#not baffled as in confused but as in astounded. as in flummoxed.

[biennatodd]

holy fck it just truly sunk in how fucking STUPID jin guangshan was. how insidious the classism in mdzs was always at work.

it is INSANE to me that he refused to value meng yao more beyond recognizing him as a jin when he just won the war.

He became sworn brothers with TWO sect leaders, guaranteeing a favorable position for their sect and all but ensuring that JGS would be Chief Cultivator after the war.

he couldve (SHOULD HAVE) used JGY as a line to both NMJ and LXC's ear--pressuring him to leverage their brotherhood in the Jin's favor, and also to monitor the movements of the other sects (assessing the political landscape as it were).

and JGY was ready to do it! he wasnt particularly happy about it but that's just how badly he wanted JGS's recognition! and he would've done GREAT at it, better than he already did.

and yet none of that was able to outweigh the circumstances of his birth

[johobi]

Breathe

Word count: 2.5k

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader

Warnings: None. This is about as wholesome as it gets on my blog.

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17359445

Next: Interval || Dig Deep Masterlist

The night before your wedding to a man you couldn’t find any more repugnant, you seek out the mercantile aid of an unscrupulous space pirate.

A coolness perfuses the soles of your unshod feet. Everything about your alien environment exudes this curious chilliness. And though it should perhaps be the foreign engineering, the meandering layout, or the noiselessness of the vessel that flummoxes you most, it is rather the temperature that beguiles you. 

Iluoli reside in a state of refrigeration. The notion is equal amounts amusing and fascinating. That much is reflected - quite literally, in the ship’s many lustrous surfaces - by your confused arrangement of features. And it is while wearing this unflattering facial setting that a door before you whooshes - everything on their ship whooshes - open. Right onto the long, limber figure of who you now know to be its captain. Before vacant, Namjoon’s eyes and mouth fly wider than you would consider possible. Then again, he is an alien. “Oh!” The exclamation is pulled from him softly. As quickly as he’d breathed it, he affixes a less terror-stricken expression. “Miss ____. I apologise if I startled you—“ by the way he white-knuckles the doorway, it should be you apologizing—“I wasn’t expecting to see you on the bridge. Or anywhere,” Namjoon remarks aside, bending enough to evaluate you from the toes up. “I wasn’t expecting to see you on your feet for a few days. Dr. Jung informed me that the soreness of your genitals would render you bedbound.” An inferno builds in your cheeks. And what may as well have been vapour, for the insubstantiality that leaves your flapping mouth. “U-Uh—“ “Ah, are you not feeling yourself still?” Namjoon incorrectly diagnoses, interpreting your incoherency as malady. “Come in and take a seat. The chairs are tolerable soft here. Designed for long stints of occupation.” “Th-Thanks,” you stumble, because if it weren’t your tongue flailing uselessly it’d be your legs, quaking in embarrassment. You’ve not long been aboard their ship, but it’s taken half that amount of time to realise that the Iluoli speak openly and frankly about such matters. And for one such as you, having been raised amidst the pomp and propriety of human nobility, their unfiltered stance on sexual activity is baffling. Refreshing, but baffling. “I’m doing well, though, thank you,” you sincerely do thank him, because his concern is genuine. “Yoongi suggested I take a wander of the ship to familiarise myself.” A lie; the bitter truth being he was standoffish and unreceptive to all attempted conversation. Even after your sordid clinch! The alien had muttered some transparent excuse about work and left you lonesome in his quarters.   “I didn’t know I was heading to the bridge. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.” “Not at all.” Namjoon rebuffs your fears of intrusion with a wave. “I was about to retire but you’re most welcome to see it. It isn’t terribly impressive.” He thumbs blindly to the chamber behind him, and his assertion couldn’’t be any further from the truth.

Meek as a mouse, you poke a toe over the threshold until awe robs you of your self-consciousness. The room carries the same, sleek architecture that is signature of the crew’s species, but what astounds you is the height of its concave reaches. A reinforced, glass dome houses you from the void twinkling beyond, granting you an unparalleled panorama of near space. Illuminants line the chamber’s walls, enhancing its majesty; strips of gentle violet that thrum with the engine’s core, pulsing like veins. Presumably the ship is either on standby or auto-pilot, as the light seems more ambient than practical. Consoles and stations around you blink with all manner of their own, indecipherable lights. And if you listen closely, there is a pleasant, undercurrent drone resonating from the technology surrounding; a hum as harmless and soporific as a mother’s bedtime lullaby.

A lullaby, if your eyes aren’t deceiving you, that one of the crew seems to have succumbed to. Open-mouthed and throat-exposed, a young man you’ve yet to make the acquaintance of dozes to the fore of the room, at its cockpit. In the lowlight it’s difficult to examine the features of his face, but by the silhouette of his strong profile he’s extremely handsome.

Is everyone on this ship sinfully good-looking?

The slumbering boy’s hair flutters on the breath of an apnoeic snort. One so loud and sudden it punctures the peace like a gunshot. Startled, you clutch the nearest thing to you, wild-eyed and abuzz with anxiety.

The nearest thing being Namjoon.

It only registers that you’re far from home, far from kin, and far out of your depth when you clock the squidgy, cloaked appendages you’re so rudely grappling are the captain’s tentacles. You know, the thing that modesty dictates they keep covered.

And you’re practically flattening them.

Namjoon makes a peculiar noise. Something betwixt a gasp and an exhalation, all at once. You think to unhand him, but your knuckles are only operating one-way. “Oh, goodness, I’m so, so sorry!”

“That’s quite alright,” the captain attempts to reassure you, though the hiccup in pitch gives away his agitation. Before you can extricate yourself from your tangle, Namjoon’s familiarly greasy appendages are encircling your wrists and returning them to your sides. Freed, his tentacles slither swiftly behind their shroud. “I apologise if Taehyung frightened you. He sleeps in here more than he does his own bunk.”

You follow the rhythmic rise and fall of the extraterrestrial’s chest. "Why does he do that?"

What you can only intuit as a fond smile erupts across the captain's face. "He's rather vehement in his pursuit of knowledge. It's a challenge to have him even eat, sometimes."

Illustrating Namjoon's words lay piles of vintage reading materials, the kind hardbound by leather and paper. Books, they used to call them. Taehyung doesn't appear the type to shun modern technology either, though. Scattered haphazardly amidst the tomes are your more familiar holopads, glowing idly with text and casting a sunset across his untroubled features.

"He's our navigator," Namjoon answers the question next on your tongue. "You would struggle to find someone who is as space-savvy as he is." His line of sight directs you to the controlled chaos stacked around the boy. "So we accommodate his eccentricities as best we can."

Where Yoongi is brusque and unfeeling, Namjoon is patient and warm. Your focus leaves the exotic chamber to land on him. "And I thank you again for accommodating me. I know it was extremely sudden. In all honesty, I'm essentially at sea. I had no plan beyond escape. And it wasn't with you, either."

Namjoon, too, is drawn back to the conversation. Spun-gold hair sweeps over an eye when he tilts his head. "You weren't planning to ask for our aid?"

"No," your cheeks feel the burn of shame before you can comprehend why. And then you do. "I approached your crew with the very specific aim o-of--" Namjoon's arcane eyes don't waver. Thraeus, they're purple. "Well, you know what."

"Engaging in interspecies intercourse?"

Namjoon's unequivocal suggestion triggers a snort from you, an improvement on head-to-toe mortification. "Yes, well. Yes." Your knuckles twist white around your skirt. "Before I was bound to marriage, I wanted that which I was always denied in pursuing. Forgive me if you think me vulgar."

A wonky smile suggests otherwise. "We really have no notion of such a thing. It was a curious display, if anything." A thumb and index finger pull suddenly, inexplicably at your cheek and bafflement leaves your mouth hanging. "Is this the colour of human embarrassment?" Namjoon hums, consumed by intrigue. "Your temperature has changed, also. We have no such reaction to that emotion. Though, we do feel it." Pincered in his scholarly musings, you can't so much see but hear the light ripple of his tentacles behind him. "Much of our emotion and reaction revolves around our Raeli."

As you speak, your cheek finds freedom from his gentle pinching. "Raeli?"

"I hear your kind term them tentacles, but that is not their true name. Raeli are, in etymology, quite literally our gifts from God." The so-called gifts squirm enthusiastically beneath Namjoon's cloak, as though sentient and hearing. "They are a measure of strength, virility, capability. They form the basis of much of our etiquette and ceremony. Their language can easily be misinterpreted by those unknown to us and thus it is prudent to keep them covered to strangers and the outside world."

Hearing him speak of alien custom in so free a way unearths a familiar, nagging resentment for your restricted upbringing. All you'd craved in your eye-rollingly homogenous curriculum was a taste of the other. To understand the beings that co-habit your universe. What you might one day run away to...

"Oh, so it's not for modesty's sake?"

Namjoon’s features scrunch toward the centre of his face. Again, you appear to have amused him. "No. We don't clothe ourselves for the reasons you do." Fingers trace the delicate embroidery of his cloak. "Well, some of them, anyway. To maintain our temperature, as you do, yes, but we feel no shame in revealing our naked form."

You mull these unfamiliar perspectives over. The more you contemplated your species' unnerving obsession for concealing all that was natural, the easier it was to consider that humans were the abnormal ones. "That's really interesting. Refreshing," you add with speed, eager to ensure your drowsy monotone isn't interpreted as sarcasm. If that's even a concept they're familiar with. They seem an extremely literal peoples.

"What's interesting?" A soft question, caught in a yawn, originates from the far end of the bridge. Taehyung is mysterious in the star-and-low-lit room, his eyes heavy with sleep and propped open by intrigue. "What are you talking about?" He repeats huskily, quicker this time, interest eschewing his lethargy.

It takes you more than a moment to respond. Largely, in part, because it's difficult to process how this fresh-, cherubic-faced man can produce sounds so sonorous. Hearing him speak is akin to submersion in your very favourite, warm milk baths. "I--well," your nerve renders itself elusive again when faced with a touted erudite. "Namjoon was just telling me some things about your species that I didn't know. I love hearing about you."

Taehyung's bottom lip catches the light as he juts it. "Oh. Is that it? We're boring. Now, what would be interesting is if you tell me everything about your species." He's on two legs, now, stretching each and every of the limbs attached to his torso toward the sky. Naturally your eyes are drawn to his uncloaked appendages as they flex away the effects of their inertia. Teal, and long - oh, so long - when extended in this manner, they tremble at the limit of their reach, much like the tail of your beloved, coddled cat, King Cud. "Where are you from? Where do you originate? What do you eat? The flora and fauna on your planet?" Taehyung stops a mere foot away, no longer lit by space but fluorescence from the corridor. There are stars, nevertheless, in his eyes, now open wide and seeking something of fascination. His tentacles undulate restlessly in the air behind him, six hands on a timepiece that originates from his back. You haven't seen them bared so boldly since--

"It's late, Taehyung. ____ is likely tired. You can ask her these things another time." Namjoon must sense some change in your demeanour. For the life of you, though, it's not something you can pinpoint yourself. Awe, maybe. He interprets discomfort. "And sheathe yourself. You may look threatening to a human."

Your head whips to him and back. Back to the imposing beauty overlooking you. "Oh, no! Not at all. I'm not afraid. I'm just--" how best to depict yourself as something other than a brazen xenophile? "--I've never mixed with people outside my own species. Other than the servant staff, I mean." The reproval you anticipate doesn't come from either of your hosts at your divulging your appallingly pampered lifestyle. The chagrin licks hot at your cheeks anyway. "What I'm trying to say is that I hold much admiration for your species. I want to learn more of you, and others, and--everything. I've led a very sheltered life until now."

As Taehyung's hands land on his hips, so, too, do two of his tentacles, ringing his wrists in mimicry. An exuberant grin pulls his lips into a charming, rectangular show of teeth. "I have so much to tell you, Madam ____!" The title is unexpected but you receive it with a smile of your own. "You don't know anything? That's so exciting!" He turns to Namjoon, tentacles tangling in his thrill. "Captain, this is amazing! I've never met someone so unintelligent! The things I can teach her!"

If your face wasn't an inferno of mortification before, it is now. "U-Unintelligent?"

Taehyung communicates a vague, self-conscious panic at Namjoon. His index fingers come together at his front for a show of agitated poking. If that wasn't winsome enough for your forgiveness, his top two tendrils emulate the gesture over his mop of hair. "D-Did I say it wrong? I meant," his top teeth sink into his fleshy bottom lip, fixed on Namjoon. His Captain, however, looks bereft of answers. "Stupid."

Whether it's a sound or a snort that ejects itself from one of your facial orifices, you're not sure. It's muffled in nano-time, however, by the palms of both your hands slapping your airways shut.

Namjoon, ever your well-meaning - if inaccurate - interpreter, sends a sigh in Taehyung's direction. His eyebrows hover low and remonstrative. "You're distressing our guest, Taehyung. With one of your words," he tacks on, sagely, though the ambiguity is transparent.

Actually, you'd laughed. Coarsely. You hadn't belly-laughed since, well, you'd been instructed by your nannies to hide it. The belly and the laughter. And all things in between. It was plebeian and unattractive to suitors, they'd said. That propriety dictated a gentlewoman keep such uncouth behaviour stifled. Slamming a hand to your mouth had become an unfailing reflex.

"Which one?"

"S-Stupid?"

Your reverie is struck aside by Namjoon's flustered speculation. Back in reality, you find yourself engaged by two extremely bewildered Iluoli. That’s very unlike reality.

The captain, then, relaxes in understanding. "Ah, yes. Don't say the word stupid, Taehyung. It's probably offensive to humans. Perhaps the term unlearned is less harsh."

There's no keeping it in. A noise, as foreign as your surroundings and situation, ousts itself like a geyser, vibrant and untapped. Thraeus, it’s funny. Everything is so funny. You guffaw into the open air, clawing at your stomach as it tremors."S-Stupid--u-unlearned--"

Once as deep as the earth's core, Taehyung's voice shoots up, shrill. "You made it worse!"

Namjoon's is just as high. "I--I didn't know humans were so fragile!"

It's only halfway to Hoseok's office, bound gently aloft by tentacles and amidst frenzied cries of Her face is watering again! that you're able to regain a measure of your composure and reassure them that you aren't, in fact, seizing.  Merely, you were laughing out your amusement. And you thank them for it.

That does nothing to clear up their confusion.