#the only thing that kept me sane after that last scene was me rooting for sapphic pa and ink

[nong-nao]

I am so overwhelmed from this episode, literally the most conflicted this show has ever left me in emotions and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it is mostly in Pat’s pov this episode.

The show up until this point has been mostly in Pran’s pov and we all know how he feels, it’s been clear from the beginning. Nanon does such a great job at portraying all of the emotions that Pran would be feeling, really bringing to life the whole phrase "showing not telling." Ohm has also done well portraying Pat because this whole time he'd been acting “normal” since he didn't feel anything to his knowledge romantically for Pran.

This episode, you could feel the aloofness and confusion Pat has in the beginning where he’s almost trying to push all of his feelings in Ink’s direction but that’s not where they are and deep down he knows it. When he coincidentally [probably not since we saw that Pran had has Pat and Ink together] meets Pran at the music shop, he starts thinking about his interaction with him with Pa's hints of romantic interest. It's so brilliantly directed too because it's not Pat thinking about how Pran sees him [like what he was doing with Ink in the cafe?] but it's him taking an introspective approach of this what he is feeling. The idea of him liking Pran in that way scares him; thinking back on the Just Friends? lyrics, he’s probably feeling insecure and hesitant about it because Pran is important to him and they really are in such a confusing place.

Wai acts as a catalyst almost for Pat to realize his emotions because he can sense that there’s something more between Wai and Pran or at least he’s filling in dots with them because he’s consumed by his own jealousy, not only romantically but in a friendship way that almost says how can you be so close to someone else and hide me? lf we really think about it, Pat’s closest friend or confidante is Pa i mean if i had friends like his, I also wouldn’t confide in them with my deepest thoughts, Pat has probably also felt so guilty about being seen as Pran's bad luck that he never really got close to other people so they wouldn't get hurt and neither would he. I also could just be thinking to much about it. The song was just the tipping point for Pat since the song symbolized their cursed relationship even if at the time he said it in a joking manner and Pran chose to play it with Wai, someone who can easily be in Pran’s life. Pran’s mom likes him and invites him into the house for dinner, even lets him spend the night, not to mention that they are protective of each other as well. For pat to see them together and then celebrating as if nothing special had happened, it’s a huge slap in the face. On a regular day if Pran had won the contest, Pat would have teasingly congratulated him and said some sny remark, but so much has happened that it just can’t be the case for them. Pran pushing him away and putting distance between the two, trying so hard to hide their secret relationship, whatever it may be, from Wai just makes Pat angrier at the circumstances. After all he was waiting for Pran to come home and it ended in something much bigger than he would have wanted.

All of these events build up so much tension for the final scene, which left me shocked going to through a whirlwind of emotions. Pat ,when he finally finds Pran, breaks down in such a calm but hurt way all about how their relationship is so confusing. That it's so tiring being the sons of families who put them against each other, always having to be aware of the other, but that he wouldn't have wanted it another way because it was lonely not having him in his life even if he could breathe better. Pran, obviously the audience knowing his own side, cries hearing this because he also feels and knows the conflict of their relationship all too well. They're not enemies, but they can't be friends, what can they be really when they both want to be more than that? The first kiss, I can only imagine how conflicted they would both be feeling. Pran, probably confused by how this whole night went down, still trying to calm down and then be met with the lips of the man that he has loved on his own for years. He has wanted this moment for so long that he brought Pat back in for another kiss, which only eased Pat's worries going into the kiss in the first place because he didn't know the other's emotions or rather he never accepted them to be real before that night. Their whole relationship over their lives, every possible emotion was in that kiss, and that is what made it so overwhelming. So when it finally came to an end, Pran was met with the reality of this kiss and what can't be or what shouldn't be, maybe also how they were in a fight just minutes before. Pat just being crushed after being relieved that this kiss was mutual, meaning the feels were mutual as well, but watching Pran walk away leaving him feel that it was a mistake. Just so powerful, seriously major kudos to everyone that went into the production of this show.

[huenjin]

don't wanna be friends.

pairing: hyunjin x reader | bff2l!au, pornstar!au

word count: 3.705 words

tw: pornstar!hyunjin, nsfw content — dick piercing!hyunjin, multiple orgasms, breast play, breath play, fingering, cunnilingus, marking, penetration, unprotected sex, dumbification, slight overstimulation, creampie, mentions of reader masturbating to hyunjin's porn and the porn explained in detail.

music rec: damage is done | devin hoffman.

note: this was an nsfw ask originally but it got way past the limit, so tada, made it into a oneshot. if anyone was wondering why it's in this format/theme. unedited, like every other work of mine.

you gulp down the next shot under hyunjin's watchful supervision. you've lost count of the shots you have taken and hyunjin has lost count of how many times he has told you to stop, that you are drinking too much.

"he told me that i can't fuck right. that i should at least pretend to fake it to satiate him," you scoff, another tear rolling down from the brim of your eyes and hyunjin wraps his arms around you, pulling into him to comfort you. "i can't— jinnie, i just don't come when he fucks me. i— maybe something is wrong with me. maybe i just can't orgasm when someone—"

"hush," hyunjin slowly taps your back to keep your thoughts shut. "there's nothing wrong with you, minion. you're fine." he pushes your big round spectacles up, calling you by the name he's always teased you with.

you slam the shot glass down, eyes groggy and head woozy from all the drinks you've gulped down. you lean forward, eyes wide open, glasses sliding down as you look closely at your best friend.

hwang hyunjin is attractive. you've always known your best friend is attractive. his bright eyes that light up at the sight of his dog, kkami, running to him right after you cuddled kkami forever. or the way his face morphs into one of disgust when you threaten to put eggplants into his plate. or the way he'd cuddle you when the weather gets too cold. hyunjin is attractive, both in looks and behaviour.

beyond this, your best friend, hwang hyunjin, is insatiable in the eyes of many women and men, including yours. a pornstar by profession, he knows the ways around women, having them come undone in his hold in minutes — you refuse to believe it's orchestrated. you know how he is in bed or at least what the biz wants him to exhibit and that alone has you trembling.

and to make matters worse in your end, you've orgasmed only once your whole life and that was during the time when you played with yourself while stumbling upon his porn (you were randomly searching for one and the temptation to watch your best friend just exceeded everything).

you knew his profession for so long — hyunjin told it to you over a glass of wine that you spat onto his white shirt the minute he told you about it. the conversation was never spoken about after that.

until today.

"what are you doing, minion? damn," he chuckles, "you really look like a minion with those glasses."

you still once you close in on hyunjin. hands on his chest, eyes fixated on his, you lick your lips and hyunjin's eyes widen, eyes unknowingly trailing downwards till he has to tear his gaze away, reminding himself that it's you, that it's his best friend.

"do you want to fuck me?" liquid courage, indeed.

"you must be kidding me?"

"why? you do this regularly."

hyunjin shoves you away, pushing you back against the couch. his eyes narrows on your figure and you fold your arms. he huffs, eyes glaring at you before looking away. he stretches his arm to take a glass and pour himself a drink, gulping it down and feeling the much needed burn in his throat.

"why?" you whine. "jinnie, that's your job. fuck me. you don't mind it. i'll just be one of those girls."

"i do mind it," he raises his voice. "you're not just one of those girls. fuck, y/n, you're the only constant in my life. why would i fuck that up?"

you bite your lower lip, eyes watering at the rejection suddenly. your drunkenness is what stirs the emotional side in you and your heart is heavy. you just want to be able to fuck like everyone else, just want to feel the bliss your friends talk about, the euphoria they reach.

"wait, are you going to cry?"

"no," you bite your tongue from letting out the sob. "i won't cry. you're not the first guy to reject me. this is normal. no one wants to—"

"y/n."

"—fuck me. who would want to fuck the girl that can't orgasm, let alone fake one?" you let out a fake laugh, tears finally rolling down your eyes.

"oh goodness," hyunjin sighs. he pulls you into him for a hug, rubbing your back soothingly. "you're my best friend, y/n. i shouldn't—"

"i want you to," you look up at him. hyunjin heaves in a huge breath. it catches in his throat as he looks down at you. god, he loves you. he has loved you for years now but who would want to be in a relationship with a guy who fucks girls for a living? not anyone sane. you deserve better. fuck, you deserved so much better than him.

yet, his heart won't stay still. his mind won't stop racing with thoughts he shouldn't normally have about his best friend. heavens, you have hyunjin wrapped around your finger and you don't even know it.

"y/n, don't—"

hyunjin loses his last bit of control over your proposition the minute you place your lips over his. it's exactly as he has envisioned. soft, delicate and everything that kept him away from breaking. you capture his bottom lip, kissing him softly, hands trailing under his sweater. hyunjin feels the goosebumps rising up, your warmth seeping into his. it takes everything in hyunjin to keep his hands away.

you pull away, catching your lower lip with your teeth before letting go and looking away, "you won't even kiss me back. am i that worse? do i kiss bad? jinnie, i just want to be—"

hyunjin has his hands on your face, turning it for you to look at him before he has his lips crashing down on yours, taking your breath away. you heave, breath hitching and you gasp.

hyunjin is aphrodite. the very reincarnation of sin. he creeps into you just as you expected, crawling into your mind and captivating every single sense of yours. your hands are in his hair, tugging at the roots and moving against his body. his hand sprawls over your neck and his thumb presses into the neck, rubbing slow circles. he kisses the top of your lips, your hands tugging at his sweater and you are moaning into his mouth.

you pull away for a second, fingers digging into his clothes, tugging at it to be thrown away and hyunjin obliges. helping you out of yours too, the two of you face each other stark naked. you take him in for the divinity he is in your head, eyes trailing down to his slightly erect dick and you gasp.

it's true. the videos don't lie. he is bigger than you had seen, girth firmer than you had envisioned and the frenum piercing has you salivating. it shines under the lighting, your eyes unable to drift away from it, lips parted slightly and heavens, hyunjin can't take his eyes away from you either. was this what he was missing out all this while in the name of friendship?

his lips are back on yours, your breasts firm against his chest as his cock rubs against your inner thigh. it's messy, heavy and has you panting for breath, chasing after his tongue, wrapped around yours like they never want to let go.

quicksand. this is quicksand. you're falling in too quick; falling into everything hyunjin has to offer way too quickly. and you love it. your mind is rid of thoughts. just hyunjin, hyunjin, hwang hyunjin. he pushes back, still kissing you heavily, till your back hits the soft covers of the couch and he's hovering over you.

hyunjin's tongue licks your lower lip, causing you to moan and he's groaning at the sensation, pulling apart for air few minutes later. he cups your face, thumb brushing the side and you lean into his palm.

"i— we should—"

"no, please don't stop," you beg. "not now. please. we're in too deep to stop."

"but y/n—"

"please fuck me, jinnie. fuck me like you fucked soojin."

hyunjin's eyes widens and he pulls away from you. looking at you as if he's staring into your soul, he gulps. "how did you—" his cheeks redden. "wait—" you bite your lower lip. hyunjin pulls the rubber band that holds his hair up, causing the silver strands to fall forward. he runs his finger through it, pushing it back as he holds it tightly to focus. "you watched my porn."

you gulp, lips drying up and you nod, running your mouth quickly to justify yourself. "i did. it was supposed to be a one time thing but—" you look away. "—i touched myself to that. i fingered myself to you fucking soojin and it's the only time i came."

if hyunjin has been just losing it all this while, now, he has lost it completely. his eyes darken, a light growl leaving his lips as he holds your legs and pulls you closer into his kneeling self. you groan slightly in his grip.

"you want me to fuck you like i fucked soojin?"

"yes—"

"want me to fuck you like some doll, huh?" he bends forward, kissing your neck, sucking at the skin till they stain purple to his pleasure. hyunjin marks you all the way to your breasts, covering your skin with both dark and light marks as you repeatedly confirm, "yes, yes, yes."

hyunjin pulls away, staring at you almost tauntingly, licking his lips and running his hand through his hair. he drops the words like they are heavy. "tell me then. tell me what i did and i'll do the same to you, just like you wished."

"you fuck—"

"no," he shakes his head. "in detail. from the very first scene. you'll get only what you ask for. nothing more. nothing less. so, go on, doll. tell me."

the power you hold is insane. you do not know how to use it, however. having never been given this much power, you look at your best friend for a while before slowly telling him. the words seem foreign to you but if this is how it is going to be, and if this helps you come, you're doing it.

"y-you kissed her first." your voice is barely audible. like you're telling hyunjin a secret. hyunjin catches your lips yet again, tongue presses against your lower lip before he slips it in, tangling it with yours as he kisses you. you moan, eyes closing as your hand wrap around his axle, hands pressed on his back. your fingers plays with the few strands of his silver dyed hair at the nape. he pulls back, waiting for you to continue.

with a little more confidence and the huge amount of liquid courage in you, you demand, "you marked her up like you just did to me. i hate that you marked her up. i hated it so much but turned me on."

hyunjin sucks a hickey right above your breast, speaking into your skin, "you hated it, doll?"

"yes. wanted it to be me." hyunjin's teeth grazes your skin and you moan, "fuck." your fingers pull his hair lightly and hyunjin grunts, teeth biting into your skin, making a dark mark that has you arch your back and your thigh to rub against his cock.

"what else did you see me do, doll?" his mouth trails further down to your breast and you gasp.

"you sucked on her breasts. played with it harshly." hyunjin abides by it, sucking on your breasts, tongue lapping around your nipples and drawing out circles by it. "yes, yes— fuck, jinnie, oh my—" hyunjin finds it seductive as fuck that you never complete your sentences as you moan. and he wants you like that — barely being able to say words besides his name. that's all he needed to hear.

"you played with soojin's other breast at the same time like—" his hand is already on your right breast. it pinched the nipple, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger. the pain shoots up and it clouds your senses, causing you to grind on his cock. your arousal leaks through you, and you feel yourself grow wetter with every single flick of hyunjin's tongue.

his right hand is still on your breast, his lips trail downward. your breath hitches in your throat and you let out a shortened sigh as he breathes lowly against your skin, kissing it before landing right in front of your core, wet with want for the man before you.

"so fucking wet and what for, doll?"

"your cock, oh my god. jinnie, want your cock in me. please." you beg, writhing in his hold as he grabs your breast, fondling it in his hold.

"that's not what i did in that video. go on, continue." it's stern with command and has you spitting out the next in sequence instantly.

"you—" hyunjin is playing with your nipples as he waits for you to speak. his finger twist and turn your nipples and you're squeezing your thighs together in this intense pleasure. "fuck, can't think, jinnie. i don't know. i—"

"no, no," he hushes. kissing your pubic mound and licking small stripes, he mumbles, "you have to remember the only porno that had you come, right?"

"you—" you feel his warm breath all over your core and a gush of arousal oozes out. "you had your mouth on her pussy. you ate her out till she came, oh my god. you ate her out—"

"well done, doll." and his lips are on your wet ones. he licks at the lips, pushing it apart as he takes in your arousal, lapping in to take it all. it's merciless. and if you thought his porn was intense, you forgot all about how hyunjin himself was a walking pornography. the way his tongue licks your lips, tip teasing your entrance as he rubs your clit, slowly. he draws small circles over it, tapping at the engorged button till your toes curl in, knees lift up to bend for your feet to press down. your eyes are squeezed shut and your fingers pull at his hair every time you feel the knot tightening.

the room is filled with lewd noises and your moans, resonating through the whole area for you to hear it out in the silence. it's pornographic. the voices you make resemble those that you heard. hyunjin licks another stripe up your sodden lips before wrapping the plump pair around your clit and sucking on it, loud noise of suckle resonating and causing you to move your hips slightly.

his teeth grazes over your clit, nibbling slightly till you feel the knot clench in your stomach. it's a vortex forming deep within and from the one time experience you have, you know. it's coming. you're so close. hyunjin rubs your clit furiously, mouth moving back your lip as he eats you out. he pulls apart right when he knows you're soon to come and in a second, two of his fingers are deep within you, rubbing against your inner walls and you're crying out his name just like he wanted.

it's hyunjin, hyunjin, hyunjin. that's all he can hear — his name dripping in saccharine from your mouth, topped with all those insatiable moans that leave your lips and hyunjin quickens his pace. the two fingers thrust in and out of you, finding the spot and rubbing at the walls to elicit a particular reaction — hyunjin is searching. searching for that one spot that will have you ruined for him.

"fuck, oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, what—"

the minute he touches a particularly soft area, he has you grinding down on him, chanting his name like a mantra and he knows — hyunjin's found your spot. he rubs it as he curves his fingers, having you arch further into him. he sucks on your clit, fingers thrusting in you relentlessly.

and you come undone so easily that it's a surprise how your ex couldn't do this for you. you see the white under your eyelids as you come undone. hyunjin helps you ride it out. he removes his fingers and licks you clean, taking in every single drop of your orgasm.

"told you that you were perfect," he says, looking at you and smiling. he kisses your mound as he lifts your hips up. "you're the most perfect human being ever. so how in the world could anything be wrong with you?" he wipes away the tears rolling down your eyes, as an effect from the intensity of the orgasm you went through. "so, doll, now tell me what else did i do?"

your mind is blank. you can't think of anything. your mind is filled with just the man before you in all his naked glory and how you just want him. "want you, jinnie. please. i want your dick. please want that."

"that's not the answer to my question," he huffs. "did i not lift her legs up like this?" he lifts your legs and places it over his shoulders. his erect cock is angled right and he rubs the head all over your wetness. you hitch and whine, stuttering how much you want him. "did i fuck my doll dumb? did i fuck out all your brains, baby? oh no. should i fuck you more? can you answer that, doll?"

you nod, lips parting. "want jinnie's dick. want it. want it in me."

"as you wish, doll," and he inserts it into you, pushing your walls apart with his fingers till he thrusts completely into you. his piercing underneath his shaft drags against your walls, the cold metal adding the extra sensation that tingles your nerves. his large hands hold your hips up, your ankles hitting his back bone everytime he thrusts into you. he uses his one hand to hold your wrists together above you as he hits your spot over and over again. the friction of his big cock and the frenum piercing is all too much right after one orgasm. the stimulation is over bearing and you know why the girl in the video has her eyes roll up, tongue out and lips swollen.

hyunjin plunges into you and you gush all over his cock, coating almost all of his length with your arousal. hyunjin is barely in but he is already hitting your spot, hot tip brushing against it vicariously and the frenum piercing cold against it. the friction is enough to have the knot tighten so fast and hard that you know this is going to overpower you. hyunjin lets go of you wrists but you hold them above you obediently. his hand trails to hold your breast, squeezing it and fondling with it; the other holding your legs up securely.

with every thrust, his piercing drags against your walls and his balls slap against your cheeks. tears spill down your face as you scream loudly, "jin-ah, fuck. jinnie, jinnie, jinnie. it's too much, oh my god. i can feel it. oh—"

"you're taking it like a good, good doll for me. you can take more. i know you can." he takes his cock out. he wraps his fingers around it and dragging it across your slit and your core, the frenum piercing rubbing against it and you're ready to snap again.

and without any warning, he enters into you again, this time harshly and with a quicker pace. it is fast and hard and has you gripping onto him for the life of yours, your hands moving to hold his biceps, fingers digging into it. hyunjin fucks you like he wants to take you to heaven and back. like he wants to show you everything you are missing out and that there's nothing wrong with you. it's the men. always the men.

"going to fuck you and show you how you should be fucked. how you should be getting it. going to fuck you dumb, doll and have you be mine."

he doesn't stop. hyunjin is grunting and huffing as he thrusts repeatedly in you, his pubic bone hitting your clit and causing short sorts of heightened sensations.

"jinnie! i'm coming. i'm coming. oh fuck, i'm—"

second one in a span of few hours. if you could think properly, you would be surprised at how you came twice. it's surprising that you've come thrice so far in your whole life and all three times were to be credited to hwang hyunjin, your best friend.

you come around his cock, the white flash spreading under your eyelids and you are weeping. you feel the rushing oxytocin clouding your brain as you clench tightly on his cock. hyunjin doesn't stop however, as he chases after his own high, thrusting even faster if it were possible and overstimulating you. in a few minutes, hyunjin is coming in you. hot white spurts of his cum coating your insides as he thrusts his orgasm out, only to pull it out eventually and have his white come and yours poze out and stain the couch.

your eyes are shut and you are panting heavily, chests rising and hyunjin brushes your hair away from your face, wiping the sweat that has accumulated by your forehead. he places your legs down and mumbles, "you okay, minion?"

"hm," you respond. that's all you can say. you were too fucked out to think or do anything. hyunjin chuckles and slowly getting off the couch, he carefully lifts you up into his arms. you snuggle into his chest, wrapping your arms around him. "where are we going?"

hyunjin barely hears you question with how soft it was. you repeat and it is the second time that he hears it perfectly.

"going to clean you up and rest you in bed. you need to sleep well now." you nod, snuggling further into his chest as he carries you into his bedroom.

hyunjin's wrong, though. when he wondered how in the world anything could be wrong with you, he clearly knew there is something wrong with you.

you are too dense to ever realise how deep his feelings are for you.

[homieswithhades]

why steve rogers returning to the past was wrong

disclaimer: im clearly a stucky enthusiast, but please, do not be thrown off by that. i admit, there may be undertones of bias because of that in the following, but i did my best with trying to lay out the facts and draw logical conclusions, so do please give me a chance. also, i may have accidentaly omitted some moments and some quotes may not be 100% word for word, as my memory lowkey sucks. ALSO this is NOT a peggy hate post!! i think shes a dope and underrated character and quite frankly she was done dirty. but i also definitely h8 the trope of badass woman falls for the hero.

first and foremost, every sane person knows endgame was complete and utter bullshit when dealing with steves character, so this post will be more for you to maybe show (and hopefully convince) some stubborn friend or family member. nice, concise (not) and including proof from the movies (+a few tweets and stucky undertones, if u dont fw that i respect it but bucky is an integral part to steves character regardless of how u interpret their relationship) here is why steves character development was thrown away at the end of endgame.

let us begin at looking at the cap trilogy.

in ca:tfa it should be noted that steve had no one to return to in the 40s, except bucky. i believe steves relationship with peggy was no where near as developed as it should have been to elicit him returning exclusively for her. as we are aware, steves driving force has absolutely always been bucky. bucky was there for steve after his parents died, when he was sick, and always protected him from whatever trouble he got himself into. "until the end of the line" right? steves relationship with peggy was forced and short lived, literally, we're talking a matter of months here. i need to keep emphasising the important disparity between bucky and peggy, as it is absolutely key in this whole argument. steve dropped everything and went against every order just to even attempt to save bucky. even the slightest chance of him surviving being captured was enough for steve to break into a hydra camp and free the 107th division. steve even had the chance to capture zola, one of the main villains and masterminds of the war, but again, steve prioritised bucky. when theyre trying to escape the exploding hydra camp, the exchange between steve and bucky is critical. steve says "go! get out of here!" as all he wanted was bucky escaping safely. he put bucky's life over his own (this wasnt the first time he did this, nor the last) but bucky rooted himself to the spot, and yelled back "no, not without you!". they both escaped safely as we know, and then steve gathers the howling commandos to take down the red skull. bucky then falls off the train, nd steve blames himself for his death, even visibly crying over it twice. steves morals went from "i dont wanna kill anyone. i dont like bullies, i dont care where theyre from" before buckys death, to "i wont stop until all of hydra are dead or captured" after. stuff happens and steve defeats the red skull and is now in control of the flying ship with the bombs. he connects the comms with peggy and she tries to convince him theres another way to disarm the ship. steve was so dedicated at that point he didnt even want to hear it. he didnt even attempt to do anything to ensure his survival. this alone proves, peggy was not important enough to him to return to.

next is ca:tws. The stevebucky movie. in the museum, peggy confirms that steve saved the man from the 107th division who eventually became her husband (steve was never in the 107th, just to clarify) i believe her husbands name was daniel sousa (as revealed in the marvels agents of shield show) steve then finds out peggy is alive and talks to her. she, in short, tells him she's lived her life, and it was his turn to live his in the time hes in. the "my best girl" line was unnecessary and out of place; again, steve barely knew her. again, shit goes down, and steve finds out the winter soldier is bucky and immediately drops everything, and becomes dead set on saving him. not killing, not imprisoning, but saving him. no matter the cost. "he saw me, and he didnt even know me" "hes not the kind you save, hes the kind you stop. he won't recognise you" "he will." god, steve KNEW bucky would recognise him. regardless of the brainwashing, steve managed to break through the barrier hydra fought so hard to drill into buckys mind. nothing ever broke him out of that state exept for steve. "im not gonna fight you, youre my friend." "youre my mission" "then finish it. cos im with you till the end of the line." [[good fucking lord let me break out of my essay-esque semi professional format here and just say how fucking heartbreaking those lines are. oh my god. read them, over and over until it hits you.]] steve shows us again, that he is willing to not only die for bucky, but literally die by his hand. he would let bucky kill him. he'd dropped his shield. he didnt fight back. steve always, always, ALWAYS got up and fought back. always. exept that time. the time bucky could have killed him. that scene is the essence of "im with you till the end of the line" because then, it was true. it was true because steve was okay with dying at buckys mercy. theres a difference between sacrificing yourself for the greater good (steve going into the ice), willing to die for someone (steve risking his life multiple times in attempts to save bucky) and finally, being willing to let someone kill you, because you love and trust them so much (hellicarier scene). the difference between peggy and bucky's relationship to steve is that steve may be willing to die for either, but only willing to be killed by one. not to mention, bucky pulled steve from the river. he recognised him. steve broke through 70 years of brainwashing with such impact it literally drove bucky away from hydra out of his own free will.

in between ca:tws and ca:cw its confirmed (im p sure sam says it) that him and steve looked for bucky for two. years. even off screen, bucky was steves priority.

im going to squeeze in 2 points from from age of ultron here, for chronology's sake:

steves worst nightmare, as portayed in the movie, is LITERALLY going back to the 40s and being stuck there (with peggy too??lmfao) and also the quote "family, stability, the man who wanted all that went in the ice 75 years ago. i think another one came out." objectively confirms that steve isn't the man he used to be, and doesnt want to return to the past. aou may have sucked, but that doesn't mean the character development should be thrown away.

ca:cw. hoo boy. steve went against 117 countries and half of his closest friends and colleagues because he believed bucky was innocent of the bombing of the un conference. god, steve quite literally, did everything to defend and protect bucky. though i shall acknowledge that steve did attend peggy's funeral, however, there was no real connotations there other than the fact he was mourning her death (understabdibly so). steve then proceeds to protect bucky for 2 hours 27 mins and 41 seconds to the point where they escape together to siberia after the airport fight. "i dont know if im worth all this steve" "what you did all those years... it wasnt you. you didnt have a choice." "i know. but i did it" again, absolutely heartbreaking quotes if you read it a couple of times and truly understand the meaning of them. steve somewhat indirectly tells bucky yes, yes he is worth all of this. otherwise, he wouldn't be doing it. a quote to support that would be "for the longest time, i always did what i thought was right." (disclaimer this is not a direct quote i deadass couldnt find it to save my life, i belive steve said it at some point during civil war or tws, but the point is, bucky is the only thing that could have shaken steves morals so intensely.) and finally, the most important part of cw, the fight at the end with tony. bucky and steve constantly protected each other. steve kept fighting because he was fighting for bucky. to keep him safe from tony and the world. he got up, time and time again. "i can do this all day." the fact that he said that to tony, some people consider them the closest of friends, proves again, a million times over, bucky is more important to steve than literally anything else, INCLUDING his shield. his mantle. he dropped it and left it like it was nothing, because his priority was bucky. as always.

theres not much to discuss for infinity war other than their hug whicg was honestly just adorable.

mmmmm endgame. i will not go into how much i hate that movie because it would be a rant quintuple the length of this one. in the support group, steve dead ass fucking says "you gotta move on. you gotta move on" and that sentiment was literally forgotten at the end. my main point for endgame is this. people tend to tell me, the reason steve abandoned bucky and went back to be with peggy is because he knew that he was finally safe. :/. if you had half a braincell youd know that's not true. the steve we know, never would have left bucky for good, ESPECIALLY after the "dont do anything stupid until i get back" exchange [[god i want to beat the shit out of the r*ssos]] mostly because, bucky had fucking no one in the time he was living in!!! no family, no friends and most heartbreakingly, no one he could trust. (yes sam was there but were just seeing their friendship develop now in tfatws, all that wasnt there in endgame) and secondly, what made steve think bucky was entirely safe??? half of the worlds population just suddenly reappeared, which as we see now, there were massive consequences for that. i simply believe steve is not that stupid. steve going back was disrespectful not only to his character, but to bucky AND peggy. most importantly, the steve we've been watching since 2011 would NEVER abandon bucky, no matter how safe he thought he was (he visited him frequently in wakanda, the safest place on the planet arguably ffs) especially for such a dumbass and quite frankly, nonsensical reason as going back to be with peggy, who clearly stated to him she moved on, and so should he (which he did. idk endgame writers prolly didnt watch the previous movies :/) its not even debatable. bucky is more important to steve than peggy. even in terms of screentime.

now allow some tweets to speak for me, this one being the absolute most important one:

ladies and gentlefolk, all of the stuff ive said can be summarised in that last line. "it would be contrary to who he is."

heres some more:

and now finally, id like to briefly mention steve and tfatws, so beware of spoilers (writing this as of ep 4 coming out; praying it doesn't age badly)

bucky mentions steve, unprompted, fucking constantly. he clearly isnt over steve leaving, and im hoping that gets acknowledged and talked out in the show.

in conclusion, tl:dr, steve shouldn't have returned to the past and stayed there, it is contrary to who he is, as shown to us through his trilogy and other appearances in the mcu. not to mention the timeline bullshit in endgame makes zero sense in the first place.

[sundaysundaes]

Spectra

Lee Donghyuck/Haechan X Reader/Female OC | Romance, Eventual Smut, Fluff | NC-17 | Soulmate AU, Childhood-Friends-Become-Lovers AU

The second part of Monochrome. Read the epilogue here.

Summary: Lee Donghyuck once believed in the concept of soulmates—how fate would connect a red thread from one lover to another, in a form of dreams and memories. That was how his parents met, that was how they claimed their happiness, and he wanted nothing more but to live his life the way they lived theirs. Until one day, as he sees her slipping away from his hands, he has no choice but to stop believing entirely.

Donghyuck woke up with his heart in his throat. His eyes, as they bore into the ceilings of his room, swallowed by the darkness, were shaking in both fear and rapture. Two things occupied his mind, forcibly pushing his other thoughts away and rendered them pointless.

First, he knew it wasn’t just a dream. Like what she’d previously mentioned, it felt nothing like a dream. He was completely aware of everything, perfectly sane, and could thoroughly remember every detail, every scene, every word that she said even after he woke up.

Second, he was certain that it was a memory, and although he was in it, he knew it was her memory and not his, because there were parts of it that felt vague to him before but were crystal clear now as he saw it through her point of view. He had his first soulmate dream, there was no doubt about it.

So that brought him to the next question.

Why did he dream about her? She’d found her soulmate, hadn’t she? And she had explicitly stated many times that her soulmate was not him, but a complete stranger—one that she only knew by his face and not his name. So, wasn’t he supposed to be connected to someone else—to see someone else’s memories?

He leaned up, sitting on his bed with his elbows sinking into his thighs, his fingers yanking at the roots of his hair. “Fuck, I don’t get it,” he whispered to himself, feeling a little bit lightheaded from all these unsolved questions swirling in his brain. “Am I her soulmate? Do I still have the chance to be with her?”

But even a chance would be enough, he soon decided. Even just reliving her memories every night, knowing her better, seeing her longer, that would be enough reasons for him to continue with his hope.

Perhaps, he could believe in soulmates for a little longer.

There were a few short memories he saw in his first soulmate dream, most of them were from her childhood days which made him feel content to the point he wanted to never wake up because these flashbacks always had him in them. He was an integral part of her childhood memories, the one who shaped her into the person that she was now.

But the memory that shook him the most was the memory of the time they went to the beach during their summer vacation with his family. Donghyuck watched himself sneak out of their cottage in his grey hoodie placed underneath a beige varsity jacket. He saw a few months younger version of himself, grinning from ear-to-ear, as he shouted in whispers.

“Come on, Noona, hurry up!”

“Haechannie, it’s two in the morning!”

The sight of her had always warmed his heart, but in this dream he was having, her beauty seemed almost ethereal as if her entire being was a piece of art with the sole purpose of being loved and admired.

“Which is the more reason why we should hurry up before they find out, Noona, for God’s sake, come on!” He grasped her by the wrist, yanking her forward so he could close the door behind her. They stepped down the stairs in a hurry, their flip-flops making creaking sounds on the wooden surface.

“If your mom finds out and she—” She abruptly ended her sentence with a yelp as she tripped on her feet, clutching her arms around his shoulders for balance, pressing her chest involuntarily against his back. The boy threw a glance over his shoulder, clearly enjoying the way she had her arms wrapped tightly around his body. Smirking suggestively, he cooed, ��Baby, you’re so aggressive. At least, buy me dinner first.”

“Asshole.” She retracted her hands at once, shoving him harshly until this time, he was the one who tripped down the stairs, falling face-first on the ground, inadvertently swallowing some sand into his mouth. She concealed her marbled teeth with her fingers as she giggled at the sight, but began to run for her life when he growled, “I’m going to kill you,” and chased after her trails with his arms reaching out to catch her.

The reason they had their feet dipped in the sand at two in the morning was simply because Donghyuck couldn’t sleep at the sight of her curling beside him on the thin mattress that was laid out in the living room. The cottage only had three rooms, one was used by his parents, another one was supposed to be used by her and his twin sister, and the last one was for him and his two younger brothers to snuggle up together in a cramped bed. But Donghyuck had insisted to sleep outside so he could watch a movie before bed and his parents didn’t mind, even if his neighbor ended up joining him in the middle of the night upon his request.

So when she fell asleep next to him, her face almost sinking into the crook of his neck, and her hand laying on his stomach, mistaking him as her usual body pillow, Donghyuck had to distract himself before he thought about doing something sinful. So he shook her by the shoulder, told her to wipe the drool away from her face, and asked her to follow him outside, mentioning that he suddenly had the urge to stargaze. And although a train of complaints kept tumbling down her lips, she followed—she always did, no matter where he led her to.

“What are you doing?” He questioned the girl who stood next to him, looking like she wanted him to do something. “Sit down next to me, come on.”

“I’m waiting for you to be a gentleman.”

“What?”

“Aren’t you supposed to lay down your jacket on the ground so this lady right here won’t have sand on her shorts? You’re wearing two jackets, after all.”

“Yeah, but not for you to sit on it.” Donghyuck, who had already sat down on the damp sand, rolled his eyes. “You watch too many dramas. Guys don’t do that in real life.”

“It’s you who don’t do that.” And with pouty lips, she quietly added, “Jaemin did that for me.”

“I heard that.”

“I wanted you to hear it.”

“And so how are things going on with this Jaemin so far? Is he still giving you sloppy blowjobs on the weekends?” He faked a gasp, one hand covering his mouth for dramatic effect. “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot he broke up with you.” A cheeky grin crawled up his face. “On. Your. Fucking. Birthday.”

“Whatever.” She blushed. “At least, he’s hotter than you’ll ever be.”

He seemed more annoyed than he should, and she was on the verge of thinking whether her joke was going too far but Donghyuck exhaled loudly into the air, standing up on his feet again and tore his varsity jacket off his body. “Here,” he said, as he spread it out on the ground. “Your majesty.”

“Why, thank you, my prince.” She giggled, plopping down on the sand. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

And they ended up throwing playful kicks and punches to each other again like the other million times they did, before they finally laid side-by-side on the sand, sweaty and out of breath.

“Haechannie.”

“What?”

“Do you think we'll still do this after we get married and have kids?” She asked, gazing at the stars that gleamed radiantly in the black night sky.

“Us?” Donghyuck rubbed his nose, a speck of sand making his skin itchy. “Like, in bed? Well, I don’t know about you, but I think I might be into rough sex, but maybe after a few years deep into our marriage so you won’t—”

“Not us getting married, you idiot!” She grappled another handful of sand, threatening to throw it on his face but Donghyuck already had his arms raised in surrender. “I mean, do you see us hanging out like this when we already have our own families to think about?”

“I don’t like to think too much.” He nonchalantly shrugged. “It’s still way ahead in the future. I’d probably die an early death from being too rich and handsome, anyway.”

“You’d die from being too dumb.”

“I was talking about me, not you.” He swatted her hand away when she was about to shove him in the chest. “Speaking of getting married, why don’t we make a pact?” Though his heart was racing a bit faster, he kept his lopsided grin intact as they shared eye contact. “If, after we turn eighteen, we end up having no dreams of our soulmates, why don’t you and I get together?”

She unexpectedly blurted out laughing. “I can understand if you think that there’s a chance of me not having any soulmate, but the chance of me not finding anyone more decent than you as my husband? How dare you, Lee Donghyuck.”

“I’m just saying,” he repeated, turning on his stomach. “If by the time we turn thirty or something we still haven’t found anyone, why don’t you and I get married?”

“I thought we’ve promised somewhere along the way in our poor little friendship that we’d never talk about this again?”

“I think we’re mature enough to have this conversation by now. So, what do you think?”

She was still on the verge of laughing. “What I think about what, Haechannie, you’re being absolutely crazy and embarrassing—”

“Why is it so hard for you to just say yes and marry me?” He insisted, holding back a laugh himself because her smile was so contagious. “Is it seriously that gross for you to think of me as your husband?”

“It’s not that, it’s—Oh my God, okay,” she finally gave in, heaving the heaviest sigh before she sat up properly and turned toward him. “Look, you’re not exactly the most romantic person out there.”

“Hey,” he pouted, scowling a little. “I can be romantic. You just don’t know it yet because you’ve never seen me on a date.”

“Yeah? Then try me.”

“Try what?”

“Be romantic. Do something that can make my heart flutter for you, oh my mighty prince,” she jeered, throwing a challenging, mocking smile at him. “If you can make my heart skip a beat, I’ll marry you.”

He scoffed. “Man, I know you’re shy but you don’t have to challenge me with this pathetic dare if you want to marry me that bad.”

She stood up immediately. “I’m leaving.”

He was chuckling as he captured her by the wrist. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, wait.” He tapped his chin, nibbling slightly on his bottom lip. “Let’s see… What should I do…. What should I—oh!”

She raised an eyebrow, seeing him stand up on his feet. “What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna take you dancing.” He offered her his hand and she stared at it with reluctance written in her eyes before she sighed and took it. He pulled her abruptly with all his strength to make her stumble on her feet, but he caught her just in time by circling his arms around her waist, leading her close until they’re chest-to-chest.

“Blushing yet?” He teased, smirking.

“I’m starting to think this is a bad idea,” she flatly said, pushing him away but he took her hand and placed it on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“As I said,” he paused, taking his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and running his thumb along the screen. He chose one of the acoustic songs in his music playlist—Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud which made her scrunch her nose in protest—turned his speaker to the highest volume and hid the phone in the pocket of his hoodie. “I’m gonna take you dancing.”

She snorted but followed his lead, landing both of her arms on his shoulders. “Why am I not surprised that your song choice is something from Billboard’s Top Twenty?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I left my compilation of classic slow dance songs back at my house, along with my ballet shoes and my tutus.”

She narrowed her eyes at his sarcasm. “Okay, Ed Sheeran it is then.”

The first half of the song went by in what felt like hours to her from all the tension that arose between them. While she moved rather awkwardly, trying to match how his body slightly swayed from one side to another, Donghyuck smiled, softer than she could even begin to imagine, and gently asked, “Can I move closer?”

She could faintly feel his breath on her face even in their current position, but she gave a weak nod and answered, “S-sure.”

Donghyuck held back a grin. “Was that a stutter?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I do stutter from time to time, idiot. Everyone does that.”

“Okay, okay, geez. Cranky, much?”

“I’m just not sure if—” she took a sharp intake of breath when he suddenly leaned closer, his lips almost grazing against hers before he pulled away to give very little space between them. “You’re not playing fair,” she whispered, trying not to focus on his lips.

His eyes were half-lidded as he took in her features. “You didn’t make any rules.”

“I hate you.”

“Man, I was hoping you’d feel otherwise, but,” he guided her hands so they could circle themselves around his neck, as he moved his own lower on her body, resting on each side of her waist. “I only just started, so…”

She was breathing a little heavily, but not expanding the space between them, afraid to lose the game. She didn’t want to give him any more reason to ridicule her. “Right, so, what’s next? Because you’re not making me feel anything with this, Haechannie.”

He slowly brushed her bangs away from her eyes, his fingertips grazing against the soft skin of her temple. “Have I told you about the day when I realized I love you?”

That question almost rendered her frozen on her feet, but she caught herself at the last second. “A pick-up line?” She tried to pretend it didn’t have any effect on her by scoffing out loud. “Seriously?”

But Donghyuck was not laughing nor reciprocating in any teasing manner. His eyes were dark and deep, with all kinds of emotions swirling behind them. The tone he was using when he spoke his next words was filled with nothing but sincerity and candor.

“Maybe I’ve loved you since the first time we met, but…” He added a small chuckle as if he was shy and she wondered since when did he become such a good actor? “I guess I was too young, but I do remember that one time when I saw you and I thought,” he exhaled, reaching up a hand to cup her cheek before he pressed his temple against hers, “God, I gotta have her.”

She gulped hard, feeling her breath hitched in her throat. She just hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“You were wearing this beautiful red dress that I’d never seen you worn before, but it wasn’t just how pretty you looked that caught me off guard.” His words didn’t have as much effect on her as the tender way he regarded her with his deep, brown eyes, just utterly mesmerized by her everything. “It was the way you call my name with that adorable shy smile on your face, asking me about how you look and I just….” He leaned down so they’re eye-to-eye, with his fingers holding her face and his thumb caressing her cheek. “I just thought that maybe I want to keep you for myself. I want to hear you say my name, to show me that smile again, over and over—every day, for the rest of my life. I don’t want you to belong to someone else. I want to be the only one you can think about, both in your reality and your dreams.”

As if she was being hypnotized, her eyes began to solely focus on the way his mouth was shaping praises and terms of longing.

“I’ve never seen you as a friend, or a sister.” He was so close, so warm, so intoxicating. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything—anyone—as much as I want you now and it fucking hurts to hear another guy’s name escaping your lips because I just really…” He sighed. “Really want you for myself. All of you. Your kindness, your warmth, your crazy bedhead, your stupid, silly grin whenever you won a game against me. I want everything, and I need you to feel the same way, to need me as much as I need you.”

“Haechannie, I—”

“Listen, Noona.” His voice sounded both pained and desperate. “I know you don’t feel the same way, you don’t have to tell me that but I just—I want to be selfish, even more than I already am, and let you know just how much I want to be with you,” his other hand traced along the dip of her spine, “and hold you,” the fingers that were cupping her cheek were now holding her by the chin, his thumb running along her lower lip, “and kiss you…”

She unconsciously parted her lips, perhaps putting her best effort to find her words but failed every time and the temptation that he felt to replace his finger with his own lips on her was too overwhelming so before anything went wrong, he pulled back and loudly yelled, “Okay, cut!”

The sudden loss of his touch on her body didn’t feel as disheartening to him as the look he saw on her face, and maybe the way the moonlight shone across her features was playing tricks on him, because she seemed… disappointed that he stopped.

Maybe she just got carried away with the moment. Or maybe she could tell that he was being honest the whole time, knowing that it was an actual confession rather than another crazy antic of his. And maybe she was about to give him the chance, to actually look at him in the same way he looked at her, to feel the way he felt about her, and…

And he ruined the moment.

“N-Noona?” He started when she fell quiet, hiding her eyes behind her bangs. “Are you—”

“It’s getting late,” she suddenly mentioned, bending down to grab his varsity jacket from the sandy ground and harshly pushed it toward him. “Let’s get back to the cottage. We need to catch some sleep.” And as she walked off, not glancing back to see whether he was following or not, Donghyuck noticed how red her face was even when there wasn’t enough lighting around them.

As a bystander in this memory, eighteen-year-old Lee Donghyuck felt a hollow forming inside his chest, swallowing his presence one-by-one until he ceased to exist because as he relived the situation for the second time in his life, he knew how badly he had screwed everything up. He had turned his honest confession into another teasing joke because he just wasn’t brave enough to take the risks—to tell her his actual feelings in fear of ruining the bond that they already had. He saw the look on her face vividly this time, and it wasn’t pure rejection. He had a hope, she was about to give in, and he lost his chance.

And now, as she fell harder for the stranger she met in her dreams, Donghyuck was nothing but a memory—one that she’d bury at the back of her mind, one that she’d pretend to never have existed in her life.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Hyuck,” he muttered under his breath before he blinked himself awake.

***

“Haechannie! Are you up yet?”

Donghyuck could hear a clanking sound on his window, perhaps from small rocks hitting the glass. Rubbing the headache away from the back of his head, he stepped down from the bed, taking heavy steps to greet the person standing on the other side of the window.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” his neighbor chirped with an excited smile, leaning half of her body forward, crossing over her window frame. He noticed how her eyes took a quick detour on his body, as he was not wearing any shirt, but she tried to act nonchalant about it. “A lady is gracing you with her presence, so get dressed.”

Usually, he would’ve said something flirty along the line of “But isn’t this how I always look like in your dreams?” But this time, he kept himself quiet, only sighing to himself as if he had troubles that he couldn’t talk about.

And she noticed. She always did. “Are you okay?”

“Just had a bad dream.” He shrugged, feeling sleepier than before he went to bed.

“I’m guessing, you haven’t met your soulmate yet?”

He hesitated. “Well, I saw you.”

She blinked, a bit startled, but she promptly laughed it off. “Right, must have sucked then. You were waiting for a pretty stranger and I popped out instead. Sorry about that.”

He tapped his fingers against the railing, somewhat agitatedly and impatient. “Noona, about last night when we accidentally kissed. Did it… make you feel something?”

He swore, she almost fell to the floor out of shock. Blood was rushing to her face, making her incoherent. “What—why—I thought we were going to pretend it didn’t happen—”

He knew it was probably a bad idea to question all this, but if he did have the chance to be with her, no matter how small it is, if she really did feel the same way, he had to know. He couldn’t make the same mistake again.

“I thought about your reaction after that kiss. I just want to know whether it made you feel something.” He was gripping the railings by then, sounding desperate, craving for her honesty. “Something about me.”

She sputtered, mouth gaping as she was rendered speechless. But before she could react any further, they both heard her mother calling her name. Donghyuck regarded it as a distraction, but to her, it was a lifesaver. Speaking in a sense of urgency, she said, “I gotta go.”

“Noona—”

“Haechannie.” The tone she was using was definite, not wanting to hear more words from him. “I think we should stop talking about it, especially when we’re a step closer to finding our soulmates.”

He frowned, feeling as if he just got impaled. “What are you—”

“I know his name now.” A weak smile appeared on her face. “I heard someone calling his name in my dream last night. That was what I was going to tell you.”

It appeared again, the hollow inside his chest, and it grew even bigger, sucking every part of him like a black hole. “So you’re going to pretend nothing happened between us?”

“Yes, because nothing happened between us,” she professed. “It was just an accident, Haechannie.” She seemed exhausted, almost as if answering his question was draining her physically. “None of us wanted that kiss to happen.”

Donghyuck glanced away, giving her the cold shoulder. “Sure. Whatever.”

She sighed, tired of his behavior. “Look, maybe you’re just confused because of everything that happened last night, what with us spending time alone holding hands, me giving you that locket with those words—maybe we crossed the line and I apologize for that since half of it was my fault. But whatever it is that you think is happening between us will disappear the second you meet your soulmate in your dream,” she claimed, using a tone like how a mother would console her crying child. “I don’t ever want to be apart from you but if being with me makes you feel awkward and uncomfortable, maybe it’s best if we keep our distance for now?”

He gaped, his heart almost leaping out of his chest. “No! That’s not what—”

Her mother’s voice rang through the air again, making her flinch. “Look, I really gotta go,” she softly said with a timid smile. “We’ll talk later?”

And before he could answer, she already stepped away from her window. She didn’t look back until she had her fingers curving against her doorknob. “Oh, and umm,” she paused, looking unsure before she looked sideways. “His name is Mark Lee, my soulmate. Just thought you should know.”

And she left, trampling on his heart with every step she took.

***

There was an invisible wall between them, and no matter how hard Donghyuck tried to tear it apart, it wouldn’t budge so instead of fixing things, he decided to give her the time and space she needed.

Because what else could he have done? She had already rejected him before he could even confess properly—or for real, this time around. It was as if she was scared to give in to her feelings, which made him feel even more confident that she had felt something for him. She was just too lost in this whole soulmate concept that it blinded her entirely, while he, on the other hand, had begun to stop believing in it and dwell himself deeper in reality rather than his dreams.

But when one of his bandmates, Lee Jeno, announced that his cousin was going to come in to temporarily fill the position of lead guitar player in their band, Donghyuck had no other choice but to believe that fate did take part in connecting a red thread from one lover to another. Because, standing in a pair of jeans and a black shirt with his eyes half-covered by his white snapback, was Mark Lee—her soulmate.

Donghyuck could tell that he was the same Mark Lee she mentioned because he had seen her drawings of him. It had taken her weeks before she could finish his sketch, drawing him solely based on the memories she had witnessed in her dreams and though it wasn’t a hundred percent accurate, she did manage to sketch his distinct features—his prominent cheekbones, his thin, curvy lips, his wide, doe eyes.

The sight of him, standing just two meters away from him, sent chills down his spine.

“Hey guys,” Mark said, giving them a tentative smile. Even his awkwardness looked exactly the way she described him to be.

“This is Lee Donghyuck, our vocalist.” Jeno introduced him, “He’s an ass and you’ll probably get into a fight with him sooner or later—we all did—but after that, he’ll get all clingy to you. Just a heads up so you won’t be surprised and end up leaving the band before the gig.”

Mark laughed at that, friendly and warm, and it set Donghyuck’s heart ablaze for an entirely different reason. It was the first time he met him and yet he already despised everything that he was.

“It’s weird,” Mark said, offering his hand for a handshake. “I thought your friends call you Haechan too.”

Donghyuck froze, almost losing his grip on his phone. “What?”

Mark blinked, the realization hit him like a wave when he looked around, noticing everyone looking at him with furrowed eyebrows and questioning eyes. “Oh, I mean,” he panicked, “I-it’s nothing. I was just talking to myself. I’m weird that way.”

“Don’t worry, bud,” Jeno said, picking up his bass. “We’re all a bunch of freaks here. That’s why we get along.”

Mark smiled but seemed more like a grimace. He turned toward Donghyuck again. “Sorry about that. Nice to meet you, Lee Donghyuck. I hope we can be friends.”

Donghyuck took his hand but wished for the exact opposite.

***

“Do you have some time to spare, Donghyuck-ah?”

Donghyuck already knew who it was without having to glance up from his phone screen. It wasn’t because Mark’s voice was distinct to his ears, it was simply because his voice and the way he said his name as if they were best friends irked him so much.

“No,” Donghyuck answered, tapping his thumbs rapidly to earn another high score on the game he was playing. He was squatting down on the ground with his shoulders slouched forward. They just finished having their third band practice in the same studio that week, and although he was drained to his boots, Jeno kept insisting to have another practice so they wouldn’t embarrass the shit out of themselves when they performed as the opening act at prom.

Mark laid his guitar case against the wall before he took a seat next to him in the alley that stood behind their music studio. “Well, you look like you do, so I’m just gonna sit here and ask you something.”

Donghyuck scoffed. “You’re actually pretty annoying, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t like me—”

“I dislike people in general, so don’t consider yourself special.”

Mark seemed amused at his words which pissed him off even more. “I know we just met for a few days and it’s probably better for me to leave you alone—”

“And yet, here you are, talking to me when I’m trying to finish this fucking game.” He moved his thumbs more frantically than before, making Mark worry that he was going to break his phone screen, and stopped when the game ended with him winning second place. “Look what you’ve done. Happy now?”

“I thought that was a pretty high score.”

“That was the lowest score I’ve ever achieved in my life.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just fuck off, Mark.” Even when his tone sounded final, Mark did not budge.

“I promise I’ll leave you alone after this, but I just really need to ask something first,” he said, slightly forcing the other man to look at him by placing an arm on his shoulder. “I see you a lot in my dreams.”

Donghyuck knew exactly what he meant, but he wasn’t going to dwell himself in it. “Sorry, dude,” he uttered, slapping his hand away. “I’m not gay.”

“No. That’s not what I meant.” Mark had the bravery to laugh about it. “You’ve heard about the soulmate dream, right? How you could see your soulmate’s memories—”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about it and I’m also not interested.” He stood up, tucking his phone back to the pocket of his jeans, and leaned sideways to grab his backpack. “I’m leaving.”

“Please.” Mark stopped him by wrapping his thin fingers along his wrist. “Please help me. By your reaction, I know she’s told you about me and I want to find her—I need to find her. I just don’t know where to start. I don’t even know her name.”

“Well, it’s not my fucking problem, is it?” Donghyuck harshly pulled his wrist away, stomping his feet on the pavement, away from the other man.

Mark stood up, desperation sounding thick in his voice. “Can’t we just—Donghyuck-ah!”

“Fuck off, Mark.”

“You love her, don’t you?”

That stopped him in his tracks, making him turn on his heels, hissing, “Excuse me?”

Mark fidgeted slightly, swallowing his breath. “You’re acting this way because you love her. More than a friend. That’s why you don’t want to help me.”

He had earned his whole attention now. “The reason why I’m not helping you is simply because you’re a fucking stranger who’s looking for ways to get into my best friend’s pants.”

“I’m not—” Mark blushed. “Listen, I’m just trying to find my soulmate. I know she’s looking for me too. I’ve seen her memories. I’ve seen you spending a lot of time with her too. I won’t be surprised if you end up having feelings for her—”

Donghyuck almost bared his teeth. “Shut up.”

“But she’s not your soulmate, so—“

“Shut the fuck up!” It happened so fast for Mark’s eyes to catch, but the next thing he knew, Donghyuck’s fingers were fisting the collar of his shirt, slamming his body against the wall and Mark groaned lowly, feeling pain spreading like wildfire from the back of his skull.

“You don’t know anything about me, Mark Lee.” The way Donghyuck spat out his name was laced with nothing but venom. “And don’t you dare talk to me about this soulmate bullshit. Falling in love with a complete stranger just because you saw her in your dreams? Do you know how fucking ridiculous you sound in my head?”

Still wincing from the pain, he replied, “I saw the way you looked at her.”

“I don’t fucking care,” Donghyuck snarled, tightening his grip around the fabric of his shirt. “And if I were you, I would just fuck off and try my luck finding her somewhere else because I’m not gonna tell you anything. Do we have that clear?”

Mark didn’t say a word in response, but his eyes were locked into his. Donghyuck could see how they didn’t waver in the slightest, and the way Mark’s fingernails were sinking deep into his wrist let him know that this man could hold his own battle if needed.

Donghyuck released his hold with a hard shove, and Mark didn’t blink an eye even after knowing his strength.

“Just so you know,” Mark said, when Donghyuck began to step away, slinging his backpack to one of his shoulders. “She would’ve done the opposite for you. She would’ve helped you find your soulmate. But I guess, you already know that.”

Donghyuck stomped off, kicking a trash can on his way out until it toppled over to the ground.

***

Their next band practice was filled with nothing but severe tension between him and Mark, and Jeno had to sigh in exasperation every time one of them made a mistake and blamed the other for it.

“The two of you,” he said, scowling at the two boys who were still trying to murder each other with their glares. “Just go home. Now.”

And unlike Mark, Donghyuck didn’t hesitate—didn’t even try to reason. He just snatched his backpack and walked out the door, slamming his shoulder against Mark’s on his way out.

Jeno grimaced, probably imagining the trouble Mark had to bear while seeing him rubbing off the pain. “Remember when I told you he’s an ass?”

Mark timidly smiled. “Yeah.”

Donghyuck walked home with a sore throat and sweaty bangs. He was no longer as furious as before, but he had to make sure to push every thought of Mark away from his head if he wanted to spend the rest of his evening in peace. He was beyond exhausted and in desperate need of a good, warm shower. He glanced at the house he grew to be more familiar than his own, feeling disappointed that she wasn’t sitting on her porch, waiting for his arrival like usual though she would never admit that out loud.

Well, he should’ve seen that coming. After what happened that morning, he would’ve avoided him too if he was her. But almost a week had passed and they had no interaction, not even meeting each other by coincidence. And although she seemed fine with it, Donghyuck felt more than miserable.

God, if only I can stop missing her so much…

But he couldn’t, so he broke through her fence, and turned over the doorknob of her front door. “Auntie? It’s me. I’m coming in.”

The clicking sounds of footsteps meeting vinyl flooring had him excited in anticipation of her face and the shy, awkward smile she always threw whenever they had arguments a few moments before. But the one who greeted him was her mother, grinning widely at the sight of him as she wiped her hands on her apron.

“Ah, Hyuckie,” she squealed. “Glad you’re here, I was just making dinner. Wanna join us?”

“Oh, no thanks. I just ate something on the way back. Is she here?”

“She said she was heading to the park to draw something. It was hours ago, though. I’m also wondering why she hasn’t come home yet.”

“I see…” There was a knot in his stomach again, making him feel uneasy but he beamed at her again. “Well, I think she’ll be back soon but I’ll go search for her, just in case.”

She pressed a hand against her heart. “Aaw. Always being her knight in shining armor. She’s so lucky to have you.”

He blushed but covered it with a peal of bashful laughter. Saying his goodbye, he turned around to take his leave but she stopped him with a call of his name. “Yeah, auntie?”

“Have you heard…” She hesitated. “Have you heard about her soulmate?”

Donghyuck curled his fingers. “A little.”

Her eyes gleamed in sadness and, as much as Donghyuck hated to see it, sympathy. “Are you okay, Hyuckie? With all of this?”

Thunder roared inside his chest, making him stand still. “What—of course, I’m fine. I’m glad she’s having these dreams. She’ll probably gonna see him soon.”

And Donghyuck never pegged himself as an actor, but seeing how she gradually picked up her motherly smile back on her face and no longer staring at him as if one of his family members just died in such a tragic way, maybe he had a natural talent in lying about his emotions.

“I’m so glad you’re taking this well. I guess I’m not as sharp as I used to be.” She chuckled to herself, a bit diffident. “To tell you the truth, I was rooting for you to be her soulmate. You guys just look so adorable together, but maybe it’s weird for you since you probably think of her as a sister or something.”

“That’s right.” There was a crack in his voice, but he hastily covered it with another smile. “A sister.”

“Which turns out to be a good thing. Because if you love her that way but she’s not your soulmate then it’s going to be hard on both of you.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“You see, finding a soulmate is a rare, wonderful thing that can only occur once in a lifetime. It’s a sign from fate, and if you ignore that sign, if you don’t accept who your soulmate is and be with someone else, something bad will happen, either to yourself or to your relationship.”

“Something bad like what?”

“I don’t know, it just usually doesn’t work out.” She frowned a little bit, noticing how he seemed unusually invested with the topic. “It’s just a rumor, though, darling. So just take any of this with a grain of salt. No one can prove whether it’s true or false.”

“Of course, yeah.” He shook his head, taking control of himself. “Well, thanks anyway. I gotta go.”

“Take care, Hyuckie. And let me know when you start dreaming about your soulmate! I want to know who the lucky girl is!”

He waved a hand, replying to her with a smile but not promising anything.

***

It was already nightfall when he came to his senses, and he hadn’t found her no matter how many steps had he taken in the search of her presence. He had visited the park she often went to in her spare time, the garden near their houses, even the cafe where she once grew fond of. And yet, she was nowhere to be found.

He had tried to call her several times but they were always directed to her voicemails, and he grew even more anxious with more time passing by, worried sick of her well-being.

So when she finally walked past his house, carrying her sketchbook in her arms and a dazed smile on her face, Donghyuck nearly screamed.

“Where the hell have you been?!” He shouted, jumping off his porch and ran to her spot. She was startled, her entire body shaking by the sound of his voice. Her sketchbook slipped from her hands, meeting the cold hard ground that was slightly damp from the drizzle.

“You scared me,” she said, her hand going to her chest. “I was just from the park—“

“I was from the park and you weren’t there!” His eyes were scanning her profile, making sure she was fine. “Where have you been? Do you know how late it is?”

She frowned. “Why do you sound like my mother?”

“I’m not—” Donghyuck exhaled loudly through his nose, trying to collect himself. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Well, I’m fine, so you can stop acting so weird.” She bent down to pick up her sketchbook, but he was faster. “Thanks.” She awkwardly smiled when he handed it to her, noticing how his fingertips brushed hers ever so slightly. “Have you been looking for me all this time? I thought you were avoiding me.”

“I thought you were avoiding me.”

There were a good few seconds of silence where they just gazed deep into each other’s eyes before they began to quietly laugh, exchanging sheepish smiles with knowing eyes. “I guess we avoided each other for nothing then,” she said, holding out her hand. “Are we okay? With everything?”

Donghyuck’s eyes were soft and longing as they peered into hers. He took her hand and pulled her forward until she landed on his chest, embracing her tightly with both arms. “We’re okay.”

“Good,” she lightly murmured, placing her chin on his shoulder as she tiptoed to match his height. “Because I’ve missed you, Haechannie. You and your whole stupid antics.”

It still felt awkward for him, and maybe for her too, to suddenly ignore their heated debate about the kiss they shared and the feelings they had for each other. And maybe they would fight about it again in the future, probably with him starting the fire the second he lost control of his emotions again. But he wanted to forget all of that for now, just for tonight, so he could focus on how perfect she felt in his arms, how both overwhelmingly intoxicating and comforting her scent was, and how nice it was to hear his name falling down her lips.

“I’ve missed you too, Noona,” he whispered. “You could’ve at least texted me where you were. I was worried sick about you.”

“Okay, that was what I was going to tell you.” She pulled away slightly so she could look at him with a pair of animated eyes. “I just went on a date.”

“A… date?” He shivered. “With who?”

“With Mark Lee.” Her cheeks turned rosy with her smile nearly splitting her face in half. “My soulmate.”

Donghyuck gaped, a spark of electricity running through his veins. “H-how?” He swallowed hard.

“A funny story, actually.” She shyly rubbed her nose. “I was trying to draw that pine tree near the pond—the one where we used to carve our names on—and I saw him passing by with his guitar case strapped to his back and a camera in his hand—just like the first time I saw him in my dream. And he saw me through his camera lens and then we were just staring at each other with our mouth wide-open, like can you believe it? It just happened out of nowhere. He noticed me at the same time I noticed him so he must have been seeing me in his dreams too.”

With more words falling from her lips, Donghyuck’s heart raced even faster. It was the first time in his life he ever felt terrified down to his soul. He felt weak, powerless and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find a way to win against fate. He didn’t know how to defy his destiny.

Though she was an arm’s reach away, it felt like they existed in different universes.

***

It’s hard to pretend to be fine when deep down inside, you feel like drowning and Donghyuck knew how that felt first hand. She regularly came by to his room to say hello but she never laid herself down on his bed. She never touched his arms when she laughed. She no longer pressed her cheek against his shoulder when she felt sleepy. He could tell that she was trying to respect his feelings, not wanting to lead him further ever since that accidental kiss happened. She was trying to be cautious, to draw lines between them, so he’d know his boundaries and stay still on his place, and continue to regard her as nothing but a friend.

It was torture.

They no longer spent their nights together, with her making excuses about studying for her final tests and her college entrance exams. And Donghyuck didn’t mind, though his heart craved desperately for her attention because he couldn’t properly breathe whenever she was around. He felt like he was transforming into someone else, almost like a robot, that only smiled when she smiled and responded with words as little as necessary.

He continued seeing her in his dreams every night, and only then could he truly feel joy. Only then he could have the time to look at her face as long as he wanted. Only then he could hear her calling his name without inflicting some kind of pain in his chest. But even then, he still couldn’t touch her. Even then, she was still out of reach.

She was moving out of town before long, preparing herself to settle at her dorm before she started her first year in college.

“Hey,” Donghyuck softly called, as he leaned against her doorframe, watching her finish packing what was left in her room. It was unfamiliar, he thought, the sight of her room now that her novels were packed in boxes, her clothes were no longer hanging inside her closet, the posters of her favorite idols folded and unseen. It was only her scent that somehow still linger faintly in the air that seemed recognizable to him.

“Hi.” She smiled back, her shoulders going down in relief at the sight of him smiling sheepishly with his eyes peeking from under his bangs. “I was beginning to think that you wouldn’t come to say goodbye.”

“Of course, I would. I’m your best friend, aren’t I?”

“Well, I haven’t seen you in a while.” The way she said it, almost heartbrokenly, made his smile falter from his face.

“Yeah, sorry, I was…” He scratched his cheek. “Busy.”

She took a good look at him, not saying anything and it made him feel queasy. “I saw you on stage during your graduation,” he said, changing the topic. “You looked beautiful.”

“Why didn’t you come to say hi? I was looking for you.”

You did? “You seem occupied with your friends and family. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Haechannie,” she sighed and he wondered what kind of mistake did he make with his words. “You’ll never bother me. I mean, yes, you bother me a lot as in you annoy the hell out of me but you never bother me with your presence. I missed you on that day. I’ve been missing you for the whole week. And I still kinda miss you now.”

He grew weak. “I miss you too.”

“Why do we keep saying these things when we literally live next to each other?” She chuckled but it sounded dry before she gave in to the silence again. “Are things… okay between us?”

He tried not to flinch. “Were things not okay between us before?”

“I don’t know, you were acting a bit weird after…” She knew the words, she just wasn’t sure whether it was wise for her to say them. “Well, after everything that happened. I just wasn’t sure how to approach you.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I guess there were just a lot of things running through my mind at the same time.” He brought his head down, looking at his feet. “I’m okay now, though. And I hope we can go back to how we were.”

“Of course, Haechannie.” She stood up, opening her arms to him and he answered immediately, half-running to her spot before he circled his arms around her waist, pulling her close. She sighed the second their skins make contact with each other, exhaling in relief. “Please don’t ever give me the cold shoulder again. I can’t stand it.”

“Okay, okay.” He almost let his lips graze her temple as he spoke. Almost. “Do you want to go somewhere, just the two of us? You’re not leaving until tomorrow, right?”

“I won’t be leaving until next year if that’s what you want me to do.” She grinned childishly. “So take me away, Haechannie. I’m all yours.”

And although he mirrored her grin, his heart was shattering one piece at a time because he knew she only meant her last line as a fleeting joke, and yet he wanted it to become a promise made solely for him.

They tried to catch up as much as they could during dinner in the cafe that she loved so much. He hated the taste of their food—everything somehow felt either too sweet or too sour on his tongue—but he never mentioned it to her, not wanting to erase her happy grin whenever she took a spoonful of gelato into her mouth. Their conversations didn’t go as awkward as he had imagined, but it ended up with her asking more questions and with him only nodding or shaking his head in response. He tried to cover it up with smiles or waves of laughter, and noticing how she hadn’t complained about it so far, maybe he did a pretty good job of masking his feelings.

“It feels so good to have you back,” she said, hands buried deep in the pocket of her coat as she blew hot air into the cold weather, watching puffs of air forming in front of her lips.

They were walking back to their houses, matching their steps with one another with their voices being the only ones that could be heard within the neighborhood. It was late, and she knew she really should have gone to catch some sleep to wake up early on the next day but Donghyuck’s voice in her ears was soothing, making her long to hear more of it, especially when she knew, she wouldn’t be able to hear it again in a while.

Donghyuck sank half of his face behind his scarf. “I never left you, though.”

“Liar. You totally avoided me this whole time.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? You kissed me and pretended it didn’t mean shit.”

“I kissed you?!” She gasped, blushing as she stopped in her tracks. “It was an accident!”

Donghyuck turned around, facing her. “It was still a kiss, nonetheless.”

They were walking on a thin rope. He knew it was a sensitive topic, and she also knew that it was best for them to avoid it but she was leaving on the next day and she couldn’t help but feel that he was still holding secrets from her. It was time for her to face this once and for all, so they could go back to the way they were before it was too late.

“What exactly do you want me to do about it?” She nervously asked, but tried to keep her voice steady. “I can’t exactly turn back time.”

Donghyuck’s eyes glinted mysteriously under the dim lighting of the streetlight. “You really want to have this conversation after what happened to us last time?”

“It’s not like you’re giving me any options. I just want us to be like how we used to, not with you acting all awkward and agreeing to every word I said.”

“So you noticed? I thought I was putting a good act.”

“Haechannie.” It was almost like a plead, the way she said his name. “I’m tired of seeing you like this. Like you’re in pain and I’m the one who caused it. So if you have anything to say, say it right now. What are you so upset about, exactly?”

He took his time contemplating, he really did, but he hadn’t finished thinking everything through before his emotions took control over him again, making him blurt out, “I don’t know, I guess I’m just pissed because you seem fine the next day after that kiss happened and I’m over here losing sleep still trying to sort out my goddamn feelings for you.” There was a pause, as he tried to catch his breath, but before she could form a response, he questioned, “Do you ever feel something for me, Noona?”

She swallowed. “I don’t know, I’m—”

“Be honest.”

Another pause, where silence struck like a hurricane. “Maybe I did have feelings for you in the past,” she finally admitted and his eyes gleamed in both joy and anticipation, “But even then, I wasn’t sure because we grew up together, Haechannie. We slept on the same bed, we even took baths together. I wasn’t sure of how I felt because I never had this kind of relationship with anyone before.” She sighed, rubbing the side of her temple. “And with you constantly making me confused on whether you had feelings for me or not also didn’t make this any easier for me.”

“What about now?” It was the question that mattered the most to him. “How do you feel about me now?”

“Haechannie—”

“No, listen to me.” He stepped forward, wrapping his lean fingers along her wrist. “Remember that time on the beach when you dared me to be romantic and I told you I loved you? I think you know by now that I wasn’t pretending that night—”

She averted her gaze, trying to pull her hand away. “Please stop—”

“Noona.” He cupped her cheeks with both hands, lifted her face so she could only look at him. “I still feel the same way about you. It never changed, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it because I cared about our friendship as much as you do, but—”

“Stop.” Lying a hand on his chest, she tried to push him away. “It isn’t right. You’re not my soulmate, we shouldn’t do this—”

“I don’t care about your fucking soulmate!”

The sudden roar that erupted from his mouth was echoing loud in her ears, making her freeze on her feet, with her hands shivering against his chest. She looked frightened and it tore him to pieces. Cursing under his breath, he stepped away, his skin no longer making contact with hers.

“I just…” He started and failed instantly, wanting to caress her cheek, embrace her to soothe her down but was too scared of startling her again. “What I want to say is that I care about us. I care about you more than I have ever cared about anyone else in my life.”

“I care about you too, Haechannie.” There was a quiver in her voice as if she was on the verge of crying. “I care so much about you.”

“Why does it feel to me like you’re about to contradict your own words?” There was no answer and the tension was so thick, it felt like he was suffocating. “I saw your reaction at that time when we were at the beach. I know how you wished parts of my confession were true and I’m telling you that all of it was—I meant every word I said that night.”

“Stop—”

“I love you, Noona,” he immediately said, before she took his chance in answering. “I really do, now more than ever. So if you still have feelings for me, please—”

“I don’t.”

Donghyuck’s jaw fell slacked on his face. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Haechannie. I’m sorry for leading you on, but I don’t. I don’t feel the same way.” She was looking everywhere but his eyes, her voice was clouded with emotions, becoming unclear as seconds went by. “I care about you and I do love you but only as a brother and a friend. I can’t give you more than that.”

He stood still in silence, clenching his jaws. “Can’t or won’t?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head frantically. “Look, we have soulmates for a reason. Even if we both give in and accept our feelings, what if it doesn’t work out?”

“I don’t care, I’m willing to try.”

“Well, I’m not. I care about our friendship too much. I don’t want anything to ruin what we have now. Especially after I meet my soulmate and you meet yours.”

Donghyuck could feel himself slowly withering away. “So you just want us to go back to how we were? After this?”

“Yes.” He didn’t have to see her to know she was spilling tears from her eyes. It was already spoken clear in her voice. “I-if that’s okay with you.”

And if he was much more mature, maybe he would’ve been able to let everything go. Maybe he would’ve been able to step forward and twist his fingers around the strands of her hair, cradling her gently in his arms and whisper, “Of course. I’ll always be here for you.” But that wouldn’t be him. And he was so tired of being someone else this whole time, trying to hide how he really felt for her.

So, underneath the darkness and the silence of the space that was hanging between them, he told her, “No, I don’t think we can go back to how we were.” And even as he watched her cry, covering the sobs that threatened to fall from her lips with her palm, he said, “I’m sick of pretending, Noona. So if I can’t have you that way, I don’t think I can be your friend and do nothing but sit there, watching you slip away into another man’s arms. I’m not as good of a person as you think I am. And as long as we’re both selfish with what we want—with you wanting to keep our friendship together and with me wanting you that way—this is as close as we can get.”

“What—” Her shoulders were shaking with every breath she took. “Why does it have to come to this—I—”

“Make your decision now.” His voice was loud and clear, making him surprised by how steady he sounded despite all the storms swirling in his chest. “Be with me or push me away. Your choice.”

Tears were spilling down her cheeks as her eyes grew wide, staring at him with parted lips but only whimpers could be heard. He knew how ruthless he was being, and he felt sorry for making her stand in this position.

So, with a heavy heart, he walked away.

***

Days passed by in silence, and they turned to weeks, and months, and when he finally had the bravery to reply to her words with sentences longer than, “I’m doing fine,” and “Sorry for the late response, I had things to do.” It was already several months after his graduation and he was moving out of the place he called home into his dormitory that stood hundreds of kilometers away from her place.

He was nineteen and she was twenty, and he had never loved anyone else while she was tangled deep in her lover’s arms.

And it was maybe his fault because he was the one who pushed her away. She’d asked him to take a day off college so they could fly back to their hometown and celebrate his birthday together but he declined, making random excuses that sounded like a train of lies to her ears but she took notice of his tone and forced out a laugh.

“Then maybe I’ll see you when my birthday comes up?”

“Sure.” But it wasn’t a promise. He thanked her for the present she gave him but ending his call shortly before she even asked about his day.

He sent her a birthday present—a book that she once loved to read as a child, but was thrown away by her mother by accident—and he received five missed calls from her and nine different texts, begging him to answer her calls but Donghyuck was busy burying his fingers deep inside his locks and yanking at the roots with one hand, and rubbing the unspilled tears from his eyes with his other one as he sat on the edge of his bed, swallowed by the darkness of his room.

And he began to fear the night when exhaustion would consume every part of his body and invisible hands began to press his eyelids down until he fell asleep and woke up in her memories. It was painful enough for him to not be able to see himself as often as he used to, and it was torture when Jaemin began to take his place, forcing Donghyuck to stand in the background and watch as he planted his lips on the pair that should’ve belonged to him. He had to hear her gasp Jaemin’s name between kisses, had to see her card her fingers through his sandy blonde hair, had to see her watching him with dazed eyes and swollen lips.

Donghyuck always willed himself to wake up and he found himself breathing hard when he did.

That night, another memory occurred and it was when she shared her first kiss with Mark. They were at her dorm, her roommate was away and she pulled him by the hand to walk deeper into her room. Mark seemed awkward, like how he always did, scanning the room and gulping as he noticed how the entire place smelled pleasantly like her.

“Coffee?” She offered, and he nodded. Taking a seat at the side of her bed, he played with his fingers, trying to hide the quiver that sparked in his fingertips. She joined him soon after with two cups of hot coffee on her hands, which he took with a grateful smile.

“Why do you look so nervous?” She questioned between small, shy giggles that wrenched Donghyuck’s heart from how much he missed hearing them.

“I’m not—it’s just—” Mark gulped, tapping his fingers anxiously against the cup. “It’s my first time being in a girl’s room.”

“Haven’t you dated anyone before?”

“I went on a few dates but nothing serious happened. And when I started seeing you in my dreams, I just stopped dating entirely.”

She was about to take a sip of her coffee but stopped mid-air, eyes unblinking. “You were waiting for me?”

He bashfully smiled. “M-maybe…”

Her eyes drooped down, a faint blush smearing her cheeks. She placed her cup down on her nightstand before she turned toward him again and pressed a gentle kiss on his cheek.

“What—” He sputtered, holding the side of his face, his round eyes turning even wider. “What was that for?”

But she didn’t reply. Instead, she leaned in for another kiss, and this time, he answered with his lips instead.

Donghyuck woke up with a pain in his chest, and he felt so sick, so disturbed, that he began to jump down his bed, startling his roommate who was deep in slumber. He snatched his jacket from the floor and closed the door behind him with a small thud. He needed to distract himself so he burst into the night air, not caring if the cold made his teeth chatter behind his lips.

***

His dreams, they became nightmares. And they didn’t stop even when he woke up. He was losing sleep and had the hardest time concentrating on everything. He was putting his best effort to move on, to forget about her existence entirely and he had been successfully avoiding her calls or her pleads to meet up every time a long holiday came up. But how could he forget about her when she kept showing up in his dreams, making him feel jealous, feel pained, with no way of stopping it?

It was a week before his birthday when his mother begged him to come home and celebrate it together with his whole family. Though he was reluctant to go, worrying that he’d probably see her on his way back, he eventually agreed to his mother’s wish. If they ended up meeting each other, maybe it was a sign for him to tell her about these dreams he’d been having of her and see how it would go from there.

It was raining, the third day he spent lounging on the bed in his room. It looked just about the same, but with fewer things and thicker specks of dust. And he kept his curtain closed, not wanting to look at the other side of his window.

A sudden ring of his iPhone sent jolts to his entire body.

It was from an unknown number. He usually wouldn’t respond to it, but there was something in his chest that told him to answer no matter what excuses he came up with.

He slid his thumb along the screen and pressed the phone to his ear, but he did not say a word, waiting for the other person to ignite the conversation.

“Haechannie. It’s me.”

He had a hunch who it was, but hearing the sound of her voice so close to his ear still almost sent him falling to his knees. The words I miss you, I’m sorry I’ve been trying to push you away, but I can’t pretend anymore, I miss you, I miss you so much, I’m going insane threatened to fall from his lips so he kept his mouth shut, not believing in himself just yet.

“I could tell how you wouldn’t pick up if you knew it was me, so I’m using a new number.”

“It’s…” He licked his lips, trying to tame his racing heart. “It’s been a while, Noona.”

“Don’t say that when you’ve been avoiding me for years, Lee Donghyuck. I know you’re home so let me in. It’s pouring outside.”

His grip tightened around his phone. “You’re… here?”

“Yes, idiot. Your mom told me last night that you’re here so I flew back the first thing in the morning to meet you. If you make one more excuse of not wanting to see me, I will literally climb up your wall and kick your window open myself, I swear to God.”

Donghyuck would’ve laughed because it was so her to say things like that whenever she got angry, but he was so overwhelmed with the thoughts of seeing her in person that he tripped over his own feet before he ran down the stairs.

The second he opened the front door and saw her standing on his porch, with her hair a little wet from the rain, all the air nearly left his lungs. She was still wearing her trench coat, a scarf around her neck with her suitcase stood idly next to her. He noticed that she must have returned straight back from the airport, not even spending a second resting in her own house when it was only a few steps away from where she stood.

“Can I come in?” She asked, trembling slightly from the cold. There was a huge urge to embrace her that he almost couldn’t control, to share his warmth and steal all the shivers away from her body. But he swallowed all of his feelings with a hard gulp, and stepped back to let her in with a small nod.

She closed the front door behind her, pressing her spine against it and they both waited in the silence of his house, expecting the other to strike a conversation but neither of them had the bravery to find a word. The ticking sound of the grandmother’s clock in his guest room was loud, matching the thundering sound of his heartbeat.

“Where are your family?” She eventually uttered, peeking at him from behind her bangs.

“Visiting my cousins outside of town.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Just didn’t feel like going so I told them I was sick.”

“I see…”

And silence struck again. It was so tense, the awkwardness between them and it was beginning to suffocate him. “Noona, I think—”

“Can I hug you?” She spoke in such a quiet voice, but it sent powerful vibrations down his spine. He was busy gawking at her, not sure how to respond and it didn’t matter, because she already took a few steps toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sinking her face deep into the crook of his neck.

Donghyuck let out a shaky breath, his arms still dangling weakly on his sides.

“Seems like you’ve lost some weight,” she spoke in whispers, her breath felt like fire on his skin. “Have you been eating well?”

It was hard trying to focus on her voice when the sound of his heart clamoring inside his ribcages was deafening in his ears. He only hummed in response, moving his hands slightly until they rested on the sides of her waist, tense and awkward.

“I really,” she breathed, her voice quivering. “Really miss you, Haechannie.”

It was all too much for him to bear, too many flashbacks, uncontrolled feelings, and hidden emotions washed over him at the same time, making him feel dizzy and emotive. So instead, he focused on what mattered the most. “You’re shivering. We should get you changed.” And he pulled away before she could reply. Noticing how the loss of their warmth on each other’s skin was as painful for her as it was to him, he offered his hand with a timid smile, which she immediately laced together with hers.

He guided her to his room and released her hand to rummage the inside of his closet, trying to find that particular sweater of his that she grew to be fond of. She slid open his curtain to brighten the room though it didn’t do much because the clouds were dark and thick, pouring heavy rain to the earth.

“Here,” he said, handing her his navy blue knitted sweater. “I’ll go outside so you can change.”

She grabbed him by his wrist before he stepped aside. “No, it’s fine, just—” She cleared her throat, didn’t dare to look him in the eyes. “Just turn around for a little bit.”

The old Donghyuck would’ve had a blast teasing her about this, so when he simply turned around, bringing his head down to stare at his feet while scratching his nape from being both shy and awkward, the feeling of loneliness began to consume her heart.

She was losing him. He wasn’t the person she remembered him to be.

“I’m done,” she called when she had finished changing her damp blouse into his sweater. The fabric fell loose around her body, its hem reaching to the middle part of her jean-clad thighs. “You can turn around now.”

Donghyuck slowly turned on his heels, but his eyes were looking everywhere but hers because he knew, once he saw her again wearing his clothing around her body like a lover would, he would lose his common sense.

“It feels familiar, doesn’t it?” She lightly laughed, trying to keep it casual but it felt strained. “I mean, us spending time in your room with me wearing your clothes.”

He tiredly smiled, leaning against the wall. “Yeah.”

“How was your birthday yesterday? I’m sorry for not sending you any present, I wasn’t sure you wanted to receive one from me... Did auntie make you a cake?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t good.”

She tucked a loose strand of her hair, wetting her lips. “You always said that, but you ate all of it.”

He wanted to sneak a glance at her, wanted to be captivated by her beauty just for a split second, but noticing it was best for him to stop. Otherwise, she’d entrap him again. “Yeah… I did.”

“Haechannie.”

“Hmm?”

“Can you look at me, please?”

He tightened his jaw, taking a few seconds in silence to prepare himself before he slowly looked up, peering at her features from behind his bangs.

He had seen her sad before—multiple times, in fact—but it was never like this. She never looked this heartbroken before, and he loathed the fact that, unlike any other times where she cried over anyone else, he was now the reason for such emotion to arise.

And maybe he looked the same to her, as she instantly grew speechless, her fingers tightening around the hem of her sweater. “How… are you?” She asked, and he knew that wasn’t the question she intended to say but maybe she was afraid and uncertain whether her words would inflict more sadness to his eyes more than she already did so far.

“I’m doing well.”

“Have you made any friends at your campus?”

“A few.”

“Ah… Great, then.” She was going insane, she could feel it, and when he never tried to spark a conversation like she did, she began to lose her patience. “Why have you been avoiding me?” Her tone somehow a tad colder this time around.

Donghyuck slipped his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You ignored my calls, you rarely replied to my texts—”

“Yeah, well, I was busy—”

“Two years, Haechannie. You had two fucking years to reach out back to me, and you’re simply telling me you were busy?! If you’re going to lie, lie better!”

“Well, you already have your whole life perfect without me anyway.”

Hot tears began to well in her eyes. “Do you not… need me anymore?”

He looked away, his chest suffocating. “You should leave. Get some rest. We’ll talk la—”

“Stop it!” She cried out, forcing him to look at her in the eyes by the desperate tone in her voice. “Stop acting like this! Stop pretending like you’re not hurting when you are just as much as I am!”

His eyes gleamed in the dim lighting of the room. “Why are you even here?”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to ignore the pain that was about to erupt from her chest. “Is it so wrong for me to see you?”

“I thought we’ve both decided that it’s best if we stay away from each other.”

“You decided.” It was both sorrow and anger that painted her voice. “You decided to stay away from me. I never wanted us to be like this. I’ve been trying to reach out to you and you pushed me away every time, so don’t you dare blame this on me.”

“What do you expect me to do?” He vocalized in outrage, his voice reverberating through the air almost as heavy as the storm that poured outside. “I revealed all of my feelings out to you, asked you to make a choice and you just stood there doing fucking nothing! How do you think that made me feel?”

She stepped back, her hand on her chest. “I—” She fumbled with her words. “It was all so sudden, I didn’t know how—”

“So sudden?!” He threw his head back in exasperation. “I have been trying to tell you that for years, Noona!”

“You flirted with me for years, that didn’t count as—”

“Well, I had to pretend everything was a joke because you always looked like you were seconds away from crying, afraid of ruining our friendship and it made me think that maybe you never really liked me that way at all! I don’t even know how you feel about me now because you’re never honest even with yourself.”

“I…” She nibbled on her lower lip, scared and anxious. “I don’t know whether I—”

“Of course, you don’t,” he spat out, scoffing loudly. “You never do. That’s what I fucking hate about you. You’re such a coward. You don’t want to be with me but you keep coming back to me, making me feel things I shouldn’t, making me yearn for you again when I literally spent every second of my life trying to forget you even exist. I had to watch you slip away from my arms twice as if it wasn’t enough for you to hurt me one time—”

“I never meant to hurt you—”

“But that’s all you fucking do!” Donghyuck unintentionally slammed the side of his fist against the wall out of sheer fury, making her take a step backward, terrified. “Do you know how much you’re driving me insane from seeing you here within my grasp but not having the right to touch you in the way I want to? Just how fucking selfish can you be?!”

Tears were forming in her eyes, but he wasn’t sure whether they emerged from sadness or anger. “I’m selfish?! I’m trying to do the right thing! You know how things can go bad if we ignore the signs and deny our soulmate, so even if I agree to be with you, what if things don’t work out and we end up—”

“I’m so fucking tired of soulmates.”

Donghyuck had her body pressed against the wall, his hand on her face and his lips on hers, meeting together in a heated kiss. She closed her eyes in reflex, her fingers clutching tightly to the fabric of his shirt, gasping into his mouth when he pressed harder. Donghyuck felt like a flame, scorching every inch of her skin that was connected to his and she let herself grow weak, succumbing to the fire that was about to devour her whole.

When he let go, the tip of his nose was still grazing against hers, his fingertips holding her by the jaw, while his other hand was secured tightly around her waist.

“I’m giving you another chance to make your decision.” He breathed out, hot breath caressing her skin. “Be with me or push me away. Your choice.”

Her eyes were half-lidded, her breathing ragged and Donghyuck could count her eyelashes if he wanted to. It was torture to keep this little space between them because to him, they were like magnets, both desperately drawn to each other, wanting to consume one another.

Maybe it was like that for her too, because when she took her next breath, she had her fingers around the collar of his shirt, tugging it down so their lips met once again in a searing kiss.

It felt complete—no, it felt more than complete. It made him feel infinite. Every touch, every gasp, every little whimper that came out of her mouth made him feel alive and he wanted more, he wanted everything. He wanted her.

And to her, she was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and it didn’t feel like she was doing something sinful, something forbidden. Everything felt right, the way her body fit his perfectly, the way he moved his lips against her, with the touch of their tongues nearly sending her down to her knees.

“Haechannie,” she breathed heavily as he ran his lips down her jaw to her neck, before he moved back up again, melding their lips together because he couldn’t waste any second longer being apart from her.

The desperate call of his name rendered him powerless so he pressed himself against her harder, embracing her better so they could hold on to each other. And by the relieved sigh she made as she circled her arms around his neck, her fingers finding a home in his hair, she must have felt the same.

“I love you,” he murmured against the supple skin of her neck, making a messy ponytail out of her hair to expose more skin. “Fuck, Noona, I’ve never loved anyone else but you.” He lifted her body up the wall, leaving her with no choice but to tangle her legs around his waist for balance, his hands sliding dangerously along her thighs as she connected their mouths again.

Donghyuck’s voice was deep and hoarse, foreign to her ears but she loved it. She loved everything new she found about him, as much as she had loved everything about him in the past. She knew she wasn’t being fair; she knew it wasn’t a good idea to hold him like this, but it felt so terrifyingly good and there was not a part of her mind and body that shouted for her to stop. He was her puppet master, plucking on her strings, and she didn’t mind being tangled under his fingers.

She flinched when she felt him pressing his hips against her, pinning her against the wall and he noticed as she moaned a bit louder against his mouth, pulling a similar groan from the back of his own throat. The sound of her lustful cry made him go absolutely insane and not familiar with his own strength, he carried her to the bed, making her yelp in shock and wrapping her legs and arms around him tighter in the fear of falling.

But the way he laid her down on his bed was surprisingly gentle, sliding down a pillow underneath her head before he dipped his face down, pressing a warm kiss on her temple. The sudden change of pace made her blush, cheeks blooming red as she became conscious of how he gazed at her features—how the previous loneliness in his eyes was replaced with both felicity and uncertainty, asking for her sign to stop or continue with everything.

She swallowed her breath when he stood on his knees, pulling his shirt over his head, his silver necklace glinting faintly under the soft glow of thunder that flashed on the other side of the window. She flinched, not from the fear of lightning, but from the way his vulnerable eyes were filled with need and affection. She had once told him that Jaemin made her feel wanted—made her feel desired—and she thought that was really the case, until she saw the look Donghyuck gave her and suddenly everything that Jaemin did felt pale in comparison.

Donghyuck needed her like a drowning man needed air.

So when he bent down and kissed her again, she felt like he was unraveling her soul, stripping her naked both her body and her mind, and as if she was a blank canvas, he cast iridescence on her skin, drawing lines with his fingertips and painted a spectrum of colors with his lips.

As a man of passion, Donghyuck’s kisses were strangely tender but it elicited as much fire, if not more, as any fervent kisses she had ever shared with the other two men in her life.

“Noona,” he abruptly stopped, eyes unfocused as he broke away, expanding the space between them but only for a few inches. “You’re not regretting any of this, are you?” It was the question he’d been dreading to ask, but he had to before she ended up living with guilt. “I told you to make a choice before but…” He cupped her cheek, rubbing his thumb against her skin in such a soothing manner that she would’ve probably fallen asleep to it if her heart wasn’t racing like this. “But if you feel like this is not what you want, you can back out anytime. I’m not going to force you, and I’m not going to leave you even if you push me away now. I’ll still be your friend, I promise, so it’s okay.” He smiled but the only thing it conveyed was sadness. “It’s okay if you want to put an end to this. It’s okay if you don’t want to be with me. It’s your choice.”

She wasn’t sure why, but she felt like crying. “Well, I’m not okay with it.” She ran her thumb along his lower lip, in a paper-thin-like touch. “I think you’ve noticed by now that I…” It was too much. It really was too much for her to admit it without being flustered.

“Tell me,” he pleaded, gently taking her wrist when she was about to cover her face with her hands. “Tell me how you feel about me. Please.”

She shook her head, heart thumping loudly. “I can’t—It’s embarrassing. You already know how I feel anyway.”

“But I need to hear you say it.” He kissed her palm, leaning against her touch like how a little kitten would. “Please?”

Her voice was quivering when she spoke. “I love you, Haechannie.”

He’d heard her say those words many times in his life, but only now, they felt different in his ears. And almost like a prisoner being released from his chains, he nearly whimpered in bliss. “Y-you do?”

She shakily nodded her head once. “You were right. I’m a coward. I’m too afraid of losing what we have, not realizing that we can actually become so much more.”

He smiled, small but lovingly. “And it’s fine even if I’m not your soulmate?”

She was entranced with the way he kissed her fingertips one by one. “I don’t care.”

“I love you too, Noona.” His tongue was wet and slick when she felt it against her earlobe, his voice sounding dangerously close and sultry, even when his words were innocent. “You don’t know how glad I am to finally hear you say this. I’ve tried so hard to move on but I couldn’t. It’s just—for me—” his lips hovered above hers again, and she felt his whispers directly on her skin. “There’s no life without you.”

She carded her fingers through his hair, pushing back his bangs until she could gaze directly into his eyes. “There’s no life without you too, Haechannie.”

As they were connected, both their bodies and minds, it felt like nothing mattered anymore. They already had what they needed, already owned what they craved, already found what they were searching for. Donghyuck was sheathed deep inside her, his kisses were wet and languid, passion never dissipating no matter how many times he had tasted her.

It never felt unnatural, never felt awkward, and there were no uncertainties whenever their skin made contact. It was almost as natural as breathing, and though they needed more experience in some parts, they were already content with everything that they shared. Every breath, every gasp, every moan was sending heat to every inch of their bodies, making Donghyuck’s bangs stick with sweat and her cheeks reddening from his feverish touches.

When it finally ended, both still feeling lightheaded from reaching their highs, orgasms hitting hard like waves in a storm, Donghyuck was shaking, murmuring both expletives and praises against the skin that covered her heart, making her shiver.

“What is it?” She questioned tenderly, gentle fingertips caressing his cheekbone. “You’re trembling.”

But he didn’t answer, laying his head down on her chest, her heartbeat vocalizing faintly against his eardrums. He had never felt so happy, so complete, so perfect, and it was all because of her.

“I’m…” he exhaled heavily, lost for words as he sank deeper in his own elation. She curled her fingers around his jaw, lifting his face so they could peer into each other’s eyes.

“Haechannie.”

“Yeah?”

“I know it’s late, but…” She beamed at him. “Happy birthday.”

And he kissed her with so much fervor, his eyebrows adjoined in passion and he whimpered against her mouth, a tear slipping from the corner of his eye and she smiled, hugging him close because finally, after seventeen years had passed, they truly found each other.

He was her life, and she was his, two different souls united into one.

***

Almost an hour passed by with them just enjoying each other’s company as they laid side-by-side on the bed, with Donghyuck idly sucking more bruises to her skin and her panting his name against his pillow. He was trailing his fingertips from her nape down to the dip of her spine as she laid with her stomach pressed against his sheets, slightly quivering from his touch.

Both of them lacked the energy to get dressed or wash their sweat away from before, and instead just dwell further in each other’s warmth, basking in the soft glow of the sunset that had replaced the storm.

“Why did we wait so long to do this?” She asked with her cheek pressed against the pillow, looking at him with drowsy eyes.

He snorted. “Because you were too big of an idiot to notice and too goddamn stubborn to—”

“Forget I asked.”

Donghyuck grinned to himself but she soon felt it on her skin. “I’m still sweaty, Haechannie, get off me.”

“No way, I want to enjoy this,” his nose was skimming against the skin of her back. “It’s not every day I have a naked lady lounging on my bed. In fact, I’ve never had one. Ever.”

“Yeah?” She turned around, covering her bare chest with his quilt as she looked at him. “What about your girlfriends?”

“What girlfriends?”

“You know, the ones you got together with in high school. You told me you had sex with them.”

“Oh.” His playful smile grew sheepish. “I lied about it.”

“What? Why?”

“I was just trying to make you jealous. You were hanging out with Jaemin and I was so pissed!”

“I can’t believe how lame you were.”

“Hey, I was desperate!”

“So…” She slowly said, drawing her name on the square of his chest with her fingertip. “I’m your first?”

“You’ve always been, on everything.”

Her breathing tattered, blood rushing to her face, turning it scarlet. She moved her hand to his neck, playing with the silver necklace and the oval locket with her fingers. “I can’t believe you still wear this.”

“It’s the best present I’ve ever had,” he replied, leaning close until their foreheads meet one another. “From the best girl I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Stop saying things like this, I can’t handle it.” And she hooked her finger around his necklace, dragging him down to close the gap between them.

They both smiled into the kiss but what was once innocent and chaste, became deep and ardent in a matter of seconds. Donghyuck’s fingers were slipping underneath the comforter that she used to cover her body, feverish skin meeting her cold one and he looked at her in concern. “Are you cold?”

“Just a little bit.” She chuckled awkwardly before it was replaced with a gasp when he pulled her up by her waist and positioned her on his lap. He snatched the quilt away from her in one quick motion, leaving her naked and exposed before she toppled down to his chest. His hands found their way back around her waist, drawing her close so every inch of her skin was pressing against his. His warmth began to seep into her, and he draped his blanket around their bodies again.

“Better?” He looked up, his teeth peeking behind his grin that was both teasing and shy at the same time.

She melted into his touch, wanting to taste his lips again. “Better.”

She was distracted with the way he ran his tongue along her lower lip, sneaking in as soon as she granted him entrance to her mouth, but found her focus back when his hands start to roam around her chest. She immediately covered herself with both hands, embarrassed out of her mind.

“Why are you covering yourself?” He asked, chuckling faintly though his cheeks were reddening by the second. “You were fine when we had sex before. Let me see.”

“I just remembered that you once said I have small boobs.”

Donghyuck’s jaw hung loosely on his face. “That—I was just joking! I love your boobs—I love every—” He thought hard for the right word and failing miserably. “—every aspect of them, how soft they are, the little moles you have, and how they jiggle when—Why are you laughing?!”

But she couldn’t stop cackling even when he was pouting about it, complaining that he was being serious. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping a tear out of her eyes. “It’s just you were so dominatingly sexy before when you slammed me against the wall, and now you’re acting like such a dork, which is also cute but—” and she laughed again, covering her mouth with her fingers which he immediately took and replaced them with his mouth, turning her soft chuckles into pleading moans.

He cupped her breasts with his palms, groaning at the back of his throat from how perfect they felt under his hands, massaging them gently until she had to break away from the kiss, nibbling at her lip to contain her whimpers.

Donghyuck trailed more kisses down from her neck to the valley of her breasts, before he attached his soft, plump lips on her sensitive nub, making her arch her back in response. He peeked at her reaction from under his eyelashes, almost losing his mind from the sight of how alluring and sinful she looked. “Does it feel good?” He knew the answer but he needed her praise. He had waited for all this time to have her crying out his name in pleasure like this, he guessed he’d allow himself to be selfish just for tonight.

She shakily nodded, eyes tightly shut in pleasure but he didn’t stop until he had her whimpering, “Yes, yes,” into his ears.

“So about what you said before,” he continued, nipping at her sensitive skin with so much fervency, enough to leave purple bruises by the morning. “About me being dominatingly sexy. Is that the kind of thing you’re into?”

She shivered, looking like she wanted to escape his touch. “I—I don’t—” she stammered, having the hardest time finding her words especially when he had one of his eyebrows raised tauntingly. “Stop teasing me.”

“Guess being friends for seventeen years doesn’t really mean you know everything.” He chuckled, sliding down his hand between her thighs but stopping before he got too close, asking for permission. “Can I touch you here?”

She bit her lip, nodding slowly.

“Can we… have sex again?”

“Stop asking questions, and just do it.”

Their second time was much slower, more playful with a lot of teasing and exploring and it was the kind of sex that felt more like them, reminding them of how carefree they were back in their childhoods days, or the flirty banter they shared during their small escapes every summer. It took them hours to be satisfied with one another, at least until the next day started, that by the time they were finished, it was already nighttime. But even after they were dressed back in their previous clothes, they still found their way back in each other’s arms.

“I wasn’t sure to ask about this before but,” Donghyuck snuggled closer from behind, his lips almost brushing against her nape when he spoke in both curiosity and uncertainty. “How are things with Mark?”

“It’s so like you to ask about stuff that mattered after you got what you want,” she responded, making him pout and cower behind her. “We’re still going strong, actually. He said he’d ask me to marry him after we both graduated from college.”

He froze, literally stopped breathing. “What?”

“I’m kidding.” She turned around, tapping his cheek. “You’re cute.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m sorry.” And when she laughed, he pouted even harder. “Well, truth is, we broke up over a month ago.”

“What—” Shock filling his eyes. He thought he had known everything about her from seeing her memories in his dreams but maybe he hadn’t seen anything yet. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t aware we were on speaking terms what with you avoiding my calls and ignoring my texts.”

“You’re never gonna let me live this down, are you?” He sighed, playfully biting her at the part where her neck met her shoulder. “Why did you break up with him anyway? I thought soulmates were meant to be together, not that I’m complaining though.” He couldn’t help but display his cheeky grin. “I’m actually happy—it’s the happiest moment in my life, dare I say.”

She scoffed, shifting on the bed again so she wouldn’t have to face his annoying grin. “It certainly not the happiest moment in my life but as long as you’re happy, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, come here.” Donghyuck sneaked his hands around her body, hauling her toward him until he could press his chest tightly against her back, burying his nose in her hair. “So, what happened?”

“Well…” She huffed, leaning against him. “Mark and I… We’re so similar in a lot of ways and I find myself more compatible with him than anyone, which feels kinda weird, if I’m being honest. Like, we share the same thoughts, we make the same decisions, we listen to the same music, love the same movies and everything. Unlike when I’m with you—” she stopped when she felt his arms tightening around her. “Wait, before you start fuming, listen to me first.” He sighed but nodded his head twice before he landed his face on her hair again. “What I meant was when I’m with you, we argue, we tease each other, we fight over stupid little things so we can look back on it in the future and have a good laugh from realizing how dumb we were being. And that’s what makes it exciting for me. You make me laugh, you make me upset, and when you suddenly disappeared from my life it was like…” she tried, but whether she was too shy or too confused to say the words, Donghyuck wasn’t sure so he helped.

“Like a part of you was missing?” He offered with a smile, nuzzling closer to her.

“Well, I don’t want to sound that cheesy but for the lack of better words, yes,” she admitted. “I just really couldn’t stop thinking about you. I missed you in the way I’ve never missed anyone before, like I kept seeing you anywhere I go. Whenever a Michael Jackson song came up in my playlist, I thought of you. Whenever I saw a movie, I remembered how you would always scrunch your nose in protest when something didn’t make sense. And I felt awful every time because I wasn’t supposed to think about you at all. I was supposed to think about Mark, and how he always tried to make me feel comfortable in his arms, kept asking me whether the room temperature was too cold or too hot, whether I needed another cup of coffee or—”

“He actually sounds pretty nice,” he murmured against her skin. “I’d date him if I were you.”

“Exactly, he’s too perfect.” She turned around, placing both hands on his shoulders. “He’s too perfect, Haechannie. That’s my problem.”

Haechan snorted but he also seemed amused. “This is why boys have problems trying to understand girls.”

“Doesn’t it make sense, though? You have so many flaws—like, so many. You have more flaws in you than your strengths.”

He flatly stared back. “Thanks.”

“But that’s what makes you interesting.” She reached out a hand, playing with the waves of his hair. “That’s what makes you adorable.” When she noticed him turning slightly red on his cheeks, she chuckled awkwardly. “Or maybe I’m just a freak who has a kink for annoying brats, I don’t know.”

Donghyuck smiled softly in return, rubbing his thumb in comforting circles on the skin below her eye. “Well then, I’m glad you have a kink for annoying brats like me.” And when they kissed, he could feel her grinning against his lips so he tore himself away, frowning. “What?”

“I didn’t realize you were this sappy and clingy.” She giggled, pecking his nose. “You really love kissing, don’t you?”

“I love kissing you,” he corrected, slightly wincing at the thought of the previous kisses he’d shared with his former girlfriends. “There’s a difference. And I’m not sappy, I am full with affection.” She teased him with a loud, exaggerated yawn but he ignored her, focusing on the things that hadn’t been spoken. “So, you broke up with him because he was too nice? How did you even tell that to him?”

“No.” Her tone suddenly became heavy. “We broke up because he no longer had faith in me. It was not long after he read my journal.”

“What journal?”

“Okay, now, don’t laugh, but I’ve been keeping a journal lately to help me think and…” He couldn’t see her face, but he could tell she was flushed. “Well, figure things out. So I wrote a lot of things about you, about us, about how I truly felt about you but couldn’t be with you because of the things we’ve been through. And the fact that I’ve been dreaming about you—”

“What?” His breath hitched in his throat. “Like a soulmate dream or just your regular wet dream about me?”

It was vexing the way he sounded so serious when he asked her the most insensitive question at times like this. “It felt similar to how I dreamt about Mark which is weird because how can that be? What does that even mean? I can’t have two soulmates at once, can I?”

Donghyuck contemplated in silence, unsure of his thoughts but eventually made his decision. “Okay,” he shifted his weight, now sitting on the bed, and gesturing for her to meet his eyes. “I have a secret I’ve been wanting to tell you but since we weren’t on speaking terms—”

“Thanks to you—”

“—yeah, thanks to me. I decided to keep it a secret. And I realized that I didn’t want to tell you that because I wanted you to figure out by yourself that you have feelings for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been having dreams about you too.” He unconsciously reached out for her hand, lacing their fingers together. “I saw your memories. I knew that they weren’t mine because I’ve dreamt about the time you spent with Jaemin and Mark, but I didn’t say anything because I want you to fall for me for who I am, not because I have connections to your dreams or because it turns out I’m your soulmate.”

She gaped in disbelief. “How long have you been dreaming about me?”

His voice grew quiet. “Since that night when we kissed.”

Her mouth was shaping into a silent ‘o’ but no words came out. She was deep in her thoughts and Donghyuck had to squeeze her hand to bring her out of her reverie. “Noona?”

“So it wasn’t just because of the kiss, was it? That morning when you were acting weird, asking me about my feelings?”

He nodded reluctantly. “I thought you were experiencing the same thing, but then you told me you had another dream about Mark, and not soon after, I saw him with my own eyes.”

Something befell on her face, eyes wide in realization. “So, it was true—what I saw in my dream. You’d met Mark way before I did but you never told me about him—you even told him to stay away—”

“Yes, but—” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I know that was a total dick move, but—”

“You had no right, Hyuck.”

The way she called him by his real name made him freeze for a split second. “You’re… really upset about this, aren’t you?”

She tried not to scowl at him harder than she already did. With a sigh, she massaged her temple. “Well, I guess I should’ve seen that coming. You’ve always been acting like that anyway. You and your possessive, competitive ass.”

“But,” he said, smiling bashfully. “Will you love me and my possessive, competitive ass for the rest of your life?”

“One step at a time, Haechannie.” She pressed her palm against his face, wiping his annoying smirk away. “One step at a time.”

***

Unbeknownst to them, it turned out that being in an intimate relationship didn’t really change the way they behave around each other. They still fought over the little things but always agreed on the things that mattered. They shared loving words as much as they had done numerous times in the past, only this time they shared them between lustful gasps and lascivious groans.

Their long-distance relationship was hard during their years in college as they went to different campuses in different cities, but only because they couldn’t feel each other’s lips and breaths on their skins, so every time a long holiday came up, they would spend it somewhere where they could be alone, tangled in each other’s arms, moaning terms of endearments laced with desperation and urgency against the sheets.

It was funny how they kept having dreams about each other’s memories, even after they admitted their feelings out loud. Every morning whenever they were apart, they would send text messages, describing the memories they saw in their dreams, that it became some kind of a new habit for them. It was harmless most of the time, but Donghyuck became unreasonably jealous more often than not, whenever he saw Jaemin or Mark in her memories. He would spout out hateful words, calling their names with degradation, and she would sigh and wave him off, being the mature one in the relationship.

She had a theory about why he was dreaming about her, and why did her dreams change from Mark’s memories into his. She said it had something to do with their feelings, that if they loved someone so dearly, their dreams began to change from seeing the soulmate they were originally matched with, to the person they truly loved. And if the feelings were mutual, they would begin to dream about each other. Donghyuck didn’t pay too much attention to it, because it didn’t matter to him. Soulmates or not, dreams or no dream, he’d still love her with all his heart.

They kept their relationship a secret because they knew how their parents believed in soulmates and didn’t want to make them worry. But whenever they had sleepovers in his house, leaving their bedroom door open as instructed, keeping secrets became torture because Donghyuck always found a way to pepper playful kisses on her cheek. And playful kisses always turned perilous when they fell on her lips, and once the tip of their tongues met in curiosity, just wanted to get a glimpse of each other’s taste, there would be no turning back.

So they exchanged deep kisses and sinful strokes under the duvet, closing their eyes shut and pretending to sleep whenever rustling sounds or footsteps could be heard from the other side of their slightly ajar door. Donghyuck would whine something about, “Noona, I can’t do this. I can’t come like this,” even though he grew hotter and larger in her hand, and she would raise a teasing eyebrow with a smirk painting her face. She would then sneak under the sheet, crawl down his body, and blow hot breath against his tip, before engulfing him completely. And Donghyuck would bite into his fist, eyebrows furrowing in ecstasy, eyes shut closed as he imagined the way she would hollow her cheeks around him, with her tongue running along his veins and he would come undone in seconds. “Already?” She would ask with a teasing grin, wiping her tainted mouth with the back of her hand. “I must be super good at this.”

Donghyuck would let her win, just for the night. He could always pay her back the next day, he figured, when his parents were still deep in slumber, and the sun was still hiding somewhere out of sight. He knew how much she loved seeing him between her legs, with his eyes half-lidded and his lips sucking bruises on the inner parts of her thighs. And he loved seeing her face contorted in pleasure every time he brought her tongue deep inside her, remembering her taste better than anything he had ever tasted. Whenever her body started to shake, hands tangling desperately against his locks, her legs closing in on him, he would lick everything that seeped out of her, glance up to meet her eyes, and lick his lower lip in satisfaction before he said, “Already? I must be super good at this.”

“You know,” she sighed one day when she curled against his chest in a hotel room that smelled like cinnamon mixed with sandalwood. “I’ll probably end up getting pregnant with Hyuck Jr from how often we have sex.”

“I don’t mind.” He laced their fingers together, tracing his tongue on the side of her neck before he marked her with his teeth. “Hyuck Jr sounds hella cool.”

“Of course, you don’t mind. You say that to get more sex.” She wiggled away, shoving him gently by the jaw. “Stop that, I have work today.” And as much as he wanted to ignore her, painting more of his signature down her body so everyone would know who owned her, he stopped with a pout because she could really be terrifying when she got angry.

“Noona~ Come back to bed,” he whined, as he watched her stepped down the bed, getting dressed. “I need you to love me again. I’m needy.”

“You are gross, and I am late. Where the hell is my bra?”

Donghyuck grinned in amusement, watching her running from one corner to another only in her panties. “Man, have I told you how much I love your boobs?”

“Stop staring and help me find my clothes!”

She soon collected every piece of her clothing back without his help as he just kept lazing around on the bed, giggling every time she tripped over something.

“Noona.”

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever thought about being this intimate with me back then?” Donghyuck flipped over to his stomach, crossing his arms idly on top of his pillow before he dipped his chin between them. “Before we got together. Have you ever thought about kissing me?”

Her cheeks were flushed. “W-what kind of question is—”

“I need to know whether you were as crazy as I was about you.” His smile was both teasing and gentle. “Please?”

“Fine.” She eventually succumbed with a sigh. “Remember back then when you said you were going on a date with that girl you’d been seeing for two weeks? Not sure why, but when I thought about you kissing her, I was also thinking about you kissing me.”

“You did?” He gaped, mouth wide open. “Way back then? And you still went out with those douchebags instead of being with me?” He protested, sinking his face in his pillow as he muffled his whine. “Noonaaaa~”

“It was just a fleeting thought! It wasn’t anything that serious.” She put on her stockings, having the hardest time focusing from all the embarrassment she had to endure. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, now that I know you’ve been thinking about me that way for quite some time, what kind of things did you imagine us doing?” And when he didn’t answer right away, lost for words, she added with a sly smirk. “Don’t tell me you jacked off while thinking about me.”

He was good at controlling his expressions, but his ears betrayed him right away from how red they were turning. “No comment,” he muttered, sinking half of his face into his pillow.

She rolled her eyes, snorting. “Well, that’s fair.”

“What about the future? Have you ever thought about our future together?” The sudden question made her gaze back at him. “What do you see happening to us in ten years?”

She was fiddling with the buttons of her blouse, but her mind drifted somewhere else. She had thought about it. Thought about growing old with him. Thought about them getting married, have a child—or maybe three. Thought about how nervous and panicky he would get when her water broke, and how whiny he would be whenever she asked him to do house chores but ended up doing everything perfectly. She had thought about how cute he’d look as a father, telling a little boy—who looked exactly like him—during his first try at riding a bicycle that it’s okay to cry if it hurts when you fall because daddy is going to hug you and make the pain go away, okay?

She had thought about it, more often than not, but he had just graduated from college and she was in her first year working as an intern in a high-tech company. They still had a lot of things going on in their lives. Maybe he wasn’t ready to settle down yet. Maybe he needed time.

“Babe?” He called. “You’ve been quiet for a while.”

“You want an honest answer?”

“Yes, please.”

“I see you growing bald from all of those hair products you use.”

“Why you little—”

***

“What’s this?” She questioned as he slid a little black box with a red bow wrapped around it—a spitting image of the gift she had presented to him a few years back—into her hand. She remembered the joke he made that night, so she mirrored his action, faking a gasp while squealing, “No way, you’re proposing to me? But honey, I’m already carrying your child!”

He laughed, a bit bashful and awkward, but he understood her joke. “But wait, if you’re seriously carrying my child, I will hate you for the rest of my life for breaking the news like this.”

“I’m not, calm down.” She chuckled, and they walked next to each other again, enjoying how peaceful the Han River was at night, with cherry blossoms petals dancing in the wind.

“Are you cold?” He asked though she was already wearing multi-layered clothes.

“What, are you gonna wrap your coat around me?”

“Nah, just asking. I’m more sensitive to cold than you anyway.”

“Thanks.” She rolled her eyes before she focused back on the tiny present. “What is this for? Our anniversary is still a month away.”

“Just shut up and open it.” He sniffed from the cold, tucking his hands deeper inside his coat. “And hurry up. I’m freezing. I need you to warm me up.”

“I swear to God, can’t you at least be romantic for five minutes?”

“Okay, five minutes. After that, we’ll run back home and have hot, dirty sex.”

She scowled at him which he returned wholeheartedly with a playful kiss on her cheek. She opened the box and smiled when she saw a similar oval locket necklace that matched the one he wore around his neck. “You’re so predictable,” she sneered, taking the necklace in her hand. “But I love it.”

“You haven’t seen what’s inside.” He whispered close in her ear. “I’ll give you a little spoiler. It’s not a picture of us taking a bath together when we were kids but it’s something similar.”

“Ah, I get it. Is it the time when we—” But her sentence ended abruptly in silence at the sight of the words that were engraved on the silver plate.

Will you marry me?

“Haechannie—” And as she turned around to face him, he already had one knee on the ground, taking her hand in his and she could feel shivers running through his fingertips. The soft glow of the streetlight illuminated his face most beautifully, with his bangs fluttering softly under the wind. His chocolate brown eyes were so gentle, so loving, so shy, matching the way his cheeks were reddening with more seconds passing by. When he pronounced her name, it felt like he was casting spells on her, bewitching her with his smile, his voice, his scent, his everything.

“Okay, so I’ve written a whole speech—like, a whole speech,” he repeated, emphasizing with a deeper voice. “And it would probably take me a good half an hour to recite it to you and I don’t think either of us wants to stand here for even a minute longer, so if you can just say yes now, I’ll do the speech later when we’re warm and cozy and naked in our bed.”

She was prepared to cry in joy but she ended up crying from the hilarity of it all. “What the hell was that? Haechannie—”

“I’m serious, Noona, a whole speech!” His teeth were beginning to chatter. “Trust me! Can you just accept my stupid proposal now so we can go home?”

“What is this, a blackmail?”

“Noona~”

She hauled him up to his feet again with both hands. “Well then, let’s go home,” she said, sinking their intertwined hands in her coat’s pocket before she tugged him forward. “If you amaze me with that whole speech of yours, then I’ll say yes.”

Donghyuck grinned. “You got it.”

He kept his promise from the beginning to the end. As they stepped into the little apartment they had been sharing in secret for the last few months, Donghyuck had her pressed against the wall, kicking the front door closed with one foot, before he moved it to slide his knee between her thighs, giving her the friction she needed. Clothes were soon scattered on the floor as they walked and tripped their way to the bedroom, silently shouting gratitudes to the heater that kept the place warm while they were gone.

“So,” she breathed against his mouth, pressing her bare chest to his slightly colder one. “Your speech. Go.”

“In a minute,” he said, smirking as he gestured her to sit on the edge of the bed. When she followed, he kneeled in front of her, spread her legs apart, and licked his lower lip as he stared at her arousal. He pushed his bangs out of his eyes, saying, “I have my priorities and this. comes. first,” and he dipped his head low, hot tongue pressing against her most sensitive part, forcing her to chant his name like a prayer.

But when their feet were tangled around one another on the bed, her hands buried deep in his hair while he raked his fingernails down her spine, Donghyuck murmured the things she didn’t realize she needed to hear. He reminded her of the precious memories they had shared, of the feelings they had even back then when they were too young to understand love, of his promises to make her happy—to make her feel complete and infinite until the end of her days—and of his cute, little fantasies of how the future was going to be for the two of them and their future children.

And as he pounded into her, with hard, deep thrusts, hips moving faster and faster each time she moaned against his ear, driving him to the edge of his sanity, he demanded her to say her answer to his proposal. With pleasure clouding her mind, she could no longer think about any word other than yes.  

***

“It has a private pool and a jacuzzi, you’ll love it, babe, trust me,” Donghyuck said into his phone, grinning to himself every time he heard a giggle coming from the other line. “I know I said no surprises this time, but I made the reservation like a month ago so you can’t really blame me for it.”

He silently thanked the florist who handed him a bouquet of red roses before he exited the store and head back to his car. He placed the flowers on the passenger seat next to him, along with two little custom-made alpaca plushies wearing wedding attires, and a tiny white box with a pair of engagement rings inside.

“Look, we’re celebrating your birthday in that resort whether you like it or not,” he said, looking like he was about to burst into laughter in a matter of seconds from hearing her adorable complaints. “It’s not that expensive, I swear! And even if it is, I’m completely fine with using my three months' worth of salary to please my girlfriend.” There was a loud shouting on the other side of the line, and he chuckled, “I’m kidding, Noona. Look, I’m heading to your workplace. I’ll see you in half an hour, okay?” His gaze softened. “Me too. I love you too. Bye.”

When the line got disconnected, Donghyuck leaned against the back of his seat, huffing to the air, his heart banging loud against his chest. The first proposal was all fun and games, but this time, he was serious about it. He had prepared everything, dressed sharply in a black suit and a white buttoned-up shirt, and memorized his lines by heart from practicing it over a hundred times in front of his bathroom mirror a few hours ago. He had taken a day off to make sure everything went perfectly, but now as he seated behind the wheels, about to see her face and the bright, beautiful smile she always threw at him whenever he graced her with his presence, he became so nervous, so afraid of ruining his plan.

A text message arrived, interrupting his thoughts.

There’s a birthday gift on my desk under your name. My co-workers are getting jealous. Why are you so perfect?

And before he could reply, another one came by.

I love you, Haechannie.

All of his concerns began to dissipate from his chest. It would be okay if he ruined one thing or two while undergoing his plan. She would forgive him with a smile. She always did. She had always accepted him the way he was.

So he texted her back.

There’s no life without you, Noona.

And that was the truth. He had only truly lived because of her.

He placed his phone on the dashboard of his car, wore back his seatbelt, and started the engine. His thoughts were so full of her as much as his heart was, that a smile began to grow permanent on his face. Even as he began to drive, he still had the hardest time focusing on everything else but her.

It was until a truck passed at high speed, smashed his car from the side with a loud, thunderous bang, sending tremors of pain all over his body before his thoughts could process the details.

And suddenly, what was once vibrant with a spectrum of colors, his world turned monochromatic once again.

***

[yehet-me-up]

The Problem With Wanting

Pairing: D.O./Do Kyungsoo x Reader (female)

Word Count: 16,160

Rating: (M) for explicit sex and swearing

Summary: Quiet, observant, and whip smart, Kyungsoo keeps Barada Pizza running behind the scenes. Whether he’s firing up pizzas in the large stone ovens or slaving away over paperwork at night, his focus is on keeping the business going. He’s kept his nose to the grindstone for years, desperate to prove his family wrong, and lately he’s forgotten how to look up and see anything else. When you barge into his life, a wildfire of a woman in disguise as a waitress, he finds that for the first time in ages he can’t look away. 

Part three of the Exodus Mall series! (Can be read independently, but you’ll get some extra backstory if you read the other parts first!)

January 21, 1997

An incessant buzzing wakes you from sleep and you groan, rubbing your hands across your face. You slap the alarm and roll over in bed, gathering the covers back around you.

A few minutes later the sounds starts again and you sigh, reaching over to turn it off. When you see the time your eyes go wide and you throw the covers off.

“Nine thirty?! Oh God,” you exclaim to the empty room and hop out of bed.

You always set two alarms. One for a decent time and one for a ‘you must get out of bed this instant or you’ll be late’ time. And after many years you’ve finally accepted that you’re the kind of person who will only ever get up with the second.

Your bare feet hit the wood floor and you shiver in the cold. Wrapping your arms around yourself, you shuffle off to the bathroom to take a hurried shower.

Seattle in January is very different from Savannah in January, that’s for fucking sure, you think dejectedly. 

But your friend was ready to go back to her home state of Washington after six years away and you were desperate to break away from your Southern roots. She’d invited you along after she accepted her new job a few weeks ago and you’d happily agreed to move with her.

She started work at the beginning of January, at Simpson & Sons Jewelers, and you’d been living off savings until you could find work. She’d seen a flyer in the mall advertising for a waitress at the pizza place last week and you’d called right away. The man who answered had a big, happy voice. Said his name was Chanyeol and that you could come in that day to interview if you were able.

You’d dressed in a hurry and gone down to meet him. The interview went great; Chanyeol was clearly well loved by his staff and customers. With your positive attitude and experience as a server in Savannah during college, he’d offered you a job on the spot. 

The co-owner, Kyungsoo, was at a business meeting, but Chanyeol said he was sure he’d like you too. He went over all the necessary details and you agreed on a start date.

When you told your roommate about the job and the owners she’d just about had a heart attack. It turns out that she, Chanyeol, and Kyungsoo had all gone to high school together in the area, and that Chanyeol was her ex who’d broken her heart.

You tried to tell her that you’d find something else, not wanting to put her in a bad spot, but she’d waved you off. She insisted she’d be fine and you’d gone out for drinks that night to celebrate your new employment.

The two of you had met at Savannah College of Art and Design freshman year. She was an incredibly talented art student specializing in metalwork and jewelry design, while you were a Southern former debutante who’d gotten in on your family’s connections. Not that you were happy about any of those facts.

Your mother always joked that with your enthusiastic personality and pretty face you had everything you needed in the world. She’d only wanted you to go to college to get your ‘MRS degree’ - an outdated Southern joke implying that ladies such as yourself, well off and from a good family, were only interested in going to college to find a husband that would make them a Mrs.

It frustrated you to no end, how instead of asking you about your hobbies, your interests, your thoughts, all she asked about was if you’d met any cute guys in class that week. She just about lost it when she found out that you’d taken a waitressing job on the weekends at a café on campus. It was a constant source of anxiety for her, that you’d rather spend your nights studying for your degree in advertising, or working, than going out on dates.

“Honey, with your smile you could charm a pile of rocks. Why would you waste that on something so dull?” she’d ask, agitated.

The two of you never saw eye to eye, and it had taken you days to work up the courage to tell her you were moving. In typical fashion she had wept dramatically, but eventually your father had come to your defense. He was always the sane one in comparison.

He reminded her that you’re an adult, and that it’s normal for a twenty-four year old to stretch her wings and try new things. And now here you are, a month later, in a freezing apartment in Seattle, going off into uncharted territory.

You’d spent the year and a half in-between college and now as an apprentice at an ad agency. You loved the creativity and the people, but the work itself had left you uninspired. Much that you hated to admit that your mother was right about something, you were definitely someone who craved human contact.

The late nights spent in meetings or coming up with ideas in your office just didn’t fulfill you like you thought it would. You honestly enjoyed working at the café during college more, getting the opportunity to make someone’s day with a positive experience.

You cut off the water after a frustratingly short time and rush to towel off your hair and your body. Since you’re the kind of person who favors sleeping in to getting up early, you’ve honed your morning routine to get ready in as short a time as possible. You could practically do it in your sleep at this point.

Bra, panties, jeans, and socks on. Into the bathroom to put on deodorant, moisturizer, a swipe of mascara. Back into the bedroom to put on your new deep blue Barada Pizza t-shirt, your Converse hi-tops. Into the kitchen to grab an apple and a granola bar. 

Back into the bathroom to run a quick blow dry through your hair with one hand while you brush your teeth with the other. Fluffing your hair out behind you, you dash back into the bedroom. Earrings in, coat on, purse on your shoulder, and you’re out the door. All in under 20 minutes.

Thankfully your apartment is close to the mall. You hum along to the radio while you drive, in between munching on the granola bar and apple. Pulling up to the mall you find a spot out front and head inside.

It’s just before ten in the morning and most of the stores open. A department store at one end, a book store, music store. You take in each one as you walk by on your way to the food court. You can see your roommate inside the jewelry store, helping a customer, and you wave when you catch her eye.

Barada Pizza is undoubtedly the heart of the space, dominating most of one side. It’s wide, open counter faces the center of the mall. The large stone oven is visible just steps behind. To one side is the back room, presumably filled with industrial storage and fridges. Several booths are off to the other side; comfortable seating areas with deep blue leather seats and dark wood tables.

Next to Barada is a vegan restaurant and a small burger restaurant. On the opposite side is a bustling Starbucks, a Chinese restaurant, and a rustic-looking pub that advertises ‘pub grub and billiards.’

When you approach the pizza place you can see one man working in the back, kneading dough along the wide stone counter in front of the ovens. Kyungsoo, that’s his name, you think. You walk into the back room, your steps echoing in the wide space over the faint music playing in the mall. He doesn’t turn at your approach, so you decide to reach out first.

“Hi there,” you say happily and he jolts in surprise. He turns, giving you an appraising look. He blinks in confusion for a moment before his expression settles into a frown.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says, disgruntled.

You raise your eyebrows at his tone. But you’re hardly the type to be put off by someone being unfriendly, so you push onward.

“Yes, it’s me. Hi,” you say with a grin and tell him your name. “Today’s my first day. Where would you like me?” you ask.

“Follow me,” he says bluntly, leading you to the back room. He shows you a row of lockers along the back wall, next to several industrial size fridges and rows of metal storage shelves. “You can put your stuff in any one of the open lockers.”

You slough off your coat and purse and hang them up in the first open locker you see. Several of the lockers are decorated with stickers and photos. You think to yourself that you can’t wait to decorate yours, but with a look at Kyungsoo you decide not to voice this thought out loud.

“Let’s get started,” he says and leads you to a narrow office in the back. The space is incredibly well organized, piles of paper in folders in a storage rack on the desk. Spindles of paperwork neatly aligned.

You spend the first hour filling out the necessary paperwork and agreements with Kyungsoo. He asks nothing personal, says no happy welcome, asks you no questions about yourself. You find yourself desperately hoping that Chanyeol will come in soon. Blessedly, he arrives a few minutes later.

“Welcome!” he says, leaning his head into the office as he takes off his coat. “I hope my boy Kyungsoo has been welcoming you with his trademark hospitality,” he says.

He comes back from putting his coat away and looks between you two, taking in your hesitant expression and Kyungsoo’s stern face. He grins and starts laughing.

“Don’t worry about him, he warms up, I promise,” he says to you and pats Kyungsoo’s shoulder. Kyungsoo turns to glare at him and he removes his hand quickly.

“Are you guys all set in here? I was going to give her a rundown of the opening duties and the register.”

“We’re all done here,” Kyungsoo says. He slides your signed paperwork into a folder and slips it into the rack on his desk. Without another word he heads back out into the store to get back to preparing the dough.

The rest of your first shift goes considerably better. Chanyeol walks you through the opening duties. It’s all things you’re familiar with. Making sure the tables are clean, the menus are organized, the condiments are all set out.

Barada has both dine in and take out options. Most days during the week Chanyeol manages the take out counter, serving customers by-the-slice and handling the take out orders over the phone and in person. Your job is to handle the dine in customers and fill in on the take out counter as needed; easy enough.

The menu is fairly standard for a pizza place. Three sizes, a wide assortment of toppings. Salads, breadsticks, sodas. Chanyeol tells you that what sets the place apart is the speed and the quality. With a laugh he explains that Kyungsoo’s a stickler for high standards and you believe him.

By the end of your first shift you’re comfortable taking orders, ringing people up at the register, and delivering pizzas to the table. You spend the day alternating between shadowing Chanyeol and shadowing one of the experienced waitresses, Delia.

When you leave at six o’clock Kyungsoo is in the back office, working diligently on paperwork. You contemplate sticking your head in to say goodbye, but when you remember his stern expression earlier you decide to skip it, at least for now.

January 22, 1997

Kyungsoo watches the clock, dreading your approach. He could have killed Chanyeol for hiring someone without his approval, but he’d foolishly given him equal ability to hire and fire employees all those years ago. 

It had never been an issue before, but when he’d seen you, he knew he was screwed. Chanyeol had been bothering him for years to let loose, to have fun, to date ‘for God’s sake.’

He hadn’t dated anyone since college, hadn’t slept with anyone in months, but if he could conjure up his ideal type – it would be you. He’d nearly groaned in frustration when he turned to see you standing there, cheerful and sweet, determined to be positive despite his cold greeting. 

The moment Chanyeol had appeared he happily passed you off, desperate to get back to his routine, his work.

His friends, his ex, even Chanyeol had never understood why he was so focused on his studies. It was all his parents talked about; get good grades, study hard, go to a good college. The undercurrent was always clear – make us proud. They’d never hidden their desire for him to become a lawyer, to become rich and successful.

After a year of college, pre-law, he couldn’t stand it anymore. His one act of defiance had broken his parents hearts. He’d gone to his uncle, a man who’d made money in real estate but who was definitely the black sheep of the family in comparison to Kyungsoo’s serious father. He’d broken down, admitting to his uncle how unhappy he was, how we couldn’t stand it any more, and asked for advice.

“You’re smart, organized, and logical, Kyungsoo. Why don’t you start a business?” his uncle had said, as if it was that easy. “What do you like to do?”

“What do I like to do?” Kyungsoo had laughed. 

He’d racked his brain, trying to think of anything he spent his time on besides school and the internships his parents had forced him into. He played video games with Chanyeol, he liked reading, but he couldn’t make a career out of either of those. Then it hit him.

“I like to cook,” he said tentatively. “And Chanyeol and my friends say I’m pretty good at it.”

His uncle had clapped him on the shoulder and that was it. Chanyeol was an easy recruit. He was more than thrilled to give up on his half-hearted efforts at community college to start a pizza restaurant with his best friend.

They’d both gotten jobs working at a local delivery company to save up money. Over the course of a year, under the guidance of his uncle they’d found a space, hired employees, and opened Barada Pizza in early 1995.

It’s been just over two years, Kyungsoo realizes with a shock. Two years since he’d started this business and three years since he’d created a rift in the family with his decision to drop out of college. It had taken months for his parents to start speaking to him and his uncle again. But the rift was steadily mending, in no small part to the success of Barada.

Thanks to Kyungsoo’s dedicated efforts, Chanyeol’s personality, and his uncle’s support, Kyungsoo had a thriving business. He’d paid off his uncle’s initial investment just a few months after opening, but he didn’t see it as an opportunity to slack off. This business was his livelihood, and he held it closer than he cared to admit sometimes; desperate for things to work out.

“Who wants to be with someone as serious and boring as you, Kyungsoo?” his ex had said, with the kind of brutal honesty that only comes when someone was drunk.

He blinks rapidly, remembering all over how hurt he’d been when she ended things. She wanted to go to parties, to have cute study dates at cafes, to have a ‘normal’ boyfriend. But first with his studies, and then with the business, words like ‘fun’ and ‘normal’ didn’t have room in his life.

“Good morning!” you call, walking into the back room. 

The high, pleasant voice startles him yet again and he turns to regard you with a blank look. You chuckle as you walk past him into the back, seemingly fully aware of your effect on him.

He sighs heavily to himself. He didn’t want to be so gruff and unwelcoming to you yesterday. But seeing you there only reminded of him of things he can’t have. Reminded him that happy, pretty girls have zero interest in dull, serious guys like him.

He slaps the ball of dough on the counter with probably more force than necessary. With another sigh, he braces himself for another day of working with you.

February 16, 1997

You yawn, holding a coffee in each hand, taking a sip of one in the hopes that the caffeine will help you adjust to your new early schedule. Now that you’re done training you’re on the opening shift five days a week.

The mall is so peaceful and quiet at this hour. The only store open this early is the Starbucks. For someone so energetic and excited all the time, you really love silence, so you can’t find it in you to be resentful of the early hour. 

Eventually you drag yourself over to the pizza parlor and of course, Kyungsoo’s already in the back, making the dough for the day.

“Morning!” you call out brightly and he visibly jolts with shock. 

You smother a laugh and come up beside him. He gives you a stern glare like always and goes back to his kneading. You’ve come to expect his silence by now. You set one of the cups down on the counter beside him and he stares at it like it’s an alien he should be afraid of.

“What’s that?” he asks, wrinkling his brow in confusion.

“It’s… coffee? Plain black. I heard you order ahead of me last week so I figured that’s what you like,” you reply, mouth twisting in amusement. “I promise I didn’t poison it,” you reassure him, patting him on the arm briefly before heading to the back room.

When you come back from putting away your stuff he’s kneading another roll of dough, the coffee untouched beside him. You shake your head in silent laughter and get started on the opening duties. After a month of this routine every time you work together, your curiosity finally gets the best of you.

“Is it me?” you ask bluntly in a cheerful voice, grabbing the tray of parmesan and red pepper flake shakers. 

He looks over at you in confusion. You cock a hip out and rest the tray on it, your other hand coming to your waist, staring him down. “You never talk to me, and every time I come to work it’s like… like I’m a giant thorn in your side. Is there something wrong with me–”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says emphatically, cutting you off.

His gaze sweeps up and down your body before locking onto yours, a pleading look in his eyes. He winces and whips back around to start working on the dough again.

“You’re just… distracting,” he says with a breathy laugh to himself.

He doesn’t say it like you’re an annoying child, distracting it’s parents from their work. He doesn’t say it like something out of place, a crooked picture frame or a misspelled word, that distracts the eye. 

He says it as if you’re the kind of distraction he wishes he could ignore, but can’t. As if he’s distracted by you, in that way.

You take a deep breath – when had your heart started racing? - and regard his back with curiosity. “Oh,” you say aloud in surprise. 

God knows you’d like to push, to use the arsenal of words at your disposal to prod and pry. But for once you keep quiet, going about your opening duties as he keeps up his morning preparations. 

The weight of his statement hangs in the air between you, a living thing that worms it’s way into your mind. While you’re wiping down the menus you see him sneak a sip of the coffee and smile to yourself.

As you work around each other you find that you can’t keep your eyes off him. It’s like he prefers to be a shadow, to blend seamlessly into the background. To let Chanyeol be the voice and the face of Barada, while he works tirelessly in the background, as its heart. But after his admission, he’s all you can see.

You take in the sweep of his hair, imagining what it might feel like between your fingers. The lines of his face, the lush curves of his lips. With a blush you wonder if they feel as soft as they look. As you walk past him to grab another sleeve of cups you notice the cut of his body, his strong forearms revealed by his rolled up sleeves.

How did you not notice him before - the full picture of him – you wonder to yourself. A fierce desire rises up in you, to know more; to find out why someone like him would seek to remain just slightly out of focus from the world.

Abruptly you hear Chanyeol enter the store, as he always does, with a rush of energy. “Good morning Sunshine, morning Soo!” he calls out happily on his way to the back room.

You call out a greeting back to him, ducking your head as you finish cleaning off menus, as if your thoughts about Kyungsoo might be broadcast across your face. For all of his lightheartedness you know that Chanyeol’s much more perceptive than people would think.

The next morning you come in to find a large Starbucks drink waiting for you in your locker. You cautiously take a sip. The caramel macchiato is still warm, and just how you like it. You grin to yourself, glancing back to where Kyungsoo’s still working at the dough.

February 19, 1997

Two people you’ve gotten to know in the last few weeks, Baekhyun and Hitchcock from the movie theater, have declared that tonight is a night out on the town. The group is going to Shari’s, a local club that plays great music, and they invited you along.

The phone rings a few minutes before you’re going to be off. Luis answers it and a minute later he calls out to you where you’re restocking the toppings during a lull in customers.

“Hey Sunshine, phone’s for you. It’s Delia,” he says and tosses it to you as you walk over.

You put the phone up to your ear. “Hey, Delia. What’s up?” you ask.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry to ask you this. But my babysitter cancelled tonight and there’s no one else to watch Caleb for me. Is there any chance you’d be willing to cover my closing shift tonight? I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” she says.

You give a brief thought to the fact that you’ll miss out on the group outing tonight. But she’s a great co-worker and there will be other nights out, and you’re always ready to help out others.

“Of course, totally no problem,” you reply. “I’ve got you covered.”

“You’re a life-saver, thank you so much!” she says.

“Don’t even worry about it,” you say and hand the phone back to Luis.

You head back to the office to talk to Kyungsoo. He’s working through a large pile of papers when you knock.

“Hey, Delia had trouble finding a babysitter tonight, so I’m covering her closing shift. Is that okay?” you ask.

He furrows his brow at you. “But isn’t tonight the big night out at Shari’s? Wouldn’t you rather be there?”

You shrug. “Yeah, I’m sure it would be fun. But she needs me, I’d never let a friend down. Besides, the company here isn’t too bad,” you say with a smile. 

Kyungsoo closes every Saturday night and he blinks for a moment before realizing that you mean him.

He looks at you thoughtfully before giving you a small smile. “All right then.”

“All right then,” you repeat and head back out onto the floor.

March 7, 1997

He’s watching you again, unintentionally. In between sliding pizzas around in the large stone oven, his attention seems to find you like a homing beacon. Your hair caught in the warm afternoon light, your head tipped back in joyful laughter at something a customer said.

He tries to stop his mind from wandering, his eyes from roaming your body, but by now he’s realized it’s pointless. The energy around you is palpable, your joy and warmth contagious. He doesn’t know what to do with you, especially in light of his unexpected confession all those weeks ago.

He feels your attention on him sometimes and wishes not for the first time that he was more like Chanyeol. That he was easygoing, friendly, and able to talk freely with others. But you seem to find his crankiness charming, always smiling at him whenever he does ask you about your day or strike up a conversation when you run into each other in the back room on break. 

He has to stop himself from moving your schedule around so it lines up more closely with his.

You open together Fridays, Mondays, and Tuesdays. You open and he closes on Saturdays and Sundays. Every week he tells himself that those three days together are enough. Every week he knows that he’s lying to himself.

March 27, 1997

By this point even Chanyeol has noticed Kyungsoo’s distraction around you. He smiles every time he looks over and sees his friend paused in the middle of adding toppings, his gaze stuck on you.

He doesn’t say anything of course, he’d never tease his friend about the crush he obviously has. He’s happy that Kyungsoo is finally showing interest in someone after all these years of working his ass off.

Just last week you’d had an angry customer yelling at you and Kyungsoo had stepped in. Chanyeol had been completely shocked. In all the years he’d known Kyungsoo he’d never seen him move so quickly.

The minute the man’s voice got raised, yelling about how you were an idiot and how he’d specifically asked for no olives, Kyungsoo was over to your side. Stepping in front of you to talk down the customer, handling the situation.

He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself, the way Kyungsoo pulled you aside after the customer left. His hand gently reaching out for your shoulder, his soothing words asking if you were all right. Chanyeol would have bet a million dollars that Kyungsoo missed the adoring expression on your face as you watched him for the rest of the day.

May 19, 1997

It’s twelve thirty-four. It’s twelve thirty-four in the afternoon, he keeps repeating to himself. 

Desperately staring at the clock in the back room so his attention won’t be drawn back to you and the man at the nearby table. He watches the two black hands move around the clock face, trying to simultaneously block out the words he’s hearing and listen as closely as possible.

“Yes, oh my gosh. You have got to try the key lime pie there. It’s amazing,” you’re gushing to the man at the table.

He’s tall, even seated. Shaggy blonde hair, red plaid shirt on, skateboard propped up against the table leg. The textbook photo of a Seattleite. When Kyungsoo gives up and glances back, the man has his arm around the back of the booth; his eyes take in your body as you ramble happily about the insanely popular diner down the street.

He feels his blood burn, a tightness coming to his chest as this man so brazenly admires you. He’s going to ask you out, Kyungsoo can feel it. The thought makes him want to scream, but he’s helpless, watching from the back. What claim does he have on you? If you were uncomfortable he could easily step in as a manager. But against this benign flirtation he has no jurisdiction.

It’s like a car crash, he can’t look away. The voracity with which he wants to know your answer to the forthcoming question is staggering.

The pizza the man ordered is already on the table in front of him. You finish talking and turn away with a smile, saying, “Enjoy your pizza, let me know if I can get you anything else.”

“Wait,” the man says and you turn back. “This diner sounds fantastic, I can’t believe I haven’t eaten there before. Why don’t you come with me? Friday night maybe?” he asks with a smug grin, as if there’s no chance you’d turn down the offer.

You falter, brushing your hair behind your ears. “Oh, that’s so sweet of you. But I close Fridays actually. Sorry,” you say with a relieved tone that catches Kyungsoo off guard.

You don’t close Fridays - you open with him every Friday morning like clockwork. He grins to himself, a triumphant feeling rising in his chest.

The man presses on. “That’s too bad. What about another night? I’d love to get your number and we can set something up,” he continues hopefully.

At the second attempt you become more resolved. “Thank you for offering, but it’s still a no. Enjoy your pizza though,” you finish with a smile and walk away back to the kitchen. 

Kyungsoo picks up a pizza on the long board and turns to put it in the oven, knowing that the wide smile on his face will give him away.

June 2, 1997

The other cooks talk with each other as they make pizzas. Luis, Christian, Kim – everyone else jokes with Chanyeol when he brings over the order slips, talks with you and the other waitresses. Everyone but Kyungsoo. When he works, his focus is solely on the task at hand.

You wonder what it’s like to pursue one goal with such ferocity. To hold a singular thought in your consciousness like he can. You can’t imagine it. Your mind is always focusing on a million things at once. Chatting with customers. Trying to remember to call your parents on your break. Wondering what you might get up to that weekend with your group of friends Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Hitchcock at the center of it.

In the months since you’ve been working at Exodus you’ve found a great group of people. And of course you hang out with your roommate, who is still staunchly avoiding Chanyeol, making going out difficult.

But Kyungsoo, in your estimation, only focuses on work. He’s joined you all a few times, at the occasional party or movie night. But other than that his life seems to be all about Barada. Not that it bothers you, you admire him for it actually. If the rest of your life is a flurry of activity and words and energy, being around him is a pocket of calm.

You pick up a pizza he hands you and his dark, perpetually intense gaze meets yours. A rush of desire skirts down your spine, as it always does when you find yourself the subject of his focus, even for a second.

Over the past few weeks you’ve increasingly found yourself wondering about what it might be like to be the only thing he’s concentrating on, outside of work. If that ferocity of focus would extend to the bedroom.

You blink rapidly, taking the pizza from his waiting hands, and quickly rush off to deliver it to the table. You grin to yourself, shaking your head. Imagine that, Kyungsoo liking you back, you think wryly.

June 15, 1997

Another Friday night, another informal party at Baekhyun’s. A loose circle of people are scattered around on the couch, chairs, and floor, all talking and laughing. Baekhyun lies with his head in Hitchcock’s lap as they discuss something energetically. 

You’re sitting with your shoeless feet tucked up underneath you, leaning against the girl from Starlight Clothing as you laugh about her stern co-worker’s latest sarcastic comments. Kyungsoo listens to Chanyeol, exasperated as usual at his friend.

“Hey everyone!” Baekhyun says in his typical exuberant manner, sitting up suddenly. “Who wants to play a game?” he says and wags his eyebrows.

“Oh god, we are not doing spin the bottle again dude,” Chanyeol groans. “Last time I had to kiss Jongin. And while I am comfortable enough in my sexuality to admit he is a very handsome man, I have no wish to have a repeat of that experience.” Several people around him laugh.

“No, no. Even better. Never Have I Ever,” Baekhyun says with a wide grin. A few people groan.

“I haven’t played that since college. I am so in,” you say excitedly.

Baekhyun claps his hands together. “Finally, some support! Thank you,” he nods in your direction.

Everyone mumbles agreement and a few people grab some drinks from the kitchen for reinforcement before starting the game. Finally set, everyone circles up again in the living room.

“So how many are we starting with?” you ask, nestling your drink between your legs and holding up both hands.

“Is anyone going to explain this game?” Kyungsoo asks with a raised brow, looking skeptical.

“I’m glad you asked, my good man,” Baekhyun says energetically, clapping Kyungsoo on the back. “Everyone, let’s start off easy and say five fingers. Loser has to chug a mystery drink of my making,” he starts and everyone groans in disgust.

“It won’t be that bad, I promise. Now, everyone puts up five fingers. We go around the circle and say something we’ve never done,” he says and holds up his right hand officially.

“There are two approaches. The first one is to try and target someone specifically. For example,” he says and stares evilly at Chanyeol. “Never have I ever gotten drunk and tried to make out with Mrs. Baker at senior prom.”

Chanyeol throws a pillow at Baekhyun. “You’re lucky this is just a practice round or I’d share some of your terrible secrets.”

Baekhyun laughs hysterically and then collects himself. “Or you can take the second approach. Some general and broad thing that you just haven’t done that will get a lot of people. Like… never have I ever been to the top of the Space Needle,” he says with a gloating smile. Several people groan and put down a finger.

“That was just a practice round! Okay, let’s start for real. Kyungsoo my friend, the goal of the game is to not be the first person with zero fingers left standing. How does that sound?” he asks and Kyungsoo nods.

Minseok starts off the game and gets his girlfriend out with a targeted attack about never reading a certain book and she retaliates with an obscure band she’s never listened to. Yixing tags out most of the circle by saying he’d never learned to ride a bike. Chanyeol gets retaliation on Baekhyun by saying he’s never thrown up on a crush before.

Hitchcock smirks and looks around the circle. “Let’s expose some people here. Never have I ever taken a date to Somerset point.” Baekhyun and Chanyeol groan and put down a finger. 

She laughs and points at Baekhyun. “Ha! I knew it. I knew you were lying about never going there with Jenny Albertson!” Baekhyun hangs his head in mock shame.

The game moves onto Kyungsoo. Most of the people around the circle are down to three fingers, but he’s still going strong with five. He thinks hard for a moment. “All right. Never have I ever… gone to a high school dance,” he says with a wry smile.

Everyone in the circle whines and drops a finger. In the end Chanyeol is out first after you admit that you haven’t been to the famous Dick’s Burgers yet. Baekhyun claps in delight and rushes into the kitchen to come up with a nasty drink.

A second round is played and Minseok loses, but at his deadly glare Baekhyun makes something slightly less disgusting. Again, Kyungsoo finishes with all five fingers up, though you think that you’re probably the only one that notices.

It’s decided that a third and final round will be held. It’s even raunchier than the other two, given that it’s the point in the night where everyone is tipsy at best, aside from Kyungsoo who’s just drinking sodas.

“All right people, gather round. Who’s ready to admit some uncomfortable shit to their friends?” Chanyeol calls out good-naturedly, settling once again into his spot in Baekhyun’s La-z-boy chair.

You slump back into the sofa, leaning your head on Hitchcock’s shoulder next to you. The girl from Starlight on your other side goes first. She rubs her hands together and thinks hard, covering her face with her outstretched fingers.

“I’ve got it! This is getting all of you. Never have I ever made out in a movie theater,” she says with a grin, pointing at both Hitchcock and Baekhyun. 

They groan and immediately put a finger down, along with you and almost everyone else in the circle. The lone hold out is Kyungsoo. She tilts her head at him and snaps her fingers. “Dang, I really thought I’d get everyone with that one.”

The game continues and it’s Yixing who loses this time. Baekhyun cuts him some slack and gives him a shot of bottom shelf Vodka. As the night goes on everyone switches to water and snacks on chips and dip in an effort to absorb the alcohol.

You stand in the kitchen, happily munching and listening to Hitchcock tell the story of how Baekhyun had been caught making out at the theater in the mall back in high school by their boss. Your attention is drawn to Kyungsoo where he sits on the couch with Chanyeol, smiling slightly as his friend tells a story in his loud and booming voice.

You wonder about him, as you always do, but in a different way tonight. He hadn’t put down a single finger all night. You take a deep swig of water from your cup and resolve to ask him about it tomorrow.

June 16, 1997

Kyungsoo blinks quickly, trying to wake up his tired mind after a late night out. Chanyeol had pleaded a hangover and begged Kyungsoo to open for him and he reluctantly agreed.

He loves your cheerful voice in the mornings normally, though he’d never admit it to you. But this morning you come in looking determined instead. You set your obscenely large coffee on the counter and fix him with a stare.

“I’ve got a question for you,” you start.

He sighs and turns from the dough he’s kneading to look at you, dressed in a riot of colors. Pink Converse sneakers, baby blue jeans, purple Barada Pizza shirt, bright yellow headband. Your appearance is in direct contrast to the serious expression you’re giving him and he stifles a laugh.

“Yes?” he asks, folding his arms to mirror yours and leaning against the counter.

“Have you ever been laser bowling?” you ask.

“Huh?” he asks, confused. Of all the things you could have asked, this isn’t what he was expecting.

“I’ll take that as a no. Okay, have you ever been to Denny’s at three in the morning?” you ask, raising a brow.

He gives you a sarcastic look and you throw up your hands.

“Fine, another no. You didn’t put a single finger down last night. What did you spend all your time doing while you were growing up?” you ask. He abruptly turns back to his kneading, his expression shuttering.

“I’m not judging, believe me,” you continue, placing a hand on his arm to get him to look back at you. “I’m just genuinely curious. What did you get up to while other kids were out being idiots?”

He sighs and rubs a hand across his eyes. “Look. It’s not something I want to talk about. Let’s just say that my family was pretty strict growing up and I didn’t have a lot of time to go out and have fun. And I started this business when I was twenty-one. Since then, it’s been all I have time for.”

You think for a moment, fitting this information with your picture of him. An idea comes to you, and like always, you just blurt it out rather than giving it careful thought.

“Okay, that’s fair. So how about this? Let’s make a list of all the things you’ve never done and we’re going on a big summer quest. You have a whole lot of new things to try and I love… having fun. It’ll be the perfect combination,” you say and clap your hands together excitedly.

He groans. The thought of spending all that time with you would be both a blessing and a curse. Once he might have been able to resist, but these days you’re his Kryptonite. 

With a shrug he says, “All right, why not?”

You grin at him and it’s easy to see why Chanyeol has nicknamed you Sunshine. He thinks to himself that all the silly things in the world would be worth it if they make you look at him like that. You reach into your purse and grab out your order pad and pencil and start writing.

“Okay, so we know you haven’t been bowling or to Denny’s in the dead of night. Have you ever been skinny dipping?” you ask, raising an eyebrow at him. He gives you an ‘are you serious’ face and you giggle to yourself. “Added to the list.”

“What else did we do all the time in high school? Oooh have you ever parked in the back of a truck and watched the stars? We know you’ve never made out in a movie theater,” you say.

After a beat you both realize the implication behind that statement, what it would mean if you added it to the list of things you wanted to show him this summer. You blush and look down.

His eyes dart down to your lips, fantasizing for a moment about what they might feel like against his. Did he ever regret not going laser bowling or skinny dipping? No, he never has. Not until he met you. Now here you are, with your list and a beautiful pink tint to your cheeks and with a sigh he realizes that he’ll be unable to stop imagining kissing you in the dark back row of a theater for quite a while.

“We can add more later,” you say softly. You swallow and look up to meet his eyes, your expression turning serious again. “Pick something. We’re doing one of these tonight. It’s Saturday, an excellent night to start, and I know that you switched with Chanyeol so he could sleep off his hangover. So you’re free. How about laser bowling?”

He sighs. “Fine. There’s a bowling alley a couple of block from here, I’m sure they do it. What time?”

“Well, laser bowling is usually a later in the evening. Why don’t you give me the address and we can meet there at like, eight?” you ask.

“Deal,” he says and you smile, putting your apron on and slipping the notepad back in. Throughout the rest of the day he almost catches himself singing along to the music in the mall.

Once your shift is over you grab your stuff and head out towards the mall. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol are looking over a report together in the back room. You smirk at Kyungsoo tonight as you walk past.

“I’ll see you tonight,” you say with a smile.

Chanyeol dramatically drops his jaw and raises his eyebrows. He reaches out a hand to your shoulder to stop you walking.

“Wait, wait, wait. What’s this?” he says and puts his hand on his chest in mock hurt. “My best friend in the whole entire world is hanging out with someone without me?”

You laugh and Kyungsoo pats Chanyeol’s shoulder reassuringly. “Sorry friend, you’re stuck on the closing shift. Guess you’ll have to miss a thrilling night of bowling,” he says.

Chanyeol pouts. “Aw, man. I love bowling. Laser bowling especially. We used to go to the old ACME bowl down the street all the time in high school.”

You raise an eyebrow at Kyungsoo. “What a coincidence, that’s exactly where we’re going,” you say. “See you later Kyungsoo.”

As you exit the store you miss the meaningful look Chanyeol gives Kyungsoo before he allows himself to be drawn back into the ordering reports.

The bowling alley down the block is exactly like the one you used to go to in high school back in Georgia. Cheesy early eighties designs on the wall, the paint peeling on the tables, a rusty popcorn machine from the dawn of time in the snack bar.

You feel a wave of happy nostalgia wash over you as you and Kyungsoo grab your shoes and find your lane. While you punch your names into the computer Kyungsoo grabs a big basket of fries and two sodas from the concessions stand.

He looks up at the scoreboard and laughs. You’ve entered in GRINCH and SUNSHN for your names. He gives you a sarcastic look and you grin back at him.

“Alll right ladies and gentleman, are you READY?!” a male voice booms from the loudspeaker. “It’s LASER BOWL TIME!” he says and plays some silly sound effects.

The lights dim down overhead and black lights come to life along the walls, interspersed with colorful neon lights that move back and forth. You look down at your shirt and see that it’s glowing in the black light.

Kyungsoo smiles, taking in the ridiculous and dramatic setting. You laugh and point to his teeth, which are glowing as well. He looks over at your own teeth and cracks up.

“Why don’t you go first?” you offer, motioning toward the lane.

He nods and walks over to carefully choose a ball. He walks up to the lane and rolls his neck, shaking his arms out. He swings his arm back as he walks forward and releases it with precision.

You stand there with your drink paused halfway to your lips as the ball perfectly spins and gets an instant strike. He turns back to you with a satisfied smile, the closest he’s come to being cocky in the time you’ve known him.

You set down your drink with a thump and hold both hands out toward the lane. “What was that?” you ask with a laugh. “You said you’d never been bowling!”

His handsome face breaks into a grin as he joins you at the table, popping a french fry into his mouth. “No, you asked me if I’d ever been laser bowling. Which I haven’t. But like the fascinating and lively guy I am, I was in a bowling league all through middle school.”

You scoff and narrow your eyes at him. “Fine, you’re saved on a technicality. I just hope you’re ready for my amazing bowling skills,” you say and saunter over to choose a ball. Of course you choose the brightest one, a neon yellow ball that weighs a bit too much for you.

You’ve been bowling many times before, but in high school and college the objective was always to bowl as seductively as possible. Playing a whole different game - seeing if you could get the guys in the group to ‘help’ you learn to bowl, rather than actually caring about scoring. But something about Kyungsoo makes you want to try.

Holding the ball as best you can you step forward, trying to mimic Kyungsoo’s style. The ball angles wildly and rolls into the gutter. You groan and turn around to see Kyungsoo is doubled over, holding his arm against the counter as he cracks up silently. With an amused smile you join him at the table. He waves a hand at you, trying to speak, but he can’t with how hard he’s laughing.

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad,” you say with a grin.

He coughs and gathers himself, standing back up. His mouth keeps twitching as he tries to stop smiling. “No, no it was great. You’re definitely a pro,” he says.

“Well I’m glad I amuse you. You know, I think this is the first time I’ve seen you laugh that hard. It’s good to know you actually can,” you say.

“Ah, well I don’t mean to laugh at you. It’s just that you have a very uhh, unique style of throwing,” he says with a smirk.

“Fine, then. Watch out, this time I’m going to get a spare,” you say with a huff, walking over to the return to grab your ball. 

Your second shot goes into the gutter even faster and you can feel him laughing before you even turn around. With a sigh you walk over to grab some fries.

“Okay, ace. It’s your turn,” you say and shoo him over.

He gives you a confident raise of his brows before grabbing his ball. Another shot, another strike. You groan and drown your sorrows in a big handful of fries. The next two shots you take as hardly better than the first round, only getting a pin each time. Kyungsoo of course scores a spare on his next turn.

You grab your ball and turn to him. “Show me,” you ask seriously.

He almost chokes on his drink of soda, eyes going wide with surprise. “What do you mean ‘show you’?” he asks when he can speak again.

You hold the ball against your hip, giving him a sassy look. “You know what I mean. Show me how to bowl, o’ wise master,” you say.

He walks over to you, grabbing his ball off the rack and coming to stand a few inches next to you. “Start right about here,” he says and moves you up a few inches. “Hold the ball like this.” He shows you the proper grip and you do your best to copy it.

“Now when you walk forward start off on the same foot, it’s about building the muscle memory.” He demonstrates the walk a few times and when you’re finally able to copy it, he motions for you to try it out.

This try is better than before and you manage to get five pins. When your ball comes up through the rack he picks it up and hands it to you, standing close in the low light.

“Now this time try to spin it with these fingers,” he says and touches them lightly.

You almost drop your ball at the contact. You line back up and walk forward with renewed focus. This time you hit the remaining five pins; a spare. You throw your hands up in celebration and run over to hug Kyungsoo before you can think about it.

He staggers back a step as he catches you in his arms, his hands coming around your back to steady you. You squeal with excitement, pressing yourself against him, squeezing his shoulders.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” you say. “I’ve never gotten a spare before!”

When you pull back he’s watching you curiously, a smirk on his face. You quickly realize you’re basically clinging to him and step back.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “Let’s see if we can get you a strike next.”

You end up getting 78 points to Kyungsoo’s 215, but you do manage to get one strike. Next round you get 99 points to his 195, and two strikes. You pout as you return your shoes with him. “Well, it’s better than I’ve ever done before,” you tell him. “I’ll do even better next time.”

“All right, hot shot. I’ll be ready,” he says, pushing open the door to the parking lot, smiling softly at you.

July 7, 1997

You come back from a night out with your friends playing pool at the pub in the mall to see that Kyungsoo is actually on AOL for once. You log into the chat and message him, figuring tonight is a perfect night to check another thing off his list.

sunshinegrrrl9: of course you choose something basic like your name and not something fun dohkyungsoo: what would you prefer I go by, thegrinch? sunshinegrl9: ha. ha. very funny sunshinegrl9: what are you doing up so late? dohkyungsoo: working on end of the month reports. why? sunshinegrrrl9: i think it’s time you experience the glory of Denny’s at 3 in the morning dohkyungsoo: do I really have to wait until 3 am? sunshinegrrrl9: no, i’ll be nice, i won’t make you wait that long. sunshinegrrrl9: it’s 12:30 now, why don’t you pick me up at 1? dohkyungsoo: deal. see you then.

He pulls up and you can hear him idling out front. You check to make sure that your roommate is asleep before you sneak out the front door. She’s been asking questions about why you’re spending all this time with Kyungsoo.

In the past few weeks you’ve dragged him to a movie marathon at the theater, to the arcade next to the mall, and made him take you to the Seattle waterfront so you could finally experience it and so you both could go to the top of the Space Needle afterwards.

You’d almost even talked him into having a food fight one morning when you opened with him and Chanyeol, but he’d given you both a stern expression and you’d dropped it.

Your roommate reads right through your explanations about the quest, saying she knows that you’re just happy for an excuse to spend all this time with him. But as she’s knee-deep in her own drama with Chanyeol, you’ve both declared your apartment a safe haven from any boy talk. Unless it’s to discuss Leonard DiCaprio in the most recent trailer for Titanic, of course.

You open the car door and slide in, reaching as you always do to turn up the radio. He shakes his head and drives off for the Denny’s near your house. The place is half-full when you arrive and Kyungsoo looks inside in confusion.

“Oh yeah, this is prime Denny’s hours. You don’t even know yet,” you say and open your door.

The waitress leads you to a booth by the window and hands you menus. “Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks in a droll voice.

“Two coffees please,” you say before Kyungsoo can speak. He purses his lips in disapproval. “What? Trust me, you’ll need it for the full Denny’s experience.”

He looks around at the brightly lit space, taking in the group of college students at a nearby table, laughing with each other, their textbooks forgotten on the table. The two men at the bar, obviously still drunk, trying to persuade the waitress to give them free pancakes. A group of men and women in leather jackets, clearly just beginning their night, are eating burgers and fries.

The waitress comes back a moment later, dropping off the two coffees and taking your orders.

“Oh yes, this is definitely an experience, that’s for sure,” he says and you laugh. “Anyways, how are you?”

You stir in cream to your coffee and sigh. “I spoke to my mom today and got the usual torture routine.”

He takes a sip of his coffee and raises a brow at you. “What do you mean?”

“Oh right, I keep forgetting you didn’t know me in Georgia,” you reply with a shake of your head. “My mom’s an old school Southern belle. She wanted me to be married by now, maybe even have a kid. She’s never gotten over the fact that I didn’t want her vision for my life. That I wanted more for myself than to just be a pretty face on the arm of a financially secure, respectable man,” you say with a sigh.

“Does she not see that you’re so much more than just beautiful?” he asks emphatically. He blushes, looking down at his coffee for a beat. “I mean, you’re so warm and kind, you take care of everyone around you. You make people feel seen, appreciated, and you’re smart enough to figure out what they need. And brave too, moving halfway across the country,” he says meeting your eyes.

You’re moved, amazed that he has been paying such close attention to you that he’s able to reassure you like this. To remind you that you have much greater value in the world than just your looks. 

You reach over and squeeze his hand. “Thanks, Kyungsoo. That means a lot,” you say.

“Believe me, I know all about family expectations though,” he says with a sigh, taking another sip of his coffee.

“Really? Tell me,” you say, curious to know more about him.

He starts telling you about his family and how they put a ton of pressure on him growing up, expecting him to become a lawyer. You keep talking, in between bites of the food you ordered. The conversation moves to your debutante days and in return you demand that he tell you about being forced to be on the knowledge bowl team in high school.

Eventually you order another round of coffee and then third. The crowd changes as the night goes on, the bikers and the drunks and the college students clearing out. When the groups of older men and women start coming in you look out the window and realize that the sun is coming up and it’s now after five in the morning.

You and Kyungsoo pay your bills and then sleepily head out. You sneak back into the apartment and fall straight asleep, still wearing your clothes. Before passing out you think to yourself how amazing it is that you basically talked all night with Kyungsoo, the self-proclaimed hermit.

August 1, 1997

“Well I personally think they’re totally underrated,” Chanyeol says from a nearby blanket where he’s discussing bands with Minseok.

No one in your group owned a pick up truck, or even knew someone who did. So you settled for driving out I-90 east for an hour or so until you found a spot to watch the stars. It supposed to be a fantastic night to watch the meteor shower, and out this far from the city lights, the view is spectacular.

You pour a cup of wine and pass it over to Jongin on a blanket next to you. On your other side, Kyungsoo is spread out on the blanket, resting his head against his hand as he watches the sky. You take a sip of the wine and then secure your cup firmly in the grass before spreading out next to him.

You try to find a comfortable spot, but it seems you’re sitting on top of a giant root. Twisting and turning for a moment you finally settle with your back as comfortably as you can with a disgruntled huff. Kyungsoo laughs quietly next to you, watching with amusement.

He scoots over a few inches and holds out his arm. “Just put your head here already,” he says with a laugh.

You move over next to him, sighing to yourself as your body comes into contact with his. You ease your head into the crook between his arm and his shoulder, your side flush against his. 

Everyone in your group quickly joins the discussion with Chanyeol and Minseok, about whether pop music is going to replace the grunge movement and what that would mean for the music industry.

But you and Kyungsoo stay there, watching the stars overhead. You can feel him breathing next to you, his steady presence a comfort. After a while you start seeing bright lights streaking across the sky.

“Guys, look!” you exclaim, drawing their attention.

They all ooh and ahh and you can hear them settle into their blankets. Kyungsoo sighs happily next to you and you turn your head to give him a smile. 

“Thank you for this,” he says quietly so only you can hear.

You reach your arm behind you, lacing your fingers with his and squeeze. “You’re welcome,” you reply just as softly.

As you watch the meteor shower it occurs to you that you should eventually let go of his hand, but he never moves to and neither do you. You only separate an hour or so later when Baekhyun finally starts yawning so badly that you all decide to call it a night.

August 14, 1997

“So if I was looking for somewhere to go skinny dipping around here, I’m assuming you’d be the one to ask?” you say with a grin to Baekhyun.

Hitchcock cracks up laughing, her hands paused in lifting the burger to her mouth. You have Wednesdays off and a standing lunch date with Baekhyun and Hitchcock downtown. You always laugh at seeing your friends out of their casual clothes, dressed up in their professional attire.

“Sunshine, you know it,” Baekhyun starts with a grin. “I’ve got the perfect place. When were you thinking of going?”

“This Saturday? Kyungsoo has the day off for some family thing in the morning, and I think I can talk him into it.”

“Perfect, let’s do it,” he says with a smirk at you and Hitchcock.

August 17, 1997

Saturday is a gorgeous summer evening - warm, clear skies. You all meet up in the mall parking lot at seven to carpool to the spot. The drive is about half an hour away and you all pile into cars, carrying towels, six packs of beer, and Baekhyun’s trusty boombox.

You’re wedged into the back of Chanyeol’s car along with Kyungsoo and Hitchcock while Jongin navigates from the passenger seat.

The Kachess campground is everything you hoped it would be. Warm evening light spills over the tree lined road to the lake, the car rocking as it goes over the bumpy, unpaved path. Every jolt of the car throws you against Hitchcock, who giggles, and Kyungsoo, who looks like he’s feeling something entirely different at your closeness. Your side feels hyper aware of every inch of his body that’s in contact with yours.

Chanyeol turns down a smaller road off the main one, so narrow that the trees brush his car as it passes. Eventually your train of cars emerges into a small clearing. The lake is visible just up ahead through a gap in the trees. Getting out of the car, you can hear the faint sounds of other groups talking nearby, apparently it’s a popular spot.

Chanyeol parks the car and you all hop out, excitedly talking about the evening. Baekhyun strolls over to one of the picnic tables in the clearing and sets up his boombox. Moments later the sounds of Missy Elliot’s new album starts and Minseok groans where he’s grabbing a cooler out of his trunk. His girlfriend pats his shoulder, laughing as she pulls out stacks of plastic cups and plates.

Baekhyun dances to himself, singing along loudly to the music as he proceeds to fail horribly at starting the outdoor grill. Kyungsoo shakes his head and walks over to take charge of manning the grill. You join the group at a nearby table, grabbing a beer and sitting down. 

Baekhyun laughs and takes over setting up the sides, holding two cups to his chest like Madonna, making Hitchcock laugh so hard she almost spits out her sip of beer.

Over the course of the night the group enjoys hamburgers, hot dogs, and plenty of beer and soda. Chanyeol tells a tipsy version of the story of how he and Kyungsoo met in high school during a miserable science class together. Just after nine the sun finally slips below the horizon and everyone starts discussing the impending foray into skinny dipping.

“Well I think we should split up into groups. Seeing you all naked isn’t particularly high on my bucket list,” Minseok says with a laugh and his girlfriend smacks his shoulder.

“Oh come on, it’s a great bonding experience,” Yixing says, tickling his girlfriend and she runs out of his grip giggling.

“I’m only in for this if I can avoid seeing any of your genitals,” Kyungsoo says sternly, folding his arms and staring down Baekhyun with a pointed look. When his eyes meet yours he drops his eyes, a blush forming in his cheeks.

Baekhyun steps forward, the resident skinny dipping expert, and holds up his hands officially. “Okay, ladies and gentleman, how about this? Minseok and his lady over there,” he says, pointing to a path off to the right. “Yixing and his girl the next trail over,” he says pointing to another path on the right.

“Chanyeol, Hitchcock, Jongin and I, as the experienced professionals here, will take the front and center path.” He dramatically points to the main trail leading to the water from the clearing.

“And our new recruit, Kyungsoo, and his corruptor can take the one to the left,” he says and waves his hand toward the only path on the left hand side of the clearing, dense with trees. The water is just visible through the branches up ahead in the growing darkness. “Does that work for everyone?”

The group cheers in agreement and begins the process of packing up the food into coolers, grabbing towels, and meandering off on their various paths. Baekhyun cranks up the boombox to the highest setting, the music echoing through the clearing.

Kyungsoo walks up to you with a nervous sigh, his towel draped over one shoulder and his hands in his pockets. You’re normally the type to strip off your clothes and be first in the water, but around him things are different. With him it feels more intimate, more meaningful. You hold your towel tightly under one arm and tuck your hair behind your ear with the other hand.

“Ready?” he asks gently.

“Let’s do it,” you reply.

He reaches out a tentative hand and you slide your hand into his. Together you navigate the branches and roots in the twilight. You trip over a hidden root and his hand tightens on yours, keeping you upright. Nearby you can hear Baekhyun and Hitchcock screaming to each other and the sound of furious splashing.

You follow Kyungsoo onto the smooth sand of the beach. There’s a few tree logs and you set down your towels. The night is still warm, but the breeze over the lake cools your sticky skin. You sit down on the log to take off your sneakers and Kyungsoo joins you at a respectable distance. Sliding a hair tie off your wrist you twist your hair up into a messy bun.

Kyungsoo and you stand up at the same time and wait awkwardly, both fully aware that the next step is to remove your clothes. His eyes meet yours and his lips twist into a wry smile. You both start laughing at the situation and agree to face away from each other to undress.

As you slide your shirt over your head and throw it on the log you can see his shirt hit the log next to yours in your peripheral vision. You swallow involuntarily, already imagining his naked body behind you.

Your shirt, shorts, and panties are quickly added to the pile and you clasp your hands together against your now naked body. The sun is now completely below the horizon and the sky has turned an inky royal blue, the stars popping out away from the lights of the city.

“Wow, that’s quite a sight,” Kyungsoo says behind you and you turn around abruptly, keeping your eyes above his waist. 

He’s not looking at you, but up at the sky, a look of wonder on his face. You grin to yourself, happy that he’s having this experience – even happier that he’s having it with you.

For a moment you stand there, trying to decide if you should get in the water together and how on earth you’d bring it up. But eventually you just decide to jump in first, while he’s distracted.

With a squeal you take a few running steps forward, bracing your hands against your chest in preparation for the cold. Even in the summer beaches in Washington are bracingly cold. The water drops off quickly, and after three steps you’re up to your chest in water. One more step and your feet slip out from you and you plunge under the water. You catch yourself quickly, windmilling your arms to propel yourself back to the surface.

When you break through, gasping a breath, you let out a huge laugh. You swipe the water from your eyes with your hands and sigh, loving the feeling of the cool water on your skin. You look around and see Kyungsoo watching you from a few feet away as he treads water to stay in place. His hair is slicked back and his skin practically glows in the night, a big grin on his face.

“I should have guessed you’d run in head first,” he laughs. “Just like you do everything.”

You splash him in mock outrage and he splashes you back full force, sending a wave of water over you and pouring your hair into your eyes. You laugh as you brush your hair out of your eyes.

“So, how is it? Your first time skinny dipping?” you ask and raise a brow.

He looks around at you, the sky, and the lake lit up by moonlight. He leans his head back into the water for a moment and you can see his wistful smile when he tilts back up.

“Definitely more pleasant than I was expecting,” he says, voice low.

You blush and look away, remembering all of a sudden that you’re both naked and only separated by a few feet of water. You try and think back to the last time you were completely naked in front of a man and are surprised when none immediately come to mind. It was at least before you moved to Washington, that’s for sure.

Maybe Ethan? Your last boyfriend in Georgia. You widen your eyes when you realize that it’s been over a year since then, and before him it was just a handful of fun short term relationships in high school and college. 

No one that makes you feel like Kyungsoo though. When he looks at you it feels like you’re the only person in the world.

A loud noise comes from around the bend, what sounds like Chanyeol screaming about “drowning,” drawing you back to the moment. Kyungsoo’s still watching you with that intense expression of his, just content to be in your presence. You love that the two of you don’t need words all the time, that you can just exist together. After a beat you start swimming further out from the beach, shivering as the cool water rushes along your body.

Kyungsoo joins you and you quickly lose track of time swimming together in slow circles around the area. Eventually you see a flash of lights through the trees.

“KYUNGSOO, SUNSHINE, WE’RE HEADING OUT SOOOON,” Baekhyun calls from the clearing.

The two of you swim closer to the shore and once you get to chest deep you turn towards each other at the same moment. It’s full dark now, but the moon is nearly completely full and casts a bright light all around you. If either of you gets out of the water, you’ll be almost completely visible. Kyungsoo motions you to the shore.

“Why don’t you get out first and I’ll turn around? Then you can do the same for me?” he says gently, trying to not to laugh.

You breathe out a laugh, glad that the potentially awkward situation was avoided. He turns around, putting his hands over his eyes and humming. You crack up and splash him in the back. The air is growing colder and you clutch your hands to your chest as you dash up the beach to the log that has your towel.

You quickly dry the water off your skin, twist your hair to get out the majority of the water and then wrap the towel around you. You slip on your panties and shorts and look at your sports bra in frustration. Somehow you manage to get it onto your damp skin and throw on your shirt. You put on your shoes and socks quickly.

“Okay, you’re all clear!” you call and sit down on one end of the log, turning to the side and covering your eyes with one hand.

You hear him approach and start toweling off, your body flooding with heat as you imagine him just a few steps away, naked. You shake your head to yourself, smiling.

“All clear,” he says next to you a minute later.

You drop your hand and he’s thrown his shirt and shorts on, his hair messed up from the water. With a grin you stand up and come over to him, holding your towel in one hand and ruffling his wet hair with the other, sending drops falling onto his face.

When you drop your hand you realize he’s not laughing with you, he’s regarding you with something much headier. You take an involuntary step back in surprise, but his hands on your elbows stop you from going too far.

You clutch the towel to your chest with both hands, desperately trying to stop your hands from reaching for him. The tension grows unbearable as you both stand there, so close that you can feel his breath on your face. Heat blooms low in your body at his nearness, and a crazy desire to lean forward and kiss him.

Your soft voice breaks the silence. A single word falls from your lips – his name, barely above a whisper. It’s all the invitation he needs. 

With a rush, he bends down and his lips are on yours. You make a small noise of surprise against his mouth, surprise that this is finally happening.

He pauses a moment, his full lips held gently against yours. Then he moves his mouth, brushing it more insistently against yours. You toss the towel away from you and close the distance, bringing your hands to grip his shoulders, pulling him closer. Your bodies collide and he wraps an arm around your waist to steady you, a groan leaving his lips at the contact.

For someone so reserved, he kisses like a wildfire. He slips his hand up to cup your face, holding you steady while he sweeps his lips along yours. Your wet clothes quickly heat up as you move against each other, a friction that makes you wish there were no layers between you two.

His hand on your back tightens, molding your body against his. You moan against his mouth and he takes the opportunity to lick along your bottom lip. You gasp in surprise and he lets out a low laugh. He guides you back to him, humming in satisfaction as you work your lips against his.

“WHERE ARE YOU GUYS?!” Baekhyun yells again.

You pull back, dazed. Kyungsoo keeps his hold on your back and turns in the direction of the group.

“FIVE MORE MINUTES!” he yells back, a boyish grin on his face that sends butterflies to your stomach. He turns back to you. “You’re not getting away that easy,” he says in a low voice, dipping down to give you a kiss. You laugh against his lips.

“You know, I’ve never made out in a move theater before. But I’m pretty sure this is even better,” he says in your ear.

“Mm, I’d have to say I agree,” you reply and lean up to capture his lips again.

When you can’t leave the group hanging anymore, you grab his hand and lead the way through the trees back to the group. Though it’s dark and you can hardly see where you’re going, you know that his grin is just as big as yours.

November 1, 1997

The idea comes to you on one of your girls lunches. Something else that Kyungsoo has never done – a school dance. You think up the idea for an Exodus Mall prom and in no time, the rest of the girls are excitedly planning along with you. Everyone welcomes the opportunity to dress up and to either relive a treasured memory from high school or to create a better one.

Between the group you divide and conquer. Jongin reserves a room at the KOKO exercise studio that’s large enough for the event. Minseok agrees to provide the music. Hitchcock and Baekhyun make sure that everyone in the entire mall receives an invitation. Yixing and Chanyeol agree to provide food and desserts. Yixing’s girlfriend and your roommate make the decorations.

You do your best to keep things under wraps from Kyungsoo as a surprise. The prom is set for a Friday night, your usual date night. Well, your unofficial date night. 

The past two and a half months since you kissed at the lake have been an interesting dance. Neither of you has said anything official. Your adventures together still continue, they just now involve a lot more kissing.

You come into work one morning, holding an invitation behind your back. The last one that you saved just for him. He’s kneading dough like always, but now he anticipates your arrival. You still trade off buying each other coffee, and today he has your favorite waiting on the counter. 

He wipes his flour-covered hands on a towel and reaches for you. His hands find your favorite spot, just beneath your ears, and he pulls you in for a quick kiss. 

You hum happily against his lips and pull back to look at him. If you hadn’t met him before, hadn’t seen him so closed off and grouchy, you’d have thought this was how he always looked. His warm eyes glowing with joy, a contented, relaxed smile on his lips. But you did know him before, and seeing the transformation over the past few months fills you suddenly with a wave of love.

“Good morning,” he says, leaning against the counter, keeping an arm around your waist. “What have you got there?” he asks, nodding his head to your hands still clasped behind your back.

“Oh this?” you say coyly. “It’s for you.”

You pull out the invitation and hand it to him. His eyes quickly scan it and he looks back up to you, brow furrowed in confusion. “Will you go to prom with me?” you ask, grinning.

He laughs, looking at you with amusement. “Absolutely,” he replies and gives you another quick kiss before you start working on your respective morning tasks.

November 13, 1997

No one is really able to concentrate the day of the mall prom, but you all do your best. Kyungsoo agreed to close the store at five for the special event, so everyone could have enough time to go home and get ready. You head home with your roommate after checking with Kyungsoo that he’s picking you up at seven.

Your roommate is applying her make up when you arrive. Hitchcock comes over a minute or two after you get to the apartment, brandishing two bottles of champagne. Your friend from Starlight comes over, a long gold gown draped over her arm and a boombox in the other.

Your roommate chose a long black dress and everyone squeals when she comes out, saying she’s totally having an Audrey Hepburn moment. Hitchcock is wearing a body-hugging teal dress and you let out a wolf whistle when she comes out.

You change last. Your dress is floor length, deep red, with a slit in one leg. It flares out behind you. You leave your hair loose and wavy around your shoulders and pair it with a swipe of eyeliner and a red lip. 

Everyone screams when you come out of the bathroom. Hitchcock leans against the wall, holding a glass of champagne in one hand. She dramatically pretends to dab tears out of her eyes.

“You know he’s going to die when he sees you, right?” she asks with a wistful grin, looking you up and down.

“Who? Kyungsoo?” you ask.

“Who else? If he wasn’t already head over heels in love with you, he would be after he sees you in this dress,” you roommate says as she walks by, a curling iron in her hand.

You blush, an unexpected nervous excited energy settling in your stomach. A car horn honks outside and you look around curiously. The guys weren’t planning on being here for another fifteen minutes. You move your dress out of the way and walk over to the window. 

A stretch limo waits outside. Chanyeol and Baekhyun are leaning out of the open top window, waving dramatically. Kyungsoo and your friend’s date, Sehun you think is his name, are standing out front, looking dapper in suits.

“Oh my god, get over here you guys,” you say, grinning. “You’re not going to believe this.”

You open the door and the girls rush up behind you. Everyone screams excitedly when they see the limo waiting. Hitchcock tells the guys to give you all five more minutes to get ready and slams the door, laughing.

In a flurry of activity shoes are found, hair is pinned into place, earrings are located, and make up is finalized. You all take turns walking down the stairs of your apartment, making a grand entrance.

You lock the door behind you and put the keys into your purse. You can hear everyone inside the limo laughing and cracking open yet another bottle of champagne. Kyungsoo waits by the door, hands in his pockets, watching you with awe. As you make your way down the stairs he lets out a whistle.

“You sure clean up nice yourself,” you counter. 

His dark hair is parted on the side and slicked back from his face. He looks like he’s on the way to an awards show. The look definitely suits him, you decide.

When you reach him he takes your hand in his and presses a kiss to the top. You lean over and brush a quick kiss to his mouth. A chorus of ooooohs come from inside the limo and Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and grins at you.

The ride to the mall is much too short so you all ask the driver to circle the building a few times. Once you arrive you see that the KOKO exercise studio is completely transformed. The set up you did earlier in the day looks even more incredible at night.

As you head into the building you see that there’s already quite a crowd assembled. The mirrored studio reflects the shiny decorations hanging from the ceiling. Minseok’s selections are playing in the background and everyone is enjoying the food and dessert buffet.

After you eat you drag Kyungsoo onto the dance floor, laughing happily as he twirls you around before pulling you into his arms. The song switches to a slower tempo and you step closer, linking your arms over his shoulders, his hands come to your waist. 

He hums along to the song, a contented smile on his face. “Can I ask you a question?”

You nod. “Always.”

“Why did you do all of this? The prom, this whole summer?” he asks, carefully watching your reaction.

You look away and open your mouth to give the reasons you’ve been saying to your friends the past few months. 

“Because he was deprived of many incredible experiences and I wanted to make sure he had them.” 

“Because he’s a good boss, a good friend, and he deserves something light and fun in his life.”

But the words get caught in your throat. You can always lie to yourself, but if there’s one person you feel compelled to be honest with, it’s him. You duck your head, a blush spreading across your cheeks.

When you look back to him he thinks to himself that he’s never seen you so vulnerable and so hopeful. The love radiating from your face makes his heart feels like it’s going to burst.

“You know why, Kyungsoo,” you say. Your voice is soft, a small, wistful smile on your face.

“I think I do. But would you say it for me? Please, I have to know for sure,” he says urgently.

“Because I love you,” you say with a shrug and a tilt of your head, the words free of doubt or fear. A giddy laugh escapes from you. After thinking the words for so many weeks it feels surreal to finally be saying them out loud.

He looks so shocked, you think he would have looked less surprised if you’d slapped him. He furrows his brow adorably and you stifle a giggle. His hands come to gently cup your elbows. He meets your gaze with renewed intensity.

“Say it again, please Sunshine. Say it again,” he whispers, so close to you his breath brushes your cheeks. You smile to yourself, the nickname sounding like the most intimate of endearments coming from him.

“I love you Doh Kyungsoo, every wild, crazy inch of me,” you say and your breath hitches. 

The truth of the words filling every part of your body. You couldn’t pinpoint the exact time it happened, but his happiness has become as important to you as your own.

A brilliant smile blooms on his face, his eyes crinkling in the corners with warmth. He brushes the hair out of your face and tucks it behind your ear.

“This whole time I’ve been falling in love with you. But I was afraid that this was just something fun for you. A quest. Something to fill your nights with. I never dreamed that you’d feel the same way about me,” he says in a rush, holding your gaze.

“I love you Sunshine. With all my heart,” he says, voice low and full of emotion.

You pull him into a hug, resting your forehead against his neck, feeling happy tears welling up in your eyes. He holds you close, running his hands up and down your back as you sway to the music. After a few minutes you pull back, dabbing your eyes and you smile at each other. Tentatively at first, and then fully.

“Would you come home with me tonight?” he asks with a wry smile.

You laugh and press a quick kiss to his lips. “Yes, absolutely.”

You, Kyungsoo, and your friends dance the night away and by midnight you’re all considerably more disheveled than when you arrived, but it’s completely worth it. Kyungsoo pulls Chanyeol aside and asks if he wouldn’t mind crashing on Baekhyun’s couch tonight and he gives you both a wide grin.

“All right kids, now don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he says with faux seriousness and you roll your eyes at him.

Once the evening is over you go with Kyungsoo in his car, his hand holding yours as he drives. He pulls up out front of the apartment he shares with Chanyeol and he lets out a groan.

“What’s wrong?” you ask as he rubs his hand over his face.

“Uhh, I just realized… if we’re planning on doing certain activities tonight… I don’t really have the necessary precautions,” he says and gives you a knowing look.

A beat later you let out a laugh. “Ohhh, you mean condoms? Shit, I don’t have any either,” you say, unable to contain your grin. “Let’s go get some, there’s got to be a drug store around here.”

He looks down at his suit and over at your long, elegant dress and gives you a wry smile. “All right, princess, let’s go.”

After a few blocks you see a Rite Aid up ahead and pull up out front. He meets you around the front of the car and clasps his hand around yours. You run into the store together, laughing. The night staff, an older man and woman at the register regard you curiously as you hurry past them.

You reach the aisle and stand there staring at the wide array of options.

“Oh my gosh, I just realized we’re sleeping together for the first time on prom night. How cliché of us,” you say with a giggle. “Although, it’s not too stereotypical - I’m not a virgin.”

“Neither am I,” he says with a laugh.

“I wish it had been with someone like you, though,” you say, squeezing his hand.

“Someone like me?” he says, raising his eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.

You look down at the floor, trying to figure out how to put how he makes you feel into words. “Yeah, someone strong, and steady. And safe.”

He lets out a laugh. “Safe? That sounds awfully similar to boring.”

“No, no. You don’t understand,” you say emphatically, coming to stand fully in front of him, grabbing his other hand as well. “You never ask me to be anything but who I am. You’re patient, kind, caring. For the longest time I thought that falling in love would be stifling. That it would… I don’t know, take my independence. Take my spirit. Make me into someone I don’t recognize.”

You step closer, holding his face in your hands. ���But I can’t think of anything I want more than to be with you. You make me the best version of who I am. I don’t know how it is for you, being with me. But when I’m with you, it just feels like… home,” you finish gently.

He gives you a brilliant smile, leaning forward to capture your lips with his for a long moment. “Hmm, how do I feel when I’m with you,” he says, considering. 

“Like I’m simultaneously on fire and completely at peace, if that makes sense. You make me much less cranky, which I’m sure everyone appreciates,” he says and you laugh. “I can’t imagine my life without you, and to have you be mine? I’d consider myself the luckiest man in the world.”

“Well guess what? I’m all yours,” you say and he picks you up, spinning you around.

You squeal and cling to him. The workers at the register lean over to look at you and roll their eyes. He sets you down and you peruse the display with greater focus. Eventually you decide and bring your selection to the register. The older clerk stares you down with a wry smile as she rings you up. 

Once she hands you the bag you dash back out into the parking lot and drive to his apartment as quickly as you can.

He runs up the steps with you right behind him. Once you’re through the door he kicks it behind him and comes up to you. He bends down and picks you up, a hand under your knees and one under your shoulders. You squeal and laugh as you wrap your arms around his neck to hold on. He reaches the bedroom at the end of the hall and flicks on the light with his elbow before gently setting you down.

You regard each other for a moment. Holding his gaze, you kick off your heels and pull your hair to one side. You turn around and look at him over your shoulder. He steps up behind you, running his hand along the delicate skin at the base of your neck and down to the zipper. 

His finger brushes along your back as he draws it down and a shiver of anticipation runs down your spine.

His hands slide inside the fabric and push it gently off your shoulder. The dress pools at your feet and you step out, clad in only your red satin bra and panties. He stares hungrily at your body, running his hand along his lower lip. 

You move the dress to the side with your foot and step up to him. “My turn,” you say with a sly smile.

You slip off his jacket and toss it on the chair by the bed. You do your best to untie his tie, but can’t seem to work out the knot. He chuckles and helps you out, slipping it off easily. You unbutton his shirt slowly and add it to the pile. He strips off his undershirt while you make quick work of his pants. Once he’s down to his boxer-briefs he pulls you to him, trailing a line of kisses down your neck and along your shoulder.

You moan, leaning your head back and holding onto his waist for support. He turns, moving to sit on the bed and pulling you on top of him. You let out a hiss of pleasure as his erection comes into contact with your clothed core. 

He stills, closing his eyes to enjoy the sensation. You take the moment to unhook your bra, sliding it down your arms and throwing it behind you. When he looks back at your naked chest his eyes go wide and darken with desire.

“You’re going to be the death of me, woman,” he says with a chuckle.

You grin and grind on his lap, sucking in a breath at how good he feels. He slides his hands to the backs of your thighs and twists, dropping you down onto the mattress on your back as you squeal and cling to him. He settles between your legs, his lean body flush against yours.

He bends down to slide his mouth over yours and starts slowly rocking his hips. You clutch his back, letting out needy whines against his open mouth. He smiles against your lips and draws a hand up to massage that sensitive spot behind your ear. After weeks of making out, you’re helpless against him, you realize with a laugh, he already knows all your weaknesses.

“Okay, now you’re going to kill me,” you say and breathe out a sigh.

He laughs and pulls back to look you in the eye, trailing a hand down your body to play with the edge of your panties. You feel a rush of heat to your core, desperate for his touch any way you can have it. His finger dips below the fabric and runs along your slit.

Your mouth falls open and you shut your eyes in pleasure. He continues his assault, trailing two fingers up and down, before slowly circling your clit. You clench your legs together around his hand and bite your lip.

“You’re so ready for me,” he says in amazement. “I don’t think I’m going to last long.”

You open your eyes to give him a sarcastic look. “Then it really would be like prom night,” you tease.

He gives you a devilish grin and slides a finger into you. You choke out a laugh. “Mercy, please,’ you plead with a high voice. ‘I need you inside me, like, yesterday.’

He withdraws his finger and carefully works off your underwear, moving your legs to the side so he can slip them off before throwing them on the floor. He looks around the room for the bag, finally finding it underneath your dress on the floor. He pulls out a condom and sheaths himself after sliding his underwear off.

When he positions himself above you again, you feel his heat against your core and bite your lip in anticipation. He bends down and kisses you, his tongue quickly slipping into your mouth as he braces himself on the bed. You clutch his arms to ground yourself as he eases inside you, groaning into each other’s mouths as he fills you to the hilt.

A beat later he starts to move, setting a steady pace. After months of only getting off with your own hands, he feels so good you could cry. He tilts his body over yours, the change in angle bringing him into contact with your clit with every thrust. You whimper into his mouth, a high keening sound, and grip his arms tightly. 

You pull back, resting your forehead against his. “Come with me,” you plead, breathing heavy.

He nods, panting. “I’m so close, are you?” he asks, eyes half closed in pleasure.

“Mmhmm,” you murmur in assent, hardly able to speak. “If you touch me, I’ll lose it in a heartbeat.”

He grins and leans up. His finger finds your clit, swirling messy circles as he thrusts faster and harder into you. Your orgasm rips through you, a strangled cry leaving your lips. He finds his completion right behind you, letting out a deep groan. 

You stay there for several minutes, his weight on top of you grounding you as the world swims back into focus.

He presses a kiss to your lips and then eases himself out of you. He gets out of bed and disposes of the condom. Turning off the light, he throws back the covers, getting underneath. He holds them open for you. You follow and he pulls you to his chest, kissing your forehead. 

“So, what did you think of your first prom?” you ask, stifling a yawn.

He laughs, snuggling against you. “It was perfect, Sunshine.”

[dentalrecordsmusic]

Starry-Eyed Curiosity: An Interview with Curtis Cooper

Photo courtesy of Catherine Dempsey

"Every time Rancid puts out a new single, I feel like I've heard it so many times,” says Curtis Cooper. "They don't even care anymore. I think there's a limit to good creativity if you stick to the same genre, but if you're flexible you can write forever.”

Cooper is seated in a porch chair playing with their blond locks. Their Choking Victim t-shirt is a noticeable reflection of their roots, but not the end-all-be-all. Cooper lists their influences all over the musical map, from Elliot Smith to The Unseen, Amy Winehouse to Bright Eyes — wherever they find their home in the world of noise and sound is simply whatever strikes them with surprise and beatific style.

Cooper began playing music when they were four, learning Elvis melodies “because [they] couldn’t physically play chords yet.” After finding themselves in the midst of Beatles worship, Cooper discovered Nirvana when they were 12. “I just learned Nirvana songs for years and I got really into punk in high school when I was 16, and I started playing in bands but it was more like, ‘Let's get as drunk as we can.’ No one was paying attention to what was going on.”

Cooper’s first ever band was called Don’t Get Caught! when they were 17, an obvious nod at an Against Me! reference complete with an exclamation point for emphasis. "A lot of the songs were just about getting fucked up and drinking and drugs and they were nonsensicle and we didn't put in the time and we were just getting fucked up,” Cooper says. "That was just that point in time. At the time for me, music was secondary and drinking and drugs were the priority. It's a bit more focused these days,” they say with a laugh.

The 29-year-old Philly native has dipped their toe into genres and sounds that are scattered and yet oddly fitting. They first came to DRM’s attention back when they were fronting the punk outfit Community Service. The band released J-a.w/n< in August 2013 and found that they quickly became a staple of the Philadelphia punk scene. The band was fun, upbeat, no-frills punk rock with a silly sly smile and an undertone of ska.

"When I started Community Service it was a demo thing and it was just me playing dumb demo shit and then I started trying to focus more, and it wasn't just punk,” they say. "It was sad boy songs and punk and I remember when I got back to Philly [from Boston] and was playing with this nasty drummer Luke Dillon, after we graduated and moved back home I kept playing with Miles and Will and we did that for a couple years. We got all the stupid out of our system."

Touring was no easy feat for Cooper and their bandmates. Most baby bands tend to take any show they can get their hands on — Community Service was no different. "We would start in Baltimore and then we'd take a show in Rockhill, South Carolina which is like an 8-hour drive and sometimes the routes would take us close to home [in Philly] and that's what would fuck us up,” they say. "If we passed through Philly and had a day off, you'd be like, 'I wish I could be home now, why am I playing these stupid shows?’”

The band had a habit of playing hard in more ways than simply playing their instruments. "I was always fine mentally but you could see the others where slipping, after two and a half weeks in a car, we were just drinking [alcohol] and Red Bull, drinking and Red Bull,” they say. "I would get home and be like, ‘What did I do to myself?’ Some people would be in the van freaking out like, ‘What the fuck are we doing?!'"

Around the same time Cooper was playing with Community Service, they went on to write and perform solo acoustic-based music, releasing their first solo record, Laughing In Line in January 2016. "Right after I started doing my acoustic stuff I was like, ‘Ehh I'm kind of done with punk,’” they say. "I still go to punk shows every once in a while but the scene isn't as rewarding to me but it depends on the kind of punk. It was really into rewarding stupid behavior like how much can you drink? That makes you cool. How many studs are on your jacket? So stupid. Are you kidding me? Fuck you.”

Cooper’s disillusionment in the punk scene sent them on a path towards more expressive and sensitive songwriting. "I feel like I was faking it in the punk scene,” they say. "I'm not hardcore at all. Dip my toe in kind of thing. I have a bunch of songs I wrote for my friend Morgan [Ganou] to sing and in my head I'm writing for Amy Winehouse. I like the energy of punk, but that energy could come from all kinds of music."

An album as colorfully composed as its accompanying artwork, Laughing In Line was Cooper’s introduction to their more sultry, creative, and quietly shocking approach to music. With songs featuring another talented voice, such as Ganou on track three “Happy and Sane,” Cooper was able to reach for influences, sounds, textures, and stark silences to create an atmosphere fit for indie-pop-acoustic dreams made reality. "When you play loud people talk over you,” Cooper says. "When you play quiet people will shut up and then they talk right over you. But I've learned that if I play loud and then I just shut up really fast it grabs people's attention. When I was playing house shows that was my trick. Then I started writing songs around those tricks which I definitely did for Laughing.”

Then along came Messy, a noisy, turbulent, and dingy journey through one’s own insecurities and bouts with self-destruction which Cooper reluctantly dropped in November 2017 and largely written on electric guitar in stark contrast to the last release, Laughing In Line. "I was so suicidal and I hope I'm never there in my life again,” they say. "I don't wanna do that. I was drinking a ton during that record. I go to sobriety meetings every now and then these days. I would just get drunk, wake up the next morning, and I'm suicidal. There's real addicts and they're struggling to survive. I don't have that problem but it's just like a mental instability problem. I guess the big thing I've learned is I say ‘no' to a lot of things. I can't hang out with everyone I used to hang out with.”

Messy was a hugely intimate portrayal of Cooper, who was uncertain the record would be too intense for listeners to digest. "Messy was way too personal and I went way too far,” they say. "I've never been one to shy away from sharing personal stuff but it was just way too honest. Some of the songs I did change the lyrics too and it was still way too honest. I would've gone back and changed the lyrics and made them more convoluted and not so direct. Buried the vocals more in the mix."

Being a non-binary artist plays a role in how Cooper is able to create their art, often avoiding people and things that don’t stick out as enjoyable or pleasant for them. "I wanna hang out with people who are cool with me being non-binary and know how to use my pronouns properly and don't care what I'm wearing. Those are the people I wanna hang out with,” they say. "People get stuck in saying they'll hang out with certain people and then I'm like, ‘Why the fuck did I say yes to this?' That's another side. Saying ‘no' doesn't mean you're a dick and people could interpret that as being a dick, but that's on them. There are people who don't like you, that's fine, fuck them.”

Cooper is noticeably thrilled to have completed their latest record, which currently has no working title. After starting with 15 tracks, they wrote it down to ten. They say there will be two instrumentals and claim it’s "weird and fun to play." This one is slated to be acoustic-based but it's built on some "Elliot Smith worship" and "a million double vocals.” "I recorded it in my room and it's not very clean,” they say. "It's definitely gonna be like a 'bedroom pop’ record.”

Cooper has extensive plans to tour this summer, joining Thin Lips who will be opening for Hop Along for a month, then Slaughter Beach Dog immediately after. Thin Lips just released their new single "A Song For Those Who Miss You All The Time.” "I gotta learn these Thin Lips songs and it's way harder than I thought it would be,” Cooper says. "I really did not think it would take me so long. They're fucking tough! The chords are so fucking weird so I have to do that, and we get back from tour September 5 and then I have an Amy Winehouse set on September 14th which is an hour long. I have to learn all these Amy Winehouse songs which is so much fun. It's in Germantown on her birthday. It's gonna be sick.”

Cooper has always had a ton of love for Amy Winehouse — when they first heard her prominent single, “Rehab,” they quickly went out and bought her sophomore record Back to Black. "I feel like I'm the weak link in the Amy Winehouse band so I gotta get my shit together,” they say. "It's gonna be difficult but so worth it. I feel like learning someone's songs gets you into their mindset. You're getting better and diving deeper. This is what its like to be depressed and going through addiction and also being so talented and making something so beautiful out of it. Amy sounds like a horn and she can just wail."

The future looks as though it’s painted in gold for Cooper, though it’s uncertain and constantly changing. However, their persistent hold on creativity and artistry leads one to believe that they aren’t done yet, and they won’t be done for some time. "I'm gonna be doing this forever so you can only write for yourself and if you don't like what you're doing then you're not gonna have fun,” they say. "I wanna be in a Primus cover band and an Amy Winehouse cover band and that would be insane,” Cooper says with a laugh.

Cooper will be playing with their full band (Jack Zaferes on Bass, Scott Stitzer on Drums) on June 28 at Space 1026 with Mal Blum and the Blums, Teenage Halloween and Ramona. They will also be playing with Thin Lips on  July 24 opening for The Japandroids at Boot and Saddle, and August 25 at Philamoca opening for Slaughter Beach, Dog. Thin Lips with be on tour with Hop Along from July 28 - August 21 on a full US Tour, and then will be touring with Slaughter Beach, Dog from August 23 - September 2.

Keep up with Curtis Cooper on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.

Catherine Dempsey has been laughing in line. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter.

[man-i-dont-know]

BNHA Chapter 162 and 163: Thoughts and Spoilers

I am two weeks late, sorry, I’ve been busy. Well I am gonna jump right into it and I will try to keep it short since this is two chapters. I say that every week but trust me this time.

So they found Kurogiri and he was looking for the freaking mountain of a man, named “Giganto-machia” (possibly Gigantomachia, one word who knows). Giant is genuinely terrifying, not to mention that he is a “faithful servant” of All for One, which, tied with religious zeal that was revealed in that one flashback with Ashido, is an unusual combination. I don’t know, to me the religious types are fascinating to me, whether they are zealots or simple believers, the absolute faith is typically tied to something that grounds them, and with a person like Giant, I suppose a faith is the only thing that he could latch onto. Side note: is he naked? I would really like to know if it a Thor Ragnarok situation where the Hulk’s junk is just kinda out there, or if he has a loin cloth. Was Gran Torino fighting a naked mammoth?

Then there are more hospital scenes, Deku still is forbidden from seeing Eri, and he ends up visiting Mirio. The following scene is what cemented my absolute adoration for Mirio as a hero (though arguably that happened when he kept fighting after getting hit with the bullet). Mirio immediately took Sir’s words to heart, he was the one comforting Deku, he was the one who kept smiling despite being the one who lost everything. Deku shows more immaturity with offering Mirio One for All, even if Mirio does not fully understand the offer, he promptly rejects. The rejection was so fast and so sure that I was amazed, it was a seemingly hypothetical offer that Mirio did not even mull over. When a question is posed as hypothetical the typical response would be to think about it, but Mirio is set in his morals that he did not even think of the “what if”.

All Might also over hears this conversation, but from what I’ve seen, in this chapter and the next, he does not scold Deku for sharing this information, which is interesting. That could be because All Might is coming to terms that Deku’s quirk is now his own, and this thought could be driven by loss. He sees it within Deku, something which he once had but now he is without and is painfully helpless. It could because of this that All Might has resigned to himself to letting Deku share the specifics with whoever, though that is a terrible idea. Or it could be a show of trust, either way, Deku needs to learn to shut up.

The next chapter starts off with a heartwarming scene. All the class 1-A kids rushes the four involved with the raid and are immediately comforting them. Iida was also being super kind by not rushing them even though he really wanted to (then the “well then” reaction thing happened and I genuinely hope that it becomes a meme). Ashido goes out of her way to show specific concern for Kirishima and Kirishima thinks he has a long way to go, even though he is already an A+ hero. Uraraka has a flashback with a super supportive Aizawa, and she wants to save people. While I did not think much of that as it happened, thinking about it now, this is amazing development. She starts off wanting to make money for her family, but after this arc, what she wants now is to save people. Originally, she did not fit Stain’s “ideal hero,” but she certainly does now.

Ya boi Bakugou is chilling on the couch. Even though he does not say anything, this is the most compassionate thing he has done in a while. When Deku rushed into the slime monster to save him, Bakugou became angry. When Bakugou was successfully saved from the League of Villains, before the fall of All Might, he was not saying any thank yous. The closest thing to compassion he has achieved was when he told Deku not to follow him through Kurogiri’s gate. In this scene, he was in the room, just to see them, he didn’t say anything probably for a couple reasons. He probably didn’t trust himself to say anything comforting, and he probably knows that if he did comfort someone that more attention would be drawn to himself than what the situation called for. He is capable of comforting people, but he has only ever comforted Kirishima while we was with the Bakusquad, so something like that would be hard for him.

Also Kaminari is straight up fearless when talking with Bakugou, even calling him Kacchan. This in particular gets me, because never once has he ever told anyone to stop calling him that nickname, and now we see someone other than Deku saying it, and since Bakugou doesn’t react at all, can we assume that this isn’t the first time? Did Bakugou give him explicit permission? Did Kaminari say it once, Bakugou just stop in his track for a while and stared at him before silently carrying on? I’ve noticed that Horikoshi like to develop characters off screen without Deku being a part of it (which is great, it shows that Deku doesn’t know everything and that the characters are not dependent on Deku for development).

Bakugou and Todoroki head to bed early and Todoroki seems disturbed with something on his phone, but they have make ups coming up and I want to see how they have grown since then.

Present Mic greets Todoroki and Bakugou by screaming that they are “bad boys.” All Might’s attitude surprised me at first, it being so somber and all, but with Sir’s death in mind, it makes sense. The fact that All Might got information about Giant could also cause this. Gran Torino was forced to retreat from a monster that was reworking the topography of a mountain, that is nothing to sneeze at, even when All Might was at his peak, that is excessive firepower that no individual should have. Good news is that Kurogiri has been captured, and without a team mom I feel like the League is gonna have a harder time mobilizing, unless Giant becomes the team mom... scary...

Todoroki seems discontent that All Might is there, but we see immediately that this is because Endeavor is at the exam sight. Endeavor demands a quick chat with All Might, and Present Mic bails, not that I blame him.

We see Todoroki’s side and I have never seen so much emotion is a fairly straight face before. The text he was upset about was straight up his dad saying that he will be watching the exam. After thinking to himself that it would be better if no one bumps into him, Todoroki bumps into that super loud kid (forgetting his name sorry, the wind dude that is fiery of spirit). Then there is that girl that was being impersonated by Toga showed up, and honestly, I am terrified. Deku needs to out her as soon as possible since he figured out that she was there during the raid. I hope, no I am begging that she is not Toga. I love Toga’s character, but she is just too good.

Then the last couple panels of wanting to “dial it up a couple notches,” really gets me. It gets me because it is Bakugou that is saying this, he is the one focusing people up and is somewhat encouraging. He has always been able to get people to focus (besides Todoroki during the tournament) but it has never been this neutral or this positive before. I am sensing that the supplementary lessons he has been receiving really honed his hero personality skills. I would love to see someone acting as a victim and Bakugou stumble on them and gives them a super forced grin that would be the embodiment of the “your smile is $3″ meme.

Well that is it, but I have two theories that I’d like to share. So what if, and bear with me here, this secondary exam is to weed out a traitor? What if the schools know that they have a student that is a double agent? Think about it, U.A. knows they have a traitor somewhere, why would U.A. be the only one? So if multiple schools are having the same issue, something like this would be great to root out some individuals. Villains disguised as students would not necessarily desire a license because that would remove them from the school that they are trying to get info from. Plus there are a couple other things. If a villain were to try to pass a hero test, they’d fail naturally right? So individuals that have to retake the test are your best villain candidates. There is also the fact that Endeavor is there, and while it seems to be just to check in on Todoroki, I feel like the #1 hero would be busy, plus this is a high priority thing, to root out traitors. Even if the girl Toga was impersonating was returned (which is becoming less likely), her quirk would be different and that would give the schools some place to start. 

And my second theory is a lot more straight forward and almost seems obvious. I think Giant might have a couple quirks in him. He worked for All for One so it is possible, and it would account for his overwhelming strength. But what about the whole “become unresponsive” thing? Well, Gran Torino said that he had a single minded determination, and coupled with the fact that he could very well be a zealot would mean that this mind would be like a steel trap. His incredible concentration and determination could be what has kept him sane, and it could also be due to this that he has become All for One’s greatest modification, greater than the Nomus and anything else he may have created.

Now I am really done, and I failed on keeping it short again. Oh well, I needed it out of my system. Thank you all for taking your time to read this, and I hope you all have great days.

[cosmosogler]

hawaii part 2

i took a longer break.

the other thing gramma and i discussed is what i wanted to do next. i didn’t want to talk to my parents about it, but i also, didn’t want to continue to feel like i might be grabbed in my sleep. after working stuff out with grampa and setting up the bed i slept in their hotel room.

i feel like i am missing a day somewhere in here. i think... i slept one more night in mom and dad’s room. i don’t remember very well. and i don’t really recall what happened that day? 

oh! we went on a zip line tour one of those days. i had a good time with the tour guides and my other family members. the zip line tours have become very casual for us. i’m still a little leery of them considering The Accident but i feel a lot more secure with the line double wrapped around two giant posts and the tour guides swinging around all the time. the line can easily support my weight.

that and these zip lines have, like, official safety regulations and aren’t from the second floor balcony to a barbed wire fence. my back and neck hurt just thinking about The Accident.

ok i think i skipped talking with anyone about anything on the zip line day. i must have talked to gramma and grampa the next day. we agreed to collect mother and father and talk to them about what happened between the next lunch and dinner. then the day after that we went on the nature hike. it was me, mom, dad, my brother, and clara and claudia and aunt amy. 

i mostly hung out with amy and my brother and the guide. i won the hawaiian trivia game but she didn’t give me the promised gift basket. i think that may have been a joke. not sure how i won the game either... i was just making what i thought were reasonable guesses. it was stuff like “how many land masses are part of the hawaiian archipelago” and “how many apple varieties are there” and i felt like i knew even though i didn’t really have a good way of knowing.

we climbed up to a pool in the river. there were rapids leading up into the pool along slippery rocks and then a sort of branch-boulder-dam blocking off the outflow. a huge tree was growing out of the side of the cliff. i made a terrible mistake.

the rope swing from the shore into the pool was fine. i couldn’t hold on very long because i don’t have a lot of arm strength, and also because i was very, very burned. my brother didn’t get my back very well with the sunscreen the day before.

ha, i forgot. when i went snorkeling/body surfing with the boys i ended up getting sand EVERYWHERE. i went in the shower and it fell off in sheets. if the first day was a sand castle i basically brought the whole beach into the shower with me. i’m surprised i got burned anywhere. and this was AFTER using the beach shower and also squirming around in the pool.

ok the hike. the cliff tree. the guide lead the kids (we were with one other family) up the side of the cliff to the trunk of the tree. we held on to a little foothold created by the tree’s roots against the rock wall and jumped off into the pool like i dunno 20 feet. it wasn’t that high. it wouldn’t have been scary if it was the high dive at school.

but this was terrifying. i was frozen. i couldn’t let go of the cliff face. it was impossible to tell how deep the water was, or where the best place to jump would be, or how much power i needed to put into my jump to clear the cliff, which was not completely vertical. and i wasn’t sure how much traction against the cliff i could get for my jump with the old tennis shoes i was wearing. the bottoms of those shoes are smooth and worn out. 

i was actually kind of angry with myself? like, the thoughts in my head said that if i did go to kill myself, even if i really did want to die, would i freeze like this? would i just be stuck like that forever? standing at the edge looking down and i can’t jump because i’m afraid of heights?

i was having trouble reconciling the fear with my normal complete apathy toward my own survival. i was having trouble reconciling my severe aversion to pain with my desire to hurt myself. 

i’m not as afraid of dying from a fall as i am of surviving and just... hurting forever from the injury. my back ain’t been the same since the last one. the stretches are helping a little bit... but the zip line accident happened years ago now. 

so, because i am a sane and rational individual, when i had jumped into the pond and swam back to shore i looked up at the other kids, who had gone back up for another round. but this time the guide led them out onto a tree branch with no handholds or footholds and jumped from there. pumped up from my previous jump i saw a perfect opportunity to reenact the famous scene from the lion king.

perhaps ironically that video also ends with the artist falling out of the tree.

so anyway i took a minute to actually make the decision to get back up the cliff, and by the time i did everyone else had jumped, so i got lost on the way to the tree since it was off the path. my brother had to come collect me. 

i climbed down onto a branch and hugged the trunk. i looked down. i looked out at the branch, which seemed approximately 800 miles long for some reason now. i thought about my wet shoes and their lack of traction.

i couldn’t let go of the trunk. i couldn’t even get myself to move out over the water. this was a problem because i needed to get over the water in order to get down.

sammie is afraid of heights, news at 11.

so once i finally got over to the correct branch and did not fall and die i landed in the water fine.

the rest of the hike was nice. i avoided dad and nibbled on my packed lunch on top of a waterfall (but not too close to the edge). despite my intense dislike for getting things on my hands i caved and grabbed the rocks and trees covered in ants for support. we came to another pool with a giant waterfall. like, this waterfall was huge, oh my god. you couldn’t even get close to it because the current was so strong. actually you weren’t supposed to get too close from the front because the clashing currents between the river and waterfall would suck you down to the bottom and spin you around there until you drowned. our guide told us about someone she literally had to swim down and kick out of the death spin.

so my brother and i went the safe way around, climbing along the rocks at the side of the pond. we stood in the cave behind the waterfall and did stupid war cries. then we climbed back out.

i got bug bites somehow despite the repellent. then we climbed all the way down the mountain to the public area of the river. there were also waterfalls there. guess who climbed it?

it’s me. the answer is me.

so i stood at the edge of the middle-height cliff above and to the side of the waterfall and looked down and my knees locked up. every time i leaned forward to jump my knees would stop responding and i’d have to windmill back until i was against the wall again. the rocks were wet and slippery and i would have to jump way out in order to clear the rocks. so i told the guide i was going to stay there, maybe build a nest, maybe work a career on the cliff. i think she was about ready to push me off. the kids behind me looked pretty impatient. i must have been stuck up there for six minutes straight. i lost track of time.

i yelled at myself i think. i stopped hearing things after a while. at some point i ended up in the water 25 feet down. i got cheers. the girl behind me took about two seconds to jump and i told her i didn’t like heights. she was doing something with a waterproof camera i think. she must have been like 12.

so when the guide told me and my brother that there was a cool 40-foot cliff to jump off of if you kept climbing up, i looked up into the trees. then i said no.

that was the hike!!!!

there was a girl who went up behind my brother. she took even longer than i had taken to jump. fair enough. 40 feet into murky water is a lot to ask.

after that we went for pies at leoda’s. 

after that we had dinner... i don’t remember where. beach bum i think? the new one where everyone gets food poisoning. most of the kids had trouble finding something they wanted, including myself. i don’t know what the parents were doing.

so after that i went over to gramma’s room and asked if we should do the meeting thing. gramma asked my mom and dad to come over. only mom showed up. i told her what happened. she said “that’s just how dad is.” 

i expected as much. she said other things but it kept coming back to “that’s just how he is.” just like every time i have a complaint about mom that’s “just how she is.” 

my response to that became “yes and i don’t like it.” there’s a reason neither of my mother’s siblings talks to her very much or with the informality that they use with other members of the family.

so mom asked if i wanted her to talk to dad. i had wanted him to show up. i had some choice words for him. but i didn’t get to say anything i actually wanted to say. because he didn’t come to the meeting. i said sure.

so when i was in my family’s room that night i heard mom say some things to dad. i didn’t hear what they were because i was listening to music and i didn’t feel like eavesdropping. i know mom’s tone sounded irritated. maybe not exactly irritated, but worked up in that manner. dad didn’t come out of the room or say anything to me.

actually it’s been like literally a week and dad hasn’t interacted with me except when he yelled at me about the car this morning. spoiler alert.

after that i think it was the 4th? my sister, austin, ryan, and i went scuba diving. we found some cool fish at the reef and chased a turtle. and by chased i mean we swam next to it several feet away and made the hang loose sign while the guide took a picture with three of us in the frame.

there’s something about wearing an air tank in zero gravity that just feels right to me.

i think my favorite thing about scuba diving is taking a deep breath, rolling over onto my back, and looking up at the surface and listening to the ocean while i hold my breath. i hold my breath so i don’t make bubbles and noise for a few seconds. you can hear everything. the boats out in the open ocean. whale songs, when they’re around. fish. the wind picking up the water at the surface sometimes. i like getting picked up and carried by the waves forming under water sometimes. but when i’m down in the reef i always feel too bulky to be very comfortable with unpredictable movement. and “treading” water in scuba gear is stressful when sinking too far means you’ll crash into the reef. even gently, that can scrape the skin right off your hands and also it damages the coral polyps.

what that means is that i spend a lot of time staring at things and flailing my arms around trying to stay level.

we stayed out for 50 minutes, which is actually great. i didn’t even use as much air as my cousins when usually i am the Air Vacuum. after that i seemed to have a sunburn around the face mask, which is strange because i was 30 feet underwater and also mostly face down.

the 4th celebration was mostly me just leaning over to sierra and saying “happy will smith day.” there weren’t any fireworks on our side of the island and traffic was incomprehensibly dense so we didn’t drive out to town. then i brought out onitama and played a few rounds with sierra since she was sober. well, sober enough, i didn’t ask. i won the first round, then i got tired and lost the second round. made a lot of really dumb oversights. i say i got tired, but maybe i’m just bad at the game. and sierra kept telling me she was really bad at chess-style games and then would end up in the most miraculous situations. i couldn’t get a very good handle on her skill level. i usually beat asher when we played, but i think our play styles are compatible in a way that puts the more experienced player at a greater advantage. sierra was mostly using strange moves and i would accidentally give her just the card she needed.

anyway i don’t remember how late i stayed up. not too late i don’t think... the last day at the beach i was wiped out and very burnt to the point of my face blistering up a little bit. so i stuck to the shade. i was ready to go home. but the trip was only half over!!!!!! and i had yet to spend an afternoon at Public Beach!!!!!!!!!!!!

i may have to pause here and dedicate another post to the last half of the trip. it was slightly less eventful. since there were fewer people and all. and i just didn’t really want to go outside. i ended up spending more time thinking, and also more time playing pokemon so i didn’t have to interact with anyone. i also stopped being able to eat more than half a meal at a time.

i also need to devote some time to thinking about what i want to talk to the therapist about tomorrow. i can’t go back to the group therapy place because my insurance didn’t renew their coverage. i was actually very upset about that. i surprised myself with how visceral the reaction was.

so i only get 45 minutes a week for the next three weeks. i don’t know whether to try to talk about the trip and what i feel about that, or whether to try to focus on the future and what i need to do going forward. and how i might go about doing that considering my nonexistent energy level.

also i’m having major surgery on wednesday so that will also cut into my ability to do things.

since i actually remember a lot about the trip and have had a lot to say about it here, i might go with preparing for grad school with my therapist. she will ask about my text. i will have to talk about that because it’s still upsetting and i know what dad is doing now and it’s actually making me more furious? have to talk about that tomorrow, too tired tonight and it gets more relevant the longer it goes on. really i should talk about it when i talk about today. that’s when it’s started to interfere with my transportation and stuff.

actually, one more thing. the night i started sleeping in my parents’ room again my brother grabbed my butt during the middle of the night. he kept saying “don’t worry” and “it’s ok” and stuff and i got angry and swiped him away from my side of the bed. when i asked him about it very loudly in front of aunt amy the next day he said he didn’t remember that and looked genuinely baffled enough that i let it go. amy basically pointed and laughed at him though. he shuffled off to my parents’ cabana, which they were using exclusively, and was separate from the shaded area the rest of the family was using. ryan went over to hang out there a few times, and i think mike dropped in to talk to them for a while, and maybe clara spent a little time there too? i didn’t hang out with mom or dad or my sister though.

it’s 11:40 now. i went to bed at 2 last night... tried to go to sleep earlier, but i was too restless and i kept finding things to do, like wash my face or set out my shoes for the morning. then i couldn’t sleep because it was too hot, because i was super jittery and could NOT get into a comfortable position no matter what i did, because the sheets felt Wrong, and because my brother was screaming about league of legends in the other room as always. i must have been up 40 minutes to an hour. slept fitfully and woke up a lot, then i woke up and was wide awake at 8 and realized my alarm wasn’t going to go off until 9. so i went back to bed and sat there and did nothing for an hour but i didn’t really doze very much.

i am very tired. i have therapy tomorrow, then i need to stop by the surgery hospital to get some blood work done, and then i would like to buy some food that i can eat (so i have more than mac and cheese to choose from), and then i am picking up asher and we are going to hang out for a while and maybe i can talk him into playing smash bros or something. we’ll have the house to ourselves after 5:30 so maybe we can just talk about stuff.

i would also like to check in with my aunt in chicago and i need to contact the university about my payment plan so i can work on a budget. and... i need to turn in my refund paperwork to nau. i have everything i need, i think i just need to scan in the last doctor’s note and put it all in a pdf.

i have all these fun adult things i can do instead of studying for the giant test i have to take in a month!!! procrastination is USEFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!! why study for a thing that stresses me out when i can PROCESS ALL THESE EMOTIONS that stress me out and DO ALL THIS PAPERWORK that stresses me out????????????

[uberchain]

Rewind 2017: Post-Thoughts

I flew back in from California a few days ago after the last stage of filming for Ready Up, and the first TF2 LAN of 2017. In the past live Team Fortress 2 events I have been privileged to have been flown out to - i55, Tip of the Hats 2015, DHW 2015, DHS 2016, i58, and Tip of the Hats 2016 - I’ve never felt post-LAN blues like the seventh event I’ve attended thus far. 

LAN, aside from a competition to see who is the best team out of all the teams competing in an equal playing ground, is a social gathering. A coming together of a community that has followed each other for a combined purpose. A forging of relationships with each other over a common passion, to know not simply players as players but players as people - as friends, as comrades, as partners, and as Redeye said: as family. This is something I would like to convey through Ready Up as we wrap up the filming stage and move forward into the editing stage from here on out. This is why me, Dashner, and Sideshow were flown out to Rewind.

Once it’s released, Ready Up may be my last major competitive TF2-related contribution. I’m in no rush to finish it, though. We’re going to take our time with it, most likely extending the date from early 2017 to late 2017 - we just want to make sure we do our best for our sponsor, the competitive community, and everyone who will watch. I am thankful for Dashner’s passion and knowledge for co-direction. I am thankful for Sideshow’s eloquence and confidence for co-interviewing. Both have taken time out of their jobs with OW for this.

I personally always want to show this community that they’re appreciated and loved, despite our differences and frustrations in how we view the same game we play. I work hard, because I feel like the community counts on me to deliver. I know I’m not obliged to do so, but I like to do so. I’ve been told numerous times that this in particular, this is not worth my energy. This is not worth my time for a community that in love is equal in hatred when you make a misstep. Some people have gone as far to tell me I’m clinically insane. These people could be right for all I care.

So what of my family then? The family one of the strongest figureheads in the esports community notices and praises fondly? When Dashner and I caught Redeye literally in the middle of ESL NY’s hallways amidst the tough and scary security, right outside the arena where the sound of matches bled out - standing in this hallway interviewing him then and there, we felt touched by his words. We were thankful for him remembering us past his stardom and status. Redeye has always tended to check in every now and again to smaller esports scenes, to see how they’re doing. It’s sweet and sincere, and knowing this was his nature made those words he gave us feel genuine to me.

ESA Rewind this last week was when I realized that I had said Ready Up would be my last major contribution to comp TF2. Like many others, bills are piling up. I owe debt. I’m rebuilding my design portfolio and figuring out the plan for 2017. There’s a lot of money I’ve invested into other future TF2-related projects I won’t ever see a return on from Valve or the TF2 community. I want to stay, but only if I can afford it (as do most sane people). As expected, the idea of never seeing my friends and family from here again is something I’m not readied up for.

Filming was wrapped on Friday after we arrived early for the European and Australian bootcamping and interviews, and B-roll was left to shoot on Saturday and Sunday, the actual game days. Dashner was manning the big guns for Ready Up (aka our expensive rentals), so I chose to focus on photo coverage for Teamfortress.tv. (There was a lack of photo coverage from i58 due to focus on Ready Up. I recruited Jasbutts and we went ham.) What I also chose to focus on was my international friends from Europe, and that’s when I got to learn more about Se7en.

Kaidus had approached me a while back to talk about his new organization and team he wanted to bring to America for Rewind, as well as future events and LANs. I recognized the Crowns champions, as well as my Full Tilt’s boys and the launching legend. He had named them Team Seven, a tongue-in-cheek response to the criticism Crowns Esports Club had faced back when Kaidus was more heavily involved in coaching it. 

I like the storyline FROYOTECH presented for this LAN’s victory: they came back from their 3rd Place slump at i58 and proved that they were still one of the strongest teams to be reckoned with. Habib’s mother was there, who kept asking Jasbutts about how the game worked as she spectated it, and finally watched her son win. Nursey has successfully shut up a good narrow-minded portion of the community and became the first female TF2 player to win an international LAN in the highest bracket. Paddie and Freestate finally became part of the FROYOTECH victory roster. 

As it usually goes, though, I root for the teams I’m asked to be involved with. This was on another level. I screamed my lungs out for Se7en. I knew their flaws and their criticisms. I didn’t care. It was like i55′s Ascent and i58′s Full Tilt. And some of these were Full Tilt. I liked Crowns way back then too. These were my boys. This was my team. I wanted them to win. This time, I knew their history and their players the most out of any team I had rooted for. European Prem TF2 was the scene I was watching the most at one point in my time here. FROYO got it in the end, and of course I didn’t want Se7en to lose, but I had a worse fear - I didn’t want them to leave. 

Again, coincidentally - Rewind was the seventh TF2 live event I flew out to. It might be the last TF2 live event I see them at too. I didn’t realize how much I actually gave a shit about this until it hit me, that this could be the last time I’d see them play TF2. It could be the last time I’d see them attend a LAN, or go pro in another game. CS:GO or OW, maybe? I don’t know, I want them all to keep going and not...disappear? Jasmine Tea is disbanding, one of them is going off to focus on school. That also hurt, it’s always amazing having the Australians at a TF2 LAN. Yet this one for Se7en, why? My colleagues & friends feel similarly, but it’s like why do we feel like that? People come and go all the time. And underneath it all, I’m just a fan who does more shit than I should out of my love for this game and this community. What worth is my opinion? 

Every time I run into Sideshow IRL, it’s uplifting to know he’s still around somewhere else. When we say our goodbyes, I usually make it a point to tell the dribbler, “let this not be the last time; we will see each other again”. It might be because we also cross paths in OW things, but it’s something I make a point to tell everybody in TF2 for my farewells, as an incentive. A promise. 

I went to Blizzcon. Aside from the interviews we got there, I’ve talked to the ex-TF2 pros who have fire re-lit in their eyes, who are being appreciated, rewarded, and shine on in OW. I can’t be upset. I too was treated very well by Blizzard while I was there, to the point of tears. I don’t want to be another one of those TF2 fans who wants to hold back somebody from moving on to other opportunities, or telling them not to quit. If it’s outside of their priorities, then I’m not important, and TF2 is not important. 

I understand more than ever after Blizzcon and Tip of the Hats when people need to go. There are other priorities in life. There are other things to pursue. This is why I remember telling him, “wherever your journeys may take you”. So why is it that - almost selfishly, as though I have rejected any concept of what I just learned about not holding people back, especially if I tell myself I have no significance to this player, this person I realized I ended up looking up to more than I thought - I wish I’d said, “please don’t leave yet”? 

And it went similarly for many other people that I realized that, how much I looked up to them as players and colleagues, then as friends and family - and it’s like...the idea I might never see these people represent again. That I might never see these people again. That sense of absolute finale, knowing that all things eventually come to an end; knowing that people that you are proud to say are part of your life, your passion, your hope, could be temporary due to the distances you might not be able to bridge...

That every farewell hug I shared, every departing Uber I waved at, even my own Uber I was escorted to by the last friend I’d see before my flight as he turned around and walked away while my car drove off - 

Fuck me, no. Not yet. It seems ridiculously melodramatic for real life. It’s almost laughable, the fact I haven’t learned. None of us have learned, to be honest. The idea of leaving for good, even on my end, never seeing those people again - I haven’t readied up for that at all. 

Rewind it all for me. Take me back, remind me of why we fight so hard to attend these things. Whether you’re a player, a former pro, a production crewmember, LAN organizer holy shit the LAN organizers, or a spectator. The post-LAN blues and the LAN high that just overwhelm any sense of practical reasoning you had. And then we end up going back when we thought we were out, and we don’t learn - because we love this game too much. We love each other too much. 

You desire the friendships and the relationships you’ve forged stronger together in the real world. Your heart aches to hear the laughter and see the smiles of the people you’ve befriended beyond the internet. You say shit like, “let this not be the last time, we’ll see each other again” so you can fight not just for the game, but for them. For your community. 

LAN, aside from a competition to see who is the best team out of all the teams competing in an equal playing ground, is a social gathering. A coming together of a community that has followed each other for a combined purpose. A forging of relationships with each other over a common passion, to know not simply players as players but players as people - as friends, as comrades, as partners, and as Redeye said: as family.

[princeleyjeans]

When you don’t want insta to delete some possibly helpful future shit, sometimes you just gotta throw up on tumblr, so lemme start this off:

In 2014 thanks to Tumblr, I met my first girlfriend, after missing out on the whole teenage on/off dramatic romances due to my youth being taken up by undiagnosed autism, depression, the death of my dad and various issues with overall emotions i went into it without a clear head, I went in, inexperienced and as you can already imagine, my selfish ass got cocky from the attention of my blog and it’s slight fame, confused, even more anxious about stupid shit and round up putting myself into a hole that was hard to climb out of. Again, as you can assume, the relationship didn’t last long, mostly because I couldn’t handle being the not only one of us to have problems, because more things were coming out that I wasn’t ready to deal with, along with the newfound bravado of “hey somebody likes me”.

Cruelly, my main fear out of our parting was my rep, they were a well known blog in our shared community and so I was afraid of sides being taken, drama being caused, issues in between and basically anything that affected me, made me out to be the bad guy. I was incredibly selfish and put them through a lot of hurt and mixed feelings and so much bull crap that I’m still shocked they didn’t just fly over here to put a knife through my thick skull. I was that much of an asshole, not really mean but you know when someone lets fame go to their head and that’s the main focus, they don’t learn to manage, the idiot just soaks it up and leaves everyone else in the background? That’s what it was, I went from this struggling IRL 18 year old to Mr hotshot, the big contributor to a small fandom, nice dude who made everyone happy and did their all to provide decent content...it was like a really pathetic television show, main character gets to drown in their glory while neglecting everything and everyone else close to them, anything good becomes expected and inclines become mountains because they’re too busy enjoying themselves to realise “oh shit this is going on”

I was a piece of trash and on and off kept them on the hook, were we gonna get back together, weren’t we, if we’re single I’m so many years then who knows! That crap,, as my mental world started to crumble around me, my trust of people went with it and I became really possessive and paranoid and downright fucking weird like looking back even I wanna smack myself cus dude, not chill, take your MCR Goth phase elsewhere. thankfully they wound up meeting someone who made them happy and despite running away from them due to my paranoia, I still wish them all the best, still hope they’re in a better place because god knows they deserve it.

After that, interests came and went, ironically my ass received a karmic kicking when someone I had become close to and mutually expressed genuine affection toward turned around and literally threw the “I thought you understood” excuse at me, and this time I got multiple feedbacks as to what the overall interpretation was! (My friends are thankfully sane enough to explain shit to me and read stuff I might not be able to fully get), basically we’d come from another fandom, we’d been in a group and when that bunch fell apart, we stayed together as friends, talking, hanging on skype, playing games online, that shit, it felt right and we had both vocally expressed the desire to be a thing, to the point where love was mentioned, we both wanted to take it slow because of X, Y and Z but it was said, it was confirmed, this wasn’t just me, they wanted to be a couple too...and then...karma. It was New Years, they were going to see a movie with a friend of a friend because they never left the house or talked to anyone so I just assumed this was what my sister tried to suggest I do sometimes, go and meet people, go and interact with the world....noooooooooooo. The morning after we Skype called and they talked about the movie, about the other person and suddenly the tone went from “we hung out” to “we groped each other during the movie and they want to hang out again sometime”.

Yeah, like that scene in gta where you have to smash into the van with the tow truck, I literally stood in my living room with tears streaming down my face while putting on a happy voice, acting like “omg you hoe! Details, are they hot? Can we share?” It went from “I’m falling in love with you, can’t wait to see you, Babe” to “Thought you understood what we said” real quick. After that, I became second fiddle, our mutual taking it slow was no longer even existence and it was painfully obvious that my presence was one of “youre such a sweetheart, if nobody wants me, you get dibs” like I know that sounds like the worst way to put things but that was it, I am not even joking, for six months they loved me and then the second someone better appeared, whoop bye bye. Karma clapped me good. Understandably after that, I didn’t stick around, and trying to get closure was like trying to mash cured ham through a strainer.

The reason for talking about this stems from the insta posts I do at like 1AM, LOL NEED A GF HOUR. because genuinely I do want someone, eventually, and after the bullshit, I’m more than happy to wait however long to find them, to learn how to not fuck up or be fucked up, how to not bottle up every feeling to exploding point, how to just be a better me, for myself and them. After the hurt I caused and received, it’s become really really obvious that this shit takes time, effort, growth, if you want it you better be willing to fight for it, and I wanna be, I do, and this post is to talk about it, those feelings, that LOL moment where I feel alone, like that someone for me isn’t here yet and I need them to be, but then again, why rush? If waiting means the right person comes along, why hurry?

Maybe it’s sort of an underline sad feeling, like I’m sad and lonely, hurry up future spouse. Or maybe my heart just aches, in a fucking cheesy way of saying things.

I dunno, but just read this when you need to learn something or if you’re just feeling like you need a pep talk and wanna feel like not a complete fail. I’m trash, but if you open the bag and root round, you’ll find a penny, something kinda worth the stench of year old milk

[themomsandthecity]

Stabbed 63 Times at Home by Boyfriend's Teen Son, Murder Victim's Family Wonders What Drove Him to Kill

The night of April 6, 2017, was wet and cold — miserable already — when Todd Taylor and his older sister, Alyssa Nicholas, learned their mom, Heidi Taylor, had been murdered. It was late when Todd, 21, heard the news. He’d been at work at a fast food restaurant, coming off a dinner break as his shift neared its end, when his sister called and told him to get to Heidi’s house as quickly as he could. She’d just received a phone call of her own: Something was wrong with their mom, she’d been told, and the police were involved. But nobody seemed to know where to find Donovan Nicholas, the 14-year-old son of Heidi’s longtime boyfriend, who lived with Heidi and his father in a two-story farmhouse in Urbana, Ohio. Todd arrived to a scene already covered with police and caution tape — “I didn’t even know Urbana had so many cop cars,” he says. Amid all of the activity, he saw a body being wheeled out of the home and then he saw Alyssa, 23, wrapped in layer upon layer of blankets. She was “bawling her eyes out.” “I’m trying to get information and finally she says, ‘That was mom,’ ” Todd recalls. “I asked who did it and that’s when one of the deputies came over.” Says Alyssa now: “What actually happened would never have been something that I would ever have guessed in a million years.” ‘It Wasn’t Me … He Snapped’ Donovan Nicholas, the boy who killed 40-year-old Heidi Taylor, whom he called “mom,” is also the only witness to her death. His is the most complete version of her murder, and it is an awful one: In a stuttering voice that April night last year, he called 911 once Heidi was dead to report what had been done. He described how Heidi had been stabbed with a kitchen knife — authorities learned she suffered some 62 or 63 wounds across her body — before being shot once in the head on her bed. He told responding officers that it was just the two of them in the house: Heidi upstairs and him down by the back door, bleeding from an inadvertent cut sustained in his attack. He pleaded for help and he said he was not to blame. “It wasn’t me who killed her,” he told the emergency dispatcher, knowing how that sounded. RELATED: Boy Executes Woman Who Raised Him Then Blames Alternate Personality Based on ‘Jeff the Killer’ “This really hard to explain, but I kind of have another person inside me,” Donovan said. It was this person — this “Jeff” personality — who was responsible, who had been in control during each swing of the blade. Jeff was modeled after the fictional horror character “Jeff the Killer,” an eyelid-less maniac who recurs in online stories and artwork. Donovan, who had become enamored of “Jeff,” dressed the part for Heidi’s murder, saying he was driven to wear black clothing to look like Jeff and to take a small blade to slash the sides of his mouth, extending it into a Jeff-like rictus. “He killed her,” Donovan told 911. “He snapped.” The teen’s voice shook. “I hate Jeff so much,” he said. “He’s going to make me die in prison.” An Excuse or a Disease? Prison is where Donovan will spend at least the next 28 years of his life, after which he will be eligible for parole from his life sentence. Tried as an adult for aggravated murder in Heidi’s death, he was convicted in July, days after his 16th birthday. Everyone agrees on the who, the how, the when and the where. But the why is a struggle. Donovan’s attorney, Darrell Heckman, who is appealing his conviction, believes he is seriously ill and should never have been removed from the juvenile system, where he could be rehabilitated. Donovan’s father, Shane Nicholas, is supporting his son’s appeal and believes he is sick. (Shane declined to speak with PEOPLE.) In critical need of treatment, Donovan has developed still more personalities while behind bars, Heckman says. He believes Donovan has dissociative identity disorder (DID) — a rare condition whose roots typically trace back to extreme physical or sexual trauma in childhood, which Donovan did not experience. While psychological experts say someone with DID could theoretically commit such violence in the grips of another identity, as Donovan says he did, patients with the disorder do not tend to be more violent than anyone else. “In general they’re people who have been badly damaged,” says Dr. David Spiegel, a Stanford psychiatrist professor. “The last thing they want to do is hurt anyone else.” Spiegel, who stresses that he is unconnected to Donovan’s case, is nonetheless somewhat skeptical of Donovan’s clothing change. “When you’re really experiencing it, you don’t need the props,” he says. • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. The psychologists who examined Donovan came to no more of a consensus. All three found him legally sane under the standards of Ohio law — in essence barring Donovan from arguing at trial that he was insane — but two found that he had notable mental health issues such as depressive disorder. None of them determined, conclusively, that he had DID. Prosecutors have never been convinced. “I believe this ‘Jeff’ persona was created by the defendant as a way to try to find a legal excuse for the conduct that he engaged in,” says Kevin Talebi, the Champaign County prosecutor. While Heckman has taken issue with Donovan being prosecuted as an adult despite his youth, Talebi phrases the issue in reverse: “How often is it that we deal with 14-year-olds who plot the murder of a person in a premeditated manner then follow through with the plan?” Heckman takes a wider view, posing more difficult questions than he provides answers. “We need to come to grips with the fact that severe mental illness is real,” he says. “There is an important societal issue as to what age do we give up on children for their rehabilitation prospects and what age do we not? We want to be tough, but we want to rehabilitate that can be rehabilitated. And I think there also is a question of how much of a limit do we want to put on insanity? What should you be allowed to present to justify insanity?” Heidi’s children, who were raised as siblings to Donovan, aren’t sure what to believe. Todd, 21, thinks Jeff must be fake — but if an alternate personality is not to blame, who is? “I don’t know how he would go from an innocent kid,” Todd says, “to what he is now.” What Was Going on at Home? Prosecutors say the answer is simple: Before killing Heidi, Donovan had grown resentful and wandered deep into homicidal fantasy, exchanging numerous morbid messages with a friend from school. He was pushed over the edge when Heidi discovered him sexting with an out-of-state girlfriend and decided to take his phone away. Heckman disputes this and says it was the “Jeff” personality who could not handle the stress of losing his connection to Donovan’s girlfriend. In Heckman’s telling, “Jeff” developed over the course of early 2017 as an alternate personality for Donovan, a studious but socially awkward boy who had dealt with depression and self-harm in recent years. “The more he admired him, the more it took over,” Heckman says. How a dissociative identity disorder could develop in Donovan, however, he still doesn’t know. Before Heidi was killed, Donovan had not been violent and he has had no issues since. Those closest to the teen, too, say they did not see signs of such darkness in him before the murder last spring. Donovan, whose mother lost custody of him soon after his birth, was just a toddler when his father and Heidi — who had first met through mutual friends and later reconnected — moved in together. They formed a close-knit blended family including Heidi’s two children, who describe typical domestic scenes such as bustling weekend breakfasts and trips to hike and camp. At some point, however, Donovan began deteriorating. Alyssa says Heidi and Shane were aware he had been cutting himself and that Heidi had taken steps to make sure he was not alone at the house. She wanted him to get counseling, according to Alyssa. “She tried doing everything she could, just to make sure he was okay.” Otherwise, Alyssa says, Donovan did not seem unusual — apt, as any teenage boy, to give Heidi some grief when asked to do the dishes. But there were things Donovan did not talk about: He was skilled at masking his self-harm, according to Alyssa, and neither she nor Todd say he had mentioned Jeff to them. “For my sanity, I’d like to think that there really is something truly wrong, something going on , just for him to be able to do something like this — just so out of the blue and so horrific,” Alyssa says. Jailhouse Conversations “I’m sorry”: That’s what Donovan told Todd the second time Todd visited him in juvenile detention, as Donovan awaited his trial. “He just kept apologizing,” Todd says. “I mean, really that’s all you can do. I don’t want to hear no excuses.” This was last year. Both Todd and Alyssa visited Donovan multiple times while he was in custody. “Initially, for something so unexpected to happen and for the reasons he’s saying that it happened, I guess I just needed to talk to him and figure out and try to see if he really was himself,” says Alyssa, noting that they “really weren’t allowed” to discuss the murder. The first time Todd visited, he was with Shane, Donovan’s dad, who did most of the talking. “I couldn’t take my eyes off his hands,” Todd says. His second visit, months later (“I was too mad to go see him because the only thing standing between me and him was a metal table”), was much more charged — a confrontation, a confession, and some kind of equilibrium. “It sounds wrong, but it’s not: I wanted to kill him at the time and so I told him, I was like, ‘You don’t understand how bad I want to hurt you,’ ” Todd says. “And he’s like, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I asked him, ‘Do you ever think about what you did?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, every night.’ He’s like, ‘I can’t even sleep. Most of the time I curl up in the corner of my bed crying and screaming.’ ” Todd says he asked about Heidi’s murder and Donovan “kind of shrugged the question off.” “He asked me, ‘What would you have done if I would have ran?’ and I told him what I’d do,” Todd continues, leaving the consequence unsaid. “And he told me it was understandable.” Alyssa, who visited more often, saw Donovan a few days before he was sentenced on July 24. She was working on her victim impact statement for the court. “I was having a really hard time just trying to decide how I did want him to be sentenced and I felt like I really did need to talk to him about how it has affected all of us,” she says, remembering their conversation. “He told me that he understood how I felt about everything and that he wanted me to be honest because he understands that what he did has a huge impact on us and he understood how we felt. … And he said it doesn’t matter what I put in it, he was okay with it, because he knows how hard it’s been for all of us.” ‘No More Big Family’ In court, Donovan offered his regret and said he wanted treatment. He repeated his story about the “Jeff” personality, telling the judge, in part: “Before we distinctly split, I liked Jeff the Killer, I was obsessed with Jeff the Killer. Jeff became a problem when he started doing things I didn’t want him to do: destroying my room, stabbing walls.” Alyssa’s statement was read on her behalf by a close friend. She called her mom her “biggest supporter and my best friend,” and she called Donovan her brother. “I no longer have a parent to turn to for guidance when life gets rough,” she told the court. “I have nobody to support me and push me to be who I can be. I feel completely lost all of the time.” Heidi, who loved to cook and garden, especially loved being a grandma to Alyssa’s daughters — apt to cancel any plans to spend time with them and never one to tell them no. The February before she died she’d left her job at Honeywell, where she had worked in various positions, to help with child care as Alyssa prepared to go to nursing school. “There is no more big family unit that is there to love and support each other,” Alyssa said in her victim statement. “Holidays no longer feel warm. My children no longer experience the joys of having a grandmother and being able to run to a grandparent for things parents just never quite understand.” Donovan’s absence created its own pains. Alyssa said her daughters “do not know what happened or why they haven’t seen Donovan, but they miss him and the fun times they remember with him.” Despite the grim details of a murder that has attracted national attention, Alyssa tells PEOPLE she holds to her mother’s memory. “I don’t want anybody to forget who she was and the type of person that she was. I just don’t want her to be another name or face in this case file. She was an actual person, and she was a very important person.” A few days later, Alyssa gave birth to her third child, a girl neither Heidi nor Donovan will ever meet. “Even if they were convinced that he was okay and he was to be released, I don’t know if I would ever really be okay with the fact that he was released,” Alyssa says. But she knows that, were Donovan someday to go free, she would not want to see him outside of prison. “That trust just isn’t there anymore.” http://bit.ly/2MD9AVT