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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 5 days

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By: Richard Dawkins

This is a slightly edited version of the essay written to accompany the transcript of the conversation between myself, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and the late, much-lamented Christopher Hitchens, recorded in Christopher's flat in Washington DC in September 2007 and published in 2019 as The Four Horsemen.

Among the many topics the ‘four horsemen’ discussed in 2007 was how religion and science compared in respect of humility and hubris. Religion, for its part, stands accused of conspicuous overconfidence and sensational lack of humility. The expanding universe, the laws of physics, the fine-tuned physical constants, the laws of chemistry, the slow grind of evolution’s mills – all were set in motion so that, in the 14-billion-year fullness of time, we should come into existence. Even the constantly reiterated insistence that we are miserable offenders, born in sin, is a kind of inverted arrogance: such vanity, to presume that our moral conduct has some sort of cosmic significance, as though the Creator of the Universe wouldn’t have better things to do than tot up our black marks and our brownie points. The universe is all concerned with me. Is that not the arrogance that passeth all understanding?

Carl Sagan, in Pale Blue Dot, makes the exculpatory point that our distant ancestors could scarcely escape such cosmic narcissism. With no roof over their heads and no artificial light, they nightly watched the stars wheeling overhead. And what was at the centre of the wheel? The exact location of the observer, of course. No wonder they thought the universe was ‘all about me’. In the other sense of ‘about’, it did indeed revolve ‘about me’. ‘I’ was the epicentre of the cosmos. But that excuse, if it is one, evaporated with Copernicus and Galileo.

Turning, then, to theologians’ overconfidence, admittedly few quite reach the heights scaled by the seventeenth-century archbishop James Ussher, who was so sure of his chronology that he gave the origin of the universe a precise date: 22 October, 4004 bc. Not 21 or 23 October but precisely on the evening of 22 October. Not September or November but definitely, with the immense authority of the Church, October. Not 4003 or 4005, not ‘somewhere around the fourth or fifth millennium bc’ but, no doubt about it, 4004 bc. Others, as I said, are not quite so precise about it, but it is characteristic of theologians that they just make stuff up. Make it up with liberal abandon and force it, with a presumed limitless authority, upon others, sometimes – at least in former times and still today in Islamic theocracies – on pain of torture and death.

Such arbitrary precision shows itself, too, in the bossy rules for living that religious leaders impose on their followers. And when it comes to control-freakery, Islam is way out ahead, in a class of its own. Here are some choice examples from the Concise Commandments of Islam handed down by Ayatollah Ozma Sayyed Mohammad Reda Musavi Golpaygani, a respected Iranian ‘scholar’. Concerning the wet-nursing of babies, alone, there are no fewer than twenty-three minutely specified rules, translated as ‘Issues’. Here’s the first of them, Issue 547. The rest are equally precise, equally bossy, and equally devoid of apparent rationale:

If a woman wet-nurses a child, in accordance to the conditions to be stated in Issue 560, the father of that child cannot marry the woman’s daughters, nor can he marry the daughters of the husband whom the milk belongs to, even his wet-nurse daughters, but it is permissible for him to marry the wet-nurse daughters of the woman . . . [and it goes on].

Here’s another example from the wet-nursing department, Issue 553:

If the wife of a man’s father wet-nurses a girl with his father’s milk, then the man cannot marry that girl.

‘Father’s milk’? What? I suppose in a culture where a woman is the property of her husband, ‘father’s milk’ is not as weird as it sounds to us.

Issue 555 is similarly puzzling, this time about ‘brother’s milk’:

A man cannot marry a girl who has been wet-nursed by his sister or his brother’s wife with his brother’s milk.

I don’t know the origin of this creepy obsession with wet-nursing, but it is not without its scriptural basis:

When the Qur’aan was first revealed, the number of breast-feedings that would make a child a relative (mahram) was ten, then this was abrogated and replaced with the number of five which is well-known.[1]

That was part of the reply from another ‘scholar’ to the following recent cri de coeur from a (pardonably) confused woman on social media:

I breastfed my brother-in-law’s son for a month, and my son was breastfed by my brother-in-law’s wife. I have a daughter and a son who are older than the child who was breastfed by my brother-in-law’s wife, and she also had two children before the child of hers whom I breastfed. I hope that you can describe the kind of breastfeeding that makes the child a mahram and the rulings that apply to the rest of the siblings? Thank you very much.

The precision of ‘five’ breast feedings is typical of this kind of religious control-freakery. It surfaced bizarrely in a 2007 fatwa issued by Dr Izzat Atiyya, a lecturer at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, who was concerned about the prohibition against male and female colleagues being alone together and came up with an ingenious solution. The female colleague should feed her male colleague ‘directly from her breast’ at least five times. This would make them ‘relatives’ and thereby enable them to be alone together at work. Note that four times would not suffice. He apparently wasn’t joking at the time, although he did retract his fatwa after the outcry it provoked. How can people bear to live their lives bound by such insanely specific yet manifestly pointless rules?

With some relief, perhaps, we turn to science. Science is often accused of arrogantly claiming to know everything, but the barb is capaciously wide of the mark. Scientists love not knowing the answer, because it gives us something to do, something to think about. We loudly assert ignorance, in a gleeful proclamation of what needs to be done.

How did life begin? I don’t know, nobody knows, we wish we did, and we eagerly exchange hypotheses, together with suggestions for how to investigate them. What caused the apocalyptic mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, a quarter of a billion years ago? We don’t know, but we have some interesting hypotheses to think about. What did the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees look like? We don’t know, but we do know a bit about it. We know the continent on which it lived (Africa, as Darwin guessed), and molecular evidence tells us roughly when (between 6 million and 8 million years ago). What is dark matter? We don’t know, and a substantial fraction of the physics community would dearly like to.

Ignorance, to a scientist, is an itch that begs to be pleasurably scratched. Ignorance, if you are a theologian, is something to be washed away by shamelessly making something up. If you are an authority figure like the Pope, you might do it by thinking privately to yourself and waiting for an answer to pop into your head – which you then proclaim as a ‘revelation’. Or you might do it by ‘interpreting’ a Bronze Age text whose author was even more ignorant than you are.

Popes can promulgate their private opinions as ‘dogma’, but only if those opinions have the backing of a substantial number of Catholics through history: long tradition of belief in a proposition is, somewhat mysteriously to a scientific mind, regarded as evidence for the truth of that proposition. In 1950, Pope Pius XII (unkindly known as ‘Hitler’s Pope’) promulgated the dogma that Jesus’ mother Mary, on her death, was bodily – i.e. not merely spiritually – lifted up into heaven. ‘Bodily’ means that if you’d looked in her grave, you’d have found it empty. The Pope’s reasoning had absolutely nothing to do with evidence. He cited 1 Corinthians 15:54: ‘then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory’. The saying makes no mention of Mary. There is not the smallest reason to suppose the author of the epistle had Mary in mind. We see again the typical theological trick of taking a text and ‘interpreting’ it in a way that just might have some vague, symbolic, hand-waving connection with something else. Presumably, too, like so many religious beliefs, Pius XII’s dogma was at least partly based on a feeling of what would be fitting for one so holy as Mary. But the Pope’s main motivation, according to Dr Kenneth Howell, director of the John Henry Cardinal Newman Institute of Catholic Thought, University of Illinois, came from a different meaning of what was fitting. The world of 1950 was recovering from the devastation of the Second World War and desperately needed the balm of a healing message. Howell quotes the Pope’s words, then gives his own interpretation:

Pius XII clearly expresses his hope that meditation on Mary’s assumption will lead the faithful to a greater awareness of our common dignity as the human family. . . . What would impel human beings to keep their eyes fixed on their supernatural end and to desire the salvation of their fellow human beings? Mary’s assumption was a reminder of, and impetus toward, greater respect for humanity because the Assumption cannot be separated from the rest of Mary’s earthly life.

It’s fascinating to see how the theological mind works: in particular, the lack of interest in – indeed, the contempt for – factual evidence. Never mind whether there’s any evidence that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven; it would be good for people to believe she was. It isn’t that theologians deliberately tell untruths. It’s as though they just don’t care about truth; aren’t interested in truth; don’t know what truth even means; demote truth to negligible status compared with other considerations, such as symbolic or mythic significance. And yet at the same time, Catholics are compelled to believe these made-up ‘truths’ – compelled in no uncertain terms. Even before Pius XII promulgated the Assumption as a dogma, the eighteenth-century Pope Benedict XIV declared the Assumption of Mary to be ‘a probable opinion which to deny were impious and blasphemous’. If to deny a ‘probable opinion’ is ‘impious and blasphemous’, you can imagine the penalty for denying an infallible dogma! Once again, note the brazen confidence with which religious leaders assert ‘facts’ which even they admit are supported by no historical evidence at all.

The Catholic Encyclopedia is a treasury of overconfident sophistry. Purgatory is a sort of celestial waiting room in which the dead are punished for their sins (‘purged’) before eventually being admitted to heaven. The Encyclopedia’s entry on purgatory has a long section on ‘Errors’, listing the mistaken views of heretics such as the Albigenses, Waldenses, Hussites and Apostolici, unsurprisingly joined by Martin Luther and John Calvin.[2]

The biblical evidence for the existence of purgatory is, shall we say, ‘creative’, again employing the common theological trick of vague, hand-waving analogy. For example, the Encyclopedia notes that ‘God forgave the incredulity of Moses and Aaron, but as punishment kept them from the “land of promise”’. That banishment is viewed as a kind of metaphor for purgatory. More gruesomely, when David had Uriah the Hittite killed so that he could marry Uriah’s beautiful wife, the Lord forgave him – but didn’t let him off scot-free: God killed the child of the marriage (2 Samuel 12:13–14). Hard on the innocent child, you might think. But apparently a useful metaphor for the partial punishment that is purgatory, and one not overlooked by the Encyclopedia’s authors.

The section of the purgatory entry called ‘Proofs’ is interesting because it purports to use a form of logic. Here’s how the argument goes. If the dead went straight to heaven, there’d be no point in our praying for their souls. And we do pray for their souls, don’t we? Therefore it must follow that they don’t go straight to heaven. Therefore there must be purgatory. QED. Are professors of theology really paid to do this kind of thing?

Enough; let’s turn again to science. Scientists know when they don’t know the answer. But they also know when they do, and they shouldn’t be coy about proclaiming it. It’s not hubristic to state known facts when the evidence is secure. Yes, yes, philosophers of science tell us a fact is no more than a hypothesis which may one day be falsified but which has so far withstood strenuous attempts to do so. Let us by all means pay lip service to that incantation, while muttering, in homage to Galileo’s muttered eppur si muove, the sensible words of Stephen Jay Gould:

In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.[3]

Facts in this sense include the following, and not one of them owes anything whatsoever to the many millions of hours devoted to theological ratiocination. The universe began between 13 billion and 14 billion years ago. The sun, and the planets orbiting it, including ours, condensed out of a rotating disk of gas, dust and debris about 4.5 billion years ago. The map of the world changes as the tens of millions of years go by. We know the approximate shape of the continents and where they were at any named time in geological history. And we can project ahead and draw the map of the world as it will change in the future. We know how different the constellations in the sky would have appeared to our ancestors and how they will appear to our descendants.

Matter in the universe is non-randomly distributed in discrete bodies, many of them rotating, each on its own axis, and many of them in elliptical orbit around other such bodies according to mathematical laws which enable us to predict, to the exact second, when notable events such as eclipses and transits will occur. These bodies – stars, planets, planetesimals, knobbly chunks of rock, etc. – are themselves clustered in galaxies, many billions of them, separated by distances orders of magnitude larger than the (already very large) spacing of (again, many billions of) stars within galaxies.

Matter is composed of atoms, and there is a finite number of types of atoms – the hundred or so elements. We know the mass of each of these elemental atoms, and we know why any one element can have more than one isotope with slightly different mass. Chemists have a huge body of knowledge about how and why the elements combine in molecules. In living cells, molecules can be extremely large, constructed of thousands of atoms in precise, and exactly known, spatial relation to one another. The methods by which the exact structures of these macromolecules are discovered are wonderfully ingenious, involving meticulous measurements on the scattering of X-rays beamed through crystals. Among the macromolecules fathomed by this method is DNA, the universal genetic molecule. The strictly digital code by which DNA influences the shape and nature of proteins – another family of macromolecules which are the elegantly honed machine-tools of life – is exactly known in every detail. The ways in which those proteins influence the behaviour of cells in developing embryos, and hence influence the form and functioning of all living things, is work in progress: a great deal is known; much challengingly remains to be learned.

For any particular gene in any individual animal, we can write down the exact sequence of DNA code letters in the gene. This means we can count, with total precision, the number of single-letter discrepancies between two individuals. This is a serviceable measure of how long ago their common ancestor lived. This works for comparisons within a species – between you and Barack Obama, for instance. And it works for comparisons of different species – between you and an aardvark, say. Again, you can count the discrepancies exactly. There are just more discrepancies the further back in time the shared ancestor lived. Such precision lifts the spirit and justifies pride in our species, Homo sapiens. For once, and without hubris, Linnaeus’s specific name seems warranted.

Hubris is unjustified pride. Pride can be justified, and science does so in spades. So does Beethoven, so do Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Christopher Wren. So do the engineers who built the giant telescopes in Hawaii and in the Canary Islands, the giant radio telescopes and very large arrays that stare sightless into the southern sky; or the Hubble orbiting telescope and the spacecraft that launched it. The engineering feats deep underground at CERN, combining monumental size with minutely accurate tolerances of measurement, literally moved me to tears when I was shown around. The engineering, the mathematics, the physics, in the Rosetta mission that successfully soft-landed a robot vehicle on the tiny target of a comet also made me proud to be human. Modified versions of the same technology may one day save our planet by enabling us to divert a dangerous comet like the one that killed the dinosaurs.

Who does not feel a swelling of human pride when they hear about the LIGO instruments which, synchronously in Louisiana and Washington State, detected gravitation waves whose amplitude would be dwarfed by a single proton? This feat of measurement, with its profound significance for cosmology, is equivalent to measuring the distance from Earth to the star Proxima Centauri to an accuracy of one human hair’s breadth.

Comparable accuracy is achieved in experimental tests of quantum theory. And here there is a revealing mismatch between our human capacity to demonstrate, with invincible conviction, the predictions of a theory experimentally and our capacity to visualize the theory itself. Our brains evolved to understand the movement of buffalo-sized objects at lion speeds in the moderately scaled spaces afforded by the African savannah. Evolution didn’t equip us to deal intuitively with what happens to objects when they move at Einsteinian speeds through Einsteinian spaces, or with the sheer weirdness of objects too small to deserve the name ‘object’ at all. Yet somehow the emergent power of our evolved brains has enabled us to develop the crystalline edifice of mathematics by which we accurately predict the behaviour of entities that lie under the radar of our intuitive comprehension. This, too, makes me proud to be human, although to my regret I am not among the mathematically gifted of my species.

Less rarefied but still proud-making is the advanced, and continually advancing, technology that surrounds us in our everyday lives. Your smartphone, your laptop computer, the satnav in your car and the satellites that feed it, your car itself, the giant airliner that can loft not just its own weight plus passengers and cargo but also the 120 tons of fuel it ekes out over a thirteen-hour journey of seven thousand miles.

Less familiar, but destined to become more so, is 3D printing. A computer ‘prints’ a solid object, say a chess bishop, by depositing a sequence of layers, a process radically and interestingly different from the biological version of ‘3D printing’ which is embryology. A 3D printer can make an exact copy of an existing object. One technique is to feed the computer a series of photographs of the object to be copied, taken from all different angles. The computer does the formidably complicated mathematics to synthesize the specification of the solid shape by integrating the angular views. There may be life forms in the universe that make their children in this body-scanning kind of way, but our own reproduction is instructively different. This, incidentally, is why almost all biology textbooks are seriously wrong when they describe DNA as a ‘blueprint’ for life. DNA may be a blueprint for protein, but it is not a blueprint for a baby. It’s more like a recipe or a computer program.

We are not arrogant, not hubristic, to celebrate the sheer bulk and detail of what we know through science. We are simply telling the honest and irrefutable truth. Also honest is the frank admission of how much we don’t yet know – how much more work remains to be done. That is the very antithesis of hubristic arrogance. Science combines a massive contribution, in volume and detail, of what we do know with humility in proclaiming what we don’t. Religion, by embarrassing contrast, has contributed literally zero to what we know, combined with huge hubristic confidence in the alleged facts it has simply made up.

But I want to suggest a further and less obvious point about the contrast of religion with atheism. I want to argue that the atheistic worldview has an unsung virtue of intellectual courage. Why is there something rather than nothing? Our physicist colleague Lawrence Krauss, in his book A Universe from Nothing,[4] controversially suggests that, for quantum-theoretic reasons, Nothing (the capital letter is deliberate) is unstable. Just as matter and antimatter annihilate each other to make Nothing, so the reverse can happen. A random quantum fluctuation causes matter and antimatter to spring spontaneously out of Nothing. Krauss’s critics largely focus on the definition of Nothing. His version may not be what everybody understands by nothing, but at least it is supremely simple – as simple it must be, if it is to satisfy us as the base of a ‘crane’ explanation (Dan Dennett’s phrase), such as cosmic inflation or evolution. It is simple compared to the world that followed from it by largely understood processes: the big bang, inflation, galaxy formation, star formation, element formation in the interior of stars, supernova explosions blasting the elements into space, condensation of element-rich dust clouds into rocky planets such as Earth, the laws of chemistry by which, on this planet at least, the first self-replicating molecule arose, then evolution by natural selection and the whole of biology which is now, at least in principle, understood.

Why did I speak of intellectual courage? Because the human mind, including my own, rebels emotionally against the idea that something as complex as life, and the rest of the expanding universe, could have ‘just happened’. It takes intellectual courage to kick yourself out of your emotional incredulity and persuade yourself that there is no other rational choice. Emotion screams: ‘No, it’s too much to believe! You are trying to tell me the entire universe, including me and the trees and the Great Barrier Reef and the Andromeda Galaxy and a tardigrade’s finger, all came about by mindless atomic collisions, no supervisor, no architect? You cannot be serious. All this complexity and glory stemmed from Nothing and a random quantum fluctuation? Give me a break.’ Reason quietly and soberly replies: ‘Yes. Most of the steps in the chain are well understood, although until recently they weren’t. In the case of the biological steps, they’ve been understood since 1859. But more important, even if we never understand all the steps, nothing can change the principle that, however improbable the entity you are trying to explain, postulating a creator god doesn’t help you, because the god would itself need exactly the same kind of explanation.’ However difficult it may be to explain the origin of simplicity, the spontaneous arising of complexity is, by definition, more improbable. And a creative intelligence capable of designing a universe would have to be supremely improbable and supremely in need of explanation in its own right. However improbable the naturalistic answer to the riddle of existence, the theistic alternative is even more so. But it needs a courageous leap of reason to accept the conclusion.

This is what I meant when I said the atheistic worldview requires intellectual courage. It requires moral courage, too. As an atheist, you abandon your imaginary friend, you forgo the comforting props of a celestial father figure to bail you out of trouble. You are going to die, and you’ll never see your dead loved ones again. There’s no holy book to tell you what to do, tell you what’s right or wrong. You are an intellectual adult. You must face up to life, to moral decisions. But there is dignity in that grown-up courage. You stand tall and face into the keen wind of reality. You have company: warm, human arms around you, and a legacy of culture which has built up not only scientific knowledge and the material comforts that applied science brings but also art, music, the rule of law, and civilized discourse on morals. Morality and standards for life can be built up by intelligent design – design by real, intelligent humans who actually exist. Atheists have the intellectual courage to accept reality for what it is: wonderfully and shockingly explicable. As an atheist, you have the moral courage to live to the full the only life you’re ever going to get: to fully inhabit reality, rejoice in it, and do your best finally to leave it better than you found it.

[1] https://islamqa.info/en/27280 [2] http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=9745 [3] ‘Evolution as fact and theory’. [4] For which I wrote an afterword.

#Richard Dawkins #atheism #moral courage #intellectual courage #intellectual honesty #science #religion is a mental illness

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fantasykiri5 · 8 months

Note

I head canon that Jimmy has the dead anime mom hair of death

And this is why he always dies first

this ask has been ROTTING in my inbox since SEPTEMBER FUCKING SEVENTEENTH and I kept forgetting to draw what I wanted to draw for it but NOW IVE REMEMBERED!!! Huzzah!!

He actually looks really pretty like this lol

#my art #Asks #adina123 #jimmy solidarity #jimmy solidarity fanart

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leclerc-s · 1 year

Text

honest series timeline

(white events indicate an official date, blue events indicate no official date, red indicates which events have corresponding parts)

1989

july first: daniel ricciardo's birth december thirteenth: daphne jones' birth

1994

september first: carlos sainz's birth

1996

february seventh: pierre gasly's birth

1997

march second: penelope trevino's birth september thirtieth: max verstappen's birth october sixteenth: charles leclerc's birth december eleventh: rowan todd's birth

1998

june sixteenth: natalia ruiz's birth

1999

may eleventh: mae jones' birth march twenty-second: mick schumacher's birth november thirteenth: lando norris' birth

2000

october fourteenth: arthur leclerc's birth november twenty-first: freya vettel's birth december thirty-first: logan sargeant's birth

2001

april sixth: oscar piastri's birth july tenth: dulce perez's birth september seventh: bailey winter's birth

2002

january twentieth: isabella perez's birth february twentieth: zoya torres' birth trevino family moves to madrid, spain first meeting between penelope and carlos

2003

first meeting between natalia and charles

2004

2005

freya's adoption

2006

october twenty-fourth: daphne's debut album release

2007

2008

november eleventh: fearless release

2009

september thirteenth: daphne gets interrupted by kanye west at the vma's

2010

twenty-fifth: speak now release

2011

july tenth: daniel ricciardo's debut grand prix

2012

october twenty-second: red release

2013

2014

june twenty-seventh: mae's debut in girl meets world october twenty-seventh: nineteen eighty-nine release

2015

march fifteenth: max verstappen and carlos sainz's debut grand prix april fifteenth: eyes wide open release mae and max begin dating first meeting between daniel and daphne

2016

february twelfth: kanye west releases famous february fifteenth: daphne seemingly shades kanye west at an award show july sixteenth: kim kardashian releases video footage of kanye's phone call with daphne, daphne issues a statement defending herself after the leaked call september twenty-eight: daphne and daniel begin secretly dating october fourteenth: evolution release october twenty-third: daphne performs after the us grand prix mae and max break-up

2017

daphne disappears for a year august twenty-third: daphne announces reputation october first: pierre gasly's debut grand prix november tenth: reputation release

2018

march twenty-first charles leclerc's debut grand prix november ninth: singular act i release natalia and charles' friends with benefits relationship begins

2019

pierre and rowan's situationship begins march sixteenth: lando norris' debut grand prix june thirtieth: scooter braun purchases daphne's masters july first: lover release july nineteenth: singular act ii release september thirtieth: seven release (see seven for further info) november twelfth: zoya's debut on high school musical: the musical: the series

2020

january thirty-first: miss americana release march twenty: the entire phone call between daphne and kanye get leaked july twenty-fourth: folklore release december eleventh: evermore release daniel and joshua reunite mae and max

2021

lando and bailey's fake relationship begins april ninth: fearless (daphne's version) release march twenty-eighth: mick schumacher's debut grand prix may twenty-first: sour release september: filming for daisy jones and the six begins november twelfth: red (daphne's version) release mae and max begin dating again

2022

march: filming for daisy jones and the six wraps natalia becomes pregnant july fifteenth: emails i can't send release september twenty-eighth: daphne and daniel get married october twenty-first: midnights release pierre and rowan accidentally get married in vegas september twenty-eighth: daniel and daphne get married november twentieth: sebastian vettel's final race

2023

january seventeenth: baby leclerc is born rumors of daphne and fernando dating begin (see the daphlonso scandal for further info) lando accidentally leaks daphne and daniel's secret relationship during a livestream (see the daphlonso scandal for further info) march fifth: logan sargeant and oscar piastri's debut grand prix march seventeenth: daphne's eras tour kicks off and emails i can't send fwd release mae and max get secretly married the first meeting between logan and zoya july seventh: speak now (daphne's version) release july eleventh: daniel replaces nyck de vries at alphatauri august twenty-third: mae and max's familial wedding party september eighth: guts release october twenty-seventh: nineteen eighty-nine (daphne's version) release november 11th: daphne's famous line change, "karma is the guy on the track" (see karma is the guy on the track for further info) november fifteenth: mae and max's vegas wedding party (see what happens in vegas never stays in vegas for further info)

2024

january 25th: charles leclerc extends his contract with ferrari for a disclosed amount of time (see divorcegate for further info) january 26th: lando norris extends his contract with mclaren for a disclosed amount of time (see divorcegate for further info) february 1st: lewis hamilton announces his departure from mercedes, and announces his multi-year contract with ferrari. (see divorcegate for further info) february 4th: the 66th annual grammys, daphne announces her new album, the tortured poets department ( see let him be a trophy husband! for further info) march 2nd: the 75th formula one season begins. april 19th: the tortured poets department release

… more events to be added

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tomhiddleston · 1 year

Text

One More Tomorrow (Billy Taylor x Fem!Reader) - Chapter II.

CHAPTER I.

Summary: Billy's crush returns to The Halcyon for her seventeenth birthday and the two of them enjoy more chances to grow closer.

Pairing: Billy Taylor x Fem!Reader (third person)

TW: so much fluff, blink and you miss it Billy having some impure thoughts, mention of death of a parent, Billy being Billy again

Word Count: 5.5k+

A/N: I love Billy Taylor so much that I want to scream, explode out of my body, and ascend to the moon. That's the author's note. Also, thanks again to @valeskafics for giving this a read-through for me! c:

Disclaimer: I do not own any The Halcyon characters nor do I claim to own them. I do not own any of the images used nor do I claim to own them.

Comments, likes, and reblogs are never required but are always appreciated!

Art deco dividers by @saradika

It is the longest summer of Billy’s life, waiting for the months to tick by and November to finally arrive. Every day is just another shift. The same old thing day in and day out. Now and then, Billy catches himself staring wistfully at the marble staircase as though he will see her coming down to have lunch with her father or pop out for a bit of shopping. He even starts dreaming about her. About taking her dancing or going on a drive through the country. One morning he wakes up blushing after dreaming about her in a wedding dress, walking down the aisle toward him in a church filled to the brim with white roses.

Does she dream about him, too?

The stiflingly hot summer months wane on and Billy continually bothers Mr. Garland about the Greenes’ return visit to The Halcyon. Every time he asks, the answer is the same: there has been no request yet about any birthday party, whether for Mr. Greene or his daughter. Billy starts to wonder if she won’t return in the fall. If, maybe, she’s found a beau in Birmingham - one she would rather celebrate her birthday with. One her father might actually approve of.

He starts to mope around The Halcyon when August turns into September with still no word, enough that even Mr. Garland begins to notice. His mum, Peggy, has seen the most of his gloomy mood out of anyone, what with having to watch him drag his feet around their house every morning and night. “It’s about that girl again,” she tells Mr. Garland and both share a sigh. Young love can be such an overwhelming, complicated thing. But this is Billy’s first time coming face to face with it, and she hates to see her sweet boy - her eldest child and only son - like this.

Peggy is, therefore, elated when a letter arrives at The Halcyon addressed to Billy. When he arrives to have tea with her that afternoon, she wiggles her finger at the mailboxes beside her desk and tells him to look.

But who would write to him? His confused expression only warrants a smile from his mother.

“It’s from Birmingham, Billy.”

He very nearly throws his teacup to the ground to lunge for the letter. Sure enough, that’s his name written in delicate cursive on the back of the envelope. His heart is pounding out of his chest as he tears open the letter and finds an automobile sketch inside with a single folded piece of paper. A handwritten letter so perfect that it almost looks printed.

Dear Billy,

Mr. Garland said you liked my father’s automobiles, so I managed to get one of his original sketches of the Model F for you. It’s not much, but I hope you will like it all the same.

I’ll see you in November.

She’s signed the letter “yours truly.” Not “sincerely,” not “regards.” He’ll be pouring over the meaning of that one for days. But, no matter the meaning of the signature… she’s remembered him. She’s thought of him. She’s taken the time to write to him! And she does still plan on returning to The Halcyon.

Suddenly, his dreary summer no longer feels so dreary.

November 1939.

The leaves on the trees lining the streets of London have turned orange and fallen. The grass, once kissed with glittering morning dew, slumps from the heavy frost that coats it each sunrise. It hasn’t snowed yet, but winter’s chill is beginning to set in in earnest.

None of the ladies at The Halcyon dare step through the front doors without their heavy coats, gloves, and scarves any longer lest they catch their death, they lament. The fireplaces roar at all hours to offer some heat to the towering lobby. The doormen keep the doors shut as much as possible to trap the warmth inside. Cold manages to seep in every now and then when an unfortunately timed breeze blows through just as someone is stepping in or out, but it’s never severe enough to linger.

It is only a few weeks before The Halcyon’s lobby will be stripped of its usual flowers, vases, and other decorative trinkets and decked out in full Christmastime splendor. But first, the hotel must play host to the seventeenth birthday party of a certain young woman. And her father has spared no expense in decorating the lobby and the bar for the occasion.

Before the Greenes even arrive, the lobby is filled with dozens of arrangements of white and pink roses in gold vases. Mr. Greene even commissioned a special tiered gold chandelier for the occasion, which hangs low over a stunning centerpiece of peonies, hydrangeas, roses, and lilies enhanced with sparkling Swarovski crystals.

The other bellboys whinge about the decorations being too much, but Billy just brushes them off. He knows in his heart that they aren’t enough. Every flower in the world wouldn’t be enough to match her beauty.

He’s proven himself correct when the front doors swing open and she walks in, arm linked with her father’s while the other holds onto her dog’s lead. Billy has made sure that he is the one to take her coat and hat. He notices the coy smile on her rouged lips as he slips the coat off of her shoulders and the soft blush that blooms on her cheeks when his fingers brush against her upper arm.

“Hello, miss,” he mutters softly, unable to hide his own smile. His heart is full to bursting at being so close to her again. The warm, rosy scent of her perfume is filling his nostrils and making his head spin.

“Hi,” she whispers over her shoulder, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “It’s good to see you.”

“You…” Billy’s mouth has gone so dry that he can’t finish what was meant to be a two-word sentence. He clears his throat to no avail. “Uh huh.”

She’s quickly whisked away by her father and Mr. Garland, who are eager to show off the decorations to her. It’s clear that she isn’t used to such grand gestures, seeing how she nervously clasps her hands in front of her and shifts from one foot to the other. Billy drinks in the sight of her, in her pale blue dress that he guesses has been tailored to fit her judging by the way it so perfectly hugs her every curve. His eyes linger perhaps a little too long on her bum because he hears Feldman clear his throat.

“Come along, lover boy. Luggage to unload.”

Billy doesn’t see her again until the following afternoon, when he is sent up to her room to take her dog out for a walk. She’s otherwise preoccupied, Feldman says. If it were for anyone else - even His Lordship himself - Billy would have groaned and grumbled about having to stumble about the streets of London being dragged along by a dog. He doesn’t even want to think about the more than few occasions when he’s lost control of a dog’s lead and left the guest’s beloved pet to run amok in the streets. He’s had to dodge cars chasing after more than one poodle or bulldog, only to return to The Halcyon completely out of breath and with his bellboy hat and cloak all askew.

But he won’t let that happen to her dog. There is no way that he will treat this dog as anything but the most precious jewel in the world.

Walking toward the lobby, he has wrapped the lead around his wrist twice so there is no possibility for the dog to break free. He does thank his lucky stars that the dog is so small and well behaved. Even less of a chance to muck things up. Still… he can’t help but feel nerves churning in his stomach at the thought of something happening to the animal.

“Alright there, Clara?” he asks the corgi as she trots along happily beside him down the stairs. “It’s you and me today. Please be good, yeah?”

“Don’t worry. She always is.”

Billy freezes. He knows that voice.

When he looks up, his eyes meet hers. He’s been standing at his post by the door all day, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but he wasn’t expecting to see her right now. His free hand tugs at his uniform jacket to make sure he looks perfectly tidy and in order.

“Clara, are you going for a walk with Billy today?” She coos in a high-pitched voice to the dog, who spins in a circle in excitement. He watches a small crinkle form at the corner of her eye as she smiles at her beloved pet. Her cheeks and nose are pink from the cold and her hair is windswept, but she still looks as lovely as ever. “Do you… mind if I join you?”

“N-not at all,” Billy replies, sounding more nervous than he’d like to. “Bit cold out, though.” No, he reprimands himself. Don’t try to dissuade her, you idiot! He’s fidgeting with his hands again like he does every time he talks to her. Get it together, Billy.

“It is, but… I need a break from all this last-minute party planning. If I have to look at another table setting, I think I’ll die of boredom.” She rolls her eyes dramatically to emphasize her hyperbole, but Billy still prickles at the mere thought of it.

“I don’t want you to die,” he responds with a little too much sincerity. But he means it. He can’t think of anything that would be worse.

“All the more reason for me to join you, then, Billy.”

Her smile softens the tightness in his jaw. He offers a crooked grin in return, but he’s kicking himself inside. Will he ever stop making a fool of himself in front of this girl? He could tell himself a thousand times to act normally around her and he would still muck it all up the second he opens his mouth to speak to her. And yet, she doesn’t seem to mind? She might even… like him?

He reckons he’ll never understand girls.

Their walk with Clara winds up being the longest they’ve ever spent alone together. It’s so much more than a stolen glance across the hotel lobby or a few minutes spent chatting when he brings her tea. They are strolling through Hyde Park side by side, almost in a world of their own. This isn’t the time of year when mums are out with their babies in prams or old couples are walking hand in hand among the trees. Due to the cold, the park is uncharacteristically empty and quiet, save for their own shoes crunching along the stone path and the jingle of Clara’s collar.

But the very best part is that Billy has gotten a chance to hold a proper conversation with her. If by “conversation” he means “letting her tell him about herself while he bloody clams up yet again.” She tells him about her life in Birmingham, about a book she’s reading, about her father’s company. Anything and everything. He’s happy to hear her talk. He’d listen to her read the dictionary aloud if it meant he could hear the sound of her bright, sweet voice. She has a way of softening the inflection at the end of her sentences that is so warm, so comforting.

“Billy.” His head snaps toward her like it does every time she says his name. “Is it true that your mum works at The Halcyon, too?”

“Yeah… she’s the telephonist.”

“Oh. I’ve spoken to her, then.” A realization dawns on her and she laughs, throwing her head back in a way that makes his ears go hot. “Oh… Mrs. Taylor. I’m so silly. I should have known. She seems nice.”

“She is.” Billy wrinkles his nose. “Bit overbearing, though. Sometimes…” He’s convinced that his mum still sees him as her little boy the way she treats him at times. Fussing over his hair, fixing his collar, tying his shoes. As if he isn’t turning eighteen next year.

“Yeah, but that’s just her being your mum, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be like that. It just means she loves you.”

Billy shrugs. Doesn’t make his mum any less annoying about it. “What about your mum?”

He realizes he’s well and truly stepped in it when he sees her face fall. He had wondered why only she and her father had been to The Halcyon, but guessed that maybe her mum didn’t fancy traveling. But the way she purses her lips and stares at her feet as they continue walking suggests something else.

“She died when I was four.”

“Oh–” Billy feels his heart sink at having brought up such a sorrowful memory. He wants to apologize a million times and it wouldn’t be enough to convey how sorry he is.

“Please don’t feel bad about asking. It’s been so long that I… I don’t really remember her. It’s just been me and dad all this time. And he makes sure I know that I’m loved.” She laughs dryly. “I mean, look at how completely overboard he’s gone with this birthday party. I guess that’s his version of being overbearing.”

Billy’s expression softens. “Well, but… you deserve it, though. I’d throw you a party like that. If I had the money.” He realizes what he’s just said and hurriedly attempts to cover his tracks. “I mean…! If I was your dad. No–” Bloody hell, you’ve just made it worse.

She laughs in the same way she does whenever he fumbles over his words with her. Not laughing at him, not laughing like he’s stupid like other people tend to do. It’s a genuine, sweet laugh accompanied by that glimmer in her eyes that he loves so much. He pulls his lips inward as he feels new heat rush to his cheeks.

“Did you get my letter, Billy? From this summer?”

His previous embarrassment almost completely forgotten, his face lights up in a wide grin. He becomes more animated than he’s ever been around her, almost bouncing along the path beside her. She clearly notices, judging by the way she smiles.

“Oh, god. Yeah, I did…! That sketch by your dad… that was bloody incredible!”

She laughs again, a laugh that seems to warm the air around them. “I’m so glad you liked it.”

“Liked it? I… I loved it. The Model F is the most brilliant car on the market. But you… know that…” Billy stops himself before he begins to fanboy even more. He feels a little flutter in his heart as he glances sideways at her, though. He dips his head a bit in a moment of sudden bashfulness. “Can’t believe you… you know. Thought of me.”

“‘Course I did.”

Billy turns it over again and again in his mind, trying to decipher the meaning of her words. If he weren’t such an idiot, he’d come right out and ask her. But the words bloom and die on his tongue in an instant.

He can’t remember a time when a girl ever looked twice at him, let alone thought of him when they weren’t together. Had she really taken time to think about him when she had returned home to Birmingham? Did she think of him when she took tea every afternoon, or when she removed her coat upon stepping inside her house?

His silence eventually prompts her to prod him with a question of her own.

“Did… you think of me, too, Billy?”

His eyes are wide when he turns to her. He doesn’t mean to stare at her like some startled animal, but he can’t bloody help it. The thought of divulging the truth to her strikes the fear of God in him.

“Yeah, I did,” is all he can manage to push past the frog in his throat.

Yes, he thought of her. He thought of her every morning as he stepped foot into the hotel lobby. He thought of her whenever he passed the flower shop at the end of his street and smelled the freshly cut roses they had for sale. He thought of her on rainy days, on sunny days. He thought of her morning and night.

Even his younger sister, Dora, eventually started to notice how Billy seemed to float around their house whenever he would start to think about her. Being only eight years old, it had been a prime opportunity for the younger Taylor sibling to tease her brother relentlessly. But not even Dora’s incessant needling could have dissuaded Billy from thinking about the charming, beautiful girl from Birmingham who had smiled at him and made him feel wanted. Nothing could.

That’s what Billy would have said to her if he’d had the courage to do so.

Instead, he just manages to flash a shy little smile that seems to satisfy her because she responds with one of her own.

“Will I see you around at my party tomorrow night?”

“Yeah… I’ll be working.”

She doesn’t know that he begged and pleaded with one of the other bellboys to switch shifts with him so that he could be there. He doesn’t tend to work such late evenings. His mum prefers him to be home for dinner. But he would have done anything to be there for her party, even if it means that he will be stood by the door taking hats and coats all night.

“I wish you could come to the party itself,” she mutters softly, perhaps thinking that he can’t hear her. She sounds so earnest that it gives him butterflies. “My dad and my cousin Margaret won’t tell me what they’ve got planned, but I think it'll be a real gas.”

Billy knows he may be a bit daft sometimes, but he isn’t stupid enough to think that he could be anything but a bellboy at her party. When he’s alone with her, it feels a bit like they aren’t from different social classes. That the earrings she wears aren’t real diamonds and her clothes haven’t come from the finest shops in London. That he isn’t a lad from down the street who’s never owned anything that wasn’t second hand. She treats him like he’s someone. Someone worth talking to, worth listening to. Someone who is more than just another worker whose name she’ll forget by the next day.

It brings him crashing back down to earth every time he steps out of their little bubble and back into the real world. In the end, he’s just a bellboy. And she’s a beautiful heiress. Love, affection, even friendship between people like them is something forbidden. That is something that Billy must constantly remind himself of. It hangs in the very air around them whenever he is with her. But it does not stop him from wanting her.

“I’m sure you’ll have a great time,” Billy says, and he means it. “I hope you do.”

Billy laments that they’ve been walking for long enough that The Halcyon has come back into view. Their approach spells the end of their walk together. It’s a return to that real world where they must go their separate ways; him, to his work, and her, to her glittering, beautiful life.

The hotel lobby welcomes them back with the warmth of the fireplaces, which helps them begin to shake off the November chill. Theirs is a quick goodbye as her cousin pulls her away, shrilly and breathlessly admonishing her for disappearing when there is still so much to do for the party. But she’s sure to give Billy one last tender smile before she disappears into the restaurant.

There’s hardly any room to breathe, let alone move, through The Halcyon lobby on the night of her seventeenth birthday party. If anyone thought there had been too many flowers in the room before, then they would have had to rethink their definition of “excess” upon seeing the state of the lobby tonight.

Flowers, mostly white roses, cover every pillar, frame every doorway, cover every rung on the bannister. There is even an archway created entirely from flowers at the top of the staircase - the perfect setting for the birthday girl’s grand entrance. And the gold accents have only been expanded upon since the day before. In some places, the light bounces off of the gold candelabras and vases in such a way that it casts a warm reflection on the walls and floor. It’s the most extravagant affair that Billy has seen at The Halcyon in more than a year of working there.

And it’s all for her.

The buzz in the room dies down in an instant when Mr. Greene appears in the archway at the top of the stairs, delivering a short speech about the gathering of family and friends that is eloquent without any of the stuffiness of having been rehearsed. It’s clear by the reaction of the crowd that he has a natural charisma about him - something that his daughter has clearly inherited from him.

Billy’s eyes widen as she steps out from behind the flowers after being beckoned by her father. There must be a hundred people packed into the lobby, but it’s as though a spotlight has been shined on her. Flash bulbs pop and the room erupts into applause. But all that seems to exist in this moment… is her.

Billy enjoys the perfect view of her from where he stands beside Feldman by front doors. She’s wearing her hair in an elegant updo with roses pinned into her low bun. Her gold floor length gown cascades around her like a sparkling waterfall, flowing over each step of the staircase as she and her father begin to descend arm in arm. The dress is modest, with long sleeves and a v-neck that doesn’t show off too much. But the gold fabric gathers at the waist in a way that accentuates her lovely figure. Billy can’t help but bristle at the thought of all the young men who will get to dance with her tonight and rest their hands on the soft curve of her waist.

But when her eyes meet his from across the room - however briefly - all his jealousy and longing melts away in an instant.

Billy spends the rest of the evening at his post but finds himself craning his neck each time the door to the hotel bar opens, on the off chance that he will catch a glimpse of her in her beautiful gold dress. He thinks he does once or twice, but he can never be sure.

The night wanes on and Billy begins to yawn. He’s never worked this late before. If he wasn’t here, he’d probably be fast asleep by now. Feldman tries to send him home at half past eleven, but he just shrugs him off.

“Billy, you’re falling asleep standing up. Go home.”

Billy hums and shakes his head, lifting a hand to his face to rub at his eyes. “Can’t go yet.”

“What are you waiting for, Billy? For me to have to carry your ugly mug home because you’ve fallen asleep on the job?” Feldman’s rising annoyance with him makes him blush.

“I…” Billy stares at his feet. “Could you do me a favor, Feldman?”

Fifteen minutes later, Billy is pacing back and forth in the dark restaurant on the opposite end of the hotel from the bar. The chairs have been flipped and placed atop the tables for the night. The silverware sits, polished and ready for the next day. The curtains are drawn across the floor-to-ceiling windows, with only the softest light from the street lamps outside filtering through them. Only the sconces on either side of the door offer any real light to the room.

Billy has removed his bellboy hat and nervously sweeps his palm over his slicked-back hair to ensure that not even a single hair is out of place. In his free hand, he clutches a small, wrapped box with such a vice grip that his knuckles have gone white. And he continues to pace and pace and pace while he waits for the restaurant door to open.

When he sees the small crack of light at the door begin to grow and spread across the carpet, he stands at full attention with his hands behind his back. Somehow, his heart begins to beat more quickly than it already has been when she peers around the door. Her furrowed brow softens the moment she lays eyes on him.

“Billy… hi.” She’s smiling, and the light beside the door hits her face in a way that gives her an angelic glow. “Heard you wanted to see me.”

If only she knew just how badly he’s wanted to see her all night. He drinks in the sight of her, looking her up and down. He notices little details that he didn’t see from across the room earlier. The teardrop earrings she’s wearing that match her necklace. The little curled strands of hair that fall on either side of her face. The pink lipstick that’s different from the red she usually wears. He’s sure to be quick about it, not wanting it to seem like he’s asked her there just to ogle at her.

“You look…”

“Exhausted?” She jokes, but the sincerity on his face gives her pause.

“Beautiful.”

The lighting may be a bit rubbish for seeing her properly, but even he can tell that he’s made her blush. Her hand flies to her cheek as if to hide her smile. Her eyes fall to the floor. Surely she’s been complimented dozens of times tonight. He reckons - he hopes - that his has meant the most of them all.

“Thank you, Billy,” she breathes, finally pulling herself together enough to respond. “You look handsome, too.”

He’s caught completely off guard. The very air seems to leave his lungs. At first, all he can do is shake his head and let out a nervous laugh. “I’m… just in me uniform…”

She takes a step toward him and he swallows hard. It still feels so hard to bloody breathe. “But you always look handsome… doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.”

It’s by some small miracle that Billy doesn’t fall to the ground unconscious right then and there. He very nearly drops the gift he’s still holding behind his back. It’s only when he has to fumble to catch it so it doesn’t tumble to the ground that he remembers why he had Feldman have her come see him.

“I… I, uh…” he flounders trying to speak again. “Bout to be off for the night, but, uh… didn’t wanna leave til…” He clears his throat. “Til I gave you this.”

“What?” He sees her eyes narrow suspiciously, although she keeps her lips turned up in a smile.

Billy takes a step toward her, dotting out his tongue to wet his lips. “Close your eyes… and hold out your hands.”

She does exactly as he asks, letting her eyes fall closed before she extends her perfectly manicured hands. Into her cupped palms, he placed the little box he’s kept in his locker all night. He’s seen the pile of gifts that she’s received tonight, the big boxes with their shiny wrapping paper and bags tied up with perfect bows. The one in her hands is no bigger than a makeup compact, and wrapped in crinkled newspaper with a paltry, crooked bow made out of twine. It’s hardly the most glamorous gift she’s gotten, probably ever. He almost feels embarrassed as he sees it resting atop her hands.

When she opens her eyes and sees what he’s given her, she doesn’t react in disappointment. Rather, Billy watches her face light up in a smile.

“Billy… you didn’t have to–”

Billy rocks back onto his heels and offers a little shrug. “I know… but I… I had to get you something for your birthday. You only turn seventeen once.”

She’s holding the little gift as though it’s a delicate baby bird. “Do you want me to open it now?”

“Well, I– I mean, you don’t have to…” What if she didn’t like it? She wouldn’t have to pretend to be grateful if he wasn’t there when she unwrapped her gift.

But his words go in one of her ears and out of the other. She carefully plucks the bow open and unveils the ruby red box that’s been hiding beneath the newspaper. Inside it, she finds a delicate rose brooch. The stem is made out of a shiny gold that matches all the gold accents dotted about the hotel lobby. The petals themselves are white. Billy thinks he remembers the shopkeeper say that it’s porcelain.

“Happy birthday.”

“Oh, Billy…” she whispers as she admires the brooch.

He saved up for months to buy it for her after seeing it in the window of the pawn shop down the road from his house on his way home from work one day. His mum and dad usually expect him to chip in for necessities now that he’s employed. “It’s your money, Billy,” his mum said to him when he asked if he could keep a little more to save for the brooch. He put away every penny he could after that. What should have taken him six months to save up, he saved in only four.

“I, uh… saw it and thought of you,” Billy says warmly. “I know how you… like roses and all…”

She delicately lifts the brooch from its box and lays it flat in her palm to see it better in the light. She turns it over and over again, treasuring every last detail. And all the while, the smile in her eyes shimmers brighter than the sun.

“Billy, this is so… incredible. It’s beautiful…”

“Yeah…?” He feels a sense of pride, hearing her genuine gratitude and seeing her joy.

“Yeah.” She finally looks up at him and he felt his stomach flip. “Billy, it’s perfect. I love it. I love it so much…” She reaches out to take his hand and wraps her fingers around his. Her touch is soft and warm against the calloused pads of his fingers and palm. Bloody hell, how many times can he nearly faint in front of her in one evening?

For a fleeting moment, there’s a force that draws them closer to one another. His senses are overwhelmed by the smell of her perfume, the warmth of her hand in his, the sight of her face so close to his. But he’s a bloody idiot as always and stands completely frozen in place. He wants to lean down and press his lips to hers, but his muscles won’t move.

He clears his throat. “Can I… put it on for you?”

He sees disappointment flash across her face before she pulls away. She’s quick to replace it with a sweet grin, but he knows he’s missed his chance. He’ll be kicking himself for weeks for this. Stupid, stupid coward.

“Please.”

His hands are shaking as he takes the brooch from her and fumbles to clasp it to the front of her dress, just below her left shoulder.

“How does it look?” she asks.

Billy can think of a million ways to describe her beauty in this moment. Not just the way the brooch looks on her, but everything about her. In the end, he smiles crookedly and settles on the one he thinks encapsulates her best.

“Exquisite.”

Their time together is short as always. Her party can’t go on without the guest of honor and he can finally allow Feldman to send him home now that he’s given her her gift. His mum’s probably waiting up to make sure he gets home safe and it’s nearing midnight, now.

“Billy, we’re leaving for home in the morning,” she tells him as if he doesn’t already know that. “I guess… you’re off tomorrow.”

In any other situation, he’d be glad that Feldman wasn’t making him come in first thing after working such a late shift. But now it means that he won’t be there to see her off like he did the last time.

“Can I write to you again, Billy? After I get home?”

“Of course.” His earlier embarrassment at having denied her a kiss is somewhat dulled by the assurance that she wants to keep in touch. “But my handwriting’s a bit rubbish…”

She laughs. “I’m sure it’s fine. I’d… like to see it. Be sure to write back. Promise?”

“Promise.”

Satisfied, she pulls open the door but stops in the doorway. “Thank you again, Billy. For my present. It’s the best one I’ve gotten tonight.” She chews on her bottom lip, lingering on the boundary between the restaurant and the lobby for just a moment longer. She presses her cheek to the edge of the mahogany door, staring at him as though she doesn’t want to go. But eventually she relents as calls of her name echo through the lobby and she is beckoned back to the party.

And Billy watches dreamily until long after the bar door shuts behind her.

Tag list:

@sepherinaspoppies

(Let me know if you'd like to be added!)

#billy taylor x reader #billy taylor x fem!reader #billy taylor x you #billy taylor #the halcyon #the halcyon itv #the halcyon fanfic #ewan mitchell #one more tomorrow

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nikeshady-blog · 1 year

Text

Written for @hinnymicrofic September 13, 2023

Begin

Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy’s shell.

After what seemed like hours, Harry managed to free himself from the congratulations and breathe in the fresh air of the day as it filtered through the broken windows of the Great Hall. All around him were shouts, cries of joy and tears of condolence in a chaos that, combined with his growing fatigue, almost made him faint.

For a moment, he pushed aside his fears and pains, and his gaze searched intently around the perimeter of the Great Hall. Finally, it fell on a pair of warm brown eyes. Ginny stood slightly apart, as if waiting for him, far from the others, far from the shouts and attention she knew he never wanted. Her expression was fierce, and the rest of the scene faded into the background. For Harry, it was as if there were only the two of them in the Great Hall.

He had barely taken a step forward when he saw her move quickly and purposefully, her hair swaying like fire tinted with the pink of the coming dawn. Her gaze was hard and blazing. He saw her approach and held his breath, unable to control the hope that roared in his chest.

Without thinking, without saying a word, Ginny threw herself on him, her arms around his neck, their lips touching, and it was as if a fire burned in Harry’s chest.

It felt unreal. After months of staring at a point on a map, her physical presence washed over him like a flood. The feel of her weight on him, the floral scent of her hair, unmistakable even under the ash and sweat, her hands on his scalp, their noses brushing, their lips boldly seeking each other as if they could only quench their thirst by touching. Everything was as it had never been before. Nothing could compare, not even those weeks of bliss in his sixth year, not even their last kiss on his seventeenth birthday came close. This was different, this kiss was pain and freedom, it was resolve and promise. No more barriers, no more war, no more Horcruxes. Now Harry could finally be just Harry, and Ginny could finally be his Ginny.

It tasted like a new beginning.

#HINNY #HINNY MICROFIC #HINNY FANFIC #HARRY X GINNY #GINNY WEASLEY #HARRY POTTER #HARRY POTTER FANFICTION #MICROFICTION #harry potter and the deathly hollows #deathly hallows

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hwan-g · 2 years

Text

DARLING. kim seungmin — 김승민

pair. bookshop owner! seungmin x f. reader | warnings. profanity, angst, unprotected sex, fingering, oral sex, slight exhibitionism | genre. dark academia, romance, love at first sight | word count. 8k

tags. @ughbehavior (@straywrds), @cb97percent, @j-0ne25, @hyuneater, @hyun-bun, @choigore, @danyxthirstae01, @hellishmoons, @lix-ables, @skz317cb97.

a/n. this was supposed to be out for his bday, but life happened. nevertheless, hope you guys enjoy!! reblogs are great, all writers appreciate them incredibly 🤍

synopsis. it hasn’t stopped raining for weeks. as you enter his life, as you walk out of it. he just needs one chance with you.

Cold, empty—wet.

A city devoid of sun, in a constant state of mourning. Century old buildings with their Victorian architecture and smell of humidity, the eternal reconstruction that makes it impossible to enter them, a church with no door, a river without bed, a shop with nothing to sell. They might as well be part of the scenery, now and forever. Occupied space and not much else.

There had been a point in time, though, and this is the part that’s important to Seungmin. There had been a time when these grand structures held great power over people—artists, especially. Endless sketches of the fabrications can be found in the Public Library, a place he used to visit quite frequently before he opened his business. Blueprints of the interior, books about the conformation and infrastructure going on and about continually, pages creating volumes, creating noteworthiness, establishing history.

He wonders if you’ll come today.

Kim Seungmin was born in Seoul, Korea on September twenty-first to a doctor mother and architect father. He strived tirelessly for most of his childhood and adolescent life for more than adequate grades, and a clean record, and when it was deemed appropriate, on the day after his seventeenth birthday, he left for London to join his sister at the University of Cambridge, an exemplary student with a bright future. He surprised everyone when instead of following in the footsteps of his parents and going for Medicine or Architecture, he chose Engineering with History of Art as his minor. A respectable career, granted, but not what he was supposed to do—not what had been predetermined for him.

Four years of nothing but rain, libraries, books, and dorm life, he’d finally graduated with Honors, and went to join the real world, with its many offers, all miserable and soul consuming. It didn’t take long for the masks to fall, the pretenses to seize. Seungmin was fucking over it, wanted nothing more to do with the path he’d led for all those years, nothing to do with his parents’ expectations, the appearances to be kept, the role he had to play, to maintain, so they can boast and gloat, and fill their bellies in their private fucking golf clubs, to their insufferable little friends with the pretty daughters, and the arranged marriages.

Yeah, fuck no.

What he did alternatively—he took a loan out. He opened a bookshop in Pimlico overlooking the Thames, and he never looked back. He lived with three roommates in a crammed-up apartment on Winchester Street, a tiny room with a twin bed, a desk and a refrigerator, until he was able to stand on his feet, and move somewhere nicer, somewhere private, and do not get him wrong, that took two entire years—years of learning the ropes of handling a business, of making orders, of studying his crowd and getting a feel of the area, and even then, sales weren’t booming, they weren’t even fucking flickering, till more café’s opened up, bringing people towards that part of the river, the hibernating one, with the sleepy tree branches looming over Seungmin’s head every time he walked to work. It was hard, being independent. But he did an excellent job hiding it, and after a while…well maybe he was just a natural pretender.

Eventually he got a bike. It was a used, secondhand thing, and he had to change the chain on it, but after that it worked just fine, so it was enough for him. With a ‘help wanted’ sign under his arm, pedaling the ten-minute ride to his shop, his only stop the local bakery where he purchases his warm cappuccinos and apple strudels every morning. The co-owner of the place, Han Jisung, always asks the same question upon arrival—the usual, then?

The usual. Seungmin was a creature of habit from a young age. He had to have a plan, an extensive list of steps to be taken, a routine. He thinks his life would’ve turned out completely different if he wasn’t like this; he would’ve ended up working a corporate job, a nine to five, sitting on a desk with a suit and tie, holding a briefcase, that kind of thing. Something simple, mind numbing. Instead, he chose the calendar, the extra assignments, the sleepless revisions. All which ended with him thousands of miles away, managing an establishment with no outside help. The point was—he needed to find someone immediately. He couldn’t possibly bear to manage everything on his own anymore, what with the seminars and people going in and out in a regular stream, only pausing for a couple hours at lunch time.

Sometimes, the strudel would go to waste. There’d be no time. Still, the usual. Why bother switching something that’s worked so well for so long?

“It’ll be raining for weeks, I heard. Better get yourself a raincoat if you want to keep riding that rusty bike of yours,” his friend advised him, handing him his order with a tight-lipped smile.

Seungmin mirrored his expression. “Will do, mate. Thanks for this.”

“No problem. Hey, don’t forget—you, me, the guys. Friday evening. Drinks at The Morpeth Arms.”

Here’s the thing. Seungmin never forgot, he wasn’t the forgetful type; in fact, he had a spectacular memory, something that helped him immensely during his academic career, and earned him a few nods of amazement, the casual ‘memory of an elephant, this one.’ No, Seungmin just hated social events, especially the ones that included drinking yourself into a stupor, traveling in packs holding on for dear life, and paying an enormous amount of money just for your liver to turn black later on. He’d rather be at home, eating comfort soup, watching his home country’s drama shows, and falling asleep on the couch, glasses inadvertently positioned on the very tip of his nose, every single time.

Yeah, Seungmin never forgot. He just had other things to do. Something warned him though, that he might not be able to get out of this one. Undeniably so. He’s bailed on his friend group more than two times in a row, had no good excuse for it today.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied, waving a quick goodbye, and making a run for it.

“Don’t just see, Kim Seungmin. Do!” he heard the boy yelling after him, but he had already passed the threshold of the bakery, securing his things in the basket on the front of the bike.

Jisung was a force to be reckoned with. Same age as him, of Korean descent as well, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, he took over his mother’s bakery and revamped the entire place, a smart move, which turned out to work in his favor, tripling the monthly profits in the first six months of reopening. Things seemed to just…go well for him, whatever he did, something Seungmin envied, but tried his hardest to learn from. It's always been him, Seungmin, and Hyunjin, an Art major, currently in his last year of school, ever since he came to England. Jisung had an ex-girlfriend attending Education classes at the same university as the bookshop owner, and Hyunjin would tag along only with the promise that he’d be able to stay in the premises and sketch the gardens.

Eccentric at times, the two of them, but the interesting kind, the kind that makes you want to stick around just to witness where it is all heading. Although they could get quite annoying when they wanted to…

He unlocks the wooden door with the glass pane, the intense smell of books hitting him at once. Moving in the familiar area, he makes sure to secure his bike along the wall, so it doesn’t slip and hurt any customers, and goes to turn on the lights from the panel in the back, resting his breakfast on top of the checkout secretaire.

The small bookshop lights up like a tree at Christmas, the fairy lights he’d installed earlier in the year hanging gracefully amongst the bookshelves running from floor to ceiling, stacks upon stacks decorating each section, all alphabetized and in categories, all carrying a purpose. Seungmin fixes his glasses on his face, running a careful hand through his parted hair, before removing his brown coat, rolling the sleeves of his white, crisp shirt high up on his forearms, and getting to work.

There’s a sort of ambience he particularly enjoys, a specific scent to accompany the unique odor of books, of yellowed out pages or alternately, of freshly published novels, recently sewn together, a big section of them in front of the big window as soon as you enter, with an exclusive segment of Seungmin’s Top Ten Picks of the Month. More lights along the walls, lantern looking designs, made specifically to give off a vintage overtone to his business, and a couple velvet armchairs in the corners, with decent sized tables, and candles on each side to provide a moment of relaxation for the customers.

Cinnamon and vanilla. A tiny tea and coffee cart next to his workspace for anyone that cared for it, always filled and ready to be taken advantage of. When Seungmin cared for something, he took it to the absolute extremes, made it part of him entirely, took care of it tenderly, tended to it regularly. This is why, he thinks, he succeeded in marketing this place. Because it isn’t just a means of income for him, because he’s genuinely a book lover, an avid reader. Because this is the inside of his soul, perfect to a T.

He starts the playlist on his tablet, lowers it to a gentle hum, and stands for a minute, taking in the warm palette of colors around him, sipping on his coffee, tasting the apple wrapped in puff pastry. It’s exquisite, as always, Han really has a fucking talent, he thinks as he peals the sticker off the sign he picked up from the printer shop earlier, sticking it on the storefront window, capital black letters in Times New Roman looking outside.

Hopefully, someone will show up within the week. In the case no one’s interested, well—he’s fucked. No plan B there. He counts on the broke students pacing up and down these streets daily to fill in the position. No one else in their right mind would work at a bookshop, of all places of employment, and for that he won’t dare fault them, not one bit. He can pay a fair wage, but it’s nothing to start a proper life, he’s aware of that. It doesn’t change the fact.

A little after ten, it starts raining; the fat, gray clouds he saw looming over him on his way there, finally giving way to fat droplets of water, drenching everything in their wake, a blurry watercolor painting. Seungmin sighs, leaning back on his chair, as he checks off inventory and researches up-and-coming authors to feature for next month. He accepts that it might be a slow day, and gets comfortable in his seat, yawning and stretching his limbs.

You enter in disarray, dripping water everywhere, closing a bright colored umbrella halfway in your attempt to shut the door behind you. The tote bag is the first thing he notices, it looked heavy on your shoulder, worn down. Then your coat, a deep emerald green, an entire forest, how it looks from above, and then finally your face as you turn to him, your expression bewildered, staring down at him like a deer in headlights, slightly confused, but not lost, not entirely.

There you are.

“Good morning,” he greets, no other words present in his brain. How peculiar. He adds a soft smile, for good measure.

Normal. Nice job, Kim Seungmin.

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” you say, and he guesses you refer to the rain, so he nods, watching you observe his establishment with curious eyes, leaving your umbrella behind as you walk over to the bookshelves. “It smells nice here. Are you the owner?”

Seungmin stirs, stands up straight, his tablet forgotten in his hands. “Yes,” he mutters, doesn’t sound sure of it. “Yes, I am,” he repeats, louder this time.

You hum and disappear behind a row. He finds himself leaning to find you again, stare at you a bit longer. He snaps out of it almost immediately, clearing his throat. Three things, he grounds himself.

One, the beautiful girl from last time had just entered his shop, yet it felt more like she’d shook through the foundations of the building and was coming for his very life.

Two, said pretty girl rendered him stupid two seconds in your interaction. What did that say about him as a person? He wasn’t usually like this. He’s had dates, and girlfriends, but they never felt like this—a blow to his stomach.

Three. He absolutely fucking needed to learn your name.

“Are you looking for anything specific?” he asks, nervous, wanting to cut through the tension he felt overtaking his entire body.

“Mythology classics!” your voice is an echo, a perfect ring of a pitch, reverberating through him.

He gets up at once, jumping at the chance to be useful to you, and crosses the shop, closing the distance between you. You’re skimming through a thick book unrelated to what you’ve just told him, your eyes moving on the pages. He doesn’t dare disturb you, not at first, but then the more he looks at you, the more he can feel his heart attempting to jump out of his fucking chest, so he deems it dangerous business, and breaks the silence. Your hair is wet, he finds, he sees. He wants to dry it for you.

Dangerous fucking business.

“Those would be on the other side, after poetry,” he informs you, and your gaze devastates him. It’s bright, it’s glorious, it’s a place he’d want to explore, dive into, and lose himself forever.

It’s looking up at him, waiting for him to lead the way. He blinks and moves. Your perfume is something light and floral and Seungmin wants to offer you coffee with sugar, give you books for half off, hire you part time, let you consume him. What a strange feeling to have for an absolute stranger, serving your heart on a silver platter over a mere ‘hello,’ and hoping they’ll accept it.

It terrifies the living shit out of him.

“Thank you for showing me. I loved this place when I came last time—I thought you just worked here. It’s hard to find what I’m looking for elsewhere,” you give him an excited smile, bending at the knees in front of the small section to pick out what you need.

He wants to know everything about you. “Are you a student?”

“English lit, fourth year. Aha!” you jump up, and Seungmin steps back, surprised. You wave the paperback cover in his face. “The Oresteia. Need to write a dissertation on it.”

Seungmin speaks as if in a trance, quoting the play he knows by heart. “‘This was always going to happen. She’s been dead since the beginning.’”

You’re beaming, buzzing, electrocuting him. Then you go right back down, your search not over yet. “You’d read this? It is quite extensive, is it not, and you need to watch out for the translations, some are over complicated, and hard to understand…”

“I enjoy the classics,” he admits, shyly. “You’re welcome anytime around here. To browse, or…whatever. And if you can’t find something, let me know. I’ll order it for you.”

“You’re too kind, bookshop owner, aren’t you?”

Seungmin stares, stares, stares—at the top of your head, at your elegant hands reaching for the spines of the books, flipping them over, inspecting them. He prided himself on his eloquence, his extensive knowledge of words, his friends sometimes teased him, called him a ‘walking dictionary,’ but what does he do with all this, when he must force his throat to open, unable to voice those same words he’s studied over the years, grown familiar with. They’re all traitors to him now, he will never depend on them again. Ridiculous, what’s happening.

You’re a customer. He shouldn’t be treating you any more than, any different. Why then did that one, singular smile of yours make a home in him, right under his ribcage? He pictured butterflies erupting behind you, wild in color, beautiful in their movement, flying too close to the fairy lights. This was unreasonable. It would wreak havoc in him, rearrange his world view, have him fantasize about things that could not be, should not be. Your lips, he thinks.

Cherry flavored.

“What’s your name?” he caved in. He wanted to pull you up, feel you under his touch, see for himself if you were real.

You got up once again, two more books in your hands, as you tilted your head in question, strands of hair falling in front of your perplexed face. “Do you always ask your customers for their names?”

Seungmin swallowed. He’d been caught. What he had—honesty. “Only you.”

You smiled again. He almost clenched his chest. “Good save. I’m (Y/N).”

He repeated it internally. (Y/N), (Y/N), (Y/N) …he imagines it rolling off his tongue, your body under his, those delicate wrists pinned above your head, whispering it to you again, and again, and again.

Fuck him.

“Seungmin,” he extends his hand for you to take, trying really hard to conceal what contact with you would do to him.

He’s defenseless against his own desires, he realizes. He’s never wanted to take someone as his own so badly before. His mind was in overdrive, completely overwhelmed. You’ve exposed him, laid him bare—have your way with him. He’d do anything, he decides right then and there. Anything. Say the word and he’s yours.

You take it, kickstarting a whole new series of events and catastrophes inside him.

“Well, Seungmin, I’m done here, and I have class in about ten minutes, but I’ll pass by again soon, yeah? Ring me up, won’t you?”

You brush past him walking up to the register, and he’s left watching your figure slip away from him, so easily, no further regard to him, that forest green coat of yours flowing around you, your boots stomping with certainty. A fucking vision, you were. Stomping your way into his shop, into his life, into his heart. Oh, what is reason? What are words?

Metamorphoses, The Oresteia, Theogony. What you purchase. He hands you the books, per your request, and you slide the tote bag down to your arm, shoving the books in there at once. He watches all this, in awe, speechless, afraid to let you go, knowing he can’t beg you to stay longer. It’d be weird. And slightly creepy, he thinks but it’s more of an afterthought. He notices he doesn’t really care—anyone that would grant him the wish to stare at you more, to marvel at your cute features.

“It was nice to meet you!” You grab the umbrella again and rush out of his life, the same you stumbled in.

He watches in mystified delight.

‘Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient,’ he remembers reading once.

He becomes half water. He waits.

Friday comes. Seungmin decides to go to the Arms, straight for them, no second thought about it, one and done, but then he procrastinates getting dressed, looks for his watch for ten minutes, and his keys are nowhere to be found, so he takes that as a sign he shouldn’t go. It’d be bad if he went. He shouldn’t go.

Then he remembers he doesn’t believe in the signs of the universe and locks his apartment behind him.

Two beers, then he’ll go home, he tells himself. Just enough so his friends can’t say anything to him, can’t be mad at him, will stop calling him incessantly, whining about how he’s neglecting them so, and what kind of a mate are you, Kim, not a very good one, eh?

Seungmin thinks he’s a pretty good lad, actually. He helped Hyunjin move this past summer and has offered many a solution to Jisung’s never-ending on-and-off relationship with that indecisive girlfriend of his. Hasn’t committed a crime in his life, not even a petty one, not a traffic light. He’s never littered in all the years he’s been conscious about his person. He’s been an upstanding citizen, and a supportive friend. He’s just a bit of a homebody, and when has that ever hurt anyone, really.

The pub is filled to the brim by the time he arrives, incredibly loud, with a game playing in the background. He finds Jisung easy enough and goes to him, to that table he frequents all the way to the wall by the bar and slips his coat off wearing it on the back of the chair.

“Couldn’t have picked a Sunday, yeah?”

Jisung claps his shoulder and shakes his head. “You’d complain about any day of the week, Min, so just sit here and look pretty like you do. Hyunjin’s bringing us drinks.”

The baker’s hair had faded to a light brown from the August sun back in Seoul, his yearly vacation, and just as Seungmin is about to make a joke about it, Hyunjin enters his vision holding three pints of beer, muttering excuse me’s to the table next to them. Blonde hair, soft looking cardigan, tall, long limbs and all, full scholarship artist-to-watch-out-for Hwang Hyunjin, on his way to an amazing career.

“Would you look at who the cat dragged in—my God, Kim Seungmin, is that really you? Gracing us with your majesty’s presence? I must be dreaming!”

His ‘majesty’ sighed and grabbed the beer, an unamused look on his face. “You know, surprisingly, this isn’t making me want to show up any more than it makes me want to dump both of you and find new friends. About time, I say,” he drawled. “Cheers!”

The two men looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Cheers, fuck it,” Jisung exclaimed.

Hyunjin turned elegantly in the chair, legs crossed, mischievous expression on. “What have you been up to, huh? Who’s the girl?”

Seungmin froze, then reassured himself they had no idea about you, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose—a habit that gave him away. The blonde ‘aha!’’d and bumped his elbow against Jisung’s, giddy as ever.

“See, I knew it.”

Jisung didn’t look particularly convinced, though. “Where would he even meet a girl, Hyun? The only dates he’s been on for the past year have been with his TV.”

“Ouch, bro.”

He wasn’t wrong, yet Seungmin wanted to let him know—about the girl that walked into his bookshop, has swept him off his feet. Just so he stops talking shit, just so it can finally set on him; that you’re real, that you happened. How you will never stop happening from now on.

Instead, he scoffed. “Fuck you, Han. You’re one to talk with that toxic shit you’re pulling.”

Jisung had the audacity to look shocked, and even appalled at the accusation. “I’m hurt you think I’m somehow at fault with how I’m being treated. I should just break it off once and for all, show you fuckers.”

Hyunjin casually sipped on his beer, palmed a few sunflower seeds. “It’s not about showing us—it’s about showing yourself, baby.”

Seungmin chuckled at that, chuckled even harder at Jisung’s blown out face, with the puffy cheeks and the big, wide eyes. He’d missed this, how carefree it all felt. It brought back memories, reasons why these people were close to him, why he could never get rid of them. They kept him sane. And gained him points with the ladies—Jisung’s humor, and Hyunjin’s angel features were a double threat. He just completed the group with the boy next door vibe, and sharp styling choices.

“Where’s Jeongin?” he asks, opening the bag of crisps laid out on the table.

“Late night studying, he’s already driving himself against a wall,” Hyunjin replies, a seed between his teeth.

“Chris has a late session, as well,” Jisung adds. “Music majors—perfectionists.”

It was at that point that you walked in. Seungmin hadn’t noticed you, not until his friends looked towards the door, and then looked again, making him curious. It was indeed you, he concluded after blinking several times, you, the most beautiful fucking girl in there, searching for empty tables with—a guy. A guy taller than you, taller than him, and fuck him, he didn’t need to see that, he didn’t have to know who you hung out with, if you had a boyfriend and how long you’d been together—he could do without all those things.

But now they’re overtaking all available space in his mind. Now there’s green inside him, eating away, molding, rotting away everything, and he’s jealous, he’s jealous, he wants you, he wants you alone, single, to himself, forever—

“She’s cute, no?” Jisung comments and nudges him.

For a moment, just for a moment, Seungmin takes off his glasses and glares at his best friend, filled with fury and green, green, green, but then he comes to his senses, reasons that Jisung hasn’t got a clue who you are, what you are to Seungmin, and so with that he breathes. He breathes and downs his beer, fuck the crisps, fuck the plan.

“It’s her,” he confesses.

Hyunjin leans in, suddenly very interested, and Jisung furrows his eyebrows, clearly confused. “What do you mean?”

Seungmin looks at you again, sees the hand around your waist, the casualness of the movement, and doesn’t want to jump into conclusions, doesn’t want the conclusions to jump him, but he’s fairly certain, he’s almost a hundred percent—

“The girl that’s kept me away, let’s say.”

At first, “No fucking way,” but then Hyunjin studied his friend’s expression, the unwavering gaze, the set of his mouth, the defeated slump of his shoulders, and his head tilted, his own mouth hung open, stared.

“I’ll be fucking damned,” he deadpanned.

“But who’s that dude, then?” Jisung questioned, hanging off the edge of his seat, thirsty for the gossip.

“No idea.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“Customer.”

“Kim Seungmin!” Hyunjin gasps, a hand on his chest, over his heart. “The scandal!”

Jisung rolls his eyes. “Don’t listen to him. Is she aware of your feelings?”

Just as Seungmin was about to answer, the entire pub breaks out in boo’ing, the team on the TV losing dramatically, the place vibrating, and his fists tighten at the sound, his whole body alert, aware of you, in the same space as him, outside of the magic of his bookstore, outside of the owner/customer dynamic.

“I’ve only seen her twice, Han. My feelings don’t even make sense to me.”

A devilish smirk spread across the blonde’s face. “I think you want to fuck her, Min. This sounds like an attraction to me.”

Jisung slaps his hand on the table and points at his face, nodding his head. “That’s an excellent observation, my dear Hyun. Kim, you just need to get her out of your system.”

Seungmin groans and gets up, grabbing his empty glass of beer. “Shut the fuck up. Anyone need a refill?”

The men glance at each other’s half empty beers, slightly concerned. “We’re good, mate.”

The truth was, he had thought about the possibility. What he’s felt for you he hasn’t felt for anyone, not this strong, not this constant, even in your absence, especially in your absence. You should’ve been just another English literature student shopping for books to him. That should’ve been it.

It wasn’t. It didn’t feel like it could be.

Waiting for the beer, he dared a peek at you. You sat with your back facing him, your head thrown back at something that guy had said, the other members of your party smiling brightly at you. Your hair was down, moved with you. Seungmin could bring your scent forth in his mind, the flowers, the sweetness that surrounded you. It physically hurt to ignore you, to pretend this wasn’t killing him. He needed more, he needed to pull you away, he needed to vomit all this out; the attraction, as Hyunjin eloquently put it, the heart stabbing, the turning of his stomach—the fucking boner he got first time he saw you in that dainty dress of yours.

He needed you to know, to make a decision. He wouldn’t sit still, there’d be no sleep for him until he did something about it, until you were aware of this, whatever the fuck it was, also.

“I’ll come back for this,” he informs the bartender, and his feet carry him before he’s even concluded thinking about it before he even sets on it.

“Excuse me,” he says loudly. The entire table turns to him. You turn to him.

“Bookshop owner!” you grin at him, and he’s at ease at once. He doesn’t need anything else. “What a coincidence. How have you been?”

You’re kind, then, you don’t shun him away. He’s chosen well. Seungmin feels his heart blooming, expanding, threatening to take over. You’re kind to him. You don’t know him, not as well as he wanted you to, but you still chose decency. Did he deserve it with the thoughts currently swimming in his head? Probably not.

He spares one glance for the hunk of a guy sitting opposite you, only one, not more than that, because he might be half his size, but Seungmin had always been exceptionally strong whenever he deemed it necessary. Then his eyes are back on you, and God, why did he ever look away?

“I’ve been well,” he touches his glasses. Catches himself. “Could I please steal you for a moment?”

Your eyes widen a bit, hands holding the table, ready to pounce on your feet. “Sure, but why? Is everything okay?”

Seungmin nods, offering you a soft smile and his hand. “Everything’s fine. It’ll only be a moment.”

“Okay,” you turn to your friends. Seungmin looks at his, already staring at him. Hyunjin winks. Seungmin blinks.

“I’ll be back guys.” You grab his hand, bringing him back, setting him on fire.

He tries to hide, push it all down, away from you, because he needs to be careful. One wrong move, he tells himself. One wrong move and that’s it. He opens the door for you, walks out after and into the chill of a September night. At least it’s quiet, at least he can hear himself think. One wrong move, it repeats, one wrong move…

“I apologize for taking you away from your friends,” he starts, walking to the side of the building to stand under a birch tree, almost completely devoid of leaves by that point. You follow, patient, kind.

“Oh, that’s—” you wave your hand, pft’ing. “They’re just classmates. We’ll be working together for a while.”

Just classmates. Seungmin stands up straight to that, in his full height. Just classmates you say, but that hand didn’t look friendly, that hand looked exactly how Seungmin feels about you, protective, territorial. You thought nothing of it, because that’s who you were, he could tell, you didn’t take things too seriously, you were alive, kind, kind, kind, what was another word—innocent.

He licked his lips, gathering the courage required to say what needed to be said, what needed to spill out his chest. He stood close, you stood closer. You were oblivious. For Heaven’s sake. This would be the hardest thing he ever had to utter.

“I—have no other way to say this, (Y/N) so, please just—fuck,” he chokes out a breath, looks you right in the eye. “I’m completely enamored by you. You have all control over this, you can curse me and walk away right now. But you need to know. I want to take you out.”

At first you just stared at him, the words slowly registering in your ears. Then, you opened your mouth to speak—closed it. Then opened it again, taking a step towards him. He remained in his place, hands in his pockets, afraid he’d reach out otherwise. He had no right, not until you gave him permission.

“You’re very handsome, you know that?” you say, placing a hand on his cheek. He doesn’t breathe, he doesn’t think. Your eyes are dark against the backdrop of the moon. Nothing moves. “And sweet, and interesting. I’m—nothing in particular. Seungmin, you’d get bored of me.”

“Never,” he’s quick to retort. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done to me, have you darling? From the moment you walked in my shop—that was it. I was done for.”

You shook your head, your fingers stilling in their caress, your hand goes to drop—his own shoots out, holds it, keeps it there, wills it to stay, desperate to show you.

“You really are very sweet,” you inhale. “No one’s ever said they want to take me out. No one’s asked.”

Seungmin doesn’t understand why, doesn’t want to ponder over it. He’s here now, and he wants you. He’d show you; he swears.

“I’m saying it. Go out with me, darling. If you hate it, you don’t have to see me ever again.”

You smile at that, your lips quivering. “Shame. I really like your bookstore.”

He smiles back. “I really like you.”

You bite your lip, and then you nod. “Okay.” A moment. “Could you kiss me, Seungmin?”

He needn’t be told twice. Pulling you closer by that arm extended on him, he closes in around you, smashing your lips together. It takes everything in him not to groan into your mouth, the softness of you, your smell, all driving him crazy, all intoxicating him, rendering him unable to think straight. You melt into him, something he loves, and he guides the kiss, his arms wrapping around that waist that he’s seen being claimed, bunching the fabric of your shirt in his fist, tightening his grip around you, devouring you.

He'd like to slip inside you, fuck slow, deep strokes into your cunt, bring you into a state of deliriousness with his cock. He can already imagine how good you’d take him, how you’d open for him. Buried in between his thighs—Heaven. Seungmin walks you to the bark of the tree and pushes you against it, deepening the kiss, his tongue pushing past your lips, exploring your mouth, tasting the ale you’d been drinking. He’s having incoherent thoughts now, nonsensical things; how he’d like to drink you, let the very flavor of you invade the top of his mouth, fill his senses, allow you to run down his throat, sip into his every pore. Fuck him, he’s whipped, isn’t he?

“There’s no going back from this, darling,” he pants against your mouth. “I’m never getting over you—never getting over this taste.”

You pull him back in. “I don’t want you to,” you whisper, your lips curving.

“Sunday, after six. Come,” he mutters, his fingers tangled in your hair, holding your head in place. You gaze up at him. “Promise me.”

“I do. I promise,” you kiss him again. “I’ll come.” Again, and again, and again.

Another day spent waiting.

By noon Seungmin thinks you won’t show. That it was all a lie, perhaps an illusion of the full moon and one too many drinks. Then he checks out a freshman buying The Iliad, a tote bag on his shoulder, the warm scent of cinnamon coming from the pale cup he’s holding, and he’s sure you will.

You happened, you will.

Oh, to trust that someone won’t drain the blood from your heart. A treacherous road.

He must’ve drank three cups of coffee by the time the stream of customers slows down, signaling lunch time. He digs for the wanted pamphlet in his drawer of take-out menus, and calls the number at once, ordering a barbeque chicken pizza with a side of cheesy bread. As he glances outside, clouds gathering already, the sky gray, dull, Seungmin throws his head back, sighing deeply, and listens to the cashier informing him of his total at the point of delivery.

“Thank you,” he says and hangs up. ‘Do you know if she’ll come,’ he wants to add, but he doesn’t, because that’d be crazy, nonsensical. Still, the question—it stands.

He breaks down boxes, organizes book labels and invoices, and even dusts the shelves. Five pizza slices and a heartburn later, Seungmin sinks back into his chair, and decides that time will not help him today. The anxiety is eating at him, at the tips of him, like a parasite, slowly making him sick, feverish. He won’t be able to keep this up for long, he wishes he’d told you to come earlier, maybe this way this endless questioning would’ve stopped by now, maybe the heartbreak would’ve been easier to swallow with people around. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle closing down shop with no trace of you.

God, the waiting. Seungmin doesn’t like doing this, has only done it once before–he takes the scotch out, a bottle he’s kept since opening this place, and drinks two big gulps of it. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he thinks he might have to daydrink his way to getting you out of his mind. And the rejection. And the outline of your body on his. No other way about it. Alcohol or going mad, his two options.

Fuck him.

The clock on the wall behind his desk says five minutes to six. By that point he has no hope, no patience, no heart, no will–no scotch. He drags himself over to the door to flip the sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed,’ and he leaves nothing but the fairy lights on, an indication that the shop is closed, but someone’s still inside.

He’s not drunk but he’d like to be. One thing about Seungmin, why he doesn’t like drinking–it does nothing for him. His damn tolerance is too high. He can drink and drink and drink, but it will make no difference. Only thing he’ll be left with is a dehydrated, scratchy throat; more of an annoyance than a relief.

Seungmin sweeps, mops, then proceeds to put every single book in the wrong area back to its original place. That should take him a good while, he thinks, definitely–it doesn’t. It takes him ten minutes, because this is his store, he knows it inside out, he’s done this hundreds of times before, and why aren’t you here? You should’ve been here by now.

The glasses come off. He won’t go down that road, he can handle rejection, he’ll move on, you’re just–well, you’re…unforgettable. Haunting. All he can think about, all he wants, all he craves. Outside is pouring, thunder cracking, always a blurry watercolor painting now describing what’s going on internally, draining away any opportunity of you showing up. He tells himself he’ll stay until the rain calms down, until it’s safe to ride his bicycle.

He tells himself he will never get over you, but that the water will eventually wash you away. It has to. It’s six-thirty and you are nowhere to be found. A little more. He’ll wait a little more. Out of desperation if nothing else. He won’t be afraid to admit. He kissed you, he tasted you. He’ll wait. You’ll come, you have to. You kissed back. You–

You’re standing right there. Drenched, shaking that god awful umbrella, looking through the glass, pushing the door open–spilling into his bookshop like nothing happened. Like before. Like a story repeating itself. Forest green coat, hair sticking to your face, disheveled expression.

“I’m late, aren’t I?”

Are you? Seungmin’s knees almost give way. He exhales shakily, blinking at your drowned figure. You’re not. You’re not. You’re right on time.

“You’re soaking wet,” he notes, and comes back to life, taking long strides towards you.

You chuckle nervously, shivering, apologetic. He grabs the umbrella and leaves it by his bike, his hand staying in yours, tracing your fingers, feeling for himself that you’re really there, that you really came. You look up at him, wide eyed, mouth falling open, studying him.

“Better take this off,” he mutters, and waits for your approval. He removes the coat from your shoulders, shaking off the rain droplets, catching a whiff of that cologne he so adores. He’s a fucking animal, he can’t even be near you without his mind doing a complete one eighty on him.

“I’m sorry,” you start, watching him take care of you. “I…wasn’t sure if I should come.” His hands push your hair back, listening calmly. “Bookshop owner, I don’t–”

“Seungmin,” he cuts you off, his gaze snapping down to meet yours. “Say my name, darling.”

“Seungmin.” It’s breathless, it’s surprising. It’s perfect. His cock twitches in his tailored pants.

He bites his lip. “Will you let me remove your shirt, (Y/N)? You’ll catch a cold if you stay in these clothes.”

A single moment of silence, your eyes clouding with the same intentions. “Yes.”

He expertly undoes the buttons, exposing your white, lacy bra underneath, your breasts deliciously tucked in the cups, better than his dreams, better in every way because it’s reality. Seungmin wants to take his time with you, wants to take you out on a proper date, pay for you, make sure you’re having fun, that you enjoy being with him, establish a connection before he–

He thinks he can’t wait. He thinks if he doesn’t take you right here, right now he’ll fucking die. None of the internal struggle shows on his face. You wiggle off your shirt, and he lifts his arms to remove his vest. Picturing you in his clothes, in his shop, surrounded by your smell, and the smell of vanilla…a fucking dream. His Aphrodite, compliant under his touch, willing, those lips teasing, their pink tint inviting. Fuck it all to Hell. You look absolutely beautiful, the brown of the fuzzy fabric making you appear softer, if that’s even possible. He pulls you into his arms, falling victim to his own wants, his own desires. He holds you tight, your freezing body gradually warming up under his caress, flush against him.

“‘I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself,’” he quotes in your hair, his palm rubbing circles on your lower back, hoping you’d know. That you’d get it.

“Frank Kafka,” you answer with a breathy laugh. “‘What’s happened to me? It was no dream.’”

Something opens in his heart, tears itself out. There’s no stopping it. “My darling,” he whispers, and lifts you up. You gasp, his name falling from those lips. It happens fast, he walks you to the mythology section, in front of the window, a consequence he won’t think of until later, your back hitting the shelves, as your arms circle his neck. Seungmin kisses you, then. What’s there left to do? There are no words to describe this. You taste like rain and hard candy, and his fingers get lost in between your thighs, pushing aside fabric, and feeling the slick of your cunt. All reason escapes him, all but the sensation of your excitement for him on his digits. He kneels down, has to have a taste, needs to, for his sanity. His arm snakes around your ass and keeps you there, as his tongue comes in contact with your leaking pussy, lapping your juices, slurping loudly, shamelessly.

The back of your hand presses against your mouth, moans tearing through anyway. No one’s ever gone down on you, you didn’t even know how it felt, nevermind that it felt like this, wet and embarrassing, but so good, oh my God, so good, fuck, your fingers getting lost in the mop that is his hair, tugging, your breathing ragged, fast, your knees shaking, the smell of books engulfing you–

“You taste like Heaven,” he grunts, and his tongue gets replaced by his hand, as he makes his way back to your mouth. “Taste yourself, darling, see for yourself what you do to me, how am I supposed to stay away when–that’s right, fuck my fingers, go on, my love…”

There’s still water dripping from your hair, and he leans the side of his face on it, enjoying the coolness it provides while his entire body is on fire. You’re everywhere on him, he feels all of you, and his fingers curl inside you wanting that release, craving those broken moans he’s eliciting out of you to get louder, to deafen him, to fill the entire shop and stay, echoing over and over so he never forgets this moment, so he’ll always have you. You’re biting his neck, your nails digging on his shoulders, in his back, falling, going to his belt, coming to the buckle, undoing, all the while coming undone.

Right before you start spasming, he lifts you up again and slips inside you swiftly, cupping your face with one hand, his mouth taking yours in an open-mouthed kiss, cursing at how tight you fit around him. For one second, just one single moment, he does not move, no matter how much you want him to, no matter how you’re wiggling and arching, against all of his thoughts of fucking you into the bookcase to have and admire you whenever he wants. No, he marvels in the way his cock is throbbing inside you, all of you alight, in flames, and only then–only when you mouth his name, staring in his eyes desperately–only then he finally begins thrusting, causing you to wrap your legs around his torso, holding on for dear life.

“Is it supposed to feel like this–God, please, please don’t stop, never stop–”

Seungmin wasn’t planning to. Stopping was the furthest thing from his mind as his hips picked up pace, his thrusts angled, deep and hard, bottoming out every time, skin hitting on skin, your hot breaths mingling, mixing, one one one– You felt exactly how he imagined, and a thousand times better, Christ, your tits perfectly bouncing, your cunt squeezing him closer. Books fall, all around you, the sound of them magnifying what the two of you are doing, what’s in process, an altering of souls, because he knows this will never again be the same for him, this shop without you, it will always be more, more, more, he will fuck you over every surface, he will make you part of him, he swears, you’re never leaving, not when your juices are the only thing that can get him drunk, not when you sound this hot moaning his name, his name, it’s never vibrated through him like this before, a name, you make it holy, you make it matter–

“Cum with me, cum with me Seungmin, please, let me feel you, fuck, fuck, fuck–”

He’s your servant, he would do anything you asked. He comes with a ferocity unknown to him, panting, sweaty, holding on to you, drilling the last bit of cum deep within your walls, his hands holding, squeezing, digging into your waist, forehead on your sternum dropping soft, abenseminded kisses, and you let him. You let him, because you have no idea what the fuck just happened, you only know that it was the best thing, the rightest decision you’ve ever made in your entire life.

“You look so handsome without your glasses,” you compliment him shyly, smiling.

He carefully puts you down, adjusts your skirt, and tucks himself in his pants, before touching the bridge of his nose. There was nothing there. He chuckles, and his arms are around you again. He can’t bring himself not to touch you, can’t find a reason why he should stay away, put some distance. You belong in his arms, he concludes.

You belong with him.

“So, I’m not when I wear them?” he teases, his lips on your forehead.

A weak punch on his stomach. He hufs a laugh, moving back just a breath so he can stare down at your face. You look fucking beautiful. You look like you’re his.

“You’re like a sexy professor with them on, you know what I mean, or like a–”

He kisses you. He’s falling in love. He’s already fallen.

#stray kids scenarios #skz scenarios #stray kids smut #seungmin scenarios #seungmin smut #seungmin fanfic #stray kids #stray kids seungmin #skz fanfic #skz imagines #stray kids imagines #stray kids fanfiction #—mine.

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kiiyunz · 8 days

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posted⠀by⠀junjiie⠀⠀⸻⠀⠀1Oth May,⠀2O24.

Alright, alright, I know it’s a little late. I got distracted! A human error. From a human. But anyway, I’m back with the promised rundown of KIHYUN’s NCT U eras—but I’m ditching the rankings this time around, as the majority (up until UNIVERSE in 2021) took place in and around KIHYUN’s BAD eras. Everything else is the same, though, so.. Have fun!

EMPATHY 2018 GLOWSTICKS & (FAKE) GUCCI

RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC just over a week after his seventeenth birthday, the first whole NCT album was both a somewhat-old (he’d been promoting for a good two years by then, after all) but still refreshing experience for Kihyun. Participating in BLACK ON BLACK, GO, and BOSS, the vocalist threw every part of himself into it as usual—and maybe even a little more so, reinvigorated by the fact he was collaborating with members from the other unit (and ones from an upcoming one) that he’d only ever trained with in the past. He enjoyed the more mature feel of the teasers for GO, as well as the music video and the song itself—it was during this era (although it would only really become more apparent during WE GO UP promotions in September of that same year, and during EMPATHY he kept this thought mainly to himself) that he was starting to feel like the whole childish concept was something he wanted to be rid of, that he wanted to trade in for something different; and GO fit that vision perfectly. He had a notable amount of fun on the set of the music video, and slated filming it as the ‘best thing he’d get to do all year,’ despite the fact they were only three months into said year.

Due to the would-be unspoken rule of Kihyun only making an effort to have any sort of online presence when he wasn’t the biggest fan of an album’s concept or music, he was fairly offline during this era—the only actual content fans ended up getting was in the official music videos & the behind-the-scenes and dance practices for said videos. They made the most of what they were given, choosing firstly to poke fun at what they’d styled him in—one of his outfits included a horrendous rip-off Gucci jacket that was noticeable from a mile away—and secondly to enjoy the interactions he had with the members of 127 (the EMPATHY era showcased his bond with members like Johnny, Jaehyun, and Jungwoo to the public for the first time) and members like Ten and Kun, who hadn’t yet found their place in a permanent unit—although it wasn’t long in the making, as would be proved by WayV’s debut the next year. This was most prevalent with the behind-the-scenes of the BOSS music video in particular, a clip of Kihyun and Jaehyun chasing each other around dangerously close to the literal circle of fire featured in one of the later scenes while Mark watched on on the obvious verge of panic going quite viral online.

MY FAVOURITE MOMENT: ⠀GO MV BEHIND

Kihyun getting a little too ambitious while balancing on the metal of the train tracks and nearly falling flat on his face, much to the delight of Chenle and horror of Jeno—who ran over to see if he was alright, and then proceeded to nearly trip himself up also. The nearly-fall didn’t deter him in the slightest and he continued to walk down the line, Jeno stepping up behind to follow along (he noticeably wobbled more than a few times, but still stuck with it if only to give Kihyun some company). Chenle got bored of watching—or, as Haechan called it, “got FOMO,” and it didn’t take long of observing the other two before he was running over and trying it out for himself also. Him and Kihyun were walking on parallel sides, with Jeno in the middle after having given up on the whole balancing shtick; watching as the two in front of him reached out to hold on another’s hands and intercepting so they were both grabbing hold of one of his instead. Mark cooed, Haechan pretended to throw up in his mouth.

RESONANCE PT 1 2020 VOCAL FRY & BADLY DISGUISED VODKA

IN THE MIDDLE OF running around and getting up to many a scandal with someone that was, really, doing him more harm than good, NCT came back together as a full group to release RESONANCE PT 1. For the album he traded his newfound clubhopping hobby for what’s considered by some fans as one of his best (although criminally short, what with him only participating in VOLCANO and DÉJÀ VU—something that many suspect was a sort of punishment for the bad press he’d been bringing to both Dream and, by proxy, the group as a whole by that time) performances in the entirety of his career thus far. During VOLCANO he gave listeners a few seconds of rap lines, a skill of his that had previously been rarely utilised, Kihyun’s voice taking on a raspier edge that he later mentioned off-handedly as being his “Taeyong impression,” which was met with both positive and negative reactions—as is the same with most things any idol says or does while they mention another. DÉJÀ VU saw him back to his standard vocalist position, but many slated his lines as being their favourite, or his tone standing out amongst the rest in a certain moment. Altogether, despite his public image still not being anywhere close to being fully repaired, at least he wasn’t being accused of being talentless to add fuel to the fire.

What was adding fuel to it, however, were the leaked photos of him with a shiny silver flask halfway to his mouth on the way to a taxi. It was after hours, hardly being able to be accused of drinking on the job (but with a job like being an idol, it would be a little difficult to blame him for doing so), but it still sent a few people into an outrage—and Kihyun’s response didn’t help matters either, the simple ‘whoops’ he sent on Bubble enough to prompt some into showing their truce stance on Kihyun and his situation as of late (that being, of course, that they hated him). Most took it in good humour and laughed along with him, seeing as those photos and content put out by the company were all they got to see of him for the whole era. Even his moments in things such as behind-the-scenes videos were frighteningly scarce, only appearing for a scant second or two before he was being whisked off by another member or the camera had decided to abruptly cut away in the middle of his screentime where in the past it most likely would’ve lingered a little longer. It was sort of a tug of war between the good and the bad things throughout the whole promotion period.

MY FAVOURITE MOMENT: KYUNDERY INSTAGRAM LIVE

It was almost like a miracle, the day Hendery logged into the NCT account and decided to start a live—and with Kihyun, no less. They were a little drunk, and didn’t care if the people watching realised that. In fact, them being tipsy probably played a part in the decision to go live, so maybe it was really something they should be thankful for. The majority of the time on live was spent by the pair taking turns scrolling through the filters and laughing themselves into hysterics, so much so they could barely get a word out between their fits. When they’d finished filter sampling they held an impromptu karaoke session, despite the fact their voices were cracking a minimum of twice for every line they belted out into the empty company room they’d holed themselves up in (and, when Hendery tilted the phone to show viewers their set up, it almost looked like they were camping for the night—there were a few pillows and a blanket they’d hoarded from somewhere, snacks galore, bags and a few empty bottles and one singular shoe). Beggars couldn’t be choosers in the Kihyun-content regard for this era, but it just so happened that the one thing they did get (or rather, most of them got, as some missed the notification and had to watch clips elsewhere) was something they could hold dear.

RESONANCE PT 2 2020 LUCKY NUMBERS & LEGO SETS

STILL RUNNING AROUND, still not the fan favourite he once was, most were expecting much of the same treatment during RESONANCE PT 2 as Kihyun got during PT 1. However, to the surprise of all of them, he actually received a little more screentime this promotion period around—most likely because of his involvement in the tracks 90’S LOVE and WORK IT, where there was far more extra content to go alongside just the music (as well as RAISE THE ROOF, although that didn’t receive a music video like the former two), but most fans decided to take it as the plus it undoubtedly was. He looked happier than he had in months skating around with Mark and Jeno, catching up with Ten, cracking easy jokes with both Shotaro and Sungchan in his attempts to get to know them better despite the slump he’d been in for most of the year thus far, and of course messing around to his heart’s content with Johnny and Hendery on the WORK IT set. His normal full-of-energy self was back—not that it had ever left, but he’d seemed far more tired, almost lifeless, in the months running up to the dual albums—and to see him so sunny again seemed to brighten the mood of a few of the members he was particularly close to in tandem.

As was beginning to become the (unfortunate) norm, hardly any extra content atop what the company gave the fans came from Kihyun himself—no lives, no posts, barely any messages on Bubble, the list only went on. Some said he was simply following his own tradition of staying quiet if he liked the music making up the album he was in the middle of promoting, but most people were still under the impression that it was due to the scandals and articles and countless rumours that had completely taken over his public image with fans—decidedly for the worse, seeing as it ended up getting so bad once that people were left wondering if he was going to be kicked out of NCT on the whole. The mood was beginning to dip again, fans taking his complete lack of presence that wasn’t company-mandated to mean that they were going to be seeing even less of him in the future. Until—a post from Kihyun, a simple selca on their Twitter account of him in his 48 hockey jersey from the 90’S LOVE music video, the two simple words ‘lucky number’ as his only caption. You’d think he’d just dropped a movie-length vlog from the amount of people celebrating his (brief) return, the words ‘HE’S BACK’ trending for a few hours or so as most of his fanbase frantically changed their profile picture to the aforementioned selca.

MY FAVOURITE MOMENT: WORK IT MV BEHIND

No one was happier to see Kihyun than Johnny, and that fact was apparent from a mile away. They were attached at the hip the second the cameras stopped rolling, always visible in the background glued to each other’s sides even if they didn’t get much time talking to the camera for the BTS video. When it was finally their turn to give their small interview (or rather, when it was Johnny’s turn, and he dragged Kihyun along with him by the arm) Johnny was resting his head atop Kihyun’s and buttoning and unbuttoning the blazer he was wearing for that scene while he spoke. Kihyun even cracked a smile or two at the jokes that had obviously only been told for the sake of his reaction, and contributed a few words here and there. Another moment from the video widely loved was from the scene on the wide open field, where he was captured sprinting away from Jungwoo giving chase, Jaemin and Johnny close behind, wide grins on all of their faces and the faint sound of laughter being picked up. Jisung was standing and watching with a small smile, with the rest making bets on who was going to trip over their very-much-not-made-for-running shoes first.

UNIVERSE 2021 BASEBALL BATS & BETTER DAYS

WELL ON THE WAY to being fully back to his normal self again (despite it being a couple years in the making), UNIVERSE saw Kihyun far happier than the previous two promotion periods, almost reaching his mood during the EMPATHY era. Participating in songs UNIVERSE (LET’S PLAY BALL), OK!, BIRTHDAY PARTY, and of course BEAUTIFUL, it wasn’t as if he was at a loss for things to do. He admitted it was tiring, but also that it was fun—because with the more songs he got to work on, the more time he was given the chance to spend with members not in his unit (namely Hendery, Xiaojun, Johnny, and Jungwoo—although he did talk a little more with Shotaro and Sungchan also, stating proudly to the camera on one occasion that they’d been thinking about going out for dinner one night in the future). He also found it fun because he enjoyed every track on the album, even if he didn’t make an appearance on most of them. Despite the hate some of them got from the fanbase (BIRTHDAY PARTY in particular) he held firm and even sent a few Bubble messages defending them in earnest, complete with angry kaomojis and one (not really) accidental swear. Kihyun saw UNIVERSE as his chance to prove he was ready to be a proper representative of the neos after his nearly-two-year-long slump, and was truly giving it his all.

Like the mood maker he’d always been, this dramatic change for the better in his demeanour affected everyone’s around him also. A few member’s smiles always seemed a little wider now that Kihyun was nearly back to normal, after they felt far more confident in the hope he’d bounce back stronger than ever, and benefit all of them—Dream members in particular, of course—while doing so. UNIVERSE was also an era in which Kihyun put his extrovert nature to work and gave fans interactions with members they’d barely been allowed to see him share one word with—the main ones being Doyoung, Kun, and the most surprising to a fairly large amount of fans, Winwin. Despite only appearing with the latter on BEAUTIFUL (as it was a whole-group song), once things like the jacket BTS began to be released, they were made witness to the bond the two of them shared; far closer than apparently most had ever dreamed of them being. Kihyun was as affectionate with the Wayv member as any other person in the group, but as he only did with a few of them, Winwin was reciprocating—a returned hug here, tolerating a little handholding there. He wasn’t exactly matching the boundless enthusiasm the acts of affection were performed with, but no one was really expecting that anyway. It just went to show that Kihyun could pull most people into his orbit, even if it was just for a moment or two.

MY FAVOURITE MOMENT: ALBUM UNBOXING

Placed into a group with Johnny, Hendery, and Shotaro, Kihyun was having the time of his life. He went to lengths to include the newer member in all of his conversations, light-heartedly prodding at him like he’d known him for years, and even making an effort to slow down his usual break-neck pace of speaking so that Shotaro would have a better chance of understanding him fully—the ribbing could’ve gone a lot worse if the latter thought Kihyun was actually poking fun at him, but thankfully Shotaro took it well and even gave it right back on a couple of occasions, which made all four of them burst into laughter. For his pulls, Kihyun received a Kun photocard (he couldn’t have ripped off his phone case fast enough, with enough force that he nearly sent both it and the HOT SAUCE era Jeno that was still inside flying across the room), a Johnny poster (which the 127 member was delighted about, and demanded to have a picture sent to him later of said poster tacked up on Kihyun’s wall), a Jaemin postcard, and a Mark sticker—which Kihyun immediately stuck on his phone case also.

GOLDEN AGE 2023 POLO SHIRTS & ..PURPOSE?

HAVING MOVED FAR PAST all that was weighing on his mind during previous whole-group slbums, Kihyun went above and beyond for GOLDEN AGE. Featuring in INTERLUDE: OASIS, THE BAT, ALLEY OOP, and obviously GOLDEN AGE, he made sure to throw more than he’d ever thrown before into recording. He was fully aware that the past years hadn’t been his best, and despite already making amends during UNIVERSE, he still wanted to prove his worth all over again. Everything was fully behind him, and it showed in the sparkle in his eyes and brightness of his laughter that came alongside every appearance of his in any piece of behind-the-scenes content. Always smiling, always energetic, always wanting to make whoever he was laugh, even if it was just for a second. Although he did stick to his usual (and very obviously favourite) members—Mark, Jeno, Chenle, Johnny, Hendery, Niko—he did make sure to wrap all of them in a too-tight hug and hang off of them while they talking to other members or giving mini interviews to cameras at some point or another. ‘Spreading the love,’ he called it, to which Chenle beside him, through poorly contained snickers, quipped that he was also probably ‘spreading diseases,’ which earned him a punch in the stomach.

Kihyun even made an effort to show up (often unannounced) to sets of the track videos he wasn’t involved in—namely PADO and KANGAROO. There he enjoyed himself thoroughly, poking at Jaehyun’s hair, dragging Donghyuck off to who-knows where, and making fun of Hendery’s outfit on one set, and latching onto Renjun’s back, avoiding small talk with Yangyang at all costs with red ears, and cooing obnoxiously loudly at Jisung on the other. He opened his copy of the album on a live with Jungwoo and Mark, and pulled a Xiaojun photocard which, as per, he immediately stuck over the face of ISTJ Renjun and patted with horribly contained smugness (he then remarked to the camera that he barely pulled Xiaojun in any of his WayV albums, and so it was practically a miracle). And apart from the live, he was very online in general—once again breaking his rule of staying quiet if he was happy with it all. He posted on his Instagram, he was sending messages on Bubble at least once every week instead of monthly at best, he was going live with just about every member of the group (there was a lot of karaoke, a lot of giggling of stupid filters, and a lot of radio hours mish-mashed with fit checks mish-mashed with impromptu fashion shows). Overall—a very happy time for Kihyun, and everyone around him.

MY FAVOURITE MOMENT: #1 MARKF ACTIVITIES (SORT OF)

He’d never made any attempt to hide his love for Mark (like most of the group, really) but during GOLDEN AGE it felt like he was turning it up to eleven. During the fit checks and fashion shows on live, sometimes Kihyun would be decked out in full Polo Ralph Lauren—laughing all the while he showed it off, but wearing it all the same; no doubt because of a certain someone’s connection to it. He even bought a flat cap, and had great delight in showing it off to anyone who wanted to see it. Mark’s music taste also looked like it was rubbing off on him. Suddenly he was sharing Justin Bieber songs (mid 2010’s era Justin in particular—the PURPOSE album if you want to be extra specific), doing dance covers, almost to the point where it felt like he was trying out a new era of being a mini-Mark—which, when brought up to him on a fancall, set Kihyun off into uncontrollable laughter for so long his and the fan’s time nearly ran out because of it. It was there, quickly trying to cram all of his explanation in before he was made to hung up, that he told them that it was his penalty that came out of a bet with Chenle that Kihyun had evidently lost. What the bet was had yet to be determined, but all inquiries after that were met with a secretive smile and a finger to his lips. Mark did appreciate the fanboying, though, despite it not being entirely genuine—he posted a selfie on Bubble of him and Kihyun in their matching caps and argyle sweaters with an abundance of hearts coming afterwards.

#⠀૮ ᴖﻌᴖა⠀DRIVE ME CRAZY ✱⠀⠀——⠀⠀eras.#i was not doing another yt vid for ts BYE #nct dream added member #nct oc addition #nct dream 8th member #nct addition #nct oc #kpop idol oc #kpop addition #kpop male oc #fictional idol community

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