#pasta is the ultimate student dish

[sonetcs]

is that MACARENA ACHAGA ? oh, no, that’s MARISA IRIGARAY, a TWENTY-NINE year old SALES ASSOCIATE AT INHERITED ESCAPES AND ASPIRING POET who uses SHE/HER pronouns. they currently live in CASABLANCA, and the character they identify with most is PENNY LANE FROM ALMOST FAMOUS. hopefully they find their own little paradise here in el país de los poetas! 

//::  T H E   B A S I C S

name: maria isabel irigaray lombardi

nickname(s): marisa

age: twenty-nine

gender: cis woman

place of birth: colonia, uruguay

birthday: march 14th, 1994

zodiac : pisces sun, capricorn moon and leo rising

height: 5′7″

occupation: sales associate at inherited escapes and aspiring poet

//::  T H E B I O G R A P H Y

tw: abandonment

maria isabel "marisa" irigaray was born in colonia, uruguay, and spent the initial five years of her life there before her family relocated to montevideo. born into a family with a banker father and a receptionist mother, marisa's upbringing was shaped by her parents sacrificing their dream careers for a more secure livelihood. while her father came to terms with the curtailment of his musical aspirations, her mother, an aspiring painter, struggled to move past the relinquishment of her artistic dreams. over time, her mother harbored resentment towards her husband and children for the role they played in truncating her ambitions.

despite her mother's usual cold and distant demeanor, there were instances when, under the influence of alcohol, she would engage in lengthy conversations with marisa about the profound significance of art. ironically, these intoxicated moments with her mother ignited a curiosity for art within marisa. she experimented with various forms, including painting, singing, and sculpting, but ultimately discovered her true calling in the realm of words.

at the age of eight, marisa's mother reached a breaking point and chose to abandon the family. devastated by this abandonment, marisa's father, though successful in providing a comfortable life financially, became immersed in work and frequently neglected his two children emotionally.

at 18, she attended university, majoring in literature. it was in her junior year that she seized the opportunity to spend a semester as an exchange student in valparaiso. it was during this time that marisa developed a deep affection for the city and vowed to return someday.

after completing her studies back in uruguay, she graduated and worked as a teacher for a few years. simultaneously, she dedicated her free time to crafting poems and actively sought a publishing house for her work.

one year ago, she made the bold decision to relocate to valparaiso. opting for a less demanding job than teaching, she sought a position at a bookstore, allowing her more time for writing. embracing a modest lifestyle, she now resides in the city.

//::  H E A D C A N O N S

marisa holds a special affinity for mario benedetti's "la tregua," making it her favorite book. additionally, she admires the works of horacio quiroga and jorge luis borges. among her preferred poets are gabriela mistral, rosario castellanos, sylvia plath, and pablo neruda.

influenced by her father's musical tastes, marisa grew up immersed in spanish rock, with a particular fondness for bands like soda stereo, héroes del silencio, and caifanes.

her upbringing also instilled in her a love for cooking, a skill passed down by her mother from their italian immigrant roots. marisa takes pride in her ability to prepare homemade pasta, with cannelloni being her signature dish.

her early education included attending an italian school, but her proficiency in the language has diminished over time since her mother's abandonment. despite being a bit rusty, she still retains some knowledge of italian.

while marisa often mentions "before sunrise" as one of her top 5 favorite movies, her true favorite is "mamma mia!"

unbeknownst to many, she harbors a fear of water due to a childhood accident at the age of five, which prevented her from learning how to swim. she keeps this detail private, sharing it with only a few people.

[heliotropiumarborescens]

Kind of ugly studying pictures lol but this is from my evening study sesh. Exam season is here and here is my tip of the week to survive your studies:

Meal prepping saves many student's wallets while keeping us full and energized. It's also not that difficult or time-consuming. I meal prep at least 2 timed per week and I usually only spend an hour in the kitchen each time. And whenever it's time to eat I just take my meal out of the fridge, heat it up and 💥boom💥 I have a healthy homecooked meal in just a few minutes.

Make sure you get your proper nutrition as well. I very easily fall into the trap of eating bread and noodles every day but doing this will just make you feel low on energy and probably also make you run low on some vitamins lol. Proper nutrition is key to making sure you have energy for your studies and that your brain is functioning properly. You also minimize the risks of certain (or probably most) preventable diseases. You don't have to be the ultimate "that clean girl who snacks on blueberries and only drinks green tea " type of person but make sure you have a balanced diet.

You can also make amazing meals for super cheap. Chili con/sin carne (my fav) can be made sooo delicious for cheap. There are also plenty of pasta dishes, soups, grilled veggies and proteins that are student-budget friendly. My best tip is to use beans, lentils, potatoes, rice and peas to bulk up meals for cheap while buying other proteins (such as meat) on discount or frozen.

Meal prepping can help you save money, keep your health in check and can also serve as a study break/hobby and make you feel proud when you make an absolutely banging meal. So give it a shot! And please, remember to eat your fruits and veggies. I don't want to hear any excuses, we're too grown to not eat them! Also: remember that some food is better than no food. Make sure you at least eat something. Please take care of yourselves during these times ❤️

[gosocial365]

Savor Every Bite: The Ultimate Food Delivery Experience

In today’s fast-paced world, the convenience of food delivery services has become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Whether you’re a busy professional, a student buried in textbooks, or simply someone who enjoys the luxury of delicious meals without the hassle of cooking, food delivery offers a seamless solution. But what makes for the ultimate food delivery experience? It’s more than just the speed of service or the variety of cuisines available. It’s about creating a moment of joy with every bite, ensuring that every meal is an experience worth savoring.

The Evolution of Food Delivery

The concept of food delivery is not new. From the ancient Romans who enjoyed meals delivered to their homes to the rise of pizza delivery in the mid-20th century, the idea has evolved significantly. However, the digital age has revolutionized this industry, making it possible to have almost any dish delivered to your doorstep with just a few taps on your smartphone. This transformation has set new standards and expectations for what constitutes a great food delivery experience.

Key Elements of the Ultimate Food Delivery Experience

1. Variety and Accessibility

One of the primary factors contributing to an exceptional food delivery experience is the variety of options available. Whether you’re craving sushi, pasta, a gourmet burger, or a vegan bowl, the ability to choose from a wide array of cuisines is crucial. Accessibility to different types of food, including those catering to specific dietary needs and preferences, ensures that every customer can find something to enjoy. Check Jamtara food delivery.

2. Quality and Freshness

The quality of the food delivered is paramount. A truly satisfying meal arrives fresh, hot, and ready to eat. This requires meticulous attention to detail, from the preparation and packaging to the delivery process. Ensuring that the food retains its original taste, texture, and temperature is essential in providing a delightful dining experience at home.

3. User-Friendly Technology

A seamless user experience begins with the technology used to place an order. Intuitive, easy-to-navigate apps or websites with clear menus, detailed descriptions, and high-quality images can enhance the ordering process. Features such as real-time tracking, estimated delivery times, and secure payment options further contribute to a smooth and enjoyable experience.

4. Speed and Reliability

While quality should never be compromised for speed, prompt delivery is a significant aspect of a satisfying food delivery experience. Reliable and timely delivery ensures that the food arrives in optimal condition, ready to be enjoyed. Efficient logistics, clear communication, and courteous delivery personnel play a vital role in achieving this.

5. Sustainable Practices

As environmental concerns grow, sustainable practices in food delivery have become increasingly important. Using eco-friendly packaging, minimizing waste, and supporting local producers not only help the environment but also resonate with a growing number of conscientious consumers. The ultimate food delivery experience is one that is not only delicious but also mindful of its environmental impact.

6. Personalization and Customer Service

Personalization can significantly enhance the food delivery experience. Customizable menu options, the ability to save favorite orders, and personalized recommendations based on past orders add a touch of individuality. Additionally, excellent customer service that addresses concerns promptly and courteously can turn a good experience into a great one.

Creating Moments of Joy with Every Bite

The ultimate food delivery experience goes beyond mere convenience; it creates moments of joy and satisfaction. Here are some ways to elevate the food delivery experience:

Curated Meal Experiences

Imagine receiving not just a meal, but an entire curated dining experience. This could include a themed meal set with complementary sides, beverages, and even a playlist to set the mood. Such thoughtful touches can transform an ordinary meal into an extraordinary event.

Celebrating Special Occasions

Food delivery can play a significant role in celebrating special occasions. Whether it’s a birthday, anniversary, or any other milestone, special packaging, personalized messages, and celebratory extras like desserts or drinks can make the occasion memorable. These small gestures can make a big impact on the overall experience.

Interactive and DIY Kits

Interactive food delivery options, such as DIY meal kits or interactive cooking experiences, offer a unique twist. These kits come with pre-measured ingredients and step-by-step instructions, allowing customers to enjoy the process of preparing their meal while still benefiting from the convenience of delivery. This hands-on approach can be both fun and educational, adding an extra layer of engagement.

Culinary Discoveries

Food delivery services can also introduce customers to new and exciting culinary experiences. Highlighting local specialties, seasonal dishes, or chef-curated menus encourages customers to try something new and expand their culinary horizons. This sense of discovery adds an element of excitement to the food delivery experience.

Nurturing Community Connections

Supporting local restaurants and producers through food delivery services helps to nurture community connections. Featuring local chefs, promoting neighborhood eateries, and highlighting farm-to-table offerings foster a sense of community and sustainability. This not only benefits local businesses but also creates a more meaningful dining experience for customers.

Enhancing the Experience Through Technology

Technology plays a crucial role in shaping the ultimate food delivery experience. From advanced logistics to personalized customer interfaces, here’s how technology can enhance every aspect of food delivery:

Smart Ordering Systems

Intelligent algorithms and machine learning can streamline the ordering process, offering personalized recommendations based on past orders and preferences. This not only makes the ordering process quicker but also ensures that customers receive suggestions tailored to their tastes.

Real-Time Tracking and Notifications

Real-time tracking systems provide customers with updates on their order status, from preparation to delivery. Notifications about estimated delivery times and alerts when the food is on its way or has arrived enhance transparency and build trust.

AI and Chatbots for Customer Support

AI-powered chatbots can handle customer inquiries and issues efficiently, providing instant support and resolutions. This ensures that any problems are addressed promptly, improving the overall customer experience.

Augmented Reality Menus

Augmented reality (AR) technology can create interactive and immersive menu experiences. Customers can visualize dishes in 3D, view nutritional information, and even see how meals are prepared through AR interfaces. This adds a new dimension to the ordering process, making it more engaging and informative.

Enhanced Payment Systems

Secure and convenient payment options, including digital wallets, contactless payments, and cryptocurrency, ensure a hassle-free transaction process. Multiple payment methods provide flexibility and convenience for customers.

The Future of Food Delivery

The food delivery landscape continues to evolve, driven by advancements in technology and changing consumer preferences. The future holds exciting possibilities for enhancing the ultimate food delivery experience:

Drone and Autonomous Deliveries

Innovations in delivery methods, such as drones and autonomous vehicles, promise to make deliveries faster and more efficient. These technologies can reduce delivery times and minimize human error, ensuring that food arrives in perfect condition.

Hyper-Personalization

Future food delivery services will likely offer even more personalized experiences. Advanced data analytics and AI will enable hyper-personalization, where every aspect of the service, from menu recommendations to delivery schedules, is tailored to individual preferences.

Sustainability and Ethical Practices

Sustainability will continue to be a major focus, with more emphasis on eco-friendly packaging, carbon-neutral delivery options, and support for sustainable food sources. Ethical practices, such as fair wages for delivery personnel and transparency in sourcing, will also become increasingly important.

Virtual Dining Experiences

Virtual reality (VR) dining experiences could bring a new level of immersion to food delivery. Imagine enjoying a meal in a virtual restaurant setting, complete with the ambiance and interaction of a real dining experience. This could revolutionize how we perceive and enjoy food delivery.

Health and Wellness Integration

Integration of health and wellness features into food delivery apps will cater to the growing demand for healthy eating. Nutritional tracking, meal planning, and wellness tips can help customers make informed choices and maintain a balanced diet.

Conclusion

The ultimate food delivery experience is a blend of convenience, quality, personalization, and innovation. It’s about more than just getting food from point A to point B; it’s about creating memorable dining moments that bring joy and satisfaction. As technology advances and consumer expectations evolve, the food delivery industry will continue to innovate, offering new and exciting ways to savor every bite.

Whether you’re enjoying a quiet meal at home, celebrating a special occasion, or exploring new culinary delights, the perfect food delivery experience can make every meal an unforgettable experience. So next time you order in, take a moment to appreciate the effort and thought that goes into delivering that perfect bite right to your doorstep.

[saltyrunawaynight]

 Have you ever considered adding some cardio to your passion for coffee? Guess what, though? Chandigarh is the ideal location to accomplish it because of its broad roadways, green areas, and relaxed atmosphere. Put on your favorite music, explore Rentnhop to get the best bike on rent in Chandigarh grab your helmets, and let's bike around some of the hippest cafés this city has to offer. Are you prepared for the ultimate mobile café hopping experience? Now let's get going. 

Why Bike Through Chandigarh’s Cafés?

Let's start with why you should think about bikes throughout your café crawl. To start with, it's not harmful to the environment. In addition, it's a fantastic method to burn off the excess calories from all the delectable pastries you'll be consuming. Furthermore, there's no denying that riding a bike in Chandigarh's traffic is far more enjoyable than getting caught in a car. You also get to take in the breathtaking beauty of the city up close. Thus, you're making a great decision if you're considering getting a bike on rent in Chandigarh.

The Route Map

This is our suggested itinerary, which visits five of the hottest cafés in Chandigarh. It's ideal for studying, meeting people, or just sipping a nice cup of coffee. The itinerary is made to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing so you can make the most of your bike ride and café hopping. 

1. Indian Coffee House

2. Backpackers Café

3. Books n Brew

4. The Hedgehog Café

5. Willow Café

Let’s dive into the details of each stop

Indian Coffee House

In Sector 17, begin your adventure with the renowned Indian Coffee House. For many residents of Chandigarh, this location is both a revered landmark and a piece of history. 

- What to Order: You must try their masala dosa and classic filter coffee. The coffee filter has enough strength to get your biking excursion off to a great start. 

- Vibe Check: It's ideal for a laid-back start to the day because of the vintage decor and rustic appeal. It's also an excellent place to people watch. 

Backpackers Café

Proceed to Sector 9's Backpackers Café next. This café is well-liked by both tourists and students. 

- What to Order: Enjoy their English breakfast dish, which is highly recommended, together with a fluffy cappuccino during their all-day breakfast. 

- Vibe Check: It's a terrific place to read light literature or hang out with friends because of its eclectic yet friendly décor. Here, fellow bikers frequently congregate to tell stories of their travels. 

Books and Brew

From there, ride your bike to Sector 16's Books n Brew. This café blends its love of books with coffee. 

- What to Order: The combination of cold coffee and Nutella waffle is a match made in heaven. 

- Vibe Check: You can study, relax, or lose yourself in a good book there with its book-lined shelves and laid-back vibe. Bringing your own book and curling up with a hot cup of coffee earns you extra points. 

The Hedgehog Café

The Hedgehog Café in Sector 7 is the next place on the list. For people who enjoy excellent cuisine, coffee, and company, this is a haven. 

- What to Order: The chicken quesadilla and Vietnamese iced coffee are popular dishes. 

- Vibe Check: Perfect for a laid-back get-together or perhaps a date, this quirky café has fun décor. Because it's entertaining and comfortable, younger people tend to like it. 

Willow Café

Visit Willow Café in Sector 10 to cap up your exploration of cafés. Along with wonderful food, this café has a pleasant ambiance. 

- What to Order: Your list should include a refreshing lemonade and Willow Special Pasta. 

- Vibe Check: It's the ideal spot to think back on your day's adventures and make plans for the next one with its garden seats and calm ambiance. It's a fantastic location for your daily Instagram photos as well. 

Tips for a Smooth Ride

Now that you know where to go, follow these suggestions to make sure you have a fun and easy time riding and visiting cafés. 

Bike on rent in Chandigarh

Relax if you don't possess a bike. For bike rental in Chandigarh, there are lots of possibilities. Seek out a Chandigarh bike rental company that provides comfy and well-made bikes. Prior to riding, make sure the bike is in good working order. 

Packing Essentials

- Backpack: Keep a modest backpack filled with necessities like cash, a power bank, and water. 

- Helmet: Putting safety first! Don't wear a helmet at all times. 

- Lock: If you want to keep your bike safe while sipping your coffee, you need a decent lock.

Staying Energized

- Hydration: Remain hydrated. You'll be drinking coffee, but you also need to stay hydrated with water. 

- Snacks: In case you need a fast pick-me-up, keep some light snacks like nuts or energy bars on hand. 

- Breaks: At each café, take quick stops to relax and refresh yourself. Take in the atmosphere, talk to friends, or just people-watch. 

Conclusion

There you have it, then. a full day of biking on a bike rental in Chandigarh, rolling around Chandigarh's trendiest locations, stopping at some of the greatest coffee shops and snack bars the city has to offer, and touring the city's cafés. As you ride your way back home, you'll see that biking and café hopping together is a terrific way to explore the city's hidden treasures in addition to being exciting and daring. 

Finally, for some lightheartedness, don't be shocked if your bike seems heavier at the end of the day. The happiness and memories you've stored away in your heart are what make you heavier than all the snacks and beverages you consumed. Tell your friends that bike and coffee are the newest "health trends" when they question why you're suddenly so into them.

Prepare yourself, get on your bike on rent in Chandigarh, and start your café hopping journey. Cheers to biking and drinking.

[luckystorein22]

The Ultimate Comfort: Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup Warms Your Soul!

When it comes to seeking comfort in a bowl, few dishes can rival the timeless appeal of Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup. This classic soup has been a cherished favorite for generations, and its ability to provide warmth and solace on even the chilliest of days is unmatched. If you're looking for a bowl of ultimate comfort that will nourish your body and soul, look no further than Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup.

1. A Taste of Nostalgia:

Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup is more than just a meal; it's a delightful trip down memory lane. For many, this iconic soup carries a sense of nostalgia, reminding them of cozy family meals, childhood memories, and comforting moments shared with loved ones. The rich and familiar flavors of ripe tomatoes and cream transport us back to simpler times, creating a sense of warmth and security.

2. Simple and Convenient:

In our fast-paced lives, simplicity and convenience are key. Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup offers the perfect solution for those craving a satisfying meal without the hassle. With just a can opener and a stove, you can have a steaming bowl of goodness ready in minutes. Whether you're a busy professional, a student, or a homemaker with little time to spare, this soup provides a quick and effortless way to indulge in a comforting treat.

3. A Nourishing Balance:

While comfort food often gets a bad rap for being indulgent, Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup strikes a delicate balance between taste and nutrition. Packed with the goodness of ripe tomatoes, this soup offers a healthy dose of essential vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It's a guilt-free choice that not only warms your soul but also nourishes your body, making it an ideal option for those mindful of their well-being.

4. Versatility at its Finest:

Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup is incredibly versatile, making it a staple in every kitchen. It serves as a delicious base for countless culinary creations, allowing you to unleash your creativity and transform it into a variety of dishes. Whether you prefer a classic grilled cheese and tomato soup combo, a hearty pasta sauce, or a creamy tomato bisque, this soup provides endless possibilities to satisfy your taste buds.

5. A Universal Delight:

Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup has transcended borders and won the hearts of people around the world. Its popularity extends beyond cultural boundaries, proving that comfort knows no limits. Whether you're enjoying it on a rainy day in London, a snowy evening in New York, or a breezy afternoon in Sydney, this soup brings people together, reminding us of our shared love for simple pleasures and the comfort they provide.

Conclusion:

In a world filled with chaos and uncertainty, Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup offers a comforting refuge. Its ability to warm your soul, evoke cherished memories, and provide a nourishing treat is truly remarkable. So, the next time you find yourself craving the ultimate comfort food, reach for a can of Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup and let it embrace you with its familiar flavors and heartwarming goodness.

[gukyi]

if i told you | jjk

summary: in order to pay for university, jeon jungkook decides to market his most valuable asset to the wealthy socialites of campus: himself. donning a suit and tie, tousled hair, and glasses (to look smarter), he becomes every rich daughter’s dream: the perfect boyfriend to bring to balls, dinners, and business gatherings. all while you watch from the sidelines, only able to dream of having that much money to buy yourself what you really want: him.

{friends to lovers!au, college!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, angst, we’ve got it all folks word count: 22k warnings: slightly underage alcohol consumption, mention of words that could be spoken on an crime documentary series but nothing graphic, ravioli-stealing, idiots to lovers, as per usual a/n: finally! here is the long awaited jungkook fic that i have literally been slaving over since the beginning of january. was this fic supposed to be 10k? yes. did i somehow end up writing 22k anyway? of course! in any case, please enjoy my absolute baby who i love and cherish!

check out the post-script drabble here!

Jeon Jungkook loses his job at the university call center on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year. 

You know this because on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 2:07PM, seven minutes after he normally starts his job at the university call center. 

He’s lucky that you’re the only one who doesn’t have class in the 2PM hour. 

“Y/N!” He shouts through the thin wooden door, his voice probably echoing down the thin hallway of your apartment complex. 

You open it before the second knock—you only rush to the door to get him to shut the fuck up, and not because you’re excited to see him, you swear—to see him standing on the other side, XXL university hoodie draped over his figure, down to his mid-thigh, baggy hood pulled over his head like a sad college-aged Star Wars character. He looks exactly like a jaded sophomore year college student would. He is beautiful. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the call center right now?” You ask in lieu of a normal “hello” or even a “what the fuck are you doing here, it’s 2PM”. Jungkook does not wait for you to invite him inside your apartment, immediately kicks off his shoes by the entrance and tugs on your apartment slippers that are a size-and-a-half too small for his feet, and marches over to your shared fridge to fish through the tupperware containers with your name written on Post-it notes for a mid-afternoon snack. 

Jungkook waits until he’s got an entire piece of frozen supersized ravioli shoved into his mouth before he responds. “I was fired,” he says over a mouthful of pasta and cheese.

“What?” You ask, eyes widening as Jungkook shuffles through your kitchen drawers for a fork, which means that the first piece of ravioli that he ate he did so with his bare ass hands. Like a heathen. Like a ravioli-craving twenty-year-old heathen. 

“I was fired,” Jungkook repeats. He stares at the microwave resting on your kitchen counter for a good ten seconds before he continues to eat the cold, unheated pasta. Every time he’s in your apartment (which is frequently), he tells you how it’s a fire, water, and explosive hazard to have your microwave on the counter like that. As if there is any other place in your apartment for it to go. Maybe out on the tiny balcony you have that overlooks the busiest street on campus. 

“Care to offer an explanation as to why?” You ask, coming up next to him. Jungkook is nearly finished with your tupperware of ravioli, and normally you’d shout at him for it, but seeing as he was just fired from his only source of income as a money-starved college student, you’ll cut him some slack. Just a little. 

“You remember that old, angry alumnus that told me that asking for donations in order to benefit low-income-slash-first generation students was selfish and rude of me, and that I wouldn’t be in college if it weren’t for what his generation accomplished?” Jungkook asks. 

You remember that vividly. Jungkook spent an approximate two hours and thirty-seven minutes on FaceTime with you ranting about this one “old man bitch” who he had to speak to during his day at work, all while you did your economics problem set to the sweet, mellifluous sound of Jungkook’s shrill shrieks. 

“The one you lost your temper at and shouted at for being ungrateful and elitist?” You ask pointedly. You have a feeling you already know where this conversation is going. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes. He finishes the ravioli (goddamnit, now you’re going to have to find something else to eat for dinner at 11PM tonight) and turns around to place it in the sink. For once, it is not piled high with dishes from up to a week ago, so Jungkook even squirts a bit of Dawn onto a sponge and washes the plastic container for you. “Well, as it turns out, telling an old racist elitist that he’s old, racist, and elitist does not go down well with my boss.”

“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse. Jungkook sighs, walking over to where you’re taking it easy on the couch. “Oh no,” you say, eyes widening as he grins, plotting something. “Do not, Jungkook. Jungkook, do not!”

He jumps, catapulting himself onto the couch and landing on top of you with a thud. You let out a groan as the weight of his body hits you, foreheads nearly knocking into each other. Jungkook is a good foot-and-a-half too long for this dinky leather couch that’s always sort of smelled, feet and ankles hanging off the opposing arm rest just so he can nuzzle his face into the crook of your shoulder like he always does. You hate when he does this. Hate when he jumps onto the couch while you’re casually reclining just so he can collapse on top of you. Hate the feeling of his body resting against yours, soft breathes against the skin of your neck. Hate how it always makes you want more, how it will never be enough. 

“Have you been working out?” You mumble against the fabric of his t-shirt. “You’re more muscle-y than usual.”

“I added weights to my routine,” Jungkook tells you mindlessly. If your roommates walked into your apartment right now and saw the both of you on the couch, you’d never hear the end of it. “Taehyung said it would make me more swole.”

“As if you need to be any more buff,” you say with a roll of your eyes. Jungkook’s the most athletic person you’ve ever met in your entire life. He could probably pick up your dinky couch with you sitting on it without batting an eyelash. Even Superman would tremble at the sight of him. “You’re perfect the way you are.”

“Thanks, Y/N,” Jungkook mutters into your skin. “God, what the fuck am I gonna do now? I need money to pay for everything in my life and my one source of income is now totally invalid because an old guy got what he deserved.”

“Are there any work-study positions still available?” You ask, hand reaching up to stroke at his hair, smoothing it down. Jungkook’s preferred cuddling position is big spoon, but he still demands that he be coddled as though he were the little spoon. 

“No,” Jungkook says with a huff, “they’ve all been snagged by try-hard freshmen who need money like me.”

“I distinctly recall you being a try-hard freshman who also needed money,” you tell him. “That’s why you applied to work at the call center, isn’t it?”

Jungkook sits up, the weight of his figure crushing your legs as he rests on top of them. If you stayed like this forever, you’d probably lose feeling in your lower body, but you’d also get to stay with Jungkook forever, which is a trade-off you would genuinely consider. “Yeah, but the call center hires everybody. You just need to be like… decent at communication. And I’m pretty decent at communication.”

“You never text me back,” you tell him pointedly. 

“That’s because I prefer showing up unannounced at your apartment or other places you frequent,” Jungkook reminds you excitedly. He’ll never let you forget about the time you were wrapping up a small seminar with your history professor and Jungkook burst through the doors with a whole thing of carrots and hummus because you had texted him that you were hungry. You could not look your history professor in the eye for the rest of the semester. “I’d say that’s pretty decent communication.”

“Well, you’re going to have to figure out another way to market your decent communication skills to get another job,” you tell him. “Have you considered the boba place on Oak? You could get me employee discounts.”

Jungkook leans over just to pinch at your cheek, fingers gripping onto your face and pulling like a grandmother. “You just want me for my money.”

“You’re my best friend, Jeon Jungkook,” you tell him. “Of course I do.”

This is what Jeon Jungkook’s obligatory university Facebook group introduction post read:

Hi, I’m Jungkook and I’m thinking of majoring in visual studies or computer science (really different lol I know)! I played soccer in high school but don’t think I’ll be continuing in college because I was pretty bad at it. I’m looking for a roommate and I’d really like to live in New East House, but anything works for me as long as it has a bed. Hit me up if you think we’d made a good match, but I like talking with everyone lol. 

I’m really into music and can play the guitar, drums, and piano. I like listening to all types of music (yes, even country which slaps kinda hard sometimes) but my favorites are The 1975, Frank Ocean, Troye Sivan, and Khalid. Will bop to Justin Bieber on occasion as well. 

I play Ultimate and am really interested in joining the club team here so hit me up and we can practice sometime because my skills are a little rusty. I also do a little skateboarding but I am definitely not a skater. 

Hit me up if you think we can be friends lol I’m excited to meet you all!

It was accompanied by several pictures, a couple of which are selfies at that anime girl angle, one of him with his friends at prom all doing that Frat Boy pose, and a couple of him with his family. To an outsider doing a very quick glance, it pretty much reads the same as a rather extensive dating profile. 

The truth of it all is, as you were scrolling through the hundreds of obligatory university Facebook group introduction posts in search of a freshman year roommate, you stumbled upon Jungkook’s intro post and you thought this: No. Way.

The moment you laid eyes on his first above-the-head angle selfie, you knew that it would be unlikely that you and Jeon Jungkook’s paths would ever cross. He played guitar and did Ultimate Frisbee, and you wanted to audition for your university’s symphony orchestra. He was beautiful but in that sort of college frat boy who can crush you at beer pong kind of way. Craziest of all, he was a computer science major, and you were walking in as an undecided humanities concentration. 

Impossible. There was no way the two of you would ever meet, and you accepted that right off that bat. At a school your size, you would go through these four years not knowing a majority of your class. Jeon Jungkook was just one of the casualties. 

On the very first day of orientation, Jeon Jungkook comes up to you on the sidewalk, wearing a white t-shirt, a backwards baseball cap, and shorts, and asks you if you’re here for orientation as well? He’s lost. 

Jeon Jungkook is the type of guy you imagine getting eaten up by any girl who meets him almost immediately. He’s charming and endearing the same way a baby deer is, but has no problem wearing clothes that remind you of how fit he is. He is, for lack of a better term, extremely good looking. 

“Yeah,” you had said on the sidewalk, squinting to look up at him since the sun was in your eyes. “I’m heading to the auditorium right now. Wanna walk with me?”

“Okay, sure,” Jungkook had replied, smiling with all of his teeth. Even in the sweaty summer heat, he looked even nicer in person. “Thanks, by the way. I’m Jungkook. What’s your name?”

You knew that already. How could you have forgotten? 

You had grinned up at him. The universe has always worked in mysterious ways. “I’m Y/N. Nice to meet you.”

When Jungkook doesn’t know what to do, he stress eats. Most often, you are the single witness to this action, which has literally no effect on his body mass whatsoever since he immediately burns off every calorie (and then some) at his next gym session. 

That is precisely why you are sitting in the second-best dining hall on campus eating a pretty measly salad and french fries, while Jungkook returns from the serve-yourself cafeteria with his sixth plate of food. Next to you is your mutual friend Chaewon, a filthy rich international student from Korea who is probably the nicest person you’ve ever met. 

“I think I’ve called every cafe, bubble tea shop, clothing store, and paid internship within a five-mile radius of this place and nothing,” Jungkook says with a sigh, keeping Chaewon updated with his job-search antics. It’s been several days since he was fired, and while being keenly cognizant of your bank account isn’t necessarily a bad thing, when it means that Jungkook refuses to leave campus because he is in hyper-saving mode, it sort of rustles your jimmies. 

“Have you tried babysitting?” Chaewon supplies helpfully. 

You laugh aloud at the mere thought of Jungkook stuck in some middle-aged parent’s house with their toddler for hours on a night where he could be living it up on campus. Jeon Jungkook? A babysitter?

“Wow, what the heck is wrong with me being a babysitter?” Jungkook questions, offended. 

“First of all, you don’t even let me beat you in Mario Kart on your Switch and I am your best friend. If you ended up gaming with a four-year-old boy, your over-competitiveness would take over you and you’d crush the poor kid and his spirit,” you remind him pointedly. Not to mention the fact that the man cannot cook to save his life, and you can’t even entrust him with microwave dinners because of his irrational fear of modern oven technology. 

Jungkook pouts. He knows you’re right. 

“It’s not like you were going to look into babysitting, anyway,” you say with a shove, nudging his shoulder with your own. 

Jungkook sighs, and despite all of the shit you give him on a daily basis (part of the responsibility of being his best friend), you do genuinely feel bad for him. Even if his job at the call center wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating nor morally rewarding, he didn’t absolutely hate it and he made a pretty decent earning off of it. He unzips his backpack and fumbles for his laptop, opening it up to reveal a Google Chrome window with approximately thirty-seven tabs open of places to work on and around campus. Meanwhile, Chaewon’s phone buzzes on the table, and she heaves out a great, exasperated exhale before picking up and immediately launching off into incredibly speedy Korean. 

“If only the bubble tea place was hiring,” you lament, kissing goodbye all of the free bubble tea you had been dreaming about if Jungkook got hired. 

“I’m glad I don’t work at the bubble tea place,” Jungkook tells you with his eyebrows raised, “otherwise I’d have to see you every day!” 

“You already see me every day!” You should back, but it’s not like Jungkook doesn’t know that already. He’s the one always barging into your apartment or sitting down next to you in the library when you’re trying to study. 

“But maybe you should try drinking less bubble tea, otherwise you’re gonna blow up like a tapioca pearl like that one girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Jungkook warns, pinching your cheek as if to make your face round like a tapioca bubble. 

“I can think of nothing I’d want more than to be a tapioca pearl for the rest of my life,” you state simply. It would be much less stressful than to be a college student. 

“If you were a tapioca pearl, I’d eat you!” Jungkook says, and you, out of the security of both your head and your heart, choose not to think too much into it. 

As Jungkook teases you about your slight obsession with bubble tea, Chaewon finally puts the phone down after what very well was several minutes of angry Korean. She lets out this deep, long sigh, like all of the pent-up rage within her is exiting through her exhale. 

“You good, Chae?” You ask her, a little concerned. Even after knowing her since the beginning of your freshman year, you’ve never once seen her get mad, though she looks pretty close to it now. 

“Yeah,” she says, exasperated. “My mom is having this stupid company ball here and she really, really wants me to attend.” It is obvious that Chaewon does not, in fact, want to attend. You’ve seen Chaewon nearly every day for over a year, and you’ve never even seen her wear a pantsuit. You couldn’t imagine her joy at having to dress up in a ballgown. 

“But fancy free food,” you point out. Even if she does have to be trapped in a penthouse ballroom with her parents’ stuffy business friends, the catering company will probably be god-tier. 

Chaewon pretty much bangs her head on the dining hall table. 

“Wow, I didn’t know someone could hate catered food so much,” you say, a little alarmed. 

“It’s not that,” Chaewon says, rubbing her forehead. The pasta on the plate in front of her has remained untouched for nearly ten minutes now. You wonder if she’s even hungry anymore. “My mom wants me to bring a plus-one.”

Your eyes widen. An excuse to dress nice and eat good food? Hell yeah. 

“And it can’t be you, Y/N, it has to be a date,” Chaewon says. It’s pretty obvious she’s not interested in dating whatsoever, no matter the gender of the object of her affection. You pout. Damn. “My mom said, ‘he can be whoever you want!’ but that means that he has to be an attractive Korean guy who’s got a future job in finance.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jungkook says over a mouthful of broccoli. 

“You will?” Chaewon asks. Jungkook just single-handedly saved Chaewon from a night of unbearable business talk with a boy she doesn’t know and cannot relate to. 

You scoff. “You’re just a regular Korean dude, Jungkook,” you tell him. 

Jungkook pouts, bottom lip turned out. “You don’t think I’m attractive?”

You refuse to answer that question. You’re afraid of what you might say if you open your mouth. 

“Seriously, you’d do that for me?” Chaewon turns to Jungkook with platonic stars in her eyes. 

Jungkook shrugs. “Sure. I’ve got a suit. I’ll ask my friend Jimin for a crash course in finance before the thing. When is it?”

And just like that, you and Jungkook’s weekly Friday Mario Kart night gets a rain check. 

 Jeon Jungkook is the sole best decision of your life. 

And it’s funny and twisted and wonderful, because he is the one thing you had failed to account for in your life. He stands there on the sidewalk in the blazing sun, black baseball cap nestled safely onto his dark brown hair, and in the split second it takes for him to open his mouth and say hello, everything changes. 

But no longer is the image you conjure in your mind when you think of him a picture of him on that very first day of orientation, lost and excited all at once. It is of him barging into your apartment and eating all of your leftover ravioli. It’s him laying on your dinky couch like it belongs to him, surfing through all of the Netflix shows available and eventually just settling on old Gilmore Girls episodes like he always does. It’s him standing in your closet to judge your latest clothing purchases and take back any items that you’ve stolen from him over the years. 

It’s imagining him not as a guest but as a permanent fixture in your home, in the place that makes you feel safest. Because that’s who Jungkook is, now. He is that place. He stands in your apartment rattling off a list of why microwaves are a severely underestimated killer, and it takes every inch of your being not to ask him to stay. To spend night after night cuddling on the couch, or make a home-cooked meal together on a Sunday evening, or get lost underneath the sheets on your bed.

Jungkook stands in your apartment like he belongs there. And only in your wildest dreams could you ever imagine that coming true.

Such is the case of that Friday night, when he’s supposed to accompany Chaewon to her terrible, awful, brain-melting parents’ business gala. You haven’t seen him all day, too busy with your club meetings to make time for him after your classes are finished for the week. College is never-ending in that horrible, unstoppable way. 

It’s nearing two in the morning when you hear the knock on your door. Two of your roommates are at a rush event for their sorority, and the other sleeps through your smoke alarm on a regular basis, so you are tasked with the job of opening the door. 

On the other side is Jungkook, as he frequently is. 

Your heart practically freezes in place, like his eyes have shot right through it. Instead of his usual baggy outfit and a bucket hat, he’s standing outside of your apartment in a crisp navy suit (complete with a pocket square), rings lining his fingers and hair tousled in that effortlessly-styled kind of way. He looks like a goddamn celebrity, like a young, successful CEO. Like the love of your whole fucking life. 

Coughing to distract from the fact that you’re practically drooling, you say, “Wow, you clean up nicely.”

Jungkook looks down at himself, almost as if he had forgotten he’s wearing a full suit entirely. “The pocket square is Jimin’s,” he explains, “but yeah. I didn’t want to let Chaewon down by not dressing up to code.”

He’s got remnants of makeup left on his face, having faded and smudged throughout the night. There’s a bit of black underneath his eyes from the liner, a smoldering effect that makes the dark brown of his irises even deeper. “You look tired,” you comment. “Why are you here, why don’t you go home, Jungkook? Get some sleep.”

Jungkook shrugs, looking over your shoulder to see if his arrival has woken up any of your roommates. “Your place was closer,” he says like it’s nothing. 

Like it doesn’t make your breath catch in your throat, stop in its tracks. He spends an evening dressed up in a stuffy suit and tie surrounded by old businessmen and their preppy daughters with whom he has nothing in common, and when it’s nearly two in the morning and he can finally relax, he drives to your place instead of his own. Like it means nothing. As if it means anything at all. 

Jungkook runs a hand through his perfectly styled hair, and even knotted and messy it still looks flawless. “If I’m bothering you, just let me know. I know it’s late.”

It’s so hard to say no to him. 

“Just come inside already before you wake up the neighbors,” you tell him, sighing to pretend like it’s a minor inconvenience. And even running on barely any sleep with makeup smudged underneath his eyes, Jungkook grins as you let him inside your apartment, caving in, just like you always do. 

The first thing he does when he’s inside is take off his fancy loafers and peel off his suit jacket, resting it against the back of the couch. You fumble around in the kitchen for the kettle, instinctively starting to make two cups of tea. Routine. 

Looking up, you watch as Jungkook loosens his tie and takes it off, unbuttoning the first two buttons of his white dress shirt. By the counter, you turn your back to him so he doesn’t see you mentally combust. It’s impossible that he doesn’t already know what he does to you. 

The kettle finishes boiling the moment Jungkook settles onto your couch. He keeps the television off so he doesn’t wake your roommates, and scrolls on his phone with his knees tucked underneath his chin. Thirty seconds later, you’re joining him, handing him the cup of tea before sitting down next to him, severely underdressed in comparison. 

“Did you at least have fun tonight?” You ask. 

“The food totally slapped,” Jungkook tells you. “Chaewon’s parents really pulled out all the stops.”

“So I’ve heard,” you muse. 

“We spent most of the time lounging by the catering table and distracting each other by making up stories about all of the rich people there.” Jungkook laughs. 

“Please tell me you didn’t embarrass yourself, though,” you say. Perhaps Jungkook could withstand a few blows to his ego, but Chaewon’s future pretty much depends on her impressing her parents and their comrades. 

“No!” Jungkook tells you defensively. “Jimin told me everything I needed to know, but all of Chaewon’s friends and their filthy rich CEO parents thought I was so handsome that I didn’t even need to speak.”

You roll your eyes. Of course Jungkook wouldn’t give up the chance to remind you of his hellishly good looks. 

“You just stood there, looking pretty?” You ask. Not as if he doesn’t do that already. 

“You think I’m pretty?” Jungkook teases, a greasy smile sent your way, like he doesn’t know the answer anyway. 

You huff. “Dressed up like this? Anyone would.”

“Chaewon said I was like her fake trophy husband,” Jungkook jokes. “She did all of the schmoozing. It’s not like I could have contributed anything anyway. Unless everyone wants to hear about C++.”

“Ooh, I love it when you talk all tech to me,” you tease, nudging him with your arm. “So sexy, keep talking.”

He laughs. “If we keep talking about Python I might get a little too excited.” He wiggles his eyebrows just for good measure and you giggle, holding onto this moment for dear life as you let it etch itself into your brain permanently. Times like these, you know you can’t forget, saving them for a rainy day thirty years down the line when you’re in love with someone that’s not Jungkook. When you look out the window and think about what might have been, if only things back in college had been a little bit different. 

Jungkook’s phone buzzes on the table. He’s got two notifications, one from Instagram of Chaewon tagging him in a post, and another from Venmo. 

“Fuckin’ damnit,” Jungkook swears, letting his phone drop on the couch cushion. 

“What?” You ask, turning to look at him. 

“Chaewon just Venmo’ed me a hundred dollars,” Jungkook says with a sigh. And it’s not one of those times when you see your bank account balance go up and get happy because yay, money!, it’s when your friend pays you anything over what they actually owe you out of the goodness of your heart, and you refuse to accept it. 

“She did?” You ask, eyes widening. A hundred dollars? That’s more than Jungkook would make in three shifts at the call center. 

“‘Thanks for bailing me out tonight. You definitely deserve more than 100 but then you’d be mad at me. But please don’t be mad at me!’” Jungkook reads off his phone. “I just stood there looking like eye candy. I didn’t do a thing to help her, what the heck?”

You pull out your own phone to check Chaewon’s latest post. 

It’s a picture of them together in the skyscraper penthouse the gala was held in, Jungkook looking dapper in his suit with a glass of champagne in his hand, and Chaewon in a dress worth more than a semester’s tuition throwing up a peace sign like the trendy Asian she is. They look like a K-drama couple. Like two celebrities basking in their fame and wealth. 

Shoutout to my one and only Jeon Jungkook for being my fake date tonight! Thanks to your good looks and charming personality for impressing all of my parents’ rich friends and their daughters. Love you 3000 💕

“Wow, whoever took this picture of the both of you knows their shit,” you say, impressed. You had always thought it impossible for Jungkook to look better in pictures than in real life, but this photo is coming rather close. If you were any more shameless, you’d ask Chaewon if she has any more photos of him. Just him, preferably. 

It’s not as if she doesn’t know about your gargantuan crush on him anyway. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever looked that good in a photo in my life,” Jungkook says with a laugh. Impossible. He yawns, placing his empty mug on the little end table next to the couch. 

“You should set it as your profile picture,” you suggest, leaning your head on him and pretending like this is normal. He yawns again, stretching out as he rests his body against yours. “Hey, we should go to sleep. Unless you want to go home?”

Jungkook groans, snuggling in closer. “No, your bed is big enough for the two of us.”

And who are you to resist?

You wake up to the sound of a phone buzzing furiously on your bedside table. You crack open one eye just a sliver to see who the culprit is and immediately eradicate it, when the sun filtering through your Venetian blinds hits your cornea. You groan, shutting your eyes once more as you smack your hand around to get it to shut off. 

The movement, however, causes the bedsheets to shift beside you, and when you turn, you find Jungkook nestled up tightly beneath your duvet, an arm stretched over your side as he hums in his sleep. 

You’re best friends. 

This is normal. 

(The feeling of your heart beating out of its chest has become rather normal, as well.)

He’s wearing a raggedy old t-shirt of yours that has always been too big on you but fits him just perfectly and a pair of joggers that he keeps at your place “just in case”. Just in case he stays the night. Just in case you ever need them. Selfishly, you will yourself to fall back asleep, shutting your eyes tightly and pretending that maybe, if you never wake up, this moment will freeze in time, locking the two of you together for eternity. 

He mumbles to himself in his sleep, a murmur of nothing as he shifts over slightly, hand dragging up your side. 

God. 

Next to you, the phone begins to buzz erratically again, and wide-awake, you look over to realize that it’s Jungkook’s, and that it’s Chaewon on the other end. 

This is at least the second time she’s called, which means that, despite how tempting it is, you probably shouldn’t silence his phone and go back to lying in bed with Jungkook and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

Sighing, you pick up. 

“Jungkook!” Chaewon shouts on the other side. For a brief moment you wonder why on earth she’s so energetic so early, but it’s less that and more the fact that you are overwhelmingly lethargic rather late in the day. “All of my friends said you looked really good in those photos I posted of us. Do you think you’re free next Wednesday night? Seunghee wants you to accompany her to a double date her parents are forcing her to go on!”

“Chaewon—”

“Oh, Y/N! How’s it going?”

“I just woke up,” you mumble quietly as Jungkook stirs beside you. 

“Of course you did,” Chaewon says, and you can see her rolling her eyes on the other side of the line. “Wait, why do you have Jungkook’s phone if you just woke up? Oh my God, don’t tell me—”

“Shh!” You hiss into the phone. Jungkook is slowly beginning to wake up, and you can only pray that he isn’t listening in to the conversation between you and Chaewon. “No, we did not. He got back after your thing and we promptly passed out in my bed, fully clothed,” you whisper loudly. 

“Jungkook went to your place last night? He was so tired, I thought he was going straight back to his. We even got dropped off outside my apartment.”

What? Chaewon and Jungkook live within a three-minute walk of each other. Your apartment is ten minutes away from both of them. 

“You did?” You ask, eyebrows furrowing. 

“Who’s that?” 

You turn around to see Jungkook lying on his back, head resting on a nearly-deflated pillow of yours as he looks up at you, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His hair is mussed, some parts styled and stiff with hair gel, and some parts tangled and unkempt. He looks like he’s been lying in that position for a while, hand resting behind his head as he gazes up at you. 

“It’s Chaewon,” you tell him softly as she laughs on the other end. “She just called your phone. Are you free next Wednesday?”

“Hmm?” Jungkook, still half-asleep. “When?”

“Next Wednesday,” you repeat, a hand on the phone like it’s going to do anything to stop Chaewon from listening to you two. “Chaewon says she has a friend who wants you to accompany her to a double date she’s been set up to go on by her parents.”

“Mmmrph,” Jungkook mumbles. It’s clear he hasn’t even thought about his plans for the rest of the day, let alone next Wednesday. 

“He’s not available right now,” you say into the phone. Chaewon snorts. 

“Fine,” Chaewon says with a sigh. “Can you pass the message on when you guys are done pretending that you aren’t fucking behind my back?”

You suck in a breath. “Chaewon!” You hiss. “We are not—” you quickly turn back to Jungkook, who, by the looks of his hooded eyes and bewildered expression, isn’t listening in, “—fucking!” You whisper. “You know we’re not!”

Chaewon laughs. “Yeah, yeah. Call me later, Y/N, we should grab ice cream or something.” She hangs up. 

“Who was that?” Jungkook asks sleepily, eyes still half-lidded as he sits up in your bed, soft skin, brown hair, pouted lips amongst a sea of white, bundled up in your thick duvet as if sitting on a cloud. 

“Chaewon,” you tell him. 

“Oh, why was she calling?”

“She wanted to ask if you were free next Wednesday.”

“To do what?”

Maybe you were worried about Jungkook listening in to Chaewon grill you about your relationship (or serious lack thereof) for nothing. 

“She has a friend who wants you to go on a parent-mandated double date, trophy boyfriend style,” you explain. Jungkook groans. 

“Pretending to know business is mentally, physically, and morally draining. It feels like I’m selling my soul to capitalism,” he says with a sigh, collapsing back against the mattress. “I just wanna stay here forever. It’s so cozy.”

“Come on, Kook,” you say, tugging the duvet off of him to reveal the rest of his body. He curls into himself at the exposure, refusing to budge. “You’ve encroached on my apartment long enough.”

“Y/N,” Jungkook whines, drawing out your name for good measure. “Noooooooo.” He reaches out to cling onto your wrist, which means that if you want him out of your bed, you’ll have to drag him out.

“Jungkook, you’re swole, you know I can’t tug you out of my bed,” you say with a pout. He knows every trick in the book to use against you, and worst of all, he knows you’re weak to all of them. 

“Good,” Jungkook says with a loopy smile, pulling you back onto the bed like it’s nothing. You yelp as you come crashing on top of him, your body bumping into his as he wraps his arms around you and flops back onto your bed. You laugh and shout at the feeling as Jungkook cuddles up in the warmth of the sheets, pulling you in tightly to his body. “It’s so warm here, let’s stay like this forever.”

“What about food?”

“You keep a stash of Clif bars under your bed, we’ll eat those,” Jungkook suggests. 

You attempt to wriggle out of his grip, hoping to escape before he holds you long enough to get addicted, hooked on the feeling of his arms around you, his body against yours. But Jungkook is nothing if not persistent and clingy, and he wraps his arms tightly around your torso like a koala, warm and soft. “Come on, Jungkook. It’s nearly noon. Let’s be productive today.”

“Gross.”

“Let’s not sit in bed all day.”

“Grosser. Let’s just stay in your bed all day and pretend that we don’t have any real responsibilities.”

“Given that we’re in college, that may be slightly difficult.”

“Fuck that, your GPA doesn’t matter anyway. Unless you have plans on going to grad school?” He asks with an eyebrow raise, turning to look at you. 

“No way, I’m not paying for another four years of this shit,” you immediately declare. Let the capitalist system of higher education extort another two to four years worth of tuition out of you for the same degree? Absolutely not. 

“Then why move?” Jungkook says with a grin. 

“Because,” you say, stumbling for a real answer. 

“Not good enough.” He grins cheekily. “I vote to stay in bed.”

“I vote to do my readings, your CS homework, and get back to Chaewon about Wednesday.”

“God,” Jungkook says with a sigh. “What’s Wednesday?”

“Oh my God, you need to call Chaewon. Right now. Before you ask me what you have on Wednesday one more time after losing all of your brain cells lounging around in my personal bed and refusing to leave,” you say, eyes wide as you worm your way out of his grip, dusting yourself off and heading to your closet. 

“Noooooooo,” Jungkook says, reaching out a desperate hand. “Y/N, come back.”

“Call Chaewon. Call her!” You order, fishing around in your closet for some fresh clothes. You’ve been wearing the same one since Thursday night. You are disgusting. 

Jungkook groans but obeys, picking up his phone and pressing her contact. “Hey Chae, it’s Jungkook. Listen, I’m literally going to Venmo you back what you paid me because you? Literally didn’t need to pay me at all? And I’m actually mad at you for it? Wait, what do you mean am I up to getting paid on Wednesday—”

The phone call presents the perfect opportunity for you to dash out of your bedroom and into the bathroom, where you splash yourself with cold tap water like a model in a face wash commercial (who already has perfect skin, so why does she need this new face wash, seriously?) to clear your head. It’s been a weird twelve hours. Even weirder knowing that across the hall, Jungkook is sitting in your room, on your bed, in your clothes, under your bed sheets. Knowing that maybe, in another universe, on another timeline, you would be in the exact same positions, only everything would be different. 

You wash your face, hoping to wake yourself up. Convince your mind that the past twelve hours have been nothing but a dream, and that when you walk back into your room, Jungkook will have vanished. Or he would have never been there in the first place. 

You leave the bathroom and return to your bedroom to see Jungkook tugging on his suit jacket, wearing the same clothes he had on when he knocked on your door at 2AM last night. He’s still on the phone, wrapping up the conversation with Chaewon. 

“Yeah, yeah, tell her that I’m down. She can just text me, give her my number. I’m happy to do this for you and your friends, Chae. Plus, she’s gonna pay me and I feel less bad about it because it’s a service and she’s not a close friend like you are. Yeah, it’s all good,” he looks up to see you standing at the door, leaning against the frame. “Yeah, Y/N just got back so I’m gonna go. Maybe we can grab dinner or something tonight? Cool. Bye.”

“Dinner without me?” You ask with a pout. 

“Never,” Jungkook says wickedly. “You’re always invited.”

“Have you figured out what’s going on on Wednesday?” You tease him as you walk him to the door. 

“Chaewon has a friend, Soojin, who wants me to accompany her on a parent-mandated double date with a business partner’s daughter,” Jungkook explains. “Apparently all of Chaewon’s friends realized I make a pretty good fake trophy boyfriend.”

You rub his shoulder. He’d make a great real boyfriend too. Not that you think about that all of the time, or anything. “Gonna put that on your resume, big guy?”

“Of course.” Jungkook smiles. “Dinner tonight? We can go to the ramen place you really like.”

“Sure thing, is Chaewon coming?”

“If she wants to. Otherwise, it’ll just be us.”

“Sounds good,” you tell him. “See you then.”

“Hopefully before,” Jungkook says. “Thanks for letting me crash here last night, by the way.”

“Anytime,” you say. Maybe one day, it’ll be true. 

Next Wednesday, there’s a knock on your door at midnight. 

Who else could it be?

It was supposed to be a one-time thing. And then it was supposed to be just a two-time thing. And before you knew it, Jungkook’s number and his services were circling through the ring of wealthy international students, jumping from phone to phone as people crammed to get him to accompany them on their next double date, next business gala, next ballroom dance. 

You had always had a feeling that his charming, charismatic personality would eventually draw everybody towards him, so electric and magnetic that you couldn’t help but want to know him, make friends with him, be close to him. From the moment you saw his Facebook introduction post, you knew it was only a matter of time before everyone on campus knew his name.

[October 17th, 4:12PM] You: do u want to get dinner tonight

Jungkook: would love to but have to go to kim family business dinner with dahyun sorry :(

You: ok next time then!

[October 23rd, 1:03PM]

You: yo what r u doing You: i have so many readings to do rip You: do u wanna come to greene w me and study

Jungkook: heejin is taking me shopping for a fancy suit for her family’s event tomorrow i can’t :/ Jungkook: but i am going to get macaroons for u at the mall so we can see each other later!

You: yummm sure thing!

[October 30th, 9:58AM]

You: hey ik you’re asleep rn but we are still on for tomorrow right? 🎃 You: can’t let our one (1) year long halloween tradition of buying last-minute candy and watching the nightmare before christmas together die

[October 30th, 11:13PM]

Jungkook: omg i just saw this now im so sorry Jungkook: uh yeonjoo wants me to go to her sister’s halloween party tm so idk if i can make it this year

[October 31st, 2:02AM]

You: ok You: thanks for telling me

It’s no fun watching The Nightmare Before Christmas by yourself, you realize this Halloween. All of your roommates are out frequenting one of the hundreds of parties being thrown on campus tonight, and although you’d normally be up for getting drunk and dropping it low, you just aren’t in the Halloween spirit this year. Wonder why. 

Armed with the knowledge that your roommates probably won’t be back until three or four in the morning, you shut your laptop and decide to go to bed early. Early being midnight, but it’s early for you and that’s all that really matters. 

You don’t know why you’re being such a stick in the mud this Halloween. It’s always been one of your favorite holidays, never one to pass up free candy nor the option to dress up, but this one has been particularly lame. You don’t have a costume, your local drugstore is out of mini Skittles packets, and you don’t have someone to spend it with. 

Realistically, you have no reason to be sad that Jungkook isn’t available tonight. It’s not as if spending Halloween together is some ancient tradition from birth that binds the two of you together. You did it for the first time as freshmen, and you were foolishly hoping to do the same thing as sophomores. It’s not a tradition if it only happened once. 

You look in the bathroom mirror, stained with nail polish and dry shampoo and old skincare, and you sigh. Jungkook has every right to prioritize his current and only source of income over a night spent lounging on the couch doing nothing. It’s not as if you haven’t seen your best friend in over a month and this was the only night you both had free. Jungkook drops by after every single event he goes on. Every single one. He stands outside your door dressed in a fancy suit, or a silk button down, leather shoes and expensive jewelry bought for him by the girls he goes out with.

No matter the time, he knocks on your door and says hello, steals a cup of tea and a bit of your heart along with it, before bouncing out of your living room and off to his own apartment. He doesn’t stay the night anymore, doesn’t worm his way underneath your duvet and refuse to move until morning comes. It’s hard to tell if you’re grateful about it or not. 

Sluggishly, you peel off your clothes and wash your face, changing into some old sweatpants from the tenth grade and a t-shirt with an embarrassingly large hole in the armpit. This Halloween, you are dressing up as a lonely college student who is going to bed early on Halloween night because she has nothing better to do!

There’s a knock on your door. 

Your first instinct is to freeze up. When there’s another knock, your second instinct is to grab the closest object to you (which happens to be your water bottle) for self-defense. 

And then, you hear,

“You’re not watching The Nightmare before Christmas without me, are you?”

To spare yourself the shame, you won’t say that you practically leapt out of bed the moment you heard his voice. You calmly removed the covers, and casually walked to the front door. That is what you did. 

When you open it, Jungkook is standing behind it, grinning, wearing the greasiest police officer outfit you’ve ever seen in your entire life. This flew at a marketing company’s heir’s Halloween party? He’s even got what looks to be a fully-loaded water gun in his holster. 

“Don’t tell me this is what you wore to some fancy-shmancy Halloween party,” you say disapprovingly, eyebrows raised as you look him up and down and pretend that you aren’t just ogling his figure. 

“It was fine, Yeonjoo’s sister just graduated college. If anything, she was more okay with it than Yeonjoo was,” Jungkook says with a shrug. You don’t even need to let him in at this point, just watch as he tugs off his shoes and steps inside your apartment like it belongs to him. 

“What was Yeonjoo dressed as?”

“Princess Leia. We made for a very mismatched pair,” Jungkook says, chuckling to himself. “Ooh, did you guys get new tea?”

“You can have some if you want,” you tell him, shutting the door as he eagerly pulls out a box of teabags, turning on the electric kettle on the counter. “I think it’s Wild Berry Hibiscus.”

“Sounds good already,” Jungkook says, and he lets out a sigh that sounds so exhausted, so tired and aching, as he leans back against the countertop, head resting on the cupboards above it. 

“You could have gone home, you know,” you tell him. Even from the couch you can see the droop in his shoulders, the bags under his eyes. He’s been going out several times every week for the past month, and he still has a truckload of CS assignments on top. He spends precious hours schmoozing with wealthy businessmen and women, shaking people’s hands and posing for pictures in the fanciest clothes he owns and then some. The selfish part of you wants him to stay. The part that loves him knows it would be better if he went home. “You still can.”

“No,” Jungkook insists, shaking his head. “We have a tradition to uphold, don’t we?”

Even though The Nightmare Before Christmas is seventy-six minutes long, the night ends long before that. You haven’t even reached “This Is Halloween” before you feel a head hit your shoulder, and crane your neck to find Jungkook having fallen fast asleep beside you, half-full cup of Wild Berry Hibiscus next to the laptop in front of you. He’s still wearing his stupid police officer costume, the navy blue uniform tight against his body. His lips are parted ever so softly, eyelashes fluttering as little non-sounds exit his mouth, hints, whispers of snores. 

He hasn’t slept over since the first time. You’re not sure if you want the trend to continue, or if you just want to be a little bit selfish tonight, greedy, taking and taking and taking. He’s so beautiful like this, so innocent and gentle and soft. It would be such a shame if you had to wake him. 

And so, gingerly, you rest your head against his own, breathe in the quiet little sounds that leave his parted lips, memorize the feeling. It’s not the first time Jungkook’s accidentally fallen asleep on you, but there is something about this moment, sitting on your couch a few minutes past midnight, as the rest of the world celebrates around you, that is so intimate. Like here, in your apartment, you and Jungkook have your own little bubble, tucked away in a corner of the universe far from the noise of the rest of the world. And it’s here that you wish you could stay forever, for once never wanting the feeling to end. Wanting time to freeze in its very steps, the clocks stop and the orbit halts, and it is just you and Jungkook, forever. Like characters in a movie, on pause for eternity.

The moment ends when Jungkook shifts beside you before eventually coming to, slowly opening his eyes as he turns to look at you. You smile at him, dazed and tired, as he sits up properly, staring down at your half-opened laptop and the half-full cup of tea next to it. 

“Thought you’d end up sleeping here again tonight,” you joke, even though it isn’t really a joke. Maybe, somewhere deep down inside you, in the crevices between your bones and the dark corner of your heart, you had hoped that he would stay. 

“Oh, did I fall asleep?” Jungkook asks, blinking away the sleep in his eyes. It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. 

“Just for a bit. I didn’t want to wake you, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to head back to your apartment or anything,” you tell him. 

Jungkook nearly jumps up off the couch at that, like he’s got springs in his shoes. Suddenly he’s wide awake, brown eyes blown open as he scrambles to gather his belongings, taking the cup of tea and quickly dumping it out in your sink. 

“Hey, don’t you want that?” You ask. 

“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll come by some other time and have some, it was really good, I just fell asleep while drinking it,” Jungkook sputters, words moving a mile a minute as he tugs on his heavy black officer boots, scuffed at the tips from wear and tear. It’s as if he’s desperate to leave. Like your apartment has somehow offended him. Or worse, you. 

“If you want to stay, Jungkook, you can,” you tell him, standing up to run to the door before he pulls the damn thing off his hinges with how fast he’s moving. “I don’t mind. My bed is big enough for the both of us.”

“No, I should—I should get going. My… plants need watering. Right now. I totally forgot.”

It’s not a completely bullshit excuse. Jungkook has a fair few pothos amongst his other worldly apartment belongings, hanging from his ceiling or potted in old mugs and janky shoes. But it’s still a pretty bullshit excuse. It’s dark. Jungkook waters his plants every Sunday, and it’s Friday. It’s obvious he wants to get the hell out of your apartment for whatever reason. 

All you can do is hope and pray that it isn’t you who’s driving him away. 

“Oh—okay,” you tell him, opening the door as he furiously laces up his other boot. 

“Thanks for doing this. Next Halloween will be more fun, I swear. I won’t fall asleep on you. Or anything.”

“Okay, see you soon, then?” You ask, searching for a clue, a hint, anything that will tell you that it’s not you, that he hasn’t found you out yet. That you can still be friends, be best friends, because even if you want to kiss him, hold his hand, roll around in bed with him, loving him from afar is good enough. 

“Yes, yes, definitely. Dinner? Uh… sometime this week? I’ll text you. I have to go. Plants. See you!”

He dashes down the hallway. 

And you end your Halloween the same way you started it. Alone. 

Jungkook ran out of your apartment the other day like it was infested with cockroaches. Or the Black Plague. Or your microwave had just beeped. It was as if simply being inside it was going to scar him for life. 

Maybe your apartment is cursed. Jungkook does believe in ghosts. That’s another reason as to why he fears the microwave. Tiny ghosts could be living inside the microwave chamber and you’d never know. But Jungkook knows better. He knows that they’re there. 

“He just… ran out?” Chaewon asks, clearly bewildered. The two of you have been working on the first floor of the library all day, obviously doing everything in your power to not actually complete any of your assignments. 

“Yeah, something about his plants.” You sigh. 

Chaewon narrows her eyes, the same way she does when she’s plotting something. “Interesting.”

“What?” You ask, nudging her to see if you can worm a less mysterious response out of her. 

“Nothing,” Chaewon says with a nonchalant shrug. She clearly has something to say. 

“What?” You repeat forcefully. Chaewon doesn’t get to go all cryptic on you just because Jungkook ran out of your apartment like it had set fire. 

“I know I’ve only known you guys for, like, a year and a bit now, but you two have the strangest relationship I’ve ever seen,” Chaewon comments like it’s nobody’s business when it is, in fact, specifically two people’s business. 

You scowl. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” She pauses, thinking. In the silence, she begins to pack up her belongings, shoving her laptop into her bag and gathering up the small pile of candy wrappers slowly amassing in front of her. “I’ve never seen two best friends have a relationship quite like yours.”

“Thanks?”

“What are you doing for dinner? I’m eating with Yoonji, but you’re welcome to join if you want,” Chaewon offers. Even though you have no idea who Yoonji is, Chaewon would never exclude you from eating with them.

“I’m getting Korean food with Jungkook, but thanks for the offer,” you say, only to be greeted with Chaewon rolling her eyes. He said he’d meet us outside?”

Sure enough, when you head out of the glass doors at the front of the library, Jungkook is waiting dutifully on a bench close by, headphones in as he nods his head and taps his feet to the beat of the music, lost in his own world. He doesn’t even realize that you’ve left the library until you’re two feet in front of him, when he recognizes your beat-up white sneakers and looks up at you in glee, eyes crinkled into crescents. 

“Ready to go?” You ask happily. Your stomach has been rumbling ever since Jungkook suggested you go out to eat this morning. 

“Hell yeah I am,” Jungkook says, putting his earbuds away as he stands up. “You coming, Chae?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m eating with a friend.” There’s nudge against your shoulder, and when you turn to face her, she winks. “But you two enjoy yourselves! Don’t have too much fun without me!”

Before you can publicly berate her for being so goddamn obvious, she’s rotating 180 degrees on her heel and speed-walking in the opposite direction, zooming off so you don’t get the chance. 

“I feel like we haven’t seen each other in ages,” you comment mindlessly. Twenty-four hours away from Jungkook feels like a lifetime and a half. Forty-eight is a light year. 

“I’ve been busy,” Jungkook says vaguely, shrugging his shoulders. 

“Doing what, going out to fancy restaurants and galas?” You half-tease. It’s sad but true—Jungkook spends his nights living a life you could only dream of. And all of these rituals you share, from studying in the library until three in the morning to crashing at his place and taking naps on separate couches, get put on the backburner. 

“Hey, it’s hard work pretending to be rich,” Jungkook pouts. “Besides, the craziest thing about going to those things is that rich Korean people don’t serve Korean food at their fancy gatherings. They serve shit like caviar.”

“Is that why you’re so desperate to get Korean?” You ask pointedly. 

“Yes,” Jungkook emphasizes. “Man, I just want some tteokbokki.”

“Then we’ll go and eat all of the tteokbokki you can dream of,” you promise. You round the street corner and on the edge of the main road and an alleyway sits a tiny Korean restaurant the size of a bedroom, no more than six cramped tables inside. It’s run by a family who passes it down through each generation, dependent on the starving college students nearby to keep it alive. 

It’s Jungkook’s favorite place. The owner gives him a discount every time he sees him. 

(It’s impossible not to fall in love with Jungkook. Impossible to not be drawn to his presence, his personality. Like moths to a flame, you can’t help but come closer.)

“Ah, Jungkook!” The old man behind the counter greets as the bell above the entrance rings. “Sit! Sit!” He points to your favorite table, a round one in the far left corner that’s right next to the biggest window. “Usual?”

“Tteokbokki, too, please!” Jungkook shouts. The man gives you both a thumbs up and heads back into the kitchen. 

“It’s been a while since we came here,” Jungkook notices. You both usually eat lunch on campus and Jungkook has been largely unavailable for dinner. 

“Almost sounds like you missed it,” you poke fun. 

“God, I missed it so much,” Jungkook exclaims, tilting his head back in exasperation. “I didn’t realize that it would be so much work to get dressed up in a suit and look hot.”

“Don’t make it sound like such a drag.” You frown. Jungkook needs to put in literally zero effort to look hot. Sitting across from him in this tiny Korean restaurant as he wears nothing but a massive hoodie and black joggers, he looks hot. When he wakes up in your bed in a raggedy t-shirt, he looks hot. When you catch him at three in the morning in the library after eighteen straight hours of studying, he looks hot. 

Jungkook sits there and radiates light. Radiates warmth and joy and beauty. Laughter and hope. He’s the college version of a Disney prince. Perfectly imperfect and completely out of your reach. 

“I wish I could take you with me, you might enjoy it,” Jungkook sighs. “Plus, I have literally never seen you wear something fancier than business casual. Imagine you in a ballgown!”

“In your dreams, Jeon,” you rebuke. “Free catered food sounds nice but having to mingle with the 1% does not.”

“Touché,” Jungkook concedes. “I don’t know how Chaewon does it.”

“She’s a goddess.”

“Indeed.”

Jungkook pours you a cup of water from the pitcher that the old man dropped off, and then pours one for himself. “Chaewon said that I did well, though.”

Not surprising. Jungkook excels at everything he does. 

“Of course you did, you sexy beast,” you chide. 

“She said I’d make a good boyfriend.”

You choke on your water as the man’s son brings out your food, and you desperately attempt to avoid eye contact as you sputter and cough into a napkin, gaze pointed away from both a surprised waiter and a concerned Jungkook, who awkwardly thanks the man and leans over to pat your back. 

“You good?” He asks, brows furrowed. 

Coughing, you say, “I’m okay, I’m okay. It just—it went down the wrong pipe, that’s all.” Jungkook doesn’t buy it, and the little coughs escaping your throat don’t do much to corroborate your claim. “Seriously, Jungkook. I’m okay. It’s just water.”

“You looked like you were on the verge of death,” Jungkook frowns. 

“That’s just my face,” you fire back. “Just keep talking about what you were saying earlier. What was it?”

“Being a good boyfriend,” Jungkook says, and with no water near your lips to distract you this time, your mind bears the full force of his words, weighing down on your shoulders like a calculus textbook. 

It’s not as if you aren’t already aware that Jungkook would be the best boyfriend in the entire world, bar none. Not as if you don’t sit in bed and dream of a parallel universe, a life other than the one you’re living in right now, where Jungkook is lovely and wonderful and yours. He knocks on your door at a random hour in the afternoon with Chinese takeout from the local restaurant. He remembers your homework assignments when you forget them. He sits in bed with you and judges the Instagrams of the guys on the latest Bachelorette season. It’s as if he was already yours.

“Believe me,” you scoff. “The people know how great of a boyfriend you are.” 

“It’s fake, though,” Jungkook reminds you. “It’s only for a night. An evening, really.”

“Better than nothing,” you sigh. “If only I had enough money to rent myself a fake boyfriend for a night.”

“If only your parents were the CEOs of a multibillion dollar cooperation,” Jungkook adds on. 

“Truth,” you say, and you and Jungkook toast to that. Toast to knowing that some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Toast to knowing that some of those people can get for themselves something you can only imagine in your wildest dreams—a night with Jungkook. More than just a night. A night spent dressed up in your fanciest clothes, arms wrapped tightly around each other. A night spent as a couple, rather than you and Jungkook. 

Toast to knowing that even if you’ll never get to have him like that, you get to have him like this, and you’d rather it be like this than nothing at all. 

“You don’t need to rent a fake boyfriend for a night, Y/N,” Jungkook tells you once you’ve downed the water in your glasses (stay hydrated!). “You shouldn’t feel pressured to spend time with people you don’t want to spend time with.”

You don’t understand, you sigh. I’d give anything to spend time with you. 

Jungkook pays. He says that he’s made more money accompanying wealthy socialites—even ones that don’t go to your school, because word gets around—than he would in a month’s worth of shifts at the call center. He says he’s never looking back. He’s probably not going to give up the gig for a while, either. 

“Just because you have cash now doesn’t mean you get a free pass to pay for everything we do together,” you warn. You’ve always split the price of meals, split the price birthday cakes for your friends. In the beginning of freshman year, Jungkook ate a quarter of a bag of goldfish you had and paid you fifty-three cents to account for his consumption, which you immediately sent back to him. You still fight over it, finding surreptitious ways to incorporate it into the Venmo payments you make to each other. 

“I’m rich, I can do whatever I want with my money,” Jungkook proclaims. “And if that means treating my best friend to a meal, then that means I’m gonna treat her to a meal.”

“That’s very rude of you,” you tell him pointedly. “Zero out of ten, worst best friend in the entire world. Will not accept my Venmo payments.”

Walking down the sidewalk, side by side, Jungkook wraps an arm around you and pulls you in for a side hug as you come to a stop at a traffic light. “You always do so much for me and Chaewon. You deserve to be treated once in a while, Y/N.”

“Why, ‘cause I go out to CVS at ten at night to get you Nyquil after you catch the common cold from some sweaty guy at the gym?” 

“That,” Jungkook nods, conceding, “and also because you’re one of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. The people who know you are lucky to get to say your name.”

If only Jungkook knew that he was the exact same. It’s an honor to know him. It’s a blessing to love him. 

“What fancy clothes do you own?” Chaewon’s lying on your bed, scrolling mindlessly on her phone. 

“I don’t know,” you respond, brows furrowing. You get up from your desk chair to start fishing through your closet,  “I have, like, some business casual stuff.”

“How about a dress?”

You whip around suspiciously, eyeing Chaewon as she lounges around in your room and acts like she isn’t plotting something nefarious. “Don’t you think you could tell me what you’re trying to convince me to do before you ask me if I have the appropriate clothing?” 

Even lying on her back, Chaewon still manages to roll her eyes, sitting up to meet your gaze. “There’s a gala tonight to celebrate some big business deal being closed and I want you to come with me,” she says like it’s a chore, exasperated. 

“Me?” You frown. “Why not Jungkook?”

“He said he had some thing to do for some other girl,” Chaewon says. The topic clearly is not at the forefront of her mind. It’s a little too obvious that it’s at the forefront of yours. “Besides, I was given no date restrictions and you deserve to have a little fun tonight. It’s a Friday!”

“I just want to stay in bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you tell her. 

“You’re already out of bed,” Chaewon points out unhelpfully. 

“Well, then I want to get into bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you rephrase. 

Chaewon pouts. “Noooo, please? It’ll be fun, I swear,” Chaewon pleads.  “It’s a huge party and hundreds of people are going to be there. Everybody gets to bring a plus one. You won’t be the only person who doesn’t know anything about business and has to cling onto their date in order to survive.”

“Gee, thanks. That makes me want to go so much,” you deadpan. 

“Seriously, Y/N. When was the last time you went out on a Friday?”

A while ago. You and Jungkook started having Mario Kart nights on Friday in the middle of your freshman year after you both came to the conclusion that every frat party smells, sounds, and tastes like the same fifty shades of college regret. You haven’t gone out since. 

“Not that long ago,” you lie. It’s been months.

“Yeah, right,” Chaewon scoffs. “Don’t think I don’t see your Bitmoji on the SnapMap sitting in your damn apartment on a Friday at 11PM,” she scolds.

“I’m gonna turn off my location,” you declare. You’ve had enough of Snapchat exposing you and your location. People can live in mystery about your whereabouts from now on. They don’t need to know. Chaewon certainly does not. 

“No excuses, you’re coming with me to the gala! You must have something to wear in that closet of yours, don’t you?” She slides off of your bed with a thud and joins you as you stand in front of your clothes. None of them scream fancy. None of them even whisper it. You stand back as she shuffles through your clothes, hangers squeaking as she shoves them along the rail. Chaewon tears through your clothing faster than you skim through your economics readings. “Aha! What do we have here?”

She whips out a dress from the very back of your closet, right behind the blazer you never wear because you’d rather be caught dead than in business attire. It’s old—you don’t think you’ve worn it since the beginning of your freshman year when you thought you actually had to dress up for parties. Needless to say, you dry-cleaned it the following Monday and never wore it again. You don’t even recall bringing it to college this year. 

“This is perfect!” Chaewon cries. “Really says ‘I can fucking dress myself’, don’t you think?”

“Are you implying that I can’t dress myself?” 

“You should definitely wear this,” Chaewon decides, dodging the question. “Gucci and Louis Vuitton are overrated, anyway.”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I.” Chaewon thrusts the dress towards you.

Chaewon shakes her head. “Of course you don’t.” 

Three hours later finds you one makeup and hair session later, standing in the lobby of a magnificent skyscraper wearing a dress that maybe could have done without the cup of frozen yogurt that you ate before you arrived. Now you remember why you haven’t really worn it since the beginning of last year. Has it shrunk?

“I feel like a loser, Chaewon,” you hiss as she bats her eyelashes and gets directed to the private elevator that will lead you both to the top floor. “A money-less, jobless loser.”

“At least you’re honest, Y/N,” Chaewon whispers back as you step into the elevator. Despite being nearly an hour and a half late (“Fashionably so!” Chaewon exclaims.) you are crowded into the back corner, several other couples stepping inside to join you, all of them wearing clothes that cost more than your tuition for all four years of college, combined. “That’s better than most of the people here.”

Nothing separates the rich from the poor like morality. 

When the elevator doors open, you and Chaewon are the last group to step out, milling about in the corner until the path is free. And when you turn your gaze away from her, you realize just why Jungkook’s so keen on going to events like these, why he never turns down an offer when it lights up his phone screen. 

In movies, rich people flaunt their wealth so extravagantly that it almost looks fake. From gigantic ice sculptures to ten-feet-tall chocolate fountains, entire orchestras and dresses worth thousands of dollars, it makes you wonder if rich people really do see those items as necessities when throwing a party. They rent out entire European castles and the press publicizes every one of their actions. To you, it looks contrived, unrealistic. Even if rich people have enough money to sustain the bottom 99% for hundreds of years, how could they spend their money on nonsense like this?

As it turns out, the ice sculptures and chocolate fountains are only half of the story.

At this gala, the hosts have spared no expense. The entire penthouse is made purely of glass, from the ceiling, to the floor, to the walls in between, giving you an absolutely breathtaking view of the city lights dozens of feet below you, of the stars millions of light years away. It’s as if you’re standing in a bubble, frozen in time, the world sparkling and twinkling and shimmering around you. You didn’t even know a place like this existed on Earth. The price to book it must be astronomical. The view, even more so. 

“Holy fuck,” you murmur, mouth dropping open at the sight. It’s a movie come to life. It’s a picture straight out of a fairytale. 

“Pretty sweet, right?” Chaewon says, clearly proud of herself for convincing you to join her. “The Parks and the Ohs really felt like celebrating.”

“No shit,” you say, dumbfounded. Chaewon wraps her arm around yours and leads you out of the elevator, her poise and grace akin to that of a princess. She’s been to this place before. She could do this in her sleep. 

“Pictures first, then we eat, and then we mingle,” Chaewon instructs, and you nod diligently. She’s the only way you’re going to make it out of this night unscathed. Without her, you don’t know what you’d do. 

On the average day of an average life of an average person, pictures means getting a stranger to take a single pic on your shitty iPhone at your worst angle, which you will begrudgingly post to your Instagram later after extensive editing. 

But this is not your average day, and these are not average lives of not average people. Pictures means professional photographers with entire setups, standing with their cameras held up to their eyes, poised and ready for the next shot. It means couples, one by one, stepping in front of a gorgeous backdrop and posing, over and over, as five photographers at once cram to get their best angle, the cleanest photo. 

You don’t know how to pose for photos. You barely remember what the proper formatting is for your essays, depending on the citation structure. And yet, Chaewon is ushering you over in front of the photographers, immediately striking one of her classic, perfect poses as you flail about, trying to figure out what to do with your hands. 

“Just relax,” Chaewon advises. Even standing beside you, she can see you panicking in her periphery. “And smile. You’re beautiful, so show them that.”

Eventually, as the photographers switch positions to get different angles, you stop worrying about your hands, stop worrying about your bag, your feet, your head tilt, and just grin. You may not have millions of dollars to your name, but it’s a Friday night and you’re living the life of a billionaire with no responsibilities. You deserve to live a little. 

When the next group comes up, Chaewon nudges you out of the way and whispers to one of the photographers, who nods dutifully in response. Wrapping her arm around yours once more, she guides you to the massive catering setup, tables and tables lined with delicacies from every country you could imagine. And of course, a gargantuan chocolate fountain in the middle of it all. 

Your stomach rumbles. Clearly, the frozen yogurt was not enough to hold you off. Or maybe it’s just because you’ve been eating college dining hall food for weeks now, and are probably going to throw up if you have to have dry beef one more time. 

“If you want to, you should try the caviar. It’s delicious. Avoid the eggplant, it tastes like foot, but the brussel sprouts are delicious. Kimchi’s good, too. Classic,” Chaewon instructs as you walk around the tables, placing servings the size of quarters onto your plate just so you can have a taste of everything. Chaewon sticks to some ribs, pan-seared salmon, and a vegetable so expensive you’ve never even heard of it before. 

“Im Chaewon, is that you?”

“Mrs. Kim!”

A strange older woman comes up to the two of you as you’re dishing up, and Chaewon’s face immediately lights up. The woman goes in for a hug, a barely-touching pat of the shoulders and hands. Over her shoulder, you watch as Chaewon rolls her eyes and pulls a face. 

“How are you, dear? You look so grown up,” Mrs. Kim says. You watch as the light slowly fades from Chaewon’s eyes with each second that passes. 

“I’m very well, Mrs. Kim. Did you get your hair done? It makes you look so youthful.” Chaewon’s a master. She glares at you when Mrs. Kim isn’t looking, raising her eyebrows as if to say learn, young padawan. This is how it’s done. They go on for a couple minutes, showering fake compliments on each other as you slowly begin to eat. You scrunch your nose up. Chaewon’s right. The eggplant does taste like foot. 

“And who is this?” Mrs. Kim asks, turning her focus onto you. You look up like a deer in headlights, a brussel sprout puffing your cheek. You were not meant to mingle and eat at the same time. 

“This is one of my closest friends, Y/N,” Chaewon introduces for you. You nod your hello, chewing the brussel sprout in the most nondescript manner possible in an effort to save whatever is left of your dignity. “She’s pre-law.”

You are not pre-law.

“Oh, how wonderful! You must have a lot you want to accomplish in life,” Mrs. Kim says. God, you couldn’t care less about how Mrs. Kim feels about you.

“Yes, definitely,” you say awkwardly. 

“We really must be going, Mrs. Kim. My parents will want me to make sure I do my rounds,” Chaewon says, a hand on your arm as she makes to get you both the fuck out of there. 

“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Kim concedes, sending you and Chaewon one final goodbye before moving on to find her next victim. 

When she leaves, Chaewon seems to let out the biggest exhale of her life. “Holy fucking shit, I thought she’d never leave,” she exclaims, grabbing a flute of champagne and downing it in a single go. “She’s an associate of my father’s, so she’s always trying to kiss my damn ass. Like, sorry that you need to brown-nose your boss and his daughter just so you bribe your idiot son’s way into college.”

“You like mingling, I take?” You joke. 

“Just murder me.”

“Have any tips?”

“Flex as hard as possible without actually flexing. Try to speak to people your age because they are usually more bearable than people older than you. The best conversationalists are anybody under the age of ten,” Chaewon tells you. She picks up another glass of Prosecco. “Want some champagne?” 

“You have it,” you tell her. “I think you need it more than I do.”

Chaewon shrugs. Not as if they’re running out any time soon. She gulps it down and places it on the tray of one of the caterers as they whiz by her. 

The rest of the night passes by in the same way the beginning of it did. Chaewon drags you around the penthouse, talking with her father’s business partners and associates and their sons and daughters and husbands and wives for no more than two minutes each before moving on. She’s got her technique down pat. Greet, compliment, shade, flex, compliment, say goodbye. It’s foolproof, because you immediately notice that everyone else in the room has adopted the same approach. 

Business gatherings like these are just one big game of who can be the most-liked and the least-liked at the same time. And the answer: everybody, all at once. 

Halfway through the evening, Chaewon collapses against the back wall, totally unafraid of the possibility of the glass giving out behind her. She doesn’t care. If it breaks, it breaks. 

“Tired?”

“I just need a break,” Chaewon declares. “Because everyone in here is so fucking fake, and you’re the only one I can talk to without wanting to rip out my eardrums.”

“I’m honored,” you say sarcastically. 

“When I say you’re the only honest one here, I mean it,” Chaewon says. You lean back against the wall next to her, looking out into a sea of people in fancy clothes with fancy food and fancy friends. “Look at all these people, Y/N. All these fucking people, and you’re the only one who’s true.”

And then, you spot him. 

He’s far away, standing in a group of people you don’t recognize, a hand on the small of another girl’s back. He’s wearing a navy blue suit, tight-fitting and tailored, a silver watch sparkling on his wrist as he adjusts his sleeves. One of the other young men in the group says something funny, and he tilts his head back to laugh, chuckling as the girl beside him curls into his arms. 

You suppose it would have been ignorant of you to assume Jungkook was elsewhere on a night like this, at a gathering where everybody who knows anybody is here. 

Jungkook must not know you’re here. He mustn't, otherwise he would have come over to find you. You must have entered at different times, spent the night wandering around different parts of the penthouse. Clinging onto Chaewon’s arms, you must have avoided his gaze, and he, yours. 

Chaewon hasn’t spotted him either. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better, if you’re the only one stuck with the knowledge that he’s here tonight. Chaewon would pity you. Other people would ask you how you knew such a worldly, experienced man like him. And you would spend the night wallowing in sadness, wondering why it’s never you that gets to spend the night next to him. 

From this distance, you can see Jungkook perfectly. The light from the moon shines down on him like a goddamn spotlight, catching the sparkling on his wrist, leaving a silver gleam in his slicked back hair. You watch as he laughs, smiles, talks, grins and beams and socializes. Of course he’s here. Of course. He’s so good at this, so good at being real and genuine and happy. 

Chaewon says the only person in the room who is true is you, but how can that be? How can that be when Jungkook, the most honest, wonderful, real person you know, is standing in front of you? You aren’t honest. You aren’t true and real and whole. You stand on the sidelines, a wallflower in a room of daisies and roses, and pine from afar. Watch as he pretends to date a girl that’s not you, wraps his arm around her waist and kisses her cheek, and you act like everything is alright. 

It sucks, being trapped like this for fear of him seeing you. You know that would be worse—if he saw you standing alone and decided to take matters into his own hands. Seeing him up close in a penthouse like this, a movie set, shimmering and sparkling, it would be worse. Jungkook pulls the girl beside him in close to his side, smiling as he listens to someone else speak. She’s the perfect height in those heels, just tall enough to rest her head in the crook between his neck and his shoulder. You imagine them walking into the room together, hand in hand. Imagine them posing for the pictures like a real couple, a pair of celebrities. 

You suppose you have no reason to be jealous of her, of him, of what they have. Jealousy is when resenting someone for having something that you once had. You never had a life like that with Jungkook. You’ll never have a life like that with him. Never get dressed up to go out, never get to be his date to an event. Never get pictures taken of you as a couple, never feed each other candies and strawberries dipped in chocolate. You can’t be jealous of her. You were never in the running to begin with. 

“Ready to get back out there?” Chaewon asks, placing a firm hand on your shoulder. 

A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes, offering it to the both of you. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Chaewon tells you as she takes a glass for herself. 

You sigh, casting another glance over at Jungkook. He and his date are moving around now, joining another social circle on the opposite side of the penthouse. He looks so at ease, so comfortable. He belongs there, in the middle of it all, talking and laughing and grinning. And you? You belong back at home, underneath your duvet covers playing a game of Mario Kart. Not here. 

You shake your head. You could use a drink or two in this state. “I’d love one, actually. Thank you.”

That night, you stay at Chaewon’s place. 

“You’ve been acting weird.”

“Hello to you, as well,” you say with a scowl as Chaewon sits down across from you at the local ramen place. 

“Listen,” Chaewon begins, “I’ve been thinking. You need to confess to Jungkook.”

You nearly spit out the complimentary water you were served. “Excuse me?”

“You need to. You’ve been acting weird and that’s the only thing that’s going to fix it,” Chaewon declares. 

“What do you mean I’ve been ‘acting weird’? Care to explain?” You ask, offended. You haven’t been acting weird. Well, that weird. Maybe a little weird.

“Jungkook told me you haven’t seen each other for the last eight days,” Chaewon points out. Eight days? It’s more like seven and a half. Not that you’ve been counting, or anything. 

“So? We’re busy people,” you defend. It’s a good enough excuse. You’re sophomores in college. You have classes. Clubs. You have to meal prep. 

“So? You guys are best friends. You make time to see each other at three in the fucking morning if you haven’t seen each other yet that day. And you haven’t seen each other for eight whole days? What’s wrong with you?” Chaewon demands. 

“Nothing! What the heck, I invite you out to a best friend ramen date and you just blaspheme all over me like this?” You accuse. This is not how you imagined today to be going. This isn’t how you imagined this week to be going. “Besides, it’s only been seven and a half days. He’s over-exaggerating.”

“Seven and a—holy fuck, you are literally the worst. Can you just stop resisting? If you tell him, everything will be fine and go back to the way things were,” Chaewon says, blinking, flabbergasted. 

“No, they will not,” you hiss. “Everything will change if I tell him. We’re best friends, Chae. Imagine if I told you that I loved you. What would you do?”

“I’d love you back, that’s what!” Chaewon tells you. “You deserve to be loved back, Y/N. Nothing would change between us. I already love you. You’re one of my most favorite people ever. I would never regret something if it was with you.”

“It’s different with him, though,” you try to explain. You don’t know why—you just know that it is. The way you’re friends with Chaewon and the way you’re friends with Jungkook are entirely separate. You love Chaewon. You’re not in love with Chaewon. 

“Is it? How?” Chaewon says. 

“I don’t know, I just—it’s different with him.” There’s no way to describe it. Jungkook appeared in your life and it was as if everything just clicked into place. There isn’t a single thing in your life that makes more sense to you than Jungkook. “It’s always been different with him. With you, I—I knew that we would become really close friends once we started talking a lot more in the beginning of freshman year. But with him—I don’t know. From the moment I met him, I knew that I would fall in love with him. When he said hello to me, I was fucked. There’s never been any hope for me, Chae. I just have to live like this forever.”

Chaewon rolls her eyes. “No, you don’t. You don’t even see what the fuck is right in front of you.”

“You?”

“God, I’m friends with idiots. Literal idiots. How you guys have made it through nearly a year and a half of college is beyond me,” Chaewon says to nobody in particular. “Seriously, tell me, Y/N. What do you think will happen if you tell him? Just out of curiosity.”

“I don’t know—” you pause. A lot of things. He tells you he just wants to stay friends. He rejects you because he’s not interested that way and you can’t really be friends anymore because it’s weird now. He’s already interested in somebody else. He’s already dating somebody else and you never even knew. He’s not looking for a relationship right now. Things get awkward because you confessed to your best friend that you’re in love with him and he doesn’t feel the same. You end up never speaking to each other. You never see each other. You go through the rest of university seeing each other on the Green by chance and not knowing what to do. You graduate and move on with your lives. And suddenly, he’s just a past friend you used to have. No longer a part of your life. No longer given the chance to. “He rejects me. We never speak again and have to avoid each other at all costs. He lets me down easy and I feel like a total loser for having confessed in the first place. There’s a lot.”

“Jesus, Y/N. Aren’t you forgetting a possibility?” Chaewon says, eyebrows raised high. 

“I’m omitting a lot of them,” you tell her. Including the one where, in the next three years, you end up in a hellish dystopian wasteland and you have to band together to survive but it’s awkward and terrible because you love him still and he doesn’t feel the same, never has and never will, and now you have to fight off zombies and a corrupt autocratic government all while dealing with your own goddamn feelings. That may be the most unbearable one of them all. 

“How about the one where he actually feels the same?”

“Too unrealistic,” you tell Chaewon. It’s the truth. Why else would Jungkook be traipsing around with beautiful, rich, worldly girls on his nights off? He does it for the money, sure, but he likes it. He loves the experience, loves living that sort of life. You’d never be able to provide that for him. “You know that’s never going to happen, Chae. We’re just friends.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, he thinks that we’re just friends. And I’m not gonna fuck everything up by telling him that I’ve been madly in love with him for the past year and a half.” You can think of nothing worse. 

“Have you ever considered the fact that maybe he thinks that the two of you are just friends because you refuse to actually show him how you feel?” Chaewon asks pointedly, eyebrows raised in disapproval. She looks about ready to walk out of the restaurant. “You never do things to give him a reason to think otherwise.”

“Why would I?” 

When your ramen arrives, Chaewon takes a deep breath, downs the rest of her glass of water, and moves on. It’s clear that if she thinks about this any more, her head will explode. 

Nothing’s ever going to change between you and Jungkook. You knew, when you first met him, that it was always going to hurt like this. That loving him was something you had to sacrifice to stay close to him. He lights up every fucking room he walks into, and it’s all you can do not to sit there and bask in his warmth. You would rather catch a single one of his rays than be in the darkness. And if being friends with him means that friends is all you’ll ever be, then so be it. You’re lucky to have him like this. Why take the plunge? 

“Just—” Chaewon says as you begin to pull apart the noodles in your own bowl. “I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now. And you deserve to be happy, Y/N. You deprive yourself of all of these wonderful things, and I just want you to know that you deserve every single one of them. But telling him? That’s something that even I know would make you the happiest. You shouldn’t live like this, Y/N. You have no idea what you’re missing out on if you do.”

The streak of not seeing Jungkook ends the next day, when you come back from an evening grocery store run to find him standing outside your door, hand about to knock on the wood. He’s all dressed up again, button-down and slacks, hair styled and parted, and you watch as he takes a deep breath, almost as if he’s waiting for the best time to knock. 

“Jungkook?”

He practically jumps out of his skin at the sound of your voice, nearly tripping over his own feet as he lays his eyes on you. 

“Oh, Y/N!” He exclaims. “I was just about to see if you were home.”

“You could have just texted, you know,” you say jokingly, joining him at the front door as you fumble for your keys. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” Jungkook admits sheepishly. 

“Well, make it up to me by helping me unpack these,” you demand, kicking the door open as you reach down to grab your reusable canvas bags filled with groceries. Immediately, Jungkook is leaning down to grab all of them for you, hauling them inside like they weigh nothing. You stare as he heads over to your kitchen without breaking a sweat, biceps clenching as he lifts the groceries up onto the counter. 

“What’d you get?” Jungkook asks, slowly beginning to take out the groceries. He’s in your apartment so often that he’s memorized where all of your food goes, from the correct shelf in the fridge for produce to the proper cabinet for cereal. 

“Just like… groceries. I saw a box of peppermint chocolate bars that I thought you might like, they’re in there somewhere,” you say mindlessly, pointing to a random canvas bag. Immediately, Jungkook abandons his putting-away-groceries duty to fish through each of the bags, hunting for the box of goodies. “And I got some cheap Trader Joe’s wine. You know. Just for emergencies.”

“Trader Joe’s wine and peppermint chocolate bars,” Jungkook comments, nodding in approval. He finally finds the box and tears it open sideways. “Sounds like a perfect dessert if I’ve ever heard one.”

“What, did you eat already?” You ask, busting out the wine and a couple of mugs, because you don’t own any wine glasses. Nothing says cultured like drinking seven-dollar wine out of mugs with kitschy sayings like “don’t talk to me until this is empty” or “coffee is my first love” written on them. 

Jungkook shrugs. He grabs the box and heads over to your couch, already kicking back and relaxing. “Yeah, I went to some restaurant for another double date,” Jungkook says. “It was one of those places where everything is so expensive but the portions are the size of my fist. Of your fist.”

“You sound hungry,” you note, filling up the mugs and joining him. “And mad.”

“I’m getting reimbursed for the money I spent tonight, so I suppose I could be angrier. But I’m starving. Let’s finish this entire box of chocolates and do nothing else.”

“Your words, not mine,” you say, although his proposal sounds more than appealing to you. 

You turn the television on for some background noise, switching to a channel showing old reruns of unsolved serial killer cases, because nothing sets the mood better than the words “then, slowly, he took the knife with which he killed her and began to slice away at her body”. Jungkook doesn’t seem to pay the television any attention, though, instead focused entirely on the chocolate in front of him, calling his name. 

He takes an enormous bite out of one before moaning far too sexually for your liking, tossing his head back in bliss. “Oh my God.”

“Good?”

Jungkook moans again in response.

“Please don’t orgasm on this couch. Who knows what other bodily fluids were on here before we bought it,” you ask calmly. 

“I’d say that’s nasty, but you guys did cover this with one of those couch covers, so it’s not like my body is coming into contact with other people’s body stains,” Jungkook reasons. The couch cover is the single best purchase you’ve made this entire year. Possibly your entire life. “But they’re delicious. You made a good purchase.”

“I thought you would like them,” you say. “You’re the only person I know who actually likes the combination of mint and chocolate.”

“People who say that it tastes like toothpaste are brushing their teeth with the wrong kind of toothpaste,” he tells you pointedly. “I don’t understand. This is God’s combination. It’s perfect.”

“As long as you love it, that’s all that matters,” you tell him with a pat on his back, breaking off a square of the chocolate bar for yourself. It is pretty good, even if mint chocolate ice cream does sometimes taste like toothpaste. But you’d never tell Jungkook that, of course. 

Jungkook takes a swig of the wine, picking up the mug and gulping down about half of it, the wine bitter on his tongue. “Goes great with this wine, too,” he jokes. You take a sip yourself. It’s… not very good. Actually, rather sticky. No wonder it was only seven dollars. 

“You don’t have to lie to me, I know it tastes like ass,” you tell him honestly. To be fair, you and Jungkook have both had worse. Compared to the shit served at frat parties, this may as well be beautifully-aged Malbec. 

“It only tastes a little bit like ass,” Jungkook compromises. “But it doesn’t not taste like ass.”

“Let’s finish it now so we don’t have to have any more of it later,” you decide. “You’ve probably had some of the best alcohol in your life this semester.”

Jungkook thinks back, tilting his head to the side as he begins to recall all of the instances in the past few months when he’s had anything to drink. “Soju’s still my favorite. But yeah, I’d say I’ve had wine that probably costs more than my textbooks for this semester if I hadn’t pirated them all.”

“The beauty of being a CS student,” you muse. 

“You know it,” he says, holding his half-empty mug out as a toast to himself. “But seriously, even if this Trader Joe’s wine literally tasted like garbage, it would still be better than all of that other shit.”

You turn to him, skeptical. Even the single night you spent with Chaewon, in a penthouse amongst the stars, drinking champagne and eating strawberries dipped in chocolate, was more than you could ever dream of. You woke up the next day on an air mattress in her bedroom and wanted nothing more than to go back to basking in the luxury, desperate for another taste. It was addicting. How could Jungkook ever prefer what he has right now to what he had last night? 

“Really? Don’t say that just to make me feel better,” you tell him. You can take it. Jungkook has every reason to prefer the fancy meals, the penthouses, the suits and ties to your janky little apartment and old clothes from high school. The two aren’t at all on the same level. They’re not even in the same goddamn game. If you could drop everything to have what Chaewon has, what the other girls and boys who pay for Jungkook’s company have, you would. 

“I’m not,” Jungkook tells you seriously. “I mean it. I would rather sit in your room, hunched over your tiny Switch because you lost the HDMI cord to plug it into the television, playing Mario Kart than out there, pretending to be someone I’m not.”

“But it was fun in the beginning, wasn’t it? Getting to be rich without the moral ambiguity that comes along with being part of the upper class?” You ask. It must have been. Jungkook looked so happy when he first started doing these gigs, coming back to your apartment in a state of bliss, a little tipsy from the expensive champagne and steak. He’d knock on your door and tell you all about the night, from how older businessmen handed him their cards and offered him jobs, to the hundreds of ice cream flavors you could only ever dream of eating. Everything seemed so wonderful to him.

Jungkook shrugs, pouring himself more wine. “Yeah, I guess, but it gets so old after a while. Like, no wonder Chaewon was so desperate for me to go with her that first time. It sucks the damn life out of you. You walk around and mingle and pretend that you’re the greatest person on Earth, talking about yourself and kissing up to the other people for an entire night. Honestly, sometimes it’s worse than my CS homework. And I hate that shit.”

“Chaewon mentioned that the eggplant usually tastes like foot,” you add. Jungkook nods in agreement. 

“Yeah, it does. She warned me about it the first night and I, like a fool, tried it because I usually like eggplant. And it still tasted like foot. Never again,” Jungkook says, shivering at the mere thought of it. It’s funny, actually, because you did the exact same thing. “But the food is like, the one thing I pretty much don’t have the right to complain about. It’s delicious and usually free.”

“But I hope that you’re having fun,” you tell him honestly, because you do. When you’re sitting in your room, eating two different pints of Ben & Jerry’s, you hope that Jungkook, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, is enjoying himself more than you are. Because he deserves it. You never want there to be a time when he’s sad, when he’s unhappy or bored. Jungkook deserves to live the happiest version of life he possibly can. “I want you to enjoy yourself.”

“I do,” Jungkook says. There’s a second half to that sentence. “I do—it’s just that… It's so fake, you know? I feel like such a goddamn actor when I’m there. I get to live this extravagant lifestyle for a few hours but in return I don’t even know who I’m looking at when I look in the mirror.”

Oh?

“Like, I pretend to be this business student, when I’m not. I pretend to have millions of dollars to my name, when I don’t. I hold hands and pose for pictures with people Chaewon is vaguely familiar with and nothing, literally nothing, feels real. I don’t know.” Jungkook takes another swig from the mug. “Even the relationships I have when I’m there are fake.”

“Do you hate it that much, then?” You ask him. If it’s so awful and terrible, then why does he keep doing it? Keep dressing up and going out, holding hands with and wrapping his arm around them?

“No,” Jungkook says, sighing as he leans back into the couch. “I don’t hate it. I just—I wish I had something real afterwards to come back home to.”

Real? Like what? Like you? You aren’t real. You sit next to your best friend and pretend that everything is fine. That nothing hurts. You’ve had the biggest crush on him ever since you laid eyes on him, and you’re doing everything in your power to make sure that he’s the only one that doesn’t know. 

“That’s why I’m always coming back to your apartment afterwards,” Jungkook says. He chuckles, but it isn’t his usual laugh. It sounds forced, contrived and fake. Jaded. He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it almost immediately. Then, he breathes, long and slow. Thinks. The silence is almost unbearable. Waiting to hear what he has to say, even more so. “You’re the most genuine person I know. What we share—it’s real.”

Tonight is the least lonely you’ve felt in a long time. 

Even though Jungkook has something tonight, you aren’t aching to be by his side, desperate to spend more time with him. He told you that he was really looking forward to this one, that it wasn’t going to be some stuffy gala or blind double date. He said something about going to karaoke with the girl and her friends, singing Britney Spears songs and taking shots of soju for hours on end, screaming his voice hoarse. And even if you aren’t there with him, you’re happy because you know that he’s happy, that he’s genuinely enjoying himself. 

So, you aren’t that lonely. 

Content with the state of your life as it is, you take the night off, ready to prepare yourself for a weekend that will almost certainly consist entirely of just work. Chaewon’s voice echoes in your mind (“I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now,” she had told you), but it’s different now. Because you are happy. You are happy, because Jungkook’s happy. The two of you see each other just as frequently as you used to. He texts you about his terrible CS homework and the Shiba Inu he just saw being walked across campus. It’s all gone back to the way it used to be. That’s what you had wanted. 

You were prepared for this. You knew that it would eventually boil down to this, down to whether or not you could take Jungkook not knowing how you feel any longer. But right now, you don’t care. Jungkook not knowing has always been a part of your friendship. The love you hold for him, in the spaces between your bones and deep in the cracks of your heart, that has always been there. You see it, hear it, feel it, whenever you’re with him. Even when you’re not with him, it will remind you, appear in the silence, the emptiness. It will always make itself known, because it’s become a part of you. From the moment you met him, it had settled into your heart.

Staring out of the window by your living room, overlooking the ugliest parking garage on campus, you sigh. You can’t see the stars from here, not even in the dead of night, but that’s alright. There is something so peaceful about the navy blue sky. About how mysterious and unknown it is. It calms you. You put on a movie that you’ve genuinely been wanting to watch for a while, sit down in your bed, amongst your duvet and sheets, pillows and plushies, and enjoy yourself, for once. It’s a good night. 

And then, much like most aspects of your terribly convoluted, over-complicated and confusing life, it all comes crashing down. 

There’s a faint thud from outside, a soft little non-noise that you assume is coming from the street. Not wanting to interrupt your movie—she’s just about to confess, holy shit—you ignore it. It’ll go away eventually. 

Then another thud. You pause, leaning towards your window to see if you can figure out the source. Silence. You’re just about to press play, when you hear it again. And again. It gets louder and louder, making up in volume what it lacks in rhythm and order, until you realize it’s someone knocking on your door. And not just knocking casually. It’s as if someone is shoving their whole body into it, shoulders and chest and feet hitting the wood as they bang on it. 

“Y/N?”

Oh, God.

Pushing off your duvet, you tug on your slippers and wipe away the crust around your eyes as you rush towards the door. You know who’s on the other side. You’re not sure if answering it is the better or worse option. 

You’ve always had an uncanny ability to pick the latter. 

When you open the door, Jungkook, in a fancy sweater pulled over a white button down and black jeans that could almost pass for dressy slacks, is standing on the other side. 

Correction: he’s sort of standing on the other side. He nearly topples over when you pull open the door, having clearly been leaning on it, and you barely have time to reach your arms out to catch him. 

“Oh! Y/N!” Jungkook exclaims, as if he’s surprised to see you inside your own apartment. “I was hoping to see you.”

“I figured,” you tell him, laughing. You guide him inside, and even in his state he remembers to tug off his clean white sneakers, kicking them towards the shoe rack. “It’s so late, Jungkook, you should go home.” 

“No,” Jungkook whines. “I wanted to see you. I missed you.”

“We saw each other this morning, Jungkook. And this afternoon, right before you went out,” you remind him. The words go in one ear and out the other, and he pulls you in close to him, wrapping his arms around you as he presses his body against yours in a sweaty hug. His grip is tight around you as he rests his head on your shoulder, breathing you in as if you’d been gone for years. Slowly, after a few seconds, you pull away from him, a hand on his shoulder to get him to look at you through his too-long bangs, hanging over his eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong? I’m right here, don’t worry. I never left.”

“I had a lot to drink tonight,” Jungkook tells you, blinking rapidly. “Like, a lot. They just kept ordering soju and I just kept drinking it. It was really good. Have you had strawberry soju? It’s delicious.”

“I might have had it once or twice,” you fib, not able to recall having it one way or another. “Come on, sit down,” you point him towards the couch, but he refuses, clinging onto you even as you make your way towards the kitchen. “Jungkook, please, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“But I missed you,” Jungkook repeats. “I missed you a lot. I thought about you the entire time I was there.”

You can’t say you didn’t do the same. 

“Next time we’ll do something together then, hey? Something really fun, like going to an arcade or bowling,” you promise him with a pat on his shoulder. “But you need to drink some water, JK. Can you please sit down?”

“No, I want to be with you,” Jungkook says like it’s nothing. Like the feeling of him wrapped around you like this, holding onto you and telling you that he misses you, that he thinks about you, doesn’t mean anything. You don’t think your heart has beaten since you opened the door to see him standing on the other side. 

(You don’t think it’s beaten since you met him. Since he came up to you on the pavement, asking you for directions. Since you told him your name, and he told you his.)

“Ah, fine, just be careful, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” you concede, because it’s so easy to let him have his way, so easy to say yes to him. You manage to grab an empty water bottle and fill it up with what’s left in your Brita, too lazy to refill it after it’s left bone dry. Slowly, you make your way to your bedroom, out of view of the central living space, where your roommates could burst through the door at any moment and see you taking care of your drunk best friend on the sofa. 

Slowly, you settle on your bed, sitting off of the edge of it as you cajole him into drinking some water, whispering soft nothings to make sure he finishes the whole thing. 

“Does your head hurt or anything?” You ask him, already looking around for the stash of Advil you usually keep on your nightstand.

“No, no, I’m fine, Y/N, seriously,” he promises, even if you can see the glazed-over look in his eyes, the way his sweaty bangs stick to his forehead. “You’re too nice, you know? Always treating me when I show up at your place. Even when you don’t invite me.”

“You know I never mind seeing you,” you tell him. “You can come over whenever you want. I’m always here.”

“No, you’re not,” Jungkook says with a pout, and it makes you furrow your brows. When have you not been? Jungkook’s been going out to events ever since the beginning of the semester, and without fail, you’ve always been waiting for him at home, knowing he’ll turn up one way or another. Except, there was— “That one time a couple of weeks ago, I went to this crazy big gala with Eunha, there were so many people there, and I came back home afterwards and knocked on your door, and your roommates said they hadn’t seen you all day. Where were you that day?”

He had come? You didn’t know if he would. 

(Or maybe, you did. You knew he would show up at your door once he got back from that night, and selfishly, not wanting to see him after the fact, the leftover version of him, the part he leaves behind when he goes out. You knew he would be there and you couldn’t bear the thought of being the second girl he spends the night with. The other option. Maybe, you’ve known all along that you’ll never quite stack up to the girls he goes out with, and that sometimes, when you see him all dressed up while you’re in your hoodie and sweats, it reminds you is nothing more than a casual friendship.)

“I must have been out late with Chaewon that day, I’m sorry,” you apologize, letting him rest his head on your shoulder. “I didn’t know you would come.”

“I always come after my events. You know that.”

“I didn’t know if you’d remember to,” you correct. 

“I’d never forget about you,” Jungkook says, the alcohol erasing his filter. Making him honest. “I really missed you, that day. I had been waiting the entire night to see you.”

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” you promise, and this one is for real. 

“You know, today?” Jungkook says, pulling his head back so he can get a good look at you, your eyes meeting his own. “Today, I was so sad on my way here. It was so terrible, because I was drunk and sad and I missed you.”

“You were sad? What happened?” You ask, leaning in. Jungkook? Sad? Who would do such a thing to him? Who would erase the smile on his face, his crescent eyes, and replace them with tears? 

“This girl and I, she was a lot of fun. We sang a couple duets together and we were pretty good,” he hiccups, “kept winning. It was fun. She and I talked for a long time. I definitely liked her the most out of all of the girls I’ve gone out with. Besides Chaewon, of course.”

“What happened? Did she do something you didn’t want? You know you can tell me, Jungkook,” you ask, a hand on his arm. 

“No.” Jungkook shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was fun and I was drunk. We were on our way back in the Lyft when she leaned over and kissed me. And I kissed her back, and it was kind of nice. I haven’t really kissed someone like that in a while,” Jungkook tells you. And even though you’re hearing these words from him, hearing how he had all of this fun with a girl who isn’t you, how he kissed her in the backseat of a car, you rally, blinking away the tears you can feel forming in your eyes. It’s none of your business, you tell yourself. You and Jungkook aren’t together. You don’t get to feel bad about him kissing someone else. 

“Did you like it?” You ask, each word a pin in your chest. 

“It was pretty nice,” Jungkook admits. “We, uh, we made out a bit in the back of the car until we got to her place. And then we got out of the car and she asked me if I wanted to go back with her, to her room. And—and I almost said yes.” Jungkook looks about ready to combust. At his side, his fists are clenched so hard you’re worried he’ll pop a vein. 

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” you tell him, looking him in the eyes so he knows that you don’t mind, that he can tell you these things without worry. Jungkook may be the love of your life, but he’s your best friend, first. He’s always been, before anything else, your best friend. 

“But there is!” Jungkook cries, standing up in anguish. “There is, Y/N, you don’t understand! I almost had sex with her!”

“You’re allowed to, Jungkook!” You assure him, standing up to reach out to him. 

“No, Y/N, you don’t get it,” he tells you coldly, pulling his hand away. “Why aren’t you mad? Aren’t you angry that I nearly had sex with her?”

“No, what the fuck, Jungkook, why would I be mad?” You shout back at him. “You can do whatever you want with your body, it’s not my job to police it! I’m your friend, not your mom!”

“But don’t you want to be more, Y/N?” He rounds on you. “Don’t you want to be the one kissing me, fucking me? Why aren’t you jealous?”

“Were you trying to make me jealous, Jungkook? Is that what you were trying to do? You wanted to get a reaction out of me because my best friend nearly fucked someone else and then didn’t? What the fuck, Jungkook? What do you want from me?”

“I just want you to tell me you fucking love me back!”

“Jungkook, what—”

Jungkook, eyes dark and furious, pushes you against your closet door as your lips part, feeling the breath get knocked out of your lungs. He’s so close. He’s right there, you can see him, watch as he looms over you, hands clenched in your hoodie as he presses you against the wall. And then, wordlessly, he’s leaning down, crashing your mouths together. 

Suddenly, your heart starts. You gasp into the kiss, the feeling of his mouth on top of yours. It’s fervent, hot and angry and passionate, his body against your own as your hands reach out to press against his head. You seize up at the feeling, almost as if in shock, before melting into his touch, leaning into him, desperate. You can feel his breath mixing in with your own, feel the way his chapped lips meet your overly-moisturized ones, feel how his hands drift from where they’re bunched up in the front of your hoodie to your waist, your hips, your thighs. Jungkook kisses ruthlessly, kisses like he’s trying to prove a point. Holds onto you like he’s afraid to let go. 

When you part, gasping for air, Jungkook runs a hand through his hair, blinking. 

“Jungkook, you’re drunk—” you tell him firmly, refusing to let get your hopes up if what you have in front of you is really just an intoxicated best friend. Your heart is beating miles a minute, about ready to thump right out of you, chest heaving and mouth agape. 

“That doesn’t matter,” Jungkook argues back. “Even when I’m sober I love you. Don’t tell me I’m confused because I’m drunk.”

“You show up at my place at one in the morning, tell me about how you made out with some other girl and almost slept with her just to get me angry, kiss me, and tell me not to tell you you’re confused?” You demand. “Jungkook, I’ve never been more confused in my life than right now, can you please just—”

“I love you, Y/N,” Jungkook says, and even though he’s angry, red in the face and sweaty, when he says it, it’s soft. It’s a whisper, a murmur. He says it not to convince you, but so you know. “I’ve been in love with you for so goddamn long, ever since I fucking met you. And I thought you might like me back but you never did anything about it, and so neither did I.”

“You need to go home, Jungkook,” you tell him, hiccuping. When you blink, you feel the warm tears streaming down your face. You hadn’t even noticed them. “You can’t just come into my apartment and tell me shit like that. How do you think it makes me feel?”

“Do you feel the same, Y/N?” Jungkook asks, looking you in the eyes. He’s angry, that’s for sure, but even underneath, you can see the desperation, see how he’s just waiting for an answer. 

“Go home, Jungkook. Please. Let’s talk about this when you aren’t drunk, okay? I’m confused and I need to clear my head,” you plead, pushing him towards the door. “Please, okay? Be safe, too. I’ll call Chaewon to give you a ride,” you tell him, grabbing your phone. 

Jungkook puts a hand on your wrist. “I’ll be okay, Y/N. I just… Please, tell me. Did that kiss mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it did, but Jungkook, I can’t—”

“It meant something to me, too,” he tells you firmly, lets the words sink into the air around you.  He heads for the door, pulling on his shoes. He looks so sad. “Good night, Y/N.”

You place a hand on the doorknob. “Good night, Jungkook.”

It’s barely nine in the morning the next day when a knock wakes you up. It’s soft at first, one every couple of seconds, before it gets progressively louder. Slowly, you get out of bed, trying to tame your hair as you rub the sleep from your eyes. 

“Y/N’s in her room. Is that for her? That’s so cute. Yeah, she’s probably awake. You can just knock.” It’s your roommate. 

You scramble to make your bed, pouring some water from the water bottle by your nightstand into your hand and splashing your face, wiping it away with an old t-shirt as you run towards the door, pulling it open just in time. 

On the other side is a much more tired, much less drunk Jungkook, one hand raised and about to knock, the other holding a bouquet of daisies. 

“Hey,” he says shyly, mouth breaking into a smile the moment he sees you. 

“Hey,” you say back. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah, head hurts like hell, though,” Jungkook says. “Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, s-sure, of course,” you say, stepping aside to let him into your bedroom. 

“These are for you.” Jungkook holds out the bouquet towards you, wrapped up neatly in cellophane and tied at the stems with a bow. “So you don’t have to keep Febreze-ing your room all of the time.”

“They’re beautiful, Jungkook,” you tell him, grinning as you take them from his hands. Today feels different from yesterday. It feels lighter, fresher. New. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“I—” He pauses, taking a second to think, “I meant what I said, yesterday. Maybe not all of it, but. Most of it, yeah. I meant it.”

“Why did you try to make me jealous, Jungkook?” You ask him. “Why did you think that would work?”

“I don’t know,” Jungkook admits. “I shouldn’t have, and I fucked up. I just got so… so tired of waiting to see if you’d ever come around. I just wanted you to tell me. And then I guess I got so fed up that I told you instead.”

You place the bouquet on your dresser before walking towards him, reaching a hand out. “Yeah, that was a pretty big asshole move of you,” you chide, grinning to yourself. 

“I know, I’m sorry.” He sighs. 

“But I’m happy you’re here,” you tell him. “And happy that you meant what you said. Maybe it could have been said in a less angry way, but hearing it made me happy.”

“I’m happy that you’re happy.” Jungkook grins. “You’re my favorite person, Y/N.”

“When you asked me, yesterday, if that kiss meant anything to me? And I said it did?” You begin, Jungkook nodding in front of you. He’s positively beaming. “It still does. I want to do that every day, Jungkook. Every hour. Every single second for the rest of my goddamn life.”

“You do?” Jungkook asks. 

“I love you, Jeon Jungkook. From day one, it’s always been you.” You smile, and it feels like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. Feels like you’re fucking flying. Like you’re weightless. 

“I love you, too, Y/N. I never want to be away from your side,” he declares, and like a cheesy, rom-com movie, like the shitty novels you used to read in eighth grade, he pulls you in close and presses a kiss against your lips. Wraps his arms around your waist as he holds you tight, kisses you in the middle of your bedroom, in your hoodie and sweatpants, a bouquet of daisies on your dresser. He kisses you because he can, because for every second of every day for the rest of your goddamn life, he can kiss you, over and over and over. 

“We owe Chaewon an apology,” you tell him when you’re parted, sitting on your bed, wrapped up in each other’s arms. 

“Hell yeah we do,” Jungkook agrees. “She’s been on my ass for ages about telling you.”

“Mine too.”

“She’s such a great best friend,” Jungkook comments. “Knew all this time that her two friends were madly in love with each other and didn’t say a damn word to either of us. That’s loyalty.”

“We should do something for her, to make up for it all,” you suggest. 

“You know,” Jungkook says, grinning, “I know this guy who made bank this semester by going on fake dates with a bunch of really rich girls. Maybe he could help.”

“I know him, too,” you joke. “He’s the love of my fucking life.”

Jeon Jungkook quits his job on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year.

You know this because on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 7:18PM, eighteen minutes after he normally heads out on one of his many dates. 

“Y/N!” He shouts, banging wildly on your door. You rush over to open it, letting the pasta water on the stove boil over and sizzle on the heat. He’s barely gotten in a second knock when you turn the doorknob to reveal your smiling boyfriend in his oversized hoodie.

“Don’t tell me you’re blowing someone off for me,” you say, inviting him inside. He places a kiss on your cheek on the way in, taking off his shoes and coat as you rush over to take care of the pasta.

“Me? Blowing someone off? Never,” Jungkook says, mock offended. “I actually quit the dating thing, this afternoon. A girl asked if I was free and I said that I wasn’t, because I have to go home to my girlfriend making me a meal. Don’t you love the sound of that?” He asks, pleased with himself.

“You quit? I thought you liked doing that stuff,” you say, using the spaghetti fork to move around the linguine. “Hope you’re cool with boring old pasta for your meal tonight. You could have had caviar if you hadn’t quit.”

“I don’t care, it smells so good,” Jungkook tells you, wrapping his arms around your waist as he stands behind you, watching you cook from over your shoulder. “Look at you, being all domestic and shit. It’s very cute.”

“Stop rubbing in the fact that you’re the better cook, I get it. Pasta is all I got right now.” You pout, turning down the heat as you move to pour yourselves two cups of tea. Jungkook follows you the entire way to the kettle, grip on your waist never faltering. “You can keep going on those dates, you know. I don’t mind. I get to see you in a suit when you get back, and then I get to take it off of you. It’s a win-win.”

Jungkook pinches your waist in response. “If you have a thing for suits, you can just tell me, you know. I won’t be mad.”

You turn around to whack him with the spaghetti fork. “I do not!”

“Alright, Y/N, guess I won’t wear a suit next time you call me at two in the morning—”

“I never said you couldn’t,” you interrupt, making Jungkook laugh. 

“You’re so cute, Y/N,” Jungkook coos as you begin to dish up the pasta, making sure to add peas because Jungkook loves peas with his spaghetti. “But I quit because I have enough money to sustain me for the rest of the semester. I’ll work over break and get a new job next semester when the new work-study positions open. Don’t worry about me,” he assures you. 

“But didn’t you like going out and everything? Getting dressed up and drinking fancy champagne?” You ask, setting the plates down at your dinky kitchen table, a single scented candle lit in the center. 

Jungkook thinks about it for a split second, and then he shakes his head. “Nah. I like hanging out with my girlfriend more.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” you reason with a grin. 

Jungkook laughs, leaning over the table to plop a kiss on your lips. “I love you, Y/N.”

“Yeah, you pea-eating loser,” you chide, “I love you too.”

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

↳ check out the post-script drabble here!

[whattolearntoday]

September 3rd is...

Bring Your Manners To Work Day - This day was created by The Protocol School of Washington to remind people of the importance of treating people with courtesy and respect in the workplace.

Chianti Day - Recognizes the most-recognized red wines from the Tuscany region of Italy.  As essential to Italian cuisine as olive oil, Chianti Classico is a dry red wine that is medium to full-bodied. It shows red cherry and herbaceous notes, making it flexible with many cuisines and pairing particularly well with robust dishes like barbeque and grilled meats. And because Chianti Classico is the authentic taste of Tuscany and the ultimate expression of the region, the wines have a natural affinity to Italian dishes like pasta, carbonara, or pizza.

College Colors Day - Encourages everyone to display their team spirit. Across the United States students, parents, family, fans, and alumni will be wearing their team colors.

Food Bank Day - Encourages you to commit to contributing to the cause that believes no one should go to bed hungry.  Food banks across the country help some of the 42 million men, women, and children who struggle with putting food on the table. The reasons range from illness to job loss and a general change in circumstances – circumstances that can happen to anyone of us.

Lazy Mom’s Day -  Busy moms know that the work of being a parent is never done. However, occasionally parents need to recharge. The laundry and the dishes will be there later. When possible, finding someone to watch the children for a few hours is worth it. Sometimes all a mom needs is a nap.

Skyscraper Day -  The construction of tall buildings has become so commonplace in cities around the globe that the general public gives little thought to the visionaries responsible for creating a city’s unique skyline. Skyscraper day provides the opportunity to learn more about the architects who commit a dream to paper and the construction crews that make it reality.

U.S. Bowling League Day - Primarily an outdoor sport until around 1840, the game was called ninepins and was popular with gamblers. To snuff out the gambling, the state of Connecticut banned the game in 1841. As a result, indoor lane owners added one pin to their alleys to circumvent the law. Clubs tried organizing and creating set rules. However, it wasn’t until 1895 when the American Bowling Congress came together at Beethoven Hall in New York City. The American Bowling Congress established a maximum score of 300 which still stands today. They also determined other rules, such as lane length, widths, and distances between pins. 

Welsh Rarebit Day -  The cheesy toast was originally called Rabbit in a tongue-in-cheek way in the Welsh language because there is no rabbit in the meal. Similar to mock turtle soup having no turtle in it, Welsh rarebit does not contain rabbit. Instead, this dish is made with toast that has hot cheese poured over it.

[lassieposting]

10, 12 n 19 for skugpine?

Ohohoho so u fell in the SOW garbage pit too huh

God this got so long im so sorry

10) who usually makes dinner?

They go out. Skug has a well-equipped kitchen and can make a few staples, but Nef still has no idea where Skug lives and Skug wants to keep it that way. Serpine knows how to make a grand total of one dish - pasta, staple diet of his student neighbours - so they usually meet up in town and he'll make use of Skug's apparently bottomless wallet at one of Roarhaven's swanky restaurants. Skug likes the one that plays live jazz.

12) who hogs the bathroom?

Nef. This dimension has A Lot of fun shit that he did not have back home. Skug spends an unreasonable amount of time trying to reconcile that his nemesis, orchestrator of The Trap, is also the same man who will spend ages perched on the side of the bathtub kerplunking an entire hoard of those gritty bathbomb things into the water and gleefully sending him videos of what colour the water turns.

19) who clings to the other for comfort when they’re sad or scared?

Serpine - which is a new development for him.

Now, I have a whole theory about why alt!Serpine is so different (read: chattier, saner, more realistic and less caricatured) than his book one counterpart, and why his relationship with Skug is so different. But they're pretty similar in that until the year(?) spent in the Leibniz dimension in SOW, both versions of Serpine had to be completely self-reliant. He's never had anyone protect him before. Mevolent afforded him a lot of freedoms to commit atrocities that he might not have otherwise had, but those came with a lot of strings attached and the knowledge that ultimately, Mevolent would sacrifice him if necessary. So he always needed to be on guard for that.

When he joins the group going to Leibniz, he makes a truce with Skug.

(Interesting note: og!Serpine and Skug were already on first name terms. They called each other Nefarian/Skulduggery throughout book one. Alt!Serpine and Skug are clearly not - he's even annoyed by the familiarity in Phase One, and this sarcastic exchange is the only time he uses Skug's name pre-SOW.)

Anyway, Dexter, Saracen and Tanith all advocate for killing him on the spot. They discuss this right in front of him. And then:

Skug defends him.

This has to be a shock? It's a shock to everyone else, and they know Skug better than Nef does. But for whatever reason, Skug fights his corner against his own friends. People who want to kill him as justice for what he did to Skug.

Do-gooders. Who knows why they do these things. Bizarre.

But this continues throughout the trip. Skug tells him to shut up every time he talks, shorts out his nervous system for laughs, and threatens him with violence at the slightest opportunity, but he also protects him from everyone else, and not only the members of their own party.

He's not much of a fighter and he knows when it's in his best interest to ingratiate himself with the top dogs in a group, so he tries to connect with Skug, puts out tentative feelers to Val and Tanith. And gradually, without even realising it, he gets used to it. Having someone protecting him. And we know this, because when Skug agrees to cut his hand off, he's horrified. He genuinely doesn't believe at first that Skug will let that happen, he assumes they'll fight their way out - which means he believes by this point that Skug will prioritise his wellbeing over their being vastly outnumbered and Saracen being injured.

(Interesting note the second: we know either Serpine or Serafina cut bits of Skug off while he was being tortured in Serpine's dungeon - at least one of his fingers. It's really interesting that Serpine is so surprised Skug would allow this, after that - he's basically getting back what he gave out, and Skug is famous for his ability to hold a grudge - to the point that when they first meet in KOTW, Serpine believes Skug is there specifically to kill him...after 200-odd years.)

Anyway, the point is: to be that shocked by this turn of events, he would have had to have built up a considerable (if subconscious) trust in Skug in a fairly short amount of time - enough that he now defaults to Skulduggery Will Protect Me rather than Here Is The Inevitable Betrayal I Planned For.

(Interesting note the third: At this point, Skug reassures him that they'll get him to a healer as soon as they get back - which, again, is something Serpine never gave him. There was no healer to ease the pain of having his finger cut off, no one to nurse his injuries, no antidote to the poison slowly shutting his body down.)

After this, Serpine goes from "Skulduggery" back to "the skeleton". He also acknowledges that Skug had every reason to want to hurt him, meaning he does recognise everything he did to Skug would lead Skug to want to get his own back, and believed he'd defend him anyway.

And by the end of the year, Skug is back to protecting him, this time from China, arguably the most powerful person on the planet:

And then, now delving into au, he's made responsible for Serpine, like a parole officer. Since he's the one who refused to execute him, he gets the dubious privilege of making sure he settles in, behaves himself, and contributes to society. Serpine isn't stupid by any stretch, and he knows China very well - he suspected she'd want him killed, and since she's well aware of their history, he recognises her making him Skug's charge for what it is: a punishment. He's clever enough to connect the dots: China wanted him dead, Skug is an accomplished killer, China is furious enough with Skug to do this to him, ergo Skug probably defied orders to take Serpine out.

So. Eventually, he gets back into the habit of looking to Skug when he's scared and wants backup.

[neighborhood-houseplant]

Katsuki Bakugo x Reader

_______

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugo x Reader

Pronouns: Female Pronouns (She/Her)

_______

Katsuki was a confident boy. Most people would agree he was too confident. And throughout his time in middle school, people would always tell him how amazing his quirk was. He had fought many people outside of school grounds and all of them ended in less than two minutes.

This confidence carried with him into UA. He again aced quirk tests and fought people in the sports festival, he had won those matches until he fought (Y/n). The girl was strong and had amazing reflexes as well as fighting techniques and he wondered how he hadn't noticed her before.

She had been one of his classmates since the beginning of the school year. (Y/n) was so quiet and shy, that he often forgot she was even there until a teacher would call on her to answer a question, or if a classmate asked her to help with some form of school work.

This completely contrasted with how she acted on the battlefield. Weirdly enough, she was a childhood friend of Momo's. They were equivalent to unstoppable together, both with their cooperation and skillsets.

During the sports festival, he had been paired to fight her. He had an arrogant smirk on his face as he took his place on the platform. This was however wiped off his face when the girl kept dodging his blasts.

He was getting frustrated as the match went on, she kept on hitting him and the crowd was going crazy after his fight with Uraraka. Especially when she got a clean hit in his gut, roundhouse kicking him right after. He grabbed her shirt, accidentally burning off some of it off, exposing her toned stomach.

He then let out a huge blast, throwing her out of bounds, but was shocked when she threw something at him blasting him out off the arena as well. However, he won as she had been out of bounds, mere milliseconds before him.

At the end of the fight, they both walked up to the stands together as other students took place for their matches. She congratulated him on his win, commenting how cool it was how he controlled his blasts so well. This had made him slightly happy, though he did not tell her this.

Once the two had reached the stands, he had noticed how Mineta was gawking at her and she was shifting uncomfortably. He ended up giving her his shirt, with his black tank top underneath. He felt a sense of pride when he noticed how it was too big for her, hanging off her slightly. He however didn't get to focus on this long as Kirishima remarked how it was, "So manly!"

He soon after began talking to her more, trying to get her to take part in group activities that she would have normally avoided like the plague. Even going as far as to allow her to call him by his first name. The two ultimately became best friends. The two were inseparable, one was always with the other.

This brought us to today. Classes had ended for the day as students were packing their bags and picking up their homework from Aizawa's desk. Bakugou stood next to (Y/n)'s desk as she was packing her bag, holding two copies of the homework. He handed one to her as she finally fastened her backpack.

"You done or what?" He asked, feeling slightly impatient, and wanting to leave the stuffy classroom. "Yeah, let's go." (Y/n) spoke, throwing her backpack over her shoulder as they said their goodbyes, leaving the building.

As they reached the gates, the two continued down the road together. "Katsuki, don't you live that way?" asked the girl, pure confusion and a slight hint of anxiousness lacing her tone that Katsuki, unfortunately, picked up on.

"Yeah, and? I just happened to be going this way dumbass." He clicked his tongue at her. She sighed and let the comfortable silence envelop them. Suddenly, her phone dinged, notifying her that she had a message. Her eyes quickly scanned over the text. "Mom wants me to pick up some things for dinner tonight. Well, I have to go Katsuki, See you tomorrow."

"Hold on a minute, I'm coming with you." He rolled his eyes at her. "Goodness knows you'll do something to screw something up." The two soon reached the grocery store as (Y/n) picked up a basket going along the aisles. She placed Pasta, tomatoes, onions, vegetable oil, rice eggs, and a carton of milk in the cart before heading up to the register, Katsuki at her heels.

After paying for the items, the cashier handed her a bag containing the items, as she thanked him and left the store with Katsuki. "Oi, dumbass, give me one of the bags." She nodded and handed him one of the bags, thanking him, placing her bag on the ground, and storing one of the bags using her quirk as he handed her the second as she did the same to it. Finally, she resituated the bag on her back as they resumed the walk.

The closer they got to the said house, Katsuki noticed how (Y/n) became more fidgety. "What's wrong?" He asked with an oddly calm voice. "It's nothing, I-" she got cut off as a group of three boys, probably their age walked towards her. She let out an irritated sigh, before glancing in his direction.

"What do you want, Haru?" She seemed uninterested. "Oh, nothing. Just wondering who your little friend is. I'm surprised you even have any!" He let out a crazed cackle, his friends following soon after. Katsuki opened his mouth, already getting irritated with this guy. He would've said something he probably would've regretted it (Y/n) hadn't spoked first.

"Who he is isn't your business, now if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere to be, unlike you harassing highschoolers." Then turning on her heel and continuing down the path. It would've been left at that, if the boy Haru, hadn't followed them, intent on making (Y/n) lose her temper.

"Oh come now, I just wanted to greet an old friend, (Y/n)." He spoke in an irritating tone of voice. "Don't call me by my first name, and we aren't friends." She once again rolled her eyes. "You're not wrong, (Y/n), as if I'd want to be friends with a weak quirked idiot like you." He spoke again, soon coming to regret his words.

Just like that, Katsuki's patience was gone. He whipped around to glare at the boys, his eyes hard and angry. "Scram, before I blast you to hell!" He held his hand up, small explosions emitting from his palms. This however didn't seem to discourage Haru.

"Or what? What are your fireworks going to do?" The most taunting grin plastered across his disgusting face. Just like that, he realized just how badly he screwed up. Bakugo lunged at him, much bigger and stronger explosions coming from his palms.

He would've beat up the kid Haru right there and then if (Y/n) hadn't grabbed his arm, "Ignore him, Katsuki. He's not worth your time or effort." This luckily calmed down Katsuki effectively, as he lowered his outstretched hand.

Haru was on the ground, a terrified look on his face. His so-called 'friends' had left him behind as soon as Katsuki moved towards them. "You damn extra, if you ever try anything with (Y/n), I'll end you." Katsuki glared at Haru, as the boy ran off.

As they resumed their walk to (Y/n)'s house, Katsuki spoke up. "Why didn't you tell me you were getting bullied?" He sounded almost hurt that she'd kept this from him. "I just didn't see the point, I mean, if I couldn't handle a few bullies, how would I become a hero?" (Y/n) said, her eyes downcast.

"Everyone needs help once in a while, just tell me next time. If they mess with you, they're messing with me, alright?" Slight gentleness in his tone. The girl nodded at him. "Okay." They soon reached their destination.

"Katsuki, why don't you come inside? I'm sure my parents would love to have you over for dinner." She glanced at him, awaiting a response. The boy carelessly nodded, making it seem like he didn't care, but he was happy she even wanted him to enter her home. He removed his shoes, placing them next to (Y/n)'s.

"I'm home!" She called into the house. Her mother picked her head out of the kitchen. "Hi dear, you brought a friend over? That's nice." Bakugo's eyes trailed to (Y/n), who was blushing in embarrassment. She hurriedly changed the subject. "I brought the groceries." She spoke removing the bags from the little void, placing the bags on the counter.

"Thank you, your father should be home shortly, You and your friend can go upstairs, I'll call you down for dinner later." Taking the bags from the girl, and sending the two out of the kitchen.

Leading Katsuki to her room, (Y/n) placed her backpack near her desk, as Katsuki did the same. She sat on her bed, motioning for Katsuki to do the same as he threw himself on the bed, letting out a dramatic sigh., as they both started giggling.

The two began doing their homework, occasionally asking one another their opinion on their answer. After what felt like ages, really only being an hour, (Y/n)'s mother called them downstairs for dinner. "Hey you two, come down for dinner." Katsuki watched in slight amusement as (Y/n) hurriedly stood up.

As the four sat on the dinner table, (Father's name) spoke up. "So, who's your little friend?" He eyed Bakugo suspiciously. "His name is Katsuki Bakugo." (Y/n) spoke up. "Well I must say, he's quite a catch." (Mother's name) said in a playful tone, causing both Katsuki and (Y/n) to blush heavily.

It then started to rain. "Katsuki looks like you'll have to stay over for the night." (Y/n) said. "Look like it." He spoke, pulling out his phone to text his mother. After he put it away, (Y/n) stood up, collecting the empty plates with her mother.

The two were in the kitchen, washing dishes as Katsuki and (Father's name) were bonding over their love of working out. When (Y/n) came back, she gestured to Katsuki to come with her to go to bed. The two excused themselves and left.

(Y/n) placed a futon on her floor. "You take the bed and I'll sleep on the floor." Eventually, the two fell asleep, well (Y/n) did anyway. Katsuki was tossing and turning, smiling fondly to himself at how welcoming (Y/n)'s parents were. His mind went back to when they were eating, how flustered he'd gotten about (Mother's name)'s offhand comment. Then it hit him.

"(Y/n) you dumbass, you made me fall for you." He whispered to himself, falling asleep.

[a-smol-chub]

All on his own (Kamuegi)

Cooking was boring.

It was a precise art, a science, that required skill. Iz.uru Kamu.kura moves his way around the small apartment kitchen with meaning. Delicious aromas flood the room, filling the entire living space. Creamy potatoes topped with freshly cut onions and bacon flakes. Golden brown rolls lightly buttered that shine. A large pan of baked mac n’ cheese with a perfect crust. Kamu.kura carries everything gracefully and stacks the dining table full of everything he had spent the day making. He looks up at the clock on the wall. 4:58. Ma.koto would be arriving soon. Kamu.kura finishes setting the table and reaches behind him, grabbing the small band that was holding his hair back. His long black locks tumble down his back as he sits down on the couch, opening a book.

Almost as if on cue, Kamu.kura hears a click at the front door and in walks his boyfriend, Ma.koto Na.egi. Na.egi starts shrugging his coat off before freezing in place as the smell of dinner reaches him across the room. He looks around and sees Kamu.kura sitting on the couch, and walks into the dining room. Almost in a trance-like state, Na.egi sits down at the dining table and starts piling his plate with everything in reach. Kamu.kura smirks to himself as he puts his book down and turns around, watching silently. 

Na.egi can’t help but dig in, moaning at the taste. He tries to go slowly and savor the taste, but it’s just so good. He can’t help himself but shovel as much as he can down his throat. He needs more. In his foggy haze, Na.egi ends up barely chewing, and instead ends up swallowing most things whole. He groans as he feels entire bites sliding down his throat and landing into his stomach. Kamu.kura stands up from his seat and walks over, clearing away empty dishes and making sure there’s always food in reach. He even helps refill Na.egi’s plate so that he never has to stop. 

The lucky student stuffs himself in a haze, without realizing just how much he’s eating. Meatballs dripping with thick marinara sauce. Warm forkfuls of pasta that slide down Na.egi’s throat. Crispy fried chicken that’s perfectly juicy on the inside. All obviously the work of the Ultimate Hope. Na.egi continues to work through the entire table, completely oblivious to how full he actually was. His stomach surges forward, almost expanding with every bite he takes. The seams of his pants creak quietly, only heard by his partner. 

A few hours pass, and the buttons on his work shirt are straining. Kamu.kura hears the ominous creaking of the dining room chair, and smirks to himself. Na.egi leans back, eyes glazed over, breathing laboured. Kamu.kura finishes clearing off the table, carefully stacking all of the dirty dishes in the sink. Soon, the table is full once more with all kinds of desserts. Cakes, brownies, ice cream, donuts. All made by Kamu.kura himself. Na.egi sniffs the air and a quiet whine escapes him. “Kamu.kura…” he moans quietly. “It’s too much…”

Kamu.kura does not respond, and instead piles Na.egi’s plate high with a variety of sweets. Overcome with the sight of the heavenly food in front of him, Na.egi quickly dives in once more, eating with renewed vigor after the short break. Slice after slice of cake disappears into Na.egi’s growing gut. Entire handfuls of cookies get stuffed down his throat, and he washes it all down with a tall glass of cold refreshing milk. Kamu.kura watches intently, making sure to not interfere. He wanted Na.egi to do this all on his own.

After a few rounds of dessert, Na.egi’s pace slows considerably, but he still finds himself unable to stop. With one hand on his burgeoning stomach, and the other shoveling more pie into his mouth, he continues working his way through his plate. He moans quietly, a mixture of both pain and pleasure. His gut rubs against the edge of the table, as his clothes struggle to contain him.

With one last swallow, Na.egi gasps loudly for air, and he hears a loud ping. His face flushes deeply as his stomach surges forward, taking up his whole lap. Kamu.kura approaches from behind, wrapping his arms around his lover, and unbuttoning the remaining buttons. “You must have been hungry, for you to have eaten that much.”

Na.egi pouts, looking up. “You… -hic- you did this on purpose…” he whines, trying in vain to rub his stomach to ease the pain. Kamu.kura’s cold hands join Na.egi’s warm sweaty ones, as he starts rubbing circles on the engorged mound of flesh. Letting out a small sigh, Na.egi’s eyes glaze over as he slowly succumbs to the coming food coma. His breathing is heavy and laboured as Kamu.kura continues to gently rub, noting how stuffed and taut his lover’s stomach was. 

Kamu.kura smiles to himself. He decided cooking wasn’t too boring after all.

[whentherewerebicycles]

such a good sunday :) lots of active time but in a way that felt fun and not like a chore, which is always the goal. took a long walk with Ruthie this morning, skated for 45 min this afternoon, and took another long walk with Pip in the early evening. the grocery store was still really picked over (very little produce and nothing from the fridges) but I made a really spicy pantry staples pasta dish with chickpeas that was pretty good.

I didn’t get any fiction writing done today, but I did do some good future planning/writing re: research and career stuff this afternoon while the dogs napped.

some thoughts post-future planning: I’m trying to be a little more proactive about my own life, I guess. I feel like I spent the years between ages 15-23ish in this hyper-driven, hypercompetitive mode, where I was soooo driven by the need to secure external achievements and be the best/smartest/most accomplished at whatever, mostly because it felt like the only way I could see out of the deep pit of intense self-loathing I spent so many years stewing in. my mid-to-late 20s and early 30s have definitely been a time of just, like, figuring out what it means to be healthy (emotionally, physically, and in my friendships and relationships) and learning how to prioritize happiness, self-compassion, lightness, joy, etc in my life and work—which meant consciously jettisoning the external achievement-oriented values system that so structured those earlier phases of my life.

but I’ve been thinking a lot lately (yes partly because of sports, lol) that in both phases I may have swung a little too far in one direction, or gone too far towards one extreme. the hypercompetitive achievement-focused version of myself wasn’t healthy because it just gave me this rigid exoskeleton I believed would protect/shield me without addressing the fact that all the soft vulnerable inside parts of my self were so shot through with self-critical self-hatred I was pretty much rotting from within. I really NEEDED to swing very, very far in the opposite direction in order to start reckoning with the damage that all of these awful corrosive feelings had been doing to my head/heart/self for so long. I guess one way to describe that second extreme swing is: I had to learn how to extend compassion and total acceptance to myself while having no expectations of myself, almost to prove to myself that it was possible. I had to prove to myself that you didn’t have to achieve anything or win anything or have grandiose ambitions for yourself to be worthy of love, tenderness, care. you could just be, and still deserve to be alive.

but I think that maybe now I am ready to start looking for a middle ground, or a third way forward that lies somewhere between those two ways of living in the world/in oneself. I want to find a way to synthesize the good parts of both into something new. I needed the time to be directionless (well—directionless for me, I guess, by my old standards) and completely at peace with it, but I also know from experience that I do thrive in those competitive (or at least higher-pressure) situations where I have to think quickly, creatively, and daringly, and where I am much more frequently testing the limits of what I know or know how to do.

I feel like I used to chase achievements like something was chasing after me—something terrifying that was always hot on my heels, threatening to imminently overtake and devour me. I don’t want to ever feel like that again! but I do want to find ways to move through my life, through the world, and through my work/career in a more purposeful way than I’ve been doing for the past few years. I want to take more initiative instead of just drifting from place to place. I want to not only accept but actively seek out more experiences that challenge me, in healthy and generative ways. I want to test myself—not to see if I’ll break, but to see what more I am capable of doing and learning. I also want the desire to work more purposefully to come not from a need to be recognized with external achievements, but from the understanding that I can do the work I love more effectively if I am better connected and more deeply engaged in communities of people who are pursuing similar work.

I want to keep thinking about what it would look like to pursue excellence not in exacting or self-punishing ways, but as an extension of the care I offer myself. as a teacher I know that giving students the easy out might seem like the most humane or compassionate response in the moment—but when I let someone only & always stay where they are comfortable, or when I step in too quickly to solve a problem for them, I am depriving them of opportunities for real and meaningful growth, the kind that ultimately helps people become confident, secure adults who trust themselves to be able to respond to unfamiliar situations or tackle complex challenges. I want to teach/mentor myself like that too! I want to embrace the idea that caring for myself means creating opportunities for myself to struggle productively, in ways that test and challenge me, and ultimately help me mature into a more secure and capable adult version of myself.

lol okay well more on this later, probably! when I started writing I just meant to post a three-sentence end-of-day update and it got away from me a bit. but these are some thoughts that I am mulling over this week.

[pillow-anime-talk]

scarfs.

synopsis: Bakugo, Todoroki, Kaminari and Kirishima getting as a gift a handmade scarf from their crush.

# tags: scenarios; U.A!au; crush culture; super fluff; super soft; super cute; sfw

includes: female readet ft. katsuki bakugo, shoto todoroki, denki kaminari & eijirou kirishima {bnha}

author’s note: again, thank you for request, @aa--leksandra​!!!

— KATSUKI

“What the fuck. Who’s there?”

These were the first words Bakugo said when you knocked on his door and with a big smile gave him a small package wrapped around in colorful paper with smol presents and fireworks on the edges.

“What is it?”

“A gift, don’t you see? It’s for you, Katsuki.” You smiled gently. “Can I come in? I want to see your reaction for this.”

Bakugo frowned while letting you into his room in the class-shared dorm.

When you entered the room, you looked around. Although you have been here many times, you still admired the cleanliness in Baku's room. And also you admired this small picture in the frame on his desk, which depicted the two of you.

“What occasion is this gift?” You heard a quiet, slightly uncertain question. “Anniversary of our friendship or something like that shit?”

“No, you fool. It’s April 20. Are you dumb?”

“Huh?”

“Your birthday... idiot. Then, yes. Happy birthday, Katsuki!” You screamed joyfully, clapping your small hands. “Open, open now. Please!”

Bakugo stood shocked, completely unsuspecting of ever getting a present from someone. Not counting his parents, of course. But you weren’t his mom or dad, you’re his... crush. His fucking ideal girl who he crushed from over a year. Getting a present from you was like a marriage proposal with him in his eyes. Of course he was moved, although he tried not to show it (as always in your presence, by the way).

When he ripped colored paper and took out a few chocolates and soft material, he looked at you questioningly. However, you stood quietly, just blushing on your cheeks.

“This is...”

“Scarf! I made it by myself! Expand it.” You told him, so he did it quikly. A green scarf with the black inscription ‘Ground Zero’ looked extremely charming in his eyes. He didn’t even realize that you could do this kind of things...

“It’s really...”

“Yeah. I know, you don’t like shit like this so much, but I thought you would need it... Especially during the winter, when you’ll have to warm up to be stronger during the fight or training...” You muttered quietly, at which Bakugo smiled softly.

“I can get shit like this from you for every birthday, Y/N. Thank you.”

You quickly came up to him and hugged his body smelling of delicate, coconut gel. Katsuki felt his cheeks turn as red as the caption on the green material...

Damn. So, it’s his turn to surprise you and maybe... invite you on a date... haha, just kidding... unless...?

— SHOTO

Shoto didn’t like Christmas. Maybe in totally another family this special time would been really nice, but not at the moment when his father was Enji and his mother was still in the hospital on the other side of town. Or if his siblings was be in one place... not as currently, when Toya disappeared few years ago, Fuyumi worked in school from morning to the evening, and Natsuo had his private life and studies. That's the reason why Todoroki was hate Christmas, New Year Eve, and every other holiday like his own birthday or Children's Day.

Anyway. It was supposed to be the first Christmas in U.A High School. He didn’t wait for this day, unlike some people in 1-A Class like Uraraka, Mineta and Kirishima were charged with too much energy. But he? Shoto looked at everything with tired eyes, thinking about the excuse to not spend this time with friends, carols and gingerbreads.

The day before Christmas Eve all people of your class organized a huge supper in the main room. Sato prepared delicious cakes, Mina, Bakugo and you took care of cooking dishes. Kaminari and Sero decorated the room, while Izuku with Shoji’s help had decorated a Christmas tree... and Momo and Tsui was cleaned the living room before. Everything looked really beautiful... Yet Shoto couldn’t enjoy it at all.

Right, admiring your person in an apron and a soft smile on your face was pleasant, but it was the only thing that Shoto noticed. Therefore, at one point he put the newspaper on the table next to the sofa and stood up, directing his person to his own room.

Hardly anyone paid any attention to him, but you (as befits a good, pure soul) wanted to follow him to asked what happened. Bakugo’s voice, however, stopped you from doing this thing.

“Leave this two-shitty-haired-color boy alone, Y/N. If he wants, he’ll come back to us later.”

“Yes, but...” You sighed quietly, unbuttoning your white apron. “Give me a moment, Baku. And look after the pasta, please!”

“She’s stupid or what. The Todo-Lion will kill her.” The pink girl whispered. Bakugo shrugged and went back to cooking.

At the same time, you went to your room for a gift that you made with your own hands. You knew that Shoto didn’t like Christmas and didn’t feel their magic, but even this didn’t stop you from making a warm scarf in a color who’s matches with his hero’s outfit. Anyway... You wanted to give something to your sympathy, that’s all.

You liked Todoroki, so that’s why you wanted to give him something. Holidays were, of course, a good reason to do it.

When you knocked on your friend’s room, your heart sped up slightly. And when Shoto dressed in black turtleneck opened the door for you and raised an eyebrow, because he not expecting anyone, especially your visit. 

“Can I go inside?” You asked, and the heterochromic boy opened the door wider. When you got inside you immediately looked at his face. “I know you don’t like Christmas... And I also know that you don’t like getting anything from someone, but I thought...” You gave him a paper, silver bag. “... this would be super useful for you in this time of the year. I didn’t know what to buy, so ultimately I did something by myself. I hope you like it... If not, it’s okay! I can do something completely different for you... Like gloves or a beanie. “

Shoto opened both his eyes widely and then a bag with a woolen blue scarf inside. 

Shoto.exe has stopped working.

“T-This is... for me?”

“Yes. It’s Christmas, Shoto. Soooo, Merry Christmas!”

“Thank you... But... I have nothing for you, Y/N... I’m sorry...”

“It’s alright. You can hug me or smile to me as a thank you. I think this will be the best present.” You said cheerfully, opening your arms.

Todoroki hugged you tightly to his chest and even gave you a little kiss on the forehead. You stood cuddled up in him for a few minutes, and he thought about confessing love to you at the same time.

Maybe... now after the Christmas dinner?

— DENKI

“Hey, Mina? Ummm... Do you know where’s Kaminari?” You came up to the girl who was sitting on the big sofa in the main room and playing on the PlayStation with Uraraka and Toru.

“No...” She murmured in surprise. “Is something wrong that you’re looking for him?”

“Nothing special. Denki has just been sad since recently, so I just wanted to take him for a walk and to the cafe.”

Ashido opened her mouth to say something, but Eijiro’s hand rested on your shoulder. “He’s behind our dorm. When I bypassed him, he said he was going to rest or something like that.”

“Oh!” You breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Kirishima!” You said quickly, equally quickly you left the four students and heading towards the exit from the dorm. At that moment, Mina noticed the small package in your hands and, of course, she knew what this could mean... Would you finally decided to reveal your feelings to Kaminari? It seemed interesting move in the pink girl’s eyes.

However, you fast found a golden-haired boy with a lightning bolt-shaped streak of black who’s sat on a bench under a large, oak tree. From a distance, you saw his bored expression and the dark circles under his eyes that appeared on his face three days ago.

As a good friend, you wanted to improve Denki’s mood. You weren’t very good at these matters, but thanks to watching a lot of TV series and movies you remembered some friendly habits. One of them was just giving presents and taking the other person to the coffee shop or food bar.

“Denki?” You started quietly because you didn’t want to scare him. When the yellow boy noticed you, he immediately moved his head and brought a smile on his own face.

“Y/N! Hi!” He answered loudly, so you rolled your eyes. “Something happened?”

“I’m the one, who should ask this question.”

The boy looked at you questioningly, but without a word you sat next to him with a gift in your lap. You quickly opened a light, thin paper and pulled out a downy, dark-yellow scarf with small, black lightnings. You slowly wrapped the material around your friend’s neck and smiled softly to him.

“You’ve been in a worse mood for a long time, so I decided to help you a little. I would like you to know that you’ll always find support in me and if something happens, tell me about it, okay?”

“Y/N...” Denki grabbed the edge of a two-colored scarf and ran one finger over it.

“I did it for two days, so you better appreciate it!”

“You made it by yourself?! You shouldn’t...” His cheeks turns red.

“Of course I should. You’re in a bad and nasty humor. If it happens again, I can sew you a socks next time... Now, get up.”

Kaminari looked at you with another question mark painted on his face. “What? Why?”

“We’re going to a cafe. And later we’ll go to a pizzeria or on a burgers! I’m soooo hungry. You too, right?” You turned the other way to hide the cherry pigment on your skin, while he lowered his head, blushing even more.

“Ummm... So, this is a date?” He asked uncertainly when his heart was beating louder and faster than usual. This isn’t surprising... he liked you a lot. Is it possible that a girl like you also liked him in THIS way...?

“Y-Yeah. Why not? So, come. Our date will get away, Denki!”

Oooh myYyyY GOddD.

— EIJIRO

Kirishima stood with Tetsutetsu and paid no attention to the world around him. No wonder... After all, it was the end of the school year for the all last classes in U.A. High School, and Tetsutetsu was his friend for last three years. He had to say goodbye to him and then to his own class, 3-A.

You stood alone on the other side the corridor and waited for Kirishima to come back to you and the rest of your friends. But yet, you sighed quietly and returned to class, taking a seat on the bench, which in a few minutes, after the last speech of Mr. Aizawa will cease to be yours. It’s too sad.

Next to your leg lay your bag in which there was a small present for Eijiro. Of course, you couldn’t finish school without giving him anything. Or not confessed the feelings that had developed in you since almost the beginning of education.

The last bell was a godsend for you and other 3-A students. Kirishima returned to class and you looked at him with a smol smile. He decided to approach you. Thanks to that, some courage gathered within you. You reached for your bag and then pulled the red-haired boy to the back of the classroom.

“Something happened, Y/N? We’re finishing in a moment. After that, we can talk.” He started uncertainly, but you shook your head.

“Later I may not do it at all...” You started shyly, taking a small gift for Kirishima out of the black bag. “It’s for you. For at the end of education and... everything else.”

“Huh? For me?” He asked in shock, accepting the gift. “Thank you, but... I have nothing for you...”

“I don’t want anything in return, Eiji.” You said it lightly and then took a deep breath. “Anyway... I also wanted to say that I like you. Since... Since for a long time. Before we finished this school and we will go to other universities, I wanted to tell you that. I would regret if I kept it to myself.” You added, looking at the floor in the classroom. Kirishima’s eyes widened.

This can’t be true.

“Y/N?”

“Yes, yes. It’s a little bit embarrassing, but I prefer to confess it to you.”

THIS CAN’T BE TRUE.

You not only gave him a super soft and red scarf, which perfectly matched his costume and the whole idea of ​​‘Red Riot’, but you also admitted that you like him! Eijiro was shocked. SO SHOCKED.

“Woah... I don’t know what to say...” He started and you blushed. ”I mean... I like you from the first day of school and I was always afraid that you don’t like me in this way. And now something like this... This scarf is the most manly thing I’ve ever seen! I will proudly wear it. And well... What I’ll say is probably a little bit embarrassing too, but... Do you want to go on a date with me? I don’t know where yet, but together we’ll come up with something!”

“Y-Yes. Eiji, I...”

“Y/L/N, Kirishima. Take your places now. You two will go on date and talked about this after the last class meeting.”

At the sound of Mr. Aizawa’s voice and words, you and Eijiro became as red as the scarf. At the same time, the rest of the class who’s came back, started laugh at two of you.

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Little Miss Perfect.

Say cheese buddy!

Like this?

Perfect!

*Kaito snaps a selfie of the two of them smiling and making signs with their hands.

Um...you don’t have to do this Kaede. You’re not exactly employed here. Moving these boxes is my job.

I know, but everyone’s been so nice, I just want to feel helpful. Is that ok?

If you’re sure...

Yeah, no worries.

Ugh...That was a heavy lunch...

You gotta eat a whole lot if you’re gonna stay healthy Kaede, you know that, right?

True but...I think I bit off more than I can chew...Literally.

Aw...that’s a shame. I brought us donuts for dessert.

Oh, really? Well then I’ll gladly eat them.

Huh? D-Didn’t you say you were full?

Well, you went out of your way to bring some donuts, so it’d be kinda rude if I DIDN’T eat them.

I have a second stomach for desserts, so don’t you worry.

Aw, that’s really sweet of you. But if you feel sick, just let me know, ok?

So you’re a pianist?

Apparently? To be honest, I just thought I was a hairdresser.

Piano playing is definitely something I’d love to make a career though, if I remember how to use my talent.

Oh my god! We should totally collab if we ever get the chance! It’d be a musical revolution!

But all three of us are totally unique, and we clash with each other's music...I’m classical, Sayaka’s pop and you’re rock. They’re all very different.

It'll be like putting rice, pasta, and Chinese dim sum on one plate! A musical clusterfuck!

That’s a combination of dishes nobody would order...

But it would be fun for three Ultimate Students who are based around song and music to collaborate. Like to be in a music video with Ibuki, or sing in a concert with Kaede on the piano.

Maybe when my memories return, I’ll think about it.

Everyone here seems to really like you so far.

You think so?

Haven’t you noticed? You’ve hit it off with loads of the people here. Sayaka,  Hina, Ibuki, everyone loves having you around.

Well, I’m just trying to be nice to them. Wouldn’t do me a lot of good to be rude, right?

I just don’t want any of them getting the impression that I’m Little Miss Perfect or something...Because I’m not...

Well, no, of course not...But, hey, I have a question.

If and when you recover all your memories, would you like to join the Future Foundation and work with us?

That sounds like a great idea!

But...I wish I remembered faster... 

Oh well, not an awful lot can be done about that now...

Hey, wait here a second. I’m just gonna use the bathroom and then we can go to the cafeteria to grab dinner together. Sound good?

Sure thing!

*Shuichi goes into the bathroom.

...

Huh?

*Kaede suddenly gets the feeling of being watched. She sees someone’s sillhouette peeking at her from around the corner.

Wh-Who’s there?

*The figure comes out of hiding...

Heh...I knew it. Shyhara was bound to slip up eventually.

Oh, it’s just you Miu. How are things?

Good, good...Just been doing some thinking...

About what?

None of your business. I can’t just share my golden ideas with you or I’ll forget them!

Um...wouldn’t that have the reverse effect? I could remind you if you told me.

My brain is mine and mine alone.

Um, I don’t particularly want your brain...

Nah, of course you don’t. Don’t need it, right?

...

I’m sorry...What’s with the attitude? Did I...do something wrong?

You could say that? I got a question for you...

What is it?

Has it crossed your mind that Pooichi and the others might be keeping something from you?

What?

Wh-What are you talking about? Why would he do that!?

Take it from someone who sat next to him every trial. Shuichi ain’t afraid of lying to people to get what he wants.

Usually his lies lead us in the right direction, sure, but in this case, he’s just trying to stop you remembering shit.

Shuichi wants to help me get my memories back! Why would he keep them from me!?

Two words...Rantaro Amami. Remember what happened to him?

You might not’ve actually killed him in the end, but that killing game only started ‘cause you fired the first shot...!

Rantaro Am-

AHH!!?

K-Kaediot?

AaaaaaaaAAAAHAHHHAAAAAHH!!!

...

Hey, Kaede! Earth to Kaede!?

!!!

*Kaede takes off running down the halls.

Where are you going!? Wh-What the fuck was that!?

[faefictions]

Unrest

Pairing: Peter Parker x reader

Warnings: ENDGAME SPOILERS (like seriously don’t read ANY of this if you haven’t seen it yet), cussing, sad Peter

Prompt: “Go back to sleep”

Word count: 9k (I know, I’m sorry)

Summary: After getting dusted by Thanos, the reader tries to cope with what she missed in the five years she was dead and the aftermath of returning

A/N: This is part of @starksparker ‘s writing challenge! Also sorry it’s so long, I couldn’t help myself

Losing 5 years of your life takes a toll. Waking up one day to realize that half of the population had aged 5 years past you while you were turned to dust, wiped from existence, that was a hard fact to accept. Support groups for those who had survived were replaced with support groups for those trying to accept that their partners had moved on, whose younger siblings were now older than them, whose loved ones had passed while they were gone. A lot had happened in those five years, and being thrown right back into it was difficult. 

When you came back, you suddenly woke up in your apartment. You had remembered hearing a strange noise on the street below and rushing to the window, but you couldn’t remember losing consciousness. Your confusion only grew as you looked around your room. It was almost unrecognizable. Your posters, pictures, and bedding were missing. In their place was decor that seemed to belong to a toddler. You tried to recall any of those things being there before you had passed out, but nothing was familiar. The only thing that reassured you that you were still in your room was the small letters carved into the windowsill. You and your sister had carved them there, your initials all in a row. Those 4 little letters had earned you quite the lecture from your parents, but the memory never failed to bring a smile to you. 

You looked down at the street through the window that you had been heading for before you passed out, and you were met with the sight of confused people flooding the street, some seeming to appear out of nowhere. You thought your mind was playing tricks on you, and quickly turned from the window to find your family. You needed something to ground you and kill the confusion. 

The second you opened your bedroom door, the smell of your sister’s favorite pasta dish filled your senses. She used to make it for you when you were upset. You never liked it much, but the kind gesture wasn’t something you would turn down. You took a few steps towards the kitchen, but your breath left you when you saw her. She was at the stove, her back to you, but her hair was inches longer than you could remember it ever being, and she seemed to have lost a significant amount of weight. 

“Rosie?” You called, your shaking voice filling the quiet apartment. Instead of turning, she gripped the handle of the oven and you could faintly hear her curse under her breath. 

“Rose, what’s going on?” you asked, hoping this time she would reply. Your confusion was making you panic, a feeling you had grown to know all too well in your lifetime. Rosie had always been there to help you through anything, and her reluctance to even turn around to face you was unsettling you even more. 

As you were about to ask her again, a key started to jingle in the lock of the front door, and a child rushed through. You couldn’t recognize the boy, but his bright eyes and nose shape shared a striking resemblance with Rosie. 

You looked up past the child to see your mother in the doorway, staring at you with tears in her eyes. She seemed unable to breathe and the groceries in her hands dropped to the floor.

“Mom? What’s wrong?” you asked, as Rosie shot around to help her mother. When she saw that her mother was looking up at you, she too lost her breath. The boy ran up to you and tugged on your pant leg. “You look like Auntie y/n!” he called, just making your panic set in more. Rosie rushed over, but slowed as she approached you. Her hand slowly reached out and caressed your cheek. 

“Y/n?” she cried, looking you over, unable to accept that you were really there. 

The rest of that first night back was filled with tears as your family caught you up. You had been the only one who had been dusted, but your father’s survivors guilt had eaten him alive. He drank himself to death 2 years after you left. Rosie had become pregnant a year after you had left, and little Christopher was born a few months before your father’s death. 

Rosie had been so disturbed by the events that she had begun to hallucinate you coming back. Her dreams, when she had them, were vivid and just as disturbing as reality. She had gone into extensive therapy, but nothing could make her miss you less. 

Christopher had known you and your father only through pictures and stories, but that didn’t stop him from loving you and sitting on your lap for the entire first night back. Both your mother’s and sister’s phones were blowing up with messages about other returned loved ones, but they paid no attention to it. They only wanted to be with you. 

That night, you all fell asleep in the living room. They couldn’t imagine parting with you now that you were back, not just yet.

As they snored on the couch, you watched the news on low volume. Stories of celebrities and world leaders returning were flooding the news. Old news anchors were brought on with their families, all smiling and recounting their memories, or lack thereof. It wasn’t until 2 am that you heard the news the only news that could have made things worse for you. 

Iron-Man was dead. 

You had already had trouble sleeping, but there was no way you could rest knowing that your childhood hero was dead. Tony Stark was looked down on by your family. He appeared pretentious in the media, especially before his Iron-Man days, but you knew better. He was selfless and caring. You had met him once, just a brief passing. He gave Rosie an autograph, but you just looked up at him in awe. He chuckled at your dumbfounded face and knelt down to eye-level with you. 

“And what’s your name, kiddo?” he had asked with a grin. 

You stuttered out your name, causing him to try to fight back another chuckle. 

“No need to be so nervous, I’m not anything special.”

He had left you with a pat on the head, and you watched with a huge grin on your face as he walked away. 

Looking back, you knew that all he meant was that he was human, nothing to get too excited over. That wasn’t what you took it as when you were a child though. You took his words to mean that the greatest superhero alive was just like you, meaning that you could grow up and be just like him. Of course you had chosen another career path, other than caped crusader, but he remained to be a big inspiration for you. 

You went to different memorials held across the city for Tony. Vigils popped up on every street corner, and graffiti depicting him in his suit were on hundreds of buildings all over New York. 

Your mother begged you not to go out every night, but you insisted that you had to pay your respects. If it wasn’t for Tony Stark, you would still be dead. 

Heading back to school was the hardest step. All of your close friends had aged, which seemed to be just your luck. Everyone else around you seemed to have at least one person in their life that had been dusted, someone else to relate to, but not you. 

You only had one year left, but turning up to see faces that had been in middle school last time you had seen them was difficult to accept. You asked your mother if you could drop out, but she refused. It was, of course, ultimately your decision, but you couldn’t imagine disappointing her. 

Looking at her had only served to feed your growing mental health problems. The bags under eyes were sunken and her hair was almost all grey, and you knew that you were the cause of the stress that had led her to look that way. Seeing Rosie had the same effect, only reminding you that your disappearance had made her mind play tricks on her. 

Your guilt was accompanied by frustration and confusion, and it all caused you to have nightly panic attacks. Christopher came into your room one night as you were on the ground sobbing, and you didn’t have the energy to say anything when he ran out to tell his mom what he had seen. Rosie rushed in and wrapped you in a hug, telling Christopher to go watch something on the television while she calmed you down. 

That was the event that caused your mother to sign you up for your support group. You argued that it would just be more depressing to be surrounded by people who were just as sad as you, but she begged you to try, so you agreed to go once. 

You showed up to a somber room filled with young adults. You recognized a few faces from school, students you didn’t even realize were dusted, and you almost just turned around and left, but the image of your mother made you stay. You couldn’t cause her more stress. 

There were 12 members to your group, along with a young man who ran the group. You listened to each teenager speak of their families, their friends, and other loved ones aging without them. One of them had been in love before the snap, he was planning on proposing to his girlfriend after graduation, even had the ring, but he was dusted and she wasn’t. When he came back, she was 5 years his senior and dating a boy she had met in her second year of college. You thanked whatever powers that be that you hadn’t been in love before. Coming back to your life was already difficult enough, but you couldn’t imagine losing someone like that. 

The stories went around the group, and finally the man running the group came to a boy directly across the circle from you. His eyes were filled with tears, and he tried to ask to not speak, but the instructor insisted that he at least introduce himself. 

“Ok, uhm, I’m Peter. I was 17, and I should be 22 now. I’m lucky enough to not have really lost much more than I already have. My friends were mostly dusted with me. The only people I left behind were… uh, my Aunt May, and… and that’s it.” 

You could tell he was going to say someone else, but there was something holding him back. The instructor thanked him for speaking, calling him brave, which just made him scoff under his breath. 

After a couple more people shared their story, the instructor, who you learned was named Kyle, asked you to speak. You were too timid to do presentations in class, and you were never one for talking to strangers, but something came over you in that moment. 

“I’m y/n. I’m… or I guess I was 17. My birthday is in two weeks, and it feels weird to say I’ll be 18. I feel like I should be saying I’ll be 23, but when I think about it, it just… upsets me more.”

You were hesitant to really open up. In reality, the thought of your age would send you into panic attacks. But those strangers didn’t need to know about all the times you had collapsed onto your bedroom floor gasping for air as you tried to think about something, anything other than your reality. 

“Do you want to tell us about anyone you may have lost?”

You took a second to think. You didn’t like how Kyle put it. He hadn’t been dusted, he didn’t understand that using the word “lost” hurt you more than anything. You hadn’t really lost anyone but your father, but of course Kyle didn’t know about him. Everyone else was still alive, but Kyle’s question did nothing but remind you that you had been “lost” to them for those five years. You had “lost” the mother you had had before. Her smile would never be the same because of you. You had “lost” your happy and loving sister. She now had hallucinations because of her grief over losing you. Your temper was a moment away from getting the best of you, but you took a deep breath and shook your head. You couldn’t talk about that right now. 

After the next person shared, Kyle called the meeting for the night. He said that he would be holding the next youth support group on that Thursday, two days away. You knew right away that you wouldn’t be going back. 

You began to walk home in the dark, cruising yourself for forgetting to bring gloves to the meeting. As you walked, you spotted Peter from the group walking ahead of you. Just as you had had the courage to speak suddenly in the meeting, you suddenly had the courage to approach him and strike up a conversation. 

“Hey, Peter,” you called, instantly regretting every decision you had ever made that had led you up to that moment. Your mind blanked and forgot how normal conversations carried on. 

“Uh, hey… y/n right?” he asked, trying to sound calm and collected although his eyes were still red from holding back tears. 

“That’s me.”

“What’s up?” he asked, and you could sense that he was a little uncomfortable in the conversation. 

“This is probably over the line, but I know you were holding back in there.” Blunt, nice one y/n.

“What?”

Both of your paces slowed as a silence fell over both of you. 

“For me it was my dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“The person I lost. And I mean really lost. I know we all lost time with the people we loved, but… I think we both lost someone that we can’t get back.”

“How did you lose him?”

“Survivor’s guilt I guess. I mean, of course, I wasn’t there so I wouldn’t know. But from what I’ve been told, I gave him so much guilt that he drank himself into an early grave.”

“Shit… I-I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Well I mean not fine, it’s almost like the guilt just transferred to me. But nothing you need to apologize about.”

You tried to say it in the most humorous way possible, but it was obviously the truth. He just nodded, letting the silence fall back over you. He kicked a few pebbles as you walked and refused to look up from the sidewalk. 

“I understand not wanting to talk about it, especially in a God awful therapy group, but… if you ever need or want someone to listen, I got you.”

“Thanks,” he smiled, glancing up at you slightly. 

You took his phone and gave him your number before you parted ways to continue your walks towards your apartments. 

Peter had been just as nervous as you to go to the support group. Aunt May had begged him to talk to someone, but it was difficult for him to find someone who understood. Sure, his best friend, Ned, had been dusted too, but he had been at home and came back in his own bed. The only thing he had lost was the 5 years. That didn’t mean that he didn’t have some difficulties accepting it, but it was just different for Peter. 

He had come back on a foreign planet surrounded by people he had only know for a matter of hours. He had been transported to a battlefield where he had to fight for his life along with the fate of the Universe, for the second time, and that wasn’t even the worst of it. 

He had reunited with Tony for a single moment, one that under any other circumstance he would have loved to look back on, but now only caused him pain. He had gotten to finally hug his mentor, his idol, his father figure, just to have to watch him die moments later. And it wasn’t a fast, painless, clean death. The image of Tony sitting half alive as Peter cried and tried to tell him they had won, that was the worst of it all. 

Peter had been having vivid nightmares every night since he had come back. Some nights it was Thanos violently killing him, pinning him down and choking him or crushing him to death while he hopelessly tried to fight his way from his grasp. Other nights it was just Tony’s face, his sunken eyes boring into Peters skull were nothing to the uncharacteristic silence that came from him. No matter what it was, he would wake up sobbing, but always tried to keep quiet so he wouldn’t worry May. 

He didn’t want to go to a support group just to have to hear about other people’s same old story. It wasn’t like he could just say, “I was there when TONY FUCKING STARK DIED.” That would give away his identity, and he couldn’t have that. But May was practically begging him to try it out, so he had gone, promising he would go to just one meeting, just as you had promised your mother. You had both fully intended on holding up your end of your bargains and nothing more, but meeting each other made you rethink. 

Peter was almost happy (if you could call it that) to meet someone who had lost someone like he had. Sure it wasn’t the same, but there was a similarity that gave him some comfort. 

You were happy to meet someone that didn’t make you want to puke from nerves. Something about him made you feel like your life wasn’t such a terrible waste. 

You were a bit reluctant to go back that Thursday, but you found yourself craving interaction with Peter. It was exhausting dealing with people who pretended to understand, who thought that just because someone they loved disappeared, they knew exactly what you had gone through. Sure they had lived 5 years without someone, but that was just it, they had lived. You had been dead for five years, there was a big difference in the type of trauma you had experienced. 

You had also realized that you had given Peter the wrong number by mistake, and felt terrible enough that you had to show up at group to apologize and give him the right one. 

You stepped into the familiar room of the rec center and instantly recognized Peter from across the room. He was awkwardly standing near the circle of chairs, far enough from everyone else so he wouldn’t be pulled into a conversation. 

“So, I can explain,” you said, approaching him with a guilty smile.

“Explain what?” he chuckled. 

“I don’t know if you happened to text me…”

“I did.”

“Well, get this, I must have forgotten that I fucking died for 5 years, and in turn, my phone died 5 years ago. So I kinda gave you my old phone number, and didn’t get anything from you.”

He let out a genuine laugh at your light humor. He couldn’t recall anyone else making a lighthearted joke about dying, and he found it refreshing. It was nice to not have you tiptoe around him. 

You took his phone and gave him your number, the right one this time, but this didn’t stop him from teasing you about it until Kyle called for the group to start. 

The group mostly went the same way that it had the time before. Kyle helped organize who would speak when, asking if there was anything anyone was have troubles dealing with, anything anyone wanted to get off their chest, etc. 

Then he came to you. 

“Y/n, on Tuesday you were having some trouble speaking about who you lost. Do you feel ready to discuss it with us this time?”

There it was again. The word lost. And the reminder of what you had done to your family. You were the reason your father died and what family remained was miserable. 

“Not today.”

“Are you sure? We’re all here to support you. We all lost someone too.”

“Did we, Kyle? Did we all lose someone?”

“…What do you mean?”

“I mean, some of us in here really get loss. Some of us really lost someone that is never coming back, or lost the time that served to take away our loved ones, and you sure as hell aren’t one of us. So I’d appreciate if you’d use that term more conservatively.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know it would upset you. Is there a reason you don’t like it?”

“Holy fuck, Kyle. You really don’t get it do you? You may have “lost” someone, but they came back to you. You can’t make that time up with them, sure, but you got to live through those five years. You got to experience life while they were gone, and now you get spent the rest of your life with them. Some of us don’t get that, Kyle.”

You were visibly shaking when you finished. Some of the people in the circle were looking at you like you were about to beat them up. You had never had an outburst like that, and you were a little afraid of yourself as well. You made short eye contact with Peter, who was sitting right next to you. He just gave you a small, sympathetic smile. If it had come from Kyle, you would have officially lost your shit, but from Peter, you felt understanding. Whatever it was that he had gone through, it made him understand what you were going through. 

“Ok, I understand, and you’re right, I didn’t lose someone permanently. Maybe if you tell me about your experience, I can be better about that.”

Your breathing picked up pace, realizing that you had cornered yourself into sharing with the group. You didn’t know if you were ready to speak from your own experience, but you didn’t want your outburst to be the last image that group of peers had of you. 

“I didn’t lose 5 years of my life. I’m still 17. I lost 5 years of everyone else’s lives. And that is what I’ll never get back. And everything I lost, everything they lost, it’s all because of me. Sure they spent 5 years dealing with the loss of me, and they changed from that, but now they have me back. And now I have to live the rest of my life knowing that I’m at fault for everything that happened to them.”

“But nothing that happened is in any way your fault. It was random selection. Half of all life disappeared. None of that can be blamed on you.”

“You really don’t get it.”

“Then explain it to me. I am ignorant to your experience, y/n. To all of your experiences. The only way I can learn to help you, all of you, is if you explain.”

“All I’m saying is that if I could have chosen, I would have reversed the order. I would have suffered through those 5 years alone if it meant I could have my family back.”

“I think she’s just trying to say that it’s hard to deal with the aftermath of the time we missed. We have been thrown blindly into the destruction of those five years,” Peter spoke up beside you. It was the first time he had voluntarily spoken. “I mean, my Aunt cried for a week even after I came back. She’s been through so much already, but even when my Uncle died, I hadn’t seen her so devastated. And it was because of me. I agree, it wasn’t our fault, but that doesn’t keep us from feeling guilty about causing them so much pain.”

Sure, that wasn’t all you were trying to say, but you silently thanked Peter for speaking up as a chorus of nods and murmured agreements sounded in the group. 

You actually thanked Peter after the group was over. You were surprisingly not on the verge of panic, but you still could feel the tears brimming your eyes trying to avoid the topic of your father. 

“There’s no need to thank me. I could sense you were drowning with that answer. It wasn’t fair of him to single your trauma out like that.”

You just nodded and smiled. 

Peter got into the habit of walking you home after group on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Every once in a while he would bring you a snack for the walk home, which you thought was nothing short of adorable. One observation was becoming overly evident though. Peter never spoke in group. When he did, it was just piggybacking off of other things, or to help you form your sentences (which you thanked him endlessly for). But you began to notice that you really didn’t know anything about what had happened to him, or his “experience” as Kyle would call it. All you knew about him was that he lived with his Aunt May and that his best friend was named Ned. Those were the only two things he would talk about from his life, but you were always happy to hear about them. Talking about them seemed to bring him joy.

And that was the other thing you noticed. Peter seemed sad. Sure, everyone was sad, it was a support group for people who had been dead for 5 years after all. But Peter took the crown for the saddest person there. He only smiled at your terrible jokes, and even then, they were small. You worried about him, but it became hard to worry about him and yourself at the same time. 

You tried to sneak in some questions during your walks home, but you were always met with a Politician level avoidance of your questions. He would always find a way to reroute it. 

No matter how much he trusted you, or how much he liked you, Peter couldn’t tell you about Tony. It was hard for him, he wanted to open up to you. He wanted to just break down and tell you everything. He sensed that you would know just what to say, or not say for that matter. He knew you’d be there to hold him while he recounted looking into Tony’s eyes as the life left them, but that would mean that he would have to tell you that he was Spiderman, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. 

That didn’t mean he wasn’t filled with guilt every time you tried and failed to get him to open up. He hated to watch the disappointment on your face when he would find a way out of answering your questions, something that he had perfected with everyone who had asked him how he was doing. 

About a month after you had started going to the support group, you started to have difficulty sleeping. Something about the dark suddenly terrified you. One night, around 3 am, you woke up from a nightmare about your family. Your initial instinct was to rush to Rosie’s room. She had always been there for you when you would have nightmares as a kid and you didn’t want to wake your parents. But now Rosie was an exhausted single mother that was still recovering from the mental health problem that you had caused. So you couldn’t rush to her. But there was no way you could be alone. Not now. 

You reached for your phone on your small nightstand and quickly tapped on Peter’s contact and called him. You only realized that he was probably asleep after the third ring, but you breathed a guilty sigh of relief when he picked up. 

“Hey, y/n? What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding fully alert, as if he hadn’t been asleep after all. 

“Were you sleeping?” you choked out. 

“Uhm… no. No, I wasn’t. Are you crying?”

“…Yeah.”

“What’s going on? Do I need to come over?”

“You don’t know where I live,” you giggled. 

You could hear him let out a small sigh of relief when he heard you laugh.

“Wouldn’t stop me,” he chuckled, “What’s going on?”

“I had a nightmare. I know it’s dumb, I shouldn’t have called. I just didn’t want to be alone.” 

Your sniffling broke his heart. He really wanted to come over and hold you. He wanted you to know you were safe with him. He was already out anyway, patrolling as Spiderman. But that was another reason he couldn’t go see you. He couldn’t exactly show up in his bright red and blue suit and not have you ask questions. So he did the most he could do. He put his night on hold to stay on the line with you. 

“It’s not dumb. And I’m glad you called me, so don’t apologize.” 

“Peter, I’m a 17 year old who cries after bad dreams. It’s a little pathetic.”

“No, it’s…”

“It is, Peter. God, I’m sorry, I should let you sleep. Thanks for picking up.”

“Don’t you dare hang up.”

Your heart beat a little fast at his outburst. It wasn’t with fear, like it had been before you picked up your phone. It was something else. 

“You called me for a reason. I don’t give a shit what it was. Just… just talk to me. Please.” 

You nodded your head, but stopped once you realized he couldn’t see you. 

“I’m tired, Pete.”

He had never heard you call him that. It was cute, but the circumstances wouldn’t let him dwell on the butterflies he felt when you used that nickname. 

“Do you want to try going back to sleep?”

“No, not that kind of tired.”

He instantly understood. Just a month into support group, there were only 8 people left. 4 of the others had decided they didn’t need it anymore. They had found ways to cope. But you two had lost something that cut you so deeply. It was hard to deal with. It wasn’t just a part of your life, it was your entire being, and it was exhausting to deal with the grief and guilt every waking minute. And now you were both having nightmares. Not even sleep was an escape anymore. 

“Do you want to talk about the dream?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, can I tell you about my night?”

“Sure,” you smiled, still sniffling but no longer crying. 

Peter went on to tell you some mundane stories about his dinner out with his aunt, and how he had managed to lose another backpack, which was apparently a problem he had had for a few years. After a few more stories about Ned and him at school, you were giggling and starting to fall back asleep. 

“Hey, Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for picking up.”

“Of course. I’ve got you,” he chuckled, quoting the first night you had met. 

“I…I really appreciate you Peter. I hope you know that.”

“I appreciate you too.”

That was the closest you could come to telling each other you loved each other so early on in your friendship. 

“You sound sleepy. Do you want to go to sleep?”

“Can you tell me one more story about May?”

He smiled at your request. You had told him a couple times that she sounded like a strong woman and that you wished you could be like her. He had the same opinion, and loved that you looked up to her, so he was happy to tell you one more. He began to tell you about how she always dances when she makes him dinner. She wasn’t the best cook, and she sure knew it, but it always made him smile to see her happily gliding around on the tile. It was one of the things that reminded him that the two of them were going to be ok, especially after he came back. 

As he neared the end of the story, he could hear small snores from your side of the line. 

“Y/n?” he asked, just to be sure you were unconscious. He smiled when the only reply was a snore. 

“Goodnight,” he whispered, taking a few moments to listen to your peaceful breathing before he took the phone away from his ear to hang up. He was more than happy to have helped you fall back asleep. He had actually been awake because he had had a dream about Tony, and there was no way he could have fallen asleep afterwards. 

His nightmares about Tony had started to become peaceful dreams. It would just be Tony talking to him, making some dumb jokes just like he used to do. But the second Peter woke up, it was almost worse than the nightmares. The void in his heart was filled by the dreams, but the second he would gain consciousness, it was ripped out of him again. So he had gotten into the habit of sleeping for a few hours when May would go to bed, and when he would have the dreams, he would wake up and go out as Spiderman. He would usually perch next to one of the murals of Tony. He would just stare at the paint as he thought. Sometimes, when he was sure no one was around to hear him, he would talk to himself as if Tony was there to listen. Every once in a while Karen would ask if everything was ok, almost as if even his AI could tell he was falling apart, but he would always simply reply “No, thanks” and continue talking to “Tony”. 

That’s where he was when you called him, and when you hung up, he looked back up to the painting and smiled, his mask covering only his forehead at this point. 

“You would have loved her Mr. Stark. She’s got the same sense of humor as you. If I didn’t know better, I would swear you’re related,” he chuckled. 

Peter took a deep breath and pulled his mask back over his face, a little reluctant to go back home, but talking to you had made him feel more at ease than he thought was possible, and he wanted to get some sleep. The night was quiet anyway, no one needed Spiderman. 

After 2 months of walking you home twice a week, Peter didn’t show up to group. It was the first Tuesday of the month, and you would be lying if you said you didn’t almost walk straight out the door. Kyle saw you ready to leave and asked you to stay, and you felt too awkward to leave, so you took your usual seat. 

Suddenly group was a scary environment. You had spent 2 months with that group, whose members scarcely changed, but suddenly they were all strangers that you had no desire to be around. 

Kyle opened the meeting by asking you how you had been doing, and if there was anything you would like to share. 

“Not today.”

“Are you sure? You seem a bit anxious.”

Great, just what you needed, someone pointing out your anxiety in a group setting. Fucking superb, Kyle. 

You had learned that if you denied, Kyle would try to pester you into sharing. You knew he was just there to try to help you open up and deal with your emotions, but man did he annoy you. 

“I just don’t want to talk right now. Maybe later.” That was enough to satisfy him for another 20 minutes.

But after those 20 minutes he came back to you, and you still weren’t ready. 

“Y/n? You about ready?” 

You just shook your head. 

“Y/n, I know you’re hesitant about sharing, but I hope you know that we aren’t here to judge you in any way. We just want to listen. Why don’t you tell us a little about your family. I know you care a lot for them.”

“Kyle…”

“You have a sister, don’t you?” he asked, recalling the single time you had let her name slip in group. 

You let out a sigh, knowing you weren’t going to get out of it a second time. There was no way you were going to be talking about Rosie though. You hadn’t even told Peter about her. 

“I do, but there’s nothing to tell.”

“Nothing? In my experience, the more you avoid a topic, the more it’s hurting you. What’s the worst that can happen if you talk about her?”

Your breathing began to pick up as he pestered on. You tried to remind yourself he was just trying to help, just trying to make a breakthrough with the most difficult teen there. But that didn’t stop you from going over the edge. 

Your mind started to race, thinking of Rosie. You tried not to think about the first time you saw her when you got back. When you had said her name and she refused to turn around. Her ignoring you hurt a little, sure, but nothing compared to the little curses under her breath, the way her back tensed, or the tears you spotted when she turned to help your mother. You could physically see the pain you had caused her. You left her alone for 5 years. It was all your fault, all your fault, all your fault. 

Your mind kept chanting that at you as tears started to brim your eyes. You tried to get the image back out of your head, but Kyle had opened up the flood gates that you had successfully closed up weeks prior. You’d admit, you had started to feel a little numb, but you preferred that over the overwhelming panic that would take over your body any time you had a thought. But here you were, having yet another panic attack. 

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” you mumbled and grabbed your bag, rushing out the door as Kyle called after you. Nothing could have made you turn around though. There was no way you were going to ride out a panic attack in a room full of strangers. There was also no way you were going to walk home alone during a panic attack, so instead, you rounded the corner of the building and went into the alley. You had some pepper spray in your bag that you had readily available at all times, just in case, and you kept your hand on it as a security item, hoping it would calm you down. 

You sat in the alley, despite some shuffling noises coming from the other end, hoping that you would be able to slow your breathing and stop crying before the group was excused. You wanted to get far away from there before anyone could see you. 

Peter had been caught up on the other side of town. Despite the urge to hang up the suit after what had happened to Tony, he wore it every night. Sometimes he would go out before group, when he really needed to clear his mind. Most of the time though, it was just the late nights spent talking to the murals in his spider suit. 

That night was different though. He had been on his way to group, but caught a couple teens trying to rob a convenience store. He had decided to stay until the police showed up, and just his luck, the police ended up taking almost 30 minutes to get there. 

When he had finally arrived, he was quick to try to take his suit off and shove it into the backpack he always brought to group, but he only had his mask off when you had rushed around the corner and began to sob. 

Peter quickly ducked behind the dumpster he was next to, out of sight of you. He was going to wait for whoever had entered the alley to leave, but as he waited, he began to recognize the cries as yours and quickly pulled the mask back over his head and made his way over to you. 

In hindsight, the smart decision may have been to quickly change before he came up to you, so he could have approached you as himself and not Spider-man, but Peter wasn’t quick on his feet when it came to you. He just needed to make sure you were ok. 

“You ok?” he asked, standing a few feet away, trying to make his voice sound deeper than it really was. It worked to disguise his identity while you were still hyperventilating. 

You jumped when he spoke, almost pulling out your mace, but you eased when you saw the suit. You recognized him as Spider-man, the man who had been working with Tony Stark off and on for a few years before you had gotten dusted. You heard that he had disappeared as well, and people suspected he was dusted since he had been spotted a few times after everyone had returned. You were happy to see that he really was back. 

The most you could do to reply to him was shake your head. Words were a lost cause at the moment, and you weren’t even going to try. He knelt down in front of you, putting one hand on your knee. 

“Is this ok?” he asked, hesitant to touch you. All he wanted to do was wrap you up in a hug, but he knew it could be overwhelming. 

You nodded your head and closed your eyes, trying to calm your breathing, but it was hard. 

“Here,” he cooed, taking your hand and placing it on his chest so you could feel the rise and fall, “Just try to breathe with me, ok?”

You did your best to do as he asked you, and soon enough you had calmed down enough that you felt like you could walk home. You had begun to think clearly, and you suddenly realized, holy shit, Spiderman just coached you through a panic attack. 

“Uhm, th-thanks. I should be getting home.”

“Aren’t you going inside?”

“No, why would I….” and that was the moment you recognized the voice that had been calming you down for the last few minutes, “Oh my God, Peter?”

Spiderman grew flustered and tried to play it off, much like Peter would have if you had asked him any personal question. 

“No, don’t even try, I know your voice and your mannerisms too well.”

“I’m sorry, I really don’t know who you’re talking about.” 

You reached out and took his hand, looking into where you assumed his eyes would be, although you couldn’t tell with the whites blocking them. “Pete, please.”

After a few beats, he sighed, helping you to your feet and further down the alley, out of the line of sight of anyone who may have been passing the alley. He reached up and grabbed the back of the mask, pulling it over the back of his head to reveal the mess of brown hair beneath. 

“Holy shit,” you said under your breath. He tried not to laugh at your dumbfounded face. He knew he was supposed to be frustrated, devastated even, that someone had found out, but it was you. He had wanted to tell you anyway, he just knew that he shouldn’t. But now it was out, so, oh well. 

As he was accepting that you now knew, you were piecing it all together. Mainly just the fact that Peter refused to talk about his “experience”. He refused to talk about who he had lost, but never denied that he lost someone, and now you knew why. It was Tony Stark. You knew Spiderman had worked closely with him, but “Peter” hadn’t, so there was no way for him to truthfully tell you what had happened. 

You quickly wrapped him in a hug, tighter than you previously though you were capable of, especially after a panic attack. Peter was quick to reciprocate the hug, but his concern was still on you. 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, holding your head tightly against his chest. 

“I’m so sorry,” you stated, trying to keep it together. Losing Tony, to you, was painful enough, but you couldn’t imagine coping with that loss if you had known him personally. 

“For what?”

“Tony,” you replied simply. The one word, that one name, was enough to break Peter, and it sure did, especially coming from your lips. 

He hugged you tighter, and you could feel a few tears hit your forehead. You had expected Peter to be upset, but when his knees started to buckle it surprised you. Despite his constant downcast demeanor, he had been your rock for the past 2 months. He rarely showed any signs of weakness. But you mentioning Tony had torn him back down and opened up emotional doors that he thought he had permanently shut. It felt as if he had lost Tony all over again, like it was real again. 

The visions of Tony were dancing around in his head, both the good and the bad. As he held you, he let himself think of Tony, let himself open up to feel that hurt, because with you, he knew he wouldn’t get lost in those emotions forever. 

You guided Peter to sit down, his back against the wall of the alley. You sat to the side of him, facing towards the wall and leaning over just enough for him to still hold you and rest his forehead in the crook of your neck as he sobbed. You held him close as you ran your fingers through his hair, whispering quiet affirmations and hoping he could hear you over his cries.  

You tried not to cry as you held him. hoping that you could give him the same emotional support that he had offered those past weeks. You tried to calm him as he tried his best not to scream. 

Eventually, Peter’s sobs turned into soft crying and sniffling, but your hold on him didn’t loosen. When he finally pulled away, you kept one hand on his shoulder, making sure he knew that you were still there for him if he needed you. He shyly looked at you out of the corner of his eye as he sniffled. 

“Can I… can I take you somewhere?”

“Sure,” you agreed with hesitation, nervous to go anywhere with him in that state, but you trusted him and hoped that going along would only serve to soothe him.  

You helped him up and you watched in confusion as he pulled the mask back over his face, but didn’t say anything as he awkwardly approached you and put one arm around your waist. 

“This ok?” he asked for the second time that night. 

“Of course.”

“Ok, hang on tight.” 

You wrapped your arms around his neck and within seconds you were in the air. Any fear or unease you had was left on the ground. You were squealing with excitement and, although you couldn’t see it, Peter’s crying had subsided into a smile listening to you. 

When you finally stopped on the top of a random building, you giggled as you let him go. He removed his mask and gave you an ambivalent smile. 

When you looked around to see where you were, you recognized the building opposite of you instantly. Of all the vigils, memorials, and shrines made out for Iron man, this one was your favorite. It was a large painting of him on an old building. It was vibrant and showed Tony Stark as you had liked to imagine him: confident and care-free. You had known, of course, that the carefree part was a stretch for someone who ran a billion dollar business and fought major crime at the same time, but you wished he had some peace in his life.

The third night after you had come back, you had been walking home after the fifth memorial service of that night. They had been popping up all over the city and you had made a point to attend as many as you could. You were lost in thought, dark scenarios consuming your mind, when you came upon the artist painting that mural. You were suddenly flooded with peace upon looking at the half finished painting of Tony’s face. You ended up sitting on the sidewalk across the street, a wistful smile peeking on your lips as tears filled your eyes. 

Peter had also come across that mural being painted that night. He sat 100 feet above you, on the edge of the building, sobbing as he pleaded with the universe to send the real Tony back. Both of you were oblivious to each other, but you had both shared the same experience with that mural. 

“What are we doing here?” You asked Peter. 

“I…I think I’m ready to talk about it.”

You nodded and walked towards the end of the building, sitting on the wide edge. Peter took a spot next to you, but his gaze remained on the painting. 

He recounted every single memory he had from that day, from fighting Thanos back in 2017, to getting dusted, and coming back on Titan in 2023 with no memory of the years he lost. He told you how he was transported back to Earth and how he had to fight Thanos’ entire army, trying his best to protect the fate of humanity, a responsibility that shouldn’t have been on anyone, especially someone of his age. He told you all of this with tears barely pricking at his eyes. 

Then he told you about the moment Tony saved everyone. He watched on the other side of the battlefield as he snapped, and as the opposing army all turned to dust, he kept his gaze on Tony. He watched as Tony’s body began to wither away. He told you that he tried to tell him, he tired to tell Tony that they had won because of him, but he was too weak to respond. He had no idea if Tony had heard him, but he had to back away to let Pepper say goodbye.  But he was still right there, watching as Tony died. Peter told you this, sobbing just as hard as he had that day. You did your best to soak up every word, but it was hard to catch it all between his gasps for air. 

You sat side by side, your arms around his shoulder as he slumped down to rest his head on yours. You wanted to hold him and comfort him, but you didn’t even know where to start. So you did all that you could do. You sat with him while he let out everything he had been holding in. 

“Pete, have you told anyone else about all of this?” you asked. The thought of him dealing with that trauma on his own for so long broke your heart. 

“I mean, May and Ned know about me being Spiderman. And they know I was there when he died. But I try not worry them with the details.”

“You idiot,” you said before you could really think about it. 

“Ouch,” he chuckled. 

“I don’t mean it like that. You just… You need to talk to someone Peter. You can’t just keep that stuff bottled up.”

“But I did, I just told you.”

“Yeah, I know, but you shouldn’t have kept it in for so long. I know you couldn’t have told me, but you should have told someone.” 

You held him a little tighter just imagining how he must have felt those past few months. You didn’t want to let him go. You were almost afraid that if you let go, he would fall to pieces next to you. 

“You know, the same sentiment goes to you.”

“What sentiment?”

“You need to tell someone. I mean, preferably me because I’m so invested at this point,” he chuckled, earning a small hit on his shoulder, “But seriously. I know there are things you haven’t said. Things that are eating you alive. And no one can make you talk, but I’m right here when you’re ready.”

You replied with a small yawn, and Peter immediately pulled away. 

“Are you tired, do you want me to take you home?”

“No, I want to stay here for a while. With you.”

He smiled and pulled you back into him. It was starting to get cold outside, but sharing your body heat was keeping you warm enough to remain looking at the mural of Tony. 

You knew that this was a pivotal point in your relationship with Peter. This night was going to be the start of an amazing friendship, and you hoped that would lead to even more. You also knew that in the morning, after you had rested, you would be ready to tell Peter some of the things you needed to get off your chest, and you hoped that that would be the next step in healing. But until then, you were content to drift off on top of the roof with Peter’s arms wrapped tightly around you. His heartbeat was the only thing you could hear as you began to fall asleep. 

When you started to snore, Peter glanced down at you and smiled. He hadn’t seen you look so peaceful in the few months that he had known you, and he was happy to see you rest. 

He looked up at the mural across from him and smiled. 

“Told you you would love her,” he smiled, a few tears coming to his eyes, “I think I love her too.”

You began to stir and mumbled out “You say something?”

“No, don’t worry about it” he smiled, tears still in his eyes. He was overwhelmed with all kinds of emotions from the events of the night, but overall, the happiness was what was consuming him. “Go back to sleep,” He whispered, combing his fingers through your hair. 

Tags: @embrace-themagic @fanficparker @baconlover001 @chloe-geoghegan1 @chonisberonica @spiderlingsweb @steviesbell

[falsehoped]

@more-than-a-princess​​ from here.

It took her four slices of thick-sliced ciabatta bread dipped in olive oil for Sonia to realize he wasn't coming. She'd arrived nearly twenty minutes early (which was on-time for Sonia), and she'd held off pilfering the bread basket for the next forty. Her table, situated next to the window of the dimly lit Italian restaurant and the best in Towa City, gave her a clear view of the sidewalk so she could wait in anticipation. For the first time, Sonia Nevermind had, with Chiaki's help, set up an online social media profile just like normal students. With a fake name and no photographs of herself, she'd enjoyed adding photos to her feed (or 'curating,' that was what normal students called it) and interacting with those who commented, until she met a boy.

According to his profile, his name was Yosuke, a first year at Towa University who spoke four languages, enjoyed scary movies, and to quote his bio, was "living a completely boring life." She'd been apprehensive at first when he'd asked her if she'd like to have dinner, far more worried about being recognized for who she was than being kidnapped or worse, but with enough encouragement from her friends she'd put on one of her nice (but not too nice) dresses, a pair of heels, and her most discreet pearl and diamond jewelry to indulge in a taste of home. Yosuke was familiar with some French and Italian (alongside English and Japanese) and had traveled, so it had been an easy choice for her when she admitted it had been a long time since she'd indulged in proper European cuisine. As she fiddled with the straw in her glass of lemon soda, Sonia tried to tell herself it was just a meeting of two friends, but as the clock on the wall ticked on, it felt less and less like a missed meeting and more like a date. A date that wasn't destined to occur. She'd seen them played out in dramas, as heroines sat at a table all night and ran through the possible outcomes via voiceover: he was in the hospital, there was a death in the family, he turned out to be a criminal and had gotten arrested on the way, or the most depressing of all: he'd taken one look at her and turned the other way.

"Miss, will you still be needing this chair?" The server asked, head tilted to the side as if he too were trying to riddle out how a young, blonde foreign girl was sitting alone at one of the most sought-after date restaurants in the city.

"Yes, yes I will need it!" Sonia interjected, louder than she'd intended and causing the occupants of the four nearest tables to set down their utensils and look in her direction, most in annoyance that their meal was being interrupted. "I promise, he will soon arrive. He's simply late."

"If you say so, Miss," The server acquiesced with a sigh, filling her water glass before disappearing back into the kitchen. Sonia watched him go with a sigh of her own as she felt her stomach rumble. She was in the mood to either chatter amiably or drown her sorrows in a bowl of pasta. Either way, she'd be spared of her classmates at Hope's Peak Academy seeing the sorry state her night had turned out to be. There was a term for this, something about standing, but if she tried to pinpoint it the next day when she told her friends the events of the night before, they'd surely correct her if not demand more details as to who would stand up the Ultimate Princess and why.

A fifth piece of ciabatta and her gaze on her phone, face up on the table and waiting for a distress text to arrive, distracted her sufficiently enough that she didn't notice the chair across from her being pulled away from the white tablecloth or the body that sank down into it. Only after she'd swallowed her first bite did Sonia, rather inelegantly, drop the bread down onto its plate as she stared across the table. He certainly looked familiar, but he wasn't Yosuke. From his picture, Yosuke's hair was lightened to a reddish type shade and cut short, while the boy across from her kept his a natural black and rather long, with sections falling over his eyes. He also never smiled, a stark contrast from the social media profile she found herself checking every night before she went to sleep.

"Ah...may I help you?" She asked gently with a soft, weary smile. Even when confused and hurting, manners mattered, and putting on a good face made all the difference. At least that was how the Ultimate Princess was taught to behave. "I do not think you are the person I was originally supposed to be meeting."

of course, you have your own reasons for being in one of the most prestigious restaurants in towa city, but they are needlessly complicated and perhaps even a little contrived. you are in the debt of someone who owes a favour to someone else who owes a favour to someone else and so on and so forth. you’re not particularly a fan of being so many people’s errand boy, but that’s just how things are and you don’t exactly have much else to do, do you? you end up spending the evening going from place to place, easily moving from one half of towa city to the other in a few hours. 

you got here about two hours ago, and had given your name to the waiter and headed straight into the kitchen, arriving just in time to prevent an argument from breaking out between the sous chef and the commis chef- likely saving the commis chef from getting fired, all things considered. is there something about you that just screams errand boy? is there? you’d like to know. is it written on your forehead that people can just ask you to do anything and you’ll graciously accept? the restaurant is a little understaffed tonight, not that anyone eating would be able to guess, and they make you wash dishes while you wait for some idiot named hachiro to get back from wherever the hell he’s wandered off to. you’re only supposed to be here to deliver a box, but this too is quickly turning into one of the most bothersome nights you’ve had in a long while.

when he gets back, you give him the box and what is by your standards, several extremely sharp words and a piece of your damn mind. you really don’t care that he starts crying, because it’s not your problem. all you care is that you’re done for the night, and you can eventually make your way back to your dorm and sit down for a while.

on your way out, some poor girl yelling at a waiter catches your attention. you stare at the scene for a moment, trying to work out what’s going on. she... has been here for a while. about an hour, from the gossip you’d heard in the kitchen. she has not ordered yet. you see the pitying look the waiter gives her before he goes, and you wait a moment before you sit down at the table with her. 

she is surprised to see you, and you recognise the exhausted look in her eyes. “your date is not coming.” you say bluntly. you find yourself recognising this girl- from her accent she is from somewhere in europe, perhaps lichtenstein or novoselic, though her japanese is otherwise at fluent level, and her appearance shows that she has a considerable amount of wealth but does not want to flaunt it at the current moment. it’s then that you piece it together: this is sonia nevermind, ultimate princess. she attends hope’s peak academy. 

“i am hungry. i have never eaten at a restaurant like this, and it is notoriously difficult to book a table. i will buy you dinner.” you are a little hungry, that’s true, but you also want to figure out why anyone would stand up a girl like sonia nevermind. the very idea seems... silly, though you suppose you don’t have much experience with these things, nor are you particularly interested in women, not even women as objectively beautiful as this princess. “it is mutually beneficial. i would like something to eat, and you can claim i was just exceptionally late.” 

she doesn’t have to agree, but you figure you might as well offer.

[morethanaprincess-a]

Hiraeth + Sonia and Sophie :D

Non-translatable word prompts

Hiraeth -  : A particular type of longing for the homeland or the romanticised past

Sophie had had a bad week. That much was clear to Sonia, from her less-than-usual talkative self and how much time she shut herself away in her atelier, working on a new creation. One that had to be better than the last, something brilliant and beautiful. Perhaps she questioned her talent, or she’d had an altercation with another student or even with her family, thousands of miles away. But after a week of bringing her food on a tray and leaving small sachets of tea on each one, hoping the bursts of flavor in the form of flowers, caramel, and citrus would soothe whatever ailed her, the Ultimate Princess had had enough. She was going to distract one of her closest friends with something even Sophie wasn’t immune to: the pub.

Even Towa City had a place for expats to gather. And for lunch, no one looked twice at two foreign teenage girls (well, barring the few gaijin hunters who lingered by the door, eager to chat up anyone attractive who entered and looked vaguely European, American, or Canadian). Sonia sat across the small wooden table from Sophie, careful not to balance her lemonade over the various grooves of steak knives and possibly broken glass in the surface. The place was popular to watch football and rugby matches from various clubs around the UK, but they’d visited on a quieter afternoon and therefore blessed with peaceful conversation instead of raucous crowds. But Sonia had selected the day based on the menu available online: the daily specials changed and it had been fortuitous that on that Saturday afternoon, they were serving a traditional Shepherd’s pie, complete with peas and Yorkshire pudding. It was far more a taste of home for Sophie than Sonia, which was her intention, but enough visits to her friend and the Hatter family, invited to tuck in for tea while the Hatter matriarch saw to final fittings for the Queen of Novoselic, did bring some nostalgia to the Princess too.

“Look Sophie, our meals are ready!” Sonia beamed, nodding to the server who approached them from the pub kitchen, two plates balanced in his hands. “Can you believe we’ve even found Yorkshire pudding in Japan? As much as I think it is important to embrace our opportunity here, it’s nice to know that we’re not entirely alone in our homesickness. I think spending as much time as I did with you and your family, this almost feels like home to me too.”

Her smile persisted as she thanked the server, watching him leave before looking down at her plate. Only then did her pleasant facade begin to show its cracks: the pudding looked relatively normal and it was difficult to make peas appear inedible. But the shepherd’s pie itself had only the thinnest layer of mashed potato on top and as a further insult to injury, the thick, rectangular slice had mayonnaise drizzled over the top. Similar to how she’d seen the condiment put on pizza, on pasta, and other western food the Japanese deemed it to be a necessary addition for.

“I...I suppose we should try it?” She looked to Sophie with hopeful eyes, already slicing through the pie with the edge of her fork, mayonnaise and all. This had been her grand idea, she should be the first, if necessary, to fall on her metaphorical sword. Or in this case, a lamb dish with a questionable ratio of potato to filling and inappropriate condiments. Bringing the utensil to her lips, Sonia swallowed in preparation before taking the first bite.

But nothing could have readied her for that. The creamy mayonnaise drowned out all semblance of the herbs and spices that made a Shepherd’s Pie so hearty. And with the thin layer of starch atop the minced meat, carrots, and vegetables, the dish was more or less reliant on the offending mayonnaise to provide the entire scope of flavor. To put it politely, it was disappointing. To put it in honest terms, it was an affront to everything Sonia had grown up with when visiting Sophie and made her feel in dire need of a cider or even better, a scotch.

“Oh no...this is...” Sonia began, knowing full well that the owner of the establishment was in earshot and clearly pleased that two foreign girls chose to visit his pub instead of the cafes and family restaurants far more popular with the younger generation. She couldn’t manage the words it tastes awful, even if it was uttered no louder than a whisper. “I miss visiting you in England.” There. A diplomatic way to convey both her disappointment in their meal and the longing that subsequently now settled over them.