catch it, too rushed, but you manage to deflect it so it hits the bed with a soft thump instead of braining Namjoon straight in the nose. 

"Woah, you really do have superpowers," Jimin whispers. He lobs a bottlecap at Namjoon, and you catch it in your palm before letting it drop onto the half-wall. 

"I don't have...what the fuck you guys," Namjoon insists. His eyes are as wide as saucers behind the thick glasses he has on. He looks freaked out and you want nothing more than to hug him. Your hand reaches out of its own accord, halfway closing the distance to stroke his hair before you catch yourself. 

"Hey, levitate your plants," Jin demands. Namjoon looks panicked as he glances at the wall of plants, and you heave a sigh. With any luck, they're so drunk that they'll remember this as a strange fever dream, but you can't just let them keep throwing things at him. You crawl over to the wall, avoiding Namjoon as you do, and grasp one of the plants tight. It's a white pot with red polka dots, a simple RJ on the side, and it's fucking heavy. You only get it a few inches off the shelf before you're forced to put it down.

"Oh my god, catch this!" Taehyung throws a coffee mug straight at Namjoon's head and you panic again. You catch it, and you've decided you're fucking sick of them throwing things at him, so you lob it back and dart across the room to bounce it safely to the counter before it can break. 

Everyone in the room stares at the mug and then looks back at Namjoon, who hasn't moved from his spot on the bed. 

"Oh my god, you're a superhero," Jeongguk whispers, awe in his eyes. 

"That's fucked up," Yoongi mutters, wincing when Hoseok elbows him. 

"Maybe we should get some sleep," Namjoon says quietly. The others look like they want to disagree with him, and you have no doubt they want to explore the newfound 'abilities' of their friend, but they still start gathering trash together before they head out. 

Namjoon lays awake for a long time that night, glasses folded and sitting atop the half-wall beside you. He's oblivious to the way you watch him, too lost in thought to feel the weight of your stare or the chill in the air. 

"I don't understand," He says after a while. "I really don't, but there's got to be a reason for it." He doesn't elaborate, merely turns over and evens his breathing out until he starts snoring, but you watch him for most of the night. He's fascinating, this human, and you wonder what makes him so different from the others you've met. 

He apparently decides to experiment. You've known Namjoon is intelligent since he first moved in and you saw his collectible encyclopedias, but you hadn't realized just what it would be like in actuality. 

It starts simple. He'll toss something in the air and let it clatter to the ground. Nothing big, just little things like pencils or bottlecaps, and not far, just enough that his eyes narrow as he apparently tries to use his telekinetic abilities to manipulate them. 

It slowly graduates from there. Next comes the way he stares at something across the room, hyper-focused on whatever it is until you notice and move it around for him. It's a guessing game, sometimes, trying to figure out just what he wants to move or how he wants to move it, but each time you're successful, he smiles so brightly, dimples on full display. Who wouldn't want to make him smile like that?

It's hit or miss, sometimes. You're only so strong, and while you've had a lot of practice, you still get tired. You lifted his bookshelf almost a full inch before blacking out. Next thing you knew, a couple of days had passed and Namjoon was staring at a coffee mug. That was a significantly less fun day; between losing time and having to catch coffee mug after coffee mug, you were exhausted and a little shaken. 

So when he stops staring at things for extended periods of time, when he starts to go back to reading and scrolling the internet and bingeing all the completed shows that Netflix and Amazon had to offer, you're grateful for it. He still occasionally tests it out; he's always subtle about it, choosing to stare quietly until you notice and make whatever it is float around for a minute. Once you wandered around looking for him - a feat in a studio apartment - and found him just sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at a shampoo bottle.

You'd like to say that you don't move things entirely because he wants you to. It's a good test of your abilities and how far you can push yourself until it becomes too much, and it's always nice to have actual evidence that you still exist - in some form, at least - in the world. The validation that comes from seeing him smile every time you lift a pencil or slide a coffee mug to the side, it's not for any reason but the satisfaction of knowing that you have some kind of existence. Some kind of impact on the world, even if you can't be seen and can't leave the apartment.

It's part of why you start moving things around yourself more often; you're hoping he just blames it on his overactive 'abilities' if he notices because you really aren't sure what he would think otherwise. But you also know for a fact that just seeing that you have some kind of sway over the world still - over the things inside this tiny apartment - makes you feel just that bit better about being dead.

Which is why it's such a fucking shock when the door to the apartment slams open one evening just for Namjoon to slam it closed again and announce into the air, "So I know you're haunting me, please don't try to deny it, I only want to talk to you."

You freeze where you are, halfway through the closet door from where you were reorganizing his clothes because they made no sense and you were bored. He's looking around the apartment, almost desperate in the way he's searching, and you can't bring yourself to move. It's obvious he can't see you, and you aren't even sure if he's being serious, but the way he huffs and clenches his jaw before moving into the kitchen tells you that he probably is.

You follow him, curious, and watch as he pulls a small package out of his bag and starts ripping it open. You float the remains of what looks like gift wrap over to the trashcan, because you know Namjoon will forget, before going back to watching him. He's only a little careful as he cracks something in his hands and then slaps it onto the fridge, and you peek around him to see that it's some kind of words or something. There’s a wide variety, with no clear theme to them, as well as at least one of each letter of the alphabet. It's then you remember the throwaway comment Yoongi made during that night - "You need, like, poetry stuff, like those magnets that go on the fridge that people write that deep shit with, y'know? I'm gonna buy you one," - and realize that he'd followed through on his vow. 

"Alright," Namjoon says, leaning against his kitchen counter and staring at the magnets. "First and foremost, am I really being haunted or is this some kind of hallucination?" His gaze never falters, doesn’t ever drift from the magnetic words now spread across his fridge doors. It takes several minutes to build up the energy and the courage to move closer to the fridge.

You don't look at him as you move the words around, but you can hear the sharp intake of breath. That's likely all the confirmation that he needs, but still you clear a spot and let the words ' I am here ' sit where he can see them clearly. You wrinkle your nose, disliking how formal it sounds, but you have to make do, you suppose.

"Okay," Namjoon breathes. "Okay, prove it. My brain could work this into a hallucination. How do I know you're really a ghost?"

"Seriously?" You huff. "What the fuck am I supposed to do that wouldn't work into a hallucination, dude?"

He gets fidgety in the few minutes that you spend wondering how the fuck you're going to prove that you're a real actual ghost to someone who clearly doesn't believe in them. His foot taps at the floor and he scratches at his hand, which only makes you want to wrap your own hands around his until he stops, much like your best friend used to lay her legs across your lap to get you to stop shaking your knee.

The realization comes in a flash, and you're moving letters around before you can stop yourself.

Face book, Park Jihyo, best friend.

Namjoon stares at it for a long while before he brings his phone out of his pocket and begins to tap at the screen. You don't get too close; you've got a history with shorting out electronics, and you aren't sure you want to know what your best friend is up to without you there with her.

"Okay," Namjoon says. "Okay, I've never seen her before, so I don't think my brain could work her into a hallucination. Okay. Alright. I'm being haunted. This is fine."

"Calm down, I'm haunting the apartment, not you." He doesn't react to your words, as usual, but it still makes you feel the slightest bit better. He stares at his phone for a little longer, and the curiosity burns under your skin, but you resist. You know from experience that if you try to get too close, his phone will stop working. Just like TV, the stereo, the laptops, everything. You've had enough experience with that kind of thing to know what will happen.

"Okay, Casper," Namjoon huffs out after several minutes of waiting. He looks up and his eyes dart around the apartment, and you wonder if he's just nervous or if he's trying to spot you. "Where are you right now? Can you make yourself visible? I mean, I know you're a ghost, but it feels rude not talking to you to your face."

You huff a laugh but reach for a coffee cup. You know you can't just make yourself visible at will; you've only done it a couple of times, to your knowledge, and none of them have been on purpose. It's even more difficult to make yourself corporeal and physical, harder than just manipulating objects, but you did it once. Back when the single mom still lived here, when her toddler was falling and you had no way to cushion the fall except with your own body; you still aren't sure how it happened, but you remember being able to feel the floor against your back and the warmth of the baby on top of you for a split second before you were gone again. You won't forget that any time soon.

You float the mug towards where you stand, holding it in front of your face long enough that when you pull it away, Namjoon's eyes don't follow it. It's a strange feeling; you know he can't see you, can tell by the way his brow furrows and his eyes slide around the space, but it feels like he's looking straight at you. It feels like you're being seen for the first time since you died.

"So, where are you from, Casper?" His tone is forcibly conversational, as if he's trying his best to keep himself calm. You roll your eyes and move the magnets to show ' here ' and he nods. "You're not gonna try to possess me, or kill me, or run me off, are you? No offense or anything. I figure you would've already at this point, but...cover my bases."

No. Am nice. I think.

"You think? You don't know if you're a nice ghost?"

Does anyone truly know if they are nice? You frown, trying to figure out how to say what you want to say with the limited words available. I can only try. It's still not perfect; there's more that you want to say, more that you want to be heard, but this has to do for now.

"I can accept that. Alright. Just talking to a ghost in my kitchen. Okay. This is totally normal." He rubs a hand over his face, and you're a little impressed. Everyone else that's lived here has freaked when presented with the knowledge that you're a ghost. Namjoon looks very much like his world is exploding, but he doesn't have the same fear and apprehension in his eyes. He's certainly coping better than the single mom.

"Are you the only ghost? Here, I mean, are you the only ghost here?" He breathes a sigh of relief at your 'yes.’ "Can you see other ghosts? Do you know any other ghosts?" The 'don't know, no' that you move around on your fridge seems to unsettle him a little, but there's a curiosity burning behind it that makes your skin tingle.

Can't leave, is what you say next, cutting off whatever question he was about to ask.

"You can't leave at all? The building, or the apartment?"

The second.

"Wow. You're really stuck here?" He looks around the apartment as if seeing it for the first time and sucks in a breath. "What do you do all day?"

Watch. He cocks a brow. You are... You hesitate. The word you need isn't there, everything that comes to you is too poetic or corny for you to actually say, but the weight of his eyes is heavy on your hands. Fun is what you settle on, but it's not right either. 'Interesting' isn't there, nor is 'fascinating' or 'lovely,' and you don't want to scare him off by telling him that part of the reason you watch him so much is that he's so full of life that you feel less dead when he's around.

He laughs at your words though and shakes his head ever so slightly. "Alright, well, I'm gonna shower, so just, don't...watch that?" You squawk at the insinuation that you would, quickly rearranging the letters to spell ' privacy' and making a large angry face out of the rest of the words. He's already turned away, though, and it makes you angrier.

You don't want him thinking that you would peep at him. You already make sure that you're facing the windows when he finishes showering, you've been determined to not be creepy since the day he moved in, and to have him think otherwise is like a slap in the face. You slam the mug against the counter and he startles, turning to gape at it. You carry it to where your words and make-do emoji sit waiting for him to notice them.

"Okay," He says quickly. "Okay, privacy, yeah, got it. You respect my privacy. Appreciated."

"How fucking rude," You mutter as you set the mug back down. You don't adjust the magnets as he disappears into the bathroom. You want him to see them, want him to be reminded of the fact that being dead doesn't mean you don't have basic decency.

You can't get him to shut up now that he knows you're there. He still forgets sometimes, mostly when he's talking to his plants or narrating the way he carefully constructs some origami creation, but more often than not, he's talking to thin air. He spends a lot of time perched on his counter, watching you move magnets around his fridge through the thick lenses of his glasses before he spouts off some other question for you to answer. 

He covers the basics first: how old you were when you died, when your birthday is, your favorite color, what you were studying in school, and of course your name, though he insists on calling you Casper. You aren't sure why but you also don't get a chance to question it, because he hits you with more and more questions every day. Sometimes you don't answer because you can't, too limited by the poetry magnets to be able to really converse; sometimes you just don't have the energy to move the magnets around, but those are days are rare. The only times you use the tired magnet are when you find your limbs too heavy to move, weighed down with the memories of what it meant to be alive. 

Those are the bad days, but his questions make them just a little easier.

"How do you move around? Do you just float everywhere?" Walking, but different. No weight. Soft.

"How are you able to manipulate things in my world? Are they different from things in your world?" Focus. Takes time. Same.

"Do you sleep at all? Do ghosts dream?" No sleep. Just existing.

"You don't eat, do you? Should I be stocking up on snacks for you?" No. Save your sustenance. "What was the last thing you ate?" Don't remember. "Huh. I hope it was something good." Same.

"Were you ever in a relationship?" Once. A long time before. "Do you miss them?" Not anymore.

"What did you do while you were alive?" School. "Oh, really? Do you remember what you studied?" Boring. Important then, but it made me forget to live. Not important now. Namjoon goes quiet for a long moment after this one, staring out the window at something you can't see. He nods but doesn't ask any more questions, and he reads for the rest of the night.

It only takes a couple of weeks for both you and Namjoon to get tired of standing in his kitchen fucking around on the fridge. His legs get tired and he gets distracted by his thoughts, and you can barely keep up with the rapid-fire questions you get.

So Namjoon buys one of those cheap cookie sheets with the slightest lip at the edge and dumps the magnets on that. He leaves it on the coffee table, usually, there for you to pick up if he asks something but out of the way for when he stretches out to nap lazily in the afternoon sun.

You like the cookie sheet more than the fridge. He watches you as you work out your responses, can see the way you start to move one word before moving another instead; it makes it feel more like a conversation.

It becomes a favorite pass-time of Namjoon's, curling on the couch and putting some sort of music on in the background and just talking to you. A lot of nights his questions stop with a lingering silence from one or both of you; yours because you don't have the ability to share the words running rampant through your mind, and his for reasons still unknown to you. Still, you've missed it. You've missed talking to someone, being heard when you speak, having someone ask how you are at the end of the day.

It's the little things.

"You said you can't leave, right, Casper?" Namjoon's curled up on his couch, tucked into the arm with a blanket thrown over his lap, a mug of something warm in his hands to combat the chill of the season, and some R&B track playing lightly from his phone. You knock your fist against the cookie once - a sign for yes that you'd both agreed on. "So, are you just always here then? You don't go anywhere else?"

"Fuck, how do I explain this?" You mutter. You stare at the magnets in front of you for a long time before rearranging them. Not always. Tired sometimes, disappear.

"Disappear?" He reads. "What do you mean? You just, what, stop existing?"

Don't know, you respond. Only happens when tired. When used too much of me. He hums an acknowledgment, eyes focused on where the cookie sheet sits on the couch between you. You? What entertains you?

"Everything," he answers without hesitation. "I'm trying to work through my stack of books I want to read and finish all the shows I'm interested in, but the guys would have my head if I didn't get out and do things like a normal person."

That's where you leave to?

"Yeah." He sets his mug - now empty - on the coffee table and settles into the blankets. He looks cozy and soft and you would wrap yourself up with him if you could. "I take a lot of walks, and bike rides. I like to see the river, the trees, all the animals that live there. The beach is always fun, I get to see all the crabs and whatnot that wander in and out of the ocean."

"I wish I could go with you," you whisper.

Fun is what you spell on your sheet.

"I guess," he mutters. "It's enjoyable, at least. I'll bring you some souvenirs, or pictures next time."

You let the sheet settle on the couch as he turns the TV on, setting up a drama that he's on recently. He doesn't say anything else for a few hours, waits until the sound of rain hits the windows and stifles the apartment in an otherworldly haze.

"How long have you been dead?" His voice lingers in the air. You've been expecting these questions, and you're honestly impressed he's held them back for as long as he has. That angsty teen hadn't hesitated a single second to start asking you questions.

A while. Years. I think .

"Do you ever get tired of being a ghost?" There's something in his voice that you can't place, something that tells you this is more than just his usual morbid curiosity. Every part of your soul - whatever's left of it, anyway - is screaming at you to lie to him, to tell him that no, being a ghost is great. You've never wished he could hear you more than this moment, when all you want to is wrap your arms around him and ask him why he looks so much older than he is.

Sometimes, you tell him. It is lonely here, and boring. Fun to be unseen, but unable to do much more.

He nods like that makes all the sense in the world to him, and he brings the blanket up around his shoulders. "Do you ever miss your friends, or your family?"

Would you not? He huffs out an unamused chuckle, nodding again.

"Yeah," He says softly. "Yeah, I would. Do you want me to help you check on them? See what they're up to?" The single knock that echoes in the room is deafening to you, filled with a hope that you haven't felt in years. You've never let yourself think about them for long; if you did, you don't think you'd be able to come back from whatever that place is that you disappear to when things become Too Much.

Namjoon pulls his phone closer and starts fiddling with it. He doesn't hesitate when he types in your name, and you feel an emotional blush fill you when you see that he doesn't even have to finish typing for your profile to pop up. You glance at him, the way his brows are furrowed behind his glasses and his tongue pokes into his cheek just a little while he concentrates, and you wonder how many times he's looked at the pictures of you when you were alive. How many times has he scrolled through, reading the words people shared after you were gone, scrolling through the grief and loss to get to the words you posted yourself, the little snippets of your daily life that you would give anything to be able to relive?

"Do I still look like that?" You wonder aloud. As expected, he doesn't react, just continues tapping at his phone.

You two spend the rest of the night like that, each curled at opposite ends of the couch while Namjoon slowly looks up your friends and family and updates you on each of them. Jihyo got married, to someone she'd gone on a date with a few weeks before you passed, and she's apparently trying to start having kids; Your mother and father aren't very active, but they never were. They both share pictures of you when you were a baby each year on your birthday, and more recent photos of you on the anniversary. They have a dog now. It's cute. You wonder if it helps them cope with the loss.

Your other friends are doing well, too; most of them are still figuring out their lives, but it seems like all of them are settling in their skin and finding comfort in who they are. They're out there, navigating the world and doing things they enjoy, meeting new friends and making new memories.

You stand by the window for a long time, cookie sheet of magnetized words pressed against your chest as if you can feel the cool of the metal against your skin, and watch rain drip down the panes as you imagine what your life could have been.

You can always hear Namjoon before you see him. He whistles as he walks down the sidewalk, his small way of letting you know he's on his way back from wherever he's gone that day, and today isn't an exception. Relief sags through you and you move away from the windows, let your fingers trail against the ceramic of the newest succulent he'd bought, and head towards the kitchen. The kettle is turned on and heating a few moments later while you pull a mug down from your cabinet and set it carefully on the counter where Namjoon will see it.

It's a regular routine, for the two of you. He heads out, usually in the early morning after turning on some music or a show for you, and when he comes back, you make sure there's hot water for his tea or cocoa or whatever he feels like drinking that day. The sound of his whistling gets louder the closer he gets, a simple way to let you know he's safe and he's home. You glance through the cabinets and quickly make a note on the fridge that he needs to buy more of his special tea blend soon.

The lock turns and you smile, waiting patiently as Namjoon saunters into the apartment. He sets something down on the kitchen counter just as the kettle starts to scream, and you wait while he pours the water and gets it ready.

"The cherry blossoms bloomed," He says. You grin. "They look great. I got some really nice pictures while I was there, I'll show you tonight. I was thinking we could try to finish Voltron tonight if you want. We'll have to go back an episode though, I think I fell asleep during the last one." You knock once against the counter beside you, and he turns with a wide grin to glance at the spot where you stand.

It's ridiculous for your heart to speed up in your chest, for the hair on the back of your neck to rise, for breath to catch in your throat; you don't have a heartbeat, you don't have breath, you're a shadow of the person you used to be, and yet...

And yet, seeing his dimpled smile focused so naturally on where you are, as if it's just second-nature, is like a breath of fresh air after years underwater. It smells like flowers, like dirt and earth and a new beginning. It feels like you're alive again, and you don't want it to end, but too soon he's turning away to finish steeping the tea. Something lingers in the air for a moment after but it's gone too soon for you to place it.

You both settle on the couch, Namjoon tucking whatever he brought home with him under his arm, between his body and the arm of his ratty old couch. Your cookie sheet is in its place on the coffee table, unneeded at the moment. You can't help the glare that you give it; the things you would give to be able to just speak and be heard are endless.

It rattles a little and you look away.

Namjoon is quiet as the show plays. He doesn't react when you move to turn the oven on, but he does laugh quietly and thank you for it when he goes to put his dinner in. He eats and you don't bother him, though the way he keeps his little package hidden away makes curiosity burn through you. Eventually, once he's eaten and washed his dishes and laughed at the way you rubbed them dry before setting them carefully in their places, he settles back into his blankets and turns on the music he loves so much.

He's got a book balanced in his hands and your cookie sheet rests on the coffee table, and you both just sit like that for a long while, enjoying existing.

"You remember your life, right Casper?" You thump lazily against the wall in response, eyes drawn from where you watch the gloomy sky slowly get lighter with the dawn. He isn't looking at his book anymore; he probably hasn't been for a while, based on the way the pages have migrated around his thumb, too busy staring at the wall across from him. "Do you remember your death?"

You hesitate. You've tiptoed around the subject before. He's always been too afraid to ask directly, and it's too painful for you to offer it freely. You thump against the wall once more, and he nods like he already knew the answer.

"Are they very different?" His glasses are falling down his nose and your fingers itch to push them up. Instead, you reach for your cookie sheet. He makes a sound in the back of his throat when he sees it moving, reaching under him for his package. "I forgot, I got you this. Thought it might be easier."

He sets it down and you slide the contents out of the wrapping easily. Inside is a small dry-erase board, complete with markers and eraser, small things that should be easy for you to manipulate. You beam at him; he can't see it, but you think he might be able to feel it because he perks up and smiles a little.

"You don't have to answer," He adds. "I was just curious to know if being dead is really as different as everyone makes it out to be." You nod and thump once against the board before you uncap a marker and start writing.

It's a bizarre feeling, after so long. The muscles in your hand don't ache, no matter how much you write, and you can't feel the smooth surface of the board under your fingers or the weight of the marker in your palm, but it glides against it cleanly and leaves a thick black streak behind.

It takes you a minute to write everything out, get it worded how you want. Namjoon doesn't interrupt you, just watches the marker move against the board and smiles every time you go to erase something that isn't right. Eventually you show it to him.

There are similarities. I'm still me, I still enjoy TV and music and books. Things are duller now, like there's a filter over them, and it's harder to do things. Like when you're in water, or mud, like that. Resistance.

"Oh," Namjoon replies, "That's not what I expected. It makes sense though I guess." His hand moves against his chest, rubbing lightly as he looks over your words again. "Is there anything you actually like about being a ghost?"

"Well, being invisible is pretty cool," You say, writing the words as you do. "And it's actually really fun being able to walk through walls and stuff, even if I can't go anywhere outside of the apartment."

"I'm sorry you're stuck here," Namjoon says. You startle a little, looking up at him. You think he actually heard you for a split second, but his eyes are locked on where you're writing your words out on the dry erase board.

"Yeah, me too," You tell him. He stares at the board for a long moment, chewing nervously on his bottom lip as he does. "Ask what you want to ask, Joon," You write as you say it.

"How did you die?" He blurts. You sigh and he jumps a little, looking fully at where you sit. You're shocked; you know that sometimes little noises cross over, like when Jin heard you laughing, but it's still rare. You can't figure out how it works, but you want to.

You write for a long time, letters small so they fit on the board. The whole thing is crowded together, looks like one long string of letters instead of the story it is.

There's a lot of violence in this neighborhood. You probably know that by now. People are always getting robbed or mugged or something around here. Someone tried to break into my apartment by banging the door down. It didn't work, luckily, but I got really paranoid afterwards. One night I was cooking, and someone's door slammed really hard. I spilled the water I was boiling, slipped. Blacked out after a while, and when I came to, there were police everywhere. I guess I hit my head harder than I thought, because they carted me away, and I couldn’t follow.

"I'm sorry," Namjoon says softly. "You deserved more time."

Yeah. The universe had a different plan, I guess. He smiles at that, and it settles the anxiety thrumming under your skin. Wouldn't have met you, so I guess that's a bonus. He rolls his eyes at you but he laughs softly, so you consider it a win. You doodle on the board then, simple little designs that don't mean anything beyond being able to see your effect on the world.

Namjoon sucks in a breath beside you and you look up at him. He's always been good about looking towards where you are, doing his best to make eye contact with someone he can't see, but he still always tends to look through you.

Not this time.

This time, electricity sings through the air as your eyes meet his. You don't know how, but you know he can see you. His eyes roam over you, taking in the crumpled sweater you were wearing with the stain you like to think is pasta sauce on the arm, the hair you can't ever really tame, the way you sit cross-legged on his old thread-bare couch with a dry erase board in your hands.

Neither of you moves. He looks torn between fear and amazement, every emotion in between flitting quickly over his features, and you're terrified that if you move, whatever spell that's been cast will fade. It had been so long since you talked to anyone when Namjoon slammed those magnets on the fridge, and the conversation has been a reprieve, but to be seen for the first time in years...

It's invigorating.

Watching Namjoon just look at you is something you won't ever forget, not for as long as you exist in the world. He looks at you like he's memorizing every detail, every hair and wrinkle and pore, and just knowing that he can see you fills you with something new.

"Namjoon...?" You call hesitantly. His eyes fall on your lips.

"Again," He says. Your brows must furrow, maybe you frown, you don't know because it's been so long since you've needed to pay attention to your facial expressions, but he notices your confusion. "Will you say something again?"

Breath you don't have catches in your throat, wraps itself around a heart that doesn't beat, but you smile a little. "I'm glad I met you."

Namjoon smiles. It's big and blinding and knocks everything out of you except for that emotion that's been sitting in your chest since the first time you watched him talk to his plants. You lean forward, and you can tell the exact moment you disappear, because his smile falls and his eyes unfocus. A whimper leaves your throat, but he doesn't react, and that may be the most painful thing that's ever happened to you.

"Can I feel you?" His voice is hushed but the words reverberate in your head. His eyes dart around, looking for any glimpse of you, and your hand trembles as you reach out.

Goosebumps raise on his cheek where your hand touches him and his breath stops for a moment, but he smiles again and leans into the chill. You bring your other hand up to cup his other cheek, your dry erase board lying forgotten on the ground, and Namjoon's eyes flutter closed.

"I think I might love you," You say quietly just before you press your lips to his. He doesn't react to your words, but he lets out a soft sigh at your kiss. Thunder cracks through the apartment, a torrent of rain unleashed on the windows, but you don't move.

The two of you sit like that for hours, until he starts shivering and his nose turns red, like it does when he forgets his scarf on the cold days, and his breath puffs in the air. When you finally pull away from him, he smiles, and the blush on his cheeks has nothing to do with the cold air that makes up your form.

"Yeah," He says softly, voice nearly drowned out by the storm raging outside. "Yeah, I can feel you."

If you expected things to change much after that, you were wrong. At least a little. Namjoon still disappears to go on his walks, you still start the kettle the second his whistles drift up to the apartment. He still asks you a million questions, but they're more normal now. Your favorite music, color, what you wished you'd done with your life, if you've been able to corporealize again recently, what you wanted to watch that night.

"Come on, Casper," Namjoon groans. "I promise you can do it." You huff and he smiles, clearly having heard it. You're tempted to just disappear somewhere, rattle some pipes in the bathroom or the kitchen so he thinks you're in there and leaves you alone, but he smiles at you again and you're weak for that dimple.

You grip the watering can again, doing your best to lift it and manipulate it the way you need to. It's heavy, and something about the metal makes your skin itch, but the more you struggle the more you're able to pour the slightest bit of water where RJ - a giant plant that you don't even know the name of - sits in the corner of the room across from Namjoon's bed. It's the twentieth-something time you've tried this today, and you're ten seconds from just giving up completely, but you can tell this is important to Namjoon.

He's been talking all week, between the late nights where you lay over his blanket-wrapped form and the mornings where he ducks out with a soft goodbye. He's told you everything about his plants that you think he possibly could, teaching you about them and showing you how to care for them. It's interesting, you won't lie, and it's always fun to see him light up when you recall something he's told you, but you're exhausted and every part of you is shaky, and you're more than a little worried of what might happen if you push too far again.

Still, Joon hasn't looked great lately, like he might be getting the flu, and you want to be able to help him with all the things he does in the house. You've already started doing the dishes and folding laundry, since those were the two things he was the absolute worst at, but you feel like you should be doing more.

"Good job, baby, I'm proud of you!" You grunt and let the watering can fall back to the ground with a loud thump that almost definitely has the downstairs neighbors cursing Namjoon's name. "See, and now we're done for the day! C'mon, we can put on Sens8 and cuddle."

He's on the couch before you can stop him, wrapping himself in blankets except for one lone hand that sticks out, expectant. You roll your eyes and sit beside him, close enough that if you had a body you would be cuddling instead of just sitting awkwardly beside him.

You know that this is just going to make your hand all pink and gross, right?

He just smiles when the board flips around to reveal itself and wiggles his fingers. "It's worth it," He says. "I'd rather be pink and gross than never get to hold your hand at all."

You can't even feel my hand, Joon, there's literally no point to this. He huffs and wraps his hand around the marker in your hand, shivering at the chill that runs through him when he does. He grins and gestures down to where the tips of his fingers are already turning red.

"Clearly I can feel it, Casper."

You're glad he can't see you, that you don't have a heart that beats or blood that runs, because if you did, your face would no doubt be red. You have no doubts that Namjoon would tease you about it.

He's quiet as you both watch the show; he makes the odd comment here or there, but his mood seems to have calmed some. When he first got back from whatever place he visited that day, he'd been anxious and jumpy and entirely too on edge.

"Hey, Casper?" He asks quietly. You slide a hand against his cheek to let him know you're there, and he leans into the chill again. "What do you think about me?"

You don't move for several seconds, hand still poised around his cheek.

"Like, your feelings. What are they? Will you tell me?" You knock once on the wall behind the couch. Your hand stays poised over your board for long enough that Namjoon starts to get a little restless. Words refuse to come to you. Every time you start to think you have a way to describe to him what he means to you, they disappear as quick as fog on a summer's afternoon. Frustrated, you let the board fall to the couch and scrawl a quick 'hold on' so he knows you aren't just ignoring him.

It's been weeks since you've seen what you're looking for, your cookie sheet with the word magnets having been basically forgotten in lieu of the more personal and convenient dry-erase board, but right now you know that if words won't come to you, you'll have to go to them.

You finally find it, shoved under several encyclopedias and magazines, and the noise you make is so triumphant that even Namjoon hears it. You curl back up beside him, careful to make sure the blanket is wrapped tight around him, and make sure he can see the words as you move them. It still takes a long time, constantly changing and rearranging and stacking to make sure it conveys the things you need it to convey.

You are like music. A symphony of summer days and peach skies with soft rain. You are a storm in the moonlight. I'm not lonely when I have you pouring around me. You make me feel alive again.

Namjoon is silent for a long time, and you wonder if you've gone too far. It's more poetic than you'd like, too frilly and fancy and emotional than you usually are, but they're the only words you have.

After too long, he exhales. It's heavy and deep and it feels like he's trying to expel more than just air from his body.

"You make me feel alive, too," is all he says, whispered into the softness of his blanket in a voice too small for his long limbs. He shivers, and you hear him choke down a cough, and then he disappears into the bathroom for a long time. When he comes back out, he doesn't say anything, just slides into the mass of blankets on his bed and lays his arm out across the mattress. You spread out across from him, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he looks through you and out the window where the rain is letting up.

"Looks like the rainy season is gonna last longer than everyone thought." You slide your hands around one of his large ones and just hold them like that. His eyes sink closed and something like relief stands on his face for a moment before it's gone, swept away by the peace of sleep.

You wonder what it is that he sees when he looks out the window. If it's the plain brick wall and windows of the building next door, or something more.

You aren't sure you want to know.

Namjoon's flu only seems to get worse. He leaves early in the mornings, as if he thinks you might not notice the way he coughs into his scarf just because the sun hasn't risen fully yet. He stays gone most of the days, and even when he apologizes quietly during the twilight when he slinks back in to the sound of the kettle screeching on the stove and his tea already waiting to be steeped, he still doesn't stop.

You've taken to playing blues while he's gone, mostly the old school stuff, digging out the vintage record player he has buried in the closet and setting it up on the coffee table. It’s the only technology you can use without shorting it out. You don’t know why, but it makes you grateful the record collection Namjoon keeps tucked away inside the coffee table that you’ve learned is in fact an actual steamer trunk that he salvaged and restored himself.

The music fills the apartment, distracts you from the oppressive weight of his absence. He knows you wait at the window for him, you told him that back when the two of you were first getting to know each other.

You're so fragile, you had told him. He had laughed at you, quiet and fond, and waited for you to explain further. You're so full of life and breath and possibility, and the world is so big and so dangerous. I'm scared you won't come back.

"Of course I'm going to come back," he told you. You didn't even need to tell him that you're afraid of what being alone might do to you, now that you're so used to his presence. You're being heard again, sometimes even seen, and you don't know if you can go back to the stagnant depression of solitude. "I'll always come back to you."

That was the first time you thought you might love Namjoon. The feeling has only gotten stronger, and now that you wait at the window with your eyes focused on that tiny section of sidewalk you can see at the end of the alley, it threatens to consume you whole.

You wait at the window for hours. You know because you glance at the clock every minute and a half, mocking you with every tick as it hangs limply on the bathroom door. The sun sinks below the horizon, the moon rises to take its place, and they switch again while you wait. The dawn paints the sky in beautiful shades of pink and red and orange and the faintest purple, but you can't appreciate any of it, because you're too anxious.

He could be hurt. He could be gone, and you wouldn't ever know until his friends came to pack his things. He could have left, too; maybe he finally decided that living with a ghost was just too much for him and just ran. Maybe he figured out that you love him, that you would move heaven and earth if it meant he was safe forever if only you could leave this apartment, and it was too much for him.

What if he knows about how you lay beside him every night? How you tuck the blankets tighter around him, cover him in warmth and comfort before settling on top of them and closing your eyes and pretending that you can feel his arm draped over your waist and his breath on the back of your neck. What if he felt you, that night you wandered into the bathroom while he was showering to write on the steam-covered mirror that he needs to buy more eggs soon and got distracted by the way he looked stepping out of the shower? What if he knows your stomach flipped at the long limbs and the hidden muscles and the sheer size of him? What if he knows the real reason you were quiet that night, the way you kept replaying the moment in your mind and wishing you had a body so you could have just touched him, at least.

It's closer to noon than midnight when his whistle echoes up through the window.

"Hey, I'm home," He calls as he enters the empty apartment. You're upset, but you're more filled with relief than anything because at least he's safe and he's here now. He makes a beeline for where the kettle is just starting to whistle, already reaching for the honey and the tea you set out on the counter for him, and you do your best to calm the storm of emotions inside you.

Did you have fun, wherever you were? You ask him, floating the whiteboard in front of his face so he has to acknowledge it.

"Yeah, I did," he responds as he stirs his tea. "Jin invited everyone over for some end of summer thing. I didn't feel too great at the end of it, so I just spent the night there."

Don't party too hard, you might remember how to have fun, you joke. It falls a little flat based on the grim smile Namjoon gives you. Are they gonna come over here again anytime soon? I've missed scaring Hoseok.

He lets out a real laugh at that. "I don't know, maybe. My birthday's coming up, after Jeongguk's, so they could definitely be planning something. I'm heading over to Yoongi's later to help plan for Guk's party. I might stay there tonight, so try not to worry, Casper."

I'll try, you tell him. You both know you'll stand at the window every second he's gone, but you don't want to tell him why. You don't want to tell him that you love him through a dry erase board, or some fancy poetry magnets. It doesn't matter that you may as well have already said so by telling him that he makes you feel alive again; you haven't said the words to him, he hasn't seen 'I love you' in the messy scrawl that is your handwriting on some stupid board, and therefore he doesn't know.

You don't know if you want him to.

He stays gone that night, as he said he might, and reappears the next day to shower and change before he vanishes again. The next time he shows up, he takes a bag with him when he leaves, which only worsens your fears. He stays gone for three days this time, doesn't apologize when he turns up again and just mumbles a soft hello into the air before he makes tea and sags into his couch. He's asleep in seconds, and as much as you want to scream at him, you can't bring yourself to disrupt how peaceful he looks.

When he wakes, he takes a shower and ignores the ' can we talk ' you scrawled in the steam. He packs a bag of fresh clothes and doesn't say goodbye when he leaves, just disappears and leaves you standing at the window with the pail in your hand, caring for the plants he isn't. The slam of the door sounds like nails in a coffin and breaks what little was left of your soul.

He shows back up nearly a week later, and the relief at seeing him again is overridden by the sheer anger at being left in the first place. You don't start the kettle when you hear his whistle, the quiet and hoarse tune of a familiar song barely reaching the window, but there's plenty of noise when he enters.

The cabinet doors are quaking with your fury, the lights flicker and threaten to burst, and Namjoon just leans back against the door. He’s soaked from the storm thundering outside, even his jacket plastered to his skin, and he’s shivering slightly, but you can’t see anything past the rage.

"Where the fuck were you?" You demand; there's no point, it's not like he can hear you, but the way he sighs makes you feel like he can, so you continue anyway. "It's been almost a week, you didn't even think to stop by for ten seconds so I know you're okay? I thought you were dead somewhere, you could've been, like, shot, or something, I don't know, just bleeding out in some ditch, and I wouldn't know! And what about all the plants? I know how to take care of them, sure, but do you know how hard it is for me to do it?"

Namjoon sighs again, the breath catching in his throat and coming out in a cough, but you don't pay much attention to it.

"Why would you act like this, Namjoon? What did I do, is it because of the things I said? Do you not want me to feel like this about you? Because this a damn good way of making sure I don't, I assure you, so by all means, just keep disappearing and leave me alone with the plants you decided to rescue and save!"

His cough gets worse and he just shakes his head, covering his mouth and making his way towards the bathroom.

"If you want me to hate you, it's too fucking late, Joon!" The slam of the bathroom door punctuates your sentence, and you quiet at the sound of continued coughing. You knew his flu was getting worse, but it's never sounded like that. Even when you were alive, you knew that the wet sound that's muffled by the bathroom door isn't what a cough should sound like. The lock of the door clicks, and it shocks you into movement because he's never - never - locked you out of anywhere. He knows it wouldn't stop you, knows it as well as you know that you'd respect that boundary if he set it, and yet here he is, locking you out even as he coughs up what sounds like a lung in the other room.

You hesitate at the door, torn between respecting his boundaries and knowing what’s happening. You want him to trust you, always, and yet you find your hand disappearing through the door before you can stop it. You stand like that for a long moment, just listening to the sounds of his wracking coughs; the sound of a crash echoes through the apartment, though, and you’re through the door completely in the span of a heartbeat. 

Nearly everything that had been on the counter is scattered on the ground, Namjoon himself gripping the sides of the toilet as if he would fall apart otherwise. A single glance tells you that the crash happened as he turned from the sink to the toilet, and if his jolting shoulders didn’t tell you why, the sounds of his retching would. That isn’t what fills you with dread though; the disorientation, the vomiting, all of it comes with being sick sometimes, but the red staining the bathroom sink? 

That’s not normal, and you know with every part of you that it’s the reason he’s been gone so much. 

The temperature in the apartment drops with the sun, but your arms surround Namjoon as best they can. Goosebumps break out on his arms, shivers run down his back, but you don’t move away from him; he doesn’t say anything, just sits there with his forehead pressed against the cool of the porcelain. He stands eventually, ignores the way he passes completely through your body to rinse the sink and brush his teeth. 

You let him stay quiet until you’re both on his bed; you’re pressed up against his side and running your hands along his forearms, idly wondering if you would be able to feel his heartbeat if you were alive. 

“It’s not...it’s not gonna get better,” He says eventually. “There’s not a cure, just some things to draw it out and give me a little bit longer even if they come with more pain. I go once a week to see if it’s gotten worse, check how much longer I have. It’s why Hobi let me move in here rent-free. He pays the bills, says it’s the least he can do. I wanted to be closer to him anyway, so that’s a bonus, I guess.”

“I’m so sorry, Joon,” you whisper. Your board lies forgotten, somewhere on the couch maybe, you aren’t sure and can’t be bothered to pull yourself away from him long enough to find it. You don’t need it right now, though; he knows what you mean by the way the cold presses against his bicep with your palm. 

“I didn’t want you to know.” You’re not exactly surprised at that; you’d figured as much. You just don’t understand his reasoning. “I didn’t want you worrying about me, or anything like that, like the guys do. They always look at me and it’s all they can see. Like they’re already mourning me, even though I’m still here. I didn’t want to feel like that with you.” 

“I know,” you say. You don’t, not really. Your own death was sudden, a shock to everyone you knew; you didn’t get the luxury of saying goodbye, didn’t have the burden of knowing you would be gone soon. 

The two of you sit in silence for a while, until you can feel Namjoon’s chest quivering under your palm. When you look up, he looks at you, really and truly at you , and he has tears in his eyes. 

“I don’t want to die, Casper,” He whispers. You suck in a breath because he can see you, and you don’t even know why, but you don’t want to lose this moment. “I don’t want to leave all of this behind. I don’t want to leave you.” 

“It’ll be okay,” you say softly. His brow furrows and a tear slides down his cheek. “I promise you it will be okay, Namjoon. It gets easier, and people remember but they aren’t stuck forever. And I…” You falter, and it takes his eyes meeting yours to make you realize he can hear you. And there’s only one thing you’ve ever needed him to hear. 

“I love you,” You tell him. “I love you, and I will never forget you.” 

He surges forward, lips meeting yours in a rush of air. You moan at the feeling of him against you, realizing that for the first time since you died, you can feel something under your fingers. His skin is warm against your fingers, his lips soft against your own, and when he reaches up to cup your jaw with his hand, he doesn’t pass through your form. Instead his hand settles heavy against you, and he moves your head to lick into your mouth. 

Tears that won’t fall prickle at the back of your eyes and you climb into his lap before he can stop you. He’s still crying so you wipe away the tears before they can fall, pressing soft kisses to his cheeks, his dimples, his nose, every bit you can reach. A question sits at the back of your mind, and you can see it lingering in his eyes, but neither of you asks it.

“You’re so cold.” His whisper is nearly lost amidst the thunder that shakes the apartment, but it makes you smile a little. 

“Warm me up?” 

His chest is still quivering with unspoken sobs, but he nods. “Always,” he tells you. “I’m always going to be here.” It doesn’t take long to pry him out of his clothes, takes even less time for him to sink into you. It feels just like it did when you were alive, only magnified; you can feel him hot and warm inside you, can feel the beat of his heart in the firm muscle under your hands. His moans are quiet and hoarse but you wouldn’t have it any other way. 

He keeps one hand on your waist and the other on your neck, holding you close enough that he can kiss whenever he wants. “You’re beautiful,” He whispers. “The most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” You just press another kiss to his chapped lips and let him dig his fingers in hard enough that it would bruise if it could. When he’s close to his peak, he stops thrusting, just sits inside you as he grinds your hips down to his, and presses his forehead against yours. 

“I love you,” He tells you, lightning casting his shadow across the wall for a brief moment. “I love you, I do, I wish-”

“I know,” you tell him before he can continue. “I know, Namjoon, I know, and I do, too. I love you, too.” He comes a few seconds later, the warm seed soaking into his sheets because it has nowhere to go. His warmth disappears from under your hands and his arms fall to his lap when the only thing holding them up is gone. All you can hear is your quiet sobs mixed with his and the rain against the window, and for the first time since you came back, you really, truly, wish you had died. There’s no point in being a ghost when you can still feel your heart breaking in your chest. 

“Casper, are you ever scared?” 

It’s the middle of the afternoon. Namjoon is sprawled across the couch wrapped in blankets while Lucifer plays in the background and you doodle aimlessly on your board. You don’t need it as often now; you’ve gotten better at focusing your energy into being heard, though being corporeal still eludes you. You don’t know how you did it that night, but you’re grateful for it. 

“Of what?” You ask, looking towards him. He’s not looking at you or watching the show, just staring at the ceiling. He focuses at your words, lifts himself up into a sitting position. A shiver runs through him when his legs move through you, and you settle a weightless hand against his knee out of habit. 

“I don’t know,” He replies. “Just...whatever comes next. If there’s something that comes next. Being forgotten. Being stuck here forever.” 

You aren’t stupid; you know why he’s asking. The question lingers in the air, colors all of your conversations now, but the truth is that neither of you has the strength to ask it and neither of you knows the answer. 

“Sometimes,” You tell him. “Sometimes I wonder what Jihyo is doing, if she ever had a baby like she wanted to. I wonder if my parents are still alive, and what they say if they visit my grave, what they tell me now that I can’t respond to them.” 

Namjoon nods like he’s already thought of that, and he probably has. 

“Most of the time I try not to focus on it, though. It’s not helpful, it only upsets me, and I don’t…” You trail off, unsure of how to word your thoughts. “I don’t know what might happen if I only focus on the negative. I don’t know anything about what’s true about ghosts and what isn’t beyond that I exist now, and I can’t risk becoming something bad. So I try not to focus on it. It’s easier when you’re here.”

He grins and blows a kiss in your general direction, and you pretend not to notice the blood on his cracked lips. He’s quiet for the rest of the episode of half of another. 

“Have you ever seen a light?” 

“What?” He doesn’t seem to hear you, and you repeat your question on your board for him. 

“A light,” He echoes. “Like, the light.Y’know, the light at the end of the tunnel, ‘don’t go into the light,’ that thing.” 

You hesitate at that. You knew what he meant, what he actually wants to know here. He’s easier to read now than he was in the beginning. 

You watch him as he watches the space where you sit, curled up beside him on his couch. He can’t see you, of course, but he can see where the board rests in your hands. His gaze is heavier than it was when he first moved in; his cheeks are hollower, skin more gaunt with a grey tint that’s only made worse by the constant rain. The sun is just starting to break through the clouds, a brief reprieve after weeks of the dreary stone-colored clouds. It casts shadows along the walls, reflects off something in the window across the alley, and backlights Namjoon beautifully, casts a halo of light around the brittle brown hair you love. 

Once, you tell him. Just once.

“Why didn’t you go to it?” 

There are so many things you could tell him, so many different ways to answer such a simple question, but you find yourself lingering on the one thing you know is the ultimate truth. 

Because I love you.

September comes with even more rain and a bittersweet atmosphere. Jeongguk spends his birthday at Namjoon’s apartment and then comes back a little over a week later, surrounded by the other guys and carrying enough food to last a few months. You stay curled on the bed, one of the only safe places for you to not mess with anyone or anything. Your board is tucked into the blankets, ready to be used but hidden from view just in case. You watch as Namjoon sits on the couch, tucked between Taehyung and Yoongi with both of them leaning into him as much as possible, Yoongi’s hands wrapped in one of his and Tae’s head on his shoulder. 

The other’s aren’t far, leaning against the back of the couch and on beanbags they’d brought with them, all laughing as Hoseok does his best to act out whatever he’d been given in charades. He’s not bad at it - you’ve guessed the last few he’s done - but he is utterly ridiculous in his mannerisms. You know why; it’s the same reason everyone kept smiling when Namjoon refused all of the food he was offered, why Seokjin would crack a terrible joke whenever it got too quiet for too long, why everyone is resolutely ignoring the growing pile of tissues on the table. 

It keeps a smile on Namjoon’s face, though, and a laugh in his eyes, and you can’t ever be anything but grateful for that. 

Hoseok stumbles, nearly falling and whirling his arms to catch himself before eventually falling anyway. You laugh along with the others, grinning at the way Hobi pouts and rubs at his hip. You’re focused on the way Joon laughs, the way it lights up his face and brightens the entire room, which is why you see it first. 

The tickle at the back of his throat quickly becomes a cough, wet and wheezing and enough to make him throw the blankets from his lap and stumble to the bathroom. 

You’re there before he is, helping him slide the door closed and locking it behind him as he bends over the toilet again. The six of them are quiet in the main room, speaking in hushed whispers that neither you nor Namjoon wants to hear. You turn the knob on the sink, wetting a towel while you drown out the sound of voices, and letting a hand run over Namjoon’s back. 

“I’m okay,” he mutters. You ignore the way his voice shakes, the way his lips are redder than before, the way this happens more often than before. Instead, you just press the damp rag to his neck and watch his eyes close in relief. When he stands and flushes the evidence away, you already have his toothbrush ready and waiting, and you stay as close to him as you can until he takes a deep breath. 

“I’m okay,” He repeats. “I’m okay. It’s my birthday, and I’m okay.” 

He goes back out with a smile on his face and a laugh in his voice, teasing Hoseok about the way he fell and reenacting it, even. When he settles on the couch, he urges the others to continue the game. There’s a brief moment of hesitation before Jimin declares that he’s next and pulls something from the bowl on the table. 

You know you aren’t the only one that notices the way Namjoon’s eyes linger on the six men around him, but you are the only one that notices the way they also linger on his steamer trunk, the shelf with his books, the TV, the record player, the scrapbook of his life that they all worked on and Taehyung pieced together over the months, the plants on the wall that he had cared for. He looks around his apartment as if he’s looking at it for the last time. 

As if he’s already planning who’s going to get what. 

He finally asks the question you both have been thinking about, nearly two months later. His breathing comes in ragged pants, his lips stay chapped, and he keeps several blankets around him at all times to try to hide the shaking of his body. Your soft sobs echo through the apartment constantly; while you reheat the tea he doesn’t drink for the millionth time, while you quietly water and prune the plants he’s saved from death the way you wish you could save him, while you sit curled around him as he sleeps, soothing his coughs with quiet whispers. 

Night has just begun to fall, the rain of the day turning into a soft drizzle, and you stare at him blankly, unsure how to process what you’ve just heard. 

“Do you think I’ll come back?” He asks again, slightly louder. As if you hadn’t heard his shaky voice the first time. It’s not the question that floors you. You’ve been expecting this for weeks, months even. You’ve wondered it yourself as you prepare tea and ignore the sounds of him vomiting blood in the bathroom, as he disappears to the hospital and returns with a worse prognosis than before, as you’ve adjusted to the idea that you are dead and he is dying and you cannot do anything to help him. 

You never would have expected the hope that his words carry though. 

“Why does it sound like you want to?” You ask. Your voice is clear in the air and you’re glad for it, because this isn’t something you want to talk about through your board. 

“Because I do?” His response is delayed and sounds more like a question than a real answer. 

“Why?!” You demand. 

“Are you serious, Casper?” His brow is furrowed as he sits up and lets the blankets fall away to sit haphazardly off the couch. 

“Are you? Joon, why would you want to come back?”

“You’re seriously asking me that question? Why would I not? I’ve got so much I still want to do, I never thought I’d get the chance to after I got the diagnosis and now I might be able to. Why wouldn’t I want that?”

“Because it doesn’t work like that! You don’t get to just wander the world and fuck around, Joon, you’re dead.”

“Yeah, but you can still read and write and everything. I’d have all the time in the world to read the books I want to read, watch the shows I want to watch, write the music and stories and lyrics that I want to write.”

“Yeah, so long as it all stays in this apartment!” The light in the room flickers slightly with the force of your irritation. “You can’t do anything that isn’t in this room, Namjoon, you can’t use any of the electronics, you can’t read a book unless it’s here, you can’t write music unless it’s on actual paper, you can’t do anything.” 

“Yeah, and I could make that work. Why are you so upset about this? I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy? You think I’d be happy that you’d be stuck in these four walls forever, too? Why would that make me happy?” Namjoon stands, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. 

“Because I’d be with you! We’d be together, forever! Do you not want to be with me?”

“Of course I want to be with you, Joon, but not at the cost of you being stuck here. I don’t want that for anyone, certainly not the man I love.”

“And what if that’s what I want? What if I want to spend the rest of time with you? I’m already spending the rest of my life with you, I’m in love with you, I don’t want to leave you.”

“And I don’t want you to go, but Joon, why would I want you stuck here, too? This isn’t something fun. This isn’t anything that I enjoy.”

“Oh, so you regret it all then?”

“I didn’t say that, I just don’t want you to be stuck in a shitty studio apartment for who knows how long when you can’t fucking do half of the things you love! You wouldn’t go on walks, Namjoon, you wouldn’t go with Guk and Jimin to the movies, you wouldn’t get visits from Hobi, you wouldn’t get to shop with Taehyung or Jin, you wouldn’t get to drag Yoongi away from his thesis or celebrate with them when he finishes it! It’s not like being alive, Namjoon, you’d be dead and alone and in hell!”

“Whatever,” He mutters, shoving his arms into his coat. “Why can’t you understand for one fucking second that it wouldn’t be like that with you? I’d rather be stuck here forever than have to die in some shitty apartment and not even be able to touch the person I love.”

“Why can’t you understand that it’s still death? You’d be dead, Joon, your friends would go to your funeral and disappear from your life, and you’d be stuck staring out that window at that shitty alley for the rest of time. You don’t get it, you don’t how terrible it is to be stuck here and watch life pass you by.”

“Then why the fuck are you still here?” He asks. The door slams behind him before you can answer him, and your scream shakes everything in the room. You just barely catch one of the plants in the kitchen, a brown-potted one with ‘Shooky’ scrawled in Yoongi’s familiar handwriting, before it crashes to the ground. You return it to its place gently and huff another frustrated groan. 

You wish you could explain it better, but you know he wouldn’t get it even if you could. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to be trapped between four walls and unable to do anything without massive amounts of effort. And he won’t, not unless he experiences it himself. 

You’ve already watched him wither away. You’ve watched him become thin and sallow and a shadow of the Namjoon who first moved in, and you don’t know what you would do if he came back. You wouldn’t be alone anymore, of course, and you’d have him here with you, but at what cost? Namjoon was built for cherry blossoms and sunshine and the riverside. He would hate being trapped here even more than you do.

Still, you could have been more understanding of his view. You can admit that even being stuck in a shitty apartment wasn’t so terrible when you had Namjoon there to make you laugh or watch TV or read to you. It may even get better if he turned into a ghost; maybe you could hold his hands in yours, could feel him wrap his arms around you, could press kisses to his skin again. 

You move to the window and stand there waiting. It’s not good for him to be out, even if the rain had stopped a few days ago and the forecasters promised it was the end of the downpours. He was still weak, you’d be surprised he even went anywhere to begin with but you know he likes to walk to calm himself down. 

You worry for what feels like hours. You can’t focus on anything, not the way the sun starts to set, not the sound of cars passing or the neighbor leaving. You’ve worked yourself into knots by the time you hear his whistle echo up through the streets, nearly lost in the sound of some argument in the alley below you. You catch a brief view of his coat and smile when you see that he’s got some half-dead plant tucked under an arm. There’s the briefest glimpse of what looks like a Ca scrawled onto it, and your heart jumps in your throat.

You make your way to the stove, turning the heat up slightly too high so that it’ll be ready when he comes in. The arguing outside gets louder but you pay it no mind, pulling the honey out and setting it next to his favorite mug. You’re reaching for the tea when you hear something else. It definitely sounds like Namjoon’s voice, but it’s not in the hall or at the door like usual. It’s raised, like he’s yelling at someone, like it was just a while ago when he was fighting with you. A crash startles you and before you can even reach the window to see what’s going on, there’s a deafening bang. 

You slam your fist against the window, watch the red mix with dirt, and the kettle isn't that only thing that screams. 

“I think that’s the last of it,” Jeongguk says. His voice is scratchy and quiet, but it’s deafening in the silence of the apartment. 

“Yeah,” Hoseok replies. His eyes are rimmed with red and his hands shake as he slides the last mug into a box. “Thanks for the help, Guk. I don’t, um.” He sniffles. “I don’t think I could’ve done it myself, y’know?” 

“I know,” Jeongguk agrees. They’re quiet again, adjusting the things they’ve boxed and avoiding finishing what they’re doing. 

“Oh, can you get that?” You don’t have to look to know what Hoseok is talking about. Jeongguk grunts an affirmation and makes his way over. It’s a strange feeling, having someone pass through you again for the first time since. His hands fly into the air as he tries to lift, clearly not having expected it to weigh anything. 

His reflection in the window frowns, and he tries again, tugging on the pot. 

“I can’t get it,” He says. “Do you think he glued these things down or something?” 

“No,” Hoseok replies as he wanders over as well. “He used to pick them up to re-pot them, remember? And the others came up with no problem.” 

“Well it’s stuck or something, you try.”

Hobi takes Jeongguk’s place and pulls hard at the plot, but your grip doesn’t waver. He huffs and disappears. When he returns, he’s got a butter knife in one hand that he does his best to slip under the pot. He tries hard to pry it up, so hard that you almost want to give in. You don’t though. 

The knife clatters to the floor with as much force as Hoseok can put behind it, a curse following quickly behind it. 

“Fuck it,” Hoseok says. His voice is shaky and you know he’s near tears again. “Just fuck it.” 

“But that was-”

“You can try if you want, Guk, but I just-” He chokes back a sob, shaking his head and moving to pick up the boxes he’d set down. “I just can’t, okay?” He disappears out the door in a hurry, and you wish you could follow after him. 

Jeongguk looks down at the small plant, with its painted periwinkle pot and soft leaves. He runs a quivering finger over the leaf and sniffles. He doesn’t try to lift it again, just stands and lets his tear soak into the soil.

“I wish you could come back to us,” He whispers. “We thought...we expected more time. It’s not...it’s not really fair, y’know? So if you can hear me, if you can come back to us, please do. Please.” 

He turns and leaves, the apartment door slamming behind him like the lid of a casket. Your grip on Mang loosens now that you know no one’s going to try to take it. You’d watched them pack everything else up; you’d let them take the steamer trunk full of records, the shelf full of books and movies, the collection of mugs, the soft blankets, the ratty couch, the rest of the plants he’d cared for so tenderly. 

Piece by piece they had packed Namjoon up and walked him out of the apartment, but this was the one piece they couldn’t have. This was his favorite and none of them knew how to care for it like you did, and you had to. You owed it to him. He deserved to come back to at least one familiar thing, never mind that you woke up not even a day later and it’s now been weeks. If there was one thing you wanted him to see when he got back, it was his favorite of his plants. 

The sun glares into your eyes from where it shines down on the city. It reflects off something in the window from across the alley, would be blinding if you actually had eyes. You pay it no mind, focused instead on the remains of the broken brown pot down in the alley, the way you’ve pieced them together in your head a thousand times just to trace the word Casper with your eyes. You can almost hear his voice saying it, even now.

You whip around, eyes darting through the empty space of the apartment as your hands tighten around Mang.

All that rests there is empty space, mocking in its loneliness. You remember when he moved in, remember how it felt to test the boundaries of the apartment and wish you were free. The want is still there, to leave and never think of it again, never think of him. You know better, though. You could never escape the memory of him, the way he laughed and smiled and spoke. You could never abandon Mang. Not when he said he’d always come back to you. 

You turn back to the window, cursing the sunlight with every other breath. It fades, slowly, into the black of night, before returning again, and again, and again. Days pass, each one feeling like years. Hoseok doesn’t appear to show the apartment, no one comes to collect the small periwinkle pot between your palms, and the ghost of his laugh echoes around you. 

The sun blinds you again. You don’t even know how long it’s been, just that you’ve yet to move. Light glints off whatever hangs in the window across the alley. That's when you see it, a vague reflection in the weathered glass of a dimple and a grin, and warmth surrounds you.

“I told you I’d always come back, Casper.”

[mittensmorgul]

The Tumblr Beta Version: an objective analysis

I was tempted to just type “it sucks.” And while that is an objective analysis, it’s not exactly helpful. I’ve sent several requests to @staff and @support to restore my account to the old tumblr dashboard format, and received the same automated reply twice now. I’ll copy/paste it here so everyone is on the same page:

(lol, I had to go back and edit this, because apparently the beta version doesn’t display block quotes on the dash. So I’ve also put the block quotes in italics... hopefully it’ll display properly... note after editing: nope, it doesn’t display italics either... how the heck am I supposed to differentiate quoted text? I’ll start each quoted bit with an asterisk, I guess...)

*Thanks for reaching out about the beta dashboard.

*We're currently testing it out, and your account seems to have been selected to take part in the test. Thanks for your patience while we work on it! At this time there is not a way to opt out of testing. You may see your Tumblr experience return to normal as we continue testing.

WE CAN ONLY HOPE.

*In the meantime, check out some of the new features available only in the beta dashboard:

OKAY TUMBLR, IF YOU INSIST, though I would MUCH rather have back all the functionality I personally invested into this website through xkit... you know... making the site ACTUALLY FUNCTIONAL. Let’s see what this beta version has given me instead of functionality:

*Change Palettes: Go to the person icon, then click "Change Palette." You'll find the classic Tumblr blue, dark mode, and a few other color palettes for your dash.

So I tried out all the color palettes. In addition to the ones mentioned here, there’s one that’s trying to look like a green screen terminal that gives me flashbacks to the early 80′s. There’s a reason we stopped using green screen terminals... Another one is “canary yellow.” It’s very yellow. The “classic tumblr” isn’t actually classic tumblr... all the post boxes are dark blue with grey type, not white with black type. And all the other colors are the insanely bright fluorescent of the new Dark Blue standard tumblr scheme. Which means links are practically invisible unless I highlight them. It’s migraine inducing. The one theme with a light colored background is called “Concrete” or “Cement” or something like that and even that only works for about half an hour before the migraine aura really kicks in. I just want my Old Blue via xkit back. You know, what tumblr actually used to look like. I don’t want any of these horrible color palettes. None of them work for me.

*The new "meatballs" menu: This is where you can copy the post link, unfollow the Tumblr who made or reblogged the post, or report a violation to our Community Guidelines.

I could do all of this from the user menus with xkit, too. I don’t regularly report violations or have the urge to block people I have chosen to follow. Why on earth would I want to do any of this? And why would I want these features located directly beside the post link copy feature? 

You know what I do miss? I miss the xkit timestamps feature. I didn’t have to hover dangerously close to the KILL IT WITH FIRE meatballs menu in order to see when a post was made, and in this era of disinformation and misinformation spreading around this site faster than Covid-19, being able to see when a post was ORIGINALLY created is a far more useful feature than an easier way to block people. For reference: I currently have three blogs blocked. Two of them are pornbots. One is a nazi. If I don’t want someone’s content on my dash, I don’t follow them. This “feature” is entirely useless to me.

*A quick note: Pagination is not supported in this beta test, but we're collecting feedback to send to our engineers.

THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST. This beta test might actually be tolerable if I wasn’t trapped into endless scrolling. If I could page through my dash, refreshing it every ten posts or so. You know why? Because once I scroll about 30 posts down my dash, tumblr starts overheating my laptop under the load of ALL THOSE POSTS. Things start malfunctioning-- it takes longer and longer to load new posts the farther I scroll. And the keyboard navigation (both page down and hitting J to advance to the next post, and even just using the down arrow to scroll as I read a long post) freeze and stop functioning. One of my laptop fans has actually begun to malfunction.

You know why this wasn’t a problem on the old version? If the data load got to heavy, I could open a post in a new tab, click view on dash with xkit, and voila! Brand new tab! I could close the malfunctioning tab and everything would be refreshed to normal! But without pagination, THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Also, after reblogging a few posts, the beta version of this site breaks, and doesn’t open a post tab to add commentary or even tags. It just... reblogs the untagged post with no warning whatsoever. You know... that’s really really not cool. I tag EVERYTHING. Well, almost everything. The tags are the only way to keep track of the 40k+ posts on my blog. And warn people that I am posting potential spoilers, or other specific content. It’s REALLY inconvenient to have to either immediately go to my blog to edit the post and add tags, or even comments. The alternative is to scroll up to open individual posts I want to reblog in a new tab, and then reblog directly there. Ironically enough, THOSE pages actually open with xkit installed, and everything (surprise!) functions perfectly there.

It’s perfectly reasonable to understand why this specific issue has limited the number of posts I reblog. Reblogging content should not be this much of a hassle. Creators have been complaining for a while that reblogs have drastically slowed down, and I think making it even more annoying and difficult to reblog posts will not help this problem.

Also, with xkit enabled, there’s a function that auto-loads images as you scroll, so the images are always visible BEFORE they appear on screen. I don’t have to look at the colored boxes and wonder if this is a post I’ve already seen or something I should sit and wait for. Don’t even think about watching tumblr videos. Loading priority is given to the ads that you cannot pause or dismiss, so that video loads and plays in choppy two second bursts instead of being given priority. Since that’s the content I am actually here to consume, it kinda makes me want to do the opposite of patronizing anyone who advertises here with graphically intense ads. And then when you scroll away, with xkit, gifs and videos you’ve scrolled past STOP loading and playing, which I think might be contributing to the intensity of the resource hogging that’s literally melting down my laptop.

And for reference, I have a pretty decent little gaming laptop. A blogging platform shouldn’t be driving it to the brink of frying itself. I didn’t realize just how much xkit worked to streamline this and provide basic functionality to this site.

*And lastly, if you're an XKit user, know that the XKit team is working hard to update things on their end to make it compatible with the beta dashboard.

And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what I’ve lost without xkit. And this is a really REALLY garbage response to user complaints. “Oh, yeah, sorry we made our site suck even worse, but those nice people who do our jobs for free will surely fix our garbage soon!”

Dear wonderful people at @new-xkit-extension, I love you, and I miss you, and while I wish xkit worked with this beta version I’ve been forced into living with, I truly feel for y’all who are trying to deal with this nonsense on behalf of all of us.

And to the folks at Tumblr... maybe try to just... make your site actually more like xkit. You know, actually functional. None of these special new features are useful or functional to me. I respectfully request for a fourth time to be removed from this inane beta test.

Give us OPTIONS. Let us display ALL THE TAGS without having to click a button. Let me have back my Activity+ that actually allowed me to interact with people from my dash! That showed me real-time inline notifications in a way that I could reply to with a single click! Bring me back to my column of open messaging conversation icons so I have easy access to the people I talk with throughout the day instead of closing them all every time I refresh the page. I already feel socially isolated in freaking quarantine, please stop shutting off all my avenues of communication!

Let us have pagination! I mean, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to force heavy users of this site into a beta version that doesn’t allow us to opt out until your engineers had actually figured out how to make it work in a very basic way.

*Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with!

YES. PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THIS BETA TEST NOW. I have let you know exactly what I want from this site. I just want it to ACTUALLY WORK. For someone who spends 12+ hours a day on this site, this beta test version is NONFUNCTIONAL. PLEASE ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT. I AM LITERALLY BEGGING YOU. I WILL ACTUALLY PAY YOU CASH MONEY TO ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT OF THIS AND GO BACK TO HAVING A FUNCTIONAL BLOG AGAIN. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!

PLEASE! 

I AM OFFICIALLY AT THE END OF MY PATIENCE FOR ENDURING THIS NIGHTMARE.

(one final quick note... I’ve only been back on my dash long enough to make the parenthetical edits-- i.e. adding italics that don’t display and then adding the asterisks at the beginning of each section of quoted text, and already my laptop is overheating again. For reference, I originally typed this entire post from within my tumblr inbox page-- which still functions normally with xkit-- and spent over an hour on it. My laptop was fine the entire time. Clearly the issue is this beta version of the website. I will never forgive tumblr if y’all fry my literal only portal to the outside world at this time. PUT ME BACK TO NORMAL NOW. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING AND ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE. Thanks)

(oops apparently i lied... when the asterisks and the previous final note failed to display, I thought that seemed suspicious, and realized that I literally needed to refresh my entire dash in order to see edited changes. Funny how xkit enabled me to do that in real time, which is just another bit of functionality I’ve lost with this beta program. Please guys, this is really, really not working for me at all, just put it back.)