#the idea of him being so apathetic about the whole ‘almost dying thing’ is very funny to me

[that-bat]

Draw your favorite from the musical!

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a favorite (sort of a redraw of an older thing)

[forthegothicheroine]

How other great detectives would solve the disappearance of Rowan Morrison from Summerisle

A series I do sometimes. I think most horror fans know the basic idea behind the original Wicker Man, but if you don’t and want to avoid spoilers, scroll away.

I don’t think most of these detectives are virgins- maybe Miss Marple or Poirot, but maybe not- so I’ll be assuming that for ritual purity purposes, just refusing Willow will have to be enough.

Sam Vimes: Haha. Haha. Oh wow, haha. Picking a detective who’s already an apathetic polytheist sure throws a wrench in Lord Summerisle’s plans! Vimes starts arresting people when he arrives and basically doesn’t stop, mostly for child endangerment (don’t send your children to go jump over fire! there are plenty of murderers out there to do that to them!) He starts kicking back on the other side of the door when Willow starts singing until she gives up and goes away. There’s still some strong danger here since Vimes would fulfill the role of a man who came with kingly power (oh boy he’d hate hearing that!) but Vimes does have one advantage Howie doesn’t have: a loyal team. Lord Summerisle said that no one would come for Howie- maybe he was right or maybe he was bluffing, but he’d sure as hell be wrong where Vimes was concerned, and that’s assuming they got him to come here without any other Watch members in the first place. Without dying or after death, he’s pulling this place down.

Columbo: Here’s the best omen for Columbo’s success- I didn’t think of it until this list, but Lord Summerisle dresses exactly like a Columbo villain! Anyway, schlubby little Columbo solves his cases more or less by pecking at key suspects until he can figure out which ones are lying to him, so I think that bodes well here. He steps off the plane and finds everyone clearly lying to him; he takes out a notepad, writes “THEY ALL DID IT”, and gets back on the plane. Or maybe he could steal a boat and escape later at night so I can give him the chance to annoy Lord Summerisle ("Mythology, huh? My wife has a book about that, very interesting stuff. You know, I thought it was kind of funny how that inn was called the Green Man. See, in that book, Sir Gawain goes to meet this green man with the force of the whole round table behind him, but they’re planning to test and then kill him. Funny thing, right?”)

Phryne Fisher: This makes so much more sense if it was Jack they were after and due to plot hijinks, Phryne ended up there instead of or in addition to him. She has sex with Lord Summerisle almost immediately, and the village isn’t really sure if that counts as breaking ritual purity or not (Willow doesn’t seem like her type.) Besides the ritual purity, they have to deal with the fact that she does not have the authority of a king- she probably doesn’t even have police permission to be here! This whole operation has been a tremendous cockup on the cult’s part.

Dale Cooper: Despite being friendly where Howie was prickly, Cooper has a lot in common with that other doomed policeman who came to a creepy town to save or avenge a young girl. Things might go more or less the same as they did in the movie, but there’s one circumstance under which he might get out with his life. Willow bangs on his door naked, singing a sexy song, and he opens the door for her. She’s a bit disappointed that he failed the test, but instead of going along with the seduction, he tells her that she’s too young for him but that it looks like she could use a friend, and that he thinks she might be lonlier than people realize. Maybe- just maybe- the first genuine offer of nonsexual friendship she’s had in years might break through to her, and she might start to talk.

Philip Marlowe: I love Marlowe, he’s my guy, but I don’t think he’s getting out off this. He’s thrown naked girls out of his bedroom before- why should he think this time is any different? He and Summerisle have nice long chats about history and literature, but in the process he demonstrates that he has a very strong sense of morality and propriety (if not religion) and that he thinks of himself as a sort of fairy tale knight. That’s bad. That’s very, very bad.

Sam Spade: I think he ruins this by trying to extort Lord Summerisle for blackmail money and Summerisle just kills him and needs to find a new detective to trap. Either that, or he gets away with it because he absolutely sleeps with Willow.

Poirot: This trip is the single most miserable experience of Poirot’s life. Even more so than the nudity, he knows he has plunged into hell upon eating the terrible food and finding they don’t even have any of their famous apples! In fact, I like the idea that it’s their famous food that first leads him in the direction of the answer; the harvest was bad, the book suggests they might have made a sacrifice, but they’ve had girls pose by those crops every year without anything bad happening to them. If the girls aren’t the sacrifice, who is? Willow’s attempted seduction certainly upsets him (David Suchet says he played him as asexual, but even if that’s not your interpretation, naked youths pounding on his door are the last thing he wants!) I don’t know if he can escape, but I think he can pull the right threads to figure things out and ruin the event.

Miss Marple: Boy, does Lord Summerisle feel like an asshole about this! Miss Marple does her best not to judge anyone for so much nudity- these young people today do insist on being modern, she just hopes they don’t catch cold. I think she’d really frustrate the islanders by not seeming to actually do her role. She’s not breaking down doors and demanding answers, and when Willow sings at her door she just chats about how nice it is that youngsters are interested in traditional folk music, seeming not to even get the test. What they don’t know is that Miss Marple is very, very good at listening and observing. She knows. And she’s going to play the part of the dotty old lady right up until the very point when she can get back on that plane.

Kinsey Milhone: Kinsey may be in trouble here. Innocent young people being put in danger, especially when she could have saved them, is the sort of thing that drives her courage but could also propel her blindly into her doom. If things don’t go exactly as they did in the movie, it will be because she focuses on a different question- who sent her that letter? Everyone acts like they know what’s going on, so who “didn’t know” where Rowan was and was “afraid something terrible had happened”? The bigger the conspiracy looks, the less likely it is that anyone could have been ignorant or even sent a secret letter, and that might let Kinsey realize it was sent on purpose.

[xxdragonwriterxx]

🔥The Angelus Mortis (2/2)🔥

A/N: Here is part 2 of “The Angelus Mortis”! Part 1 is linked below if you haven’t read that part yet. Thank you for reading!

Part 1

~~~

The next day, Erwin woke up early to visit (Y/N) one last time before he had to hand her over to the MP’s. He sighed in disappointment. He thought he had been getting through to her, especially after she had given him her name, but he was left with nothing but false hope when she remained adamant about not answering any of his questions. He ran one of his large hands through his blonde locks in frustration as he made his way down the stone steps into the gloomy dungeon below.

He had no idea why he felt so conflicted when it came to this woman, why he had a feeling she was a better person than she was letting on. His heart battled with his brain as he walked, causing him to groan when he felt a headache begin to form. Why did he feel like he was missing something? Something important? He knew she would be a valuable asset to the Survey Corps if she cooperated, her strength rivaling that of Levi’s which would give them two vital weapons on the field. And he was sure that under Levi’s supervision she would flourish, maybe even develop a friendship with the sullen man. Maybe that’s why he felt so strange, because it was a missed opportunity?

Erwin shook his head as he finally rounded the corner, pushing away his inner turmoil to mull over on a later date. Immediately upon his arrival, (Y/N) rolled over on the small, filthy cot she had been provided, and met his gaze.

“Here to collect me, already?” (Y/N) asked, her disdain barely veiled by her attempt at a quip.

“No, not yet,” Erwin said as he sat down in the lone metal chair he had used the day before.

(Y/N) sat up slowly and crossed her legs, resting her hands in her lap as she turned to face him completely.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Well, you have spent one whole day here and you’ve been alone for most of that time. I came down here to see if you’re ready to answer my questions now.”

(Y/N) grit her teeth. “I told you, I don’t want to answer any of your shitty questions.”

“What’s the point? You’re going to be heading right for your very painful death in just a few hours, what is keeping you from parting with some information that will likely be unimportant soon anyway?”

“Just because I’m dying doesn’t mean I have to justify my life, to you of all people.”

“I only want to help you, this could save your life.”

“Why the hell do you care so much about me anyway? What am I to you? Do you want me for something? Maybe for your own personal desires?” (Y/N) suddenly bristled. “I didn’t take you as someone who would stoop so low, Commander, but what did I expect? I guess that’s what I get for thinking a murderer could show empathy. And to think, I almost learned to trust you a little.”

Erwin blanched, his face paling and his eyes widening.

“What?” He asked in utter shock. A murderer? What the hell was she going on about?

(Y/N) seethed at him and turned away, her entire body tensed and angry.

“Do whatever the hell you want with me,” (Y/N) said in a low voice. “Beat me, kill me, fuck me, do whatever you want, but I’ll never tell you anything.”

Erwin was quiet for a minute as he fought to process what he had just heard. A killer? Him? He only killed when he really needed to, aside from when he was fighting titans, of course, but he rarely used his weapons on a person, and never with malicious intent.

“What makes you think I’m a murderer?” Erwin asked.

(Y/N) suddenly whirled on him, her teeth bared, showing more of the wolf inside her that she had developed in the Underground. Her eyes flashed with fury and her fists clenched at her sides as she lost control.

“How dare you ask me that question,” (Y/N) snarled. “How dare you after what you took from me? Do you not even remember? Were they really that meaningless to you? You took away my family, the only positive thing I had in this world. You ripped them from me and now you dare ask how you have wronged?”

Erwin was bewildered now but he tried not to let it show on his face. He had to tread carefully. If he didn’t say the right thing, she might end up shutting down completely, and then he would lose any chance of keeping her from getting killed. He also wanted to keep her from hating him. If she was going to join the Corps, he would have to be able to lead his men without fearing for his life every time she was around.

“Did… did they live in the Underground with you?” Erwin asked carefully.

(Y/N) plopped down on her bed, rage still coursing through her veins as she looked at the man she had loathed ever since the fateful day her family had disappeared from her life, but she felt too tired to argue with him. He had won anyway, she was going to be tortured, maybe violated, killed, and then dumped in a trash can somewhere, left to die alone and forgotten. There was no point in trying to fight him anymore, not when he held the strings attached to her back, commanding the show and forcing her to dance. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break, but she knew her fate was sealed the moment she was brought up from the Underground. “Yes,” she said in a small voice, her head hanging low so that her hair covered her eyes.

“Are they the reason why you asked for my name in the Underground? Why you hesitated when you saw my face?”

(Y/N) only nodded.

“Are they why you targeted soldiers? To make us feel the pain you did when you found out they were gone?”

(Y/N) nodded again, more slowly this time and with a single glimmering tear that slid down her cheek and hit the stone floor with a barely audible tap.

Erwin hesitated again and swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry… for your loss.”

(Y/N) scoffed at him, her eyes filled with a smouldering hatred as she met his gaze.

Erwin cringed a little. He knew how apathetic that apology must have sounded, but he was at a loss for words. He just had to keep trying.

“I mean it. If I am responsible for their deaths then it must mean they died in combat, under my command. So, I am sorry for not being able to lead them properly. For not being able to protect them and bring them back home to you. I am so sorry…”

(Y/N) didn’t respond but he did notice that her gaze softened just slightly at his apology. He was starting to get through to her again. He knew that her acceptance of his apology was just a chink in the protective walls surrounding her broken heart, but he would take whatever he could get.

That was when Erwin suddenly realized something, the image of two faces flashing in his mind as he thought about what she had said. There had only been three people he had ever brought up from the Underground to be in the Survey Corps, and only two of them were dead. Farlan and Isabel.

Thinking back on it, Levi had never mentioned anyone other than Isabel and Farlan, and when he had been busted and brought to the surface he had only come with his two friends. Maybe they had never met. Maybe (Y/N) only knew Farlan and Isabel from her childhood and early adulthood while Levi was a mere business partner. Or maybe they did know each other but only through brief business interactions.

His heart jumped a little in his chest when he realized he was on to something. Maybe he could show her to Levi and see what his reaction would be? See if he would be the key to having her cooperate? Besides, it might be good for them, the both of them having lost their two best friends in a horrific manner, giving them the chance to form a bond or close friendship. It might even give Levi some closure. Erwin would be a bad friend if he hadn’t noticed how the loss of Levi’s past friends were still affecting him.

“How… how did they die?”

(Y/N)’s sudden question surprised him but he quickly brought himself back to the moment, not wanting to scare her away from talking to him again. He honestly couldn’t believe this was the same woman who had been bantering back and forth with him the day before, but he now realized she had been using it as a means of protecting herself. To make herself seem more confident in the face of the one person she supposedly hated the most. She had entertained him so he would stop digging, stop trying to dredge up old, painful memories.

“We were on an expedition outside of the walls and it started to storm. We tried to retreat but the rain and open meadows made it difficult to find our way back. Everything looked the same, blurry and gray or green. In the confusion, an abnormal titan snuck up on us and killed the majority of our troops, your family among them.”

(Y/N) was quiet but met his gaze again, her eyes shining with unshed tears. She looked so vulnerable at that moment. He could tell she still had that fighting spirit, that unwavering strength; the vulnerability did not make her look weak or pitiable in the slightest. It just made her look more… human.

“What happened to the titan?” She asked.

“One of my Captains, Levi, took care of it.”

(Y/N)’s head suddenly jolted up, her entire body going rigid. “Wha-”

“Erwin!” The Commander turned around to see Hanji standing on the stone steps leading down to the dungeon, clutching a lantern in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other.

Erwin stood and met his girlfriend on the steps, taking the manacles from her. Hanji gazed at him for a minute before her gaze shifted to the woman in the cell. Erwin could tell right away that Hanji felt something similar about the mysterious assassin, that she had the strange feeling that there was something more to her like he did. He could see it in her eyes, in the way they shone even in the darkness of the dungeon.

“Time to go,” Hanji said softly.

Erwin nodded and made his way to the cell, Hanji following close behind with a sword in her grasp, ready to cut the woman down should she try anything.

When Erwin moved to stand behind her, leaning down to lock her wrists into the handcuffs, (Y/N) hung her head again, her mind still spinning with the name that had fallen from the Commander’s lips. 

It was a name she hadn’t heard in years, a name that still haunted her dreams and left her feeling cold and alone. There was no way it was really him. Levi was a common enough name that the Captain could be anyone. Despite this, the fact that there was a chance he was really out there, gave (Y/N) peace of mind. 

If he was dead, then she guessed she was going to see him soon, maybe finally live the life they wanted to, if that was even possible after death. If he was alive, then that would still be satisfactory enough for her. Either way, she hoped she’d get to see him again soon. Maybe death wouldn’t be so bad.

“Commander Erwin,” (Y/N) said.

“Yes?” Erwin said, trying to hide the surprise in his voice when she said his real name rather than mocking his title of Commander or calling him an idiot.

“How is your shoulder?”

Erwin was baffled but answered her honestly.

“Sore but healing well.”

“Good. I’m sorry I stabbed you.”

Erwin swallowed and shook his head to tell her it was alright, his throat refusing to let him speak. Hanji was watching the Angelus Mortis carefully, her eyes filled with confused sorrow. (Y/N) glanced at the bespeckled Squad Leader and nodded once, a tiny smile curving at the corners of her lips.

(Y/N) could do nothing but sit still as they finished clamping her hands behind her back and stood her up, leading her out of the cell and up the stairs to her inevitable death.

_____________________________

Levi strode through the halls, looking for Erwin. He had been told immediately upon his arrival that the Commander had managed to capture a dangerous assassin from the Underground and needed his assistance in transporting them to the Military Police base to be detained and sentenced to death. He had been a bit surprised with the news, he hadn’t known that Erwin was hunting for a killer from the slums, but he had been out for an entire week on that solo mission, so things were bound to happen without his knowledge while he was gone.

Levi only paused by his office to switch out the sword he had for a cleaner, sharper one. The blade he had carried previously was covered in filth and worn from the constant fights he had been forced to break up on his mission.

As soon as he had a better weapon, he set off for the dungeons where Erwin and Hanji were supposedly already bringing the criminal up the stairs. He hadn’t heard much about this assassin, all he knew was that they were exceedingly dangerous, known as the Angelus Mortis, and they were headed for death row. He gripped his sword a bit tighter as he walked, readying his mind to prepare for anything. A criminal this dangerous would be incredibly strong and while he had no doubt in his mind that he could defeat the bastard, he would rather get out of the fight with all of his limbs attached.

“Levi! Over here!”

Levi looked up as he approached the dungeon steps, his silver eyes flickering over to the prisoner in Hanji’s and Erwin’s grasp. His eyes widened a little when he realized the assassin was a woman, her filthy (h/c) hair covering her face as she hung her head.

“Oi, who are you? What’s your name?” Levi asked coldly, his eyes narrowing on her thin form.

He expected her to keep her head down despite his commanding tone. He knew criminals like this, you could yell at them all you wanted, demand things from them, even beat them and they would usually remain stubbornly silent. 

What he did not expect was for her to lift her head sharply, the sound of his voice triggering something in her.

Levi gasped audibly when her (e/c) eyes met his silver ones, his entire world shifting beneath his feet. Her whole body froze when she saw him. For a moment, nobody breathed, Levi’s eyes roving over her constantly as he tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing.

(Y/N). That was (Y/N). His (Y/N).

The one who had given him so much love and appreciation every day despite their shitty lives in the slums. The one who had comforted him when the world felt too dark; the one who loved him when he couldn’t love himself; the one who patched him up after a fight and fought by his side when she could. It was (Y/N). Undoubtedly (Y/N).

“Levi? What’s the matter?” Hanji asked.

Levi suddenly remembered the reality of their situation. (Y/N) was the goddamn Angelus Mortis. The most dangerous assassin in the world was the love of his life, and she was being sentenced to death.

“Let her go,” Levi said, his voice low.

“What? But Levi-”

“I said let her go!” Levi barked.

Hanji and Erwin exchanged concerned glances but slowly moved to unlock the handcuffs holding her to them.

As soon as she was free, (Y/N) sprinted forward and crashed into Levi, her small frame hitting him like a bullet. 

“LEVI!!!” (Y/N) cried in a strangled voice.

Levi grunted a little at the impact but wasted no time in wrapping his arms around her waist, completely forgetting about the audience that watched them, their mouths dropped open in shock. Hanji and Erwin were no better, their eyes wide.

“Oh my fucking gods, it’s you, it’s really you,” (Y/N) whispered in awe, her arms tightening around him, holding each other in the middle of the hallway.

Levi was about to speak when he looked up and noticed that everyone was staring. Sending a glare in the direction of their audience that promised a painful death to anyone who spoke, Levi reluctantly pulled away from (Y/N) and grabbed her wrist, tugging her along behind him as he made for his office.

“Wait, Levi!”

“Levi! What the hell!?”

Levi heard Erwin and Hanji call out to him but he ignored them, making a beeline for the familiar wooden door to his quarters. He could hear the pounding footsteps of the Commander and the crazy scientist coming up behind him, but he did not stop or slow down, his eyes trained on his destination.

When they had finally reached his office, Levi pulled (Y/N) inside and begrudgingly let Erwin and Hanji join them before slamming the door shut and locking it. (Y/N) barely had enough time to glance around the space before he was on her again, this time sealing their lips in a searing kiss that stole the air from her lungs.

Erwin’s and Hanji’s jaws dropped at the sight of Humanity’s Strongest Soldier kissing the Angelus Mortis without a care in the world. Neither one of them had ever known Levi to be interested in love, the sullen man even going so far as to get angry at the mention of it, rolling his eyes when couples kissed in the hallways and gagging when Hanji tried to set him up with someone.

Levi pulled away from the kiss, panting, before he moved his lips to place desperate butterfly kisses all over her face and neck, his body humming at the feeling of her against him for the first time in years.

When they finally broke apart again, both of them ignoring the company they had in the office with them, they stared at each other, their eyes shining as they took the sight of their lost lover. (Y/N) reached up and gently cupped his cheek with her palm, her heart nearly exploding when he nuzzled into her touch, his eyes closing and his own hand coming up to cover her own.

“Gods, I missed you so fucking much,” Levi murmured.

“Me too Levi, I missed you so much, I don’t even have the words to express it.”

“I thought I lost you…,” Levi choked out, a single tear sliding down his cheek to hit her thumb where her hand was still holding his face.

“I thought I lost you,” (Y/N) whispered, her thumb moving to swipe the tear off of his skin. “I was told when I asked around that you were killed in combat with Farlan and Isabel, after being forced to join the military.”

Levi’s eyes opened, his silver hues glassy with unshed tears.

“I tried to get you. Tried to come back for you. But when I got to the Underground, everyone near our old place told me you had been brutally murdered. I even found the inside of our house to be destroyed with blood splattered on the floor.”

Levi’s body began to tremble as he relived the horrendous memory. The time when he thought all hope was lost, all life was meaningless, and that he was destined to be alone. When he had collapsed upon the filthy floor of their old ramshackle home, the blood soaking into his pants and sliding over his palms, he had wanted nothing more than to die. Almost did, until he managed to remind himself that she would’ve never wanted that for him. That she would’ve killed him if he decided to end his life. And so he had hardened his heart and left the scene, making that promise to himself right then and there that he would never love another woman ever again. He would live, for her sake, but he would never love, for his sake.

(Y/N) glanced away from him then, her hand dropping from his face to twist nervously in front of her, her knuckles turning white from the pressure.

“Yeah, well, when I thought you were dead, I knew there was no hope for me left. I was in agony, but I was also furious. Beyond furious at both the Military Police and the Survey Corps for taking you and Isabel and Farlan away from me. Aside from that though, I was also scared. Scared they would find out about our relationship and come looking for me. I knew I had to get out of there, I refused to work for the murderers who had taken away my one happiness in this life. So I trained myself, starting by faking my own death to become untraceable. Then I became stronger, faster. I killed both to remain free and to make them feel the pain I felt when you were ripped away from me.”

Levi’s eyes softened and he reached for her, bringing her into his chest and holding her tightly, his fingers tangling in her hair. Oh gods she was skin and bones, he could feel how malnourished she was through his shirt, her ribs poking him in the chest as he held her.

Suddenly, the Commander’s sharp voice broke the spell in the room, making both Levi and (Y/N) jump a little when he spoke.

“Sorry to interrupt, but what the fuck is going on here?” Erwin asked.

Levi and (Y/N) pulled out of their embrace but Levi kept an arm around (Y/N)’s shoulders, holding her close to him as if she’d disappear if he let go.

“Sorry, Erwin, Hanji,” Levi said, looking at each of his friends in turn. “I’d like for you to properly meet (Y/N) Ackerman, my wife.”

If Erwin and Hanji thought they were shocked before, nothing could have prepared them for the bombshell that just landed on them. Both of their mouths fell open so they were gaping like fish, their words caught in their throats.

“YOUR WIFE!?” Hanji suddenly screeched, her eyes sparkling with shock and wonder.

(Y/N) couldn’t help but smile and nod, her expression making the room feel several degrees warmer.

“But, Levi, you’ve never worn a ring!” Erwin pointed out, his mind scrambling for any kind of clues that he had missed that would’ve told him sooner that Levi was married. He came up empty. He knew for a fact that Levi never wore a ring on his hand, knew that if he had, Hanji would’ve never stopped asking him about it.

Levi then flashed a small smile of his own, and reached up to remove the cravat from around his neck. As soon as the pristine white fabric had fallen away, Erwin and Hanji were both able to see the silver chain that was clasped around his neck, a simple gold band hanging from the center.

(Y/N) reached up with her own hands to move the flaps of the old jacket she was wearing, the same silver chain with a gold ring on the end of it sitting against her sternum.

Erwin and Hanji just stood and stared in complete and utter shock for a moment, before Hanji suddenly let out a loud squeal, her eyes shining behind her glasses as she ran right up to (Y/N). Levi stuck an arm out as the energetic woman came running up to them.

“Oi, Four-Eyes, don’t go harassing her.”

“Levi, this is your wife! I can’t not come and say hello!” Hanji said incredulously, pushing his arm away and ignoring his scowl as she bounded around (Y/N) excitedly. “Oh my gods you are so pretty! No wonder Shorty likes you!”

(Y/N) blushed at the comment and sheepishly ducked her head down a little but she was smiling brightly, her fingers moving to gently run down Levi’s arm, telling him she was alright even with this wildly energetic woman in her face.

“T-Thank you,” (Y/N) said. “Are you a friend of Levi’s?”

The  scientist nodded excitedly and stuck out her hand for (Y/N) to shake. “The name’s Hanji.”

(Y/N) shook her hand and tried to force the blush from her cheeks as Hanji continued to fawn over her.

“Levi, how come you never told us you were married?” Erwin asked while his girlfriend continued to blubber away, cooing over (Y/N)’s features and already beginning to set up a meal plan to help her get strong again.

Levi leveled a gaze at his Commander and one of the few people he called his friend. It was hard to tell what the giant blonde was thinking. He obviously knew Hanji’s opinion on everything, but Erwin’s sharp blue eyes remained unreadable but no less intense as they settled on the shorter man, waiting for a response. Levi naturally drifted almost imperceptibly closer to (Y/N) before speaking.

“I thought she was dead, Erwin. I’ve thought that ever since I went back to try to bring her up with me and found that scene at the house. Not only would telling you have been pointless, but also, it hurt too much to talk about her. I never took off my ring, I always wear it under my cravat, but I could never bring her up in conversation, not without feeling like my heart was being ripped out,” Levi said quietly, his voice a low rumble and his cheeks tinted with the palest pink as he admitted his feelings aloud.

Erwin contemplated his Captain’s words, his eyes narrowed on the sharp grey ones that stared right back. After a moment, Erwin could tell there was no deception in his friend’s gaze, nothing to suggest he hadn’t told them about (Y/N) for some unorthodox reason. The Commander nodded once, and he could’ve sworn Levi let out the softest sigh of relief. Hanji’s head suddenly shot up from where she had been examining (Y/N) for injuries.

“So that’s why you never accepted any of the women I tried to set you up with!” She said. “You were always so bothered by it, always so angry, now I know why!”

“Yeah,” Levi grumbled as he glared at the scientist. “Even when I thought she was dead, I just couldn’t love another…” 

Hanji stared at him for a moment before her eyes softened. She knew how hard it was for him to admit all of this, how awkward he must feel right now trying to explain everything. She wasn’t used to seeing her normally blunt, stoic, collected friend so nervous.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I just didn’t want you to be so sad and lonely anymore.”

Levi threw her another glare but it was less harsh this time, and having been friends with the grumpy man for so long, Hanji could read the hidden gratitude in his eyes. She nodded once in response and went back to checking (Y/N) over.

“(Y/N),” Erwin called, suddenly turning to face her after watching Hanji examine her.

“Yes?”

“Now that we’ve found out about your connection to my Captain here, I want to remind you that I am technically still obligated to take you to the Military Police for your crimes.”

Levi let loose an almost animalistic snarl and wrapped his arms around (Y/N), his eyes flashing and his teeth bared as he dared his friend to even try to take her from him. Erwin didn’t even bat an eye, a small smile curving at the corners of his lips.

“Since it is obvious that is not really an option for either of you, I would like to formally ask you to join the Survey Corps. That way, I can discount any charges against you and protect you from being forcibly taken from our custody once the Military Police realize we are not going to arrive.”

(Y/N) looked up at her husband, meeting his gaze and squeezing his hand comfortingly. Gods she had missed him so much, her heart ached with how much she loved this man, how much she never wanted to let him out of her sight ever again. Even though she had hated the military for most of her life, basing her entire career around it in her search for vengeance, there was no debate in her mind. Even if joining the Survey Corps wouldn’t have guaranteed her life, she knew she would’ve always agreed.

“Yes, I will join the Survey Corps, pledge my life to you, and fight for humanity,” (Y/N) said clearly and without hesitation, returning the smile the Commander threw her. Turning to Levi, (Y/N) looked deeply into his gunmetal eyes, marveling at the emotion swirling within them. “I will follow you, wherever you go, no matter what happens, I am never letting you out of my sight ever again.”

Levi let a genuine smile ride across his face as Erwin and Hanji left to go submit the proper paperwork, giving the reunited couple some privacy. Leaning down, Levi pressed his lips to hers in a blazing kiss, gentle and sweet but no less passionate, letting his kisses tell her exactly how he was feeling in that moment.

“I’m so glad you’re alive, (Y/N),” Levi whispered breathlessly when they pulled apart, resting his forehead against hers.

“I will always come back to you, Levi,”  (Y/N) said, her own eyes glazed with unshed tears. “I only ever feel truly alive when I am with you.”

~~~

A/N: I know the ending dialogue is a little cheesy but I had fun writing this anyway. Thank you again for reading and I hope you enjoy! More Levi content coming soon!

[ofbloodandbullets]

So it’s recently come to my attention that not everyone in the world has actually watched The Old Guard (WHO KNEW?!) so I’m going to try and do some info dumps about the world, the general canon and Andy’s history, personality, powers etc.  This will ... probably get kinda lengthy. 

Also: MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS FOR COMICS & MOVIE.

The first thing you need to know is that for the main part, the history and the world that TOG takes place in is the exact same one as the real history of the world.  It’s set in modern day, though the plot points stretch back to 7k+ years ago.  It’s also important to note that there is a lot of historical inaccuracies and some things in canon that conflict themselves so it’s best to just take it all with a grain of salt and just go with what works best for your particular preferences etc. 

The main difference between reality and TOG is that in TOG there are a very minute like .00000000002% of the population that are immortals.  Now, it’s important to note that these people can die but they resurrect pretty close to immediately after they die no matter the amount of damage done.  Now it can take some time to fully heal or reform, depending on how extensive the trauma (being blown to bits or burned etc. will take longer to fix but there’s no amount of damage that we know of that can actually keep them dead).  

There are times when, for reasons unknown to the characters in character (or to us as readers  of the comics / viewers of the movie etc) that the immortality just stops.  There’ll just be a time that they suffer injuries that just don’t heal, and they die.  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to this, be it age, number of times they’ve died, whatever.  Now, I have my own entirely headcanon and personal preference based theory which you can find HERE but it’s totally just a random idea that I had that I liked to explain the loss of Andy’s immortality in the movie (that doesn’t happen in the comics) and lets me say that she regains her immortality post canon so that I can nudge things back in the direction of the comics for post movie plots and so on.

Andy is, as far as we know, and as far as she knows, the oldest (human) immortal, coming in at around 7,000 years old.  She was born into a tribe, the Scythia (hence what she’s generally called: Andromache the Scythian).  A nomadic warrior tribe that I headcanon to be a matriarchy, Andy was betrayed by the ‘queen mother’ when she was sixteen and killed in battle because the leader feared that Andy posed a danger to her continuing rule.  This person was practically a mother to Andy and it was a horrific betrayal.  What was almost as shocking to Andy was the fact that she got back up again after being literally stabbed in the back and killed.

In the vein of trying to thwart prophecies making them happen, Andy killed the matriarch and took her placce ruling the tribe, eventually becoming a God King to her people and ruling over them for hundreds of years until her loneliness absolutely overwhelmed her and one day she just vanished.

At some point after this, she began to dream of a woman, feeling a pull towards this stranger that she couldn’t begin to explain.  After dozens, maybe hundreds of years, she managed to track down the woman in question (Noriko in the comics, Quynh in the movie) and realized that they’d been dreaming of each other.  (In the comics she meets Lykon before Quynh/Noriko, whom she had also been dreaming of).  

Now, the connection between these immortals isn’t explained in canon, and for a long time, Andy, Lykon, Noriko (and eventually Joe, Nicky, Book) thought they were the only ones but there is a scene in the second set of comics that implies that there are other ‘packs’ of immortals.  I headcanon that it’s a ‘like calls to like’ / kind of Sense8 simpatico type thing - like minded souls drawn to each other, which is why Andy and the others didn’t know about the other immortals, but again, that’s just entirely my thoughts on the matter. 

Lykon is the first to succumb to the loss of immortality, a short couple hundreds years after he and Andy find each other.   He dies on a battlefield, one that he and Quynh/Noriko and Andy fought on like a hundred/thousand before, champions for the abused etc.  Skip forward a couple hundred years again and enter Joe & Nicky, a Knight and a Muslim warrior who kill each other on the battlefield only to both wake up and spend (an unspecified amount of time) hunting and killing each other before eventually Andy & Quynh/Noriko find them.  In time, Joe & Nicky realize that they love each other.   (Important to note that Quynh/Noriko and Andy were also lovers).  In the movie, when the first major surge of witch hunts began, Quynh/Noriko and Andy go to help the women that stood accused, only to be captured and accused of witchcraft themselves.  After being hung, drowned, burned at the stake and coming back to life every time, the witch hunters settled on locking Quynh into an iron coffin and dropping her into the ocean.  (In the comics, Noriko is lost at sea during a massive storm that had thrown their ship entirely off course with Andy having no clue where they actually were at the time.) 

Joe & Nicky arrive in time to rescue Andy, but Noriko is already gone and despite spending decades tracking down every person even remotely involved in the so called ‘investigation’ into the women’s inquisition and punishment, Andy wasn’t able to find anything about where Quynh could be. 

Cue angst & depression & guilt for ages after.

The trio still steps in over the following decades, trying to help prevent the worst of atrocities, but Andy quickly begins to spiral into an, at best apathetic, at worst, entirely distant and withdrawn mindset and steadily begins to lose hope that they’re actually making any difference at all.

Skip ahead a century or two and enter Book; a Russian conscript who had been forced into the fight after being convicted of forgery.  Hung for desertion, Book spend days dying over and over again as he hung there, unable to attempt an escape until the troops finally packed up and moved on.   He and Andy, Nicky and Joe meet up and Book kinda reluctantly joins their little group.  It’s revealed that Book dreams, still, of Noriko/Quynh and while he can’t tell where hse is, dreams of her still dying, drowning on the floor of the ocean over and over and over like she had been for the last hundred or two years.  

Book returns at some point to his mortal family which ended in disaster when his last remaining son was dying of cancer, cursing and screaming at Book for ‘choosing not to save him’ by making him immortal too, even though it’s something Book had no ability to transfer or make happen.  Between his nightmares, losing his son and a number of other factors, Book decides he wants to end it all but no matter what he tries, doesn’t die and stay dead.

Eventually he’s approached by a pharmaceutical company that has figured out what he is and wants to run tests on him to see if they can unlock his healing / immortality for other people.  Merrick’s company works in league with an ex CIA agent whose wife died of a horrific terminal disease who hopes that they can find a way to keep anyone else from dying if they don’t have to.    Initially it was just supposed to be him, but he’d set up a display to stream for proof of what he was / they were and the corp decided they wanted all of the immortals.   Book ends up betraying the team, and he and the others end up locked up and tested on / killed / experimented on etc.  

There’s another character introduced in the meantime, the first new immortals in centuries, an American soldier named Niles.  There’s a lot more that goes on here, but the main point is that in the movie, Andy stops healing from her wounds shortly after she tracks down Nile and is put into incredible amounts of danger when Merrick (the leader of the pharmaceutical company) captures Andy, Joe, Book, Nicky.  Book is devastated, Nicky and Joe are furious, Andy’s just tired.

Eventually, Andy and the others break free with Niles’ help, destroy the lab they were originally held in etc and set out to try and hunt down any other proof, lab results, anything that Merrick got his hands on during the tests.

The group meets and settles on a hundred year exile for Booker (which I think is one of the stupidest things - like, the man’s clearly desperate and depressed and lonely and mentally unstable so by all means let’s isolate him for a fully century) and at the end of the movie we see him stumbling home to his apartment six months later to find Quynh standing in his apartment, pouring and drinking a glass of water which is a whole power move considering how many millions of times she died by drowning.

In the comics, Quynh/Noriko was driven entirely mad and to the point of wanting vengeance against Andy for abandoning her and spends a while gaslighting Andy and torturing her physically and emotionally and what not until she manages to isolate Andy from the other immortals and scoops in to ‘rescue’ Andy.  IDK what they’re going to adapt this to in the second movie, 

Again, via the link posted above, my Andy slowly begins to regain her immortality (again, IDK what they’re going to do with the next movie).  

Uhhhh yeah.  So I .. think that’s the majority of what you need to know for canon info about Andy.  THIS is also an important PSA regarding my Andy’s history & her longest lasting relationship that has nothing to do with canon at all but that is part of Andy’s bg in every verse, even if it never comes into play.

[ryuichirou]

Can you make your top 10 aot characters that have a good development? Like Eren and Reiner are considered to be the best characters as 'characters' themselves

Anon… dear Anon, you’ve been waiting for like a month I think, I’m so sorry. I took this ask waaay too seriously lol, but yeah, I can’t postpone it for any longer…

I know you asked for top 10, and this is a numbered list, but I wouldn’t call it a proper ranking, so the place doesn’t really matter all that much. Otherwise this list would’ve taken even longer, I’m very serious about lists, it seems lol

Before I start I want to mention (just in case): I feel like “character development” isn’t always about becoming better at something. Sometimes you can become “worse”; sometimes you can get “better” and then fall back to your old ways. It’s just how the character changes, and the trajectory of that change can be very different for different characters.

1. Eren. I can talk about Eren for hours and hours, and I have talked about him a lot, so I’ll try to be quick this time.

Eren’s journey is very interesting and enjoyable to read. He’s such an unusual main character. So aggressive at first, unlikable to some (not to us lol we adored him since day one), loud and stubborn. But it’s super cool to watch this hurricane of a person, especially as he gets calmer, starts controlling his emotions little by little, learns more stuff and understands the situation around him better.

I think I’ll talk about how perspective and knowing a bigger picture change the way character acts a lot in this post, but Eren is an ultimate example of this. He got every single thing: past, present, future, drilled in his head at one fucking moment. He didn’t get a bigger picture, he got the biggest 5d picture with special effects. And he had no one to share that with: he had to deal with it himself, knowing that he himself is the reason for everything that’s happening. It makes my head hurt to even think about that lol It’s cool and unnerving to watch Eren, who’s used to be such a fireball of a character, to just get… quiet and apathetic. We don’t know what he’s thinking about, we don’t know what’s going on anymore, even though his emotions were always the most obvious thing about him. It’s almost scary.

And the interesting thing about it is that nothing really changed about his feelings, at least I think so. Ultimately, the only thing he wanted is for his friends to be happy and live long lives, and who knows, maybe he saw that the “freedom” he was initially seeking for himself doesn’t really exist. This is up to debate and definitely not for this post though lol

2. Reiner. Ohh Reiner. He was one of the characters who wasn’t all that interesting to me personally at first, but as he got more and more complex and emotional, I fell in love with him more and more. This isn’t a numbered list, but he is definitely one of the best written characters. And what’s cool about him is that we see the reason for him being the way he is throughout the story: why he wanted to become a hero, why his mental state got so bad, why he was conflicted, why he got so depressed and why he was able to take responsibility for his actions. I love it when the story breaks its characters, and Reiner is certainly one of the most broken ones. His lower point (when he almost killed himself + cried and asked Eren to kill him) was very beautiful and painful to read, because we know why he feels that way and we know how smug and brave he was at the very beginning of the show/manga. And we know that it was all a lie, which makes everything even tastier.

And as much as I love broken characters, I’m kind of glad Reiner found strength to continue fighting and to take responsibility for his actions (to some degree, at least). Not only he saw a bigger picture, he actually learned how to live with it. I’m so happy they discussed the Marco incident with Jean, and that after Annie told that it was her who took his gear, Reiner stood up and said that Annie was following his orders. He also apologized to Annie for everything he did to her and Bert.

Basically, Reiner went from wanting to be a hero to acting like a hero, then to being an actual hero to Marley and feeling like shit anyways, then to just being a human being, something like that. And that scene with his mom hugging him and being happy for him being alive is actually a very sweet and satisfying moment. Especially considering how much Reiner wanted to die lol

3. Zeke. I’ve talked about it in one of the replies about ch137, but I love how Zeke went from “I shouldn’t have been born” to “maybe small moments of happiness make everything worth it” at the very end of his life (what a cruel irony to realise that just before you die). Not only the character develops and changes, our view of him changes as well: I think Zeke was universally hated when he first appeared, but then he became more fun (dude’s too charismatic), and then he became sympathetic and vulnerable. All of this was always inside Zeke, but it was hidden since Zeke is a lying snake. See, Zeke is smart, but he’s super sure that his views are the only valid ones and that his idea of freeing Eldians is the only solution. His views are surprisingly black and white: I suffered, Eren suffered and our dad is bad. And no one challenged his beliefs until they walk through Grisha’s memories with Eren in ch120-121, and then he realized that Eren didn’t suffer at all and their dad is actually just a person who really regretted being a horrible father to his first son. I love that he got some closure with Grisha because he held that grudge for his entire life.

4. Grisha. He has a rollercoaster ride of a development lol: at first he was an innocent boy, then he became an angry boy, and then he kind of calmed his anger down for some time? But after learning what actually happened to Faye, his emotional wounds got open and all that rage blinded him again. And then, after being outed by Zeke, he lost everything, but had a harsh realization that by being driven by his anger only, he completely forgot not to be a shitty dad. He basically had a second chance in life, with a much better perspective about what’s going on, but now he has his younger son’s ghost haunting him and telling him to do thing he never thought he’d do. At different points of the story Grisha feels both like a mastermind behind things and like a pawn who doesn’t have a choice even if he just wants to live a peaceful and happy life with his wife and kids. The irony of him killing a bunch innocent kids when this whole story started because he got his little sister killed? Delicious. Oh, and I really love the fact that he realised that he screwed up as dad and apologized to Zeke. He loved his kids a lot: Zeke, Eren and Mikasa too (he called her his daughter after all).

5. Erwin. Way more interesting than people give him credit for. He’s mostly adored for being a badass, but he also has his own flaws that he had to deal with. He’s like a moth that’s drawn to the light, but right after burning himself and dying he kind of did “the right thing” that he had to do as a commander. Now, for me it isn’t really about Erwin ending up doing “the right thing” to be honest: we would probably adored him is he ditched everyone and ran to the basement because his selfish desires ended up being more important to him. But that scene where he confessed to Levi that he really wanted to find that basement and just told him everything about his capricious and selfish childish desires, talked about how he lied to everyone including Levi basically just to prove his dad’s point… it was beautiful, because it was basically “I have to do it, haven’t I? But I really don’t want to”. His character development is interesting in a sense that at first he was getting gradually more and more psychotic about his dream, doing crazy things even when he knows it might not be the best choice possible (like him risking his life instead of staying behind), but at the very end he stopped to think and… well we know the rest lol

6.  Armin. I remember people saying that Armin is just a narrator-like character who is here to explain thing (I probably thought so too at first), but this is so unfair. It’s easy to make someone like Armin into this trope, and to leave him being a very one-dimensional dreamer who’s smart but naive. And Armin is so much more than that. Throughout the story he has a lot of “I should have been the one who died” moments, and I love that this is such a prominent issue for him, but he still got over it somehow. Armin was kind of lost at the beginning, but found his role. And wow, he had to go through it again after he was chosen instead of Erwin, because the burden on his shoulders just got 100 kg heavier lol He also got less naïve and more cunning with time and got much better at emotional manipulation, I think. While preferring a dialogue over violence, Armin still isn’t pure, and he acknowledges that constantly, especially after his first kill, and things got even worse since that point, which definitely changed him. But his violence-loathing (kind of…) core is still there.

Armin ended up playing a much bigger role in the story than I thought he would be, I really love it. He has his moments of weakness, but he still pushes forward and takes responsibility and does his best. Oh and let’s pretend that the Annie thing never happened, it doesn’t contribute anything to his character anyway.

7.  Jean. I think Jean is the first character who starts showing character growth, and I believe his development is the reason he was Isayama’s favourite for some time. Tbh, I don’t find Jean annoying even at the very beginning: yeah he’s selfish, but he’s self-aware about it, he’s a realist. And he’s still a realist, but his conscience wouldn’t let him just have an easy life while everyone else’s suffering. I always feel like Jean is a spoiled mamaboy, so it’s great to see him showing that he can put others before himself. He also had an inner conflict similar to Armin’s: is it right to kill innocent people if you have to? Is it ok to kill not-so-innocent people because they’re against you? I really like this theme in SnK just in general.

8.  Gabi. It’s no secret that I adore Gabi lol, and I think her character development is great. She was in her element when we first met her: she was confident, she was doing her best and succeeding, she knew the world around her so well, and then Eren took everything from her. People like to hate Gabi for killing Sasha and for being aggressive on Paradis, but I think it’s great that she didn’t have an overnight change of heart. It’s great that Isayama showed us her shock and her raw emotions, it’s more than natural for a child with her upbringing, even if it’s messed up. But I love it when stories take characters that are great at what they do, and they take them out of their element, to show them at their worst: lost, angry, broken and confused. I love that she understood everything herself and not because Falco told her “hey they’re people too” that one time. She had to go through this hell to figure everything out, and I think it’s great.

9.  Historia. Historia was one of the least interesting characters for me (and for a lot of people, Yams included) at the beginning, and tbh I think it’s brilliant: we never saw anything in her; she was just a waifu material who’s nice to others. It felt fake and boring, well, because it was indeed fake and boring, and to this day I cannot believe that that was the entire point. I love how Ymir made Historia realise that she needs to think for herself, but what’s interesting about all that is that after Ymir left, she almost came back to her old habits. Which is also a development, and a very interesting one. The end of S2 was a high point for her (when she told Ymir that she isn’t scared of anything when they’re together), and then there was a very low point (when Ymir left), and then a high point again (when she remembered Ymir and Frieda and decided to act upon her own desires). She’s one of my faves now because of all that… It’s sad she didn’t have a bigger role post-timeskip, but I still appreciate her story for what it is.

10.  Oh god this is so hard to pick one and this post is already so long… can I just give you a bunch of quick honorable mentions?

Annie (who was a loner that couldn’t really trust anyone but ended up showing her vulnerable and emotional side), Hange (started out enthusiastic and eager to learn more only to meet more pain and disappointment, crumbling under the pressure, but ultimately remembering her amusement with titans), Levi (granted it’s very subtle, but him going through Kenny’s death, Erwin’s death and his promise to him, realization that he’s been killing people all this time and other stuff fascinating and huge leaving a mark on him), Ymir (who got hurt and decided not to trust anyone anymore and to act selfishly, but ended up sacrificing herself anyway lol)…. God, these short description sucks, they can’t describe them properly. Also there are so much of them that I think have good development, and I’m 100% missing someone… but I think I’m done for now. Katsu I’m sorry for making you read all this.

That you for this ask, Anon <3 and sorry again for being so late

[no-gorms]

I do love those post CW fics where both Steve and Tony have internalized what happened in very different ways and how they can’t actually fix it until the scope is revealed. With Steve it’s “calcified” as you said, frozen (hah) and a load to be dragged around and endured because Steve will sometimes just lets things be endured rather then try and repair it. Tho I think he hadn’t quite gotten how dire/hopeless the situation with Tony was until the yelling at the start of EG, which reveals that the situation has changed from the “calcified” level of issues of trust and lying, into worse ones. Like don’t get me wrong, Steve knew it was bad but it’s got WORSE.

Because Tony has internalized it in a way that’s “festered” in that it’s actively hurting him, he keeps picking at the wounds and making them worse. It mutates the “Steve lied by omission thru cowardice and a level of inertia and apathy” into “Steve and the whole team hated you or were completely apathetic to you and your ideas and never respected you and look what’s happened and they did so because you weren’t good enough to listen to”. “Resentment is corrosive” because Tony is a futurist, a fixer, a man that lives and dies by considering each “what if” and exploring it and that can cause MASSIVE anxiety and catastrophic thinking at the best of times, as we see in Tony’s phase 2.

(I’m not sure he’d’ve given in to how bad his perception of STEVE’S perception of him got if it hadn’t been for the whole Snap+almost dying in space for weeks almost alone with his thoughts but that’s where they got 😕)

Tony has to lace his wounds and then leave them be to heal to get better, Steve has to actually examine the reality of the WHOLE problem and decide to let it go or actually try and repair it rather then dragging/pushing it all around as “punishment”. Because again, in post CW fic where Steve kinda thinks it’s still only about the Accords/Tony blaming Bucky and that’s bad but eventually they can fix it? And then Tony reveals that oh boy it’s waaayyyyyyy worse then that, Tony’s questioned and concluded Steve either like, WANTED to kill him or doesn’t care if he died. THAT’S the level his brain has gotten him to at points

(following on this)

For sure, yeah, I agree that Steve and Tony had different takeaways from the CW conflict, and internalized different lessons from it, where Tony's explosion at the beginning of EG became a wake-up call to Steve at how deeply personal those wounds are. IMO Steve did know it was more than just the Accords and Bucky at stake, based on his reaction at the climax of CW where he had no anger, just desperation to stop Tony, but I reckon he didn't expect that Tony would've reviewed their relationship as a whole based on what went down and revise his understanding of what they were to each other.

(Side note: I'm not interested in CW discourse which has been done to death, so I'm keeping this brief!)

This break and reconciliation isn't really something that could've been addressed properly in an ensemble event film, so post-CW fic has been great at exploring all that awful nitty-gritty, though sometimes I like imagining (barring actual reality) if they could've explored the fallout on a smaller, personal scale within the D+ miniseries format, like shove them into a multi-episode bottle situation I guess WandaVision style where they have to deal with Plot A (their relationship) against Plot B (beating the bad guys) instead of the priority being the other way around. Ah, dreams!

[sepublic]

With what Dana revealed about the Blight parents and they arent what they appear to be in either a good or bad way, do you think she's going to reveal that they arent abusive? Because honestly with the whol thing with Willow and Amity's hair, the fact she never felt close to a parent, that she didnt have a place to go and that she still called a teacher Mom are all red flags. Maybe it will be that not both of them are horrible, maybe Mr Blight is also a victim?

           (TL;DR at the bottom)

           Let me get this clear; Abuse is abuse, intentional or otherwise. That it doesn’t matter if you didn’t realize how much you were hurting your loved one (like Emira and Edric), or if you were doing it ‘for their own good’ (Like Camila and Lilith). Emotional abuse is REAL and nothing can justify that, and after seeing the very elitist, almost disgusted way Mrs. Blight regarded Willow? How she’s so quick to blackmail her own daughter and someone else’s kid, and treats it like it’s all fine, implies to Amity that if she’s upset about the situation then she’s just being a silly little kid?!

           This lady is AWFUL, there’s no room for interpretation. Whyshe’s awful and in what specific ways is interesting… But she’s awful regardless. I’m pretty sure Dana was alluding to the Blight Parents having more nuance than anticipated while still being terrible people, just as Lilith had her reasons for cursing Eda but was still a bad person for never telling the truth, supporting the Emperor’s Coven, mistreating Luz, etc.

           In general, if I had to pull together my current read on the Blight Parents, and combine it with my own personal speculation and ideas…

           Mr. Blight seems like the kind of person who’s at least… straightforward and honest about his abuse. Like he doesn’t bother with the pointless, ‘sweet’ façade, acting like he’s oh-so kind and caring, that this doesn’t REALLY matter… He seems rather blunt with his feelings. Like he doesn’t try to undermine your feelings by gaslighting you into thinking they don’t matter, mostly he’s just saying, “They don’t matter to me.” Which is still, like, AWFUL, but…

           Then we have Mrs. Blight, who seems to be actively smiling at Eda’s misery in the flashback; That or she’s smiling at Lilith, but regardless. She comes across as a lot more willfully sadistic, and more intentional of a gaslighter; Someone who makes you doubt yourself by getting into your head, making you question yourself and if you’re right… Really playing it up like she DOES know best, that you’re just a silly little kid, you’ll learn and grow up eventually… It’s so dismissive and condescending.

Like, Mrs. Blight is the kind of person who when called out bats her eyes and is oh-so innocently like, “Oh, me?” As if she never did anything wrong, that at worstit was some mistake or misunderstanding… That you can still LOVE her, because she totally still loves you and always did! And then you start wondering if you were too harsh with your accusations, if you’re assuming too badly of her, that maybe Mrs. Blight didn’t ACTUALLY mean it, maybe you’re just going too far…!

           …Like let’s be real. They’re BOTH terrible. But something about Mrs. Blight rubs me the wrong way… And it’s even MORE aggravating considering how much she looks like Amity and Emira. I suspect that it’s her way of sugar-coating her abuse, dressing it up in a little bow, that REALLY contributed to the Blight Kids internalizing a lot of toxicity without even realizing it, and thus transmitting it to one another and outsiders as a result, under the impression that they’re not actuallybeing that bad, right? That if they other doubt their harshness, Mrs. Blight’s abuse undermines that doubt by reassuring the kids that they’re totally in the right and that at worst they’re just misunderstanding things!

           In Lilith’s childhood flashback, Mr. Blight doesn’t really seem to be reacting much.

          He seems mostly apathetic, aloof, and chill about the whole thing… Meanwhile, you have Mrs. Blight who very clearly has a much more willfully malicious smile to her about the situation! Though it’s hard to say what him and his wife were reacting to specifically in that moment, as they can be seen glancing at Lilith, who has just been inducted into the Emperor’s Coven…

          But their expressions could also be hold-overs from their reactions to Eda, who they likely looked down upon for being a troublemaker and defying the Emperor’s Coven in that moment, getting cursed. Knowing Mrs. Blight in particular, she was probably smugly vindicated by the moment; Like this commoner dared to spit on the very values and ideals that nobles like her held themselves up to, and was karmically punished by the Isles for this! Meanwhile she’s looking down proudly upon Lilith for actually ‘knowing her place’, for ‘learning to be one of them’, for ascending past her lowly peers and whatnot… You get the idea.

          Given the way Mrs. Blight was smiling at Lilith in that flashback, I have to wonder if in general she approved of Lilith was one of those few ‘humble beginners’ who became acceptable for the Blights to hang around, which coupled with her status as Belos’ head enforcer, led to Amity being her apprentice…

          Though I have to wonder how Mrs. Blight reacted to the Covention Incident and what Amity had to say, especially since she knows firsthand that Lilith and Eda –sort of- had their feuds in the past? I wouldn’t be shocked if she believed Amity about Lilith resorting to the Power Glyph, but still punished her daughter anyway because she’s an abuser…

          So, when you combine this with what we’ve heard from Dana herself, about the Blight Parents appearing in multiple ways that could be ‘good or bad’ for our protagonists, and Mr. Blight being an interesting person to write for…

          …I think it’s likely that Mrs. Blight was born into the family. She’s the one who has power, given how she dictates that Amity have green hair like her… She definitely has the more elitist look to her in childhood, and her VA was specifically mentioned as a guest-star and everything!

          (Getting into some baseless speculation, we know the Abomination Head can’t be the Blight Parents as they were appointed when the Coven System began, when clearly the Blight Parents were kids in its earliest years… Dumb idea, but the Abomination Head’s hair is tied back in a bun, like Mrs. Blight…?)

          So in all likelihood, Mrs. Blight is probably the one who wields the power in the family, and I have to wonder what her husband thought of it when she prioritized making Amity look like her, in the process removing the main visual connection his daughter had with him! Did he have any doubts, did Mrs. Blight have to reassure her husband that it was all in good-nature, that surely he understood as an outsider? Or…

          In Amity’s flashback, Mr. Blight specifically states that Blights only associate with the strongest of witchlings. If he did marry in as a technical outsider, this would obviously be a very conceited thing for him to say, that he considers himself worthy and strong enough to have joined the family… But after seeing his generally aloof expression, slightly unruly hair, and what Dana said? Amidst my observations of Mrs. Blight having the power, and Mr. Blight seeing more like an enforcer what his wife has to say?

           …I have to wonder if Mr. Blight was like, perhaps. The FIRST person that his wife abused and began to take control of. Like, Mrs. Blight WAS interested in him as children because Mr. Blight was genuinely charming and also pretty strong… But somewhere along the way, she used her greater social status to be in charge of him. Maybe Mrs. Blight began dictating how her significant other acted and behaved, to make sure he was ‘worthy’ enough to be a member of the Blight household. And while some of this could’ve been motivated partially by a genuine desire to see him fit in with her, as well as her own conditioning…

           …It’s still kind of an awful way to treat your beloved. Maybe Mrs. Blight intentionally abused and gaslit or him, or maybe Mr. Blight was always used to being in a position taking orders from her, out of a genuine sense of loyalty and love… And one way or the other, that twisted into him only caring what she had to say. That to him, his self-worth hinged entirely on whether or not he matched the Blight standard, if his beloved wife would approve…

           Perhaps Mr. Blight was someone who was also indoctrinated into the Blight family, not allowed to become one of them until he changed who he was? Like his relationship with his wife as kids was similar to Boscha and her friends, just sort of a follower who got roped in… But with a dash of genuine love and you’ve got him unquestioningly carrying out her orders, helping Mrs. Blight abuse their children together because can’t you see your beloved mother knows best???

           Maybe he has experience with what they’ve gone through, albeit from a more sympathetic angle from Mrs. Blight… And regardless, to Mr. Blight, he’s someone who survived the abuse and came out better, stronger for it! He knows it’s a good thing and pays off in the end, those children of theirs just need to understand…!

           Because it’s worth noting that he has brown hair. So to Mr. Blight, his wife may be the world to him in a rather toxic sense… That HER lineage matters more, that SHE graced him and his ‘humbler’ backgrounds… I have to wonder if Mr. Blight purposefully cut off ties with the rest of his family to be with his wife, either because his wife specifically demanded it or simply as a side-effect of absorbing her elitist, classist attitudes over time.

           …Like, what if Mr. Blight dyed his hair green, too?! To match with his wife… Like he’s the one always making concessions for her because SHE is the noble Blight, and he doesn’t even realize or consider how toxic it all is; Because to Mr. Blight, he takes a personal pride in serving his wife, because there really IS a genuine love there… But that real love is unknowingly hindered by Mrs. Blight needing to enforce some elitist hierarchy within the family. To Mr. Blight, he’s just repeating his wife’s mantra, he sees himself as serving his rightful place in the world, no doubt thanks to Belos and his Coven System encouraging such a viewpoint…

           And, like. There’s still some genuine, legitimate trust between these two. I wouldn’t be at all shocked if Mrs. Blight had indoctrinated her husband without either of them realizing this, because they were both kids and this is how she’d always lived! But alas, it’s worrying… That too much of his self-worth is directed towards his wife and neither of them consider this, that Mr. Blight would gladly lay down his life for her because she showed him kindness… But he’s still dependent upon her, and conditioned to be so like many others with the Emperor’s Coven!

           I also have to wonder if Mrs. Blight will be an extreme version of Lilith; Someone who legit thinks she knows best and casually gaslights others into doubting their objections without even thinking about it, without even self-reflecting upon it… Like a part of her is willfully ignorant of the harm she’s causing, or she’s taught herself to be outright dismissive of it in the end; Because surely she knows best, right? Perhaps she’s someone who casually steamrolls over what others have to say because while there’s some genuine love and interests she’s also very elitist and patronizing, and was taught that she’s the one who should be in charge.

           Then there’s my speculation, half-joking, on the idea of Luz being wholly accepted into the Blight Family, because look at this clever human who managed to wound Emperor Belos! Clearly she’s VERY powerful… Not to mention, Luz is very friend-shaped! So we could have Mrs. Blight trying to assimilate Luz into the family, dye her hair green, make Luz hang out with her kids more and more…

          And Mr. Blight is just watching it all, and when Luz expresses doubts he pulls her to the side, explains that he understands and empathizes… But then he tells her to keep going with it, because who wouldn’t want to be where he is now? That obviously it’s worth it in the end to be with your beloved Blight… Not for social status or anything, but simply to serve a higher cause, and someone you love.

           So this could be a very ‘twisted’ form of acceptance, kind of like how Lilith initially loved Eda but more the idea of her up until the season finale… Of the Blight Parents wanting Luz, but wanting a specific version of her that’s fully integrated into the family! I can see them using their influence to cut off Luz’s ties with her other friends and family, to make her more entrenched and dependent upon the Blight household…

          And naturally, Eda and Lilith and the rest, have a lot to say! Amity definitely has reservations, she wanted to keep Luz from her parents for this and other reasons… While Emira and Edric possibly take it in stride, because they don’t quite realize what’s going on, or they’re just too thrilled at having Luz be accepted to consider the implications of what’s happening! Maybe they think it’s okay because they can teach Luz how to still be her own person, or they’re just glad to have her and don’t think much of it, because while those two certainly try, they’re not always self-aware of the toxicity their parents passed on.

          Either way, Luz is inevitably going to have to make a stand and insist on still maintaining her own connections and who she is, Amity will stand up for her… And things will get messy, because I REALLY do not want to see the Blight Parents be angry! Maybe the Twins stick up for Luz and Amity or just stay to the side, because they didn’t really see the issue beforehand? Either they’re neutral and/or they take Amity’s side, there’s no story where they side with their parents!

          And, there’s the possibility that. The Blight Parents just REJECT Luz, immediately! And we’ve already seen plenty of speculation on how THAT will go… Such as the idea of them sabotaging Luz’s enrollment at Hexside, even if Belos himself doesn’t care about persecuting her as of the moment.

          TL;DR Mr. Blight was an outsider and got fully-indoctrinated into the Blight family mentality and dutifully serves his wife. While he’s still a victim of toxicity, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s now complicit in it as well, something the show addresses with characters like Lilith or Amity. Mrs. Blight is elitist and definitely more of the ‘mastermind’ who has the final say in things, but whether or not she’s actively, intentionally spiteful or is just devoid of self-awareness (or both), I can’t say!

[radramblog]

I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream

…is the title of a Hugo-winning short story I just read. I’d heard the name for a while, gotten the gist of it, but for whatever reason I’d assumed it was a full on novel that I’d have to put proper time into, not a 13 page quickie made of psychological horror and fetid wordplay. This thing is dark, twisted, and probably one of the most influential stories I can think of, at least in terms of science fiction.

I suppose with such a short piece to divulge, it suits that the intro be similarly hastened. Shall I?

The cliffnotes version, although you can read the whole thing here if you’d like and it wont take too long. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, aside from being such an incredible title, is a tale of 5 individuals and the torture they undergo at the hands of AM, a supercomputer that has taken over the planet and extinguished all other human life on the face of the earth. For 109 years the fivesome- Ted, Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, and Ellen- have been tortured, and altered, and kept perpetually alive by the machine, bleeding and dying and being corrupted over and over for its tepid amusement. AM significantly changed who they were- the pacifistic Gorrister turned an apathetic abuser, the brilliant scientist Benny rendered an ape-like creature with a…monster cock…for some reason (look the reasons are fucked up aight don’t wanna get into em), and the narrator, Ted, claims to be unaffected but his paranoia says otherwise.

After AM sends them on a particularly heinous journey as part of yet another controlled torment, Ted snaps into lucidity for the briefest of moments, taking a moment of AM’s distraction to (with Ellen’s help) kill the rest of his companions for good, ending their suffering in a way that AM cannot revert, and for this crime, AM finally transforms him into a horrific bloblike mess- the title being the final line of the story as he describes the disgusting, useless form he finds himself in- helpless to reply to the hatred AM has for him for all eternity.

This story, is fucked up, in case you hadn’t noticed.

(This is from a comic book adaptation, in case it wasn’t obvious)

It’s also exceptionally well written. The descriptions of everything ooze malice and pain, the vivid nightmare that is pseudo-reality for our five protagonists lovingly rendered in ink and blood. It’s the kind of story that lets me write sentences that silly without a hint of irony, which is always fun. It might literally be one of the first instances of “suffer porn”, though at the same time there’s a hint of hope to it- despite the perpetuity of Ted’s suffering, he ultimately does manage to “free” the other four, sacrificing himself by, ironically, surviving.

But aside from the suffer porn aspect, I’m certain this short story has to be the first of its kind in a fair few aspects- and if not the first, certainly the codifier. With it in mind that the tale was penned in 1966, it’s surely groundbreaking in its crystallisation of the fear of technology, of artificial intelligence, and ultimately, of apocalypse. The end of the world being caused by the folly of man wouldn’t have been a new concept, even in the 60s, but for our hubris to be repaid so fully, so viscerally, and in such a concentrated manner is surely a development of author Harlan Ellison’s own. I suspect that without I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, we wouldn’t have Terminator, or System Shock, or The Matrix, or hell even Wargames - though perhaps that one might be for the best.

When reading it, I was also astonished to find how much of what I thought I knew about the story came instead from it’s 1995 adventure game adaptation of the same name. With Ellison’s involvement, it’s as close as you can get to an official expansion of the story, with perhaps its most iconic, non-titular monologue (pictured above) an exclusive to the additions. It’s an incredibly difficult game, designed to make you struggle in solving its puzzles, and screw it up repeatedly on the way through. Or at least, that’s my understanding, I never played it- read a let’s play instead, sucker, take that AM you cybertronic bitch.

I’d argue I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream holds up today, even as its ideas have filtered into the rest of popular culture. It still feels fresh despite its almost 55 years of publication, and despite the brutality described, it’s detached enough (and short enough) to be not too harrowing. Or perhaps I’m just too desensitized at this point. Hell if I know, but hell the characters do know.

(I think I’m very witty sometimes.)

[alphaketoglutaricacid]

@onehithero said: also we know theres at least some actual animals besides gadoll liek the scorpion n cows tht show up for a sec in ep 1 so tankers hav tht going for them re: food sources ..SORRY FOR RAMBLING SO MUCH deca dence essay got sleeper agent activated

onehithero said: i rly like what usaid abt kabu from natsumes pov too but i cannot form a half cohernet thought abt tht one

onehithero said: ALSO ALSO i think its interesting how the ep 8 conversation w minato is i think the only time kabu talks abt being jealous of humans being able to choose their own paths

onehithero said: also how minatos convinced hes like a good lil cog in the machine yet hes done 50 things tht wuld get him labeled as a bug but he just ignores all tht. the both of them can be so disconnected w reality

onehithero said: like minato didnt know abt 1)natsume 2) how the system has made kabu so severely depressed n he culdnt put up w it anymore.n minato continues pushing the just go along w the system shit he doesnt understand tht he was contributing to kabus misery.. n bc of tht kabu doesnt trust minato enough to tell him abt natsume for so long but then he goes n asks smth so big of him as go against the system

onehithero said: thinks abt how kabu n minato r obviously so important to each other but minato understands him less n less over time & kabu kinda already knew its risky to confide in minato like minato did know abt pipe which was a long time ago but he didnt know abt natsume til kabu was already sacrifing himself for her sake. n yet kabu then goes n tries to get him on his side anyway cuz he wants tht so badly..

onehithero said: OMG OMG CHEWS THESE WORDS SLOWLY N THROUGHLY SO DELICIOUS THANK U THANK U u get it u understand i love reading n writing essay lengh responses abt deca dence & again u just hit the nail on the head w this

Please let me know if this @ u 8 times and sorry if it did.  I will reply under this readmore but i love this enthusiasm! I like discussing this stuff so if u want keep it coming. I wanna understand deca dence better and i think i will by sharing ideas w other ppl. 

I think kabu and minatos relationship  is as good as it is because theres clearly a lot of mutual love and respect between them even when they don’t understand each other and thats why minato still runs after him when he hears kabu going suicide mission lets go baby. I think its interesting that minato was like ready to lie down and accept getting mass scrapped until he hears kabu go im about to be hilarious and hes like actually living and staying alive sounds great actually forget what i said about it being over.   you are so right about kabu and trust and natsume. I will always cherish episode 5 where kabu gives this big rousing speech about how natsume inspired him and saved his life and minatos there like ..who? ..what?? I think they may not be used to hiding things from each other. Also I think them drifting apart mirrors natsume and feis drifting apart tho I think while feis the instigator on that side kabus more on his side and minato like natsume is like wondering what in da world is going on. I think someone else wrote about this better than I can.

I do think minato does know kabus severely depressed because theres this line in ep 4 where he puts his hand on kabu and says like you’ve toiled enough at that awful job. and also in episode 11 when he and kabu talk and kabu says he was in a similar place as minato now in that he was waiting every day to be scrapped minato has no reaction until kabu says but that bug saved me. I think he knows kabus very depressed but he does not know how to address it cuz the system never gives either of them the tools or options for it. Though also I feel the system discourages meaningful relationships between the cyborgs so I think what minato and kabu have is likely pretty rare. Kabu donetello and turkey also fought together for a long time but turkey turns on donetello in a second even tho they fought together, he was his number two, and they were in prison together, and were pretty much all they got and donetello kills him in turn. I also think minato probably knew because he’s empathetic. Like I’m not sure about compassion but he’s very good at understanding where other ppl are and how to meet them in the middle so both parties get something they want. That’s how he got all the gamers to collect the old deca dence parts. Not by cashing in on ppl doing the right thing but by framing it as the final mission. He gets his lgbt community center coworkers for fight with him one last time by appealing to their sense of duty. He got the system to put kabu in jail instead of getting scrapped when Mikey got scrapped for a lesser offense. The list goes on. A tangent but I think the fact he acknowledges the living conditions of the humans are gonna get worse if nothing’s done even tho he’s apathetic at best towards them shows even when the system tries to mold the cyborgs into the roles it wants, sometimes the traits they have just keep on going despite themselves. I’m gonna stop myself before I go into jill and this theme but I’m gonna talk about it someday. So I think its more likely than not he knew but he didn’t know how to navigate around it also because it’s heavily implied he’s going thru the same thing and I think kabu might genuinely have no idea Bc kabu lacks empathy but his heart... is huge. When he hears minato express his feelings of not knowing what he wants he instantly tries to reach out and explain minatos not alone in what he feels. This is why they’re good foils. while kabu moves past where he was in the start where he states he does not intend to oppose the system and his compliance while also trying to do the bare minimum drives him to suicide, and finds the willpower and a reason to live and rebel against the system through his connection to other people (first natsume , he hangs out w kurenai sometimes too, and then with the jail robots). Meanwhile minato whos stuck in his literal ivory tower (it’s a Metaphor) never makes any of these connections. It’s the irony of kabu working at a armor repair job giving him some ability to connect w others vs minatos higher position isolating him from everyone else. I think kabu living amongst the ppl he harmed drove him to give up on life quicker, while minato being far apart shielded him from rlly having to see the effects of his actions I think he was headed a lil slower in the same direction. I think we’re led to believe minatos okay where he is but I think towards the end it’s clear minato has spent most of the series also in a bad place. I think he views things very similarly to kabu in that he wants to use what power he does have to protect the ppl he cares about similar to how initially kabu tried to just convince natsume to quit several times and he was like whatever at the rest of the humans who are natsumes comrades dying but he chooses to put it all on the line and try for some systemic change when he sees natsumes determination to fight. Also I think minato holds very little loyalty to the system cuz he doesn’t only like breaks 1000 rules for kabu (the hypocrisy) but he also looks the other way a lot. For example, when he overheard the top rankers talk about limiters he’s like I’ll pretend I don’t hear it also turn on private mode next time and he doesn’t berate them for considering cheating. Also donetello has been using an illegal avatar to climb to S rank again (isn’t it interesting that even after the ranked system is abolished something similar took its place). And his avatar looks the same as it did when minato worked with the guy. There’s probably like not that many ppl in s rank. And he calls himself donetello. Minato knows he’s supposed to be in jail but does he tell anyone? He’s like well.. that looks like someone else’s problem if they notice *goes and vapes* it’s so funny how little minato cares but it’s also not funny Bc some of minatos cruelest actions and things he’s complicit in are born not outta malice but apathy to everything. I think it shows (tangent number 4?) how the systems use of excessive force is counter productive cuz neither minato nor kabu are willing to report anything to disrupt the order Bc neither of them think the level of punishment is warranted. I also think that minato is probably the first person kabu really opens up to about why on a personal level he feels the system needs to be destroyed after Ep 7 is really interesting. It really speaks to how deep their [mutual and not platonic relationship I don’t know how to label ] is. I also think that he admits to minato that he envies human is rlly interesting and would like to hear what u have to think! I think it’s interesting that what really sets minato off is kabu saying he wants to choose for himself and also wants other cyborgs to have that freedom and I think it’s one of the few times we see minato get genuinely angry and have it not stem from worry. Tangent 5 I’m really extrapolating here but I think it’s very likely given how high up minato is that he likely knows of several cyborgs that rebelled against the system for similar reasons as kabu and knows how it ends and I think it probably feeds into his defeatist attitude. I think his role in the system must really kill whatever grasp of whatever minato has cuz he constantly has to act like it’s almost the end of the world and he’s strapped for resources all the time for like decades and decades of having to fake that type of desperation to entertain ur player base and cuz ur also on tv to entertain the general populace to distract them from their soul sucking jobs. I think that’s gotta mess with his perception of himself and also his ability to see that struggle as real and genuine. I think that’s also gotta be hard cuz he seems like out of his whole fuck we r under attack persona he seems like he’s a lil closed off but generally chill and somewhat upbeat to ppl who know him and he just wants to be isabella from animal crossing. I got really off track here. I think what really gets me is their relationship is built on knowing each other so well and so long , and how it’s managed to survive and persist through all this tragedy. They really mutually respect and love each other and that’s why kabu let’s minato walk away from his revolution even tho it compromises everything he works for. It’s why minato ultimently accepts kabus willingness to die for a tanker even tho he really doesn’t get it at all and it means it’s goodbye forever. But it’s still not enough to save either of them. Minato can’t save kabu from trying to passively starving himself to death and I’m not sure if kabu even knows where minato is at mentally. Sometimes no matter how close u are to someone there r things u miss and things u can’t help each other with. Even tho the two resolve to fight and then die together cuz this seems like the best choice Bc the system they were born into offers no alternatives, the deca dence doesn’t even activate without the help of other ppl. I think it shows one relationship cant support all that weight. In the end it is through their bonds with other ppl that gets them to an ending where they both survive when they decided alone their only option is death. Also u are so right about the other animals existing I totally forgot ty I cannot believe I forgot about the scorpion which calls to natsumes hairstyle which is a visual gag on how natsumes a bug and how like a scorpion, although unassuming, and fucking kill u, just like how her trying to get her boss to open up eventually leads to the whole thing toppling down. I also have a lot of thoughts about natsume but I’m still thinking of them and thinking hard Bc sometimes she becomes kabus inspiration Pinterest board and I don’t like that. When she shines she really shines but it starts getting sloppy towards the end so I have to think a lil longer about it. Okay I’m done. Also it’s kinda hard for me to look like I’m agreeing to ur points and nodding in this format but I really appreciate ur thoughts and will try to convey this. Maybe by formatting as a response to each of ur replies next time

[cinnaminsvga]

fox rain | one

→ summary: When the love letter you wrote and submitted as an assignment is leaked to the entirety of your university, it becomes a race against time to dispel rumours and convince the seven suspected muses of the poem that they aren’t the subject before anyone realises that you are the author. Easy, right? Well… maybe not as easy as you think.

→ pairing: bts x reader (feat. seokjin) → genre: college!au, crack, fluff, angst → warnings: none unless you count overly graphic descriptions of how stupid seokjin is (i’m sorry for always making him so dumb) → words: 10.4K → a/n: i know i say this a lot, but this literally the STUPIDEST thing i’ve ever written in my life. i’ve lost maybe ten braincells per word in this fic, and i’m proud of it gdi!! some of my best jokes are in this mess, and that’s saying a lot considering my whole life is a joke. also: check bio for the chapter links for now!

— • masterlist | prev | one | next • —

When you feel yourself awakening, for a moment, you think you might have been hungover. The usual disembodiment you feel after a night out of drinking is what greets you when the last dredges of sleep start to fade out of your periphery, added with the insatiable urge to piss the equivalent of the volume of the Atlantic Ocean. There are weights over your eyes, you surmise, because there is no way you will be able to open them long enough to see whether you were actually dead.

But of course, you are still subjected to the curse of human curiosity, which allows you to gather enough strength to squint blearily and access your current surroundings.

You are greeted by the sight of unfamiliar overhead lights and sterile white walls. The window just to your left shows the darkened sky, the moon creeping just behind the evergreen trees. Groaning slightly, you push yourself into a sitting position, a sudden wave of vertigo slamming into you like a supernova. As you survey the room some more, you notice the sound of muffled conversation going on behind the nearby sheer curtain, and the smell of antiseptic wafts its way into your nostrils. You’re in the nurse’s office, you realize belatedly, grasping the threadbare sheets of your university’s barebones version of a hospital bed.

You put your head into your hands, breathing deeply as you try to remember the last thing that happened to you.

Yoongi’s dick. The stupid e-mail. The poem. The conspiracy group. Seokjin on a pedestal giving a TedTalk about himself. Yoongi’s dick. Namboob. Fainting in the utility closet. Yoongi’s dick.

The mental gymnastics that your brain is currently undergoing elicits a sound akin to a dying squirrel from your open mouth, and it must have sounded terribly loud and unnerving because the nurse bursts into the room just a few seconds after. The nurse, who must have been an underpaid med student by the looks of the designer purple handbags decorating her sullen cheeks, looks at you with less genuine concern and more acute abhorrence.

In your drowsiness, you don’t realize that your throat had somehow converted into the Sahara desert when you had fainted, so you are just as surprised as the nurse when you start doing a wonderful impersonation of Sadako instead.

“Hoo bwat meh hey?” you articulate, your tongue feeling like an oversized fist trying to work its way from out of your larynx. At the very least, no one can blame you for not trying your best to sound coherent. Seeing your struggle, the apathetic nurse has the decency to reach behind one of the shelves and hand you a cup of water. You grab it from her, gulping the entire thing in one go all while you proceed to not care about the rivulets of water and drool trailing down your chin and onto your crotch.

“Sorry,” you say, not really knowing why you were apologizing in the first place. Perhaps for existing? “I was trying to ask who brought me here.”

The nurse, unsurprisingly, only gives you an indifferent shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t know. Some gray-haired twink came in with you on his back. Apparently, you fainted in front of him for no reason, and when we checked your vitals, everything seemed to be fine.” She gestures at your ragged form, almost as if she didn’t believe that they hadn’t found anything wrong with you. You are obliged to share her sentiments.

“You’re free to leave whenever you want. Just make sure to sleep more and eat. University is tough on kids like you,” she says, turning to leave without another look in your direction. Somehow, you feel insulted even though the nurse hadn’t really done anything to you. Perhaps her lack of concern for your mental wellness and the fact that your newly acquired PTSD after today’s events only warranted “a good night’s sleep” as a form of treatment. Ah, the woes of having zero healthcare. Regardless, you decide to take her up on her advice and head home in hopes of acquiring some semblance of sleep after today’s traumatic episode.

Exiting the clinic, you find that almost no one is left on campus, save for the occasional student on their way to their evening classes. Being at your university during the evening had always been an odd sensation for you, as it reminds you of all the nighttime finals you have had to take in the past. Whenever the sun set and darkness enveloped the campus, it is always a given that you would be able to hear someone shouting obscenities from somewhere in the distance, especially since your university is well-known for the bars and clubs that litter its outskirts. Nonetheless, you hopelessly pray that you won’t pass by any drunk college kids, especially on this Friday night.

Just as you are about to cross the street to get to your bus stop, you notice a familiar face waiting by the entrance of the clinic. You backtrack, staring at the back of her head as she inconspicuously tries to peer into the curtained windows like some sort of pervert. Knowing her, your assumption probably isn’t that far off.

You approach her quietly, carrying your footsteps so that she doesn’t hear you until you place your mouth just beside her ear. Even at this proximity, she is none the wiser to your presence. You blow gently against her neck, whispering, “Sera. What the hell are you doing?”

As expected, she shrieks at you in surprise, almost landing a karate-chop on your face but you are saved by the fact that she had as much hand-eye coordination as a dead man in a coffin. You step back as you watch her slice through the air for another few seconds, her gaze wild before they finally land on your smirking face. Realizing that she had overreacted, she straightens up in a huff, glaring at you with as much annoyance as she can muster (but really, who can stay angry at your cute face for long?)

“Trying to look for that hot doctor again?” You joke, peering inquisitively at her hunched form. You wouldn’t be surprised to find a pair of binoculars behind her back at this point, given by how many times you’ve caught her “observing” potential boyfriends.

“How dare––!” She splutters, ears turning red from your accusation. When she shifts slightly, you notice a black object passing through her hands and trying to covertly slip into her bag. Ah. The binoculars.

“How dare I what? Accuse you of stalking a poor med student who is probably overdosing on Adderall as we speak? Oh, sorry for overstepping my boundaries,” you drawl, grinning at her affronted expression. “Unless, of course, you happened to hear about me fainting this afternoon and you wanted to offer me a ride home? Since you’re such a good friend, after all?

She looks at you, alarmed. “You fainted? When? How?”

“Oh, so now you’re concerned. I could’ve died with the image of Min Yoongi’s penis tattooed under the backs of my eyelids, and my best friend never would’ve known… Who, then, would avenge me and clear my name? Who, then, would take care of my growing collection of scantily clad women figurines––?”

“Did you just say you saw Min Yoongi’s penis? Holy shit!” Sera shrieks, eyes bugging out of their sockets. You are sure everyone within a 5 mile radius must’ve heard her, but you didn’t even have the energy to be mortified. Death always did sound like a great vacation idea, anyway.

“Sure, just scream it out for everyone to hear. Maybe we can get him to come back and do it again so you won’t think I’m crazy,” you mutter, grabbing Sera by the sleeve and tugging her towards the parking lot. “You brought your car, right? Bring me home.”

“Jeez, you drop this major bomb on me as if you were just talking about your cat taking a shit on your bed or something, and now you’re ordering me to bring you home? Cheeky,” Sera huffs, but she lets you drag her regardless.

Luckily, her car is parked relatively close because you honestly don’t know how much longer you can take before your knees give out from under you. It seems that despite the little nap you had at the nurse’s clinic, you hardly feel refreshed at all. All you want is to pass out on your comfortable bed for an indefinite period of time and pray for the demon under your bed to drag you to its depths and skin you alive. Knowing your luck, even the demon wouldn’t be that merciful towards a gremlin like yourself.

Sera begins backing up the car, stealing looks at you as you slowly became one with the car seat. You clench your eyelids shut, hoping that Sera would have the decency to respect your space for now and save the questioning for later. That pipe dream is immediately dashed, however, when she starts speeding down the empty streets and opens her big fucking mouth, her shrill voice reverberating in the small sedan.

“Don’t you dare sleep on me now, young miss! You have an entire weekend to hibernate so crank up that brain of yours for two more minutes and tell me what the fuck happened,” she says, nearly crashing over a trash bin in her haste to interrogate you.

“My brain? What’s that? Pretty sure that old thing disintegrated months ago. I think I shat it out when we had Taco Tuesday that one time in November,” you say, missing the way she snorts back in response. When Sera pinches your side to force you to face forward, your fatigue addled consciousness doesn’t even register the pain until a few seconds later.

“Ow,” you whine lamely.

“That literally took you five seconds to react,” Sera whistles, running over a child’s bike in the process. Neither of you look back to check the damage. “Damn, Min Yoongi’s penis must’ve been hella impressive if you’re this mindfucked. Are the rumors true? He must be packing down there, am I right?”

“Please stop saying the word penis. I’m getting triggered again,” you groan, slapping her lightly. She guffaws loudly, shoulders shaking at your misery.

“Sorry, can’t help being a horny bastard. But seriously, what’s the context? I wasn’t even aware you still talked to him after first year. He was your RA at your freshman dorm, right?”

“I don’t talk to him,” you say. You fidget in your seat, hands twisting and turning on your lap. “I mean. We were never close or anything.”

“Then care to explain how you managed to stand in the presence of Min Yoongi junior and behold his glory? Were you guys about to fuck before you realized his penis probably isn’t going to fit? Or, holy shit… Is he actually fun-sized like the rest of his body is?”

“Shut the fuck up, Sera.”

“Oh my god, he’s totally fun-sized!” She gasps, snatching up her phone while you two waited at a stoplight. “Wait ‘til Cassandra hears about this––”

Despite your diminished motor skills, you manage to grab her phone away from her before she can spread any misinformation to the rest of the student body. Min Yoongi’s penis is his business, and consequently, it seems to have become your business as well. Cue existential dread.

“Will you shut up for two seconds and let me explain? No, he is not fun-sized. I will not divulge any more information regarding that subject,” you say. Sera deflates noticeably beside you. “And no, we were not about to fuck. I just happened upon him while he was… in the midst of some recreational activities.”

“Oh, he’s into that type of shit. Understandable,” Sera nods, sagely. You have no idea what her tone might be implying, but honestly at that point you were too scared to ask. “How’d you find him like that, then? Did you hear him tugging his meat and decide to join in? Because honestly, big mood.”

“No!” you exclaim hotly, slapping her once again. “I’m not like your perverted ass! I was just––” You halt in the middle of your sentence, recollections of the past hours swimming through your mind and the fear and anxiety that had taken over you this afternoon starts to consume you once more.

“Hey, you alright? You got pale all of a sudden,” Sera notes, slowing down in her driving as she makes her way to park in front of your apartment. The two of you can see the lights of your crotchety landlord’s living room are still on, and you hope to God that he isn’t peering outside his windows and preparing to call the police on your friend (again).

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just,” you sigh, staring ahead of you and into the empty street. You don’t know why you’re hesitant to tell her what had happened earlier today. Normally, you would be exploding at the seams right now, weeping in despair at the sorry state of your existence. Then again, you’re not sure if you’re ready to go through the agony of reexperiencing the worst 12 hours of your life. Also, you just wanted to go pass out in your bed and never wake up.

In the end, you decide to tell her. Maybe she could offer a comforting shoulder to cry on. “Okay, so don’t laugh but… You remember the poem that got posted on the CCU Love Letters Facebook page this morning?”

Sera nods, confused. “Yeah? What about it?”

You take a deep breath, feeling your palms begin to sweat as hot licks of shame run down your back. You whisper, “Well. Yeah. I’m the author.”

There is a tangible silence inside the car. You’re afraid to look at Sera, dreading what sort of expression might appear on her face. Disdain? Pity? Mirth? Whatever it is, her quietness makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in alarm. You’re about to book it out of her car and make some shitty excuse about needing to feed your goldfish when you hear the locks of the cardoors click shut. You whip your head towards her, eyes widening when you saw the smug look on her face.

Not a good sign. At all.

“Do my ears deceive me? Is Miss ‘i’m-never-going-to-date-because-romance-is-dead’ Y/N really the author of the sweetest and most romantic poem of the century?” she singsongs, her smirk growing with each word that leaves her lips.

“Who ever said I was against romance?” You retort, cheeks flushing so hotly that you’re sure there is steam coming out of your ears. Sera cackles loudly, slamming her hand so hard into the car horn that it causes one of the wandering cats to jump up high into the air. You are half concerned when you don’t see the poor cat come back down.

“Oh please! When was the last time you dated anyone? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you date anyone the entire time we’ve known each other!”

“We met in freshman year. You didn’t know how I was in high school,” you pout, huffing crossly. “And besides. I write romantic poems sometimes. You’ve read my blog posts.”

“Yeah, I know but,” Sera giggles once more, switching her phone on to search for something. When she finds what she is looking for, her eyes light up as she shows you the damned poem that got you into this mess in the first place. “You literally wrote ‘how wonderful is it to find that the dips in your hands look awfully lonely without mine in them?’ and you’re telling me that you wrote that?”

You push the phone away, groaning into your hands when you happen to glance at the number of likes on the post. “Fucking 2000 likes? Really? I’m gonna commit seppuku with your 13-inch dildo, I swear.”

As you let yourself descend into madness once more, you feel Sera’s hand pat your back comfortingly, though you can still hear her stifled giggles. “Okay. To be honest, I kind of knew it was you. No one else can write sappy lovesick bullshit like that and be sincere about it. Who the fuck compares skin to moonlight anymore? Are we in the 16th century?”

“You just said you didn’t believe that I’d write it,” you say. “I need people to not think it’s me. It’s so embarrassing as it is!”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think people are gonna think it’s you. There are a bunch of people in our Creative Writing class. It could be anyone,” Sera says, pinching your cheek lightly.

“You really think so?”

“Yeah, probably.” Sera hums, her thumbs flying on the screen of her phone. She pauses, chuckling lightly at something. “Though, I must say. You’re incredibly lucky. If you had used your actual e-mail address instead of your… burner one, you would have been found out immediately.”

“Little victories,” you say, wondering if the prepubescent version of yourself would have known that creating xXxteamjacobpuppyloverxXx@gmail.com would eventually save your life 10 years later in the future. Probably not, but you’ll take it all the same. “Will you unlock the doors now, please? I’m gonna sleep the trauma away and hopefully not be alive by Monday, but if I am… then I guess I’ll see you on Tuesday.”

“Hold on sister,” she says, restraining you back into your seat with her arm. You cough in surprise, shooting a glare back her way as she keeps you away from your bed longer than you would already like. “If you’re the author of the poem… Then can you tell me who the muse of the poem is? And more importantly, is it someone I know?”

Judging by the salacious look on her face, you know it would be a bad idea telling her. Not that you wouldn’t trust Sera with your life, but––actually, you really would not trust her with anything. Now that you think about it, telling Sera would be the equivalent of giving Kim Seokjin full access to your internet search history, and you have enough brain cells in your inventory to know that some things are worse than death.

“Ugh, can we just drop the subject, please? I really don’t want to have an aneurysm inside your car right now. I can see Mr. Park staring at us through his living room window and we both know you can’t afford bail for the third time this year.”

“Oh shit, you’re right,” she sighs, relinquishing her hold on you and allowing you to unlock the door. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting this go! You’re telling me everything when we see each other on Tuesday, understand?”

“I’d rather die, thanks!” You call out, slamming the door shut. “And besides, I’m gonna try to kill the rumors as quickly as possible before someone figures it out.”

“How are you gonna do that? Don’t tell me you’re going to go to each of the guys and explain? Maybe tell them it’s a misunderstanding?” Sera asks, watching you curiously. The very thought of doing that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention. You gaze downwards at the wet pavement, the feeling of impending doom rapidly becoming familiar.

"That would mean outing myself as the author, so that's definitely a hard pass."

"Suit yourself." Sera shrugs, already beginning to pull away from the driveway. She waves lazily at you, before driving away into the night. You stand outside for a moment longer, sighing deeply as you resign yourself to your new life filled with tomfoolery and bullshittery.

At the very least, there is no where to go but up, right?

[Life Lesson #1: It's important never to test fate with foolish declarations of optimism such as this. It only tempts whatever sadistic force that controls your pathetic human life to do their worst. So of course, it gets worse.]

To your credit, you don't spend your entire weekend wallowing in self-pity and despairing at your current situation. You only spend maybe 90% of it doing just that. The other 10% is used to plan your next plan of action.

Like an idiot, you fill yourself with too much misplaced confidence and Flamin' Hot Cheetos. You think to yourself, "Man! I have the whole weekend to think of something to do! Surely my brain will be able to make some sort of plan by the time Monday comes!"

It is a wonder that you are still somehow standing, in a state that some might say resembles being "alive," with how bad your forward thinking is. As it turns out, the weekend slips past you before you know it, with no more than a seedling of a plan than you did during the peak of your mental breakdown.

Suffice to say, you're in deep shit.

Monday comes just as surely as the sun rises from the east, which is to say that time continues to pass despite how much you'd be willing to pay for it to stop. You could live with one kidney, right? (Fate is probably more of a vegan, you surmise.)

Even when the world is ending all around you, it seems that your 8AM music composition class will wait for no one. And so, there you are: dragging your feet to what is usually one of your favorite classes, but with the added bonus of death clinging to your elbows. Perhaps your cosplay of a corpse is a bit too convincing, because most passersby are quick to step around you. Honestly, this is probably for the best, as you aren't sure what type of state your human compassion is at the moment, should someone dare disturb your "peace."

But of course, there is always that one idiot who manages to ruin your day––for the sole reason that he exists, much to your disappointment and chagrin. Hell, even his voice is enough to make your hairs bristle from just how he lilts his words ever so slightly. It is an absolute shame that the shortest route to your class is past his hair salon, so you can only imagine the speed at which your blood pressure rises when you hear him say––

“Miss Park, your split ends! Oh my word, Miss Park! Whatever shall we do but snip, snip, snip all those wretches out of your life, just like how I snip up all my haters! Aha, this is your cue to laugh by the way!” Kim Seokjin guffaws, his stupid voice unable to be muted by ten inches of concrete. Through the hair salon’s windowpane, you can see Seokjin’s hands make quick work of an elderly woman’s hair, his eyes in crescent moons with how loud he laughs. You mentally make a sign of the cross for the disaster that will soon befall that poor woman’s head.

Now, normally you would make haste to your class, with head bowed and shoulders hunched in hopes of that fool-mouthed ninny from seeing you and engaging in some of his usual buffoonery. For whatever brain cells he lacked, Seokjin always seems to have the ability to rope you into his many harebrained discussions, with topics ranging from “how often do you think people think of sleeping with me?” to “do you think if plants could dream, would they dream of sleeping with me?”

You know. The works.

As it is, today is not an ordinary day, and encountering Seokjin has only made you recall the distressing events from Friday. From your panic induced haze, you can only remember murky images of him holding court amongst a crowd of people, telling them how he must be the muse of your damned poem. The faint memory fills you with abject horror as you are reminded, not for the first time, how big his terribly well-sculpted mouth can be and how he will stop at nothing to make sure that everyone believes what he wants. (Despite how horrendous he is as an organism of this earth, you would be a fool to call his looks anything but mediocre. But that’s as far as anything worth praising concerns the likes of him.)

Something takes over you in that moment, something animalistic. As if your dumb monkey brain is going “hoo hoo eek eek… must… eliminate… AWOOGA… BIG THREAT…” and your sensible and empathetic sides are consequently forced to lie dormant in the meantime.

Hence how you find yourself bursting through Spick and Spock Hair Salon, with no plan whatsoever. All you can think of is Seokjin hanging from his balls on the school’s flagpole, and honestly you weren’t all that concerned with how Point A was going to reach Point B(alls). But we’ll deal with that later.

“What was that?” Miss Park hums, her hearing aid somewhat short-circuited with the sensory abuse it has already had to undergo. To Seokjin’s credit, his hands do not falter despite your loud entrance; however, that could mostly be explained by how much louder his own voice is in comparison, but that’s just your humble onion.

“––and basically, Miss Park, there is this poor soul out there who must be dying with embarrassment because their love poem has been exposed to the world without their consent! Now, I may be Aphrodite incarnate, but I am also a gentleman, and so I do not condone force of any kind,” Seokjin drawls, incognizant of the world around him. He continues to apply the perm solution on Miss Park’s curls, the precision at how he works almost impressive if not for the fact that he was entirely abhorrent.

“That’s nice, Jinnie, but will you please shut up? I’m two steps away from turning off my hearing aid, you know,” Miss Park says cheerily.

“STOP WHERE YOU ARE, KIM SEOKJIN! STOP FEEDING LIES TO THE ELDERLY!” You cry, filled with the same type of distress that a young peasant might feel from their first licks of capitalism. Seokjin, the wicked businessman in this terrible analogy, is the one selling his counterfeit goods to the unsuspecting innocent.

Miss Park gasps, turning to Seokjin with betrayal in her eyes. “Oh, I knew it! My perm does make me look older! Just give me the pink highlights like I told you, Jinnie. I saw the youngsters doing it on Facebook,” she says.

Seokjin turns his head towards you in slow-motion, like an ass, and even takes the care to flick his beautifully styled bangs away from his forehead so he can gaze upon you with faux interest. “Oh? Miss Y/N? In my salon? I knew you’d be back here soon enough, especially with those roots… Come, take a seat. Let me bump your sorry 2/10 looking ass to a 2.5/10 at least.”

“If it were not for the laws of this land,” you seethe, cursing him through gritted teeth. You stalk towards him, rolling up your sleeves to show that you mean Business. (Funnily enough, you were wearing a tank top that day.) “I can’t believe you’re even being considered a suspect of the poem’s muse in the first place!”

Seokjin fakes a contemplative look. “Isn’t it because of my moon-like radiance? People have told me that I glow like a newborn babe.”

“You sure have the brains of one,” you retort.

“I heard from my niece that it was because he was an extra in a play as a moon or something,” Miss Park quips helpfully. Seokjin makes an affronted noise, but does not reject her claim.

“You were, like, a prop?” You snicker, forgetting for a moment what you were doing. You watch with wicked fascination as his ears turn red.

“Everyone has to start from somewhere! And so what? I had to hang ten feet in the air with a wedgie the entire time! My battle scars are what make me stronger.” He sniffs, upturned nose and all. You and Miss Park snort, not at all inconspicuously.

He pours the remainder of the solution all over Miss Park’s head and slaps her not-too gently on the back, clasping his hands together gleefully. “Well! That should do the trick. Relax, Miss Park, and let the chemicals do all the talking or whatever.” You take mental note to never come back to his establishment ever again so long as you live.

“Ma’am, if you’d like to save yourself from listening to the avalanche of anger that I’m about to unleash, I would suggest turning off your hearing aid for a moment,” you say.

She shrugs her shoulders, reclining further into her seat and resting her legs on a nearby bench. “Sure. YOLO, as the kids say.”

At her consent, you promptly slap the hearing aid out of her ear so you can scream at Seokjin in relative privacy. Miss Park doesn’t even seem to notice, and this should’ve been an indicator of how fucked up Seokjin’s salon is if she didn’t even seem slightly shocked by your actions. (How could she, when Seokjin literally just dumped fucking chemicals all over her scalp? Isn’t that illegal?)

“I’m going to sensibly reason with you first,” you scream and jab at his chest, being unreasonable.

“Okay, sounds believable,” Seokjin replies, raising a brow. He gestures for you to follow him to where the cashier is supposed to be, except that it is so early in the morning that the other employee that works with him isn’t even in at the moment. You still have yet to know why Seokjin opens the shop at 8AM in the first place.

“Why the hell are you spreading misinformation to random people like that? You know damn well that the poem isn’t about you,” you huff, crossing your arms. Seokjin, the ever-loving twat that he is, matches your pose to mock you. He even juts out his hip the way that you do.

“Of course it’s about me! How could it not be about me? Did you not read the part about how the author looks at the moon and thinks about my skin? Everyone knows that Etude House is dying to have me as their face mask model!”

The prickling urge to strangle him strengthens. “Listen,” you say, teeth gnashing from the effort of keeping yourself from leaping and ending it all. “For once in your life, is it really that hard to believe that the world doesn’t revolve around you?”

“Oh, you’re one of those heliocentric believers? Jincentric is where it’s at, Miss Y/N!” He laughs, slapping his knee at the pure hilarity of his joke. He does not pause once at your disdainful visage.

“Fine! Believe what you want! But I need you to stop telling everyone that you’re the muse of that poem. The rumor won’t die if you keep stoking the flame with your inflamed ego.”

Seokjin ponders your words for a second, looking at you with a contemplative stare. He does not speak for so long that you’re almost willing to let yourself hope that he has acquiesced, until––”When have you ever done anything for me?”

You gape at his sudden accusation. “Excuse me? I’ve done a lot for you!”

“Like?”

You pause, racking your brain. “Uh. I haven’t killed you?”

“Fair,” he nods, stroking his chin. “But that won’t be enough to stop me. I love being admired, so fuck you for even assuming that I would stop talking about myself. However, I’ll do it for a price.”

“Price?” You groan, fixing him with a glare. “You know damn well that I’m poor, but name it and I’ll try to pay it as soon as you can.”

Seokjin grins, his pearly whites much too incandescent with how dark his soul is. “Invest in my JiHope t-shirt business. I need, like, $500 left to reach the first goal of my kickstarter.”

You stare at him, completely baffled. Is this dude for real, or is he just a caricature turned to life? “You’re a heathen, do you know that?” you say, disgust oozing from every orifice of your body.

“I am feeling quite heathen-ish today, thanks for noticing,” he replies, somber. “Does that mean you accept my proposal?”

You hate how his voice sounds even the slightest bit optimistic, because that means he really does think you’re as stupid as he is. “Can you be serious for once? And before you say it, don’t fucking pull a dad joke on me and say some shit like ‘how can I be serious if I’m Jin?’ because I will not hesitate to bite two inches off your dick.”

“That would still leave 13-inches, so to be honest I should be thanking you.” He shrugs his shoulders, unashamed of existing in this day and age. “And no, I can’t be serious. It goes against my brand.”

“Your brand of being a fucking menace to society?” you grouse.

“Exactly.”

You are seriously ready to explode, and it isn’t going to be pretty. Lord knows that Seokjin would hate having your guts splattered on his overpriced Gucci slides. “Please, can you just stop talking about the poem? It’s bad enough that the original post is getting hundreds of likes by the hour, and if I know one thing, it’s probably mostly from your own influence.”

With a hundred thousand followers under his belt, it probably isn’t that much of a stretch. As much as he is the spawn of Satan, he is rather popular among your peers. Not that popularity has ever been a good measure of compassion. Case in point:

Seokjin grins, misleadingly angelic. “Aw, are you calling me an influencer? That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“You’re insufferable!” you yell, glowering at the overly-smug theatre student. You stomp your foot on the ground, pointing a finger in his direction as your nostrils flare in annoyance. Like hell that you’re going to let this shithead make you his bitch! “If you’re not going to do as I say, then I’m going to pester you throughout your entire shift and follow you to class if I have to!”

Big words from such a weak-willed person such as yourself. It does not take you long to realize how fatal of a mistake it is to make such a promise, because you never really stopped to think about the actual logistics of such a stunt (i.e. having to be around Seokjin for longer than your recommended daily dose). You can only imagine what such an experience would entail.

After a 3-hours of watching a buffoon salvaging humanity’s hair-do’s and don’ts (his words not yours), you feel as if his very demonic energy was sucking your life force with a curly straw. You fear that when you close your eyes tonight, you will be haunted by images of his Pacific-wide shoulders and his head tilted back in maniacal laughter as he snips away with less care than a toddler. Well, at least that’s what he appears to be doing, because occasionally you will zone out but then return to the sight of a fairly satisfied customer with glossy looking locks, so perhaps he isn’t as inept as you had imagined.

Your amazement is short-lived, however, when he opens his mouth and the cycle begins anew.

After finishing his last client for the morning, he makes his way to his first class of the day. You are reminded of the fact that you are missing your own morning classes as a result, but you know that you cannot afford to let him off your sight, lest he make a bigger fool of himself (and consequently, make your life a bigger hell than it already is).

You trudge behind him, ensuring that he never strays further than three feet away from you. It’s pretty easy to keep up with him, due to the fact that he always makes a point to pause whenever he sees his own reflection (in windows, shiny surfaces, some poor boy’s bicycle helmet––his narcissism knows no bounds.)

When he finally makes a full stop outside one of the lecture halls, he intentionally sidesteps in front of you. The suddenness of it causes you to bump against his steely back, bruising your nose enough to make you yelp in pain. You’re just about to cuss him out when he turns to face you, uncharacteristically serious.

“Now Y/N, I need you to stay out here in the corridor like a good girl, okay? There’s a strict rule of having no pets allowed,” he coos, making the fatal mistake of trying to stroke your head. He shrieks when your teeth meets his palm, but you are unrepentant.

When you let go, he tries to appear unfazed, blowing you a kiss instead as he saunters off into the lecture hall. Not wanting to disturb the class anyway, you decide to heed his words and squat outside in the hallway, occasionally looking through the small window to glare menacingly at the pink-haired bastard. Despite the holes you wish you were burning into the back of his skull, he remains aloof to your imaginary death ray as he continues to take studious notes of whatever his professor is saying.

On the other hand, his classmates are a different story. They send each other wary looks, wondering why the hell this random person was doing a Jack Torrance impression. When the clock strikes, they all make a beeline for the exit, clearly avoiding looking you in the eye as they speedwalk to their next classes. Seokjin makes it out last, his gait the picture of perfect nonchalance. He has the audacity to look surprised to see you there, like you were an old friend he had not expected to meet until you both reached the pearly gates (or fiery pits, but that’s unimportant right now).

“You’re still here, Miss Golum? Have you been good? I’m honestly surprised that you are as stubborn as I am.” He whistles lowly, shouldering his backpack with a smirk. He walks down the hall towards the exit, not checking to see if you were keeping up or not.

You proceed to bite his penis in half to keep him in place. Okay, not really, but you know… one can dream.

What you actually do is follow him as he heads to the cafeteria, presumably to sustain the mortal body he has chosen to possess. It takes him an agonizing thirty minutes to decide what he wants to eat for lunch, and another thirty minutes to say his extensive list of food products that he will most likely be consuming within the next hour or so. You’ve never seen a fast food worker look so dead before, and you’re sure the poor college student behind the counter had zoned out after Seokjin ordered his tenth happy meal.

As the two of you stand to the side to wait for his order, he turns to you expectantly. “So,” he begins.

“Fa,” you retort, followed by a gasp of shock from the elder.

“Do my ears deceive me? Your first dad joke… And to think, all it took was for you to hang out with me for four hours to initiate you as an apprentice.” He weeps loudly, faking tears in an impressively short amount of time. That doesn’t stop you from kicking him in the shin, though.

“Don’t worry, I’m already dead inside. There’s no soul left for you to consume,” you reply dryly. He tuts, shaking his head.

“Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was just about to ask… As much as I have enjoyed our quality bonding time together––”

“I’ll gladly piss on your grave, don’t forget,” you interject.

“––I was wondering why you’re so adamant to dispel the rumors about the poem? You don’t seem like the type to engage in campus gossip.”

Oh shit. Perhaps there is something more than hot air in that tiny head of his.

You flounder about like a fish for a bit, your mouth opening and closing as you think of an explanation that wouldn’t out yourself in the process. You feel your cheeks reddening, only two seconds away from steam whistling out of your eardrums. Broken stammers are all you can manage as he waits expectantly, but luckily, you don’t have to think of a response when a nearby commotion forces the two of you to back away from each other.

A gaggle of freshmen storm through from out of nowhere, forcing the both of you to be swept away as they all made their way towards a pop-up stand in the middle of the court. Accustomed to the borderline cringey overexcitement of the youngest students in the university, you are quick to dismiss their behavior and decide to search for Seokjin, until you hear one of the little freshmen say something that catches your attention.

"You think the t-shirts are still available? Chaeyeon said the hoodies sold out this morning, so I'm scared that we'll be too late," a young girl says, her hands clutched to her chest as she tries to tiptoe over the crowd to survey the state of the merchants just up ahead.

Her friend pats her back assuringly. "Don't worry. The announcement on the page said they're bringing in the reserve stocks from the backroom, which is probably why everyone's here. We just have to get there first." They proceed to elbow their way through the throng of people, and completely disappear from your view. Where they stood, more people soon took their place until a sizeable swarm has taken over half the area of the floor.

Now, this exchange isn't necessarily a red flag to most people, since many clubs and organizations at your university often sold different types of goods to raise funds for their projects. However, given the circumstances that you have become entrenched in the last few days, you can never be too cautious of innocent utterances such as this.

You take a few steps back, trying your best to see over the heads of the crowd that is steadily growing larger. After a few minutes of fruitless attempts to squeeze through sweaty pits and cacophonous teenagers, you are ready to just give up and let it go when the same pair of girls from earlier exit from the side, with numerous folded up shirts in their arms.

You hasten towards them, barely being able to latch onto their shoulders to stop them from escaping. The shorter of the girls squeals in surprise, dropping her prized possessions onto the floor. She turns to you, anger ready to burst forth from her tongue when she looks you in the face. She softens almost immediately, wrath evaporating in the wind. Confused, you're just about to ask her if she knows you from somewhere when her friend cuts you to the chase.

"Oh my God! It's her!" she squeals, reaching for your hand and shaking it so vigorously that you swear you hear your shoulder bones pop out of its socket. The girl who had dropped her shirts just continues to stare at you in awe, her mouth agape as she remains speechless, apparently from your presence alone.

You feel the dread begin to build in the pits of your stomach. "It's me?" you say, pointing to yourself with your free hand.

"Yes! Miss Y/N, you have no idea how happy I am to meet you! We are big fans of your work on the CCU Pen Blog! Your short story about the talking brick wall honestly brought me to tears," she gasps out, eyes twinkling with unrestrained reverence. Judging from the death grip she has on your hand, you can certainly say that this girl isn't lying.

While you are aware of the small following that you've accumulated over the past two years as one of the top contributors in your university's open writing forum, that isn't to say that you have ever met a fan as fervent as the two before you. Still on edge from everything that has been going on, you still can't let your guard down around them.

After a bit of effort on your part, you are finally able to pry yourself away from the girl's tight hold. Coughing lightly into your abused fist, you fix them with a wary glance. They return it with unnervingly excited stares of their own.

"Um. Thank you very much, ladies. I just wanted to ask you about the function going on over there?" you ask, pointing over at the still bustling shop booth. At your query, the girls actually look confused, as if you are the weird one in this interaction.

"You don't know? I thought you of all people should know about the merch sale happening right now," the quieter girl speaks up, bewildered. She bends down to pick up the shirts she had dropped, turning it over to show you the design that you had previously failed to notice. What a terrible mistake you have committed.

(Was the mistake looking at the t-shirt? Was it waking up today? Was it deciding to live after your mother conceived you in the womb? Truly, where does the blame game truly end in this foul existence that you call your own?)

The scream that is elicited from your throat cannot be described as anything from this world, because you are sure everyone in the vicinity might have stopped breathing for a few seconds after hearing it. The macabre quality of your voice even caused the two girls in front of you to flee in fright, leaving you with the wretched t-shirt in your trembling palms.

There, printed on the t-shirt, right in front of your mortal eyes, is an image you would rather that you had not seen even if it meant having to suckle from Kim Seokjin's teets for all eternity.

In all its poorly printed glory, your face is plain as day. Anyone would be able to recognize that it was you: in the middle of chewing what appears to be a whole turkey leg.

There you were, with ketchup dripping down your cheek, sitting just outside the Fine Arts building as you scarfed down the poor piece of poultry because you had been too lazy to cut up into smaller, more refined chunks. Like the fucking caveman that you are, you had held the leg like a police baton, mouth open so wide that you'd think you might have unhinged your jaw to get the entire thing to fit in there.

You think that's all? It gets worse.

Somehow, the perpetrator of this terrible t-shirt just has to make you look even less attractive than humanly possible. Superimposed beside your sauce-stained self is none other than a PNG image of Jeon Jungkook in his prime. With his sleek black hair pushed back to reveal his forehead, you are sure that this photo is the same one that everyone on campus had swooned over just a few weeks prior, when he had been chosen to model in an advertisement for some club's fundraising event. He is the picture of quiet confidence, which might make you laugh on any other day, since the boy is anything but that in his day to day life. You only ever interact with him when you see him manning the front desk of the library, and he always has his head bowed over a book, unaware of the stares of his many admirers.

Clearly, the injustice of having a literal god beside your hulk-ish photo is downright cruel, but this optical torment does not stop there.

Underneath the photos of the two of you, there is a short line of text that is honestly the worst part of the entire thing. In bold, sans serif font, it reads “Y/NKOOK SUPPORTERS INITIATIVE” with a copious amount of black heart emojis tacked on. In a smaller, but similarly visible manner, it also reads “The Moon Poem is about them and I will stand on this rock until I die!” There are also numerous 100 and fire emojis scattered around the entire shirt.

It’s terrible. It’s downright despicable. It’s the worst thing to ever grace your vision, and that’s saying something, considering that you’ve met your fair share of delusional graphic designers.

Another scream rips from your throat––more livid, this time.

It is at that moment when you realize that maybe Thanos was right––maybe some people really do deserve to die for the betterment of civilization.

Perhaps the crowd of eagerly waiting customers can sense the heat from your unfathomable anger, because they quickly part like the Red Sea as you stomp over to the front of the lines where you will likely find the perpetrator of this heinous crime.

There is a young boy with droopy eyes standing by the tables of merchandise, his hands quickly counting wads of bills as he jams them haphazardly into his pink Hello Kitty fanny pack. He doesn't even bother looking up when you approach him, still busy with his profits, when you clear your throat to catch his attention.

"Are you the one in charge of this fucking circus?" You snarl, fists itching to come into contact with his cheeks. He hums disinterestedly, zipping up his gaudy fanny pack with a tired sigh.

"No, ma'am. I'm just the hired help," he drawls, turning away from you as he gestures vaguely at the mountains of goods still left for purchase. "Are you interested in something or what? There are still 30 people waiting to buy, so I'd rather you not back up the line please."

At the end of your patience, you admit that perhaps grabbing the poor boy by the collar might have been a bit drastic. Still, you're itching to know who the source of all this madness is, so you don't feel all that guilty when he makes a choking sound from your act of brute force. Despite your strong grip on his windpipe, his dead fish-eyes do not disappear. In fact, he looks exasperated more than anything.

"Listen lady, are you going to buy something or what? Who even the fuck are you?"

You splutter, staring incredulously at the younger. Who the fuck are you? You aren't the type to expect people to know who you are but you can at least expect that the person selling goods with your face on it would know who you are! Like, how the hell does he not know that you were the same person on the damned picket fans and keychains?

"I don't––what the hell––" you stammer, speechless for the first time in a while.

"OWO what's this? Is this a new campus couple shipping booth that just opened? Do you guys sell JiHope versions too?" Just in time to witness your second mental breakdown of the day, Seokjin makes his convenient re-entrance as he sidles up beside you. He has two burgers in hand, one of which he is halfway done eating.

You gape at him. "Did you buy a burger for me?"

Seokjin snorts, stuffing the entire remainder of the sandwich into his unfathomably large mouth. "No, you idiot. They’re both for me," he replies, with surprising coherency despite the dribbles of meat and bread product spilling onto his chin. You swear you can see him unhinge his jaw just the slightest bit.

He bends down to pick up one of the fallen pins from the floor, groaning at the sound of his back cracking. "Oh shit, that hurt!"

Unable to help yourself despite still having a freshman in a chokehold, you quip automatically "Yikes, that sounds like a couple of dinosaur bones creaking. You alright?"

Not missing a beat, Seokjin replies "Nah. I just can’t help having a bad back with how big my dick is."

The young boy taps you on the shoulder, reminding you once more of the situation you are in. "Can you let go? My shift is over so you can interrogate the next dude instead," he drawls, having the audacity to yawn at you.

Taking pity on him, you do as he asks. He straightens up, pulling his rumpled collar down before unclasping the fanny pack from around his waist. Another similarly dead-eyed young boy (who was incredibly tall, much to your chagrin––obnoxiously tall young men ALWAYS had agendas, take Seokjin for example) takes the bag from him. He gives you a short once over, no signs of recognition present in his expression at all. When he sees Seokjin, however, his reaction is a lot more than you expected.

"Oh my God, Seokjin? Holy shit, I'm a big fan!" The new boy gasps, pushing aside a customer in favor of reaching over to shake Seokjin's hand. Ever the slut for praise and appreciation, Seokjin shakes his hands with the ease of a seasoned politician.

"Aren't we all?" he laughs, haughty. The other boy laughs too, his eyes sparkling with unrestrained admiration. You sneer in disgust at the hearts visibly emanating from his body.

"My name is Soobin, and I just love your performance in last week's production at the Campus Theatre! Would you mind signing my assh––"

"Hold on," you interrupt, glaring daggers at Seokjin. "Did you fucking do this? Did you make this fucking merch booth of me and Jungkook?"

Seokjin frowns, annoyed that you had been impetuous enough to stop this spontaneous meet and greet session between him and his loyal fan. "No, of course not. Who even the fuck is Dungcock, or whatever the hell that dude's name is."

"You fucking dumb piece of shit––" you say, about to bite off his balls for real when your phone begins to ring, saving Seokjin for the time being. You recognize the ringtone to be the one you set for your alarms, and you realize that after all the commotion from this morning, you have forgotten about the tutoring session you are supposed to have with Hoseok today. Since you had cancelled last Friday's session after your spectacular psychotic meltdown, you know that you couldn't possibly skip this one as well.

Shutting your phone off, you groan, fixing Seokjin with your most solemn gaze. "Listen, I don't have a lot of time. I have to go tutor Hoseok soon, and I've already skipped all my classes today by trying to convince your imbecilic ass to be empathetic for once in your miserable life so I'm begging you for the last time––please stop spreading the rumors about the poem," you finish, tears welling up as you finally register the fatigue weighing down your bones. It's only Monday, and you can't wait for the sweet release of death.

Seokjin is silent the entire while. The merchandise boy, Soobin, has already left the two of you alone, becoming disinterested the moment you uttered the word "listen." You're breathing heavily, bracing yourself for the inevitable sound of his windshield wiper-esque laughter. To your complete and utter surprise, his mocking does not come.

Instead, he puts down his second burger, stuffing it inside his back pocket (presumably for safekeeping). He wipes his hands on his shirt, smearing ketchup sauce on it before levelling you with his gaze. He appears like he is about to acquiesce to your demands.

Is this it? Will you allow yourself to hope? Has Kim Seokjin actually developed compassion during the last 20 seconds of your heartfelt plea? Are you finally going to lay to rest the rumor that he does not actually have a second stomach where his heart should be?

Then, "Okay Y/N. I'll do it."

Hope rises just beyond the horizon.

He raises a finger, "But––"

And just like that, hope takes a pounding to the ass (lubelessly) and dies before it even has the chance to break past the peaks of your mountain of crushed dreams.

"––you have to admit that you're the author of the poem and then I'll stop exacerbating the rumors."

You can feel the demon living inside you just itching to climb its way out of your ass and circle its hands around Seokjin's larynx. Hell, you can't say you wouldn't do it yourself. "WHAT? NO!! THAT'S LITERALLY––I'M NOT EVEN––" you scream, shocked and enraged at the same time.

Seokjin rolls his eyes, placing his perfectly manicured hand on his hip. "Save it, babe. I know you're the author. As annoying and stupid as you are––"

"Hey!"

"––you've always been a pretty good writer and I would recognize your writing style anywhere. Not to say that I read your works religiously or anything, but I mean... I see your writing on the newspapers that I use to pick up my dog's shits, so I guess I read them sometimes," he says, not looking you in the eyes. The tips of his ears are turning red, but you hardly notice his embarrassment when you're more amazed that he even acknowledged your talent in the first place. You guys aren't even friends!

"Wow. I don't even know what to say."

"Just admit you're the author and we're good." Seokjin smirks, patting you lightly on the shoulder.

You frown. "Isn't that counterproductive? I want the rumors to stop, not for them to be related to me."

"Which is a sentiment that I cannot fathom at all, since I crave the attention." He sniffs, glowering at you. "You can imagine the sacrifice I am bestowing upon you by having to relinquish this newfound fame just so your little crush stays hidden."

"How benevolent of you," you deadpan.

"And since you didn't deny it, I'm assuming that you are the author after all. Besides, I just wanted you to tell me the truth, mostly so I can bully you for writing sickly sweet love poems about yours truly."

"Okay, I'll admit. I am the author. You got me," you grunt, rubbing your temples. "But there is no way in HELL that I wrote Moonlight Sonata for you. I'd rather eat my own intestines than write anything remotely flattering about you."

"That's what they all say," Seokjin says, sighing dreamily. "To be honest, I knew you were the author from the beginning and I just wanted to annoy you until you caved. I didn't think you would be that stressed over the stupid poem enough to follow me around for an entire day. That crush must be embarrassing, huh?"

"It's not!" you exclaim hotly. You clear your throat, forcing the blush around your cheeks to die down. "It's just... It was supposed to be private." Your voice breaks off into a whisper, vulnerability lacing your words.

It's true––the only reason you wanted all of this to be over was because it was never even supposed to have happened in the first place. Your words and stories were always open to the public eye. You gave and you gave and you gave, although that has never been a problem. You loved sharing your thoughts and feelings; it was one of the greatest things about being writer. You enjoyed hearing how people related to your experiences because it made you feel seen, it made you feel known. You were not alone in this journey, and that had made all the difference.

This time, however, you had preferred to go through this alone. Mostly because even you were not sure what it was that you were going through. How were you supposed to share this part of yourself with others when you did not even know what it was that you were feeling? You had poured every inch of your soul onto those pages, and to have yourself completely barren to the world like it was nothing––

That had been catastrophic to you. But at the end of the day, there was nothing you can do except to try and silence it.

Seokjin considers your sad form, watching you until a small secretive smile inches its way on his lips. You scowl, not liking the way he looks like he knows something that you don't.

"What are you smiling at?"

"Oh, nothing," Seokjin whistles, winking provokingly. He laughs obnoxiously, not faltering even when you kick him in the sin. "Just that I know you have a crush on me and you're just embarrassed to admit it. Thank God that I'm a great actor, so I guess I'll pretend for your sake."

"You're not my––" you start, before giving up mid-sentence. Was there truly any use to arguing with Seokjin? You'd rather not waste any more saliva than you already have. "Whatever. Believe what you want. All that matters is that you do what I asked you to do."

"Sure thing, Shakespeare," Seokjin scoffs, flicking you lightly on the forehead. "Also, in payment for my services, you are required to watch my next play AND attend at least three of my rehearsals and cheer for me every time I appear in a scene. I require a bouquet of flowers at every appearance."

You're about to argue, (fruitlessly, you might add), when a barrage of buzzes coming from your back pocket stops you in your tracks. You slip out your phone, and you see dozens of texts from a worried Hoseok asking where you are. You reply a quick "otw" to him before focusing back on Seokjin.

"Fine. Whatever. I'll fucking kill you the next time I see you, but... thank you. I know it's hard for you to be kind to anything other than your reflection." You take a deep breath, furrowing your brows. Saying thank you to a troglodyte is harder than it seems. "And thanks for reading my works. We're still not friends or anything, by the way. Hope you remember that."

"Wouldn't dream of forgetting," Seokjin chuckles. "Me? Friends with you? A 10 walking around with a negative 1? Fat chance." He waves goodbye, blowing you an obnoxiously loud kiss before stalking off away from you. The bulge of his smooshed burger has left an unsightly grease stain all over the back of his jeans.

Before you turn to go to the exit, you pass by Soobin who was still busy with customers.  You slip a few bills into his pocket, tiptoeing to whisper into his ear. "Here's twenty bucks. Go kick Seokjin in the balls for me."

When the double doors slam behind you, the beautiful sound of Seokjin's pained howl bids you the cheery farewell that you deserve.

[soundofseventeen]

13 Days of Christmas (Joshua Hong)

I am very tired, rip. gif credit to owners...im off to cure my cold

Word count: 1676

You wouldn’t call yourself the grinch, but you definitely hated the holidays. You couldn’t stand how the moment Halloween was over, Christmas trees were not only put up everywhere you turned, but the music seeped from the stereo and into your brain (and sometimes your dreams). And then there was the holiday shopping. There were people who didn’t deserve anything but you still had to get them something because you hung out with them. But then there were those who deserved everything the world had to offer, but you couldn’t afford that because the money in your bank account liked to laugh at you for even thinking it. None of that, however, compared to the ridiculous hours you had to work.

The worst job in the world, you liked to say, was retail. You didn’t mind dealing with people as long as they were friendly and didn’t send you into a panic attack after one interaction. They made your days bearable...and also not hate your job too much. But the ones who treated you like gum under their shoe or a roach they couldn’t kill made you wanna gouge your eyes out...or douse them in gasoline and set them on fire. You were fine with either option. It seemed like they all came out to play during the holiday deals and make your life even more miserable than it already felt. You’d been mentally preparing yourself for these days since July, maybe earlier...you didn’t know to be honest. Time now seemed like a foreign concept. Halloween meant dealing with parents fighting over the tiniest accessories for costumes to screeching for a manager because of a nonexistent discount. And the teenagers who acted too cool for everyone had you screaming into whatever you had in your hands. And November brought angry people who basically cursed you and your future generations for not having a bigger display of Thanksgiving items (despite few people celebrating the actual holiday.)

But those didn’t compare to the month-long Christmas. Christmas, ironically enough, was the holiday from hell. Most of the time, you clocked in early in the morning as the sun rose and there was a good chance you wouldn’t come out until the stars were out. If your manager didn’t have you mopping the floor from a coffee that a careless mom spilled, you worked the register, praying that you had the strength to get through your shift. You envied everyone who walked in or passed through those doors because they didn’t feel dread coursing through their bodies. All in all, if you could quit your job without worrying about your next paycheck, you would’ve walked a long time ago, because sometimes it didn’t feel like they paid you enough to deal with that bullshit. 

Tonight seemed like no exception when you trudged through your apartment door, your feet feeling like they’d give out at any second a little after midnight. You let yourself fall on your couch, ripping off the ridiculous Santa Claus hat your coworkers begged you to wear with them, wondering if you could “lose” it somehow. Your face hurt from the mostly fake smile you wore the entire time. You wanted a hot shower to relax your muscles; you wanted to sleep in to the new year so the stress would go away. You needed to look for your laptop so you could start your Christmas shopping so you could spare the other retail workers. (While customers left you apathetic, the empathy you felt for everyone else who dealt with them skyrocketed and you vowed to make things easier for them.);  you needed food so your tummy would quit whining at you to eat something; you needed to remind yourself that no other job paid above the minimum; you needed the fucking cold to go away so you could be less cranky. You just hated everything right now.

As if your night couldn’t get any worse, a scream sounded next door to you. It wasn’t an, “Oh my god, I’m dying here, someone please save me,” yell but one of, “Oh my god; what is this?!” How that was possible, you didn’t know but it was enough for you to leave your couch and out the door in record time to give them a piece of your mind. Some people were asleep at this hour and some like you wanted to wallow in their self-pity because they had to repeat today tomorrow again. 

You had a few choice words for the white flakes falling from the sky because now you had to officially accept that Christmas was coming and you were gonna die of premature stress. But then you saw the culprit who startled you and ruined your night and yelled out an irritated, “Hey!” with hopes of rolling whatever you could spew at him.

He looked at you, his emotions one of wonder and surprise at being acknowledged, his hand midair as if reciting a Shakespearan monologue.

His eyes were a lot sparklier than the ornaments that decorated the Christmas tree at work and you weren’t expecting that, so your expansive vocabulary of bad words died on your tongue, and the longer you looked at him, the harder it was to form a sentence of, “Why the fuck are you so loud?” or something along those lines...and goddamn it, now you were blushing because you had no idea what to do now. His black hair fell into his eyes as the wind blew and he made zero effort to move it, making him seem more attractive and if you weren’t frozen on the spot, you would’ve gone back in and let the roof cave in over your head.

“Hello,” he finally spoke and you were officially fucked. “Can I help you with something?” That. Lisp. With lips redder than Snow White’s had you melting into a puddle and ready to scream at whoever decided to make your life this hard.

“Yeah,” you hated yourself for how meek you sounded when you meant to sound intimidating. “Why’d you yell? Some of us have to be up early tomorrow.” Or in a few hours...time lost its meaning. All you knew was that your alarm had been set up already.

“I’m sorry. I-I just I’ve never seen snow before tonight. See, I’m from LA and it never snows there. Like, we’d go somewhere like Lancaster or more up north, but this is the first time I’ve seen it fall while I’ve been here.”

“Yeah, but so loud? Was that necessary?” Fuck, he was really cute with his reindeer antlers and you really needed to focus because now was not the time to look like a fool in front of a cute boy. Well, any more than you already have.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah well just don’t let it happen again.” You finally found the strength to move and you went back inside to let your neighbor have fun with the falling snow, trying to ignore your racing heart and blushing cheeks.

“Oh, shit this is cold!” 

“Dude!” you threw your head out.

“I’m Joshua,” he waved at you.

“And I wanna sleep.” You sighed. “Listen, I know you mean well, but I have to deal with unpleasant humans tomorrow and the day after that and this whole fucking month until the new year so if you shut up for the rest of the night, then I would appreciate it.” 

He shot you a finger gun and clicked his tongue. “Ahh, you work retail. I could tell by your attitude.” He shivered from the cold. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you; I was just excited to see it-”

And now you felt like a jerk. “No, I’m sorry it was just a really long day and people were annoying and some five-year-old kid almost made me cry and December is just a nightmare and it’s only the beginning. I didn’t mean to snap at you, and enjoy the snow.” You closed the door slowly and opened it again just as quickly. “Also, wear gloves because frostbite is not a joke. Okay, sorry for disturbing you.” *

The next morning, after digging in your closet to find all the accessories to keep you warm, you were running late. So much so, you didn’t even bother turning on your alarm. (It was insured so you weren’t too worried about something happening. And in your haste, you ran straight into...Joshua. Great. 

“I’m sorry. I’ll pay for any damages tonight. My boss’s gonna kill me if I don’t get there soon.”

“Do you ever just take a second to breathe?” He asked you, gently blowing on his coffee cup. The smell of it mixed with French vanilla wafted through the air and into your nostrils. “It’s not even eight yet. What’s the rush?”

“Traffic, and long lines to get breakfast.”

“Well, I have a bagel. Here.” 

“I don’t know you.”

“Well, it’s either take my word for it or you’ll be hungry for hours.”

“How’d you like the snow?” Better to change the subject even if meant getting there a little later than usual. You looked at his bagel a little longer and hesitantly reached for it. (And you realized you didn’t have dinner last night, making it look twice as good.)

“It’s really pretty. I’m kinda glad I live here now.”

“It won’t be like that after a while, trust me. And I really have to go. Uh, thanks for the bagel. I’ll pay you for that.”

“Just don’t yell at your neighbors anymore for seeing snow and we’ll call it even. Good luck at work. I think you might need it. Also, I didn’t get your name.” The cold air left his face red and you hated yourself for how attractive he looked.

“I’m Y/N.”

“Well, Y/N, I’ll probably see you after work. Have a great day.”

You couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or sarcastic but you knew that he was cute and you may have believed in Santa Claus for bringing a cute boy to be your next-door neighbor.

[octoberobserver]

(I’ve Got You) Under My Skin - (Eddie Can Sing)

“I’ve got you under my skin. I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart, that you’re really a part of me. I’ve got you under my skin…”

“Yo, Frankie, what time is it?”

Eddie Kaspbrak broke out of his reverie of half-singing-half-mumbling while he typed, halting immediately at the familiar, yet hoarse voice calling from across the room. His eyes leapt up towards the hallway and was met with the sight of a very rumpled Richie Tozier, clad in oversized sweatpants and an old, stained AC/DC T-shirt, staring at him through bleary eyes, his hair sticking up in every direction imaginable and sans his signature specs.

“Whoa, Rich, you look like crap.”

“Wow, thanks Eds. You say that to all the girls or am I just special?”

Eddie stared at Richie, really letting himself look, drinking in everything from the blood-shot eyes, to the ghostly-pale skin, to the shaky hands and everything in between.

Something was…wrong.

“What’s up with you? You sick?”

Richie blinked before giving a half-shrug, almost like he couldn’t be bothered to attempt a full one.

“I’m fine.”

And yeah, if Eddie wasn’t sure of something being amiss before, he was 100% certain now. Short answers were never Trashmouth Tozier’s thing and that had not changed in the last thirty years, Eddie re-learned fast since moving in with him five months ago.

He watched as his roommate shuffled across the room, his whole body slumped, as if he were a lackluster marionette with strings too long and a puppetmaster too apathetic. There was a weight to him, like he wore a boulder as a backpack, pushing down on the expanse of his shoulders.

Eddie shook his head before he could dwell on Richie’s shoulders. Now was not the time.

“You uh…you want some tea? The kettle just—”

“We got any coffee left?” Richie cut across him, his tone sharper than Eddie was used to hearing outside the hysteria of dealing with a killer clown.

“Uh, yeah, think so. A bit. You want me to—”

“No, I got it.”  

Eddie bit his bottom lip, a pang of something flaring painfully in his chest.

He’s not Myra. Don’t compare him to—he’s not her. He’s just having a bad day. Don’t be so fucking sensit—

A loud crash interrupted his spiralling thoughts.

“FUCK!”

Eddie threw his laptop onto the cushion and leapt up and around the couch, heart in his throat as he skidded into the kitchen.

“What the hell was—”

The words died in his throat as he was met with the sight of Richie, kneeling on the kitchen floor, surrounded by broken glass and coffee-grounds, his head in his hands and hung so low that Eddie couldn’t see his face.

“…Richie?”    

He tensed, his whole body as still as a statue, almost as if he thought if he didn’t move a muscle, Eddie somehow wouldn’t see him.

Richie Tozier, a man of constant movement, energy flowing from him in waves, had never been so stagnant.

It looked… wrong.

Eddie was padding over to him and kneeling down before he could think.

“Whoa, fuck, Eds!” Richie exclaimed, hands flying from his face as he tried to shoo him away, “Watch the glass! You could hurt—”

“It’s fine, Richie. I’m fine. But… you’re not ,” he murmured, aching to reach out and touch him, but holding himself back.

Richie didn’t even try to argue with him, staying silent, refusing to meet his eye, which spoke volumes, really.

“I’ll…get the dustpan. Don’t move. There could be tiny shards—just, don’t move a fucking muscle until I say so, okay?”

“Yessir!”

His mock-salute was half-hearted and his tone lacked its usual ‘charming’ sarcasm, muttered instead to the floor.

Eddie’s stomach lurched with worry.

But he powered through, making quick work of sweeping up the coffee granules and whatever glass he could see. When he was done, he halted in front of Richie, who was still kneeling, having done what he was told and not moved an inch.

“Come on,” he murmured, gesturing with his hands, “let’s get you up.”

Richie tilted his head ever so slightly, not quite meeting his eye.

“You know how bad I wanna make a boner joke, right?”

Eddie rolled his eyes, just about stopping himself from pointing out that he wasn’t the one kneeling crotch-level in front of another man.

Not the fucking time, Kaspbrak.

“I know. But you can make it from the couch. Come on,” he urged, holding out his hand, “careful. I know you can’t see shit right now, and there might be some pieces I missed.”

Richie stared at Eddie’s hand like his fingers had morphed into live snakes.

He tried (and failed) to shove down his offense at that.

“Take my fuckin’ hand, dude. Don’t make me challenge you to arm-wrestling again.”

Richie snorted, sounding a little more like himself (even if he didn’t rise to the obvious bait) as his hand enveloped Eddie’s.

Eddie swallowed, his heart skipping a beat as he was reminded, yet again, just how fucking giant Richie’s hands were.

Gently, he tugged his friend up to a standing position, eyes scanning the floor for any wayward glass. When he didn’t find any, he began walking backwards, leading them out of the room, towards the couch.

He could have dropped Richie’s hand as soon as his feet touched the hardwood floor of their living room. But he didn’t. Instead, he held on, probably tighter than necessary as he navigated around the couch and took a seat, pulling Richie down to sit beside him.

Their hands stayed clasped, Richie squeezing back ever so slightly.

“Rich,” Eddie mumbled after a beat of silence, leaning forward to catch his eye, “what’s…what’s going on, man? You’ve been in your room all day. Is it…are you upset about your date the other night? ‘Cause it’s like I said, dude, fuck that guy. There’s plenty of people who would—”

“I couldn’t give less of a fuck about Dylan Lemass and his hard on for Instagram likes, Eds,” Richie interjected with a sigh, wiping his free palm down his face, rubbing his eyes.

Eddie waited, worry gnawing at his insides as dozens of possibilities flashed through his brain at what could be the matter.

Is he dying? Sick? Looking for a way to tell me he wants me to move out so he can have his bachelor pad bac—

“I just…I haven’t been sleeping well and it’s…fucking with me, I guess.”

It sounded like a different confession altogether.

Something like, “I’m kept awake by haunting deadlights I can’t escape,” or “every time I’m alone in the dark, I hear that fucking clown taunting me,” or “I’m afraid if I close my eyes, I’ll see you die all over again.”

Maybe it was all three. And more. Eddie knew he had felt similarly the first few months after…everything.

And they were coming up to the one year mark now. It made sense if Richie was finding it difficult to get any sleep.

Eddie swept his thumb over the back of Richie’s hand before he could second-guess himself.

“It’ll be a year next week…have you thought any more about going to therapy? It’s helped me.”

Was what he wanted to say.

What he probably should have said.

Would definitely say another day.

Now though, as he thought back to the last time he saw Richie sleep peacefully, he just squeezed his hand and murmured, “Come with me.”

Richie blinked, a line forming in between his eyebrows as Eddie began tugging him again, up from the couch, across the living room and down the hallway.

He faltered only minutely outside Richie’s bedroom before squaring his shoulders and pushing the door open wide.

“Eds, what…” words seemed to fail Richie, his hand that was still clasped in Eddie’s, tensing.

“Lie down, Tozier,” Eddie ordered, finally letting his hand drop as he moved to close the drapes, blocking out the vestiges of late evening light, the room engulfed in a semi-darkness.

He could just about make out the bewildered form of his best friend as he fought down the myriad off Kill Bill sirens whirring in his head, too taken with his lightbulb idea to really heed any potential warnings from his over-anxious brain.

“Buy a girl dinner first, Edward. I’m not that kinda lady.”

It was a stalling tactic, it didn’t take a genius to see that.

Eddie reached out and laid his hand lightly on Richie’s shoulder.

“Just…trust me, Rich. Lie down.”

He paused.

“I promise I’ll be gentle.”

That got a surprised laugh to bubble from Richie’s throat.

Eddie practically preened, forcing himself to step away lest he be caught out.

“And Eddie gets off a good one!” Richie exclaimed as he shuffled over to the left side of the bed, sounding so much like his thirteen-year-old-self that it made Eddie’s heart ache.

He bit his lip as he watched him, his heart racing at the sight of Richie standing at the bed, lowering himself down to sit back against the headboard, hands folded in his lap, head tilted at Eddie, as if awaiting instruction.

And fuck, didn’t that do things to his insides.

Not. The. Time. Kaspbrak.

Taking a deep breath, Eddie tried to work up his nerve for his dumbass plan.

Richie blinked.

“So, uh, what’s—”

“I’ve got you under my skin,” Eddie began to sing lowly, eyes focussing on a spot over Richie’s head as he tried not to dwell on the truth of the words falling from his lips, “I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me. I’ve got you under my skin…”

Eddie paused, blushing furiously under the dark, widened gaze of his best friend. Even without his glasses, it still felt that as if he was a human X-ray machine seeing right through Eddie, right into, well, the heart of him.

Could you be anymore obvious, dipshit?

“You uh…you slept pretty good the other night when we were watching that Chris Hansen exposé,“ he tried to explain his flawed logic, rubbing the back of his neck. "I thought…I thought maybe, some soft sounds might uh…might like lull you to sleep, or whatever.”

So fucking stupid. He has a fucking TV in here, genius. Why would he need a live performance from a mediocre—

A small smile spread across Richie’s face, his eyes almost unbearably soft.

“You’re saying I get a private Eddie Kaspbrak concert?” He asked as he pulled the covers up over himself, shifting further down to lie in the bed, “Sign me up, dude. Know any lullabies?”

“I’m not singing you a lullaby, Richie.”

“Aw, but Eds! Rock-A-Bye Baby is a class—”

“I’m leaving,” Eddie rolled his eyes, face burning at the fact he actually implemented his idiotic idea as he turned in his heel, “this was such a dumb—”

“No, wait, Eddie!” Richie half-yelled, sounding more animated than he had the entire evening, “I’m sorry, I’ll be good. Sing whatever you want man, I…I like your voice.”

Eddie turned slowly, frantic heartbeat pulsing in his ears, wishing he could see Richie’s face, but not able to now that he was lying down.

“Fine. One song. Two, tops. Then I start charging and I’m not cheap.”

“So many jokes, so little time,” Richie replied, smile audible in his tone as he spoke to the ceiling, “deal. But uh…could you like, sit down or something? I’m not super psyched about trying to sleep when someone’s standing at the foot of my bed like a psycho killer peeping on sexy coEds in a slasher flick.”

Eddie rolled his eyes again before scanning the room.

“Sit where, Rich? You don’t have any—“

“The uh…the bed’s fine. You know if you…shove a pillow behind your head?”

Eddie’s heart leapt into his throat as he eyed the space on the right side, perfectly Eddie Kaspbrak-sized.

Richie must have heard his hesitancy.

“C'mon Eddie, you know the drill. We did it all the time as kids.”

“We were like eleven, Richie.”

“And we’re 41 now. Age is just a number, man. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have offered to sing me a lullaby like two minutes ago.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, forcing his feet to move, his heart hammering a crescendo in his chest.

“I specifically said I’m not singing you a lullaby, asshole.”  

He watched as Richie shifted in the bed, turning ever so slightly to blink up at him.

Eddie’s stomach did a somersault as he stood at the side of the bed, their eyes locking.

“Okay, Eds,” Richie breathed, voice barely above a whisper as he slowly reached out and pulled back the covers, his large hand ashen and still a little shaky.

“Singer’s choice.”

Eddie’s eyes flickered from his face, to his hand and back again before gently easing himself down into the bed, his back coming to rest against a large, fluffy pillow as Richie pulled the blanket up over his thighs and letting it drop at his waist.  

He could hardly breathe, let alone sing.

Suddenly, he was eleven years old again. Complete with sweaty palms and racing heartbeat. Not much had changed in the last thirty years.  

Sharing a bed with Richie Tozier still felt salacious. Forbidden. Exhilarating. And everything he has ever wanted.

A silence fell over them, but it wasn’t awkward. It was…reflective. As if all those sleepovers were suddenly being recalled all at once. The knobbly knees knocking together under covers, the sugar-induced giggles stifled into pillows, the flashlight under sheets as they shared the latest issue of X-Men.

Secrets whispered into the dark, their noses inches apart.

Each memory silently passed between them as they stared at one another, Richie’s head propped up next to Eddie’s hip, his eyes heavy-lidded but alert.

Along with his brain melting out his ears, Eddie was also hyper aware that Richie’s hand had fallen barely an inch from his, resting on top of the blanket. He couldn’t stop looking at it, the broad arch of his knuckles, the length and width of his fingers, the dusting of light hair that travelled up his wrist.

He should’ve drank a glass of water before attempting this.

Or a bourbon. Or three.

Feeling Richie’s eyes burning a hole into the side of his face, Eddie kept his eyes locked on that hand as he opened his mouth and sang quietly into the room.

“I’d sacrifice anything, come what might, for the sake of having you near.  In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night, and repeats, repeats in my ear, don’t you know little fool, you never can win? Use your mentality, wake up to reality. But each time that I do, just the thought of you makes me stop before I begin. ‘Cause I’ve got you, under…”

~*~

Here’s a teaser for the next instalment. It’ll probably be the last, and will be in Richie’s POV:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long? And wouldn’t it be nice to live together, in the kind of world where we belon—”

“Eds,” Richie cut across him suddenly.

Eddie glanced over from the driver’s seat, lowering down the radio from the steering wheel.

“What?”

Their eyes met.

“…We’re older.”

(Read the entire series here)

[shurisneakers]

espresso [8]

Summary: In which your best friend’s brother begins to set you up on dates when you mention that you haven’t been in a relationship in years, but things don’t go as expected.

Warning: swearing, angst (????), pining lol

A/N: surprise bitches i’m back but will disappear soon again for months at a time this is my entry for the exuberant @viktordrago‘s writing challenge (it took me like 20 minutes to find you kumi i2g) thank you to the best beta @samingtonwilson love u and our cinema boi  the fact that i had to fuckin gif this myself shows how desperate i am

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous part- Part 7 || Espresso Masterlist

Everyone has probably met that one person who is very different from the rest. Someone so profoundly boring, you had no idea you’d rather watch a tap faucet drip for eight hours straight than to ever be within a feet of them breathing.

That would be Vision.  

Vision talked like he had a thesaurus up his ass, smelled like mothballs, and had ideals much too similar to a less-funny, almost less-human Dwight Schrute.

“Hey birthday boy,” you excitedly hushed into the phone at midnight.

“Hey there,” he replied softly so you could nearly feel him smile through the phone.

“How does one more lap around the sun feel?”

“More or less the same. Hold on.” He paused for a second. “Yup, I feel normal.”

“You’re a bore, Bucky Barnes. You’re supposed to be excited or something,” you could hear Nat and Clint giggling about something in the room adjacent to the kitchen where you’d snuck to call Bucky.

“It’s just another day, my dude.”

“It’s your birthday!” you protested, filling up a glass of water and bringing it to your lips.

“Meh.”

“What do you have planned?”

“First off, bold of you to assume I thought I’d live this long to actually plan something,” he snorted and you could hear papers shift under him.

“How edgy.”

“Secondly, I’m sleeping till noon and I’m seeing you today,” He cleared his throat. “You all, I mean. The group.”

“Sounds ideal.” You took a large gulp of water before leaning on the counter.

“What about you?”

“Currently; an all nighter with Nat and Clint to complete assignments.” your eyes flitted to the doorway which you realized had gone quiet. You narrowed your eyes. “Other than that, I got nothing else to do other than your birthday thing.”

“Oh yeah, funny story by the way,” he laughed nervously. “I forgot to remind you that your next date is today.”

“Bucky I still don’t get it,” you straightened up immediately. “Today’s your birthday, why would you set me up today?”

“You’re busy through next week and then you have midterms after that,” he defended himself weekly. “And besides, relax. He said it’s an afternoon thing. He’ll drop you off before it starts.”

“Who is it?” you sighed, rubbing your temples.

“Jarvis; also known as Vision.”

You were silent for a moment as his name registered in your mind. “Why have you forsaken me this way?”

“Just give the guy a chance,” he chuckled, before yawning. “And remember, be at my place by five.”

He checked his rearview mirror again before turning his head back to the road.

You didn’t know if he was doing this on purpose, but he was driving at the slowest imaginable speed and you thought you’d reach the café faster if you just got out and walked.

He also happened to speak as slowly as he drove. “Can’t take my eyes off the road, you know. Road safety is a number one priority.”

“The world simply would not turn without capable drivers like you,” you murmured, sinking back into the seat that smelt vaguely of hospital-grade disinfectant.

The chances of you dying in an accident with him as a driver was much smaller than you dying of old age in his car.

He didn’t speak, a look of concentration as he made a turn at the curb, eyebrows furrowing in concentration.

“I thought Vision and Wanda were a thing,” Nat remarked, peering over your shoulder and into your phone when Bucky texted you. Regardless of the content of said text, you smiled anyway when you saw it was from him leading her to completely invade your privacy.

It was just a stupid meme anyway- something that he thought would be an apt goodnight message.

“Wanda doesn’t even remember him.“

“Ouch,” Clint winced from beside you. “That’s gotta hurt the dude in the feelings.”

“Assuming he has more of an emotional quotient than a potted plant,” you muttered grabbing your pencil from under Clint’s hand.

The three of you had assignments due next week, which you decided to do together over many cups of coffee and energy drinks.

“I’m gonna fail this stupid fuckin’ thing. We had to do a meta-analysis of this stupid novel and all I’ve done is watch the fucking movie,” Nat groaned, burying her head in the sheets right by your leg. “I can’t believe I paid a school thousands of dollars, which I don’t have, just to write a meta-analysis, which I haven’t done.”

“Get up, c’mon. You can do this,” you said, nudging her with your foot. She swatted it away, choosing to lie there.

“Nat, I’m too broke to make it rain at the strip club you’ll work at if you drop out. Come on. Let’s get this grade.” Clint rolled his eyes, prodding at her with his pencil.

“You’re so mean, Clit. I’d never invite you to my place of strip anyway.” She raised her head to pout at him but rolled over nonetheless to sit up straight.

“Strip club. And I told you to stop calling me Clit.”

“Whatever.”

As you pulled into the coffee shop eight hours later, you reached over to open the car door only to have him damn near hiss at you.

You reeled back in surprise, watching him shake his head vehemently and unbuckling his seatbelt.

“It’s dangerous out there, especially with those zero-traction shoes. Over 17,000 people die annually because of slipping and falling. Twenty percent to thirty percent of people who slip and fall will suffer injuries like hip fractures, or head injuries.”

”Zero to a hundred real quick, my friend,” you stated, nevertheless not moving. “I know it may not seem like much to you, but I do know how to walk. Been getting enough practice all my life.”

“This is a matter of life and death, Y/N. What if you slip on the sidewalk and crack your skull open? I’d be the one who would have to account to the officers about the lack of awareness when it comes to winter treading and it wasn’t fun the last time it happened,” he said, all in one breath, his head moving side to side furiously.

You stared at him, unable to form any words. Absolutely nothing.

He got out of the car, one foot at a time before slowly standing up and assessing his surroundings. Finally, he took one step forward before pausing and doing it again until he finally reached the other side of the car to open your door.

Wonderful.

“Be careful, don’t jump out too fast,” he commented, holding his hand out to you.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“It was made very clear to ensure your safety at all times. James was very, very–“ he looked like he struggled to find the words “—fastidious about it.”

“Oh?”

“Say, Y/N, why exactly is Barnes setting you up with such… specimens?”

“He asked if I needed help in finding someone ‘dateable’. I agreed.”

“Your reasoning being?”

“Why not?”

“Excellent logic.”

“I was bored, Clint. He looked like he genuinely wanted to help.”

“Why didn’t he just set you up with himself?” Clint twirled his highlighter around his fingers. “He missed a great opportunity to pull the greatest plot twist of the century.”

“I really don’t think-“

“It’s probably not the best plot twist. He’s making it pretty obvious with the whole intense staring and heart eyes and writing on your cup thing.”

“Okay, first of all, there is no heart eyes or intense staring or- wait, what writing on my cup thing?” you caught yourself mid-sentence.

“Clint!” Nat hissed, glaring at him.

Clint looked between Nat and you for a few seconds before letting out the most apathetic and monotone, “Oops.”

“You just ruined it, you shit-eating fuck hammer. Bucky’s going to kill us both and then himself when he finds out.”

The place Vis took you was actually decent. It was the nicer of the two coffee shops in town, the other one being where Bucky worked. Still, something was missing and soon you felt yourself missing the chipped tables and fake plants of the other joint. You liked it much more than the pristine white walls and cold plush chairs here.

“Can we get a table for two? Preferably away from the noise-“

You glanced around to pinpoint what noise exactly he was talking about but came up blank.

There were two people in the shop.

“-And away from the sunlight?”

It was cloudy outside.

“Also, could you reduce the heat, please? It’s rather suffocating.”

It was winter.

“Do y’all have tables in the restroom?” you asked blankly.

He blinked at you, expressionless, “The restroom is a goldmine for germs and particles of fecal matter. Surely you know that, Y/N.”

“I just- it was a-“ you sighed. “Okay.”

The waitress however was a sweetheart, and you made a mental note to leave her a good tip before you left. She led you to a quiet corner, meeting all of Vis’ demands before leaving you alone with the menu.

“I think I’ll just go with an Americano.” Lord knows you needed it after last night.

Vision let out a tsk of disinterest, eyes scanning over the card tediously.

“Coffee can damage your liver, increase your risk of osteoporosis, and increased blood pressure. Especially the concentrated form in espresso shots.”

“Oh bother, well, I’ll just have to take that chance.“

“I prefer tea; rich in oxidizing properties. It’s also a wonderful material for composting,” he continued, ignoring your statement. He snapped the card shut, smiling knowingly at you.

The both of you gave your orders before returning back to the non-existent conversation at hand.  Vision chose to keep his hands on the table in front of him. It felt like he was about to give you The Talk. He looked straight into your eyes, never faltering or looking away.

“So,” you dragged out the word, pressing your lips together when he didn’t respond or shift his stare. “What’s u-“

“Do you compost?” he asked suddenly, not breaking eye contact.

“Compost?”

“Yes.”

“I would, but I can’t-post.” You grinned at him, expecting a laugh or at least a groan.

“I compost,” he said stoically.

“That’s great, Vis. What else do you-“ you tried to veer the conversation in some other direction because you had a very good idea of where this was heading.

“I have my own compost. Have you tried making one of your own?” he asked simply. “It’s very simple.”

“I gotta say, buddy, I’m not wildly passionate about it right now.”

“Do you want me to tell you how to make one?”

You blinked at him. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you.”

You screamed internally, smiling at him nonetheless.

It was 4:40. You’d be out of there soon enough.

“Why would you tell her that?!”

“What the hell are you both talking about?” you demanded, shoving your things aside and sitting up straight.

“How would I know she didn’t know?” he ignored you, instead answering to Nat, who was beginning to look somewhat like an angry parrot.

“Jesus Christ, will someone just tell me what don’t I know before I start throwing hands?”

“The shit James writes on your to-go cup every time you show up at his workplace.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” you nearly shouted to match their volume.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen them! They’re so glaringly obvious, he might as well be sticking neon signs declaring his love on them.”

“I have never seen any of what you’re talking about except the ‘Mario’ he writes.”

“That’s only one side. Haven’t you seen the other?”

“No! Why would I?”

“He writes really cute messages on them,” Nat said quietly. “Some of them are normal stuff, like “I hope you have a really beautiful day” the others are like small bits of poetry that I think he writes.”

You stayed quiet, trying to absorb this information as much as possible.

“It was pretty clear that he didn’t want any of us-“ she glared at Clint who finally looked a bit guilty –“to tell you.”

“I genuinely thought you knew. He’s been doing it for months now.”

“I didn’t,” you muttered, sinking back. “That explains the weird thing he does whenever I throw away one of the cups.

“You what?!” Nat screeched, leaping to her knees. “Why would you throw them away?!”

“Hey, I didn’t know!” you defended yourself, throwing your hands up in surrender. “I literally found out about them thirty seconds ago.”

“Can you imagine how shitty he feels?”

“Now’s a good time to stop.”

“Just watching the girl you love throw away things you’ve made an effort to make?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“And that would be intimidating if you were… well, intimidating.”

“So once you finish one layer, you move onto the next and so on and so forth.” Vision stirred his cup for what seemed like the twentieth time and at that point, it was much more interesting than the shit coming out of his mouth.

He had been speaking for composting for what felt like a good hour, not allowing you to get a word in sideways about any topic that would be infinitely more interesting than this.

“Y/N, did you hear what I said?”

“What?” you jerked your head when you heard your name. “Oh, yeah.”

“Did you like a part in particular?”

Fuck.

“Loved the part about the… layers.”

“Layers are really the key to this whole thing, if you don’t have enough-“

“You know what has layers?” you said quickly, sitting up straight. “Onions. Ogres are like onions. What is your favorite movie?” if you had to hear him speak about soil and manure one more time, you were going to drown yourself in your tears right then and there.

You could feel your phone vibrate in your pocket, but you didn’t bother answering it before putting it on silent, feeling like you at least owed him basic etiquette.

“I’m not done,” he said blankly, “Now, as I was saying, layers really bring out the-“

You bring your hand down on the table a little too harshly but quickly cover it up with a smile. His voice faltered slightly before pausing when you looked at him expectantly.

“I don’t have a favorite movie. I think they’re all too dependent on suspension of disbelief. There is no true realism. None of them truly cater to what I want.”

“You’re a film major.” “So I can make films that capture the true essence of-“ he inhaled deeply before gesturing with his hands “—everything.”

The same waitress from before asked you if you wanted a refill, to which you agreed, Vision doing the same. You fiddled around with your cup in silence for a while, not knowing how to continue.

“Do you want to hear my idea for a script?”

“Sure.”

“It starts with a twenty minute shot of the ocean. Just lets you get into the tone of the movie. Then the next shot is of a horse stable. Then the next is of a wilted meadow. Then an opening door. Then an unruly bed. Then-“

“That sounds great, but what’s it about, Vis?” you emphasized, hoping to speed things up.

“I’m getting there, but please remember this desire for narrative has been fed to you. Without narrative, we truly push away from the comfort films provide and embrace a reflection of the world around us,” he insisted. “The next shot is a branch. Then a towel. Then-“

You nearly banged your head on the table.

“A church. A running tap, just to introduce motion, you know, to get things moving-“

“You need to make a move. Tell him you know about the cups.”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

It was 4am and all of you had collective taken a break from whatever it is that you were doing around thirty minutes ago and were now just laying there, waiting for the caffeine rush to wear off.

“Why not?”

“Why do you care so much, Clint?” you asked, slightly irritated.

He moved his hands to rest on his abdomen. “I don’t. It’s just agonizing to watch.”

“Don’t watch then.”

“Fine I’ll date him then. I’ll get him to write me love letters too.”

“Go for it,” you snorted, shaking your head.

“Maybe I will. I’ll ask him out today, just watch me.”

“Don’t let him break your heart, babe,” Nat encouraged him.

“He’d have to reject me to do that.”

“Why on earth would he ever do that?” she poked at his cheek, watching him grumble and shove her away.

“I think he and Dot are a thing,” you said suddenly, facing the ceiling.

“I don’t think so. He doesn’t look too invested.”

“They hang out a lot now, did you know?” you continued, ignoring Clint.

“You should ask him. Set the record straight.”

“I think I’ll keep all my feelings to myself and then die, thanks.”

“Just tell him, man. It’ll make your life much simpler,” he rolled onto his stomach to look at you. “Sweetheart, I love you, but all this pining isn’t helping either of you. Tell him, and if he likes you back, great. If he doesn’t, well, at least you’ll know, right?”

“That’s easy to say, but try doing it yourself.”

“Oh I did. The first one rejected me straight out, and it fucking sucked balls, but I could move on. Sometimes it’s better to take that chance.”

You were silent. You couldn’t believe you were actually considering what he’d said.

“Alright fine, here’s the deal. If I can gather the guts to ask out Bucky, you’ll have to do it too.” Clint held out his hand for a handshake and you narrowed your eyes at him.

“Fuck outta here. You’d do it without any regrets.”

“True, but you look like you need a push and I’m offering you one.”

“I appreciate it Clint, but it’s never going to happen. I’d rather choke.”

“I’m not gonna force you, but just think about it. It’s all about a leap of faith.”

The three of you remained in silence before Nat broke it, giggling to herself.

“Are you going to ask him out though?”

“Hell, maybe I will. Five o’clock, right?” Clint looked at his watch.

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna do it, watch me.”

Five.

Five.

Five.

Fuck.

You suddenly broke out of your train of thought and scrambled for your phone, interrupting Vision’s marvelous idea for an Oscar winning script.

Your heart stopped beating altogether.

It was nearly 6:30 and there were nearly twenty unread messages and around ten missed calls illuminating your notification bar.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you cursed steadily before standing up, your chair scraping against the floor behind you.

“Is something wrong?” Vision asked delicately, still clearly immersed in his thoughts.

“We need to leave now.” You pulled out enough cash to pay for your share, tugging your jacket back on hurriedly. “Now.”

“Why?”

“I’m late. I’m really, really late and we need to go now.” You had no idea that much time had gone by, scolding yourself for not keeping track of how long you were there.

“Alright, but are you-“

“Now, Vision.” You glared daggers at him until he relented, paying his amount and walking to the entrance at his own pace while you were nearly running.

From Becca:

Where are you???

From Becca:

We’re waiting for you to cut his cake

From Steve:

Hey, are you on your way?

From Becca:

McFucking Dot is here why tf is she here who invited her and why is she so touchy with bucky

From Nat:

I swear to god if you’re off making out w/ that boy instead of being here

From Wanda:

hey, we just cut the cake without you, hope you don’t mind. Where are you??

From Becca:

Someone “”””””accidentally””””” spilled their drink on dotzilla she’s all wet now

From Becca:

I can say with 80% accuracy that it wasn’t me

From Nat:

Becca just spilt her drink on Dot what the hell

From Clint:

Dot just left the room to go change because this dumbass turd just poured beer over her. now’s my chance

From Becca:

Yo where tf are you

From Nat:

We’re just sitting around, watching a movie. Are you showing up?? Why aren’t you answering our calls? Is everything okay?

From Becca:

Clint just asked out Bucky wtf sdjhgdkjfhgkdjfhg

From Clint:

I asked him out. he rejected me. I think I’m gonna keep trying

From Nat:

Clit’s bribing Bucky into saying yes

From Clint:

He said no im leaving this bullshit party

From Becca:

I just told Bucky you’ll be running late are you even showing up where are you

From Bucky:

Date going well? Hope you’re safe. Saving you a piece of cake 🍰

“Can you drive a little faster, please?” you urged him, furiously responding to everyone’s texts as quickly as you could.

“I’m already going as fast as I can,” he replied, driving at almost half the speed limit.

“Sweet Jesus,” you breathed out, running your hands through your hair. “Alright Vis, detour. Drop me off at this address.”

__

You didn’t wait to catch your breath as you ran up three flights of stairs to his dorm room, hands repeatedly slapping against the door.

A minute later it swung open, revealing a slightly panicked Bucky.

“What the-“

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so fucking sorry. I lost track of time and I didn’t even realize, it was entirely-“

“Woah, hey- hey it’s okay. It’s okay. ” He opened the door wider, a mix of confusion and concern on his face. “Take a second to catch your breath.”

As you did, you noticed he was wearing a black t-shirt that had no business looking that good, grey sweatpants, and his hair was pulled into a half bun, having grown longer due to months of not trimming it. He looked beautiful.

You took a moment off of staring at his stupidly attractive face, and beyond his shoulder into his dorm. You could see the empty beer cans littering his living room, the clear signs of a party.

“Everyone left?” you asked quietly.

“Yeah, just a few minutes ago.”

“Shit, Bucky-“ You sighed, frustration evident in your voice, feeling your heart sink. “I never meant to miss this, I promise.”

“I know you didn’t, don’t worry. I see you almost everyday, Y/N, it’s definitely okay to miss one evening.” He laughed lightly, shifting his weight to his other shoulder.

“It’s your birthday.”

“Like I said, it’s just another day.” He shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s nothing too big.”

Stop staring at his fucking chest.

“I bought you something,” you blurted out, tightening your grip on your bag. “A birthday present, I mean. I bought you a gift. For your birthday.”

Stop mumbling, you big oaf.

“Y/N,” he complained, “We talked about this. You didn’t have to-“

“It’s a journal,” you interrupted him, scrambling through the contents of your backpack to find it. “Each page has a question. 365 days, 365 questions. I mean, theoretically, it doesn’t work for leap years but, you know, this coming year isn’t one and I-”

You finally grabbed hold of the brown, leather bound book, pulling it out with ease and holding it out to him.  He looked back at you without a word.

“And I know how much you like writing, I just thought it’d be nice to look back on how much you change or how much your thoughts change over the year.” You pushed it forward gently, urging him to take it. He held onto it silently, running his fingers along the pages before flipping open to the first page.

You keep records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them. If you want to Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education, it’s history.

You watched him read it, his eyes widening slightly once he realized where the excerpt was from.

“That’s- that’s from-”

“The Catcher in the Rye. Yeah.” You shifted uncomfortably when he fell silent again, staring at you without a word.

Great.

“I know it’s stupid and nowhere near anything you’ve gotten me and I can get you something else-”

“I love it.” The look in his eyes made you want to melt. “So fucking much.”

“Really?” You couldn’t hide the surprise from your voice.

“It’s probably one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever given me.”

“There are some really stupid questions in there, like about memes and stuff because I thought you’d like it, but the rest are relatively normal.”

“It’s absolutely perfect.” He blew a few strands out of his face, letting his hands fall to his side. He opened his mouth to say something else but instead he shut it again.

It was probably the silence that ensues that made your fight or flight instincts take over because the next thing you realized is that you had both your arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him into a hug, earning a small ‘woah’ from him.

It took him about a second but he slowly wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you in closer, if that was even possible, dropping his forehead into crook of your shoulder. He smelt of fresh laundry and cinnamon and you couldn’t help the breath that escaped your lips. You could feel his breath tingling your neck and the warmth he exuded seeping in through your sweater. It reminded you of home.

You unwillingly pulled back, stuffing your hands back into your pockets awkwardly. “Happy birthday, James.”

“Thanks,” he said softly, biting his lip. “I, uh, saved you a piece of cake.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Finally he shook himself out of whatever he was thinking, moving and holding open the door invitingly. “Do you- uh- do you want some?”

Just tell him you like him, for the love of God.

“James I-“

“Bucky? Do you know where the tissues- oh hey Y/N!” There was no mistaking who walked out from Bucky’s bathroom. Bucky whipped his head around, confused, before who it was registered in his mind and he turned to look at you again.

“Hey Dot.”

“We missed you today,” she chirped, approaching the doorway, placing a hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

“Yeah, me too.” Something was amiss about her before you finally caught on.

She was wearing his shirt.

Oh.

“Um, I better get going.” You swallowed. It felt like you were missing something crucial. Why would she be wearing his shirt at his place?

“Wait, I thought-“ he furrowed his eyebrows, straightening up.

“It’s getting pretty late, I gotta go.” You half-smiled, pointing behind you to the setting sun. “Maybe some other time.”

“At least let me drop you back. Let me just grab my keys-“ he turned around, ready to walk back into his apartment.

“It’s okay,” you interrupted him, taking a step back. “I could use the fresh air.”

“It’ll be dark out soon.”

“I’ll be fine,” you assured him, continuing to walk backward before waving at him. “I’ll catch you later, Buck. Bye Dot.”

“Y/N-“ he tried again but you just waved again before spinning on your heel and walking off, waiting till you were out of eyesight before fumbling for your phone and calling Nat to come pick you up from his dorm because sure, you may be feeling like shit, but that didn’t mean you were going to walk home in the middle of winter, alone.

Leap of faith, my ass, you thought.

Leap off a fucking cliff was more like it.

Part 9

[starlight-matrix]

Nabari no Ou 15th Anniversary!

@nabaridays wrote up some prompts to celebrate the 15th anniversary of NnO and as it’s my favorite manga series of all time, I had to join the fun!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of the prompts’ existence until we were about four or five days in, so instead of starting in the middle of the prompt list, I wrote all mine up in a Google Doc and decided to do a big masterpost in the day of the anniversary. And here it is! Beware for a lot of reading, this shit’s at 4.1k words.

- Catherine Lynne / catielynnelove.tumblr.com Fan of NnO since 2012 -

DAY 01 (Jun. 3rd) - Favorites

My favorite character has always been Miharu, though I do struggle to choose between him and Yoite. I have always been fascinated by his apathetic nature, the way he uses is as a shield while loving the people in his life so incredibly fiercely. He appears neutral and uncaring, but the moment you look beneath the surface, you recognize that he would give his life for those he loves in a heartbeat - and has shown this on multiple occasions.

I also love his development over the series. His apathetic facade slowly falls out of use after he meets Yoite, and he learns that feeling your emotions is important, that letting the people you love know when you’re happy or sad or pissed the fuck off is important.

In the first few chapters we as readers honestly can’t tell a whole heck of a lot from what we’re shown of Miharu. He’s plain, uninteresting, even to us (unless you’re the kind of person who automatically reads between the lines, but let’s face it, not a lot of people are). But by the end of the series, he’s such a vibrant and expressive character that I marvel at Kamatani’s ability to drastically a character’s personality in a way that feels so gradual and natural.

Another reason Miharu is my favorite character is because I tend to see parts of myself in him, as many people do with the characters they like most. I can understand and relate to his apathy in the beginning of the story. His memory of his parents deaths is so deeply traumatic and that the very fibre of his being (objectively, Shinra) locked the memory, and most of his childhood, away for years to come. Because at that time in his life, the pain of it all would’ve broken him.

(E/N: I now remember that Asahi actually erased Miharu’s memories of that event, but I think a good chunk of this will still make sense, and I’m lazy, so I’m not gonna edit it out. Enjoy.)

Emotions, especially ones he didn’t understand - or couldn’t understand, like his feelings toward his childhood that didn’t quite make sense because of his augmented memories - were simply so overwhelming that Miharu pretty much just went “lol don’t wanna deal with those so yEET now they’re gone” and locked them up in a box to be dealt with at a much, much later date. That speaks to me, as a person who has struggled with depression, and the fact that he finds a way to recover from this is very reassuring.

Overall, Miharu is a very complex and realistic character that undergoes more vivid character development than I’ve seen in almost any western media. I love him very much.

DAY 02 (Jun. 4th) - What got you into Nabari no Ou?

This is actually quite a funny story, so buckle up for a wild ride y’all!

When I was 12 years old (God, this sounds like the setup for an angsty villain backstory), my family had a housemate who liked anime. One day I came to beg for him to let me use his video game console to play Little Big Planet and he happened to be watching the second half of the anime - I distinctly remember the second Alya Academy episode being the first one I ever saw. It was my first anime experience outside of a Studio Ghibli film, and to this day remains close to my heart, even though the anime adaptation itself really… just… well, it sucked.

After I finished watching it with him, I went and found the first half of the series on Netflix (back when Netflix did the whole send-a-DVD-to-your-house thing) and watched the whole thing from episode one. And then very quickly became obsessed. I probably watched the anime four times in two months. I had every single one of the English VAs names memorized. I was dedicated.

Eventually I looked up the manga online, and HOO BOI, this is the point where my Nabari no Ou origin story becomes ridiculously hilarious (and stupid).

When I read the manga, I was disturbed by the idea of Kouichi being a villain-type character, as he had been one of my favorites when I watched the anime. And, at the time I was first reading the manga, the apparent “ending” from my perspective was the scene where Kouichi takes the newly-made hijutsu scroll from a bleeding, dying Thobari.

Looking back, I figure the website I was reading it on just didn’t have all the chapters, or perhaps I had happened to start reading while the manga was on hiatus, but at that age I didn’t know of or understand either of those concepts and accepted that sad scene as the end of the manga.

And as such, I wrote the manga off as terrible and ignored it for years.

Flash forward to about 2014, two or three years after writing the manga off as a Fat Mistake, I finally decided to give it another shot. And BY GOD did I cry reading it a second time. Whether it was the two years of maturity, my experiences during those two years, or simply the fact that I read the whole thing that time - I was sobbing in my desk chair over NnO.

It was the most beautiful story I’d ever read. Even now, after five more years of reading beautiful manga, Nabari no Ou remains my absolute favorite, and likely always will.

DAY 03 - What are your favorite scenes?

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Alya Academy arc, even back when all I’d shunned the manga and all I had to go off of was the inaccurate anime adaptation, simply because of how well the character relationships are shown during those sequences (this is one thing the anime did really well in my opinion, actually - Shijima’s verbal reflection on how humans connect to each other and how important those connections are is stunning). Not to mention the displays of how the characters care for one another regardless of what side of the war they’re technically on.

I’ve always loved Subaru as a character, too. I find her motivations to be very realistic and really quite understandable, and I love the little easter eggs in later chapters that imply the Kouga ninja are helping Miharu’s side of the fight even though they’re not visibly involved. The scores from the Alya Academy arc are especially chilling and memorable as well.

Another of my favorites are the chapters following Miharu and Yoite’s escape from the Kairoshuu and their travels afterward. They feel mundane and peaceful, yet blanketed with this layer of grief, like we’re all aware that at any moment their calm could be destroyed and lost forever.  

The scenes about Yoite’s gender were very special to me as a teen still learning about the LGBT spectrum and how different people could be, and the scene of Yoite bandaging Miharu’s aching feet? My heart literally swells every single time I think about it! It was so sweet and loving, my fragile fangirl heart does flips when I read over it.

DAY 04 (Jun. 6th) - Photos & Fashion

I like to think that Miharu keeps every photograph he’s taken and has them stored safely away in a box or chest or drawer. In my experience, people who have lost loved ones tend to treasure photographs, more than someone who hasn’t experienced loss might. A lot of times a photo is all someone has of someone they loved outside of a memory, and contrary to popular belief, if you don’t look at someone - physically or in a photo - for a long time, you do forget how they look.

Miharu has lost many people: his parents, Yoite, Kouichi and Shijima, even Shinra, in a way - so I imagine this observation would be doubly true of him. Especially if he has Yukimi as an example to go by - pretty sure that guy has kept every photograph he’s ever taken in his life!

(As far as fashion goes, I honestly think everyone’s fashion in NnO is horrendous, so...)

DAY 05 (Jun. 7th) - Favorite character design in the series?

Gosh, it’s hard to choose, I love so many of them! Gau is fascinating to me because I figure his hair must be difficult to draw, with all those little curls and cowlicks. Shijima’s too, with the way it frames her face and leaves just a tiny little opening for her eyes to peer out at you through.

But, as with most of these character-specific prompts, my answer will have to be Miharu. The idea that Asahi reshaped his face to look more like her own when she used Shinra to save him is very interesting, and the fact that Kamatani manages to draw Miharu in a way that both clearly shows their resemblance to one another and establishes Miharu as his own character with his own unique features and gestures and ways of carrying himself is incredible.

Miharu’s stance are also very telling to me as a reader: he often stands loosely, almost lazily, as if he really couldn’t care less about where he is and what they’re doing, which rings true for a good chunk of the story. It matches well with his (mostly) fake apathy and kind of makes him seem bland and boring as a character. But as the story progresses, he becomes more open, shows affection more easily. He’s quicker to stand up for his beliefs and the people he loves. All of this shows in the way he carries himself throughout later chapters.

DAY 06 (Jun. 8th) - Favorite location in the series?

The Shimizu estate, without a doubt.

The secluded area, the forest in every direction, the house itself - it’s all so beautiful to me. Ot gives me the feeling of rural Japan and more traditional Japanese living. Even after the house has burned away and all that’s left is a field full of Spider Lilies, there’s a kind of sober beauty lying over the place, made even more intense when Shirogamon stands watch over it.

DAY 07 (Jun. 9th) - Positive Influences

The thing that I preach about the most when I talk about NnO to others is the fact that the series has no absolutes. There is no true right or wrong, no clear villains nothing that actually puts our heroes above anyone else. Which, in a way, means that are really are no heroes in the story at all, which is a very rare and interesting way to tell a story.

The entire series deal with a greyscale in morality. There’s no bad vs. good or moral vs. immoral, just your own goals and people whose goals don’t match yours. Opinions and ambitions differ vastly even between people on the same side of the fight - Thobari and Raimei want to seal the Shinrabanshou, Kouichi wants to use it to defeat his immortality, Miharu even changes side on a few occasions - yet they all work together together to achieve their own very different ends.

Even those who can be coded as villain on the surface have something motivating them to do what they do, and more often than not, those motivations are understandable to the reader and actually have you sympathizing with the character. Hattori wanted to rid the world of the need for war. Subaru wanted to save the person she loved most in the world. Yamase wanted to win his family back (I think? It’s been a while).

Even Katarou and Kannuki, two characters who have practically nothing to redeem them, at least have motivations that are pretty damn realistic. Kannuki wanted to capitalize on Kouga’s Forbidden Art and use it to grow Alya Academy’s profit and power through the surface world. A Lot of people are like this in real life, and while you may not sympathize with him over it, it is a motivation that is true of our own world as well as the one in this story.

An Katarou, as far as I understand, is obsessed with Shinra herself, rather than the hijutsu and the power it holds. He manipulated hundreds of people and hundreds of situations to suit his own needs, then literally got himself killed - just to see her one last time. And… yeah, I don’t think anyone really sympathized with him, but hey, I can see what pushed him to do what he did.

To me, Katarou is symbolic of someone with an addiction - their mind is so clouded by a need for some specific thing that all other human aspects of that person just fall away, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get what they want.

I also appreciate how the characters handle their differences throughout the story. Their honesty with each other, the way they support each other even when they’re all heading in opposite direction. The Alya Academy arc (I really love this arc okay) especially shows this, in how the ninja from Banten and Kairoshuu - two very opposing factions - fight together against the Kouga without hesitation, despite the fact that in most other situations, they’d be fighting each other.

It’s a wonderful thing to promote: that even though people might have different opinions or goals, it doesn’t mean they have to hate each other.

DAY 08 (Jun. 10th) - Favorite Extra?

I am IN LOVE with the little between-chapter 4koma pieces, especially the ones from the Alya Academy arc (God, I’ve talked so much about this arc). Subaru fantasizing about Miharu being her little brother and making her birthday cake? Adorable. Miharu and Yoite getting stuck behind a bookshelf and terrifying an opponent by asking for help out? Hilarious.

I love that Kamatani put those in, both as a peek into happier aspects of the world he created, and as a way to add a bit of sun in between the much darker, much sadder chapters.

DAY 09 (Jun. 11th) - Headcanons

I’m not much of a headcanon person, to be honest, and especially not with this series. It feels off to me, to try and add to something that’s already so perfect. However, I do agree with a couple of headcanons I’ve seen - particularly the ones theorizing that Yukimi is aro-ace. It makes a lot of sense to me in how his character is portrayed when nearly every other character in the series has a romantic match, and as an ace person myself, more representation is always welcome.

DAY 10 (Jun. 12th) - Alternate Universe

I once started (and quickly abandoned out of shame) a very cringey, very out-of-character fanfic, in which the Nabari world didn’t exist and all the characters meet through natural means in the surface world. Other than that, however, I’ve not put much thought into Nabari no Ou AUs.

But something I would LOVE to see is a crossover between NnO and Shimanami Tasogare, as the two stores canonically take place in the same location - NnO being in Banten, a fictional town  based on the real town of Onomichi, and Shimanami Tasogare being confirmed to take place in plain old Onomichi itself. It’s been a while since I’ve read Shimanami Tasogare, but I remember the leader/owner of the little house the cast gathers in as giving me a distinctly Nabari-world vibe, and I think it would be interesting to see the NnO characters react to a community like the one presented in Shimanami Tasogare.

(And also perhaps have some romantic relationships and sexualities proven canon. Perhaps.)

DAY 11 (Jun. 13th) - Favorite song from the OST?

It’s a firm tie between the opening theme and the second ending theme. I have every song in the OST memorized after years of hearing them day in and day out, but those two themes always give me this tingling nostalgic feeling, like rereading a book from your childhood or finding a toy as an adult that you’d thought was lost forever. The animation and symbolism in those themes are also very telling of the series and the character’s connections to each other (a bit obviously, at times), and the lyrics are special to me in a way I can’t describe. They’re precious to me, and  to me experience of NnO as a whole, considering I started with the anime first (a bad idea).

DAY 12 (Jun. 14th) - Are there any songs that make you think of NnO?

“Neopolitan Dreams” by Lisa Mitchell ( X ) ( X )

I once watched a cute Raimei/Kouichi AMV set to this song listened to the lyrics, I understood how the author had put them together. I very much feel like the lyrics echo Raimei’s thoughts on how Kouichi starts to act in later chapters, becoming more and more distant until he almost appears to be an antagonist rather than one of the perceived heroes. The song also makes me think of Raimei’s stubbornness and pride, her unwillingness to accept option besides her own conclusions until she’s had the full story and nothing less.

I can never get their faces out of my head while listening to this song, which I guess means the song reminds me more of Raimei and Kouichi than NnO in general, but it still counts, right?

DAY 13 (Jun. 15th) - Food

I’ve never really thought too hard on it, but now that I am, it’s actually very interesting to note how different characters use food - the Rokujo Okonomiyaki shop, in particular - to their advantage.

Thobari uses his (implied, before the start of the overall plot) regular visits to try and get Miharu to believe him about the Shinrabanshou and the Nabari world. Thobari uses the close proximity to explain his motives to Miharu, who physically cannot leave the situation, lest the food burn to a damn crisp (and I figure Naoko wouldn’t be pleased if that happened every time Thobari came in). He also very clearly uses this to keep tabs on Miharu when outside of a school setting where Miharu has no choice to be in Thobari’s sight, and later, as a way to either catch up on what’s going on in the Nabari world or - as in several cases - simply demand answers from Miharu.

Raimei uses the shop as a way to get closer to Miharu. She charms her way into getting free food (and sometimes, free lodging as well) and I assume her thinking is probably something on the lines of “Free Food + Spend Time With Miharu = Information on Where Raikou Might Be.” Of course, this likely isn’t her motive in later chapters, because, well, character development.

Food is also an important bonding thing for Yoite and Yukimi. In a lot of the scenes where we see Yoite and Yukimi in their home, they’re eating together, and I always took it as a display of their familial relationship - cooking dinner for Yoite the way a dutiful older sibling would for their younger sibling - thoughI doubt either of them would admit they’re like brothers. The significance of lemonade should also be noted for this topic - I could go on for ages about it.

(But I won’t unless people ask me to, because this piece is long enough already!)

I don’t have much memory of this scene being as big a deal in the manga as it was in the anime - but I also haven’t seen either in a while, so I could be wrong - but the birthday cake scene from the latter half of the anime left an impact on me even back when I’d only seen the anime, and it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the prompt was “food.” Gau’s pride in the cake he made and his determination to get any kind of praise out of Yoite is very touching, especially when you take into account that Yoite literally saved Gau’s life, and that Gau knows this, as well.

The Kairoshuu - particularly Yukimi, Raikou, Gau, and Kazuho - are all shown bonding on more than one occasion at Kazuho and her husband’s sushi shop, and there is significance to those occasions in the rather heavy conversations they have during those visits. And there’s also the time Miharu cooked okonomiyaki for all the main Kairoshuu member after he’d first joined their clan - similar to how a recently hired employee would bring cookies for their new boss.

Food has a lot of significance in Nabari no Ou, no matter where you look.

DAY 14 (Jun. 16th) - Favorite village, and thoughts on the Forbidden Arts?

As far as morals and motivations go, I would have to choose Banten, as their (or at least Thobari’s) main opinion is that the Shinrabanshou shouldn’t be used because it throws off the balance of the universe. I definitely understand this opinion, because a lot of things can go wrong if the wrong kind of person is making wishes to Shinra and having them granted.

Although, I think that if anyone were to use the ability in a way that leaves the balance of the world intact, it would be Miharu, and this is even shown in the series itself. He doesn’t have the kind of greed or anger that would taint a person’s motivations when making their wishes, he just wants to do what is best for others- especially Yoite. Yoite is important to him, and therefore Yoite’s wish is also important to Miharu. And, as we see in later chapters, Miharu puts granting Yoite’s wish above even his own happiness. I feel I would make a similar decision were I in his shoes.

(For aesthetic, though, I’d choose Fuuma. Their village is hidden and surrounded by forest and in that lovely traditional Japanese style, and their uniforms are great. If Saraba were Chief I’d join.)

DAY 15 (Jun. 17th) - Favorite minor/supporting character

Gau! Definitely Gau! Gosh I love him so much. He’s optimistic and tries his best to look for the best in situations and in people, and his smile is so freaking sunshiney, I bet he lights up rooms with it. He’s awkward and quirky and I can relate so hard. But he’s also strong? He stands up to other ninja even though he really doesn’t have the physical ability to defend himself or others. He puts his life in danger to tell Raimei the truth about her family immediately after swearing silence to Raikou, his boss, who could 100% kill him if he found out Gau had broken his promise. And I bet you Gau would’ve told Raikou about him telling Raimei as soon as he’d gone home, if the bullshit at the Shimizu property hadn’t gone down the way it did.

And speaking of that scene- he throws himself in front of Raikou’s katana to save the life of a girl he hadn’t known for more than a day, who had threatened to kill him, who was seeking to kill the person he treasured most in the world. Who does that?! Gau apparently. He literally gives his life for just the possibility that Raikou and Raimei can make up and be happy siblings again. He gives his life so that the person he loves can maybe reconcile with someone else they loved.

He makes a conscious effort to include Yoite in conversations in which he would otherwise be largely ignored, and while I doubt Yoite would care either way, it’s the thought that counts, right? And, at least in the anime (it’s been a while since I read the manga) he puts his life on the line to help Yoite and Miharu even though, as I said before, he can’t really defend himself all that well.

Basically, I’m in love with Gau and want him to be happy. Sweet baby!

DAY 16 (Jun. 18th) - Free Day

I don’t really have anything else to say but I’m posting all of these today (I was late for the original posting by like four days so I figured I’d write them all out and post them together) so I’ll count this as my day 16 entry! Thank you so much if you’ve read this far, I know it was probably daunting to look at this long as fucking post but I’m glad you took the time to read my personal reflection on NnO! This manga means a lot to me and it’s nice to discover other people who love it as much as I do (I’ve literally met two people in my entire life who’ve read it without me suggesting it).

Keep the love going y’all, I hope to see you again! And feel free to hit me up if you’d like to talk about NnO, I’d love to connect with other fans! Seeya owo

[chroniccombustion]

Ipomoea Alba pt 2

From “Seven Days to Eternity“, part of @souyoweek2019

Genre: Hanahaki Disease, angst w/happy end, romance, M/M Rated: T Characters: Souji Seta (Yu Narukami), mentions of the Investigation Team, mentions of Nanako Dojima Warnings: minor descriptions of blood and vomiting Status: oneshot collection, incomplete

<- previous chapter | next chapter -> (unavailable)

“Ipomoea alba, sometimes called moonflower or moon vine, is a species of night-blooming morning glory… It symbolizes dreaming of love, or a love in vain…”

Day 3 (part 2!): Illness/Injury or Holding Hands

Yosuke stares at him from a few feet away. His scarf dangles from one hand as he stands there, frozen mid-action, with eyes wide and mouth agape. Fear and shock lace his expression. “Partner, wha— what happened?”

The sky is light again when Souji next opens his eyes.

He doesn’t really know where he is for a few minutes, his body tired and aching and his head pounding so hard he can barely think. He exhales and his stomach feels empty, sick; he inhales and his chest feels tight. As he tries to breathe he finds that his lungs will barely expand, that each breath is shallow and weak. It leaves a squeezing sensation behind his eyes and dots his vision with dull grey splotches.

Slowly he turns so that he can get one arm under himself and maneuvers until he’s able to sit up. He weaves for a few seconds and thinks that he might topple over, but he’s able to steady himself by leaning back on his hands. Afterwards he has to sit there motionless for a bit and reign in the overwhelming vertigo that threatens to make him vomit if he dares to open his mouth. He looses track of time after that.

Souji blearily fades in and out of focus for what seems like days. There is no sense of reality as he tries to piece together what’s happening, taking stock of himself one tiny little piece at a time as the haze in his skull allows. Beyond the persistent feeling of something being horribly wrong with him and the way his breathing is slow and labored, there is the painful, catching burn down deep in his chest. Part of it seems to be leftover from the fit that took place a little bit ago, but there is an ache there that speaks of muscles long strained, so whatever this is it’s been damaging him for a while now. Several hours at the very least – overnight more likely.

(Longer than that, highly probable.)

He licks at his lips and finds that they taste like iron and salt. Blood. Okay, he remembers blood… right? Yes. Somehow last night he had been bleeding. He runs his tongue across the backs of his teeth to discover another lingering taste, this one bitter and earthy, like what he would image licking a patch of unclean grass to be like. It sits on his taste buds like oil floating on water and he instinctively tries to swallow it back to wash it away – only for his dry, ruined throat to protest with a sharp, metallic pain.

Oh.

The memory of coughing violently, of heaving up splatters of scarlet, comes trickling back into his mind little by little as he picks apart the way his body hurts. Blood in the bathroom, flowers on the floor, pain and fear and asphyxiation; blacking out from weakness and lack of air after missing Yosuke’s calls.

Yosuke.

Shrieking, tearing pain lances through Souji’s body as violent coughing suddenly wracks him. He crumples over like a discarded paper crane, coughing so fiercely that he cannot even pause long enough between them to pull in more air. His vision goes white for a moment as what little oxygen he does manage gets lodged in his chest, catching just shy of actually making it into his lungs. Something clenches hard around his heart.

The feeling jolts him forward in a convulsion, forcing his diaphragm to constrict in a mockery of a hiccup, and Souji can feel something slithering up his windpipe into the back of his mouth. He brings cold, shaking hands up to cover his face as it hits his tongue and give a final, core-deep wretch. The object dislodges and Souji wheezes like he’s been punched as the airflow to his lungs is cleared enough for him to inhale. He pulls his hands away.

Terrified, he slowly opens his hands to reveal a perfectly formed white and yellow flower sitting in his palms, the edges stained red with watery crimson.

He isn’t dreaming. As much as he’d wanted to not believe his own memories of the night before, as much as he’d been hoping that it had all been a trick of his imagination and that he really did just have pneumonia, there is no way to deny that this is real and that he is horribly, undeniably screwed.            

Hanahaki, the “Heartbreak Disease” – a rare affliction in which repressed feelings of love cause flowers to take root in the infected person’s heart and lungs, slowly growing until the victim either asphyxiates or dies of heart failure. There is no treatment, no cure. The only way to combat it is to either have the love that sprouted the flowers requited, thus withering them at their source, or to surgically remove them, which only ever has a 10% chance of being done before it’s too late. Even then, on the all-too infrequent chance that the surgery is successful, the victim is left permanently apathetic, unable to ever feel the emotion of love towards the same person again.

Souji knows what it is, has heard enough about the disease at school, on news segments, during his cleaning job at the hospital. He knows what it is and what it does and he knows how destructive it can be when it isn’t caught in time. (And it is almost never caught in time.)

Souji feels his vine-ridden heart sink. He’s dying. There’s no way around it, he’s actively dying. Hanahaki can only be removed up to a certain point before it leaves irreparable damage behind; the longer it gestates, the more time it takes for the infected to seek help, the lower the chances of survival drop. And Souji has been feeling the tickle in his throat for over two months now. It’s spread from his heart to his lungs, up his windpipe, to the point where he’s now choking on the blossoms as they work their way further and further into him. The love must be deep then, he thinks, for his symptoms to have gotten so severe so rapidly. He wonders just how long the roots have been growing, buried deep inside his heart where he’d been blissfully unaware of their existence until last night.

And he isn’t stupid – oblivious at times, yes, but when he’s being smacked in the face with context clues it’s hard for him not to notice. Every time he’d felt the worst of the tickle, the ache, the cough, it had always been around one particular person. The constant visits, the gentle way he’d taken care of Souji when Souji hadn’t had the motivation to take care of himself, the way he’d made sure to check up on Souji every single night; it had exacerbated the illness until it seems that now Souji only has to think about him anymore. Whenever Souji had smiled at one of his partner’s stupid jokes via text, whenever he’d remember a wink thrown his way after class and feel that giddy, warm sensation of butterflies in his stomach, the flowers had been shifting in his chest. After last night, after the way Souji had nearly choked on New Year’s Eve because his friend had whispered against his ear and sent a thrill down his spine, Souji has no choice but to make the obvious conclusion.

He’s in love with his best friend.

And oh, if that doesn’t throw the whole previous year into a brand new light. The twinges in his chest whenever the other boy would call him “Partner”, the way Souji’s breath would catch whenever his friend looked at him with those eyes. It had been so easy at the time to write them off as just weird situational quirks and stamp down the idea of it being anything more. Yes, he’d found the other boy attractive, funny, wonderful, but he’d never allowed himself to imagine his feelings to be anything other than objective, platonic. His friend had made it clear a long time ago that he was indisputably straight, and so if Souji had ever once harbored any sort of feelings for his partner then he made sure it stayed well and truly buried.

But that had apparently backfired in the absolute worst possible way.

Instead of burying away a crush he’d been planting seeds, watering them, incubating them until they grew into something else, something more, and now, like a Shadow, they’re clawing their way out and demanding to be acknowledged. Except he can’t deal with his sickness the way he could a Shadow. He can acknowledge it and accept it and embrace it all he wants, but no amount of dialogue is going to make this okay. In fact, he wonders if that would make it worse somehow. If he let himself pine openly and allowed himself to imagine all those scenarios he’s secretly wished he could (holding hands, leaning on one another, resting his head on the other’s shoulder, things his heart wanted but his head blocked out), would it give the flowers fuel to wrap ever tighter? Would fighting it back the way he has been give him any more time?

He wishes he knew.

Because as terrifying as it is to admit, Souji knows that at this point it’s only a matter of time before the vines strangle him. He’s living on when, not if, because as far along as he is, to where it makes his chest constrict just thinking his friend’s name, there is no possible way that emergency surgery would give him back a full, unhindered life. He would either die on the operating table, or he’d be sent home with an apology and a “there’s nothing we can do.” Confessing is his only viable option but why seek out the humiliation when he already knows full well he’ll just be rejected, leaving the flowers to spread even more rapidly with the confirmation of his inevitable heartbreak. It wouldn’t even be his partner’s fault – no matter how much his friend might want to help him, it would be impossible for someone so entirely heterosexual to ever feel the same for him as what Souji felt. And maybe there was love there, but it was philia, platonic love between friends, and Hanahaki was not a disease that could be driven out by technicalities. At best, it would only serve to give Souji a quicker, less drawn-out demise.

Souji stares down at the flower in his hands, the blood slowly drying and turning into crackling red flakes against his skin. He doesn’t know what to do. (There’s nothing he can do.) With a heart heavier than even the weight of the vines around it, Souji slowly drags himself out of bed and pushes to his feet. He shuffles like a zombie over to his desk and drops the wilted bloom into the trashcan beside it, taking a moment to brace himself on the chair and combat the dizziness before turning and making his way out into the hall. He leans against the wall the way he did the night prior, and uses its sturdiness to keep him upright as he moves towards the stairs. It’s only because he’s so numb, that his brain is still in thoughtless shock, that he’s able to make it down to the first floor of the house and into the kitchen without another bought of agonized coughing.

He washes the blood from his hands in the sink and collapses into a chair at the table, where he stares at the wall without seeing it, tears slowly building in his eyes until they fall.

 ---

 There is a knock at the door.

Souji blinks himself out of his disassociation, his eyelashes stiff and sticky with dried salt. How long has he been sitting there?

The sound of knocking comes again.

A glance over at the wall clock tells him that it is now very late morning, bordering on midday, and that he’s been sitting at the kitchen table for far, far longer than he’d realized. He isn’t entirely surprised. Having slept like garbage and not eating for more than twenty-four hours, plus the life-draining flowers and the loss of blood, it’s little wonder Souji is functioning like he’s only a hair’s breath away from slipping into a coma. He actually might be right now, for all he knows. Maybe that would be better.

The knocking returns, louder and more insistent this time, more like a banging than a regular knock. It sends a pulse of pain through Souji’s head each time the person’s fist connects with the wooden door, and he leans forward to prop his elbows on the table and grip at his temples with unsteady hands. He just wants to be left alone with his newfound fatalistic depression, thank you; he doesn’t want anyone else to see just how badly he’s doing.

But the banging doesn’t stop. It pauses for a few moments, tricking him, and Souji can just barely hear the muffled sound of his phone going off upstairs – but as soon as it stops, the noise at the door picks back up again. It’s clear that whoever is trying to get his attention is not going to give up until they get it, whether it be by phone or by forcing him to answer the door. He frowns.

Souji feels like utter hell; his chest is on fire, his breathing restricted and ready to cut off entirely with a single misplaced thought. Not only that, but he hasn’t had any kind of food or decent sleep or even water since the night before last and his entire body is making him acutely aware of it. He’s sick to his stomach with a blinding headache and is more than likely dehydrated, all in addition to dying. He is in no condition to be awake, let alone dealing with people right now.

His phone buzzes from upstairs with two more missed calls.

Souji groans into his hands, wincing at the ensuing vibrations as they rattle through his skull. There is a part of him, a very big, very loud part, which wants to just sit here until the person gives up and goes away. Maybe if he pretends he doesn’t exist then whoever is trying so hard to make him answer will simply forget that he does. A smaller, more logical part of him, however, knows that if the knocker is this determined to get hold of him then they more than likely will keep going until he either gives them a reason to stop, or they go over his head and get someone else to try and make him reveal himself. Like the police.

(And Souji really doesn’t want to get the cops involved; it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for someone who’s beyond helping anyway, and he especially doesn’t want it getting back to Dojima that he’s barricaded himself in the house. Or Nanako, for that matter.)

So, with all the strength that he doesn’t have and all the willpower he can muster, Souji tediously, painstakingly pulls himself into a standing position with the edge of the table and begins making his way over towards the entryway. He won’t let them in, he tells himself; he’ll just let hem know he’s alive and then tell them to go away.

The knocking has thankfully paused again by the time he reaches the door, the buzz of Souji’s phone slightly more audible now that he’s closer to the stairs. Outside, he can just make out the sound of someone cursing as the call goes to voicemail yet again, but the voice is too quiet, too muted through the wood for him to guess at the person’s identity. There aren’t too many people it could be, though, he thinks with another frown. If the person knows his phone number then it’s likely one of his friends.

He wants to go back upstairs and hide under his comforter.  

Against every single cell in his body screaming at him not to, Souji reaches out and twists the lock. On the other side of the door, the sound of movement stills. Souji grips the door handle and turns it slowly with a hand that shakes from illness and rising anxiety. He doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to open the door and explain to this person why they need to leave and not come back, doesn’t want to have to see one of his – probably worried – friends get hurt when he refuses to let them help. There’s nothing they can do for him, and he can’t tell them the reason why that’s so. Not without hurting them even more. (He doesn’t want to eventually die knowing he’d been an asshole to the people that he’s come to think of as family.)

He turns the handle further until it clicks and tugs on it just enough so that the thinnest sliver of light breaks the seal between the doorframe and the door. “Who is it?” he rasps, voice broken and weak. It feels like acid in the back of his throat.

There is a sharp inhale. “Partner?”

Souji instantly feels sick.

He tries to push the door shut again, to put that barrier back between himself and the compass point of his ravaged heart, but Yosuke is too quick for him. The other boy surges forward while Souji is distracted trying to quell the twisting of the vines and presses his weight against the door, outweighing Souji’s own weak body and accidentally opening it up enough to get his hand inside. The door itself is knocked from Souji’s trembling grip and he stumbles backwards a few steps before catching himself on the wall and gripping onto it for dear life, head spinning and vision whiting out as he gasps for breath. Yosuke, oblivious, clambers inside.

“Dude, what the hell?” he snaps, voice irritated but underlined with obvious worry. “Where’ve you been?”

Souji hears him shutting the door behind him, hears the rustling of fabric as Yosuke presumable wrestles off his outer winter layers. He stays as still as possible, clenching his teeth against the nausea, the vertigo, the shortening of his breath. Maybe if he doesn’t look at Yosuke – even when his sight returns – then maybe he can stave off some of the worst of the flare up.

Meanwhile, Yosuke is still speaking as if he hasn’t yet noticed the state that Souji is in. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday!” he scolds. For a moment his voice is muffled slightly, as if obscured by fabric, but then the muffling is gone and the sound is back to normal. “First you disappear in a hurry on New Years, then you won’t answer your phone. Now you’ve got me standing outside your house, beating on your door like a nutcase and you can’t even---oh my god.”

Souji peels his eyes open from where he’d apparently squeezed them shut without noticing. He blinks away the lingering white edges of blurry film over his vision and slowly lifts his heavy head to look at the boy whose flowers are killing him.

Yosuke stares at him from a few feet away. His scarf dangles from one hand as he stands there, frozen mid-action, with eyes wide and mouth agape. Fear and shock lace his expression. “Partner, wha— what happened?”

Souji can’t even begin to imagine what he must look like. Pale probably, sickly. He’s still in his rumpled sleep clothes, hair limp and tangled in places from where he’d fallen asleep with it wet; he can feel his entire body shivering from the cold and the strain of holding himself up, even though he’s still half slumped against the wall. He can’t see them, but he’s sure there are probably deep purple circles beneath his barely-focused eyes, just above where he can feel the lingering traces of tear tracks over his cheeks. (He prays there isn’t any blood leftover on his lips.)

Souji swallows thickly, a tiny cough escaping and causing his shoulders to jerk. He closes his eyes and slumps a little further down the wall as he pulls in a shuddering breath through his teeth and grimaces at the way it makes his throat crackle with pain. He hears Yosuke take a hurried step closer as he slides a bit more out of his pitifully upright position and cracks his eyes open just in time to see his friend reaching for him.

“Don’t,” Souji croaks, and it takes a herculean effort not to start coughing at the way speaking feels like death. He slides sideways against the wall as best he can, just a little further out of Yosuke’s reach. “…Sick.”

Yosuke makes a strained sound in the back of his mouth, eyebrows furrowing together in growing concern. “Holy shit, man, I’ll say. You look like you’re about to drop dead!”

A harsh bark of sardonic laughter catches Souji off guard as it spills from his mouth; he disguises it with a short round of hacking coughs pressed into the crook of his elbow. “Should go home,” he wheezes once he can manage words again. He doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to keep from spitting blood and flowers with the object of his affections standing so close. He pointedly shoves aside the budding feeling of warmth that tires to grow at the thought of Yosuke, sweet and amazing, being worried for his well being.

He has to swallow back something dense and bitter as it tries to lodge in his throat.

Thankfully, Yosuke doesn’t seem to notice the odder-than-usual behavior, of if he does he likely attributes it to Souji’s illness. He frowns, though, eyes scanning every inch of Souji’s wrecked form with an intensity usually reserved for enemies in battle. He’s not a navigator like Rise, or even Teddie before her, but Yosuke is eerily observant in a way that he rarely gets recognized for; there’s a reason he makes such a good lieutenant, after all.

Just as Souji starts to feel the creep of anxiety from his partner’s assessing stare, Yosuke huffs loudly through his nose and takes a step away, rolling his shoulders back and straightening up with a decisive nod. “Alright,” he says to himself, nodding again. “Alright, okay…”

He reaches for where he’s already hung up his coat next to the door, and for a moment Souji is hopeful that his friend has actually listened to him. But then Yosuke dumps the scarf still clutched in is hand over top of the coat’s hood and turns back to look at him with his face set into a look of stony determination. Souji feels his stomach drop out.  

“You know,” Yosuke says as he toes off his shoes and steps further into the entryway. “I would ask why you didn’t tell anybody you were messed up, but after seeing you close yourself off for the past two months I think I can already guess.” He steps right into Souji’s space, ignoring the way Souji tries to shrink back away from him, and goes to place a hand on his shoulder.

Souji’s eyes go wide. He presses himself closer to the wall as the trickle of panic becomes a stream and Yosuke’s closeness spurs a wave of heat to Souji’s face, the flowers shifting in response. “No…” he says, voice quiet and sandpapery.

Yosuke pauses with his hand still outstretched.

Souji takes a rattling breath, feels it catch on the vines in his throat. “Go home, Yosuke,” he says again. “I don’t want—“ His words cut off abruptly as the roots in his chest pierce deeper, cutting off his air supply and sending him into a startled, painful coughing fit. He slides the rest of the way down the wall as his legs finally buckle and give out, throwing his hands over his face to catch anything that his body might try and expel.

Suddenly there are hands on his shoulders, an arm sliding around the curve of his spine, lifting, helping him to sit up and forward, fingers rubbing small circles into his shoulder blades. The new position helps; the hands and the faint scent of spice and Yosuke does not. His partner’s hands practically burn against Souji’s chilled skin, and while he tries to lean away from it, to jerk to the side and put as much distance between the two of them as he possibly can while fighting for breath, there is a small, stupid part of him, wrapped in choking vines, that wants. He wants Yosuke’s arms around him, wants to turn his head and breathe in the way his friend smells like orange tea and sunlight and the lingering chill of winter. Tears prickle at his eyes and he tells himself it’s just from the tearing feeling in his lungs but somewhere in the back of his mind he knows there’s more to it. He’s wanted for months now, even obliviously, and now that there is the tiniest example of his longing made real he’s in no position to enjoy it, or even to let himself pretend it’s something other than what it really is.

Flowers, bitter and limp and clotted with the metallic tang of his own blood, crawl up his throat and into his mouth. Souji clamps his teeth together until they ache and presses his hands against his lips to keep them sealed. He keeps the flowers trapped in his mouth and does not dare spit them into his palms.

Eventually, miraculously, the coughing thins out enough for Souji to part his lips behind his fingers and suck in a ragged, shuttering breath between his teeth. He does it a second time, then a third, and by the time he’s on his sixth or seventh half-successful inhale, he pushes the blossoms to the back of his mouth and swallows. The taste is awful, worse than when they’d been sitting on his tongue; the feeling of them sliding down into his stomach nearly makes him vomit them immediately back up.

“Don’t want me getting sick, too, or don’t want me seeing you vulnerable?” Yosuke whispers as Souji sags against his arms. He tightens his grip slightly, supporting Souji’s weight with ease. His voice is quiet, knowing, and somehow – in the lower, subtler notes – he almost sounds hurt. “Partner…” He trails off with a defeated sigh.

Souji lolls his head back with a muted ‘thunk’ against the wall. He keeps his hands gripped tightly over his face, labored wheezing muffled behind them, and looks up at his friend through heavy eyelids.

Yosuke’s face is pained. There is deep worry etched into the crease between his eyebrows, his mouth downturned and his lower lip held hostage by the points of his teeth. His eyes, however, are sad. The rich brown of his irises is dulled, deepened to something closer to a muddy charcoal grey, and as he watches Souji watching him, an unnamable emotion flits across them and the lines of worry deepen around his mouth. “Come on,” he whispers, “let’s get you off the floor.”

Souji has no energy left in his dying body to protest.

Yosuke wraps his arms tighter around Souji’s limp form and hoists him up until he’s somewhat standing again. He tugs at Souji’s elbow to try and dislodge one of the hands still clamped over Souji’s face, making a frustrated sound when Souji refuses to move it. “It’ll be easier if you put your arm over my shoulders,” he says softly, gentle and coaxing even in his worry.

(Souji has the idle thought that Yosuke will make a wonderful father some day and then has to shut his eyes tight to keep away the tears that mental picture tries to bring.)

Yosuke seems to think the action means Souji is fighting off another coughing fit, or maybe a wave of nausea, because he pauses in his attempt to move Souji’s arm and stays still to wait out whatever might be coming.

Souji focuses on the way his breathing hitches and snags, on the bitter aftertaste of the flowers still sticking to his tongue even now after he’s swallowed them down. He can feel the vines and roots seeking deeper purchase in his chest because of the image he’d unwittingly called forth, but his exhaustion actually works in his favor right now; he’s too tired, too resigned to hold onto anything for very long, so for now his lungs still work at least a little. The solid weight and warmth of his partner next to him, though, that is what prickles at his ribs and sets more flowers to bloom inside them. He cannot block out the very real person standing next to him, holding him up, breathing softly against him so that Souji can feel the way Yosuke’s chest expands with each inhale. Even without the sickness spreading through his body, Souji doesn’t think he’d be able to stop his heart from pounding with the boy he loves so close.

He coughs a few times into his hands, weakly, and when nothing dislodges or threatens to come up, he finally relents to Yosuke’s gentle grip on his elbow – though he does keep his blurry vision trained on the hand he relinquishes, scanning his palm for any sign of blood. Thankfully, there is none. He uses the back of his other hand to wipe at his mouth and it, too, comes away miraculously clean. The backs of his teeth still taste like metal.

“You good?” Yosuke asks him, taking Souji’s arm and draping it around the back of his neck.

(This isn’t fair, Souji thinks as he does it, because how many times over the months has he secretly wished he had the courage to lay his arm across his friend’s shoulders like this, the way that Yosuke so causally has taken to doing to him?)

Souji tilts his head to try and give his partner a semblance of eye contact, just barely falling short when he realizes he can’t bring himself to meet Yosuke’s gaze and looking at the corner of his lips instead. He gives a shaky nod in lieu of a verbal answer – all that he can manage at the moment for fear of his voice bringing up more blooms.

Yosuke’s frown deepens. He stays silent for a few moments, simply watching Souji’s face, until eventually he slides the arm around Souji’s back lower to settle his hand around Souji’s waist just under his ribs.

Panicking, Souji hisses, terrified that with Yosuke’s hand so closed to his ribcage that the other boy will be able to feel the roots of the plant through his skin. He brings his own free hand up to awkwardly brush at the one causing his distress, and pushes Yosuke’s fingers down until they come to rest against the curve of his hipbone instead.

Yosuke startles at the sound that Souji makes, gasping softly in shock and what can only be immediate guilt. His own breathing seem to stutter in his chest for a second, and he readily lets his hand be guided lower until Souji stops frantically pawing at him. “Shit,” he whispers, quietly terrified, ”shit, I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

Souji still doesn’t trust his voice, still doesn’t trust his plant-riddled chest not to betray him, so he squeezes his eyes shut against the way Yosuke is looking at him and settles for another nod. His heart feels heavy for reasons other than the vines – he doesn’t like the way he knows his partner is going to blame himself for supposedly being the cause of Souji’s pain.

            Yosuke gives another, “shit,” under his breath. He shifts so that he’s pressed more tightly up against Souji’s side and settles his grip more firmly around Souji’s hipbone.

The action makes Souji feel warm. Yosuke has always been very expressive with his hands – gesticulating wildly when he’s excited or agitated, waving them around almost like a miniature shield when defensive or nervous. It’s something Souji has noticed about his best friend many, many times in the months they’ve known each other. At first it was nothing more than an observation, a simple, “oh, that’s a thing he does”, but then he stared watching.

He’s watched them enough to know that Yosuke’s hands have calluses on them: lines across his fingertips from his guitar strings, roughened patches across his palms from the hilts of his kunai, thins white scars from where he’s fumbled them and been nicked on the blades. He knows that not only are Yosuke’s hands sure, steady, capable of slicing a Shadow’s head clean off with the right weapon, but also that they’re strangely gentle. Souji has seen Yosuke ruffling Nanako’s hair, playfully shoving at Teddie without malice when Yosuke pretends to be more irritated than he actually is. Souji has also felt those same strong, long-fingered hands on himself – on his back when Yosuke prods him in the middle of class, on his arm when Yosuke reaches out on his more tactile days, on his shoulders when Souji had broken down at last outside the hospital and cried out every last bit of pain and stress that he’d been keeping bottled up.

(And maybe, if he tugs at the end of a memory that might be a dream, the one from back when he’d been too depressed and hollow to tell when he was awake and asleep, Souji can imagine that the careful fingers through his hair were real, too. He doesn’t have the courage to do anything but imagine.)

He lets himself lean against Yosuke’s side as his friend starts to guide him towards the stairs. It’s for balance, he tells himself, that’s it, just balance. He refuses to acknowledge the way it makes a tiny thrill go down his spine; his throat twinges regardless. The leaning actually does help, though, despite causing more tension in Souji’s body than it reasonably should. He’s still sick, after all, and weak from exhaustion and what is probably dehydration on top of the inability to breathe. He isn’t entirely sure how he managed to make it down the stairs this morning without just straight up passing out on the way, but as he lets more of his weight sag against his best friend he realizes that the likelihood of him getting back up the stairs on his own would have been nonexistent.

They don’t really speak as they go – Souji keeping his lips pressed tightly together and keeping his breathing as controlled as he possibly can through his nose – but every so often as they make their slow assent, Yosuke murmurs encouragement. “Come on, I got you”, or “easy, that’s it”, or “almost there”, all spoken so softly into Souji’s ear that he thinks he could cry. The petals clog his throat and he swallows them back with a dry mouth.

They come to rest at the second floor landing, with Souji out of breath for more reasons than he could ever say out loud. He droops forward, still in his partner’s hold, and brings a hand up to his chest to try and equalize the pressure he can feel building around his heart. He breathing gets louder, harsher, more like a wheeze and less like a normal inhale-exhale – though to say it’s been anywhere close to normal for the past couple of days would be lying. His entire side feels hot from where he’s been pressed against Yosuke’s body, leaving Souji flushed and nervous, shivering both from the exertion of moving around and the melancholy happiness of being so close to the boy he’s dying over. He closes his eyes again and presses his hand harder against his sternum.

Beside him, Yosuke makes a worried noise behind his teeth and adjusts his stance to better hold Souji’s weight. The fingers on Souji’s hip shift a little, seeking better purchase, and the pad of Yosuke’s thumb accidentally brushes against the hem of Souji’s shirt, almost-but-not-quite touching the skin beneath. Souji feels himself burn hotter. Heat floods his neck, his face, and he bites down hard on his tongue to stifle another wave of coughing as his chest tightens.

But being as close as he is, there is no way that Yosuke doesn’t notice.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Dude, I think you have a fever, you’re really hot.”

Souji lets out a startled, raspy bark of laughter. What he wouldn’t give to hear the last half of that sentence in an entirely different setting. Months ago, maybe, if he’d been able to figure himself out instead of bottling up what he can see in hindsight were the beginnings of a crush. Too late now, he thinks, and there is a desperate sort of angry resignation, a bitterness towards himself, the circumstances, everything. It isn’t fair that he’s just now able to come to terms with his feeling when it doesn’t even matter anymore. And how ironic – knowing that he’s going to die anyway should alleviate the fear of confession, but it’s because of how much he loves Yosuke that he can’t tell him. If Yosuke knew he was the reason Souji had a garden of life-sucking flowers in his chest, if Souji died and Yosuke knew the reason why, then Souji knows his partner would blame himself for another death he’d been unable to prevent.

Because as much as they might care about each other, Yosuke is unequivocally straight, and there is no way he’d ever be able to love Souji back in a way that would whither the flowers twined in his ribs. Souji could tell Yosuke everything and it wouldn’t do anything but leave Yosuke feeling like Souji’s death was his fault because he was too heterosexual to love another guy. Even if he wanted to, even if he tried – and he would try, that’s the part that breaks Souji’s heart the most.

Souji opens his eyes to pull himself back out of his rapidly spiraling thoughts and finds that Yosuke has tilted his head to stare at Souji’s face beneath the silvery fall of his hair. Souji forces himself to meet the other boy’s eyes, to try and outwardly pretend that he’s only mildly sick and not slowly succumbing to an incurable disease, and while he doesn’t manage to smile or even to shape his expression into something reassuring, he does manage to croak out a quiet, “Flatterer…”

Yosuke blinks at him.

A moment of silence passes where they both just stay the way they are, paused in the upstairs hallway with Souji trying not to imagine a different scenario, a better scenario in which he and his best friend are close enough that Souji could lean in and rest their foreheads together. He wants to. He wants to; not even to kiss, just to be close, but of all the stupid things his ragged heart has been crying for today, that idea is among the worst thus far. So instead he keeps his spotty vision focused on Yosuke’s eyes and the way they seem to flick downward for a moment, away from his own. Souji swallows the taste of bitter petals.

Yosuke’s lips twitch slightly into the ghost of a smile that doesn’t quite reach the corners of his eyes. “Dude, really?” Yosuke finally says, voice still quiet and pitched so low Souji thinks he can feel it rumble in Yosuke’s chest.

(He feels something twist inside his lungs in response, like the flowers are turning towards Yosuke’s warmth the way normal ones face the sun.)

Yosuke straightens back up as best he can with Souji still slumped against him and glances down the hallway towards the bedroom. “For real, though? I know the house is cold and all but you seriously feel like you’re burning up. We need to get you into bed.” He looks back over and shifts a little more, adjusting Souji’s arm across his shoulder. “You good to keep going?”

Souji only offers a weak nod in reply.

Walking on a flat surface is much easier than the stairs had been, and it takes far less effort to make it to the door leading into Souji’s room – which is good, because he honestly doesn’t know how much energy he has left to spare. Yosuke helps him into the bedroom and over to where the futon lies unfolded and unmade in the corner. He makes another odd, wordless noise (this one more like an aborted exhale), and slowly, carefully, he lowers Souji onto the mess of blankets.

The change from being upright to sitting down makes him dizzy. Grey eyes clench shut as Souji fights back the lightheadedness, bringing his hands up to cradle his head in one and cover his mouth with the other. Just in case. He can’t see Yosuke at the moment, but he can hear the other boy moving, hovering near him while tugging at the blankets to bring them around Souji’s legs. Souji wheezes through his fingers. “Been in bed… for two days…” he whispers. His chest seizes for a second, his breath catching on his next inhale; he bites down on his lower lip and coughs once, twice, shallowly into his hand. His throat aches.

He hears Yosuke sigh next to him. A hand, strong and long-fingered and calloused and gentle presses against Souji’s shoulder and guides him downward until he’s lying back on the futon. Energy already sapped, he doesn’t fight it. He brings his hand down from his forehead – the one on his mouth still tightly in place – and cracks his eyes open. It takes a few seconds for the blurry swath of colors at his bedside to refocus into the form of his friend.

Yosuke gazes down at him, worrying his lip between his teeth. “When was the last time you ate anything?” he whispers.

Souji shrugs.

“Okay… Water?”

Souji shrugs again. “…Dunno.”

“You don’t—! Partner!” Yosuke runs a hand through his hair and clenches at the roots in obvious upset. He lets out a long breath through his nose, sitting back and crossing his legs, before dropping his hand into his lap and bouncing the knee beneath it in a silent display of nervous energy.  Despite this, his voice, while rougher, more agitated, is still quiet, his words a harsh stage whisper as he says, “I’m staying here tonight.”

Souji immediately feels the roots dig deeper, wind tighter into his heart. He stares at Yosuke with wide eyes, struggling to pull in a new breath, to keep the taste of iron from the back of his tongue. He opens his mouth to protest, even knowing that his voice won’t come, but Yosuke gives him a look and barrels over any words Souji might have been able to form.

“No. I don’t care. You’re sick as hell – you’ve been alone this entire time, you can barely move on your own…” He trails off and gives Souji a very intense look that could almost read as anger or annoyance were it not for the way his brows arch upwards in clear distress. “Partner, you just admitted you don’t even know when the last time you ate was. I’m not gonna leave you here to just… I dunno, die in your sleep because you still can’t tell me when something’s wrong.” Yosuke looks away then, down and off to the side like he’s staring at the floor beside his right knee, but even with the grey spots at the edges of his oxygen-starved vision, Souji can see the gleam of something wet in his best friend’s eyes.

Yosuke chews at the corner of his lip, taking a long, deep breath in before letting it out slowly. His shoulders droop with the movement, making his whole body seem to deflate. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He keeps his eyes trained on the spot he’s glued them to, unseeing and unblinking as the shine of salt water gathers on his lower eyelashes. “I should have come by sooner to see how you were doing. Like… I felt like something was off when you didn’t answer your phone, but I just… I guess I thought… after November… that you’d know you could come to me if you needed anything, ya know? Even if it wasn’t super important, cuz it’d be important to me…” He sighs. Ducking his head, he rubs at the back of his hair, hiding his face by turning it further away so Souji can’t see him. His voice is even quieter when he speaks again, carrying in a different direction where Souji almost doesn’t hear it.

“I should have been here…”

Souji stares at his friend, stunned. There is a new weight in his chest, one that has nothing (or possibly everything) to do with the flowers growing inside his ribs – this isn’t right. The whole reason he hasn’t said anything about the true nature of his condition is because he doesn’t want Yosuke to think any of this is his fault. Souji can handle Yosuke being upset with him for not telling anyone he was sick, he’s alright with Yosuke believing Souji was just being stubborn or hiding a perceived weakness; for Yosuke to blame himself for any part of Souji’s illness, even not knowing what it is, or for him to think he’s done something wrong or failed Souji somehow is the one thing Souji isn’t alright with.

He wants to tell his friend that it’s okay, that he didn’t know, that Souji didn’t tell him because he couldn’t. He’d tried, last night when Yosuke had been calling him, but he’d been too messed up to answer the phone in time, and for the hours preceding and directly following, Souji had either been head-first in the sink coughing up blood and petals, or he’d been passed out cold. He wants to explain that he’d been too sick too suddenly to even have any sort of warning for himself, let alone anyone else, but as he opens his mouth to try and find his voice, Yosuke takes a sharp, shuddering breath in and scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“A-anyway, yeah. Sorry. Uhm.” He straightens up, forcibly rolling his shoulders back and giving himself a decisive nod before finally looking back to where Souji is still staring at him with all the pain of a shattering heart. Yosuke does not meet his eyes.

“You just… stay here, okay? I’m gonna go shopping real quick and get some stuff to try and help.”

Souji licks at his lips in an attempt to unstuck his tongue. “You don’t have to do that,” he manages, voice crackling and impossibly quiet.

Yosuke makes a scathing, sarcastic noise that sounds like a mix of a scoff and a half-choked, mirthless laugh. He shoots Souji a hard look with pinched brows and replies, “No offense, dude? But uh, yeah, I kinda do.” He plants his hands on the floor and eases himself up into a crouch with a grunt. He braces his arm on his knees and leans forward, reaching out his other hand and placing it gently over Souji’s forehead.

Souji’s heart hammers against the vines encircling it, his breath hitching as the careful, calloused fingertips make contact with his skin. In that moment, before the flowers can surge to the back of his throat and bring the tang of blood and bitter petals to his tongue, Souji feels like he’s been suspended. Yosuke’s palm is warm, soft despite the barely-there scars, too thin to be detected. The touch itself is so vastly intimate, completely innocent and born from selfless concern and it hurts in a way that is devoid of physical pain. He can’t stop himself from instinctively leaning into it, pressing his forehead closer to the warmth of his partner’s hand. His face flushes; the tips of his ears and the bridge of his nose, the high points of his cheekbones – all burning like the last flicker of a candle just below his skin.

Yosuke frowns. “Yeah, that feels like a fever, alright.”

He pulls his hand away and Souji nearly rolls over to try and follow it, to chase the contact that made his pulse race but somehow didn’t launce him into a coughing fit. Souji feels the absence like a shock of cold – an involuntary whimper escaping, only for the sound to stay trapped in his sandpapery throat. A fresh wave of flowers begins to peel open low in Souji’s ribs.

Yosuke, however, seems to remain thankfully oblivious to the nature of his friend’s newest turmoil. He pushes himself to his feet and takes a few steps backwards so that he isn’t looming over Souji’s bed like some kind of nightmare. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promises, already started to back further towards the bedroom door. He keeps his focus half trained on Souji as he moves, clearly reluctant to let his partner out of his sight again. “I’ll get… I dunno, cold meds or something, fever reducer. Just…” he pauses, looks at Souji with a kind of desperate pleading shadowing his features. “Don’t move? Just rest? Call me immediately if something happens, okay? Or even text me, I’ll come right back.” He hesitates in the doorway, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he anxiously watches Souji for a reaction.

Souji grits his teeth and forces himself to nod. He doesn’t have the voice to tell Yosuke that his phone has probably been dead for hours, nor does he have the heart to tell him that cold medicine is a lost cause. Souji has taken cold medicine, has been taking it, but no amount of it – or anything stronger – will work. Not against the flowers blooming in his chest.

(He also doesn’t want to tell Yosuke that there is still at least half a box of medicine left in the bathroom; his memory of the night before is hazy and Souji has no idea what state the bathroom is in, or whether there is blood still caked on the floor.)

Yosuke gives Souji one last long, searching look. He nods once, seemingly to nobody, and Souji can hear him mutter a quiet, “Okay…” like he’s gearing himself up to leave his sick friend behind. Souji settles into the futon as best he can with a body that feels like lead and watches Yosuke watching him. Finally, reluctantly, Yosuke steps out into the hallway and pulls the door almost shut behind him. He leaves it open just a crack, enough that he could probably hear if Souji were to call out for him to come back if he really tried. Souji doesn’t. Instead, he listens to the sound of Yosuke’s retreating footsteps – hesitating several times before cautiously picking up again – until he can hear the far-off sound of the front door opening and then closing with a faint click of metal.

Souji lets out a long, slow, shuttering breath as some of the tension bleeds from his body, leaving him far more drained than he thinks he’s ever felt before.

He rolls his head so that he’s staring up at the ceiling, blinking back a wave of wet-hot, choking grief that bubbles from the pit of his stomach and spreads to every last part of him. It’s like he’s drowning, submerged in a rising, boiling tide that threatens to spill out of his eyes and scald a trail down his face. He coughs, sucking in a mouthful of air through his teeth afterwards, and for once it’s not from the flowers in his throat; it’s what’s left of a sob that he can’t quite manage to suppress. Souji brings his hands up to his face, weak and shaking, and presses the heels of them into his eyes to try and stem the flow of tears before they happen. He can feel them building, prickling behind his eyelids, but he’s so dehydrated that there is nothing left to fall. He doesn’t know whether to be thankful or not.

He doesn’t like that he’s relieved about Yosuke leaving for the time being. He shouldn’t be, he doesn’t want to be – even without the romantic feelings now strangling him, Yosuke is the best friend that Souji’s ever had and the fact that Souji had been desperately wishing Yosuke would go hurts him. It feels like he’s betraying Yosuke’s trust somehow, especially since his partner had been genuinely concerned about him, but every second Souji had spent near the boy he’s in love with had been pure, phsyical hell.

Which makes Souji feel guilty, despite the fact that he very much is not spitting up flowers on purpose. For every coughing fit Souji had had to try and push down, for every petal that threatened to climb his throat and expose or choke him, there was – as there always has been – a very large part of him that was instinctively happy to see Yosuke. He enjoys the other boy’s company; it’s why he’d gone and fallen in love with him in the first place and wound up contracting a horrible, heart-stopping illness. Honestly, if his life had come with a complaint department, Souji would have kicked down the door by now.

Souji contemplates taking Yosuke’s words to heart and trying to sleep. He’s tired enough, physically and emotionally exhausted enough that he could probably pass right out if he closed his eyes. The thought holds no appeal, though. He’s spent the past day and a half asleep and it’s more than a little disconcerting to think that most of it was involuntary. Besides, if he sleeps he might not wake up again and Yosuke could come back to a garden of blood-covered flowers. He shudders at the thought.

But that still begs the question of what he should or can do with himself until Yosuke comes back; because that’s the thing, Yosuke isn’t gone for good, just gone for now, and when he comes back he’s planning on staying the night. Any other time, Souji would be excited at the prospect of his best friend sleeping over; now, though, it fills him with anxiety. There is no way whatsoever that Souji will be able to hide his sickness from Yosuke for the entire night – what if he has another fit without warning? What if such close proximity to his crush (although it’s inarguably far deeper than a crush at this point) for such an extended period of time exacerbates his symptoms? The longer that Yosuke is around him, the more likely it is that the other boy will find out somehow, will see the flowers and the blood, will know.

And that’s something else that adds another loop to this maddening spiral Souji’s thoughts have decided to take now that he’s awake and alone and trying not to have another panic attack. Provided Souji is still alive when Yosuke finds out (because he will, eventually, if not today then after the disease has claimed Souji’s life), if Yosuke already knows what Hanahaki is he will definitely try to figure out the person causing it. He already hounds Souji upon occasion as to whether or not there’s someone Souji likes, what sort of girl is Souji’s “type”, and faced with something like this there’s little doubt in Souji’s mind that Yosuke will begin the quest anew with frantic fervor. Souji selfishly hopes he’s unconscious or already dead by the time any of that happens, just so he doesn’t have to expend the last of his energy trying to come up with reasons not to give Yosuke a name.

Something else he doesn’t want to think about dealing with is the thought that Yosuke might try and push him to get the surgery, even if it’s already far too late for it to be of any help. Souji remembers, back in middle school when they had first mentioned the disease in class, wondering why people would ever opt not to have the surgery if it meant saving their life. He thinks he understands now; the thought of never feeling anything for Yosuke ever again is enough to make the vines squeeze painfully inside his chest. Even if he did survive, even if the damage to his heart didn’t kill him within the next couple of years, Souji doesn’t know if he could handle living with all-consuming apathy where love and friendship once bloomed. He could live with loving Yosuke from a distance, if the flowers would let him, as long as he could stay by his side as his “Partner.” But to look at the best friend he’s ever had in life and feel nothing would just be…

He thinks it might almost be worse than death.

Souji can feel the prickle behind his eyelids returning and he presses his hands harder against his eyes. Alone, he finally lets out a dry, shuttering sob like he’s been wanting to for ages now. Crying over his predicament is unproductive, a waste of what little time he might have left, but seeing as how there isn’t anything else he can do that will help, he might as well be childish for a moment and let out some of the building pressure before that alone kills him. There’s no one around to see him, anyway. (And besides, just like before, he’s too dehydrated to actually be able to shed much in the way of physical tears anyway.)

Souji is afraid. He doesn’t want to die, but he’d rather do that than see Yosuke hurt or lose him entirely; he loves Yosuke too much to live without him, even if it’s just as friends. He would have been perfectly happy to lock that little piece of himself away, to hide his affections for the rest of his life and never love anyone else if it meant the two of them could always stay as close as they are now. He would never have pushed, would never have wished for anything else, been content with what he had, but it seems that whatever counted as fate in Inaba’s already-weird existence had decided that Souji hadn’t given enough just yet. It had taken a chunk of his teenaged years and turned it into what would likely have been a PTSD nightmare somewhere further down the road, it had taken his family and nearly destroyed them, it had taken pieces of his sanity and left him with trust issues and what was probably budding paranoia. Now, in its cruelest theft yet, it was forcing him to make a choice between his own life and the one person he couldn’t bear to live without.

He feels sick. Actually, physically nauseous. His stomach is well beyond empty, to the point where he doesn’t feel the hunger, only the acidic sensation of his body trying to eat itself to compensate. The only thing in there is the mouthful of flowers he’d choked back earlier to keep from coughing them up in front of Yosuke, and they sit sour and heavy in his gut like he’s swallowed wet cardboard. His whole body feels weak, too – a combination of the oxygen-deprivation, the exhaustion, and the constant, simmering fear mixed with his sickness and a minor loss of blood. He doesn’t think he can do this. He doesn’t think he can pretend he’s not dying for very much longer, not in the face of his worried best friend, not when Souji is already so tired in so many ways. The temptation to break down and pour out his terror and pain and desperate desire to not die where his partner can hear is already overpowering and the more Souji thinks about it the more can feel the hopelessness creeping into his throat to drown him.

This isn’t fair! How much more is he supposed to give? He’s already stretched himself thin for months to keep his friends alive but heaven forbid he be allowed to think his job was done, heaven forbid he be given the chance to rest. He shouldn’t be petty or selfish, he knows, but right now he’s running out of energy to care. He’s dying, damnit, he’s earned the right to be upset right now!

Souji forces his body to move and rolls onto his front with a tiny burst of energy born from sheer frustration. He takes advantage of the house’s empty silence and buries his face into his pillow, biting into the fabric with all the strength his jaw can muster and screams. Out comes a gravelly, cracking sound that embodies every ounce of fear, of desperation, of anger, sorrow, disappointment, everything that Souji has been trying to bottle up and just can’t anymore. He screams until he’s out of breath and gasping into the pillowcase, until his throat and chest are raw, until he can feel the twist of angry vines inside his ribs. Then he takes a long, broken breath in and screams again. The end of it catches on his grief and folds in on itself until it becomes a sob. Tearless, he cries into the pillow until the last of his strength gives out.

He feels like a corpse when it’s over.

Wiped out in a way he didn’t even know he could still be, Souji lays there on his stomach with his face smothered in his pillowcase, sucking in what air he can past the fabric and the rising pressure in his windpipe. It burns on the way in, like coals in his throat, bright and sharp with a glow that grows brighter with each inhale. He shifts, lifts his head from the pillow to try and give himself easy access to fresher oxygen, and to his slow-blooming horror it does nothing to help. 

Oh no.

No, nonono, not again, not now.

Souji takes in a breath as deeply as he can – and immediately drops his head back into the pillow as a massive, wracking cough shudders through him. He tastes metal and salt sliding along the length of his tongue, feels the light spatter of blood as it hits the backs of his teeth. Something lodges in his chest just before it hits the line of his throat and the next reflexive breath in never makes it into his lungs.

He wasn’t aware he still had the energy left in him to panic anymore, but as Souji prizes his head back up off the pillow and sees the faint smear of crimson on the white of the fabric, he feels his stomach dropping out. It’s like being plunged into the coldest water possible, so frigid that it nearly slams into him as solid ice. Yosuke will be back soon. Yosuke will be back soon and Souji had been holding onto hope that he could at least make it a few more hours without an attack, without his friend seeing. Once again, it looks like the universe has decided to steal that shred of hope away.

Souji pushes himself up on arms that nearly buckle beneath him and climbs to his feet with help from the nearby furniture. He almost collapses before he can ever take a step. Woozy, head reeling, he throws out a hand and plants it down on top of the dresser so hard his palm stings, but manages to steady himself once more and stands there swallowing against the flowers until he can get a breath in. This is quickly becoming a habit he would give his sword arm to be able to break.

Like an awful recreation of the day before, Souji stumbles – somehow – out into the hallway and then down it towards the bathroom door. The last few steps are practically at a run as he over exerts his failing body and has to let the forward momentum of his wavering balance keep him moving those final few feet through the door. He doesn’t make it to the sink this time. Instead, the moment he makes it into the room his legs give out and he falls, landing on his knees with a vibrating ‘CRACK!’ against the tile. Pain lances through him like lightning, stealing the last of his breath. He doubles over onto his elbows and curls into a wretched little ball as the shock to his body sends a spasm through his mutilated chest.

The flowers push their way up through his windpipe, coiling their roots ever tighter around his heart until it feels like it’s going to burst inside the greenhouse that his ribcage has become, and Souji coughs and gags and wheezes until the floor is slick with red and scattered blossoms and his vision clouds over black.

He falls to the side like a ragdoll when the last of his strength finally leaves him, narrowly avoiding bashing his head against the edge of the bathtub as he slides down onto the bloody, sticky tiles. Blindly, like a dying twitch just before the final spark goes out, Souji kicks at where he remembers the door being, trying to find it with his foot to push it closed. His heel connects with the bottom corner and he shoves with what little energy he has left until he hears the metallic click of the latch.

He slips away into limbo then, with only a muted sense of sound remaining. He hears the rush of blood inside his skull, the slowing beat of his pulse in his ears, and somewhere, as if from deep below the crushing water of unconsciousness, he can hear the far-off thumping of footsteps coming briskly up the stairs.

Souji fades in and out of existence, never quite making it into oblivion but far enough in that he can scarcely feel his body. He can’t move, doesn’t have the wherewithal to try. His breathing is shallow, ragged, with his throat and lungs burning and his mouth tasting of iron and acid. He can feel the damage to his windpipe causing it to swell, leaving a tight, harsh pressure after every forced exhale. His lungs barely respond as he struggles weakly to fill them, the vines wrapped between the spaces of his ribs preventing them from expanding. But it’s his heart that’s the worst. There is a horrible, stinging, pinching sensation around his heart; even in his semi-conscious state, Souji knows that the roots have probably begun to pierce through it. Oddly, perhaps because his brain is slowly powering down, he finds he feels… not quite peaceful, per se, but something bordering on acceptance. Resignation, maybe. He doesn’t have the energy to think about it too hard.

From off in the hallway, he can hear what might be a voice calling his name. He can’t be sure if it’s real or not, thinks it might be a hallucination. It doesn’t matter either way – his voice is gone and his body too destroyed to find the strength to answer anyway. Please don’t find me, he thinks, just in case. Don’t see me like this….

“Partner? Where’d you go?”

Please no.

“Dude, answer me, where are you?!”

I don’t want you to be sad.

“Why is there blood on your pillow?”

Yosuke’s voice grows noticeably more anxious with each unanswered plea, cracking slightly on the final word as Souji’s absence stretches on. The footsteps return, this time getting louder as Yosuke presumably draws closer to Souji’s hiding spot. There is a knock on the bathroom door.

“Souji?” Yosuke calls again, and the mounting distress is clearer now without the distance to obscure it. “Souji, are you in there?”

Souji doesn’t answer, wouldn’t even if he could. Childishly, foolishly, his half-conscious mind thinks that maybe if he stays quiet enough then Yosuke won’t find him – that his friend will keep moving, keep looking elsewhere. Or better yet, just give Souji up as a lost cause and go home so that Souji can die quietly. It’s against Yosuke’s nature, though, and there is a small part of him that knows this, even through the haze that fills his head and weighs him to the floor.

True to form there is another knock, louder this time, more frenzied. “Souji, if you’re in there, please fucking say something.”

There is a pause, like he’s waiting for a response, listening for words that Souji doesn’t have the ability to give. Souji can hear a faint sound of shivery breathing behind the door and an image of the worried, tense expression that had spread over Yosuke’s face just before he’d left flickers across the dark of Souji’s vision. He can picture the way Yosuke bites at his lip when he’s anxious or scared and trying not to let it show, the pinched look around his eyes. It’s not a look that someone as full of sunlight as Yosuke should ever be made to wear.

The door handle rattles like someone has taken hold of it from the outside. “Souji, please, please say something, I’m seriously freaking out right now.” There is another pause. Then, harsh and sad and cracking, there comes a whispered, “There’s a fucking bloody flower in your trashcan…”

Souji feels his tattered heart give a tiny lurch.

No…!

A shuddering, damp inhalation comes from behind the wood of the door and the doorknob turns until the latch clicks, but the hinges themselves do not squeak as if they’re being used. “Fuck it,” Yosuke whispers, voice bordering on panic now, “fuck it, I don’t care if you’re naked or something, I’m coming in!”

Before Souji can try and will his body to curl up tighter in a vain attempt at instinctive protection, the sound of the door being swung open reaches his ears, followed immediately after by a horrified rush of air like his friend has just been punched in the stomach.

“SOUJI!”

Footsteps on tile, the wet sound of socked feet on drying blood, someone dropping to the floor beside him and grabbing at his shoulders, tugging him, pulling him into a warm lap, trembling fingers sweeping the red-matted hair from his face. The touch is nice despite the circumstances, like a balm on his clammy skin, and Souji lolls his head slightly to chase after the feeling.

Yosuke shakes him gently, frantically. “Souji look at me, look at me, please! Wake up!”

Souji tries to peel his eyes open, the lids feeling like they’ve been glued shut. He feels them flutter a little, thinks he might have managed to let a sliver of light through, but his vision is still dark.

“Come on!”

I’m trying, he thinks. I’m trying, I’m sorry…

One of Yosuke’s arms circles around Souji’s shoulders, holding him closer, keeping him from sinking back to the freezing floor; the other disappears from where Souji can feel it. There is a rustling of fabric, then a tinny beeping sound overtop a plastic clicking before the quiet, obnoxious burble of a distant phone line. Souji leans into Yosuke’s heat as best he can – he hadn’t realized just how cold he’d been until now.

“I need an ambulance,” Yosuke says in a single desperate breath. “My friend is sick and he collapsed and there’s a lot of blood and I think he might be dying!” He makes a noise that’s somewhere between a whine and a sob and it tears at what’s left of the heart in Souji’s burning chest. “There’s fucking–! There’s flowers everywhere – it’s like he threw up flowers, I don’t know what to do!”

Souji wishes he could get his limbs to move; he wants to turn onto his side and nuzzle his cold, bloodied face into Yosuke’s thigh, to throw an arm around his best friend’s waist and tell him without words the it’ll be okay. He wants to be able to take that heart-shattering fear and anguish from his beloved’s voice and bring back the sunlight that Yosuke always exudes. His body lies limp and uncooperative, though, and so all Souji can do is listen, hearing slowly beginning to fade, while Yosuke finishes the phone call with a cracking voice. He tries to ignore the droplets of something wet and hot that land on his face when Yosuke leans back over him and wraps his other arm over Souji’s chest.

“Stay with me, Partner,” Yosuke whispers, pressing their foreheads together, gradually starting to rock back and forth with Souji in his arms. “Stay with me…”

He repeats it over and over again into Souji’s temple like a despondent prayer, and it’s the last thing that Souji hears as he finally slips away into dreamless black.

 ---

 Sound is the first sense to return to him.

There is a whooshing, steady and hollow. It acts as a droning background to a high-pitched, mechanical beeping somewhere off to the side that makes his head ring with dull pain. Somewhere in the distance, muffled, there are faint voices exchanging words he can’t make out, and the sharp ‘tic-tic-tic’ of retreating shoes.

Next to come back is touch. Souji can feel himself lying on something soft; a bed, probably, but it’s firmer than his normal futon and seems to be slightly elevated so that he’s propped up and not lying completely flat. There is something he guesses might be a blanket draped over him that feels slightly scratchy and has little to no weight to it. Something kind of rubbery presses lightly into his face, just below his cheekbones, and apparently has been shoved up his nose. It doesn’t hurt him, which is nice, and as he breathes in he notices the cool stream of air that trickles from it. He breathes again. Nothing catches in his lungs.

There is a chill to the room around him. It doesn’t seep too badly through the blanket, but on the parts of him that are uncovered he feels it the most – his neck, ears, and face, and also, oddly enough, his right wrist all the way up to his elbow. His hand, however, is warm, with something slotted between his fingers. He flexes them just barely, and whatever is covering his hand gives a gentle squeeze in return.

“Partner?”

Souji tilts his head towards the voice. It’s quiet, rough, laced with tired hope. Even half alive, Souji would recognize it anywhere. He takes another breath, deeper than he thinks he should be able to take, and pulls at whatever strength his heavy, aching body might have left. He focuses on grounding points – the warmth on his hand, the voice beside him – and slowly, haltingly, Souji manages to crack open his bleary eyes.

At first there is pain. The light overhead is not particularly bright, but to eyes that have been bathed in darkness for an eternity, the florescence is like a blow to the back of his skull. He feels his face twist into a grimace involuntarily and he has to will himself not to squeeze his eyes shut and hold them like that, instead settling for narrowing them down to slits as he waits for the light to even out. Eventually it does and the room comes into bleary color, a collection of shapes finally fusing together to form a solid picture with fuzzy edges. Beside him, a blurr of copper and orange shifts into his peripherals.

“Hey,” Yosuke whispers, and the sound is so full of hope that Souji instinctively wants to reach over and bury his face in the crook of his friend’s neck and shoulder.

He shifts a bit more so that Yosuke is centered in his vision and squints at the other boy’s outline. It takes him a few seconds of stillness, of willing his eyes to focus properly, of blinking to try and clear the lingering static from the edges, before Souji is able to open his eyes a little further and actually see. Yosuke is an absolute wreck.

Tear tracks stain his cheeks and his eyes and the tip of his nose are red from crying. His hair is tangled in places along the sides and right in the front, as if he’d delved his fingers into it at some point and tugged mercilessly. He sits hunched over the side of Souji’s bed in a shitty plastic hospital chair that looks about as comfortable as their school desk chairs after a long night of fighting in the TV world, one arm draped over the mattress. The other arm lies crossed underneath it, with Souji’s hand wrapped up tightly in his own.

Yosuke feigns a smile, the expression looking strained and worn thin. “Hey,” he repeats, “you with me?”

Habitually, Souji parts his lips to try and respond, only to find his mouth and throat unbearably dry. He swallows a couple of times in an attempt to fix the problem and has to unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth, his throat raw and stinging like he’s poured down a bottle of bleach.

“Don’t,” Yosuke chides him softly. “Just nod if you can hear me.”

Souji does, and his vision only swims a little bit.

His partner lets out a long, deep sigh of relief, his entire body releasing a tension that had seemed almost embedded into his bones. He sags forward and drops his head onto his arms. “Thank god…” The hand over Souji’s own squeezes again, tighter this time, like he’s still afraid to let go, and his muffled voice cracks and stutters as he speaks. “I was so fucking scared, I thought…” He pauses, tightens his hold on Souji’s hand even more. There is the sound of a ragged inhale. “Don’t ever do that to me again, man. Ever. I can’t… I almost—!” He sits back up with a shuttering breath, fresh tears already spilling from his eyes and carving new paths down his face.

Yosuke lifts Souji’s hand from the mattress and curls his free one around it as well, holding it in both of his own like it’s something sacred. He screws his eyes shut and brings Souji’s fingers to his lips. “You dumbass!” he rasps against the backs of Souji’s knuckles. He presses a fervent kiss to each one, lingering for a moment before moving on to the next; when he’s done, he leans down to rest his forehead against the places his lips have just touched. “You absolute fucking dumbass…”

Souji stares at him, utterly gobsmacked as his partner cries silently against his hand. Surely this is a dream? One last hallucination before his brain finally shuts down and he succumbs to the choking, bitter flowers rooted around his heart. He takes an experimental breath in and while it does hurt, it’s more like an ache, a soreness that sits around his muscles and not deep inside his ribs. His chest moves, rises and falls with each new set of inhale-exhale – there is no catch, no halt. Nothing clogs up his sandpapery throat. Nothing tickles.

A fantasy then. Maybe he’s already died and this is what has been awaiting him; the illusion of a flowerless heart, of working lungs, of the boy he’s fallen helplessly in love with holding his hand and placing kisses across his fingers. There is no way that this is real.

But maybe, if all of this is nothing but a vision as the last few traces of his life flicker out, then would it be such a terrible thing for Souji to be a little selfish? Just this once? He’s either already dead or about to be so, just one stolen moment can’t be too much to ask for. He lifts his fingers, still unsteady in his body’s weakness, and brushes them through the copper strands of Yosuke’s fringe that lay within his reach. He’s always wondered what Yosuke’s hair felt like, if it would be coarse because of the dye or if it would be soft to the touch. He notes with quiet delight that it is, in fact, as soft as he’d hoped it would be.

Yosuke twitches at the contact. Eyes still shut tight, he nuzzles his face further down the back of Souji’s hand and closer to his wrist. The action pushes Souji’s fingers deeper into Yosuke’s hair and Souji delicately catches at a thin lock of it to stroke beneath the pad of his thumb.

Souji swallows again, licking a dry tongue over his bitter-tasting lips to try and make his mouth work properly. “Y’suke…” he breathes, his voice nothing more than an echo of the air slipping past his teeth. He has no idea if the other boy – the image of his beloved – can even hear him, but it doesn’t really matter. He just wants to say it. If only this one time. Because he knows he’ll probably never get the chance to do this again.

He just wishes it could have been real.

He shifts his fingers so that he can lovingly sweep a few strands of hair from where they’ve fallen across Yosuke’s eyes, a small, sad smile tugging at the corners of Souji lips. “Love you…”

To his surprise, Yosuke wheezes out a sharp, soggy bark of laughter. “Yeah, no shit, Partner.” He repositions one of his hands, sliding his palm around to fit against Souji’s own and slotting their fingers together once more. His grip is like gentle iron, tight and secure but not enough to be painful. He still doesn’t open his eyes. “Nice of you to wait until you nearly die on me to let me know.”

Souji is… confused. Even for a dream this is a little unexpected, and he’s still foggy-brained on top of everything, not yet fully “awake” and functioning.

He doesn’t get a chance to do much more than furrow his brows slightly, because Yosuke finally lifts his head from where he’s been reverently pressing it to Souji’s wrist. Red-rimmed eyes open, and the usual amber-brown of his irises has now turned a hurt, murky auburn. “You wanna know how I found out?” he asks, and there is an edge of near-hysterical sarcasm to his words. He doesn’t wait for Souji to react. “Turns out my best friend has something called ‘Hanahaki Disease’, which makes him grow goddamn morning glories in his heart, because surprise, surprise! He’s been bottling up his feelings again, and now it’s literally killing him.”

Yosuke pauses to take in a shuddering breath, glancing away as he sniffles and blinks against the new wave of moisture that has begun to gather in his eyes. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to sit there and be told that the most amazing person you’ve ever known is dying and there’s nothing they can do to save him? That unless someone can find whoever it is your partner is in love with and get them to love him back in the next couple of hours, you’re gonna lose him? Because it fucking sucks!”

Yosuke tugs away the hand not holding Souji’s like a lifeline and furiously scrubs at his face with the back of it. He pushes the hinge of his wrist against his eyes and ducks his head to hide the tears now freely flowing down his cheeks. He sobs once, quietly, his shoulders trembling as he suppresses the rest. “I didn’t— I didn’t even know you were sick before today, I couldn’t… I felt so useless!” His fingers curl and uncurl around Souji’s own, rhythmically squeezing as if he’s trying to remind himself of Souji’s warmth and solidity.

Souji squeezes back as best he can.

“And then they told me I should go ahead and start saying my goodbyes, that you might still be able to hear me if I talked to you, and I just… We already did this with Nanako, I couldn’t fucking do it again.”

Yosuke leans in again, resting his forehead once more against Souji’s arm and wrapping his free hand over the pulse point on Souji’s wrist. He just breathes for a moment, letting the steady ‘beat-beat-beat’ beneath his fingertips pull him back in. His eyes reopen and stare unseeing down at the white fabric of the bed sheets. “So I broke down,” he whispers. “I started talking, saying anything that came into my head cuz I guess I thought maybe if I begged hard enough you’d just get better or something. I told you if you woke up I’d go out and drag every single girl in Inaba over here until I found the one you liked, and if that didn’t work then I’d go to Okina and try there, too. Anywhere you needed me to look. And then when… when you just kept slipping away, I didn’t know what to do, so I got desperate and said I’d go look for you a boyfriend instead if that’s what you wanted and that you could even have me because fuck, I’ve been falling in love with you forever but I’ve been too stupid to ever admit it.”

Souji’s eyes go wide. Even in those tiny moments he’d allowed himself to have, back when he hadn’t known just how deep his affection for Yosuke truly ran, Souji could never have come up with something like this. He’d never fully let himself imagine Yosuke returning his feelings, never bothered to treat it as a possibility because he didn’t want to acknowledge his own crush or give himself anything like false hope. So this, all of this, is well beyond anything Souji thinks could feasibly play out inside his head. If this a product of a dying brain then it’s gotten well away from him and left him reeling; if it’s a piece of whatever afterlife he’s been given, then it would seem the gods haven’t been paying much attention.

If it’s neither, then Souji might just have lost his damn mind.

He steals a quick look around the room while Yosuke’s gaze is still fixed on the bedspread, grey eyes flicking from corner to corner as best they can with Souji still a bit too weak to move his head. This is definitely the hospital; he’d spent far too much time here in between his part time job and his family being bedridden to not recognize it. The beeping sound he’d heard upon first waking is a heart monitor beside the bed, connected to his body below the scratchy covers by a thin black cord. The steady whoosh of air is a different machine entirely, one with a clear plastic tube that leads to something lying loosely across his chest. He remembers the rubbery something over his face and up his nose and realizes it must be an oxygen pump, feeding air directly into his lungs.

(Souji swallows and expects the flowers to come rushing back up his windpipe, still baffled when there’s no sign of them.)

He glances back to find that Yosuke is now watching him with a look of wild-eyed caution.

“You had a… a seizure or something right after that,” he says, voice so low it’s almost drowned out by the ambient sounds of the hospital machinery. “Started convulsing, coughing up more flowers. At first they thought it was another attack but when they went to try and clear your airways they pulled a bunch of roots out of your throat.” He stops to inhale deeply, his shoulders rising and then falling again as he slowly lets the breath back out through his nose. “I dunno what happened next cuz they made me leave, but then they came back like an hour later and told me you were gonna live and that it looked like you’d kicked out the entire plant somehow, roots and all. They said the only way that was even possible was for the love that grew the damn thing in the first place to be requited. Considering I had literally just told you I loved you, it wasn’t that hard to piece everything together after that.”

Silence stretches between them. In the quiet, with only the machinery for noise in the background, it had been easy to mistake this for a dreamscape, to think that he’s finally fallen comatose and that this is his one final chance to be at peace before his body gives in to death. But… it isn’t. Souji blinks slowly, taking in his surroundings with an altered perspective. He can still feel the non-weight of the blanket, the chill of the circulated air, the pressure of Yosuke’s hands covering his own. He isn’t dead, nor is he dying. Souji is awake and alive and this is really real.

It’s almost too wild to believe.

Because he’s spent so long convincing himself that this could never happen, that this is something he’d never be allowed to have, Souji still can’t quite process it all. Yosuke, sunny, bright, wonderful Yosuke… loves him back.

Yosuke loves him back.

Like a man who’s spent his whole life in the darkness finally seeing daylight for the first time, Souji lets the fragile spark of hope within him stay lit. It catches on the love-starved ground of his battered heart and fans itself into a small, steady flame. “I love you,” he whispers again with a stronger voice than last time. Because he wants to. Because he can.

He doesn’t notice that he’s tearing up until the lines in his vision blur out. He blinks to clear it away. “I love you.”

Yosuke stares at him. His expression is unreadable, too many different emotions mixing together and Souji can barely see through the thin trickle of tears that have started falling in earnest now. He hears the scrape of chair legs on the floor, feels the loss of heat as Yosuke relinquishes one of his hands from the desperate clinging to Souji’s pulse point. There is a quiet sound of rustling fabric, the creak and pop of plastic as Yosuke rises slowly from his chair. Warm, calloused fingers brush through the wetness on Souji’s face, tenderly wiping it away.

“I love you, too,” is whispered near his ear, just before Yosuke nuzzles at his temple. “I love you so goddamn much, Souji, I was so scared I was gonna lose you.” There is a pause, a shaky breath, and then there are lips being pressed against Souji’s forehead, soft and reverent, and Yosuke’s fingers return to stroke though Souji’s hair.

Souji leans into it, revels in it without hesitation. A tiny shiver goes down his spine and for the first time ever he lets himself enjoy it. No flowers surge up to try and choke him, no clogging, suffocating mass of bitter petals fills his mouth with blood and bile. The tears gather faster as something new wells up inside Souji’s chest, bringing with it a feeling that might be budding joy. It’s been so long since he’s experienced hope; he almost doesn’t recognize it.

Yosuke dips his fingers down again to wipe futilely at Souji’s cheekbones. “I’m glad you’re alive,” he murmurs, and another kiss is pressed to Souji’s hair.

The hand in his own isn’t enough. Souji shifts his free arm, the one still under the blanket, and starts to try and pull it free from its cotton prison. Something tugs at his skin, causing him to wince, and Yosuke must feel the expression under his lips because he pulls away to awkwardly reach across himself and place his hand over Souji’s shoulder. He pushes down gently to stop Souji from tugging his arm out of the covers.

“No,” Yosuke tells him, quiet and firm. He pushes down on Souji’s shoulder slightly, as if to hold it to the bed. “You’re gonna knock your IV out.”

Souji whimpers. “Wanna hold you.”

Yosuke leans back enough to where he can blink down at Souji with a faint dusting of pink across the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just searches Souji’s face with his eyes.

“…Please?” Souji rasps, because now that his heart is beginning to understand that he can have this, it refuses to accept anything else. It strains against his heavy body, reaching desperate tendrils of want out in any direction it can in hopes of quelling a months-long ache.

Yosuke’s expression softens. “Okay,” he whispers, squeezing Souji’s hand again.

  The nurse finds them later, curled up against one another as well as they can be in the tiny hospital bed that only barely fits one. Yosuke is folded up like a cat at Souji’s side, head tucked into the space where Souji’s shoulder meets his collarbone, mindful of the breathing tube and the still-healing chest just below it. Souji’s cheek rests against the crown of Yosuke’s head and he’s long-since nuzzled into the softness of his beloved’s hair.

One of Yosuke’s arms is draped carefully over Souji’s stomach below his ribs – the other squished between their sides with their hands entwined.

--- --- ---

(A note from the author: I couldn't decide between a happy ending or an unhappy ending while I was writing this, so I put up a poll on my twitter asking for people to vote between the two and Happy Ending won by a good margin.

The unhappy ending would have seen Souji waking up in the hospital to find the doctors had performed emergency surgery on him to remove the moonflowers. He would have miraculously survived, but any and all feeling he’d had for Yosuke would have been gone, leaving Souji completely apathetic towards him and slowly causing their entire friendship to disolve until they were little more than strangers. The rest of the game’s events would take place and Souji would go back to the city at the end of the year. On the day that Souji left, Yosuke would have gone back home after seeing his former partner off at the train station and started coughing up sunflower petals into the bathroom sink.

>:3 Y’all dodged a bullet~)

[kar3npage]

Sewing Scissors and Throwing Knives

Chapter 3 is now up! Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading along! I will be posting a new chapter every Monday:)

If you want to read along from the beginning, you can check it out on ao3 here

Recap from last chapter:  Neil calls Kevin and accepts his offer, Neil meets (most of) the team, Kevin and Nicky decide that Neil needs a new wardrobe.

His fingers are itching for a cigarette. It’s not an addiction, since Neil doesn’t actually smoke the things, but he’s craving a tether. A comforting scent, something to ground him. It’s only an hour into his second day at the atelier and he’s already thoroughly tired of Kevin and the constant noise that permeates the floor. It’s getting annoying having to bite back the snarky comments and make everyone think he’s a pushover. But being a pushover will keep him alive, so he’ll make do. Matt and Nicky greeted Neil with the same level of enthusiasm as they had the day before, and he got a few friendly nods as the building started to fill. Fortunately being tied to Kevin made most people keep their distance. Unfortunately, being tied to Kevin meant that Andrew popped up constantly. Neil can feel his eyes tracking him even when he’s pretty sure that he isn’t even in the same area as them. “No, I need it by Thursday at the latest. I was promised it by Wednesday!” Kevin is saying into the phone in that particularly bossy voice of his. “No, you don’t understand. You’ve heard of Alli Rey, correct? Yes, everyone has. If we can’t get that shipment in by Thursday, we will no longer be working with your company.” Kevin continues in that vein, threatening to pull out of whatever deal they have. As far as Neil understands, the shipment is holding a fabric that they ‘desperately’ need for the showstopper in the quickly approaching show. Neil is a far ways away from his times running. He’s made little things out of the strangest material, purely out of necessity. He barely waits for Kevin to put down the phone before speaking to make sure that he can get a word in before Kevin starts. “Why don’t you just get a different fabric for it?” Kevin has that expression on that says that he can’t believe that he’s even wasting a second of his day for Neil. “It would never get here in time, even if we did somehow manage to find something as perfect as this.” “Okay, then use something you already have.” Neil thinks to the entire wall of bolts of fabric in every colour that sits in the cutting room. Kevins face is slowly going red. “You--no, fuck’s sake. Neil, no.” “Why not?” “Because this is the showstopper. This is going to be ending the show. You cannot leave the customers on a blah note, it has to be perfect. And the only way that’s going to happen is if it’s made out of a silk/rayon velvet that’s been hand dyed with a unique method in Amsterdam.” “Maybe your showstopper isn’t as good as you think it is if it’s going to fail just because you used a different nice fabric.” “He has a point,” a dry voice startles Neil and he whips around to face the door. Andrew stands there, wearing a very similar all black outfit to what he wore yesterday. Neil considers complaining that he has to change his look when Andrew wears the same thing every day. He keeps his mouth shut for once. Kevin splutters something from his spot behind the desk, face going a mottled purple. “Get out,” Andrew says to Neil. He hesitates, glancing at Kevin to argue. When he doesn’t, Neil makes sure to leave Andrew space as he walks past him. He closes the door behind him and pauses in the hallway to listen. The bond between Andrew and Kevin has already been mentioned countless times in the office, and Neil has read many articles about it in various gossip magazines. No matter what is written or said, no one can explain exactly why Andrew lets Kevin tag along. Neil can just barely hear Andrew through the door. “The Moriyama’s aren’t going to care which fabric the last dress is made out of as long as it makes them money. And Riko fuck-face can’t do anything without his uncles approval. Relax.” A muffled groan can be heard down the hallway. Neil leans in a bit closer to hear Kevin’s answer. His words are frantic and fast, too fast for Neil to be able to catch on. Andrew’s answer is a repeat of his earlier words. He doesn’t stay outside for much longer after that. Of course Neil had been keeping an eye on the Moriyamas to ensure that he would be able to avoid them, but he was under the impression that Kevin had split from Riko after the accident. Neil Josten was well and truly fucked.

He still had nightmares about the few weeks that he was stuck in the Nest, nightmares of the oppressive atmosphere, the pain and humiliation, the complete and utter exhaustion. It had taken him almost a month to stop losing time after the 16 hour days. He was still claustrophobic from the experience.

To make it even worse, he knows that his father works for the Moriyama's. He bitterly wonders whether he’ll even live to see the show that he is currently helping them prepare for. The smart thing would be to leave and get a new identity. Maybe check out Italy, he’d been learning Italian in his spare time while he was working as a janitor. Of course, just because that's the smart thing doesn’t mean it’s the route that he wants to choose.

The problem is the last time that Neil had felt so strongly about his surroundings was when he was in the fashion program in school. The working hum of industrials, the quiet bustle of seamstresses and cutters going about their work, the satisfying sound of sharp scissors cutting through silk. The atmosphere at Alli Rey was intoxicating and calming all at once. Neil had walked through the cutting room earlier and spent almost 20 minutes just looking at the shelves of bolts of fabric that fills one wall. He had almost filled his sketchbook last night with new ideas. He hadn’t felt this inspired by anything for years, and now that he had spent a few days as a part of the magic he wasn’t sure that he could tear himself away so soon. If he could just make it until the next fashion show, the one that Kevin wanted him to help design, then he could die in peace. That way he could have made a mark, albeit a small one. That way he could get rid of a few of his regrets in life.

Three days later and Neil is as in love with the volatile environment as he was when he decided that he would be willing to die for it. The craziness with the customer is apparently over, so Neil was finally able to meet Dan. She is a no-nonsense, hard working woman with a tight control over her team. She had Neil’s respect the minute he saw her wrangle Seth into some semblance of control, and he had no trouble saying that he trusted her completely to get everything finished. Seth is another employee that he has, unfortunately, gotten to know since the customer issues have been dealt with. He had immediately written Neil off, and he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder for any designer as long as it wasn’t Allison. Neil had met Allison a few times so far, and each time she had a different reaction to Seth being there. Their strange relationship didn’t make anyone else nearly as uncomfortable as it did Neil. “I think it’s time that you start working late like everyone else does,” Kevin announces as Neil walks into the office that he’s been ‘shadowing’ Kevin in so far. “I do work late with everyone else,” Neil says. Annoyance crosses Kevin’s face. “No, you leave with Andrew and Nicky everyday.” “So do you.” “I leave for dinner with them, but I come back after.” Neil has known that Kevin was obsessive about his work right from the get go, but he had no idea to what extent. He knows for a fact that Matt and Dan leave around the time that he does, since they keep inviting him out for drinks, and they have important roles in the company as well. Neil tries to muster up some irritation with Kevin about the demand, but all he feels is some excitement about spending more time in the studios. So far he’s just gone home to sketch, obsessively check the locks in his hotel room, and eventually fall into a restless sleep. Coming back in to help with the quickly coming up Resort show is infinitely better than anything else that Neil could be doing in his evenings. “Alright,” he tells Kevin. Kevin gives him one quick nod of approval. “Andrew will pick you up tonight at 9. Eat before then.”

As promised, Andrew’s fancy vehicle is waiting outside the hotel for Neil at exactly 9 o’clock. Kevin is waiting in the passenger seat, and neither of the men are currently speaking to one another. Kevin immediately launches into a brainstorming session with Neil when he climbs in the backseat, and as much as he is interested in what Kevin has to say, his eyes keep wandering to look at Andrew in the drivers seat. So far what he’s seen of Andrew makes him think that he’s apathetic about the whole thing. He’s always the calm in the storm when he walks through the atelier during the day (although that isn’t often. Mostly he’s holed up in the office that Neil so far hasn’t been in with a woman with rainbow dyed hair whom he hasn’t met), and whenever Kevin tries to talk with him about upcoming collections he answers with a bored glare. Neil’s fascinated with this person who obviously has incredible talent, yet doesn’t care about it. He wasn’t sure what to expect of their late night work, but it’s pretty similar to the work that they’ve been doing during the day so far. The only difference is that Kevin isn’t able to phone any of their suppliers, so he has more of the razor focus that Neil remembers from his Exy days. They’re in the beautiful, streamlined office staring at the wall behind Kevin's desk. Andrew lies on the couch near the window with a book, one that Neil hasn’t heard of before. The pages are dog eared and worn, yet the avid way Andrew focuses on the book makes it look like he’s never read it before. The wall has been transforming quickly while Neil has been here. For the most part he’s been keeping his opinions to himself (which has been more difficult than he thought it would be) since his real job will start with the next collection, but he hasn’t been able to help himself with a few of the looks. They’re planning the show, playing around with the order that the ensembles come out on the runway and which garments will be put together. Most of the wall has been taken over by the photos of each look on possible models (that will need to be decided as well, eventually). Each look has a number on it, though the numbers keep getting scratched out and changed. The only one that hasn’t changed is the showstopper, which will be going last. “I just still don’t understand what makes that one the showstopper,” Neil tells Kevin before he can control himself. He stiffens and waits for Kevin to have a conniption, or maybe a panic attack. Neil had thought that Andrew wasn’t paying attention to them, but a small huff tells him that he has. Kevin surprises all of them by looking thoughtful. It takes him a while to respond and he inspects the wall in the meantime. “I’m not really sure, actually. I had just decided in the beginning that it would be and it never occurred to me that it might not.” “Okay.” Neil says, but he’s been forgotten. A familiar frenzied look is in Kevin's eye now that Neil planted the idea, and he’s scrambling around the wall moving photos around. The rest of the evening is spent in near silence, and Neil finds that he enjoys his time with Kevin and Andrew more than he ever thought he would. He admires Kevin, and has for a long time. Seeing him working first hand isn’t always that impressive, but when he gets into this centered head space Neil can see why he’s gotten so far in the industry so quickly. Andrew is a different story. Where Kevin is an easy book to read, Neil just can’t grasp anything about Andrew. Everything he does surprises Neil. It’s unsettling.

So far Neil has managed to avoid Nicky and Kevin’s plans for getting him new clothes. By the end of the week he had quietly hoped that they had forgotten about it in the chaos of show prep. Neil Josten has never been that lucky. Nicky jumps him during lunch on Friday with far too much joy for such a task. “You’re going to love Abby, she’s great. We always go to the Garment District store just for her for the new recruits.” “We’re going to an Alli Rey store?” Neil has no idea what to expect from his day, but there’s a tight ball of dread in his stomach that’s threatening to swallow him. He counts to ten in French, and then German in the hopes that the anxiety will lessen. “Yep! Everyone tries to wear as much from the brand as possible for marketing. It was my idea,” Nicky preens as he pushes Neil out of the building. It’s just the two of them for once, something that hasn’t happened since he arrived. Neil makes a vague noise of approval. They get into Andrews car, which Neil can’t imagine the conversation that got the approval for Nicky to drive. Nicky talks nonstop the entire time they’re in the vehicle, which Neil is strangely grateful for. The empty chatter is enough to quell some of the nausea that popped up when he realized that he would need to get measured today, which also meant that it was pretty likely that he would have to take off his shirt. Unfortunately, he has already tried everything that he could think of to get out of this when Kevin first brought it up and he has no ideas left. All he knows is that Nicky absolutely can not be in the room while he gets his measurements done.