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whereisten · 4 years

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Fuchsia-Colored Sunglasses

Summary:

Your life is turned upside down when you’re transported into another reality by the enigmatic and mysterious old woman named Cyan. You find yourself an up-and-coming makeup artist whose latest client is the cocky fuchsia-haired rockstar Yuta Nakamoto. You struggle to find balance as Yuta is your most difficult client yet and you can’t seem to stop losing things in your apartment.

Meanwhile, Yuta is at the top of his game with his record-breaking band that’s about to tour and his perfect celebrity girlfriend. But he can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. When he meets you, however, he finally feels..at home.

In a reality where soulmates so rarely find each other, is it possible that the two of you will see the signs?

Pairing: Rockstar!Yuta x female reader

Genre: Soulmate AU, Fluff, comedy, a little smut, a tiny bit of angst

Word Count: 28.5K

Warnings: profanity, minor character death mention, alcohol mention

(A/N: we are so excited to finally post this for you guys!! It is for a collaborative project (A Colours AU) organized by the wonderful @neo-cult-ure . THANK YOU so much for inviting us to do this!! Please visit her tumblr for a complete list of all of the amazing works included in this project that we all worked so hard on❤️ with that being said, we hope you enjoy!! Thank you for supporting us!!)

[colours masterlist]: Click here to enjoy several amazing journeys :)

——————

It really hasn’t been your day. There was just one problem after the other being thrown at you at work. Books often went missing at the library, but today an entire section was missing romance novels and no one seemed to know where they had gone. So you spent hours collecting them from other sections in the library, placing them on your cart as you moved through each lane. It doesn’t sound like a lot of work but for a library with 16 floors, it was just enough to make your head spin. Your day was long and boring.

And now, you learned that your favorite cafe was fresh out of your usual drink, an iced caramel latte, the perfect drink for a pick me up.

fantastic.

A sigh left your lips as you turned around the corner of the bathroom and walked face first into someone.

smack!

You stumbled back and then felt something wet on your clothes. Great.

“I..I’m so sorry about that.” A lady’s voice caught you off guard as she quickly tried to clean up the situation. She reached forward and grabbed your hands. A bit weirded out by the situation, you tried to pull your hands away but she didn’t let go, pulling you in closer so she could look into your eyes and capture your full attention.

“Dear, don’t be frightened, my name is Cyan and I am so very sorry...” Her eyes had a mysterious glow about them that you couldn’t understand. She seemed...otherworldly.

“Let me make it up to you.” Cyan said. “Here, pick a colour and you’ll meet your soulmate. However, you should be aware that each colour represents a different reality, and you only have one chance to bring them back to this reality.”

“Really?” you asked, clearly suspicious of the entire situation.

“Yes, now which would you choose?” she asked as she held out the tablet for you to pick a colour. You tilted your head to the side before just agreeing.

You typically liked to lay low, keep things normal and safe for your sanity. And love? Soulmates? Those were concepts that you never really thought too hard about. If it comes, it comes but you weren’t going to go out of your way for it.

But today was unlike any other day, everything went wrong, so what if...you did things differently for once? What if you took the chance to experience something...new? You had nothing left to lose, right?

You reached forward to choose.

“Fuchsia.”

^_^

You sat at the kitchen table, your Bluetooth speaker playing your favorite song, “Breeze”. It was by the artist Mountain Man, whose identity was a mystery to the entire world. Your roommate Delilah came in to grab some orange juice from the fridge.

Delilah laughed. “I swear I dream of this song from all the times you play it.”

You replied, “This song is a religious experience. You should be so honored to dream of it.” You took a bite of your Fruity Pebbles.

Delilah joined you at the table as she searched something up on her laptop. “Today’s the bid for the Bulbasaur card I’ve had my eye on. I’m so nervous. I can’t go past eight five dollars so let’s hope my competition is just as cheap as I am.”

You rolled your eyes. “Eighty-five dollars for a trading card? Really?”

Deililah shook her head. “Sixty-five dollars for foundation, y/n? Really?”

You shut your mouth and keep eating your cereal. You and your roommate had your impulses...Well, your passions. Besides, an investment in good foundation only made sense given your profession as a makeup artist.

Delilah scrolled through her phone and frowned. “That’s weird. This looks just like your Hermosa Vida palette.”

That was impossible. You had the only one in existence. Last month, at the cosmetics brand launch for Hermosa Vida, you received a limited edition palette from two of your favorite makeup artists, Sol and Luna, who teamed up for their growing cosmetics empire. They gave you the limited edition trial of the palette before the official palette was released in stores. You were so excited to try it out but misplaced it two weeks ago. You knew you had to clean your room more often.

In fact, you’ve misplaced a lot of things recently: a pair of your favorite My Melody socks, a bracelet from your trip to Jamaica last summer, a pair of your reading glasses, and more. You knew people were bound to lose things but it seemed to happen more often to you. You didn’t think much of it as you were busy applying for your new job.

You stood behind Delilah so you could see the palette on sale for yourself. It was shaped like a clam shell and was rose gold. It even had Sol and Luna’s autographs on the bottom.

Just like yours.

You scanned the description of the product to find the username of the seller: 1026you.

“Wait, I thought I was the only one who owned this palette. It doesn’t make sense. If there was more than one of these palettes in existence, then there would be more on sale. But this one...looks exactly like mine,” you said.

“Maybe it’s a knockoff,” Delilah offered, “You know how people will fabricate anything to get extra cash.”

“The thing is...I lost my palette. It’s almost as if…”

Delilah scoffed. “You don’t think someone broke in and stole it?”

You considered it. “I don’t know, Delilah. I’ve been losing a lot of things lately...I think we should install some cameras in here. Just in case.”

Your roommate nodded. “Fine with me. It’ll make us both feel safer.”

So you and Delilah had cameras installed around the apartment. You hoped your first paycheck with your new gig would come in quickly. You contacted the seller and asked about the palette, asking where they’d bought it and how they had access to it. You asked so you could have some sort of proof that it couldn’t be the same as yours. But it looked exactly like yours. And it bothered you. Unfortunately, there was no response from the seller.

A few days after that, your Siamese cat Totoro disappeared. You weren’t too concerned as Totoro was an outdoor cat and he tended to wander. He would return soon, you thought.

^_^

Meanwhile across your hometown of Los Angeles, international rockstar Nakamoto Yuta stood in his bathroom, dumbfounded to find a portrait of a young woman looking over her shoulder.

Yuta said to himself. “Where the hell did this come from?”

His girlfriend Ashley called from the living room. “What’s that, babe?”

Yuta responded, “Nothing, Ash.” He’d rather not freak out his high-maintenance diva girlfriend.

It was strange how random objects kept popping up in his apartment. He asked Ashley about the palette but she denied it was hers. A bracelet appeared on his nightstand a few weeks ago and Ashley denied again, growing suspicious that Yuta was having someone over. But he didn’t owe any explanations to her.

Yuta always came up short with his security footage. There were glitches with the footage. The objects just...appeared from one frame to the next. This had to be some kind of joke.

Seeing a whole portrait pop up in his bathroom of all places was just part of his daily routine now. Guess I’ve got another thing I have to sell online, he thought.

Then again… He looked carefully at the painting. The woman in the painting was stunning. He wondered what her face looked like in reality. Gorgeous, he was sure of it. The woman wore an oval-shaped ruby necklace. The painting gave him both a sense of comfort and excitement. He couldn’t explain this clearly new but somehow familiar feeling. He decided to hold onto the painting for a while. He could always change his mind.

Ashley let out a blood-curdling scream. “Yuta! Get in here!” She sounded scared for her life. Could it have been the people who managed to break in and leave the painting among all of the other random objects? He ran into the living room to find Ashley standing on his plush couch.

“Is that...a cat?!” Ashley hissed as she looked down at a Siamese cat.

The cat watched her from the ground, swaying his tail back and forth. He simply watched her. When the cat saw Yuta, he walked up to him and rubbed himself against Yuta’s legs as he purred.

Yuta crouched down and pet the cat behind his ears. “Hey there, buddy. How did you get in here?”

“Yuta, you went and bought a cat when you know I’m allergic?” Ashley asked as she sneezed.

Yuta sighed. “I swear to you I have no idea how he got in here.” It was possible he ran in when Yuta opened the sliding glass door to his yard.

“Well...” Ashley sneezed as she grabbed her handbag and stormed out of the multimillion dollar mansion. “You better get rid of that thing if you ever want me to set foot into this house again!”

Ashley slammed the door and Yuta laughed as he sat down on the couch. The cat laid on his lap and pushed his head into Yuta’s hand so that he could pet him.. Yuta brushed his fingers through his fur.

“You know what, I think I’ll keep you.”

^_^

It was your first day of work with the world famous band Skylark. Sky High Entertainment reached out to you when they watched your most popular makeup tutorial. Now, you would be their makeup artist for their future engagements. Your first few weeks would be to assist the band in preparation for their first set of tour dates in Los Angeles for their Heaven on Earth World Tour. You were to meet the group and their team at the Staples Center. You weren’t too familiar with Skylar’s work because you were either fixated on the YouTube MUA community or repeatedly listening to Mountain Man’s music. You arrived early, too excited to start, and the band’s manager Baekhyun Byun told you that you were welcome to watch the group rehearse.

To say that the band was attractive was an understatement. You knew of their names and faces from the occasional Twitter posts. Plus, you had to memorize their names and faces for the job. However, seeing them in person was a whole other experience.

Drummer Johnny Suh’s muscular arms and intensity were reminiscent of Hercules as he twirled one of his drumsticks with ease. Mark Lee was the guitarist, looking like he was about to be cast for the next Spiderman with his sweet and goofy demeanor. He played a random guitar solo with his tongue out to get a reaction out of his cousin Johnny. Dong Sicheng was focused at the keyboard, looking as elegant and regal as a vampire prince. Bassist Jung Jaehyun’s every glance was more seductive than the last as he tuned his bass to perfection.

Last but not least was the frontman with the fuchsia colored mane: Yuta Nakamoto. His walk to the microphone at the center of the stage was unintentionally seductive, considering he was in a black hoodie and sweatpants like the rest of his band. He was at least six feet tall as his long strides made him walk with such grace and elegance. A man that was effortlessly gorgeous was definitely trouble. At this point, your jaw was on the ground. Every man on that stage was a god but Yuta was the frontman for a reason. He was undeniably the cutest of the group. In his all-black attire, he was the emo prince of millions of girl’s dreams: his slender face, his sharp cheekbones, his piercing brown eyes, a smile so bright it could make you go blind, his rockstar piercings which included a navel piercing and caused your thoughts to drift to places that weren’t suitable for the workplace…

From time to time, the band goofed off. Mark made a paper plane from the set list and threw it at Johnny. Jaehyun danced the latest TikTok dance while Sicheng filmed it with his phone. Yuta laughed as he borrowed the keyboard and wrote some notes down in his notebook.

When they got down to business, the boys completely transformed. They channeled angst and heartache when they began rehearsal. You recognized the song as their latest single: “Lost and Found”.

When Yuta sang, goosebumps ran down your back and your stomach twisted. Alarms were ringing in your head but they weren’t out of fear. But out of...excitement? You couldn’t describe this strange sensation.

Yuta transformed into a man who was heartbroken and confused. His voice danced into your ears and hearing it live made the lyrics more meaningful. Every word that left his plump lips lingered in the air. You couldn't get enough and felt your heart squeeze.

Yuta looked out to the audience as he always practiced how he would engage with the crowd. He earned several thumbs up from the staff, as expected. Then he turned to your section and could barely make you out as a silhouette in the darkness.

You saw that he focused on your section as he sang the second verse. Your heart skipped a beat. You’d have to listen to more of Skylark’s music from now on because they were fantastic. And maybe lurk on Yuta’s social media.

After rehearsal ended, Manager Byun introduced you to the rest of the team, including the other makeup artists. He walked you to the dressing room to introduce you to the band. For the first time in years, you were about to freak out like a fangirl.

“Boys, this is y/n. She’s our newest makeup artist. Please, I beg of you, don’t make her run for the hills.” Manager Byun laughed. You hoped he was joking.

The boys greeted you and shook your hand. Johnny was the most outgoing. “Pleasure to meet you, y/n!”

Jaehyun winked at you as he shook your hand. “Hi.”

Winwin gave you a childlike smile. “Thank you for joining us!”

Mark stuttered as he greeted you, “Uh, hi, it’s uh, really nice to meet you.” His cheeks were flushed.

You were overjoyed but knew you had to conceal your excitement. Still, you couldn’t help but hope for Yuta to greet you.

You all turned to Yuta who was busily texting away on his phone in front of his mirror.

Johnny cleared his throat. “Yuta, say hi to y/n.”

Then, you noticed he was wearing his AirPods. Johnny tapped him on the shoulder. Yuta looked up at him. “What? I was on the verge of a breakthrough, and now I won’t get it back. Thanks a lot.” Yuta rolled his eyes and looked back at his phone.

Johnny cleared his throat and you could see his smile twitch from his reflection in the mirror. “Say hi to y/n. She’s our new makeup artist,” Johnny said carefully. He sounded a lot less sweet, then.

Yuta sighed. “Fine.”

He got up from his makeup chair and walked up to you. His sour demeanor quickly shifted to bright and breezy. His megawatt smile appeared as he shook hands with you. “Hi, y/n. Pleasure to meet you.”

It was insincere and you knew it. You didn’t even bother faking a smile. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

It was the smile you’d seen all too often with celebrities and YouTubers whose egos grew faster than their subscriber count. It was the kind of smile they used to please sponsors and fans. A means to an end.

Yuta’s smile faded as quickly as it appeared. He quickly turned away and went back to his chair, put his AirPods in, and returned to his phone. You spoke too soon when you thought Yuta was your favorite member.

Mark whispered, “Don’t take it personally, y/n. Yuta is in his own little world most of the time.”

You weren’t surprised. Chances were one of these boys wasn’t what they seemed. You were disappointed it was Yuta, though.

For the most part, your first day went well. Everyone was warm and welcoming. You shared tips with the other makeup artists. But then, they dropped a bomb.

“You’re assigned to Yuta,” Manager Byun told you as you headed down the elevator. You just came back from a break.

You couldn’t control your initial facial expression.

Manager Byun laughed. “He won’t bite.”

You composed yourself. “Oh, I know…”

He understood. “He’s been working on a lot of projects. Some of which I don’t even know the full details of. So I apologize on his behalf for his rudeness.”

You shook your head. “But Manager Byun-”

He raised his hand. “Please, call me Baekhyun. Manager Byun makes me sound like I’m a father of three.”

You laughed. “Okay. Baekhyun, you don’t have to apologize for him. I get it. He’s a workaholic. I’ll gladly be his makeup artist.” It wasn’t like Yuta insulted you. He just wasn’t what you hoped he would be. Plus, you were there for a job and nothing else. So professionalism was always key.

Baekhyun put his hand on your shoulder. “Thank you, y/n. If he gives you trouble at all, the makeup team will make sure Yuta gets the wrong shade of foundation.”

You and the rest of the makeup team headed back to the dressing room where the boys were sitting in their chairs. They needed to get their makeup done for the filming of their tour diaries entry for this week. Yuta was still glued to technology. This time, he was on his laptop, and he was in the middle of producing a track, it seemed.

You gulped and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, Mr. Naka-” You began.

“Yuta’s fine,” he barked back.

“I have to do your makeup,” you said as you started off with his primer.

“Fine,” he said as he closed his eyes, “Make it quick.”

His tone was even crabbier than this morning. You told yourself to keep it together. You wouldn’t let this diva jeopardize your job. He was a challenge and you would overcome this bastard.

Because Yuta was quiet and as still as a statue, doing his makeup wasn’t a problem. You made sure you were swift but neat. You didn’t want to poke the tiger again. All that was left was his eyeliner. You gave him an elegant winged eyeliner for his left eye. You were halfway done with his right eye when he interrupted.

His voice boomed. “Seriously, what part of ‘quick’ don’t you understand?”

He startled you so much that his liner shot straight up to the middle of his forehead.

You bit back your anger and your tears. You said calmly, “I was almost done, Yuta. If you hadn’t startled me for ten more seconds, I would’ve finished.”

Yuta looked in the mirror, his venomous tone matching the anger in his face. “You clearly lack experience if you let one thing I said get to you. Well? Don’t just stand there. Fix it.”

The rest of the staff and the band stood there, stunned to silence. You swallowed your pride and redid the liner on his right eye. He said nothing when you finished. He left the dressing room first.

You turned to everyone else, feeling humiliated and fearing what everyone would say. “Why is it so quiet?”

“Because you didn’t run for the hills,” Sicheng replied, smiling at you in admiration.

“Huh?” That wasn’t the reaction you’d expected.

Rin, your fellow makeup artist who was working on Jaehyun right beside you, said, “The last makeup artist Lily only lasted a week. Yuta’s been…”

“A stuck up bitch,” Jaehyun finished.

Rin sighed, “His words. Not mine. Before Lily, there was Halle. Halle was Yuta’s makeup artist for three years before she left for another project. Even before Halle left, Yuta was in a mood. No one knows what’s bothering him. He’s not usually-”

“A diva,” Mark added.

Rin applied some setting spray on Jaehyun’s face. “Once again, not my words.”

You worried if you crossed a line by talking back at him like you had. “Was I not supposed to say anything to him when he yelled?”

Everyone laughed. Johnny said, “Are you kidding? We dare you to tell him to stop bitching if he snaps again.”

You thought about it. “I just hope he gets over whatever he’s going through.”

^_^

Days passed and the sixth day of work went just about the same. You were in your element and over the moon with all of the high-end cosmetics at your disposal. Not even your sourpuss of a client could dampen your mood.

During one of your breaks, you sat alone in one of the unoccupied meeting rooms and listened to “Breeze” on your phone as you read some of your emails.

“The breeze made your hair sway. I fell in love that autumn day,” you sang aloud.

Yuta was headed to a meeting with Cartier but at the sound of your voice singing “Breeze”, he froze in his tracks. He pressed his ear against the door of the room you were in. The cracks in your voice were endearing. He smiled to himself.

He peaked through the window and hoped you didn’t notice him. You were seated at the table. Your legs were propped against one of the other swivel chairs. You tapped your fingers against the table. You smiled as you sang. Your smile was lovely. Your eyes were so full of joy and passion as you recited the lyrics, and for the first time, he actually looked at you and took in your features. Your singing voice wasn’t as calm and soothing as your speaking voice, but he still enjoyed hearing you. For the first time in a long time, he felt..something.

Seeing you smile that way made you the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, he realized.

He couldn’t believe how much you loved his song. “Breeze” wasn’t doing as well as he hoped. The company CEO thought about scrapping his anonymous side project all together. He didn’t understand. Had he released the song with Skylark or under his own name would “Breeze” have charted better? It pissed him off. He was so proud of his composition. It was the first time he let himself be so raw and vulnerable. Because he wanted this project to be anonymous, he chose not to tell his bandmates or anyone else, really. The couple of staff members who did know were sworn to secrecy. It killed him that he couldn’t vent to anyone.

When the song ended, you said to yourself, “Oh, let’s just play this on a loop.” You played “Breeze” again and stretched your arms.

Seeing you love the song as much as he did made the dark cloud that loomed over his head fade a little. Perhaps he had been too harsh on you, he thought.

^_^

A few more days pass and you and Yuta seem to be getting closer. He’d actually put his phone down when you did his makeup, watching you as you patted his foundation in. For you, it was strange, but for Yuta he was mesmerized.

“I’m bored..let’s play 20 questions.” Yuta said as you spritzed his face with primer water one day.

“Uhhh..okay.” Your brows furrowed.

“Favorite movie, go.” Yuta asked before closing his eyes.

“Uhhh. Titanic?”

“Ew. Okay favorite group?” He smirked.

“Well..it’s not Skylark..” You huffed.

Yuta took in a sharp breath and held your wrist to stop you. “It’s NOT Skylark? Then who is it, who is worthy?” His eyes were intense, like you hurt him deeply.

“Hmmm...One Direction.” You were just messing with him, but you wanted to see his reaction.

He rolled his eyes and let go, leaning back in his chair and rolling his neck. “You can’t be serious...”

“What? They make good music! And isn't it my turn to ask questions now?”

“Shoot.” Yuta closed his eyes so you could do his eye shadow.

“Hmmm..what’s your favorite color?” You started.

“The color of your eyes...”

You froze for a moment, but then chuckled. “Yuta..seriously?”

Yuta’s eyes opened as he laughed. “I’m serious! They’re beautiful.”

You pouted. “I’m done playing this game if you’re gonna mess with me.”

“Are you going to ruin my eyeliner again because you don’t like my compliment?” He let out in a faux British accent and high pitched tone to mimic the queen. You couldn’t help but laugh and shake your head.

Yuta smiles widely when he hears your angelic laugh, your eyes crinkling and your cheeks becoming so round and full.

What was this new feeling that he had?

^_^

You’d be working with Skylark for a month now and you were enjoying your time with the team. However, it was pouring for the first time in a month in LA. While you would’ve been happy about it in any other circumstance, you were annoyed and on the verge of freaking out. Your second bus was running late to take you to the arena. You decided not to wait for the bus and make a run for it.

Your umbrella was helpful to a certain extent but you were drenched regardless. The rain continued to pour unforgivingly. When you were preparing to cross the street, a black Mercedes pulled up beside you. The passenger window came down and you recognized Yuta.

He was sitting there, looking amazing as usual. Only this time, his long, neon pink hair was thrown into a bun and he modeled a pair of heart-shaped, fuchsia colored sunglasses to match.

The way he held the wheel with one hand made your heart shudder for some reason.

“Get in!” He said.

You hesitated for a second. However, dryer clothes outweighed your pride at this moment. You hopped in, closed your umbrella, and shut the door.

Yuta grabbed your umbrella and put it in the backseat. “You’re soaked. I’m going to turn up the heat on your seat.”

“Thank you,” you mumbled.

Yuta drove you to work. He was surprised he could recognize you through the pouring rain. He had this inexplicable anxiety when he was at the red light before he saw you. He couldn’t explain it. He was doing okay for the most part. His last song for his first self-titled mini album was almost complete. Ashley was a pain but their respective managers were working towards a day when they could announce their breakup. His band was at the top of their game. His new cat was keeping Ashley away.

So what was this feeling that came out of nowhere?

And how did the feeling disappear just as quickly when you looked him in the eyes?

“Thanks for the ride,” you piped up.

Yuta cleared his throat, feeling shy all of a sudden. Very unlike him. “We’re both headed the same way.” That was Yuta’s attempt at sounding cool. He didn’t realize it could make him sound like a tool, you thought.

There was an awkward silence that suffocated you both. The traffic was unbearable so it looked like you would both be late for work.

Yuta blurted, “I don’t think I’ve said this before but...I’m sorry..”

You turned to him as he stared straight ahead. You were shocked that he was apologizing. You figured this man never apologized for anything, especially when he carried on with you at work like he hadn’t snapped at you on your first day. “Are you?”

He sighed as he slowed down. “Yes. I was a jerk and you were just doing your job. I really have no excuse.”

You replied, “Well, as long as you’re aware. Do you promise to keep the sass to a minimum? Or at least until after I’m done with your makeup?”

Yuta nodded. “Yes, I promise.”

You noted how down Yuta looked. Beneath the hostility and sarcasm, there was frustration and sadness. “I forgive you.”

Yuta smiled. “Thank you.”

Another awkward silence followed. And the rain poured down even harder so Yuta drove even slower. He turned up the radio and you both recognized “Breeze”.

You both sat back and listened to the song in silence. Without you realizing, Yuta snuck glances at you as you hummed and bobbed your head to the beat of the song.

“I love this song,” you blurted.

Yuta smirked. “Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?”

“I would give anything to meet Mountain Man. His music is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. No one knows who he is. His identity is top secret,” you sulk.

Yuta beamed with pride that someone could be a fan of his mysterious persona. Without knowing his face or his true identity. It truly made him feel special.

Yuta bit back a laugh. “I know who he is, actually.” He wondered if he would regret telling you this.

You looked at him in shock. “What?”

“I can introduce him to you if you’d like but you have to promise me one thing.” Yuta was elated to see you so thrilled.

“Wait, really?!” You exclaimed as you unconsciously moved closer to him. “You’re not messing with me, are you?”

Yuta shook his head as he finally turned into the arena parking lot. “When we break for lunch, I’ll take you to him. I’ll call him over.” You gaped. “Oh, you don’t have to. He must be so busy. He doesn’t have time to meet me. I-”

Yuta felt a flash of jealousy over your consideration for someone whose face you didn’t even know (even if it was his other persona). “He won’t mind, I promise. Now promise me one thing when I introduce you.”

“What is it?” You asked cautiously.

Yuta put his car in park. “Promise me you’re free tonight. I need to go over some looks for my concept photos next week. I know it’s after work but I’ll buy dinner.”

Yuta did a full 180 on his personality. You were still recovering from the whiplash. And now he was doing you favors and confiding in you? You were on the fence but if you could meet Mountain Man, surely it would be worth it.

^_^

When it was lunch time, Yuta took you to the conference room. “Take a seat, y/n. Mountain Man just texted me. I’ll bring him in.”

You sat down in your unofficial swivel chair and fought the urge to pick at your nails. You were so nervous. To be in the presence of such talent. To be in the presence of the man who touched your heart with a three minute and fifty five second song. You had no idea what to expect.

Yuta came back quickly. With no one. He looked at you expectantly.

You got up to check if anyone was behind Yuta. “Uh, Yuta?”

“Uh huh?” He asked.

“Where’s Mountain Man?” You frowned.

He threw his arms up. “You’re looking at him.”

You got up from your chair and wrapped your arms around your chest in frustration. “Come on.”

Yuta was shocked at your reaction. “You don’t believe me?”

You shook your head. How can such a high-profile celebrity be an anonymous artist?

Yuta rolled his eyes. “Wow, you’re really making a guy work here, aren’t you?”

“I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you just release your music with Skylark or under your real name? Why the anonymity?” You asked as you went back to your chair and collected your belongings to leave.

“Wait, don’t go,” Yuta pleaded, “I can prove it.”

He offered his notebook to you with lyrics that dated back two years.

“This is your lyric book?” You asked.

Yuta nodded as you flipped through the pages. “Songs I’ve written for Skylark. Songs I’ve written for my solo mini. And songs I’ve written for Mountain Man.”

You sat down and carefully absorbed all of the contests inside. You went to the first pages of the notebook and found the early drafts of “Breeze”, which dated back to a year ago. And right after those lyrics, there were the lyrics for Skylark’s Grammy-nominated song, “Hope and Flame”.

You looked up at him. “You…”

“Yeah,” he said as he put his hands in his pockets. “If you’re not convinced, I’ll take you to the studio and show you how I’ve used a voice modifier. Plus, you’re looking at lyrics of songs that won’t be released until next year. So if you’re willing to wait until then to see your proof, well…”

Well, he hoped those songs would be released next year. He prayed you would believe him.

You choked. “I...believe you.”

Yuta exclaimed. “Really?”

Yuta was acting very childlike today, you observed. You thought it was kind of cute. He may have dropped one of the biggest secrets in the industry but he was still your moody client.

“I can’t believe…you’re Mountain Man…”

Yuta sat down beside you. “You owe me.”

“After you introduced me to...you?” You laughed in disbelief.

He nodded. “You said you would give anything to meet me.” He was smug as he gave you a knowing look.

You scoffed. “I didn’t think you’d use it against me.”

He replied as he leaned back on the chair. “I’m not. I just thought I might impress you.”

“And why would you want to do that?” You teased.

He leaned closer and shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. I guess I just wanted to.”

You blushed at his proximity and quickly turned away. “There you go again with the teasing.”

Yuta smiled wide. “So what do you want for dinner? Pizza or Chinese?”

^_^

You helped Yuta explore a few looks for his upcoming photoshoot before dinner that night.

You were adding some final touches to his heart-shaped lips. “Your lips are so pretty,” you said without realizing.

Yuta knew to hold still but his eyes opened at hearing you say that. You were so caught up in making up his face that you didn’t realize you were thinking out loud. Yuta chose not to bother you. He owed you that much.

“Okay, I’m done,” you said, “I gave you a more understated look. More neutral tones in your eyeshadow and highlighter. And I chose a brighter shade of pink for your lips. I get more of a romantic vibe from this look,” you said as you looked at his reflection in the makeup mirror.

Yuta looked straight at you. “I love it.” He was impressed with your careful attention to detail and how natural you made his makeup look. Out of all the makeup artists and stylists he’d worked with, you were the most attentive and cooperative. You always surpassed his vision for his look. You asked him for his opinions in case you needed to change anything. Most of the time, though, he was very satisfied with your work on the first go. You were the best makeup artist he’d worked with, he had to admit.

“You don’t want more eyeliner? What were you thinking with your piercings?” You asked.

He shook his head. “It’s perfect, y/n. Every look you showed me is perfect for the shoot. I just need you to be by my side when it starts. No one else touches this face but you.” Yuta explained with no trace of mockery in his voice.

Yuta was so open with you all of a sudden and all you did was breathe. How was that possible? And you felt a little more intimidated now that you knew that Yuta was behind your favorite artist. You remembered that first and foremost you were his makeup artist so you shoved your confused feelings aside. You would panic when you got home.

Blushing and still processing, you said, “Thank.”

“You?” He finished for you.

You blushed even harder. “Yeah.”

He laughed as you tried to compose yourself.

You removed his makeup so his skin could get a break. “What’s next?”

Yuta sighed. “We’re done, y/n. Let’s order something and I’ll drive you home. It’s late.”

You cleaned up your supplies while Yuta ordered pizza. You both liked extra Mozzarella cheese on top.

“So,” you said, “Can I ask you something?” You’ve been dying to ask him questions for hours but you’ve done so well to hold it in. You figured you’d indulge by asking at least one.

“Yeah?” Yuta sat up straight.

“Did you compose all of Mountain Man’s releases?”

He nodded.

“What instruments do you play?” You dared to ask one more question.

“Guitar, piano, drums, violin,” he said as he got up and grabbed his guitar from his case. “Thanks for reminding me. I have a melody stuck in my head, and I want to see if I can make something out of it.”

Yuta tuned his guitar and hummed to himself. He played a few chords.

“Whoa,” you said. “Just like that?”

He chuckled in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You can make something so incredible and unique in an instant?” You asked, clearly in awe.

He shook his head. “I could only get to this point because I practiced every single day in grade school.”

You heard how lonely he sounded, then. “That must have been…”

“A pain in my ass, yeah. I gave up many trips to Chuck E. Cheese just so I could master the piano,” he grumbled.

“And you never gave up on practicing?” You asked, impressed. Had it been you you would’ve given up and found the next hobby.

“My parents pushed me hard from a young age,” he started, “They wanted me to become a world classical musician. Family honor and all.”

“What changed, though? Skylark isn’t exactly classical,” you observed.

Yuta replied, “I didn’t tell my parents but I started a rock band when I was sixteen. Johnny and Jaehyun have been by my side from the very beginning. We rehearsed in Johnny’s garage until we graduated.”

You grinned, just thinking about teenage Yuta rebelling against his family’s wishes. “That’s sweet.”

He laughed. “Yeah, Johnny and Jaehyun claimed they joined to meet girls but I knew they loved music just as much as I did. Johnny’s cousin Mark and Mark’s best friend Sicheng joined us a few months later and we were a force of nature. That was our first band name, by the way.”

You bit back a laugh. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Force of Nature,” Yuta replied, deadpan. “What’s so funny, y/n?”

You laughed, almost falling over in your seat. “That is so cute. You guys thought you were being edgy.”

Yuta grabbed a throw pillow and threw it at you. “I won’t tolerate mockery from the staff.”

You gasped. “I won’t tolerate a DICKtator.” You grabbed another pillow and threw it at him.

You both laughed so hard. Yuta grabbed an eyeliner pencil you forgot to pack up.

“You know, y/n,” Yuta started as he moved closer to you. “You’re alright.” He took your hand and slipped the eyeliner into it.

“You, too, Nakamoto,” you said, “You’re still paying for the pizza, though.”

Time passed as you two talked about your childhoods, your hobbies, and all about Skylark and Mountain Man.

“Man, what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and learn the guitar,” you said as Yuta mindlessly strummed his guitar and produced heavenly melodies.

Yuta innocently offered, “I can teach you.”

You raised your eyebrows. “In exchange for?”

He laughed warmly. “Nothing. Come over here and sit down.” He patted the seat next to him on the couch so you could join him.

You sat down and he placed his acoustic guitar over you. He moved closer to you, moving his arms over you. You could feel his chest against your back. He radiated warmth and your throat almost went dry.

Yuta took your left hand. “Now...you’re going to place your fingers up here. These are called the frets. I already tuned the guitar, okay?” His voice was very close to your ear and for a moment, you held your breath.

He took your right hand and placed it on the body of the guitar. “Let’s try an A chord.” His deep voice lowered even more and you felt your face heat up.

He took your left fingers and adjusted their positions. Never letting go of your hands, he instructed you to strum the guitar.

The chord sounded more beautiful than you’d expected it to be. “Whoa.”

“Nice,” Yuta said, “Then again, I did most of the work.”

You turned your head to him and his face was mere centimeters away from yours. “You are so-”

Yuta moved even closer. “Finish your sentence, y/n. I’m dying to hear what you have to say.”

You retreated. “Irritating.”

Yuta’s phone rang. The pizza arrived and you two fought over the last slice. He was ridiculous, considering he ate four slices to your three. It was only fair you’d eat the last slice. Yuta got creative and used a plastic knife to cut the last slice in half. You accepted but you were determined to get your revenge.

Yuta drove you home. The night was calm, and the traffic was light.

“You live pretty far if you’re walking to the arena for work, y/n,” Yuta said as he pulled up in front of your building.

“I take two buses. Normally, it’s not a problem. It was complicated today because of the rain,” you said.

“Yeah, I thought we were going to get a massive flood,” he said, “It’s very unlike LA.”

You nodded as you took off your seatbelt. “Well, thanks for the ride.”

Yuta smiled and tipped his imaginary hat. “Thank you for your help tonight.” His smile was at its most radiant, then.

^_^

You wake up the next morning thankful for the weekend but a little sad that…Wait a minute.

You didn’t miss Yuta, you told yourself. The boy gave you whiplash and you were only beginning to get to know him. You had time to do some cleaning around the apartment. Maybe you could find a lot of your missing stuff so you could put that eBay account out of your mind.

It was already 2 PM and you couldn’t find the palette, your primary concern. You sighed. You looked around your spotless room and found some solace in the fact that it was clean and organized. Tidying up was its own therapy.

You called your mom and asked her about her day. You went through your jewelry box.

Your mom chattered on, excited like a schoolgirl, “Anyways y/n, Fred wanted to take me to a costume party tonight so I wanted to know...Do you think the black flapper dress would be better than the mod dress?” Fred was her serious boyfriend of three years. You had a feeling that he would propose anytime now and you were happy for them.

That good feeling quickly dissipated. “Oh, no.” Your most prized possession was missing. You knew it was missing because you always kept it in your jewelry box.

“y/n? Honey, are you okay?” Your mom asked over the line.

You couldn’t tell your mom that your grandmother’s ruby necklace was missing. “Yeah, sorry mom, it’s nothing. I got a little dramatic. Ran out of whipped cream for my sundae.” You lied.

You finished your conversation with your mom. You had no choice but to log onto eBay again. You searched 1026you and your suspicions were confirmed.

Your grandmother’s one-of-a-kind family heirloom was for sale. For one hundred dollars. It was a priceless heirloom that was worth at least ten times as much. You clenched your fists. “Son of a bitch.”

You messaged the seller again but knew he would never answer you. He’s ignored your other messages so what made you think he would respond to this one? You read through the site’s terms and conditions and there was no way to contest that the item was yours. You noticed that the item was up for bid and the bid would end in…

Ten minutes.

The current bid was at $100.

You scoffed. “Why the hell do I have to bid on an item that’s mine?”

You swallowed your pride and prayed that no one else would bid higher.

You placed a bid for $101.

Right away, someone else bid higher. $102.

This went on and on until your competition outbid you and won the necklace for $127.

“Son of a bitch!” You cursed again.

You sent 1026you ten consecutive messages telling them that they stole your necklace and begged them to respond as soon as possible. You knew it was hopeless.

^_^

You knocked on Yangyang’s door. He lived a few doors down from you and Delilah. You used to babysit him when you were in high school and college. Yangyang was a child prodigy, having graduated from MIT with a master’s in computer science at age sixteen. His parents still needed you to babysit when he was acing Physics at age ten. He always insisted he didn’t need a babysitter but you two developed a bond. It was to both of your surprise that he became your neighbor. He had a side hustle as a hacker. You hoped he could help you track down 1026you so you can give him a piece of your mind.

He opened the door. “y/n, what’s up?” He smiled wide. He still had that boyish wonder in his eyes.

“Hey, I hope I’m not interrupting,” you started.

“Not at all, come in,” he moved to the side so you could walk into his messy apartment. Video games were scattered all over his living room floor. He was in the middle of eating a bowl of ramen.

“Yangyang, I know I’ve been relieved from my babysitting duties for a while now but...ramen is not a proper meal,” you said.

“Shut up.” Yangyang laughed. “I’ll grill some meat later. Don’t worry.”

You laughed as you sat at his kitchen table. He gave you a can of Pepsi, knowing it was your favorite. “I need a favor, actually.”

Yangyang rejoiced. “At long last, you need my help. Never thought the day would come. You never let me help you with precalculus, even though you definitely needed it.”

Ignoring his roast for once, you responded, “Well...I need your hacking expertise. I know that this is going to sound crazy but...someone has been stealing things from my apartment and selling them online.”

Yangyang’s smile faded. “What the hell? So that’s why you installed security cameras at your place.”

“I didn’t get into it because I thought I was crazy but my grandmother’s necklace is missing and it’s one of a kind. And now…” You showed him the item that was sold.

“That’s your necklace,” Yangyang replied in shock. He recognized it from having known you for so long. You wore it on rare occasions like birthday parties. You preferred not to be photographed with it because you wanted to preserve it and keep it secret from strangers and acquaintances. You never knew who you could trust.

“Can you help me track down the seller?”

“y/n, that goes against eBay’s terms and conditions,” he replied.

You sighed. “I know but-”

Yangyang chuckled mischievously. “This should be fun.”

Yangyang worked magic on his computer to track down 1026you’s location. He was in Los Angeles, to your surprise. “Can’t get you the seller’s name but will an address do?”

“It’s perfect,” you said.

^_^

Yuta woke up from a nap on the couch. Totoro was sleeping on his stomach. He chuckled as he pet him. Yuta’s phone rang, indicating a notification. He checked his phone and saw that the ruby necklace he put on sale was sold to the highest bidder at the deadline. He also saw a bunch of messages from one account claiming he stole the necklace and he’d better respond to her.

“Crazy,” Yuta said as he ignored the messages.

^_^

“What do you think I should use for today’s luxurious bath, Totoro? The ‘Cotton Candy’ bath bomb or the ‘Madly In Love’ bath bomb?” Yuta carefully picked Totoro up from his lap and placed him on the cold marble floor before standing up and stretching.

Totoro let out a loud “meow” and walked away from Yuta.

“I completely agree.”

Yuta threw his shirt off and headed to his bathroom, but he jumped once he opened the door. He had completely forgotten about the beautiful portrait that leaned against the counter. He stopped and tilted his head, really taking in the depth of color in the painting. He gazed at the stunning profile of the woman and the necklace she had on. He couldn’t understand how he had this undying urge to remember a memory he never had, to remember the moment he met this strange woman from the portrait.

He shook his head and started to run water for his bath, oblivious to the eyes that watched him through the small opening of the door.

^_^

You watched a shirtless Yuta stare at something for a few seconds. You couldn’t see what it was, but you really didn’t care, for Yuta’s abs were the real star of the show. Your mouth fell open, your heart started to race. Yuta was perfect in every way, and the twinkling piercing in his navel was the cherry on top.

But...wait.

You had to remember why you were here. Yangyang’s research found that this was the address of the person that was selling your precious necklace so you had to work fast. You already got lucky when you found a window in a first floor bedroom that was open.

You were shocked to see that it was Yuta’s house that you would have to break into, but once again, you just had to get your priceless possession.

Was Yuta messing with you? How could he do this and when could he do this? When would he have had time to sneak into your place and steal your necklace? Or was it his girlfriend?

Yuta shook his head before turning it to the side slightly. You jumped out of sight by moving to the side quickly. He interrupted your thoughts, but you had to get moving before he got out of the shower.

You looked around his enormous mansion, heading for what seemed to be his bedroom, for it was the biggest one at the top of the grand staircase.

Surely, there had to be an explanation for how your possession became his possession. Nonetheless, you were pissed that he decided to ignore your message and proceed to sell it. How could he steal something so meaningful to you then sell it? It’s not like he needed the money.

You looked on top of the California King-sized bed and then under it to see if you could just catch a glimpse of the shimmering ruby stone. But you found nothing. You then looked at his black dresser before stopping to gaze at his extensive earring collection. It was incredible.

A case full of hundreds if not thousands of earrings and jewelry stood beside the dresser. Your mouth fell open and your eyes widened. What if he stole jewelry? No-no, you shook your head at the absurd thought. This man had way too much money.

Then you heard him singing in the bathroom beside his bedroom. But his voice grew louder as he exited and entered the hallway to make his way to his room.

“Shit,” you whispered.

Your heart started to race. You're just moments from being caught so you look back to the dresser and spot it.

Your necklace.

It’s next to the small brown bag that it would have been sent in today, but you grabbed it just in the nick of time.

“BABAY!! Why DON’T YOU JUST MEET ME IN THE MIDDLEEE??” Yuta sang in the hallway and thanks to his boastful voice and the large ceilings that allowed for a beautiful echo, you heard him when he was just about to enter. You quickly dropped to the floor and rolled under the bed.

You covered your mouth to muffle your heavy breathing. He was pacing about, walking to and from his closet.

“Nah, don’t like this…” he threw a flannel onto the bed. He went into his closet and grabbed a black T-shirt, the 56th black T-shirt in his collection, to be exact.

“Nice.” Yuta continued to hum while spritzing on some cologne.

Yuta smelled amazing, like vanilla and roses, but you couldn’t help but be worried that you would be late for work if you couldn’t get out of his house right NOW.

“Hey, babe..” You heard a female voice say. It was his girlfriend. “Damn it,” you mouthed. Ashley was known for being one of the most gorgeous celebrities alive today. She had the perfect face with a dazzling smile to match, but rumor had it that she was a complete bitch behind closed doors.

You heard Yuta sigh and you could almost feel his eye roll. He was thinking of how much he hated himself for ever giving her a key to his house.

“What’s up, Ash?” He spoke to her like he was being forced to communicate with an Uber driver.

“Oh, don’t sound so excited to see me…” Ashley responded. She walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Yuta was fixing his earrings onto his ears when she embraced him. He looked at her through the mirror in front of them and gave a look of annoyance when she tilted her head to lock eyes with him.

“So...where were you yesterday? You missed our dinner date at the Venetian...Do you know how much it cost me to lose that reservation AND call off the paps?”

“I’m sure you can afford it.” Yuta walked away from her and looked at the dresser with a puzzled expression. Something’s missing, he thought.

You watched Yuta’s footsteps as he hesitated for a moment, but then he continued on into his closet.

Your eyes grew. Did Yuta really blow off his date at the most expensive restaurant in the city to be with you? He ditched $1,000 caviar and steak just to eat $12 pizza with you?

“You really like making me beg, don’t you, Mr. Nakamoto?” Her voice lowered as she leaned against the dresser and watched Yuta put his socks on.

“Where were you, daddy?”

Yuta hesitated for a moment. He didn’t like the fact that she thought he had to report his movements to her. She acted like she had to know everything that went on in his life. She was overstepping and Yuta wasn’t about to fall for it.

So he decided to piss her off.

“I was with..the new girl.”

Ashley stood up straight and crossed her arms. You nearly yelped out under the bed and revealed yourself.

“Who’s the ‘new girl’?” Ashley asked and you could just hear the fire in her tone. Even Charizard would be jealous.

“The new makeup artist..she’s sweet, I bought us food and we talked.” Yuta smirked and walked closer to Ashley who didn’t even try to hide her jealousy. Her perfectly plucked brows furrowed.

“I taught her how to play the guitar...she’s lovely, really. We had a great time.” Yuta was definitely twisting the knife and you couldn’t tell if he spoke of you fondly just to piss her off, or if he genuinely meant it. Either way, his words filled your chest with butterflies, and a smile tugged at your lips.

“Yuta...baby, you missed our date at THE Venetian to spend it with some talentless random who probably has a failing Youtube channel?” Ashley pouted. “Let me show you what’s lovely, Mr. Nakamoto.”

Yuta was about to protest, but Ashley held his chin and tilted it down towards her before placing a kiss on his lips.

The sound echoed in the large room and made you roll your eyes. She insulted you without having met you? What a bitch, you thought. No wonder Yuta was miserable.

She then took his hand and led him to the bed, pushing his chest lightly so he’d sit on the soft surface. She dropped to her knees and ran her hands along his thighs.

Oh no...please don’t do what I think you’re about to do. You squeezed your eyes tightly and prayed that Yuta would tell her to wait until later.

Yuta huffed and puffed but indulged her, allowing her to have her way because he just couldn’t be bothered. She unbuckled his belt while looking into his low eyes.

“You’re stressed, baby, that’s why you spent time with a total stranger. But don’t forget you have me.” Ashley licked her lips before taking his pant zipper in between her teeth and dragging it down.

“I can’t wait to taste you, Mr. Nakamoto.” Ashley kissed his pelvis. She was too busy to see Yuta cringe at the name she called him. God, did it feel weird.

“Just...m-make it quick. I have to go.” Yuta licked his lips, letting his head fall back as he closed his eyes in anticipation.

Shit. You mouthed again. You were about to hear the most disturbing sounds of your life and there was nothing you could do, nowhere that you could go. Could you sneak out on the other side without them noticing? Shit shit shit shit.

Ashley sneezed before she could place her mouth on Yuta again.

Yuta looked down in annoyance.

She quickly swiped at her nose then retook her position.

She puckered her lips to lay a kiss on his growing bulge, but she sneezed again.

Several more sneezes followed and Yuta was getting frustrated. He slowly became turned off.

“Damn it, do you still have that ugly cat? I’m suffering here!” She yelled before laying out four back-to-back sneezes.

“So am I.. I gotta go, Ashley.” Yuta rolled his eyes and stood up. He brushed past her, where she still knelt on the floor, and walked towards the dresser.

“Make yourself useful and mail this-” Yuta’s sentence trailed when he didn't see the necklace. The brown envelope was there but the necklace was no longer beside it. “What the hell, I could’ve sworn...”

He looked into the brown bag then onto the floor and the rest of the dresser. Sure enough, the necklace was gone. “So it disappears just as quickly as it appeared? Shit.”

Your brows furrowed. What did he mean by “appeared?”

“Have you seen-?” Yuta was about to ask.

But suddenly, your phone started to vibrate in your back pocket. You quickly reached towards it to silence it so it would no longer make that grinding sound while shaking on the floor.

Luckily, Ashley was still sneezing so it covered up the sound..or so you thought.

“What was that?” Yuta turned and looked about the room for the source of the sound.

Ashley finally stood up and walked towards him. “I’ll just drive with you to work! We can finish what we started...” She gave him a wink before sniffling.

Yuta grimaced and grabbed his keys, brushing past her once again to head out the door.. “Whatever you say, Ash.”

Ashley practically skipped behind him. Finally, the room was empty. You swiftly dragged yourself from under the bed and stood up.

You heard them argue downstairs so you decided that you would climb out from the patio attached to Yuta’s room. Yangyang made sure to deactivate Yuta’s entire security system, including his cameras, so you could enter and leave without detection.

You took a deep breath before jumping from the porch and into the bushes below it. You tried not to scream as loudly as you wanted to. How you didn’t break your legs, you weren’t sure, but you were somehow able to leap back onto your feet and book it for the main road, sliding through the gate while Yuta and his girlfriend waited for the garage door to open so they could drive out.

By the time you got to work, you were covered in sweat, leaves, and dirt. You smelled and looked like you had been camping for at least 23 days in the Appalachian mountains, but it didn’t matter. You finally had your necklace.

“You good, y/n?” Manager Byun gave you a puzzled expression as you hurriedly took your tools out of your kit and placed them on the vanity for Yuta. You were somehow able to get there just minutes before him.

“I’m okay! Had a slightly...difficult time getting here, but I’m ready!” You gave him a smile so forced, you thought your face would be stuck like that forever.

He nodded slowly but still looked confused.

Just then, Yuta entered. His smile was bright and so beautiful. You melted like chocolate in his sunny smile when his eyes were glued to yours as he entered.

But your feelings of admiration soon dissipated when you saw his girlfriend behind him. She held up a compact mirror and was fixing her lipstick as she walked in.

I guess they did finish what they started...

Your smile fell. You didn’t know why you were sad and disappointed. It’s not like your one night with Yuta actually meant anything. He had a girlfriend, and not just any girlfriend. A celebrity girlfriend that was just listed as the person with the second most beautiful face in the world, behind Zendaya of course. Yuta was lucky, there’s no way he’d drop her for you.

You looked away as he walked over. He could feel a shift in your mood immediately. Your eyes were so big and bright when he entered and now you shifted your focus to organizing your makeup and covering a look of sadness that he could clearly see.

Yuta said ‘hi’ to everyone but stepped quickly over to you.

“Hey...y/n...it's nice to see you again.” Yuta gave you a half smile that really tugged at your heartstrings. How could he manage to make you so weak?

“Hey, Yuta.” You gave a short answer, and he could tell you were upset. You weren't nearly as cheerful as you were yesterday. Then..he noticed how disheveled you were.

His face became serious. He touched your arm and it felt like sparks dancing along your skin.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly while the other members and the manager went about their business.

You tried to avoid his magnetic gaze, but couldn't.

Your mouth opened as you looked into his eyes. “I’m-”

“Hi! Nice to meet you, are you the new makeup girl?” Ashley pushed herself in between you and Yuta and obnoxiously smiled in your face to push you further away from Yuta.

“Yes.” You pucker your lips and glance at Yuta who looked beyond annoyed.

“Well, you certainly don’t look like a makeup artist..” Ashley chuckled.

You scoffed. “What?”

“I mean, look at your nails.. Are you sure you want to touch my boyfriend's perfect face when you’ve got an entire ecosystem under your nail bed?” She grabbed your hand without warning and held it up for both you and Yuta to see the dirt that had gotten under your nails when you had jumped off of his patio and held on to the ground for support. You were running late so you didn’t get a chance to go to the restroom to clean up, but of course you would wash your hands before touching his face.

“I-” you started, but she interrupted you once again.

“That’s not very professional of you...”

“Ashley! Stop, don’t you have a photo shoot to get to?” Yuta took your hand from her and lowered it to your side, but he didn’t let it go. He stood beside you and looked onto Ashley with disappointment. Your heart became warm as he squeezed your hand to let you know that he had your back.

Ashley chuckled. “People come and go pretty fast here sweetie..let’s see how long you last.” She rolled her eyes before pushing herself in between the two of you, breaking off your linked hands in the process. How could someone so beautiful also be so ugly?

“I’m so sorry about her.” Yuta turned to you.

You nodded. “She’s right. It's very unprofessional of me to come to work like this.”

Yuta shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, y/n. Things happen..Let me show you where the shower is.”

^_^

Yuta led you to the locker room where the shower was. He handed you a tshirt and sweatpants that he had asked the manager to keep in a locker for him just in case he needed to change after sweating too much.

“Why are you dating someone so...mean?” You asked while you followed Yuta. You didn’t think twice about your question, and really, you had no right to ask him. He was just your client, not your friend.

Yuta chuckled. He turned to you and raised his eyebrows. “I smell some jealousy.”

You rolled your eyes. “Yeah, she’s pretty or whatever, but trust me I am not jealous. I just don’t understand how you could be with someone like that..”

“I’m not a saint either, y/n..we’re perfect for each other..or at least our agencies think so.” Yuta paused. He wondered if he should let you in on yet another secret, but he didn’t notice that his eyes had trailed to your lips, adoring the way they formed a small pout.

You laughed. “You have a point, you weren’t exactly the nicest to me when I first started working for you...”

Yuta grinned when he saw your bright smile and your doe eyes as you laughed again. You were like a breath of fresh air, unlike anyone he’d ever seen. His spirit was instantly drawn to you, for you calmed him. You were just a stranger yet you felt like home.

“I’ll make it up to you...How about I teach you more about the guitar after the shoot?” He stepped closer, anxiously awaiting your approval like a boy that just asked his crush to prom.

You started to blush, his face was so close to yours, you had to look into his eyes.

You took in a sharp breath. “Are you sure your girlfriend will be okay with that? I don’t want you to stand her up again, she’ll probably stab me with an eyeliner pencil.”

“Again?” Yuta’s brows bunched together, but he still gave a teasing smile.

sHIT.

“O-oh i mean, surely you’ve stood her up at some point, right? She’s a total b-”

Yuta burst out into laughter.

You looked at him with worry on your face. “W-what did I do?”

“You’re adorable, but I just can’t take it anymore.” Yuta reached his hand out to the side of your face and gently removed a long vine that was tangled in your hair. He then removed a large, green leaf that stuck out of your disheveled do.

He calmed down. “There we go..much better. Even nature loves your beautiful face.”

Beautiful face.

Your heart began to race for the third time in one day. Too much was happening, you thought you would pass out. Did Yuta really just say that you were beautiful?

He cleared his throat when he realized that the words he was thinking actually came out while the two of you stood awkwardly in the locker room.

“Yuta?”

He smiled, just the sound of you saying his name made him weak for some reason, what was happening to him?

“What?”

“You’re staring..” you chuckled.

“I’m getting inspired.” he gazed at your eyes then your lips as he spoke in a softer tone.

“By what?” You tilted your head.

“By you.”

“Mountain Man, you really have a way with words, I bet you say that to all your groupies.” You rolled your eyes and brushed past him, walking towards the shower.

He spun around and grabbed your hand. Your breath hitched when you turned to look at him, his full lips parted and eyes begging for something.

“I...have to tell you something..”

He looked so serious for once.

“Ashley and I are in a fake relationship. It’s all a publicity stunt that our labels set up. I don’t love her...But I’m telling you because I feel like..I can really talk to you.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised, Yuta.” you gave a small smile. “I’m just your makeup artist, but if you want to talk to me, I don’t see why not. You’ve already told me two major secrets.”

Yuta laughed out at your response, a strand of his beautiful fuchsia hair falling into his forehead, making him look even more handsome than he did before.

He stepped closer.

“Wash up quickly, for me..the shoot starts soon.”

Yuta winked and walked away leaving you a blushing mess.

“Also, remember we have a guitar lesson later.”

For me.

Why did he have to say it like that? Wait, why were you even affected by that? Could your heart calm down when you were around him for more than five seconds?

^_^

You walked into the dressing room in your new comfy outfit and headed straight for your section. The sweatpants Yuta gave you didn’t have pockets, so you had to wear the necklace around your neck. You tucked it under your shirt to make sure that no one would see it on you.

“Wow, I wish I was wearing that instead of leather pants right now...” Johnny pouted when he saw you in Yuta’s Nike sweats.

“You look great! Always remember, beauty is pain,” you gave him a wink and continued to place your tools in order.

“You must be in pain all the time then, y/n.” Yuta exclaimed as he approached his seat.

Everyone in the dressing room let out ‘oooooo’s’ like primary school students.

You blushed but turned away quickly so he wouldn’t see. “Always teasing me, I swear one day you’re gonna pay.”

“Can’t wait for that day.” Yuta relaxed into the chair.

You leaned forward and started to place the concealer under his eyes with a small brush. You took your time and blended carefully, but felt your face become hot when you realized that he was staring at you intensely.

You couldn’t hold it in anymore. You stepped back to laugh and shook your head.

“What’s wrong? Am I making you flustered?” Yuta smirked.

You rolled your eyes then leaned in towards his face. He suddenly sat up straighter, moving forward so that his lips would be just a few centimeters away from yours.

“Stop teasing me. We don’t have time.” You blushed once again and stepped back.

Yuta bit his lips and chuckled. “Oh, so demanding.”

You were doing his eyeliner when you tugged at the collar of the men’s shirt. It was choking you slightly because it was higher than a regular T-shirt. That’s when your necklace popped up and rested on top of the shirt instead of under it.

“Wait...where did you get that?” Yuta leaned back.

“What?” You narrowed your brow, for you didn’t understand why his demeanor became so serious.

“That necklace...”

Shit.

“Did you steal that..from me?”

Then it all clicked for Yuta. You were in his house. You eavesdropped on his and Ashley’s conversation. That’s how you knew that he stood her up the night before. And that’s why you came to work all sweaty and out of breath.

“What are you talking about?” You backed away from him, but he stood up quickly and snatched the necklace from your neck furiously. The sound of the chain breaking frightened you and you became just as furious. This bastard had no idea what he had just done.

“Yuta!”

Everyone turned to you two once your voice rose.

“What the hell are you doing? Give it back!” You demanded.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he examined the necklace, the shape and cut of the ruby stone and the unique gold chain that it hung on.

He compared the necklace to the picture he posted on his eBay account, and sure enough, it was the same necklace.

“You stole this from my house! You stole from me! I thought I could trust you! What are you, some crazy stalker?!”

“Wait, you’re user 1026you! You’re the crazy one! You stole from me so that you can sell MY jewelry online! You also stole my limited edition eyeshadow palette!” Your voices escalated and everyone else in the room became quiet.

“This crazy bitch! Why the hell would I steal from someone like you?” Yuta gave you a look of disgust and looked down on you like you were a poor dog. You really hated his guts now. He towered over you as he yelled, but you weren’t scared. You were just angry that he had the audacity to lie in front of everyone like this.

“I can’t steal something that was already mine!”

“It was never yours! It was in MY house, and I have the proof right here!” He held up his phone as Manager Byun walked over.

“What’s going on here?” The manager was both puzzled and surprised that you were in a yelling match with the member that no one dared to fight.

“This delusional girl that you decided to hire is a stalker! She broke into my house and stole my necklace.”

“YOUR necklace? You’ve really lost your mind! You stole it from me first.” You shouted back.

“Okay, okay everyone calm down. y/n.. Did you break into Yuta’s house?” the manager turned to you.

“No-I mean, yes, but only because he was going to sell it and it’s precious to me. He ignored my messages and blocked me on eBay before I could explain!”

“You broke into my client’s house?” Baekhyun gaped.

“She sure as hell did. Security!! She tricked me and got close to me just so she could steal from me and learn my secrets. How much were you gonna sell this for, huh? But the worst part is that I trusted you like a fool,” Yuta stepped forward as he spewed hateful and untrue words.

Your eyes started to water, you struggled to hold back tears. “Yuta, you know that’s not true. The necklace was never yours! It belonged to my grandmother and means so much to me.”

“Prove it.” Yuta was angry beyond words, he felt betrayed.

You struggled to think of any way to prove that it was yours. The security guards took your arms and placed them behind your back while pulling you away and out of the room.

The only thing that could prove that the necklace was yours would be the painting that your grandmother made of you when you wore the necklace. The painting that you just now realized had also gone missing.

“No! Don’t do this! I’m not a stalker.” You struggled to stay still as the guards dragged you out.

“She’s delusional! How could you hire someone like that? She put me in danger!” Yuta marched off to the bathroom so he could cool down.

“Yuta-wait. y/n...We will be pressing charges, I’m calling the police.” Manager Byun pulled out his phone.

^_^

A few hours passed and the news broke of what happened.

Crazy Stalker poses as Makeup Artist to Break into Yuta Nakamoto’s home!

BREAKING: MUGSHOT OF DELUSIONAL STALKER OF YUTA NAKAMOTO RELEASED

How did she pull off the perfect plan and is Yuta Nakamoto in danger?

You sat on the bench in your cold cell and wiped your eyes. Everything went bad so quickly. Yuta and basically the entire world thought you were a stalker and there was nothing you could do to prove your innocence. Yuta had the audacity to accuse you of stealing something that was never his to begin with.

And now, you could hear his fans chanting hurtful messages.

“She’s a crazy stalker, We will protect Yuta!”

“Yuta, we love you!”

“SHE DOESN’T DESERVE FREEDOM”

You were so confused, but the part that hurt the most was that your most prized possession was gone and probably in the air on some shipping company's airplane being delivered to some oblivious buyer.

What could you possibly do to make everything right at this point?

Yuta, on the other hand, was at home being coddled by his oh so caring girlfriend.

He laid down on his plush, velvet couch and pouted.

“It’s gonna be okay, Yuta. I swear we’ll get the best lawyers. She’ll never see another day outside!” Ashley got up from the couch and paced about.

“I knew I had a bad feeling about her.”

But Yuta disagreed. He never had a bad feeling about you. He thought you were sweet and kind, he thought everything about you was genuine especially when compared to the fakeness that surrounded him in his lifestyle. How could he have been fooled like this?

He told you two major secrets and now he’d probably have to drop the charges in exchange for your silence.

You really got to him because you seemed to be the biggest fan of Mountain Man, you seemed to appreciate his hard work, but now he didn’t think any of your praises were genuine. He couldn’t even go on social media. All the hashtags were ALWAYSHEREFORYUTA, WEWILLPROTECTYUTA, CRAZYSTALKER.

And they just reminded him of how weak he became.

“LOOK! TMZ just got her mugshot! I’m so happy they’re exposing this bitch, I hope they release her address and family information.”

Ashley smirked when she pulled up the picture of your mugshot on Yuta’s phone.

“Ashley...you need to leave...” Yuta sat up on the couch and looked at the floor. He couldn’t take anymore of Ashley’s annoying voice and he really wanted to be alone to relax and decompress after what happened.

“Oh, my poor little meow meow, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” Ashley sat back down on the couch beside him and tried to take his jaw in her hands but he backed away.

“Not now, Ash..I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ashley scoffed and slowly got up from the couch.

“Okay...let me know if you need anything.”

Yuta breathed a sigh of relief once he heard the front door close. He could hear tons of fans outside of his front gate cheering for him when she opened the door and it made him sick. He doesn’t feel proud. Because the truth is, the necklace wasn’t his. It just “appeared.” But here he was defending his possession of it and it didn’t feel right.

Yuta bit his lips then looked down at his phone which was still open with the article that included your mugshot.

He looked away at first, but then looked back down when something caught his eye. He looked more closely at the photo.

Your eyes.

He’d seen them before. Of course he had, but this time..they were different. They reminded him of something, someone.

The color of your cheeks and the depth of your beautiful eyes, the tone of your gorgeous soft skin and the curve of your lips. He had seen it before.

It took him a moment to realize.

The painting.

You were the woman in the painting that found itself in his bathroom. You were the same woman that wore a necklace just like the one he sold.

He looked over the messages you sent him on his seller account. It was like clockwork, every time something appeared in his house and he posted it online, you would message him about it to ask that he return it.

She was telling the truth. Yuta thinks to himself. He could punch himself right now. He was so rude to you for no reason. It was your stuff that kept popping up in his house and he didn’t understand why, but he knew that you were innocent. The painting was huge so it’s not like you placed it there by yourself to mess with him.

He threw on his jean jacket and headed out the door to go to the police station.

He had to fight through the screaming fans outside of the station that were waiting for a chance to attack you, the police officers gathering around him to move him through the hectic crowd.

Once inside, he went to the front desk and immediately told the officer that he wanted to drop all charges against you.

“You’re one lucky girl...” The officer said as she opened the gate of your cell.

“What?” You looked up at her questioningly and stood up from the wooden bench that had made your butt sore.

“He’s here for you..you know, the good looking rocker dude.” She unlocks your handcuffs and walks you out of the cell.

You’re relieved but can’t seem to smile, what’s going on?

Yuta was signing paperwork as you walked up to him.

“Yuta..you asshole.”

“That’s no way to speak to the man that just got your ass out.” Yuta looked up and sighed.

You scoffed. “You’re the one that put me in there! And I’m supposed to thank you?” You pushed past him and headed for the door. You started to walk down the stairs, but you were quickly stopped by the officers that stood out front.

“What the-“ you started when you saw the enormous crowd outside of the station. They were Yuta’s fans and paparazzi. They rapidly snapped so many pictures of you, you had to close your eyes and cover your face, the flashing lights being all too much for you. All you could hear were the thunderous ‘boo’s’ of Yuta’s fans.

Yuta was used to noise and flashing bright lights so he quickly came up behind you and turned you around. He held your head and pressed it onto his chest lightly.

You started to cry when you heard the names everyone was calling you over a simple misunderstanding. How could you be a ‘normal’ person after all this? All you wanted was your necklace and now you were overwhelmed by this new and unwelcoming spotlight.

“Shhh..don’t cry, it’ll be okay..I got you.” Yuta whispered into your ear as he patted your head softly.

You relaxed into him more, enjoying the comfort of his broad chest.

“Put your arms around my neck. Just trust me, okay?” Yuta’s soft tone made you shudder even though you still hated him.

But you did as he instructed.

He then picked up your legs and held you in his arms bridal style. The fans roared even louder but Yuta ignored them. He marched down the stairs towards his car while police blocked them from the two of you. He was able to lay you down on the backseat of his Range Rover before jumping into the front seat and speeding away from the madness.

Once the two of you were somewhat safe and far from the police station and his fans, Yuta exhaled.

He turned to look at you when he got to a red light. You were huddled up with your back facing him while you laid down on the surprisingly comfortable backseat. You had stopped crying, but you were still angry.

“Listen, I’m just as frustrated as you are. But we need to talk about this. What the hell is going on?” Yuta let out.

“I don’t know, maybe we should’ve talked before you had security take me away. Then all of this shit wouldn’t have happened. Oh and frustrated?” You scoffed.

“Did you just spend over 8 hours in a cold prison cell for stealing a necklace that belonged to you in the first place?!”

“You’re the one that broke into my house! Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I tried to message you but you insisted on being a jerk to make quick cash off of someone else’s belongings.”

You pulled your phone out of your pocket.

“Have you seen this shit? Your girlfriend just had a press conference and is calling for all makeup brands and agencies to swear to never hire me! I hate you, I can’t believe you put me in jail and essentially, ended my whole career!”

Yuta sighed. “I’m sorry, y/n. I really am, don’t look at social media right now, and your career isn’t over, we’ll get this sorted out.”

“How did you find out the truth anyway?” You asked.

“I recognized you in the painting, you had the necklace on.”

“The painting? Wait, you have that too?” Your eyes widened.

“Yes, and I was stupid to not realize it was you sooner. I—was an idiot, y/n. I hope you can forgive me. As a matter of fact, you can expose me as the Mountain Man if you want, you can expose everything.” Yuta was genuinely sorry for what he put you through. The whole world knew who you were now. You were famous, but not in a good way. Yuta had millions of fans and you were pretty sure you were the second most hated person in the world on twitter right now, behind Donald Trump of course.

“Yuta...I don’t want to get even with you, I want my life back.” You closed your eyes and started to drift off into a deep sleep while he drove.

Yuta cursed himself, he felt a bond being created with you and now he ruined it. And he had to admit that he had started to admire the woman in the painting, the woman he wanted to know even though his soul felt he already knew her. And now, the beautiful woman was right next to him, and yet, so far away.

^_^

When you got back to Yuta’s place, you entered through the garage so no one could see you get out of his car.

Yuta took you to his security room where he could watch footage from all of the cameras inside and outside of his house.

He reached for your hand to guide you through the large mansion, but you didn’t take it this time.

You huffed and rolled your eyes.

“Explain to me why you keep taking my stuff.”

“I don’t take anything. It just..appears.” Yuta walked quickly to the room.

“I'm gonna prove it to you right now.”

Yuta pulls up footage from the night the painting appeared in his bathroom, but every time he fast forwards to the exact moment that the painting appears, the footage cuts out.

“Did you see that? The second that my camera cuts to black is the moment that the painting just magically appears.”

You blink rapidly. “Play it again.”

Yuta replays it and you both watch the unexplainable. Chills run down your spine as you are creeped all the way out.

“I’ll show you the night your necklace popped up in my kitchen.”

It felt like you were watching something from Paranormal Activity and although you were a big fan of horror movies, you sure didn’t like being in one.

The same thing happened. There is a second of footage that is cut out and right after, the footage plays again with the new item in frame. It didn’t make any sense.

Yuta looked at you as you stared at the screen and tried to make sense of what he saw.

You were so beautiful, your long lashes batting slowly, your pursed lips and cute nose. Why was he so drawn to you? The magnetic pull he felt towards you became even stronger now that he knew you were the woman in the painting.

“Where is it now, Yuta?”

“Where’s what?” Yuta was only thinking about your face. For a moment, he forgot what you were even doing there.

“The necklace.” Your doe eyes shifted upwards to his.

Yuta sighed and looked away to the floor. “I—was upset, so I already sent it to the buyer.”

You closed your eyes and let out a slow breath.

“Yuta...we have to get it back, you don’t..you don’t understand.”

“They won’t give it back to me, y/n. They already know that I’m the user that sold it, it’ll be even more valuable now.”

“But it’s priceless to me, Yuta!” You yelled before tears ran down your cheeks.

“y/n..” Yuta stepped forward to hug you, and you let him. His arms held you tightly. “We’ll work this out, I’ll get it back if it means that much to you.”

“My grandmother was a painter, she’s the one that created that painting for me. She was the best..” you sniffled as you rested your head on his chest again.

“She was the one that taught me about creativity, color and believing in your art.. she’s the one I looked up to when I was growing up. I spent most of my time with her when my parents would fight..which was pretty often.”

Yuta smoothed your hair as you spoke.

“But one day, she lit a candle..she forgot to blow it out before falling asleep on her couch and a fire started to spread..”

“y/n..I’m so sorry.”

“The oil paintings allowed for the fire to become huge and made it impossible for her to escape..she died before firefighters could get to her, the only thing that survived the fire was that necklace. She held onto it..for me. She said she would give it to me one day when I was old enough.” You sobbed once more.

“y/n..I promise you I will do everything I can to get it back.”

You sniffled then looked up at Yuta. “Please, Yuta.”

He nodded. “ I promise.”

Just then you felt something walk between your ankles. When you looked down, you were startled to see your cat, Totoro.

“What the hell? Why do you have my cat? I’ve been looking for him everywhere, but he’s old and just kinda does what he wants.” Totoro’s abrupt entrance makes you stop crying.

“What? YOUR cat? He’s in my house, he’s mine now.” Yuta says sternly.

God, why was he so possessive?

You looked back up at him and pushed his chest away, you suddenly remembered the kind of man Yuta was.

“He’s MY cat, you fool. You didn’t even raise him. You probably lured him in here by giving him food!” You picked Totoro up.

You still hated Yuta, however, it was like a weight had been lifted once you told him about the significance of the necklace.

You turned to leave Yuta’s place through the back entrance you entered through.

“Prove it, prove he’s yours, what’s his name?” Yuta looked hurt that you were taking Totoro away from him.

“It’s Totoro, bitch.” You rolled your eyes and continued walking straight-faced with your cat in hand.

Yuta’s eyes grew, he was left speechless.

The two of you finally got to the garage.

You turned to him.

“You owe me a ride home, and after that, I never want to see you again.”

^_^

Yuta drove you back to your apartment, apologizing multiple times. This day he apologized more times than he has ever apologized for anything in his life. It had to be some sort of record.

You were tired because this truly had been one of the longest days of your life. You wanted a warm shower and to hug Totoro to sleep.

Yuta parked his car in front of your building and turned to look at you. “y/n...”

“Thanks for the ride back,” you muttered as you and Totoro walked back to your apartment.

You looked so dejected and devoid of any emotion. This entire misunderstanding did a number on you. And it was his fault. He had to act fast if he was going to make this up to you.

Little did you know that a pair of serpentine eyes watched you from across the parking lot. Ashley laid low in a car she typically wouldn’t be caught dead in and watched her man drive that freak home. That was when she saw that you were carrying that mangy cat in your arms.

“So it was her cat?” She asked herself. She pulled out her phone as she took pictures of you leaving Yuta’s car and pictures of Yuta’s license plate.

Once you were out of sight, Yuta just idled there. For a little too long. It drove Ashley crazy. How could Yuta be so kind to this nobody? After everything you did?

You were inferior to her in every way, Ashley thought. Yuta was a fool for looking at anyone but her. She had to do something so you could be out of the picture forever.

She would be damned if Yuta left her for an unemployed, disgraced nobody. Ashley pitied you because she wasn’t finished with her reign of terror on you. Not by a long shot.

^_^

A few days have passed since your name became the most searched on all social media platforms. You prayed something juicier could distract the public so you could become insignificant again.

A news article came out that Yuta dropped the charges against you and that you were innocent. Unfortunately, the deranged and delusional members of the public (aka the Yutastans) already made up their mind about you. And today, shit hit the fan once again.

Delilah sat with you on the couch as you binge watched Riverdale. It cheered you up to roast the show with your best friend. Things almost seemed like they hadn’t changed.

Delilah checked her phone and nearly choked on her glass of water.

“What is it?” You asked. “Are you okay?”

Delilah set her glass down as she stared at her phone. “That’s our apartment complex. Fuck.”

“Delilah, what’s wrong?” You had a bad feeling.

“y/n, it’s going to be okay. We will get through this,” she began and you motioned for her to hand you her phone.

Delilah reluctantly handed it to you as you read the article on her phone.

Yuta Nakamoto’s Crazy Stalker Is Actually His Side Chick?

That was the headline and your heart plummeted. There were pictures of you holding Totoro as you got out of Yuta’s car when he brought you home.

“What the hell,” you started, “Who took these?” You demanded.

Someone knocked at your door and you shrunk into the couch. Delilah looked at you in concern and she went to answer the door. You both feared who it could be.

She checked the peephole and exhaled. “It’s Yangyang.”

She opened the door and Yangyang ran in. “y/n, are you okay? I saw-“

Shutting the door. Delilah raised her hand up to stop him. “We just saw the article.”

Yangyang cursed. “Someone leaked those photos to the paparazzi. I‘ll help you track down who did this, y/n.”

You sat there in silence. What could you say? What was the point? It was your word against the public who never believed in you. Not only do they think you stole things from Yuta but they now considered you a homewrecker.

And it was only a matter of time before your home address was leaked.

Delilah and Yangyang looked at each other in concern. Delilah deliberated. “She came home with Totoro that day. It was last Thursday. Around...4 PM?”

Yangyang nodded and sat down at the kitchen table. “It’s been a while since I’ve hacked into the complex’s security footage.”

That got a reaction out of you. “You mean you’ve done this before?”

Yangyang smiled wide, happy to see you react to that. “Someone paid me a hefty sum to catch their cheating husband in his shenanigans. I use my powers for good. You know this.”

Delilah scoffed. “You are such a little weirdo.”

He rolled his eyes at the word “little”. He typed away at his keyboard. He chuckled. “Amateurs. They changed one number in their password. Lazy.”

Yangyang navigated through the parking lot security footage. Based off of the angle of which the photo was shot, he was able to pinpoint where the culprit was hiding.

“A 2019 Lexus,” Yangyang said, “License plate ASHL3Y.”

Delilah let out a sarcastic laugh. “Golly gee, whoever could that be...”

You got up from the couch and checked the footage with Yangyang. “I believe it. She hated me even before she met me.”

“She’s the crazy stalker, if you ask me,” Yangyang said.

You sighed. “What will it take for her to leave me alone?”

Your phone rang. It was an unknown number and you chose to ignore it, knowing damn well it was probably a Yutastan who was going to cast some sort of evil spell on you.

Then, immediately you got a text.

Answer the phone. Unless you want an angry mob to break into your apartment tomorrow. -kiss emoji-

^_^

“Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” Ashley started. “Can I offer you a glass of lemonade? Some Brie and crackers?”

In Ashley’s penthouse suite, you sat with her in the living room. She sat across from you in a leather loveseat while you sat in a massive L-shaped leather sofa.

“What the hell do you want? You want to throw it in my face that you ruined my life and put not only my life in danger but my friends’ and family’s lives in danger, too?” You snapped.

Ashley laughed. Her voice was as irritating as that of any early 2000s socialite. “Don’t be so dramatic. No one knows about your family. Your friends at the complex are safe with some of my best security guards.”

“Gee, thanks,” you said as you rolled your eyes.

“None of this would’ve happened if you knew your place and left my Yuta alone,” she said, “So, how long?” She demanded.

“What?” You asked in confusion.

“How long have you two been screwing around behind my back?” She asked.

It was your turn to bust out laughing. You almost cried. “I helped him with his shoot last Wednesday night. The closest I’ve ever gotten to Yuta was when he gave me one guitar lesson. He drove me home twice. Once from work and the second from when he picked me up from my jail cell. It was the least he could do after selling my stuff and oh...I don’t know...SENDING ME TO JAIL.“

Ashley didn’t believe you. “Right. Well, whatever happened between you two...It ends now. Or else I will keep making your life a living hell and destroy the lives of everyone around you.”

“Ashley, the last thing I want to do is see Yuta. I want to be a makeup artist and go back to the life I had before I met him.” Damn the connection you thought you two had. It would surely fade as quickly as it appeared.

Ashley began, “Which is why I have an opportunity for you.”

You frowned. “What?”

Ashley filed her nails as she spoke to you. “Timothée Chalamet’s new horror film begins production next month in Paris. There is an opening for the makeup team, y/n.”

You coughed. “What are you-“

She interrupted you, “Take the job and your name will be cleared. Your friends and family will be safe. Your dreams of becoming a successful makeup artist will come true...”

You knew she wasn’t finished so you waited for her to continue. She was so melodramatic.

“In return, you never come back to LA and leave Yuta alone forever,” Ashley said.

“I’ll have to come back to the city. You can’t ban me from visiting...That is, if I take the job,” you deliberated.

Ashley scoffed. “If?”

You sighed. “Ashley, LA is my home. It’s a big city.” You figured there had to be a way to compromise.

But you realized you were dealing with an unhinged diva.

Ashley said, “It’s a big city, sure. But as of now, every single person knows you as Yuta’s crazy stalker. It will stay that way if you don’t take this opportunity.”

You kept your mouth shut.

“I think I’m being pretty generous, all things considered,” she said as she flipped her bleached hair behind her shoulder. “You would be stupid to turn this down. Want to stay a jobless pariah? Be my guest.”

Your hands were tied. As much as you despised Ashley for making things so much worse for you, she had the answer to your problems. And since you were done with Yuta, agreeing to never see him again didn’t even feel like a big price to pay. And Timothée Chalamet was a mega Hollywood Star. Participating in his film would surely open doors for you. If Ashley kept her word to clear your name. And Paris? You’ve dreamed of going to Paris for years. Your grandmother told you incredible stories of when she studied abroad and lived there for a few years. It was a chance to be closer to her. The sightseeing and the art were enough to make you giddy.

You refused to let this girl drag your name through the mud and jeopardize your loved ones’ lives because they were associated with you. It wasn’t right. This way, everyone could win.

“Okay, you win,” you said.

“Actually, y/n, we both win,” she said as she clinked her glass of champagne at you and drank from it.

^_^

Ashley’s driver took you back to the apartment. When you unlocked the door to your place, you were shocked to see Yuta seated on the couch with Totoro on his lap.

“What are you doing here?” You asked.

Yuta shrugged. “You break into my house. I figured it’s only fair I break into yours.”

You sighed as you took your shoes off as you sat beside Yuta. Naturally, Totoro left Yuta’s lap to greet you.

He nodded. “Delilah let me in. I had to check up on you.”

Yuta kept in touch with your best friend without your knowledge. You realized that now. You’d have to talk to her about that later.

“Well, that’s nice and all but you have to leave,” you said as you averted your gaze from him.

Yuta ignored you. “Where did you go? I was worried sick.”

“I’m fine. I…went to an interview,” you said. There was no way you’d tell him about your meeting with Ashley. He had the mind to intervene and you didn’t want things to escalate any further.

He stared at you in disbelief. “What? For another job? y/n, I told you that you could come back to work with us.”

You shook your head. “If I so much as go to the same supermarket as you, there will be a bounty for my head.”

He shook his head. “The charges have been dropped, y/n. What happened today was…”

“The second of many hits to my career if we don’t stop this now,” you said.

Yuta replied, “y/n-“

“Which brings me to this…Did you get my necklace back?” You asked. If he said no, then you had the ammunition to kick him out. If he somehow got your necklace back…you would have to get even meaner.

Yuta’s face fell. “No, y/n…I reached out to the buyer and they haven’t responded.” He wondered if the buyer already sold it for more or if the buyer was biding his time to ask Yuta for money. “I traced the buyer’s address but they disappeared without a trace. I am so sorry.”

You sighed. “Okay.” You got up from the sofa and headed for the door. “Then, I guess that’s all that needs to be said.” You opened it and motioned for him to leave.

Yuta got up from the couch. “y/n, please we can fix this. As crazy as this sounds, I think I’m falling-“

You stopped him. “Yuta, we can’t. You need to go. You can’t get caught in this complex again. For your safety. And if you care at all about mine.”

Yuta froze. “I will do everything I can to clear your name. Please give me time.”

You couldn’t respond to his sweet voice. You had to resist. As much as you denied it, you felt something for Yuta. From the moment you heard his song “Breeze”, you connected with him before you even met him. His hard work, his talent, his sense of humor, his admiration of your work, his way with words with you before everything went to shit, even the way Totoro gravitated towards him. There was something special about him. Given other circumstances, you would’ve considered exploring a friendship with him. But even that was out of the question. “Goodbye, Yuta.”

He slowly walked out the door and looked back at you. His captivating brown eyes trying to pull you in again but this time, they were full of hurt and longing.

You shut the door, not waiting for him to walk away.

^_^

A couple of days have passed as Yuta reached out to multiple media outlets to clear your name. He admitted that he accidentally sold your necklace. Unfortunately, he couldn’t explain exactly how he’d come into possession of your necklace. So he said the best thing he could come up with: a family friend bought it at a garage sale and thought he might like to have it. Yuta started the account 1026you to sell the items he found around his home in order to raise funds for the LA LGBT Center. Aside from his regular donations from his earnings, Yuta thought he could sell your stuff to make some extra cash for the organization. Had he known that these random items belonged to you he wouldn’t have done that. Which begged the question:

How is it that you lived all the way across town and your stuff just magically appeared in his house? And why?

It seemed like some kind of divine intervention, if anyone asked him. For you two were connected and he only wanted to grow closer to you.

Except now he couldn’t. He failed to get your necklace. You were still blacklisted no matter what he said to multiple companies. He was thankful that you were still able to get an interview like you told him. He wondered if that company hired you. He hoped you were doing well.

Rehearsals for Skylark’s LA shows were still underway. Lily was rehired and Yuta apologized to her for being so rude. The dressing room wasn’t as lighthearted as it’d been when you were around. It was a short time that you were there but he missed you so much.

With Yuta’s heartache, he used music as an outlet. He thought about the night he first taught you how to play the guitar. There was one melody that lingered in his mind every day since. Now he took his time to work the song out of his mind. It was a song that you inspired him to write and he knew it was his best work. He hoped he could play it for you soon.

Yuta missed Totoro’s presence in his home. He didn’t realize how lonely he was until he lost you and your cat. Ashley popped in every day, insisting she stay over. So he begged his sister Suzuka to let him babysit her cat Thorn. Yuta claimed it was out of his hands to babysit Thorn so Ashley stayed less frequently.

Yuta drank a cup of green tea at his kitchen island. He had the day off before his solo press conference. His management wanted him to promote his album but he would also take the opportunity to clear your name.

He pleaded with his agency to let him cut ties with Ashley but Ashley’s agency wouldn’t budge. If Yuta broke up with Ashley, then Ashley’s agency would cut ties with Sky High Entertainment.

He hoped to convince Ashley to cut ties with him today. It was almost as if she was avoiding the conversation as the minute she came in, she ran into the bathroom to take a bubble bath.

“Yuta! Can you be a doll and rub this shower gel on my back?” She asked suggestively.

Yuta knew she was trying to get him in bed so he wouldn’t be able to think straight. These days Ashley seemed more repulsive than usual. Yuta was getting tired.

“No!” Yuta yelled outside the door. “When you finish up, meet me in the living room.”

She didn’t respond right away. She lowered her voice. “Okay…”

Another hour went by and Yuta still waited in the living room. Ashley was avoiding him. He was fed up and he went to look for her. Surely, she’d be out of the bath now. She couldn’t afford to let her skin prune for that long.

He overheard her laughing in his bedroom. “I gotta tell you, Melissa. You should’ve seen the look on her face when I picked her up from that ghetto apartment complex.”

Melissa laughed over the phone. Yuta recognized those nails on a chalkboard from whenever his band had a fan meeting. Melissa Lee, his fanclub president. Yuta frowned and tiptoed as quietly as he could.

Ashley continued, “All I had to do was offer her a job in Paris. Frankly, I’m being way too nice for my own good.”

Melissa replied, “Well, at least you got her out of Yuta’s perfectly shampooed hair.”

“That I did. So when are you going to post the YutAsh tribute video to your website?” Ashley asked as she fell onto Yuta’s bed.

Paris? What the hell did Ashley do?

He remembered how you were unaccounted for that day he went to see you. She said you had an interview. It was interesting how this interview fell on the exact same day those photos of you leaving his car were leaked. Who followed you two that day?

Of course, it was Ashley. Yuta realized how stupid he’d been. She’d basically conspired against you right under his nose. And he was furious.

But he had to be strategic. There was only one way he wanted to take Ashley down. And it would be in the way that hurt most.

^_^

Yuta’s press conference was at The Grove. Hundreds of fans were lined up from the night before. The media was in a frenzy. Your members and team were also in attendance so this was the talk of the town.

The announcer called you in. “Ladies and gentleman: Yuta Nakamoto.”

Yuta, in a gray custom-made business suit, radiated elegance and lethality, which many of his fans said was his unique charm.

Yuta got up to the podium and adjusted the microphone as he spoke into it. “Hello, I’m here to announce the release date of my first solo mini album.”

The crowd roared while the cameras flashed. There was a lot of talking from the journalists in the front.

He smirked. He was ready to give them something to talk about.

“The album comes out July 15th. Ashley and I have been fake dating and I’m here to say that it’s over.”

The crowd was in an uproar. The press yelled out questions. Yuta’s team was full of mixed reactions. His bandmates cheered and laughed. Baekhyun looked panicked. The company executives looked paler than they’ve ever been.

Ashley, who couldn’t have been more obvious as she gossiped with Melissa, almost fell over in her Jimmy Choos.

Yuta laughed. “I’ll take a few questions.” He pointed to a representative from Teen Scene Weekly.

“Yuta, is your breakup with Ashley because of y/n?” They asked.

Yuta sighed. “First off, Ashley and I dated to strengthen our respective companies. We were friends. We had a good time. For a while now, I’ve wanted to cut ties with her but out of respect for my company, I held on a little longer…However, after I politely asked for a breakup, I was denied. Now tell me…do you think that’s fair? After everything Skylark has given to the company? That we get used this way? I’m fed up with it.”

Yuta knew he only had a minute at most before he was pulled off the stage. Ashley yelled out, “Yuta, please stop!”

He continued, “Which brings me to y/n. She never did anything wrong. As I have gone on record to say twenty times in the past week, she never stole from me. She lost her necklace along with other possessions. Friends and family got these possessions for me from garage sales. That’s all I know. y/n is innocent. I made a huge mistake by having her arrested. She is an excellent makeup artist. One of the best in the business. I should know because I’ve been in this industry for seven years now. So if you’ve blacklisted her, then the joke’s on you. Because she has more talent than most of your employed artists ever hope to have. Lastly, to answer your question…y/n is not the other woman. She never was. I started falling for her but I never acted on it. Until now.”

The crowd was in a frenzy. A lot of the fans were crying and it made Yuta wonder if he had any true fans at all. If they cared so much about who he dated, then they didn’t see him as anything else other than their property.

Skylark’s security guards went to pull Yuta off the stage but he walked out on his own with his hands up in surrender. The guards escorted him to his car.

Yuta got into the driver’s seat and nearly screamed at seeing Ashley in the passenger seat.

“What the fuck?” He demanded.

“I had extra copies of your car keys made,” she said like she knit him a pair of mittens.

“Get out,” Yuta said with clenched teeth.

“You ruined me, Mr. Nakamoto. How are you going to make it up to me?” She asked. Her eyeliner ran down her cheeks. Her critically acclaimed face made her look like the wicked witch from Snow White.

Yuta laughed humorlessly. “I don’t owe you anything, Ash. You ruined y/n’s life and pushed her away from me. You knew I never loved you so why? Why keep this charade up?”

“We need each other We are perfect together. With your music and your bone structure and my beauty and me being a triple threat, we would be unstoppable. We can only help each other. Why can’t you see that?” She traced her fingers over his chest.

“I’ve heard enough. Please leave before I call security,” Yuta said in a low voice.

“Security?” Ashley scoffed. “Fuck off. No one calls security on me.”

Yuta rolled his eyes, already having dialed Tom, one of the security guards. “Yeah, Yuta?” He asked.

“Come back. Ashley broke into my car,” Yuta said quickly.

Ashley grabbed his phone. “Yuta! What have you done?”

Yuta sighed. “What I should’ve done a long time ago.”

He unlocked the door as the guards came running over to pull Ashley out of the car. She put up a good fight but the guards successful got her out.

She yelled out, “Well, you’re too late! Her flight to Paris leaves in a couple of hours.”

Thankful that Ashley always had a big mouth, Yuta backed away from the scene and raced to the airport.

^_^

You were on the plane, happy to have the row to yourself. You had to find some joy somehow. It wasn’t like you were being exiled from your hometown.

Totoro stayed with your mom. Once the shoot finished, you would get him back so you can relocate from LA. It still hurt to leave everyone.

Yangyang and Delilah agreed to move in together so he could save on rent and she wouldn’t have to pay for the apartment by herself. But you had a feeling there was something they weren’t telling you. You couldn’t wait for updates from both of them.

In a matter of eleven hours, you would be at the Charles de Gaulle airport, ready to embark on a new chapter in your life. You put your earbuds in and put your music on shuffle. The first song from the shuffle was ironically “Your Type” by Carly Rae Jepsen. It was a song about unrequited love and you were tempted to skip. Instead, you chose to wallow.

As much as you suppressed it, a part of you held onto thoughts of Yuta. Losing your possessions and finding them in Yuta’s place. You were both confused. Part of you wondered if there was something paranormal about it all. Maybe paranormal wasn’t the right word. Maybe…something magical?

Even so, too much damage had been done for you two to return to the friendship you had for a such a short but sweet time. And Ashley drove an even larger wedge between you two by threatening you. As much as Yuta frustrated you with everything else, you were even more frustrated that he was still with her. If it was fake, why did he keep it up? Didn’t he want to be with someone he loved?

Well, it wasn’t your problem. He was a big boy. He should be able to handle problems like this since he talked such a big game all the time.

So irritating, you thought, but also irritatingly cute.

Unbeknownst to you, there was a commotion on the plane.

“Sir, your seat is in 5A. Come back here!” A flight attendant yelled.

“y/n!” Yuta yelled as he ran down the aisle looking for you. He wore a large beanie and sunglasses so no one could recognize him.

The passengers looked alarmed at the disguised man yelling frantically. Yuta realized screaming wouldn’t help his case so he scoped out for you.

And then he saw you.

Your face was made up but you still looked like you lost many hours of sleep the past few nights. But still, you were the most stunning creature he’d ever laid his eyes on. Your eyelashes brushed against your cheeks as you slept. Your lips slightly parted and Yuta bit his lip.

The flight attendant caught up to him. “Sir-“

Yuta raised his finger and nodded towards you.

The flight attendant calmed down. “You’re assigned to 5A. Why are you all the way back here?”

“Can I switch with whoever is supposed to sit here?” He asked.

The attendant frowned. “Why would you want to-“

“Please,” Yuta pleaded, “Sitting towards the front freaks me out.”

The attendant sighed. “Well, sir, you’re the last one on the plane so that seat appears to be available. Go ahead.”

Yuta smiled genuinely. “Thank you.”

The attendant was stunned and she had a feeling she recognized him. She shrugged it off and resumed her duties to get everyone situated on the plane.

Yuta exhaled in relief as he sat beside you. You looked so cute curled up in your chair but also very uncomfortable. He was tempted to offer you his shoulder but that would ruin the surprise.

Half an hour went by and you turned to your right to see the seat had been occupied by someone in glasses and a beanie. So much for having the row to yourself, you thought.

The stranger beside you said, “Morning, sleepyhead.”

You frowned as you opened your eyes more. “Hi…?”

But when you sat up, you saw his piercings and the curve of his lips. “Yuta?” You whisper-yelled.

He flashed his perfect set of teeth at you as he lowered his glasses. “Hey.”

You laughed in disbelief. “What are you-“

Yuta shrugged casually. “I felt like a trip to Paris.”

“Right…Who told you?” You asked. You dropped your defenses. For now.

“Surprisingly, it was Ashley. She may be a schemer but she’s never been the sharpest tool in the shed.”

You looked at him, noticing how disheveled he looked. He was soaked in sweat. He must have ran through the airport to catch this flight.

“Why are you so sweaty?” You asked.

“I ran,” Yuta said as he realized he must have looked as gross as he felt. And taking off his beanie was almost out of the question since his fuchsia hair dye made him stick out like a sore thumb.

You felt for him so you pulled some wipes from your bag and gave them to him. “That beanie looks uncomfortable so take this.” You handed him a cap instead. It was a Dodgers cap.

“Thanks,” Yuta said as he swapped the beanie for his hat and cleaned himself up.

“Well, good night again,” you said as you turned to the window and shut your eyes.

“I’m sorry, what?” He asked. He mistook your acts for kindness for wanting to talk to him.

“We’re done here, aren’t we?” You asked. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“y/n, I…You can’t move to Paris,” he started.

“I accepted the position, Yuta. I can’t go back from an obligation.” You turned away from him and stared out the window. The attendants were giving their airplane safety spiel. You know you were about to ascend. “Unless you have a schedule in Paris, then you should leave. Before you’re stuck on this flight.”

“There’s no place I’d rather be, y/n,” he said softly.

His voice sent shivers down your spine but you pushed your feelings down. You couldn’t let him get to you. “You hurt me.” You let it out. Maybe if you kept this up, he would leave you alone.

Yuta sighed. “I know and I’m so sorry.”

Upon hearing him apologize, you perked up but you chose to keep your back turned.

Yuta went on to say, “I screwed up. Getting you arrested, fired, and hated by everyone. I screwed up even more by selling your grandma’s necklace. And I hate that I couldn’t get it back. More than anything. I know what Ashley did to you. It was wrong of her. She had no right. I finally broke up with her. In front of everyone.”

You turned to him, worried about the repercussions of the break up. “By everyone, you don’t mean…”

“At my press conference…”

You put a hand to your mouth in shock. “Ashley must be furious.” What did this mean for you now? What if Ashley retracted the offer and then you were truly left without a job or a home?

Yuta chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about that witch.”

You shook your head. “If you broke up with her, then she’s on the warpath.”

Yuta replied, “She’ll find another big name to terrorize soon enough. I’m close to contract termination anyway.”

You gaped. “What?”

“At the conference, I told everyone that Ashley and I were a fake couple. I broke up with her and then…I told everyone how I felt about you. I really like you, y/n,” He turned bashful, putting his hands in pant pockets.

“Yuta, are you crazy?”

He didn’t expect that response.

“How could you jeopardize your career for me? You barely even know me. Sure, we shared pizza and…we had a moment when you taught me guitar…But that’s not enough reason to put everything on the line.”

“y/n, you don’t understand. I feel like we really know each other. I can’t explain it,” he said, “Why do you think it is that your stuff kept popping up at my place? There’s some sort of cosmic connection between us. That’s not something we can ignore.”

He thought the same way you had about the things you lost and later found. But you were scared. Ashley made you a human target and you knew you could end this stress by leaving. You didn’t want to jeopardize anyone you loved.

You didn’t even want to jeopardize Yuta. Especially since he just risked his entire career for you.

“Yuta, we can’t. Being with me will ruin your career,” you said. The plane started moving across the tarmac.

“y/n…”

Now you two were stuck on the plane. You weren’t planning to budge and you prayed that when you landed in Paris that Yuta would catch the next flight back to LA.

Hours passed. You were so exhausted that you nearly fell asleep the entire plane ride.

Apparently, so was Yuta. You woke up finding yourself leaning against his shoulder and his neck was nuzzled against the top of your head. He still smelled like roses and vanilla, even after working up a sweat to get onto the plane. He was a fool, you thought to yourself.

But you were an even bigger fool because you didn’t remove yourself from him.

The pilot announced overhead, “Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Paris. Bienvenue à Paris.”

You realized you’d been awake too long and hadn’t moved away quickly. You felt Yuta move so you pretended to have just woken up from the announcement. You quickly pulled away from him. Yuta rubbed his neck and watched you.

You left the plane with Yuta trailing behind you. You picked up your bags at baggage claim. Yuta grabbed one of your bags.

“Yuta, it’s fine. I have this,” you said as you pointed to the luggage cart.

Yuta relented and helped you put your bags on the cart.

He followed you to the arrivals section where drivers had their posters with the names of people they were picking up. You saw your name and identified yourself with the driver. The driver helped you with your luggage.

“Bye, Yuta,” you said quickly, not about to linger. You turned away when he took your hand.

“y/n, please…” He begged.

“Take care, okay?” You said as you pulled your hand away and caught up with your driver.

Heartbroken but unrelenting, Yuta was about to follow you when someone pulled his hat off.

“Oh my God, it’s Yuta! C’est Yuta. Skylark!” A girl yelled.

Yuta ran for cover, the gears shifting in his head for his next move with you.

^_^

It’s a few days later that you finally get to explore Paris. You haven’t heard a word from the fuchsia-haired boy, but you were trying to get over him anyway so you didn’t mind.

You had to realize that at the end of the day, he had his devoted army of fans and you..only had yourself. He didn’t need you, so surely he’d forget about you soon enough. You two had only known each other for a short time, regardless of it feeling like an eternity.

You breathe a sigh of relief when you get to the Eiffel Tower. It’s kinda cold, but the dreamy sunset draws in.

When you felt a sudden gust of wind, you closed your eyes and remembered Yuta’s warm chest on your back, the way his long fingers comforted and guided yours on the stiff strings of the guitar. His breath dancing along your ear while you shivered and felt goosebumps expose themselves.

The echoing bass in his voice that hit your heart..and other places too.

The sun was slowly retreating from the sky, but it was still bright..as bright as his smile, you missed it, even when he only showed it during his sarcastic, asshole moments.

His lips so full and soft, even the brush you used over them had a difficult time coloring to perfect something that didn’t need perfecting.

Ashley was one lucky girl. It was only a matter of time until she and Yuta got back together.

You looked to the ground and sighed. Why did you have to think of him? Even when one of the most beautiful pieces of art towered over you.

You couldn’t shake the feeling that you were missing something so great in your life now. The connection you felt with him hit you like a train and there was nothing that could compare to it. It was so strong, it could probably compete with the earth’s gravitational pull to your body.

“Yuta..I hate you, I really do.” You whispered to yourself as you clutched your long jacket around your body. You tried to convince yourself that this was true so that you’d finally be at peace. Key word: tried.

In the front of the Eiffel Tower was a board that read the rules, opening times etc.

“Le Jules Vernes Restaurant..’closed tonight for a special event..damn it.” You had planned on treating yourself to a meal at the top of the Eiffel Tower so you could take in the view as long as some fresh air. But lucky for you, it was closed for that evening.

You licked your lips and sighed.

Would you ever have things go your way?

You were about to walk away when you heard a speaker being plugged in. The feedback was obnoxiously painful and loud, and got everyone’s attention. You all turned to see the source.

A guitar riff played soon after and you heard a chorus of whispers from people on the lawn.

“Oh my God..OH MY GOD ITS YUTA NAKAMOTO FROM SKYLARK!” A girl screams as she runs past you with another girl in hand, just barely holding on.

Shit.

You squint your eyes to look at the person that a crowd begins to form around and sure enough, it is your nemesis with the pink hair. He’s smiling widely and saying ‘hi’ to everyone as his bodyguards put their arms out to stop anyone from getting too close. His guitar is in his hands and his microphone has already been set up.

“Time to go back to the hotel.”

You turn and start to brush past all the people running to see Yuta perform.

“Yuta?! What is he doing here?”

“Holy shit! Yuta is about to perform for us!”

“Yuta from Skylark? Aren’t they about to go on tour?”

You overhear some of the comments and the last thing you want is for them to realize who you are, the infamous “crazy stalker,” so you duck and push through.

You don’t feel his eyes peering the crowd and eventually locking into your body as you walk away. His smile fades and he realizes he has to act quickly.

He strums out one chord on the guitar and the girls go into a frenzy.

“This song..is for someone that just entered my life. It’s only been a few weeks, but she’s changed it for the better. She knows me more than anyone else does and I honestly don’t know how I lived without her before.”

Yuta speaks into the microphone, making the growing crowd of listeners go silent.

You slow your pace but still don’t turn around. There’s no way he could be talking about you.

“Who is he talking about? Didn’t he just break up with Ashley?” You hear a few girls whisper.

“She doesn’t know it yet, but I don’t plan on living without her anymore..she makes my head spin, she makes me forget the words to songs that I’ve sung everyday for the past 3 years, she gives me the WORST case of butterflies...she truly is a nuisance, but I need her. y/n..”

You stop in your tracks and stare at the grass below your planted feet.

“Please don’t go..” Yuta’s eyes are wide, he just needs you to turn around and look at him, to give him a second chance.

The people turn to follow his line of vision, eventually seeing your body standing alone and far away.

“Oh my god it’s her.” They whisper.

You start to walk again when you hear the whispering yet overwhelming gossip. You’re just so tired of all of the attention you’ve been getting. Yuta was trying to make some grand statement to get you back, but he didn’t realize that this was the opposite of what you wanted.

“She’s like the rain on summer days when the garden needs some nurturing...” Yuta strums his guitar and sings.

“She’s like a constellation of stars, oh she’s beautiful, and very gorgeous to me.”

You’re still walking but he continues.

“But I don’t even know her name, I only see her in a frame, yet her face is stuck in my mind..she’s the girl in the portrait, the girl with the necklace..the girl with my heart, but the girl I don’t know..I could give her the world, but it’s not like she needs it from me. She’s a work of art, she’s the only thing I see.”

You stop again, this time turning around to finally face him.

“No one knows me like you do, yes, you see the right through..and I know you won’t forgive me, I just hope you won’t forget me..because I know I’ll be thinking of you, yes you, the girl in the portrait.”

Your eyes start to tear up. The Mountain Man, the singer you so adored had written a song about you. And the melody was just as charming as his other songs. Were you that important to him that he created this song for you?

You stood there frozen as ice and stunned, with a thousand eyes on you.

“That was The Girl In the Portrait, I wrote it for y/n, because, well, it’s a funny story actually.” Yuta said as he put his guitar down and stood up. The crowd chuckled and clapped but people were still focused on you and waiting for your reaction.

This was one level above a public proposal and you didn’t know how to feel about it.

“Please..” Yuta said quietly.

You cursed silently. Your heart felt weak and you couldn’t just turn away like your conscious told you to. Your heart told you to forgive him and start over.

Yuta went all the way to Paris for you, he wrote a song for you and ditched his first tour date. He did it all for you. If that didn’t show his sincerity towards you, you weren’t sure what would.

‘I Hate You’ you mouthed before smiling.

Yuta ran towards you abruptly, making his bodyguards scurry behind him to push his fans away from him, they struggled to keep up as he dashed like Bolt towards you.

You braced yourself for impact from the 6-foot something man about to collide into you.

Yuta’s teeth showed brightly as he held out his arms and wrapped them around you. Wrinkles formed at the sides of his eyes.

He’s so filled with excitement, he lifts you three feet about the grace and bends backward.

“Yuta!” You laugh out at the sudden move, but he chuckles and brings you back down.

You breathed in his amazing scent before closing your eyes and adoring his warmth. You felt so at ease in his arms, everything faded away. The cries as well as cheers from his fans soon faded into the background. You rested your head in his chest and exhaled.

You lifted your limp arms that were once at your side and wrapped them around him while he rubbed your back. Having you in his arms tonight made it feel like Christmas Day. He never wanted it to end. Even with all the people staring and all the phones recording, he didn’t want this moment to end. He prayed that you would stay in his arms forever, for you were the only thing that made him feel comfortable and happy. You did for him what music could no longer do.

“y/n...”

“Mhmm?” you hummed, your eyes still closed while you enjoyed his embrace.

“I want to kiss you..”

Your neck nearly snapped when you looked up at him.

“What?” Your eyes widened.

“But not here..up there..will you let me?”

Yuta smirked and tilted his head towards the tower.

“Nice try, user 1026you, the restaurant is closed tonight.”

“For a special event, I know...that’s why it’ll just be me and you.” Yuta chuckled when your brows furrowed.

“Yuta..”

“I’d give you the world if you let me.” Yuta grew serious as he searched your eyes and swallowed hard. He ignored the fact that his bodyguards were having an increasingly difficult time with holding back his fans.

The two of you were surrounded by complete madness, but you felt alone..lost in each other’s eyes.

Your mouth was open slightly, you couldn’t believe that he actually booked the entire restaurant just for the two of you.

“So..You gonna let me give you a night in Paris to remember?”

You laughed and Yuta felt his chest weaken by the sight of your smile.

“You owe me big time..”

Yuta’s teeth twinkled. “We gotta run, ready?”

He took your hand and the two of you hustled to the entrance of the Eiffel Tower.

His fans ran after you two while you laughed and held onto each other tightly.

Everything happened in slow motion, the two of you moved like runaway lovers, chaos surrounded you but it didn’t matter, for you had each other. You looked over to see Yuta’s goofy smile.

The tour guide at the entrance was able to quickly let you in and close the door behind you to stop anyone else from following.

You found the elevator and got on.

Once at the top, you let go of Yuta’s hand to walk around and see the magnificent view. A million tiny lights decorated the streets of Paris. It was darker outside now, but you could still see the large crowd that surrounded the tower start to dissipate.

They looked like ants below you, slowly dispersing from the ants nest to get more food.

You were so stunned by the view, you didn’t notice that Yuta was watching you, your eyes gazing in amazement, your hair blowing softly in the wind and your bright smile that made even the moon seem bleak.

“y/n..” he called your name. There was something he wanted to see.

You turned to look at him over your shoulder.

“Yeah?”

And there it was. The pose from the portrait. You glancing over your shoulder so intensely. Your eyes large with wonder, your lips full and slightly parted, your hair shining in the moonlight. You are beautiful, Yuta can’t describe it, but he knows he is happy to be able to see an artwork come to life.

“Yuta?” You turned to him full and walked over. “What’s wrong? You’re staring again” you giggled.

“I’m happy.” Yuta smiles and looks down at you.

“Well, we’re in Paris at the Eiffel Tower! Of course you’re happy.” You chuckled and turned to look out at the city from a different angle, but Yuta took your hand in his and spun you around.

You tripped and fell onto his chest before looking up into his eyes.

“No...I’m happy because I’m with you.”

He whispered and your body felt weak. Luckily, he was holding you up so you could balance yourself.

He held you close and looked onto your lips which were just a few inches from yours. His breath slowed to match yours, you look into his lips and swallow hard.

“Y-Yuta.”

He leaned forward, placing a small kiss on your lips. Your eyes closed, his kiss made you feel like fireworks had been set off right there in your chest. It was magical even though it only lasted for a second.

Yuta was nervous, he wasn’t sure if you were ready. You held his head in your hands and looked into his eyes.

You then kissed him hard while tilting your head to the side. Yuta finally relaxes in your hands and kisses you back, opening his mouth so that he could lick your top lip.

His lips were fluffy and felt exactly like how you imagined them to feel. Silky, smooth. Even as he pressed harder, you couldn’t help but feel fragile like you’d collapse at any moment, your legs threatening to give out at any moment.

Soon, your tongues found each other and playfully danced while you struggled to keep your breathing stable.

Time slows down once again as you kiss for what feels to be days.

Yuta draws small circles and lines on your back as he pushes your body into his more. He wants more, so much more. He wants to feel you everywhere, and he can’t get enough of your touch, the way your dainty fingers play with the hair on the nape of his neck.

But you have to pull away to breathe.

“Wow..you could’ve gone on for days, couldn’t you?” You try to catch your breath as you look up at him.

Yuta smirks. “I’m a singer, it’s called breath control.”

You rolled your eyes. “It’S cALleD BrEATh coNtRoL.” You mocked him.

The two of you laughed. Yuta took your hand to guide you to a table that had been set for the two of you.

It was weird being so high above the rest of the world. But you liked it. It was just you and Yuta. Nothing else. There was no Ashley, no fans, and no drama.

Yuta rubbed his reddened lips with two fingers.

“Let’s hurry up and eat..I want to finish what you started.”

“What I started? Sir, I recall you being the one that started that kiss!”

“Nah you gave me those eyes..” Yuta was teasing you again.

You rolled your eyes and sat back in your chair.

When you finished eating, you looked into the city again and felt an internal peace. There was something so comforting about being away from the madness. Yeah, your life wasn’t what it was two months ago, but you sure as hell felt all the madness was worth it.

Getting Yuta was worth it.

You leaned forward, placing your jaw on your hands.

“What are you thinking about?

Yuta watched your eyes searching the city again. The moonlight and single candle lit on the table brought out your smooth skin even more, as well as the outline of your nose and lips. He could watch you all night.

“I like the view,” you answered softly.

“You do?” Yuta’s brows raised.

“Yes..” you nodded.

“You’re my best view..” Yuta smiled widely.

You blushed. “Ehh.. I don’t know about that line.”

“Okay how about this one?

“I wish you didn’t have a name..so I could call you mine?” Yuta leaned forward to match your pose and place his head on his hands.

“Oh no..it’s getting worse.” You held your face in your hands, feeling the heat in your cheeks rise. You’re both a little tipsy from the alcohol you had at dinner.

“Are you from Paris? Because Ei-FELL for you..” he smirked and took your hands in yours so he could see you blush.

You laughed and melted into your seat. “Oh God, Yuta make it stop.”

“Okay, okay I’ll stop..but before we leave, I have something to give you.”

You sat up straight and gave a puzzled look.

“I’m sorry again about your grandmother’s necklace. I tried..I even called up your hacker friend YangYang for help, but he couldn’t find it either..I’m so sorry. I know I can never make up for that.”

Your face straightened and you blinked slowly as the reality settled in that you would never see your grandmother’s necklace again.

“But..I did get you this..I hope her memory can still live on through this..”

Yuta reaches into his pocket and hands a small box. When you open it you find a gold necklace with a shining stone surrounded by small pearls as the pendant . The resemblance between it and your missing necklace is strikingly similar. Your mouth falls open.

“My grandmother’s necklace was the only one of its kind...how..how in the world did you find this?”

You looked closely to see that the one difference was the stone in the center.

“I searched online and went to a few antique stores and met this strange lady..what was her name again? Was it Celeste or Cerulean? Hmm..wait! It was Cyan! Yeah I showed her a picture and she found it in her store for me.”

“Yuta..that’s amazing.”

And that’s when you realized what the color of the center stone was. It’s not purple, nor red. Not pink, nor magenta..no it’s..fuchsia.

Yuta was your soulmate..that’s why your things were disappearing. The universe was pushing you to him. You were destined to meet and fall in love. How could you not realize it sooner? That’s why you felt this undeniable pull towards him.

“What’s wrong?” Yuta grows concerned when he sees your eyes start to tear up.

“Nothing..nothing..it’s perfect, Yuta.” You decided not to tell Yuta because you couldn’t really explain it. Things were finally falling into place and you just wanted to spend time with him, for you didn’t know if you’d have the chance to be with him again..in this universe..or in another one.

“Let’s go home.” Yuta kneeled down and wiped your tears with his finger.

————

Yuta helps you out of the limo once you get to your luxurious hotel. He had the driver take you to a back entrance so his fans wouldn’t see the two of you.

“Thank you.” You let go of his hand and are about to start walking but Yuta grabs your waist and throws you over his shoulder. You yelp out in surprise. Your ass is in the air as you dangle over him.

“Ahh!! Yuta!”

“Shhh we came through the back for a reason.” Yuta chuckles then gives your ass a hard smack with his hand.

“Ahh! Damn it, Yuta!”

You lay out a string of curse words as Yuta gets into the elevator. He only smiles while strangers stare and wonder what in the world is going on.

When you get to the room, Yuta flips you from his shoulder and onto the bed. You plop down and feel your body bounce back up from the plush mattress.

“I swear to-“ you start but Yuta leans down over you, attacking your lips as soon as you open them to make some snarky comment.

He liked hearing you talk back to him, but he liked kissing you even more.

You lick his bottom lip, then kiss his lips again, enjoying the way both of your lips grow wet from each other.

He was just as playful with his tongue, letting it place kitten licks on the soft surface of your lips, he kissed softly, teasingly. It was almost ticklish. You felt your chest rumble.

You closed your eyes and traced your hands up Yuta’s back, pressing him into you more.

The bitter taste of alcohol stayed on your lips and your head felt light, you both felt like you were getting drunk all over again.

Yuta presses into you more, running his hands along your sides before holding your face as he guides the passionate kiss.

You pushed your body upwards and grinded onto Yuta, feeling his member poke through his jeans. You placed a finger into his belt loop, pulling him downwards. You then wrapped your legs around his waist and crossed them over his back to bring his body closer to yours even more.

Yuta took the hint and pushed into you slowly, grinding his covered member against your covered, but increasingly wet entrance.

You moaned into his mouth when you felt him press onto your weak spot teasingly. You trembled under him, hands shaking as they clawed at his back lightly.

It felt like a bouquet of flowers were slowly opening up in Yuta’s chest. You were the most beautiful melody, the graceful echo of godly chords being played in a church organ, you were the angelic singing heard all the way from heaven. That’s what you felt like to Yuta. And he had to write about you, he had a hundred songs already in mind to write about you.

He prayed that you wouldn’t stop kissing him this time, that you wouldn’t have to pull away to breathe.

He didn’t know that you felt the same way, that he felt like a day at Disney that you didn’t want to end. He felt like a birthday surprise happening over and over and over. He was the glass of water after a long run. He made you feel euphoric just from an embrace like this. With the two of you finally being alone together, it was like the stars had collided to create something so beautiful, extraordinary and new.

But still, you were scared. Now that you found your soulmate, would he disappear? What if this was your last night in this universe? You couldn’t remember anything about your life before, but you knew that you were somewhere else before all of this.

And could something this good last? Were you really away from all of your troubles?

You were deep in your thoughts and without realizing, you kissed Yuta so hard, you accidentally bit his bottom lip.

Yuta pulled away. “Are you okay? Do you want me to stop?” He rubbed the blood from his lip, eyes growing wide.

“N-no, Yuta..I’m sorry. It’s just..” you swallowed hard then licked your lips.

“What if..this is it? What if we won’t be together after tonight?”

You played with the collar of his shirt to distract yourself.

Yuta tilted his head then placed his hands on either side of your head to hold himself up.

“y/n..I don’t plan on letting you go..ever. You make me feel..” Yuta didn’t know how to describe it either.

“Amazing.” But that wasn’t enough, it was much more than that. So much more. No word in the entire dictionary could suffice for the feeling he had.

“And if the universe allows..It won’t be the last night. It’ll just be the first of many.” He gave you a wink. “What do you say? Let’s give it a try?”

You nodded and licked your lips.

“And uh..how far do you want to go because I..” Yuta looked down at your linked bodies.

You blushed when you realized what he was looking at. It was the outline of his member sticking out in his jeans and aiming towards the apex of your legs.

You thought about the chances of this being your first and last night together, and knew you wanted to experience it with Yuta. If just kissing him made you euphoric, how would making love feel?

You nodded. “I want you to make love to me Yuta, love me like it’s the last time.” You rubbed his flexed biceps and he grew weak. The combination of your gentle touch and doe eyes while those sweet words left your mouth made him feel like he’d lost all feeling in his legs.

“It won’t be the last time, but it will probably be the best time since we’re in the city of romance. Don’t expect too much from me when we do this again, okay?”

You nodded, giggling as you held his belt again. He glanced down at your hands as they fiddled around.

He chuckled then looked back up at you. “Is your name Paris, because I think my Eiffel Tower belongs in you?”

“Yuta!! I swear to G-“ you started again, but he quickly placed his mouth on yours, taking the air as it left and circling your top lip with the tip of his tongue.

You both ran out of patience, taking each other’s lips in between your teeth. You shimmy out of your jacket and Yuta tosses it to the side. You tug the hem of his black t-shirt and help him take it off over his head, his hair becoming rustled in the process but it gives him a cute, messy look. You can’t help but laugh.

Yuta smirks and rubs his hands up and down your thighs while gazing into your eyes, pressing into the soft squishy skin to massage them.

You bite your swollen lips, knowing that he’s watching your chest rise up and down under him.

“I could stare at you all night.” He whispers.

“I know..but I want you to make love to me first.” You say as you start to unbutton your blouse.

Yuta watches your fingers play with the buttons, allowing for several inches of your skin to be revealed each time. He licks his lips but waits for you to finish and reveal yourself to him, gripping the crook of your knees while he waits.

“Yuta..” you breathlessly call out his name before biting your lips. Your voice makes him dizzy, he wants to hear you say his name over and over again like a broken record, because you just sound so..heavenly. No song could compare.

He leans forward, placing his hands on yours and gripping the bow separated fabric. And it’s like he’s opening his curtains to see a bright, sunny day after a scary thunderstorm.

He opens it slowly, staring at the small space between your breasts that he wants to decorate so badly.

You stare at his neck and then his abs, all the places you want to kiss passionately while listening to his low groans.

Yuta takes the sleeves of the shirt down your arms, his fingertips lightly touching your skin but still leaving an intense rush flowing through your veins.

You lock eyes as he tosses it to the side with the jacket.

He lowers his head to your chest and breathes over it, leaving a steamy breath over your nipple. You shiver under him and let out a moan.

“Yuta..” You arch your back, desperate to feel him on you. Having him inches away from your skin just isn’t enough, especially when he’s shirtless and daunts his stunning body over yours.

But Yuta doesn’t respond. He licks your nipple and looks up to see you tremble once again. He can feel the response from your body under him even though he’s not touching you.

“Please..” you put your hand onto his back and rub it softly to push him along.

He kisses in between your breasts, then sucks hard, biting the skin to leave a mark.

You cry out his name again, this time, your fingers going through his thick hair as he moves on to suck your nipple.

He presses his tongue firmly and flat against it, then pleases a sloppy kiss onto it.

He massages your other breast while his mouth continues to work on the first, sucking hard so he can hear you say his name once again. He circles around the areola with the tip of his tongue at a pace so slow, you start to go insane. He then flicks the tender tip with his tongue as you throw your head back and moan.

You push your body upwards but Yuta pulls away. As expected, he teases you, wanting to draw this moment out for as long as possible.

“Yuta..please touch me.”

He looks into your large eyes as you beg, but then he looks down to your breasts and isn’t satisfied so he pays attention to the other breast, switching between gentle and firm sucking. Your moaning gets louder and louder, and you’re happy that Yuta paid for the suite that takes up one floor.

His large hand cups your breast, his fingers pressing into the skin and pumping it slowly.

His plush lips kiss everywhere, lighting fires of feeling across your sensitive skin.

Yuta then starts to grind down into you. Your opening is still covered by the rough fabric of your jeans, but aching nonetheless. The sudden contact made you jolt upwards. You’re so wet and needy, you’re sure you’re soaking through your jeans at this point.

Yuta quickly drags your jeans down your legs, you start to kick them off and let it fall to the floor.

“You’re so wet, baby.” Yuta stares at your soaked panties and smiles.

He retakes his position, placing his hands on either side of your head again, and sucking on your nipple.

This time he sucks harder, humming as he grinds down into you to hear you whimper loudly. The vibrations allow for a tingling sensation to echo through your skin, you feel lightheaded, your jaw locking, and your vision fading.

“Yuta!”

You say before releasing. Your grip on his hair tightens as he continues to suck on your skin while you cum. You moan loudly and breathe heavily..you slowly start to come back to Earth.

“Oh, you’re loud..but I like that.” Yuta gives you a wink then runs his fingers over your underwear.

“I didn’t even touch you and you came.” He says smoothly.

You jerk at the feel of his fingers parting your folds to collect your essence.

“You cocky bastard.” You say breathlessly.

Yuta only smirks as he walks around the bed and to a wall beside it.

“I forgot to show you this..” he presses a button and looks up at the ceiling.

You kneel on the bed and move to the center of it.

The white covering separates from the center, opening up to reveal a window.

Your eyes widen and your mouth falls open when you see the beautiful night sky, dazzled by twinkling stars. And even though it is late at night, you can still see traces of sapphire blue and small, faint lines of indigo.

There’s nothing like it. You can see why Van Gogh painted Starry Night.

“So we’re gonna fuck in front of the stars?” You ask bluntly, gaining a loud chuckle from Yuta.

“I promised to give you the best night you’ve ever had so..yes.” His eyes squinted when he laughs again.

“Yuta..this is..”

“Amazing? Legendary? Extraordinary? Yeah I know” he put his hands on his hips as he watched you gaze.

You roll your eyes and turn to him. “Come here..”

You head over to the edge of the bed and get on your knees. Yuta walks over to you, watching your hands unhook his belt and tug his jeans down.

You lean back and fall into the center of the bed while waiting for him to kick off his jeans and get on the bed.

Yuta nearly trips and falls as he struggles to take his jeans off while watching you. You start to take your panties down your legs but Yuta stops you.

“No! I wanna unwrap the present.”

“Ugh, you’re so weird.” You hold your face in your hands again.

“Look at me, sweetheart.” Yuta grabs your ankle and squeezes hard.

“Oh!” You yelp out at the pain and look down at him, watching as he crawls over your slowly on the plush bed.

He takes the waistband of your panty in between his fingers and slowly drags it down while looking into your eyes. Your heart starts to race again. He’s so close to your wet and needy entrance, but you feel the sharp, icy slap of cold air once you’re exposed.

“Beautiful..” Yuta adores your naked body below him.

He traces his fingers on the surface surrounding your folds, just pressing shy of them to make you writhe.

“Yuta..please.”

He rubs two fingers along your folds painfully slow, using the side of his long fingers to part them.

Yuta retreats his fingers and puts them into his mouth.

“So good.” He breathlessly lets out. He teases your entrance again, his spit and your essence now mixing as he presses nearly perfect circles into your core.

You can feel the knot in your stomach start to build again. Your mouth falls open as you moan.

You arch your back and hold onto the sheets with a grip so tight, you felt your knuckles become white. You look up at the stars and think to yourself how beautiful it is out there. You feel your spirit start to ascend while Yuta plays with your clit.

Your legs start to shake and threaten to close completely as you grow more and more sensitive to his touch.

Yuta uses his other hand to pump then align himself with your opening.

His length glistens with pre cum, the tip red and veins pumping fiery blood through it.

He’s more than ready now and you can’t wait to take him.

“Open up for me.”

You don’t hesitate to spread your legs further apart so your hips align with his.

He leans down and holds himself over you with both hands, looking into your eyes before kissing you enthusiastically, tugging your lip between his teeth so you can call out his name again.

He pushes into you slowly while you kiss.

Yuta drinks in your moan and groans when he feels your silky walls surround him.

He lets go of your lips and buries himself into the crook of your neck. He breathes deeply, pushing into you again.

“So tight, fuck.” He whispers.

You take a deep breath and look at the stars above you to stop yourself from coming already.

He starts to thrust into you again, but you let out a quiet whimper.

“Shit..I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Yuta. K-keep going.”

You rub his back to push him along.

He begins to rub your clit, your mouth falling open into a silent cry.

He pushes all of himself into you then pulls out, groaning once again when he buries himself back inside.

He grinds against your silky walls while holding you close and rubbing small circles into you.

Your heated bodies comfort each other as they are finally connected, working towards the same goal.

Yuta smells like a combination of amber and musk, but feels like a soft blanket during winter, his muscular arms holding your body still while also hugging you in the most passionate embrace you’ve ever experienced during sex.

His heart beat matches yours, his breath attaches itself to your neck. His throaty moans begin to get louder and louder.

Your fingers run through his hair while you whimper.

You’re so close.

Yuta moves faster, harder, pushing into you so hard, the bed starts to move.

He lifts himself from your chest and looks down at you. Your saddened by the coldness you feel between your bodies now but Yuta is so beautiful. His magenta hair now wavy, some strands sticking to his forehead, leftover eyeliner smudging and bringing out the depth of his eyes.

He grabs your ankles, completely enclosing his fists around them before placing them into his shoulders.

He grinds into your entire body at a different angle now, the pressure on your g-spot increasing significantly. “That’s feels good, Yuta..oh my G-“

You start to clench around him, making him groan and push into you harder.

“y/n..” he whispers while looking into your eyes. “You’re beautiful..in every way.”

His surprisingly sweet words make you smile.

You gaze at the stars, but your vision starts to blur. You can’t think of anything but Yuta, the feeling is so amazing, you can’t describe it. To be filled up by him, to be completely enraptured by him, there is nothing like it. The knocking of the headboard against the hotel wall and the sounds of skin on skin brings you to the edge.

You grip the sheets tightly as your eyes close.

They roll into the back of your head and your back arches. The euphoric feeling takes over and you swear your spirit leaves your body for an entire minute.

Yuta fucks you through your high but pulls out and releases onto your belly soon after, experiencing the same overwhelming feeling in his spirit too.

He collapses onto the bed beside you and looks up at the stars, taking your hand into his and squeezing it gently.

You look over at each other and laugh, it’s as if you were both thinking the same thing. How did you climax so hard?

Several minutes pass and you’re about to get up to get a towel but Yuta holds your hand.

“I’ll get it, just relax, baby.”

He comes back with a wet washcloth and gently cleans you up.

“I love you..” he says quietly.

“Yuta..it’s a bit early for that.”

He nods while cleaning up the strings on your belly. “I know..but I can’t shake this feeling. I think you’re the one..I think you’re my..soulmate.”

You’re stunned to hear Yuta speaking like this. If he realized you were soulmates, what would happen now?

“I mean, I don’t know if you believe in that kind of thing, but..”

“I agree, Yuta..I think you’re my soulmate, which is why I’m scared to lose you..good things never last.” You say quietly and avoid his eyes.

“Don’t say that, we’ll be okay..I know we’ll be okay. Just trust me, okay?”

Yuta crawled over you and gave your forehead a light peck.

You made love again then cuddled all night, but when morning came..so did reality.

————

You jump up at your desk, startled by a harsh gust of wind against your back.

What just happened? Where are you? Where is he?

You look around you and see towering wooden shelves filled with books.

How did you end up here?

“y/n? You okay?” You hear a young voice call to you.

You turn to see Charlotte, the 13-year old volunteer at the library.

The Library

Shit. You’re back.

You hold your head in your hands and wail.

Charlotte rushes over to you, hugging you tightly while shushing you.

“Y/n! Y/n! Be quiet! We’re in a library, you can’t be loud like this!”

You sniffle. “I know! But it was so good! I was so happy there!”

“What? Are you talking about your dream?”

That’s all it was..a sweet dream, an imaginative universe you only had a quick taste of...nothing was real now. How on Earth would you find him? You were back to reality.

Totoro walked across the desk and meowed.

You looked at him and pouted.

You knew who you were..a boring librarian that owned a cat named Totoro..but who was Yuta in this universe?

How would you find him?

“y/n?” Charlotte called out to you. “Do you want to go home?”

Several weeks passed and you slowly started to assimilate back into your old life. You googled his name but found nothing, he was nowhere to be found.

You just had to accept that it was a dream, a dream followed by the nightmare of reality.

You hoped that you would find your soulmate again, but you knew the chance was little to none. So you did what you did before. Work, eat, spend time with your best friend and roommate Delilah, sleep, then wake up to do it all over again.

Love didn’t have a place in your life, could you even come to accept a loved other than Yuta? Damn him for giving you a night in Paris to remember.

———

“The true crime section is in row 13.” You pointed to a large sign hanging from above reading “TRUE CRIME NOVELS.” You wondered how anyone could miss it, then again old people were usually the ones that needed the most help when they came to your library.

You turned back around to your returned-book cart that you were taking books from to stack the shelves with. But you noticed that it was now empty.

You were 75% sure that you didn’t put away ALL of the books before turning to help the senior citizen, yet all of them were gone.

All..except for one that had fallen to the floor. It was open when you picked it up. When you looked at the page that it was open to, you realized that it was a book of poems.

The poem it was opened to read:

She’s like the rain on summer days when the garden needs some nurturing...

She’s like a constellation of stars, oh she’s beautiful, and very gorgeous to me.

But I don’t even know her name, I only see her in a frame, yet her face is stuck in my mind

You squint your eyes, where have you seen this before?

she’s the girl in the portrait

the girl with the necklace

the girl with my heart

but the girl I don’t know

I could give her the world, but it’s not like she needs it from me

She’s a work of art, she’s the only thing I see

The girl with the necklace..

That’s it! It’s Yuta’s song! He wrote this, he’s out there somewhere. Perfect! Now you could track down the author and find him-

But wait.

You looked down to see the author’s name.

The One in the Middle

“Shit. It’s just like him to not put his real name on his work.”

You opened your laptop and immediately went to google.

“Who is the author named ‘The One in the Middle’?” You said as you typed.

Nothing. Nobody knew who he was. Many asked about his other poems, but there were no answers, only fan groups that praised the mysterious writer. ‘No one knows who he is but that adds to his ‘sexiness’ that’s what their Facebook post stated.

And none of his works were posted or published electronically, so you couldn’t ask someone to track his IP address like you did the first time.

You sigh and hold your head in your hands. “Damn it Yuta, why do you make things so difficult?”

It was comforting to know he’s out there somewhere, but you couldn’t help but lose hope. Was the universe messing with you?

———

A few weeks pass again and Delilah decides to drag you to the opening of a new art gallery downtown. Normally, she’d take her boyfriend with her, but he had basketball practice tonight.

“Thank you for coming with me, y/n! You know my professor, always making us look at other works for “inspiration” I mean, why can’t I just look at works online?” Delilah spoke as you two walked around. She was a musical theatre student, but had to visit an art gallery at least once a week to pass her art appreciation class.

She didn’t see the point in it, but you always had a connection to art that you couldn’t explain. No one in your family was a visual artist. Unlike in your “dream,” your grandmother wasn’t a painter and passed away before you could even meet her.

Nonetheless, color and technique was something you grew to appreciate.

There were about 50 people in the gallery, all high class looking. You felt underdressed in your black turtleneck, black jeans and jean jacket. That’s one thing that you did miss, wearing color all the time like you did in your dream. Now, you were back to wearing black. It was like a metaphor for how you felt. Your colorful and intense world has turned to black.

The only thing that stood out from your outfit was your necklace.

“I’m going to the restroom, I'll be right back!” Delilah skips away.

You nod then walk around a wall in the middle of the room. When you turn the corner, you see..yourself.

It’s the painting from your dream..the one of you slightly turned around. Your necklace is still in it too except..

You step closer and see that it’s different. The stone isn’t ruby anymore, no..

“It’s fuchsia..” you whisper. You glance down to see that the author’s name is The One with Many Friends.

“It’s funny because I was thinking it was more magenta, but you’re right..it really is fuchsia. You’ve got good eyes.”

You slowly turn when you recognize the voice.

Time starts to slow down. You can’t believe your eyes. It feels as though the world has stopped moving and it’s just the two of you once again after so much time.

It was Yuta.

Yuta smiles brightly when you look up at him, he recognizes you right away as you make the same pose you have in the painting.

“Yuta..” the name barely leaves your lips.

“It’s you..y/n.” He walks towards you, pace increasing with each step before taking you in his arms as all of his memories flood his brain. He had seen your face every night in his dreams but he couldn’t remember who you were. He painted you in an effort to figure out who you were, but it didn’t help.

Now finally, he got his answer.

Everything that was missing found its rightful place.

“I read your poem, but you used a pseudonym..again! I thought I would never find you.” You cry into his shoulder while holding onto him tightly.

Yuta smiles and caresses your hair.

“I told you...just trust me, we’ll be okay.”

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writeblrfantasy · 3 years

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ruby & esther moments from every tes book

editing/writing fv again. love these ladies <3

“I don’t want you to die,” Esther murmurs, ducking her head. “When you hit your head, I don’t remember ever being that worried over anyone else. You awakened something in me, or maybe that was the first time I realized it was always there. I never want you to be hurt again, not that badly. So please, for the love of everything we both hold dear, be careful in battle. Eingard needs you. I need you.”

Heart lurching painfully, Ruby permits herself to step closer. “The same goes for you. In the forest, grace, I”—she chuckles— “I was ready to turn the world upside down to find you. I’ll live in order to appease you, but you’d better do the same, because I can’t promise what I’ll do if I find your corpse somewhere in—”

Esther pulls her in close for a hug, wrapping her arms tightly around Ruby’s back, and Ruby is stunned silent for a moment before reciprocating, resting her chin on her shoulder and wrapping her arms around Esther’s neck. Her breath comes slowly, her heart so full she could soar among the stars, the moon. In another world, she would never have to let go.

Ruby murmurs a thank you and stands up to get a vase for the flowers. “You gonna take a lunch break?” she asks, stepping into the more barren backyard to fill the vase with water from the pump. It’s Esther’s goal to turn the backyard into an oasis of fruit trees and vegetables plants, but right now there’s only a baby bromber bush and some carefully tended soil. She’s made the front yard her priority for cosmetic purposes, despite that they live in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors.

“Yeah,” Esther grunts in response, wandering into the washroom to clean off the morning’s grime.

Ruby lingers a moment to bask in the sun shining on her face, reluctantly ducking back inside to set the roses on the table. She’d gladly spend a whole day outside, napping on blankets and picking shapes out of clouds and enjoy the warmth of the late summer sun. It’s bearable in the north, unlike Ruby’s early memories of summer in the brutal southern heat.

Esther says they can have such a day sometime, but not even living in a one story house in the country could banish their busy habits. They always find something to do, never bored, and they like it that way.

It’s clear to everyone at the port waiting to welcome them back that Ruby has only one thought in mind, only one goal. That goal is dirty and sweaty from training, sword dropped thoughtlessly on the ground in her haste to get to Ruby.

The two of them collide with such force they fall to the ground, but this doesn’t faze them. Ruby and Esther hold onto each other tighter than seems humanly possible. Their eyes are closed, they make no sound. They look nothing short of whole in each other’s arms.

Ruby and Esther have grown on each other like moss—it’s obvious to see even without seeing either of them much. They communicate with just a look, and every hand gesture, every slight brush of an arm or a shoulder or the small of the back means something special. Ruby and Esther have mastered a language all their own.

Ruby’s eyes are squeezed tightly shut as she draws harsh breaths, clutching fistfuls of the back of Esther’s tunic. He watches Esther’s weathered hand rub tenderly over Ruby’s back. Esther could’ve lost Ruby in Orenda, just as Cygnus could’ve lost Harlan. Esther doesn’t even know it yet. He looks at them again, reads their silent language.

I’m sorry. I missed you. I forgive you.

But most plainly of all, I love you.

She drops Ruby’s sword back off in their room and shows Cygnus the book, where he learns that the book of plants is not, in fact, a book about plants with illustrations and notes, as he foolishly thought. It is a blank book with plants and flowers of every kind pressed between the pages.

It’s the nicest new year gift he’s seen someone get their lover in a long time, and Esther clearly treasures it from the way she lingers on each page, thumbing through them, telling him things about the differing shapes of leaves on different berry plants. He doesn’t give a damn about anything but the intense adoration on Esther’s face and the beaming, proud smile on Ruby’s.

“Esther,” Ruby says, interrupting Esther’s rant about goose flowers. She shyly hands out a familiar bag. “I’m giving you this, too.”

Esther’s face morphs from adoration to shock back to adoration. “This is your prized bag,” she says, taking the bag into her left hand, her plant book in the other. “Are—are you sure?”

“I told Cygnus it’d become yours eventually,” she winks. “Just fulfilling my promise. Go gather all the plants in the world you could want, dear. After all, it’s the perfect size.”

Esther slowly reaches out her arms, showing that there’s nothing in her hands, watching Ruby’s eyes follow her the whole time she spins around, baring herself. Esther tentatively touches their hands together, and when Ruby doesn’t move, Esther touches her arms and keeps going until she can envelope Ruby in a hug. She hates doing this normally, even though Ruby has gotten remarkably good about reading when Esther is and isn’t in the mood. Still, she never initiates contact like this, but her own itches come second to the way Ruby is shaking.

“I’m here,” Esther says into her ear. “You’re here. You’re not there.” She can’t say that Ruby’s family is safe, that everything is fine, because it’s not. None of them can ever do anything to make that right, and that hurts like hell even to her. She can’t imagine how it is for Ruby.

But she can offer this.

After a long minute, Ruby stops shaking, and she begins breathing normally again. She wraps her arms around Esther’s back, squeezing tight, laying her head on her shoulder. Her hair falls around them both, grown out again, as Ruby sighs.

Evan wipes her eyes for the umpteenth time and looks up. Cygnus and Harlan are grace knows where, probably seeking respite from the heavy and cold air of this room. in their place are Ruby and Esther, standing so close their sides nearly touch. They seem to lean unconsciously closer to each other. It speaks volumes that they’ve both left their swordbelts in the other room, trusting each other for protection. Perhaps feeling that it’s not needed here.

Ruby is whispering something in Esther’s ear, their hands joined in fur coat pockets. Their tears have dried, and there’s no void in their chest where a part of her soul used to be. She’s jealous of them, how easily they can find peace anywhere they go, as long as they’re together.

The insanity, the anxiety over what they’re doing closes over Ruby’s throat and threatens to choke her for a moment. She sees it all too clearly: their loss, the Caels storming the too flat plains and swarming down throughout the country, slaughtering Eingardians, and burning villages, leaving destruction in their wake.

It’s the kind of fear that makes her want to run and hide and never come out, just exist in obliviousness until she knows it’s safe to return. She wants to take Esther and the rest of her family and run, but all she can do is tighten her hand on her sword and breathe.

Esther’s fingers skim over her back, feather light but warm nonetheless. “I’ll be right behind you,” she says quietly, just for Ruby’s ears. A moment of walls down for both of them. Ruby reaches back and catches her hand, squeezes it tight for a moment. Control returns to her in waves through the link she has with Esther’s palm. She looks up and sees a few golden sigils winking out of the air. She smiles, and Esther ducks her head, but she doesn’t hide her smile well enough.

fv taglist (lmk to be added/removed): @mel-writes-with-her-dragons @magic-is-something-we-create @47crayons @idk-bout-tonight

#writing #writeblr #my wip #fantasy #fantasy writeblr #my writing #bean's excerpts #excerpt from my wip #fantasy writing #the eingard series #lila's wips: fv

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darkpoisonouslove · 5 years

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“Show the World (Inside of You)”

Summary: Griffin never wanted to be a model but in the name of her dreams she's willing to deal not only with fashion but also with the person who understands it. However, Valtor also seems to understand her, as impossible as that seemed at first, and she has to ask herself if he's still simply the designer of her nightmare or he could help her create the fairytale she'd always dreamed of for herself. Contains mildly nsfw elements.

This was not supposed to happen, then it was supposed to be short, and then I just gave up on confining it in any way since the idea ran away from me and I decided to catch up with it and run with it instead of trying to stop it. I really loved it so I had to write it all out. I hope you'll like it too. :)

She never wanted this.

She never tried to starve herself so that she could be thin enough to be a model. She simply forgot to eat most of the time driven by her passion to explore that rarely let her sit still and always had her mind occupied with a question getting the answer to which would prove to be a challenge. She was running on excitement which was why that job was proving to be a bitch.

She never tried to grow her hair long to impress anyone. She just loved the feel of the purple tresses between her fingers and how her hair looked in the voluptuous braid her mother would arrange it in, especially when she’d add flowers from their own garden to adorn it. The tons of hair products they kept dumping on her before every fashion show left her itching to scrub her scalp off long before the show was over and spending hours in the shower after she was finally done, relief only flooding once every last touch of cosmetics had flown down the drain.

She never tried to make her posture elegant or graceful or demanding respect. She only refused to bend before the obstacles in her way and held her head high every time something tried to pull her off the path she’d chosen for herself. But no one decided her fate for her so she only had herself to blame for her current situation. Herself and her passion for the night sky. And Faragonda. Definitely Faragonda.

Her friend had convinced her of the impossible by making her agree to work as a model but she was only doing it for her dreams. She had the qualities to make it in the fashion world and also had the intelligence to see that if she went through that hell, she could get enough funds to conduct her own independent research in the field of astronomy. And she had a friend who had the connections to get her an interview for a position that would pay enough to make it worth all that she had to go through. Namely, her new boss.

“How about dinner? Tonight?” Valtor's smugness stuck to her like his dress on her figure after he’d interrogated her thoroughly about her reasons to work for him as a model and she’d told him the truth. She didn’t want him thinking she enjoyed being there or had any interest into doing anything other than the basics her job required of her. He held her and her dreams in the palm of his hand and he fed off the certainty she’d have no choice but to accept. He hadn’t had the chance to learn the most basic thing about her yet even if it had been a few months since the job interview. But she’d teach him the hard way if he was so adamant to get burned.

“No,” Griffin caught his eyes in the mirror to send him to hell. She wouldn’t debase herself and sleep with him just because she needed the money. She had a dream, yes, but she also had self-respect she wouldn’t trade that just to keep a job she hadn’t even wanted in the first place.

Valtor laughed, making her turn to him to have a better angle for her glare. “To celebrate the success of the fashion show, Griffin,” he softly answered the accusation she’d thrown his way. Yet, the fact that he didn’t seem offended was a clear sign that his intentions hadn’t been quite as innocent as he was trying to make them out to be. “Some of the other girls are coming,” he only pulled a scoff from her with his inability to keep up if he thought that would compel her to go. “I always treat my models to a dinner after a job well done. Those that want to come, of course,” he explained, still not affected by her skepticism or her judgment and the gesture did sound genuine, and her arms were dropping at her sides now that she didn’t need the barrier between them.

“The critiques still haven’t come in,” Griffin teased.

It was the truth. The models hadn’t even gone out on the catwalk yet and she could still see the smirk taking over his lips when she hadn’t been blinded by a flashlight sealing her frame in a photograph to have it all over the media. It made her grateful she was all wrapped in his creations as they were the reason why people would look at her in the first place and mostly kept the focus off of her face.

“I don’t need people to announce my worth at me,” Valtor locked eyes with her for her to see the mirror was not the only thing in the room that she could see herself in. “You look beautiful and no one can deny that, Griffin,” the heat of his words was inside her, spreading towards her treacherous skin that was too white and would immediately give her away if she wasn’t covered in more makeup than she’d worn during the entirety of her life outside of work. And for once having her face painted like a canvas was an advantage that hid what lay underneath. She didn’t need him getting the wrong idea.

“Are you complimenting yourself or trying to get me into bed?” was what made its way through her blood red lips instead of the confession that he made the knot in her stomach loosen and the memories of getting bullied in school for how tall she was retreat far beneath the podium she strutted on with the heels he’d selected for her as if to help her up to his mindset of celebrating her height. She didn’t need to tell him because he knew. His eyes could be a mirror but hers were a window, letting all the light from inside spill out if you knew how to make them open up, and he'd found all her secret buttons even though she’d never told him. So perhaps he saw himself in her, too, in some way. “I still can’t make it to dinner,” she said before he’d had the chance to break through the glass and set off the alarm in her heart. She wasn’t sure she’d have anything to put out the fire with. “I have plans with a friend.” Yes, plans. She needed a plan for how to get away with killing Faragonda for getting the idea of working as a model into her head.

This wasn’t the place for her. It was too real and too fake at the same time and the confusion it wrapped her into managed to make her doubt her how well her brain was working and that she definitely didn’t appreciate. She didn’t know what to do, and she already had enough of being pulled on strings as they spun her around as they pleased while preparing her for yet another fashion show.

“Maybe some other time then,” Valtor let her free and she could thank him, but she couldn’t admit there was a problem. “It’s show time,” he slipped back on the mask she hated to help her relax with how easily the feeling came. She wasn’t getting dragged into something she couldn’t handle. She was getting dragged into something she hated but she’d come out of it with all of her strength at her disposal.

It was the thought that carrier her out onto the podium and it was the same thought that saw her walking into Valtor’s office some weeks later, all calm when he’d asked to talk to her.

She was more than ready for a fight if that was what he wanted. She wasn’t going to apologize for the scandal she’d made. They had no right to stalk her with cameras when she wasn’t at work and she’d let everyone who hadn’t gotten the memo know they’d have to respect her personal space.

“I need your opinion, Griffin,” Valtor only glanced at her, taking just enough time to acknowledge her before his focus returned on the sheet in front of him. The calm of his tone left her all puzzled amidst her expectation of a storm. It did leave one in her head and she had to hate him just for that.

“This isn’t about the paparazzi problem?” the corners of her mouth dropped after the question made it out as if to join her plummeting expectations that had been let down. She couldn’t understand the game he was playing. It had to be a game. He had to have an ulterior motive not to be angry at her after the stain on his company’s image she’d left. She doubted even the dog paintings on all the walls that he’d made himself as he’d told her were enough to calm him when he was raging no matter how much he claimed to love the animals. She’d seen him angry one time when he’d destroyed a person on the phone. She’d been sure there’d been just a heap of ash left on the other end of the line. There had to be something else behind his good will.

“Is there a problem there?” Valtor looked at her, still so relaxed that he had to be mocking her. “You had an opinion and you voiced it. You were rather polite about it, too, considering the situation.” He smiled at her, and everything was upside down. The floor was probably no longer under her feet but she didn’t dare look. She could fall. And he could catch her. She couldn’t be just another poor soul caught in his net. Not that she’d meant to have any knowledge on him as an individual but it was hard to miss his personal life when it was practically everywhere. It was beyond her how people didn’t tire of it, especially considering how wild it seemed. And it was beyond her how he didn’t tire of the constant invasion of his privacy.

“You’re not angry?” she probed carefully when she knew better than that. He could still bite her head off no matter how cautious she was. But she had to make things right, had to bring the ground back under her and not in the place of the sky. It would get in the way of her plans to observe it in the night. “About the damage to your company?” she clarified after the expectant look he gave her as if he didn't know damn well what she meant, as if he hadn't read it like the silence between them was a private language. He was just playing her to hear her admit her own guilt.

“Griffin, you clearly don’t read tabloids.” He had her there, just like she’d known he would. He was dangerous. “My company doesn’t get off the front pages. Saves a lot of money from advertising,” he joked before flashing her that pearly smile, the one that was like poison and had her heart beating frantically to get it out of her system but, instead, it only spread further in her veins. “I do love a woman with opinions,” he said as he got up from his chair, a predator ready to pounce. “It’s a thing that inspires and something I pick my models for.”

That she wouldn’t know. She hadn’t bothered to spend time with them, though maybe she should. If she could take his word for it and, despite how much she hated to admit it, so far he hadn’t given her a reason not to.

“Men usually only like their women strong-willed when they agree with them,” Griffin tilted her head, the interest in his reply not at all faked as he kept surprising her every time he opened his mouth in private. It was the pretense that fell over him like a cage for his free spirit that pushed her away but what did she know about the fight he had to lead? Perhaps it wasn’t a cage but a shield. A shield he laid down when she was around.

“I’m not like other men,” Valtor's gaze bore into hers for a moment as if that was enough to lay his touch on her inside. “I called you to have you look at this,” he picked up a sketch from his desk and strode over to her, his steps confident to match the belief she hadn't withheld from him.

“That’s to be determined,” Griffin muttered to tame his smugness to a bearable level as she took the sketch from him, her breath stopping as her eyes landed on it.

The dress looked stunning, the light blue–the shade of his eyes–starting at the hem slowly turning orange–golden–before it went into gentle pink, red, purple and finally black. All the colors of the sky before, during and after a sunset gathered in the skirt that was separated from the bodice with a purple ribbon in a very familiar shade. Right above started little gemstones arranged to make constellations. She could clearly spot Leo and Virgo since he’d taken the time to detail them precisely. And the sleeves were black veils, held to the wrists by two bangle bracelets – silver and gold. He’d captured the sky through himself and her and it looked... perfect.

“Do you like it?” Valtor had her head snapping up–and perhaps there was a protest stinging her heart that he’d made her tear her eyes off that masterpiece–her mouth already opening to let a sharp agreement come out in retribution for even wasting her energy on voicing something so obvious in her body language–her entire being had succumbed to the awe the sketch had gripped her with as she held it with almost trembling hands–but the look in his blue eyes suspended her in their ice, in its soft plea not to break it and his heart.

She closed her mouth, her lips pressing together as firmly as possible not to let out a sound the wave of which would shatter him but also subtly enough to conceal her battling the impulse to mock his request for her validation. Even if she’d acted without thinking. He’d asked for her opinion, had put himself on display in front of her like she was doing in front of the world to show off his models. He'd touched the stiffness clinging to her at those moments and he’d trusted her not to affect him with it now. She couldn’t tear that apart no matter the effort it would cost her.

“The tenth anniversary from the foundation of my company is coming up,” Valtor spoke again in her lack of reaction, his eyes going over the sketch as if to look it over one more time while she was stuck on the words coming out of his mouth.

She hadn’t known how old his fashion house was. She never would have assumed... even when she’d been convinced he was a professional. Somehow fashion wasn’t something lasting in her mind, wasn’t something important. Until she’d seen the trepidation he’d waited for her approval with. It seemed important now. It seemed like the most important thing to encourage him when she saw her reflection in his eyes once more, waiting for praise and support for her work that she’d never gotten. But she could at least give it to him.

“I’d like you to wear that dress at the celebratory fashion show I’m planning,” Valtor looked back at her and now it was hope that was in his eyes and they were the windows this time as he was letting her peek right into his soul.

Her mouth was falling open so she took the opportunity to force out the words to keep them both from exploding. “I will,” she was quick to reach and catch Valtor’s hand and the heat of his skin spread through every part of her being melting every last lump of ice people’s dismissal or animosity had hardened into on her muscles and nerves.

“Thank you,” Valtor squeezed her hand and she returned the gesture, completely consciously to give her understanding she didn't want to voice to hear it echo in the comfortably quiet room. “This is a very important occasion for me and so is the model,” he looked back to the sketch and compelled her to do the same and revel in the beauty he’d created again. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like...” he trailed off and Griffin let him find his words on his own, keeping still and doing her best to remain present and not get carried away in the depths of the dress he’d bring to life for her to wear, “to draw with passion, pure and unadulterated,” the words were quiet as if he didn’t want to boast with them and mess up the genuineness they were made of.

“What inspired you?” Griffin asked even though she knew the answer, even though she could throw a playful question about the new muse he’d found that he would normally leap at. But there was nothing normal in him at the moment, or at least it wasn’t the normal she was used to, though she’d love to change that.

“Looking at the world,” Valtor said and she could feel his gaze on her tugging at her heartstrings just like the smile was pulling at her lips and she wasn’t quick to pull her hand out of his.

Which was not to say that she was all that comfortable with his hands all over her a few weeks from then as he was fixing a dress that had never been meant for her to fit like it’d been tailored to her body. He’d kept running things by her, asking for her approval on fabrics and shades, and gems, and everything else – things she couldn’t even help him with since they were far from her area of expertise. And she did her best to fuel his enthusiasm instead of extinguish it with her lack of interest in his profession. She even found herself fascinated by some new things she learned now that she was at least intrigued by his work. But that urgent call for her to come to work had been a bit of a deal-breaker when she knew he knew she needed time to prepare herself mentally before she could go out there and pose like the flashlights and prying eyes didn't leave her fearing every next step amidst the earthquake shaking her inner world.

He’d attempted an apology but it hadn’t worked when it had been more of an explanation and he’d snapped at her to stay still while he was trying to make her presentable and wasn’t paying much attention to her emotional state that could have been better if he’d actually taken the time to do more than just throw the words in her face. But of course the fact that they stuck to her spine and kept her from moving was working in his favor so he had no reason to complain.

She’d been the one with the most similar body type to the model that had called in sick in the last possible moment–perhaps even later than that if Valtor’s hastiness both when he’d called her to demand her presence and as he was getting her prepared was reaching unprecedented levels–and just the thought they’d looked at her body’s proportions in detail made bile burn her throat like she'd swallowed a volcano waiting to errupt. Valtor’s hands running up and down her frame definitely weren’t helping. Especially with his agitation rubbing off on her instead of his usual understanding towards his employees.

“Are you done groping every part of me?” Griffin huffed once his hands left her only to be back in a few seconds like had a dozen times before leave him no closer to satisfaction with the result. She would've thought by now he’d have had his ploy fulfilled as he’d touched every part of her, pulling and tugging at the dress to smooth out creases she couldn’t see.

“You think I’m having fun with this, Griffin?” he asked, more offended than she'd ever heard him to sent her heart tearing itself in halves over jumping and sinking in her chest. “That I’m doing this because I want to?” he moved in front of her and the storm in his eyes made her bite her tongue to sever the scathing remark she had coming up right then and there. “I would’ve much preferred it if you weren’t here,” his words prickled all over her skin like sewing pins he'd forgotten in the dress, “that the dress was on the woman who was supposed to wear it and that this fashion show would go well,” he huffed, the exhaustion in the sound hitting her like a train off the rails when she could do nothing to help. The world he lived in was a mystery she couldn't solve but the fear that had taken over him was cutting her open along with her own to spill her blood over the fabric and ruin it for good.

“It will be fine,” Griffin threw her energy into the words instead of the hug she itched to give herself to protect herself from the negativity he was radiating. It would throw him into a nervous fit if she moved the dress even a hair outside of how he’d arranged it on her body to leave her more paralyzed than ever before. She'd had to perform magic to walk out of the dressing room. She couldn’t go out there thinking it would all fail. She hated it all when it was a success and finding out how much worse a failure would kick her in the ribs and push out all of her air was on her list of things to avoid at all costs.

“No, Griffin, it won’t be,” Valtor pronounced the words slowly as if that was the only way for her to understand them. But even that didn’t help when she couldn’t fathom what she was seeing. He wasn’t the man she knew with his fear of judgment. “The moment you go out there will be a disaster.” And that one was just painful. It gripped her throat to suffocate all cries without distinguishing whether they were for her or for him. It hurt to see him as this ball of nerves instead of the collected and arrogant fashion designer she knew. Especially when she was about to put herself out there and get judged along with his work. She needed his confidence but it was nowhere to be found to leave her muscles fighting the crippling terror in her instinct to run out of there with the dress and never return. His unwavering faith in the companionship of his talent and her determined pursuit of her dream was the only constant besides the nausea filling her stomach with heavy lead like it was a gun ready for firing before a show and she couldn’t lose that. She couldn’t lose his reassurance that she looked like a goddess as she wore his work because it was the only thing helping her face her personal nightmare that lay out there.

“Valtor...” She didn’t know what to say, how to ask him for... for whatever it was she couldn’t find in herself but had to. She couldn’t take from him when he had nothing to give but exasperation and doubts. And he was giving her plenty of that even if she didn’t want it. She could feel the insecurities in her mind gathering behind her eyes and pushing to break them apart and spill to the world all of her secrets, all of her ugliness and the parts that had to stay buried but wouldn’t when Valtor had just buried his confidence in both of them and she had trouble facing him, not to mention the world. She couldn’t go out like that. She’d break down.

“No, Griffin, you don’t get to cry,” Valtor's words weren’t harsh only to slap her that much harder. He wasn’t trying to be cruel to her, just to prepare her for what was to come. “You can never cry in this world,” he whispered as he cupped her cheek and she had to do her damnedest not to lean into the touch because it would be impossible to pull herself out of the warmth of it but she still had to go out on the catwalk without him to keep her heart at ease with the beauty his eyes reflected back at her. “Tears are never fashionable and they don’t go with makeup,” his thumb pressed into her cheek to remind her muscles smiles were a real thing that was expected of her before he let go, her skin so cold without his hand on it to protect her from the ice of the world. “Show time,” Valtor said and she nodded.

She pulled away from him and reached deep inside her to pull out her pride to wear along with his creation as she strengthened her back and squared her shoulders. She never bowed before a challenge and she wouldn’t start now that he’d spent so much time arranging the dress to fit just so to her frame that any movement that wasn’t accounted for would send it all to hell. And she held her head high even as the sound of her heels penetrated into her brain like the ticking of a countdown to an explosion.

There was one, flashes blinding her and fashion magazines and blogs filling with shots of every place where the dress didn’t sit right on her, critique snowing them under for the smallest of issues and not the overall composition. The other models that had all been successful were overshadowed by the failure of that one dress and her face was insignificant in the picture but she couldn’t help but feel like she’d played a part in that disaster with how stiff and rigid her posture had been as everything inside her had protested. She couldn’t hope that all of that had stayed unnoticed when every other part of him and her that had been put on display had been dissected closely. The devil did seem to be in the details.

That was where he’d buried himself ever since then, working without taking a break and for the first time it dawned on her that fashion and science weren’t that different as endless hours went into both of them, the people interested in them perfecting every aspect of their project until they were sick with exhaustion. He deserved to an award simply for making her find the similarity as it wasn’t easy to spot. At least it hadn’t been for her but now that she’d seen it, she couldn’t look past it.

She found him in his office as expected, hunched over one of the models for the anniversary show. At least no interest in that had been lost after the media-created fiasco from the last fashion show. Or at least so she’d been assured by the other girls who all turned out to be very friendly once she'd decided to come out of her intimidating bubble and join the conversation. She’d even found herself staying after she was done with work to interact with them and it had been a most pleasant surprise. The last thing she’d expected to find in the other models had been friendship but now that she'd looked closer, they did seem like a big family with the tips they gave each other and the small gestures of support she hadn’t noticed with her nose buried in her self-imposed superiority. Details indeed.

“Need some coffee?” Griffin asked to announce her presence he hadn't noticed even with her heels clicking through his office to take her to his desk. He’d really plunged himself into his work and she wouldn’t mind if she didn’t worry that he wasn’t doing it for himself, that he was trying to cater to those who’d been quick to shame him instantly, forgetting his accomplishments – and she had to wonder if perhaps that didn’t include his parents, too, who, after some digging, she’d learned had been less than supportive about his business and were still hoping he’d go back to the family company that was far more practical. In which case she’d have to remind him of all the success he’d had. With her at least. She was there for him as a friend when she’d been unable to stand him in the beginning. And she wasn’t easily swayed as he’d learned, too.

Valtor only glanced at her for a moment but it gave her enough time to see the gratitude in his eyes. “You’re saving my life,” he said once they were back on his work but there was no doubt hanging around her neck like a noose that the words were genuine. Which was what had her rage boiling over and spilling out of her heart where it had been simmering ever since that night he’d failed to comfort her when he’d had no comfort himself.

“What, no secretary?” Griffin raised a brow at him even though he wasn’t looking. He would be in a moment, once her words reached through to him. She wasn’t being fair to him and she knew it. Just because he was overworking himself didn’t mean he’d force his employees to do the same. He respected them for some inexplicable reason considering how big of an asshole he could be and she respected him for that. Which was why it was so frustrating to see him crouching over his desk and going over things that were perfect again and again to the only possible outcome of destroying them. All because everyone refused to show him mercy, including his own parents.

“You seem willing enough to fill her role,” Valtor quipped right back at her before freezing for a moment. His eyes left the paper in front of him to find her and that in itself was enough to touch her as he’d finally broken out of his mind prison. “I”m sorry,” Valtor said as he held her gaze this time. And it seemed to be important to him that she believed him.

She did. She’d seen enough of him now not to need convincing. “I’m sorry, too,” she said, using the opportunity that he was still looking at her to tell him what she wouldn’t. She couldn’t make herself put in words the dread that had filled her while everyone had picked at the dress that she’d worn instead of at her. The world had always been against her and for once it had turned in the other direction and it had been in order to hurt him when the dress simply hadn’t been meant for her body. And that wasn’t her fault; it was the industry that was flawed but... she didn’t have the same passion for his work that he did and it made her feel unworthy of wearing it. It made her feel like she’d let him down when she’d been looking for a way to escape while he’d been looking for a way to keep himself whole after the blow not only on his ego, but on his heart, too. He wouldn’t be hurting himself now with unhealthy amounts of work if he weren’t trying to avoid something worse.

“Don’t cross me out just yet, Griffin.” There was a bit of a rumble in his voice to let through the anger but behind that there was more. It sounded like a plea, like a sky that wanted worship even if all it could give was lightning and thunder, and not a drop of rain to keep the ground wet and fertile. It sounded like he was giving up on himself and he needed her to lift his spirits. But she’d never known how to do that. For anyone. The only one who’d stayed with her was Faragonda who managed to pick herself up even without her help and she couldn’t tell why she was still there with her when she knew how useless of a friend she was.

“I won’t if you promise not to drown your self-pity in coffee,” she went for a bargain. It was harsh of her but it was honest and that was all she could offer. She wasn’t good at comfort with her hands always so cold she couldn't stand to touch even herself but she sure as hell knew how to be blunt and Valtor had appreciated that in previous interactions to allowed their relationship to develop past disdain.

He chuckled, the sound running through her like a vibration she wasn’t afraid would shatter her as it was real and full of mirth that hadn’t been there before. “You think I can lose it even more if I go overboard with the coffee?” he reached to take the cup staring at it as if it was a secret serum to unlocking magical powers.

“I’m pretty convinced that’s not possible but let’s not find out,” Griffin crossed her arms but still gave an amused smile when he looked at her like he was considering his options. It made her roll her eyes but it was still good to see him get out of his head for a bit. And it was even better when she knew she was the reason why he’d managed. Maybe she wasn’t that bad at comforting him and that information was oddly warming, especially in contrast with the chill that still ran through her every time the last fashion show flashed in her mind but for the first time it didn’t show up. So maybe he wasn’t that bad at comforting her either when he wasn’t troubled by what the outside world would think about his inner experiences that he was so brave to put out there on display in his work.

“Fair enough,” Valtor shrugged, unbothered by her words that he correctly read as part of their game, the thought sending all her cogs to a screeching halt. Since when did she allow herself to play in it? “I have something else to keep me going now,” he said, his eyes on her again like he could see into her soul.

“What might that be?” Griffin held his gaze without anything to send her heart pounding in her ears even if that was true. He wasn’t there to attack her. If anything, he needed support now, not another battle after the hell he’d been through and the torture he forced on himself. Though, to be fair, the impulse to blame yourself when you seemed to be the odd one out was understandable if not even familiar. But he wasn’t alone now. They were together in that. He’d asked her to wear the dress and she would do it even if her mind was leaning towards flight as the blue of his eyes was filling her lungs. He’d seen something in her that had made him trust her with presenting his work to the world and she wanted to know what that was. She wanted to find the same magic in herself that he’d seen.

Valtor didn’t answer but turned around instead, knowing that she’d follow his lead now that she trusted him and would see what he was pointing her to.

Behind him–or rather in front of now–the city was alive with lights that shined in the darkness like the stars adorning the night sky. And it was even closer. It looked like something you could touch and could easily hold into your heart. It did look like something that could inspire you and keep you not only awake, but also alive. It certainly seemed magical to know there were so many other people out there, living like you were, with their problems and their drama, and their perseverance. Because the lights kept coming to life every night when dark threatened to put a stop to all of that. And they seemed to band together to disperse the darkness of the night and not to add more of it. It was a breathtaking sight.

As was the dress that was much more captivating in reality than it was on a sheet of paper. It was so soft to the touch even if the diamonds on the bodice threatened to cut you with the sharp light they were reflecting and it hugged her curves perfectly. It made her never want to take it off, feeling like an outfit she could live in. It wasn’t suffocating or annoying in any way and it was showing off the most beautiful colors right there on her frame. She felt like a painting – vibrant with energy and untouchable with its value, the only thing you could do with it was admire it. Admire her. In the dress he’d made specifically to celebrate his career in fashion and also unknowingly–though, his gaze on her made her doubt there was a thought in her mind right now that he hadn’t heard–to allow her to model without the dread in the pit of her stomach. She was ready to face the world wrapped in his work.

“Well?” she asked to see if he was ready for the same. “Anything off that needs fixing?” Her heart protested against the question and she could agree with that. She didn’t want to jump out of her skin at the thought of everyone looking at her in that dress and everything was right. To her at least.

“We need to figure out your hair,” Valtor looked her over, sending the first pang of nervousness shooting through her like a charge of electricity that could fray the delicate beauty of the fabric or her mental state.

“Braid? Please?” Griffin hated how small her voice sounded but it was exactly why she couldn’t have her anxiousness spilling out of her and over the dress. She’d done that to all of his other models that she’d worn but this one was special with how it made her feel and she wanted to keep it that way. She wanted to hold on to that feeling of boldness and the desire to walk out in front of all the people that would be there to judge them and show the the beauty he’d made. He’d trusted her with that and she didn’t want to let him down. And she didn’t want to let herself down either. It was the first time she a spark of enthusiasm about her job lit up inside her and she didn’t want to let that go, smothered by the lack of air in her lungs.

Valtor considered it for a moment before an idea visibly struck as he filled with energy that had her more curious rather than needing to hold on to something. Even when he made his way behind her and reached for her.

“May I?” Valtor asked, his hands only burying in her hair when she gave her agreement and she was burning to thank him profoundly but she had to stay focused on keeping her mouth shut while his fingers ran through her hair tugging on her vocal cords every time he tugged on the purple strands on accident.

It was why she hated having her hair done. There was so much tugging and pulling on it and it made it hard to contain her sensitivity to that kind of touch but she had to. She would be mortified if anything slipped past her lips and gave them a glimpse of what was going on inside her. But that didn’t hold true with Valtor as he worked, weaving her hair in a braid without weaving any panic inside her. Only gratitude, instead, for the gentleness of his hands and of his gaze as he was looking at her very closely and he still found her perfect. Even after working with her and seeing her bitterness at the world. Or maybe because of that.

A gasp fell from her lips at the realization prickling her.

“Did I hurt you?” Valtor asked, unsurprisingly having paid attention to that. His hand was on her shoulder as if to steady her and make sure she was ready for him to continue before he did so.

“No, I’m fine,” Griffin had to remind herself that she couldn’t shake her head right now no matter how much she wanted to support her words with body language, too, to convince him it was the truth. “It’s just... I have a sensitive scalp,” she said because that was true, too, even if it wasn’t what had caused her reaction this time. Not directly at least. But she couldn’t let him know that. Though, maybe it was the knowledge that she could that had her heart leaping in her throat to barricade the words inside.

Valtor hummed and she could feel his mind spiraling down to the gutter but hers followed suit and she had to pull herself out before she could fall in too deep. “I will be careful not to hurt you then,” he said, sincere to the point of inconvenience at the present moment. And his hand returning back into her hair tugged out the relief every part of her was soaking in to the point where she was drowning in it and wouldn’t even regret a last breath sucked in through the waves. It was the safest she’d felt in the hands of someone who wasn’t family.

He was soon done, his fingers holding the end of her braid to keep it from unraveling and she could feel him looking at it, the cogs in his head turning so loudly that she couldn’t hear any insecurities that came crashing down inside her mind while she waited for his assessment.

“Do you know where the braid ends?” Valtor startled her for a moment before she was prompted to join him in thought.

“Let me guess,” Griffin's lips got pulled into a smile, “where the purple starts turning into black.” It wasn’t even a question. She was aware of how long her hair was when braided and she’d memorized how the dress looked on her. It was a sight that she wished to keep in her mind until the end of time to remind her that she herself was breathtaking as became evident in the dress, in the way the colors overflowed into each other the way only nature could make them, existing together in a perfect harmony when it seemed illogical, even impossible.

“Precisely,” Valtor confirmed, slightly amused by it. Whether because he was taking it for a coincidence or because–like her–he was aware it wasn’t, she wasn’t really sure, but she was willing to bet on the latter. He was more in tune with his soul than she’d initially given him credit for so he probably recognized his own subconscious work now that he had it laid out in front of him. And she wasn't fidgeting with the thought that he’d noticed just how long her hair was and his mind had done the rest of the math threading itself between her fingers to accessorize the dress. “It just needs one last detail,” the smugness in Valtor's voice had her intrigued this time with his pride most certainly not being misplaced.

“And what is that?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t decide to be dramatic right now and keep her in suspense.

Her impatience seemed to come through despite her stillness–or perhaps because of it now that they could be real with each other and they allowed it, leaving no place for fakeness–or he was simply excited himself to share–either of which sounded good to her–since he was quick to respond. “Sparks.”

“Sparks?” Griffin echoed, though, if she was being perfectly honest, she allowed herself to taste the word and savor it even if she wasn’t quite certain what he meant with it. It certainly sounded enchanting.

“We have sun and moon, and stars,” Valtor said, making the pieces click to leave her with an alluring image of his genius, “so we only need sparks.”

“That would be beautiful,” Griffin admitted as she gave her all to control her breathlessness just as she was doing with her hands that were itching run over the gems on the bodice to get a feel of the idea of more gems tangled in her hair. She could see it in her mind's eye but she had trouble grounding the image in reality when it looked like it had come out of a fairytale. And she really needed it to come true to finally have something truly magical in her life.

“You will be beautiful, Griffin,” Valtor let go of her hair to look her in the eyes as he offered the compliment and she unraveled like her braid did when he wasn’t holding it together under his insistent gaze as he was trying to put the words in her heart and she’d let him if she could just find the certainty they would be safe there. “You always are,” he said and she found herself smiling at him when he helped her find what she’d been looking for. She didn’t even need him to touch her to believe it, the admiration in his eyes so tangible, enclosed in their ice as if to be preserved there for the ages.

And she was smiling again when she heard his voice calling for her, her fingers pressing the hold button for the elevator of their own accord before he’d even asked her to wait for him.

“Will you have dinner with me now? I need a plus one.” The answer to that proved harder to find. Especially since he kept adding strings to it and making it a net she didn’t want to die in. “It’s for a business meeting in the guise of a party,” Valtor added as if that could patch up the holes his words had left in her for the ease to seep out and make space for her unwillingness. But that didn’t help either when he was asking her to be a decoration to the mask she still hated even if it was what helped him survive in the dangerous waters he swam in.

“Why don’t you ask one of the other girls?” She didn’t want to tell him all of that. She didn’t want to tell him that there was a part of him she still found distasteful after he’d opened up to her and let her see into his soul. “I’m sure Ediltrude would love to come with you,” she did her best not to push one of her newly found friends into something she’d hate just to save herself. She knew Zarathustra wouldn’t be a fan of the idea either but she was certain her sister would love it. Seemed just like her type of event.

“Will you ever go to dinner with me?” Valtor shuffled her mind like a puzzle she'd have to put back together to tell what had necessitated that question when they’d already established an answer before she remembered it'd been Valtor who’d given her a rein check but she’d never taken it. It made the words sound different to her now, made her notice the risk he was taking by asking again and making it more personal than it had been last time. Like he wanted the answer more than he feared it, like he wanted more, more time with her. And somehow that didn’t sound selfish to her now. Maybe because she wanted that too.

“Have you considered that it’s not you that’s the problem with those offers?” she put herself out there, too, because it was just the two of them in the closed space of the elevator and her soul had nowhere to escape if she let it out, except maybe in his eyes as she looked at him to find them full of disbelief that made her want to give it to him. But to him only. She couldn’t let him pull it out in the world too.

Valtor’s smile was so small with all the sadness pushing it down in an attempt to turn it into a frown. “Sounds like wishful thinking,” he raised his hand as if trying to scare her away by letting the meaning of his words hit her. And his eyes widened ever so slightly in wonder at the sight of her stillness that allowed him to cup her cheek. And it made no sense because he’d done it before but she knew he hadn’t. Not like that. They’d been distressed back then. And they hadn’t known just what that between them could turn out to be. Or at least she hadn’t.

“Why do you want me at that event when you know how I feel about publicity?” she asked, her question not an accusation in her mind but the exact opposite. He saw her and understood her and she could find it in herself to trust that. But it left her unable to comprehend why he would ask something like that of her when he’d always read the tension in her at the moments she had to put herself out there, had even helped her with it on numerous occasions.

“Because I’m selfish,” Valtor pulled his hand away before she could catch it and proved that it wasn’t true as he refused the reassurance despite knowing she’d give it instead of grasping at it. “I want the strength you give me,” he said, awakening an impulse in her to pull away to process the words that she forced herself to suppress. “It makes it that much easier for me to put on a collected facade.” The words forced her jaw to drop as if to accommodate them as they made their way inside her and she’d need the space now even if she didn’t want it. “I know it’s a lot to ask and I understand why you refuse to do it. I appreciate you being honest with me about it,” Valtor paused for a moment as if wondering if he should say something else.

She even heard him call her name but the ring of the elevator interfered with the sound letting the outside world in when the doors opened and Valtor hopped out without even saying a goodbye before she could do anything. Not that she would have accepted it anyway as the topic still stood open in front of them and maybe it was best that way. She needed time to put her thoughts in order despite the pull on her muscles to run after him. She couldn't catch up with him just yet, still stuck on his words.

She was torn between berating herself for not noticing sooner how much her support meant to him–or rather not connecting the dots when it came to the pretense he was putting up that reminded so much of her own and she should have known–and letting her heart race with joy over what he’d confessed. She couldn’t have imagined that he needed her to keep up the facade she hated so much and she couldn’t make herself help him with that no matter how much she wanted to, especially when it meant she’d have to put on her own mask, but it still brought them closer and let her underneath even though he couldn’t let it crumble. He trusted her to let her behind his last line of defense and it was enough to stop her breath.

As was the necklace Valtor was putting on her for a photo shoot that had been arranged in the last possible moment but for entirely different reasons. At least this time the dress had been informed that it was to fit her body so that was under control. Valtor was just making sure of that and adding the finishing touch. Or rather twelve of them, all twenty-four-carat and ready to be noticed and admired like she only was with him.

“Trying to lock me into place?” Griffin teased, wishing her hair wasn’t in an updo so that she could have somewhere to put her hands. She was getting antsy having to sit still. Or maybe it was because she’d have to pose for hours on end as a mannequin for the clothes that were more important than her. Somehow that had never worried her before but now it did. She didn’t know if she could be soulless enough and she had to do it for him. For his work. She’d done a lot of posing for her own but now that she understood just how much of himself he put in his designs she felt like she hadn’t done enough. She wanted to do more.

“Gotta make sure you won’t run away with my heart,” Valtor made hers leap inside her chest as if it had been jump-started to life after she’d died so many times putting herself out there on display in the name of her dream. “I put so much effort in this dress,” he said, instantly prompting her to turn her back on the mirror she was staring at and look at him instead. She knew what the dress looked like just like she could tell when his words were a lie.

“This dress isn’t your heart.” It was beautiful, yes, but it wasn’t special. She’d peel it off after she was done with the photo shoot and she’d be glad to be rid of it and would never think about it again unless it was pushed into her face from a billboard or an internet page. Or perhaps one of those glossy magazines the other girls always had their noses buried into that had almost thrown her off about their intelligence and she’d only gotten past it thanks to the nudge from him. “The one you’re making for the anniversary celebration is,” she put her hand over his chest to feel how right she was as his heart beat in agreement.

“You know me so well?” Valtor asked but it wasn’t a mockery. It was more of disbelief, really, and she couldn’t have that. Not after how honest he’d been with her. Though, maybe that was the reason for his words now. He hadn’t avoided her per se after their talk in the elevator but he hadn’t sought her out either and it had really driven home how used she’d become to his attention. She’d found herself missing it on day one. And he must have missed it, too.

“I know you want to kiss me,” she moved closer, the deeper breath he took at that breezing over her neck his eyes darkened like she’d turned off the light to free them from the burden of being watched. “But you can’t because you’ll smudge my makeup and there’s not enough time to fix it,” she left her lips parted, running the risk of being the one to destroy her makeup if she allowed herself to lick them. It would certainly earn her his attention back if it wasn’t already on her. And it was.

He was just as lost in her train of thought as she was, the direction it was headed into clear but that wasn’t helpful when they had to find it in themselves to get off it before they’d reached their dream destination. “You’re wrong,” Valtor’s eyes captured hers despite how irresistible his lips proved to be as they were moving. “I can kiss you,” he said and her heart stopped in her chest so perhaps anticipation was the opposite of adrenaline. “And I will.” Valtor’s fingers closed around the hand on his chest and she couldn’t be mad at him for pulling it away from his heart when he let his lips caress it while his eyes remained locked with hers. “I’m not done,” he murmured against her skin before he let go of her hand and grasped at her shoulders turning her around again.

She saw him in the mirror as he leaned down, all of his focus on what he was about to do with her, and his lips tickled her skin around the fastener of the necklace at the nape of her neck with their gentleness and the knowledge she allowed it. It had a shiver running through her and she tried to soak up the warmth of his hands on her to get her through the shoot. It struck once again how similar they were as she needed his support just as badly as he needed hers.

“Now you’re locked into place,” Valtor whispered in her ear watching out for the hairdo as he did so but even that couldn’t mess up the sensuality of the moment.

She’d known he was an artist when it came to flirting, too, but this was something else, something different. It was a romance like she’d never had before and she could only hope she wasn’t mistaken because the fall would be brutal. It would rip out not just her wings but her soul, too, and she doubted even the stars would have the power to save her after she’d put all the light of her trust in him.

“Too bad I have to go out there,” Griffin drawled and the sound was more playful than regretful as this time it wasn’t the reluctance of showing herself to the cameras that had driven the words–though, that was a factor, too–but her willingness to stay with him behind the curtains. It was a good place to be. The best place. Especially with his hands on her frame still, sliding down her sides and to her waist as if to draw her attention to her curves and his appreciation for them. A dangerous move considering how tempted it left her to throw it all away and let him peel the dress off of her, free her from the duty of her job and her insecurities. She knew he could do that, could wrap her in a layer of his caresses that would keep her safe from the hell in her head. She just had to let him.

“The dress needs to be shown off,” Valtor made it a request like it had always been. From him to her to wear his dress and present his talent to the world. Only, she hadn’t appreciated the faith and trust he put into her until now, blinded by her own distaste for the whole ordeal to the point of never having asked herself why he’d let her have the job in the first place after she’d made it perfectly clear she wasn’t interested in fashion. But since then she’d seen his intuition at work and she could trust it, could draw the needed confidence from it. Because he’d chosen her to be the face of his work, of his soul.

“I’m on it,” she said and the smile he gifted her with through the mirror stayed in her eyes even as she made it out of his hold and had the cameras flashing in them like they were jealous of their golden shade. And they had to be. Because they’d never see him the way she did, would never get to know the real him with all of the beauty he had within. They’d only get to see what was spilling out because he was so full of it it overflowed. But he’d chosen to show her and for the first time she was glad to be there and proud to be in the spotlight with his art wrapped around her, his soul touching hers.

The feeling seemed to stay with her even after that as everything seemed new. She didn’t cringe when Ediltrude shoved the magazine with the photos in her hands and didn’t try to brush it off, her gaze sliding over the glossy pages to relive the moment once again and revel in the beautiful image she made for in his dress. She went to work with enthusiasm, especially when she could see the preparations for the anniversary celebration unfolding, and her heart almost exploded from excitement when Valtor told her her sparks had arrived, doing his best to resist her persuasion to spoil the surprise but he finally relented and showed them to her smiling at her joy in a way that had made her want to kiss it off his mouth and swallow it to keep it inside her forever for the it was that precious. She even let Zarathustra drag her on a shopping spree since her personal wardrobe could use something new as well.

Walking through the underground garage was also new as she’d never left the building from there but she’d felt an impulse after they were done with the last preparations for the jubilee. Tomorrow was the big day and she’d wanted to see every part of the building, get to know her work place like she’d allowed herself to get to know her colleagues. Or at least that was how she’d tried to rationalize the inexplicable need to go a route she’d never used before since the main entrance provided the shortest way to her bus stop–Valtor had offered her a firm car and a chauffeur but she’d scoffed at the idea of being treated like she was special just because of the job she couldn’t stand–but it became clear what had actually drawn her there once she saw him.

His car was one of the few left–and some of them rarely left the garage anyway so there was a good chance they were the last people in the building save for security as all of the other girls had left and the rest of the staff, too–and he seemed to abandon the thought of leaving when he saw her as he opened his door and got out of it again.

“Need a ride?” his voice echoed through the empty space and his eyes sparkled to let her know there was nothing innocent in that offer which would have bothered her if her own thoughts had been innocent. But the time when she could have pretended she didn’t want him had been gone from the moment she’d felt his hands in her hair and his lips on her neck. And sparks didn’t even begin to cover the extent of that desire.

“Is it safe to get in a car with you?” she quipped at him with maybe just a hint of genuine worry in there. She’d been more distracted thinking about him than she’d ever admit the last few weeks so as much as she liked having his whole focus on her, that could prove to be a bad idea while he was driving.

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take if I get to be with you,” Valtor leaned on the car casually and, heavens above, he didn’t get to do that. He didn’t get to read her thoughts and then respond to them, and he most certainly didn’t get to tell her he was willing to die if he could do it with her. But he’d already done it and she’d allowed it, had been ecstatic about it. He was risking so much with the dress he’d made for her, for the two of them and the way their souls seemed to tangle, and she’d let him, she’d been right there with him the whole time, by his side where she’d figured out she liked to be. Not on the podium with only his eyes on her to keep her believing she was beautiful–and she could drown in the way he was drinking in the sight of her even now that she wore designer clothes by someone else–but next to him where his arm was wrapping around her and pulling her closer even though he’d never done that since he respected her personal space. She would love that, would love to wear his touch on her skin all the time as it told her things even his dresses couldn’t when they had the softness and honesty of his soul but not the fire she’d gladly let consume her.

“Did my clothes change your mind?” she asked once she realized the silence around them would never get heavy no matter how long they spent staring at each other like nothing else existed. Or probably because of that.

“No, not at all,” he said and she had no trouble believing the words when it was obvious that he still wanted to rip the clothes off of her. And she wanted to let him, wanted to feel his jealousy and his need but was still scared it wouldn’t match hers, was still doubtful with the distance between them. “Nothing can change my mind about you, Griffin.” The way her name filled the space around them made her the center of the world, of his world, and that was more than she’d ever been in anyone’s eyes, including her own. It only had her wish to run into him and gaze in his that were her mirror and he had the power to make her see herself like that too. And she could only hope she could do the same for him as well. “Because that’s not where you are,” Valtor made her breath stop and, dammit, he couldn’t kill her now before she’d heard how he’d follow that up. “You’re in my heart,” he reached in her chest to take hers but she was only more alive than ever with him tracing his love for her all over it with his fingertips. “You’ve been there from the start with your passion and your strength, and your beauty.”

A sequence like that would have offended her coming from anyone else’s mouth but she knew what he was putting in the words. She knew how he saw the world and that that was the greatest compliment coming from him as he could see all of her and still call her that. And she accepted the title that she hadn’t been able to before now that he’d healed all the wounds that had had the compliment bleeding out of her every time she’d received it. He’d been there by her side and he’d seen everything, he knew what he was talking about and his words weren’t just empty like ghosts floating around her to remind her that no one could see inside her.

She crossed the remaining space between them, her legs like jelly but her steps sure with the sound of her heels to accentuate them. She was made of softness as she’d never been more secure in her feelings and it only gave her the strength to reach for what she wanted. And that was him.

Her hands closed in his shirt as she pulled him into her to finally taste his lips after he’d given her every piece of his soul and her mouth opened to let it all flow inside her. She wanted to feel it, feel all of him, everything. She wanted him to make a masterpiece of her skin when he caressed his feelings on it like he’d already done with her heart, wanted to be his art, the canvas on which he could express himself. She’d soak it all up and let the freedom that he gave her join the one he found in her.

His fingers tangled in her hair for her to let out a moan the moment at the slight pull on her tresses. She wanted to give it to him now that she wasn’t afraid of showing her neediness and the desire bubbling in her chest, in her lungs when she had his hot breath inside them scorching away every disruption in her breathing so that she could fill them fully. And it wasn’t even enough to feel his chest moving against her in the same rhythm as he mirrored her state. She needed to touch him, run her hands over his skin and let them both feel that they were together now, truly entangled in one another and he could hold her freely with no need to do it through the fabric she’d let him wrap around her body reluctantly at first and then more and more eagerly until she’d reached a point where she yearned to have his touch all over her body with no clothes in the way.

She let go of his shirt only to work on undoing the buttons, her mouth still on him, latched on to his now that she’d finally allowed herself to be with him. Her hands slid over the exposed skin the moment she was done with unbuttoning and she had to break the kiss to let out the groan of appreciation she didn’t want to confine in their mouths as the warmth of the contact spread through her palms and further inside her being.

Valtor seemed just as gone as she was, lost in the feeling of her hands all over his torso as a shiver running through him. It could have been from the coolness of her palms on his heated skin but she knew it was because of her, because she was touching him the way they both wanted.

She didn’t waste time and leaned in to kiss his body. Her first stop was his pulse point where she melted at the pounding of his heart inside him like it wanted to get out and into the comfort of her mouth. She’d pull it inside her own chest if she could but she had to settle for leaving her kisses all over his, her lipstick stains staying behind to show for both their feelings and she couldn’t help but smile at the color he’d picked for her as he’d said it complemented her skin tone. It certainly stood out on him in a way that screamed she’d been there and she loved it. It was perfect.

Valtor tugged her up by her hair, the action careful despite the roughness–he’d promised not to hurt her, after all, and he kept his word–and looked her in the eyes, the moment stretching when it became clear he had no intention of speaking as words had never been their language anyway but he still took the time to communicate his desire to her before putting it in her system as he crashed his lips on hers once again. His tongue made itself welcome in her mouth and she could only protest when he had to pull away. But he was still there.

His hands were everywhere, touching for the sake of it this time and not because he was arranging a dress on her figure and she could barely breathe, afraid of breaking the spell of the moment. She hadn’t quite enjoyed it when he’d been dressing her up but the undressing now she could definitely appreciate as his hands pulled her top up and traced over her abdomen searing the sensation into her brain as something new, as the true start of things between them. He hadn’t had access to that before but she’d given it now like she wanted to give him everything, all of herself for him to create with.

He took the opportunity drawing patterns on her thighs as his hands sneaked under her skirt inching closer to their goal as they touched more and more of her and there was less of her skin left unexplored and less sounds she hadn’t made for him. He was eager to get all of those out of her, pressing his fingers into her underwear to have her gasp, then pant when he rubbed them against her and she could feel him watching her face, his fascination seeping through her eyelids with the quietness that accompanied it. He barely dared breathe, the only part of him moving being his fingers, entranced with pleasuring her the same way he was entranced with the sounds she worshiped with which his efforts.

Her head was already spinning just from that before he turned them around and hoisted her up on the hood of his car, the metal pressing into her flesh not cold enough to have her desire sizzle out. If anything, it only made her reach blindly for his belt buckle, not even frustration entering her mind when she couldn’t find it immediately. She got to feel the skin she’d found by accident instead. Even the lack of his heat on top of her as he moved to grab a condom couldn’t pull her brain out of the passionate haze it was wrapped into. The only thing she could think about was him inside her and, luckily for her, that was exactly what she got.

His name almost slipped from her mouth as he entered her but she wanted to save it for when he made her come–she wanted to give him everything but at the right time and she thought he’d appreciate hearing his name drenched in all the pleasure he’d brought her–so she settled for a loud moan instead. Not that she could keep it to that one only. It was just the start and she found herself desperate enough to whine for more as she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him closer, her fingers clutching at his shoulders without the presence of mind she needed to bite at him. She could only hold on and let him give her everything he wanted.

He had it worse, though, his frustration coming through in the way his teeth slid over her skin repeatedly only to pull away at the realization he couldn’t bite at her upper body–and he couldn’t reach lower–with the celebration the next day. He seemed to drown out the fading memory of reality in the sounds she was spilling keenly in response to his fingers moving over her in sync with his thrusts that were pushing her into ecstasy as well as into the hood of the car.

She had to have hurt his hearing with how loudly she moaned out his name right in his ear but he only sank further into her and her embrace until he reached his release as well, her name a breathless whisper on his lips and she couldn’t help the quiver that ran through her at the knowledge he used up the last bit of his oxygen to let her know the depths of the pleasure he’d found himself in, all enveloped in her soul. And she fell in love with the way his muscles slackened as he let his body relax on top of her and weigh her down while he panted softly against her throat. As if feeling her draw in air was helping him do the same and it was so intimate, especially as he pressed his lips there, right above the hollow of her throat, worshiping the very fact that she was alive and breathing. She almost came again just from that.

Valtor helped her get down from the car and reality started coming back as her clothes returned in their places and she could keep her eyes open, could hear the way the sound waves moved through the garage and could remember the sensation of the metal under her back. It started sinking in that she’d just had sex–her first time with Valtor–on the hood of his car in his company’s garage and if that didn’t speak loud and clear of how desperate she’d been for him, then she didn’t know what did. Luckily for her, he didn’t seem to mind.

“Is it finally time to grab that dinner?” Griffin asked as she made sure she’d fixed her skirt properly. She didn’t usually do it backwards. She didn’t even do it at all, her feet firmly on the ground and taking her to her goal, no time for meaningless romantic escapades and flings that just weren’t her thing. But he’d never taken out of her time. He’d only enriched it instead and had helped her find meaning in something she’d despised when she’d started out as a model. She wanted to give him all the time she had.

“Hungry so soon?” A grin pulled at Valtor's mouth at the double meaning of the words.

“Just a dinner, Valtor,” Griffin said but her sentence was disrupted by the chuckle that escaped her.

“Of course,” he agreed instantly. “I know I’m starving. My place then?” Looked like she wasn’t going home. Good thing she’d denied Faragonda’s offer to spend the night with her as she usually did before Griffin had a fashion show the next day. It helped calm her nerves but she hadn’t felt the need this time. Not to mention that she’d gotten tired of Faragonda’s teases about what was brewing between her and Valtor. Probably because they were wilder than what was happening in reality or because she hadn’t wanted to jinx it, even if her own imagination could get quite racy as it turned memory into fantasy and she wasn’t superstitious. Though, it’d turned out just fine. Better than that, in fact.

“You cook?” Griffin tried not to jump to conclusions on either side of the range of answers he could give her. He’d been surprise after surprise so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he could cook. She kind of hoped that he’d say yes, actually. They could have so much fun cooking together.

“God, no,” Valtor dashed those fantasies quickly. “I’m an actual disaster in the kitchen,” he admitted. “The only way I can be helpful there is to assess how aesthetically pleasing a dish looks.” Of course. That did sound like him and she was sure he was great at it. “I assumed you’d prefer the privacy over a restaurant, though. Even if we have to order takeout.”

Griffin nodded, leaving alone the implications behind why he didn’t bring up her place as they could go either way as well. “Okay. And yes, you were right about that. Thank you,” her resistance to reaching out to touch him was a mystery to her after they’d been all over each other. But maybe that was it. She couldn’t exactly trust herself to keep her head in the game around him after she’d let herself have sex in a public space. It sounded like her nightmare and yet, there she was, fingers fidgeting with the hem of her top that was now where it was supposed to be which could be the reason for her restlessness that hadn’t been present while his hands had been on her skin.

“Okay,” Valtor said, a brief pause in him as he debated what to do next, the same frantic energy radiating from him before his hand was on her neck cupping it gently and pulling her into a kiss that she’d need him to hold her for as she her knees buckled just at the contact of their lips but it was over soon. He probably feared that they’d fall down the rabbit hole again if they kept it up. “You can get in the car. I’ll just go make sure we haven’t left a sex tape behind,” his voice was quiet as he was doing his best not to disturb her peace of mind.

Heat rushed through her to set her whole body on fire before it reached her cheeks where it was blocked from escaping her system and started scorching her instead. Though, she had to admit it wasn’t all bad. And while the thought of someone having seen her at a moment so sacred made her hair stand on end and gave her trouble walking the short distance to the passenger door, she couldn’t bring herself to regret the experience.

There was something about the lack of control and restraint they’d both demonstrated that made her blood boil in a most pleasant way. There'd been no containing the passion pouring out from within and the knowledge of how much they’d both wanted it still made her shake on the inside and press her thighs together, the slickness she could still feel making her breath hitch. It was hard to breathe through the thick blanket of tender happiness Valtor had wrapped her into but she wouldn’t change it for anything. She’d yearned for that for so long, had burned in her desire for it until it’d been just beyond painful, and she’d finally gotten a taste of it. All she could do now was hold on to it and try not to let the fear of losing it in her heart but that would prove to be hard when it was so open in her eagerness for new sensations.

Luckily, Valtor caught her short as he came back and reassured her that there’d been no recording made. Apparently his staff was more than loyal and considerate since they’d turned off the cameras the moment it’d become clear in what direction things were going. Which meant they’d jeopardized the security of the building with their sex escapade and embarrassment should have had her sweating but all that was left on her body was the exertion from the sex. He was there with her and she was more comfortable in her skin than she’d ever been before after he’d touched all of her, her body and her soul, and had helped her feel whole.

The car ride had been light, full of joking to compensate for the lack of eye contact and touching. They only sharpened each other’s wit as the comebacks were flying back and forth and she was alive when he matched her every step and pulled her forward. They only had to stop to order food so that they wouldn’t have to wait for it too long once they got to his house. She was quite hungry herself even if they’d sated other urges.

She was stuck in awe when they walked inside his living room and she saw the sketches hanging on the walls instead of the paintings of dogs she’d expected there, too. They were all of dresses she’d worn and Valtor explained that his walls were reserved for his favorite designs. She asked him if he’d put them there before or after he’d had her wear them only to have him help her realize it didn’t matter. Either way he associated his best works with her. And her chest wasn't big enough to contain her heart anymore at the silent confession that she was his muse, his inspiration, and she was barely able to keep inside her all the happiness trying to leak out of her eyes at the thought that she was to someone–to him–what the stars were to her. But she didn’t have to because Valtor could see it and share it with her without taking it away from her. He’d only add more to it instead.

She was surprised to find a piano in there, too, though Valtor’s artistic inclination wasn’t something anyone could dispute. She hadn’t pondered the question if it extended to other forms of art as well. She did have the answer now and she was delighted when Valtor offered to play for her.

The soft melody hung in the air during the rest of their evening while they ate on the couch and took the time to share memories. They knew each other on an emotional level but they didn’t know much details about their backgrounds. And she had to admit her life didn’t seem quite as gloomy when she looked back on it now. Maybe it was because she was bringing up more of the happy moments in favor of keeping the mood light or maybe it was because she’d gotten through all the pain to make her way to the present where she could sit with him and look back on her tears knowing they had been worth it as she got to look into his eyes now and see the light she hoped her own would return.

Next thing she knew was the blinding light of the morning offending her sight after her eyelids were forced open against her will by the incessant sound of his alarm. They’d drifted off to sleep on the couch and her entire body was stiff but at least there was nothing too sore once she worked out the kinks. It wouldn’t get in the way of showing off the dress.

Just the thought had her stomach tightening in anticipation but it wasn’t anxiousness. She was actually so excited about it that she couldn’t quite keep still while Valtor drove her back to her apartment so that she could take a shower and change. And she would’ve loved to ride with him to work as well but she didn’t want to start rumors today of all days. The twins were already teasing her because of the whole business with the dress and how often she’d been finding her way to Valtor’s office the last few weeks. And while they were right to think something was happening there, she didn’t want to have that to worry about on a big day like that one.

She was considerably more relaxed than usually during the whole process of makeup and hairstyling and then dressing. Though, it might have been the fact that she had the same lipstick she’d left on him the previous night applied on her lips–it would give him something to think about the whole time he was looking at her and possibly not only–and she had the orange gems–her sparks–tangled in her braid. It only sparked love towards her process of transformation instead of the hate she usually regarded it with. And then it was finally time for the dress.

Valtor was there to help with the whole process and his hands on her definitely got in the way of concentrating to keep her from troubling her mind with worries but she knew she needed to focus. She couldn’t blow this for the both of them. She wanted to make him proud of her. Not only as his muse but also as his model and that was a first like so many other things were with him. She couldn’t wait to see what else that relationship had to offer.

Her heartbeat raced as she waited for him to announce her entrance but the impulse to run was directed towards the stage, towards him, instead of in the opposite direction as she was so used to it being. She would gladly take his hand and stay at his side at that important for him moment. She wanted to give him the support she hadn’t been able to provide with her own hangups in the way. He’d freed her from them and she wanted to do the same for him, wanted to get out there and show everyone just what beauty he was capable of making when his heart was in it as much as his mind was.

The sound of her name leaving his lips was much louder than it had been when he’d been inside her but it still carried the same affection and his eyes were still full of worship as she stepped on the stage confident like she was a goddess. Because she knew she was one in his eyes and that was all that mattered.

She did her best to contain the smile blooming on her face as she heard the gasps of wonder when the guests’ eyes landed on the dress and the echoes coming from behind her when her secure steps took her closer to him and allowed for the sparks to be noticed. She couldn’t help but revel in the attention this time like never before as she felt beautiful and recognized for who she was. At least by him. But that was more than enough for her, and she didn’t leave his side all night which was exactly what surprised her at his casual comment that his parents had left.

They hadn’t even walked by to congratulate him and despite their clear stance on his whole business, she’d expected at least as much. Valtor wasn't surprised or fazed for that matter and told her that they were just there to save face since they wouldn’t get away with not showing up to their son’s company’s anniversary among their friends.

She didn’t care about them either way, not after he’d told her about their dismissal of his work and she knew their hearts had to be made of unthawable ice if even the sparks he got in his eyes from his passion about a project hadn’t melted their disdain of his talent. And since he didn’t pay attention to their soulless behavior, she decided not to either. She had far more important things to attend to – namely, making sure he was having the time of his life. He deserved it after all his hard work and enthusiasm he’d poured in building his company and his reputation. And she was glad to see he’d also made friends along the way since all the other girls and his other employees shared his happiness and all the genuine joy made for an unforgettable atmosphere that even the outside people couldn’t tear apart.

The party went on till the early hours of the morning, though it was mostly just company staff that was left at that point which only made it merrier. Especially when the photos taken weren’t going to be subjected to meticulous judgment and were just for fun instead. She even indulged all the rest when they begged her to pose with them for a firm album they’d just gotten the idea to make. She couldn’t bail when she was the centerpiece of the whole celebration and of Valtor’s career.

It proved much more fun than she’d expected but she was glad that it was over and it was finally just him and her in his office. She wasn’t quick to get rid of the hairdo this time as the braid was as cozy as home to her but she was making use of the supplies for removing makeup she’d grabbed from the dressing rooms.

“No dinner with the girls this time?” she teased, trying not to let the sad note in her tone take over it. She’d never managed to go to one of those–or rather hadn’t let herself–and since the end of the night was also the end of a whole era, she couldn’t help the feeling of a missed opportunity. The knowledge it was all on her as she’d been cordially invited by pretty much everyone didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

“Well, technically, the celebration ended just now so we proceed with our usual schedule and have the dinner that same evening, so tonight,” Valtor's voice carried a hint of a playful note that was most certainly there to cheer her up since he could read her mind. “Will you come?” he asked, the hope bountiful both in the words and in his eyes.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Griffin paused her work just for a moment to let him know she truly meant it. If anything, the night had proven that she’d joined a big family–whether she’d liked it or not–and she didn’t want to let that feeling of belonging go. It wasn’t something she’d had before and while she’d never expected to find it at a fashion house, she was ecstatic at having been proven oh so wrong.

“There’s just a thing we need to discuss before we can appear in public together since I’m sure there will be paparazzi following us everywhere,” Valtor made her raise her eyebrow at him both in question and to express her distaste with the whole ordeal of being unable to take a step without being chased by cameras. It was like living in a dystopian novel and those had never been her favorite genre. “The media is already speculating about the nature of our relationship and if it is strictly professional,” he showed her his phone for her to see the article that had already been posted on someone’s blog about the constellations on the bodice of the dress she was still wearing–she didn’t want to part with it yet when she didn’t know if she’d get to put it on again–and how that was probably a hint at the romance between the two of them since Valtor had chosen to put the symbols of their zodiac signs on it. “What do we tell them?” Valtor would’ve managed to sell the collected facade to anyone else but not to her.

“That it is none of their business,” Griffin looked him in the eyes to let him know none of her ardency was directed towards him in this situation. She didn’t want to hide their relationship but she wasn’t ready to deal with the response it would have from the media yet. Plus, she’d love to have him all to herself for a little while at least before they let the world in on their secret.

“True,” Valtor said, but his nervousness was still there. “However, it is my business,” he put the phone away and rose from his desk that he’d decided to use unconventionally instead of sitting in his chair which would have been far more comfortable, especially after the long night they’d had, but maybe the desk provided more space for his restlessness to roll off of him. “So will you inform me about the status of our relationship?” he stepped closer and she couldn’t decide if he still hadn’t wrapped her in his arms because he wanted to give her her space or because he was afraid she didn’t want him close to her. It was unthinkable for her to imagine it was the latter but she needed to rectify it either way.

“Valtor, I had sex with you on the hood of a car in a public space–which I have never done before–followed by us falling asleep on top of each other while talking on your couch,” she said, hoping the reminder would help quell his anxious mind. “This definitely screams relationship to me,” she left everything she was holding on the chair next to her that she was currently using as a vanity sans a mirror as she did her best not to break eye contact.

Valtor grinned at her at the reassurance–and possibly at the memory of their little adventure and her confession it had been a first for her–and pushed away the rest of the remaining space between them as he made his way to her and wrapped his arms around her waist while she rested hers on his shoulders. “Maybe I should have you screaming it to me to convince me then,” he purred, so close to her lips that she couldn’t resist the temptation to kiss him and he knew it damn well. Not before a smartass comeback, though.

His lips were on hers before she could think of one and she let it go as she much preferred to go with his suggestion anyway. Though, the way it was going, she’d do well to forget about having sex in a bed for a while. It seemed they’d make their way through any other possible surface before they got to the comfort of a mattress. She couldn’t even mind much–or at all–when she had him all pressed against her. That was all the softness she needed to be comfortable so she left herself to the kiss and was surprised to find she didn’t mind him taking off the dress if it was to give him access to her skin. His touch was everything and he was giving her all of it.

She never wanted this to end.

#winx club #winx griffin #winx valtor #griffin x valtor #covenshipping #fanfiction #my fanfiction #my writing #fashion designer au #2.0 #au

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killingkueen · 6 years

Text

Irish Twins

Previous chapters on AO3

Summary: Aaron Gold always knew, in his own way. Belle Kingston, on the other hand, had no idea. In the end, there really isn’t that much difference between water and wine. A switched at birth AU

Note: Whoops it’s been a long time. I’ve been going through some stuff.

I edited the previous chapters but it’s mostly just cosmetic stuff so don’t feel you have to go back and reread everything. But there is a change I made: Gaston is now a police man. So. That’s a thing.

Thank you to those who gently nudged me and asked after this story. It really means a lot to me that you still care.

ooo

Bae woke up to someone shaking his shoulder.

“Bae,” he heard. Sounded like Neal.

“Mmmpf.” He turned his face into his pillows, pulling up the covers to his chin.

“Bae,” Neal said again, drawing out his name in a whine.

Eyes blurry and half-focused, he stole a look at the clock, where he could make out the numbers 7 and 4 before he flopped back down and closed his eyes. He rolled over again and instead of smacking Neal with his pillow, he pulled it over his head. Bae didn’t care what time it was—it felt too early to be awake. Especially on a Sunday.

Neal didn’t seem to agree.

“Bae, come on.”

“What do you want?” he asked, turning over yet again, pulling the pillow up so they could look at each other. Neal was lucky holding a pillow over his head made it hard to breathe.

“....your papa’s downstairs.”

“So?”

Papa was always downstairs. Whether Bae was going to bed or waking up, he rarely found his father in his own bedroom. He was half convinced he never slept, period (which was actually kinda cool. It sounded like a movie: who wore suits and slept upside down in his study like a bat? Vampire Dad! Yeah, he’d watch that).

“Mom’s not up yet.”

Bae squinted. Neal was still in his pajamas, but under one arm was his new sketchbook and the pack of colored pencils that Bae knew had been left downstairs last night.

“Are you…” Bae sat up, frowning. “Are you afraid to be alone with him?”

Neal scowled. “No.”

Bae kept frowning. He knew Neal was different from him, knew that Belle was different from Gold. He and Belle clicked together like puzzle pieces, but like puzzle pieces, Neal and Gold kept having to be turned and moved about until the right sides matched up. He didn’t get why it was taking so long.

“You know, I failed the spelling test last week,” Bae said, sitting up. “And since it was the third in a row, I had to take a note home for Papa to sign.”

Neal’s eyebrows raised in alarm even as they drew together suspiciously. “What’d he say?”

“He asked if I studied, and I said ‘no.’ Then he asked if I was going to study for the next test, and I said ‘probably not.’”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He said ‘fair enough’ and signed the paper.”

“Seriously? That’s it?”

Bae shrugged. “It’s just spelling. That's why autocorrect is a thing.” Gold had told him once that he didn’t care what his grades were as long as Bae was okay with how hard he worked

“Yeah, but you failed a test. You failed three.”

“It’s not like I fail every test,” he snapped, the annoyance sudden and sharp. He was trying to explain that his Papa wasn’t scary. “Why? What happens when you fail?” he said before Neal could respond.

Neal shifted his feet. “I don’t know. I’ve never failed a test before.”

“C’mon. There has to be something you didn’t pass.”

“I don’t do that great in PE,” Neal said after a pause.

Bae flopped down on his back, face to the ceiling. Neal was gangly; all elbows and knees, and shorter than Bae was. He bet Neal was picked last when they did teams, and was probably the first one out. It didn’t make him feel any better.

He felt the bed dip near his feet, and heard the swish of pajamas against a comforter as Neal pushed himself up.

“Bae?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

There was a long pause, longer than any before. It made Bae push up on his elbows. Neal was sitting at the end of his bed, shoulders hunched over the notebook in his lap. The colored pencils were beside him.

“What is it?” Bae prompted.

“Is…” he trailed off. Bae saw him grip his notebook tighter, then immediately release it only to hold it tight again.

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him to ask his question or go away so he could go back to sleep when Neal blurted “Is your papa gay?”

Gay? Bae thought about what Neal had said in the kitchen last night during dinner: but you’re a boy.

“Why would you ask that?”

He saw Neal’s shoulder twitch in something resembling a shrug. “Your house is pink.”

“So?”

“Pink is for girls.”

Bae scrunched his nose. “Emma hates pink.”

“Who’s Emma?”

“She’s my best friend.”

Neal turned to look at him, first in confusion. When he saw Bae wasn’t joking, his mouth set in a half-frown, half-sneer that Bae immediately hated.

“You’re best friends with a girl?” he asked.

“Emma’s cool.”

“Girls are dumb.”

“She’s not.”

Neal scoffed, and Bae hated that, too. He drew his knees up to his chest, the covers following.

“So is he?”

“Why do you care?”

He frowned, his eyebrows drawing down, his head tilting to the side, like he was trying to do a really hard math problem in his head. “I don’t.”

“Then why would you ask me that?”

Neal flinched, but he tried hard not to. “I just want to know.”

(his papa always said that being curious was a good thing; wanting to understand the world around him was a good thing)

Bae stared at him, at his stupid sharp nose and stupid short hair. He wanted to kick him off the bed. He wanted to demand an apology, but for what, Bae couldn’t put into words. He laid down on his back, face to the ceiling so he wouldn’t have to look at Neal.

“So, is he?”

“I don’t know,” Bae said, his chest still feeling tight. His ceiling was white and boring. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Hm.” Neal ran his hands over his sketchbook. He bowed his head a little forward. “Do you think it’s bad? Being gay?”

After a breath in and one out, Bae sat up, kicking his covers off so he could fold his legs criss-cross. “Do you think it is?”

Neal was still looking at his floor (which was just as interesting as his ceiling) and he shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, and Neal didn’t move. They stayed still, like seeds growing roots.

“Ruby has a girlfriend,” Bae said finally. “Her name is Dorothy and she likes horses.”

“She’s gay?”

“Huh-uh.”

“I didn’t know girls could be gay.” Neal hummed, and Bae could almost see everything in his head turning the new information over. “I like Ruby. She’s funny.”

Nodding hard, Be said, “If you like Ruby, then you can’t think being gay is bad.”

Neal nodded slower. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Of course it does,” he said, his eyes sliding down to his lap where Neal’s new colored pencils sat. He remembered what brought Neal to his room in the first place.

“Did Papa see you when you went downstairs?”

Neal followed his gaze to the pencils. He straightened the pack so it sat neatly on his notebook. “Oh. No. I was already there. I heard him coming down.”

As if that explained everything.

“Why were you downstairs at all?”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went back down ‘cause I wanted to keep drawing and I eventually fell asleep on the couch. I don’t think he saw me, ‘cause he went into the kitchen without saying anything.”

“You couldn’t sleep?”

“Someone kept interrupting Mom reading.”

“He can’t live in a cupboard. There’s not enough room, even if it is under the stairs. It doesn’t make sense!”

“It’s a story about magic—”

“It should still make sense!”

“Well if you let her get through an entire paragraph, maybe it would.”

“You’re the one that said the first two books were boring anyway,” Bae said, smiling despite himself. He wasn’t that upset, and neither was Neal judging by the same smile on his face. “Did you finish, at least?” he asked with a nod to the notebook.

“Uhm, yeah, I did.” Neal ran his hands over the cover.

“Well? Can I see?”

Neal opened his notebook, but then he swallowed, hesitating. “Do you bring stuff home? From school?”

“You mean stuff from art class, right? Yeah, sure. Why?”

Neal shrugged, frowning down at his lap. “There’s nothing on your fridge.”

“Oh!” Bae wondered for just a second why it was a thing for every adult to pin artwork there, of all places. “I’m not that proud of anything, I guess. I don’t care.”

“Does he throw them away?”

“Nah, Papa keeps everything. He still has my first baby tooth, somewhere.”

“I think Mom kept mine, too.”

Bae shrugged. “Parents are weird.”

Nodding in agreement, Neal seemed to steel himself. He used one hand to hold his notebook steady, then carefully began pulling the first page from the binding. Bae held his breath as the the paper gave a small fpt with each gentle tug. A part of him couldn’t believe that Neal would rip out a page, the first page even, but he was afraid to say it in case Neal decided to stop.

“Here,” Neal said when he was done, the frayed edges catching slightly in the bed spread as he tried to slide it across.

Before Neal could change his mind and snatch it back, Bae picked it up. First, all he saw was shapeless color, but then he could make out a house.

Neal had drawn his house, lines wobbly but mostly straight, but it wasn’t pink. It had been drawn as shapes that all fit together, each shape a different color. It was like looking at a finished paint-by-the-number page, only if Neal had ignored the numbers completely and colored however he wanted to.

It was kind of cool.

“Can you give it to him?” asked Neal, watching his face with bright eyes.

“He’s gonna know I didn’t draw it.”

“Yeah, I know,” Neal leaned over and pointed to the the bottom of the porch steps (one light blue, one dark green, one a deep maroon). “I signed it, see?”

“That’s not a signature. They’re supposed to be messy and hard to read.”

“I want him to know who it’s from.”

Bae just looked at him, wondering if there was a joke he was missing. “Then you give it to him.”

“No.” Neal’s eyes flitted away from Bae, and to the floor, his ears turning pink.

“Why not?”

Instead of answering, he scooted back on the bed so he was leaning against the wall.

“Do you think he won’t like it?” Bae asked.

His only answer was a shrug. He looked back down at the drawing. It was better than anything Bae could draw, and Gold loved everything Bae made, which meant that he would especially love this.

He said as much to Neal, but again, no response. His chin was resting on his knees, and he was watching Bae with a frown.

Bae resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Come on,” he said, throwing his legs over the bed. “I’ll go with you.”

He waited until Neal had stood up before giving him back the drawing, which he took with clear reluctance. “Maybe after breakfast,” Neal suggested.

“You’ll just chicken out if we wait.”

“Will not,” he sputtered.

“Will to. C’mon,” Bae said again, pulling his door open.

“Hey Bae?”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry I called Emma dumb.”

Bae paused in the doorway. He wiggled his toes, the carpet soft.

“If she’s friends with you she’s probably not,” Neal said, his voice fast. He was looking at the floor again.

“She’s not. Thanks.” Something deep in his stomach unwound. It felt a lot like relief.

As they came to the stairs, Bae came to a standstill, Neal nearly bumping into his shoulder. He looked behind him down the hall, to Belle’s door, which hung open to show an empty bed. She must have woken up.

“Don’t tell her I failed my spelling tests.”

Neal nodded, his face serious. “Okay.”

With a resolute nod, Bae made his way down the stairs. Neal was going much slower, but at least he was following.

As they neared the kitchen, Bae thought about how best to say I told you so when they finally made it. He knew no one liked hearing it (Emma called it being smug) but Neal clearly needed to be told several times that Gold wasn’t about to unhinge his jaw and swallow him whole (though it would be so cool if he could actually do that).

Bae paused at the threshold, waiting for Neal to catch up. He heard the clanking sounds of dishes and two voices. It was like dinner last night, but better because this time there was the smell of coffee and his mother was laughing at some story his papa was telling, and the sunlight was lighting up the hall and he never knew how good this all could feel. He woke up to Emma’s parents together whenever he spent the night with her, to them smiling in their kitchen and smelling like breakfast. It wasn’t something he’d ever thought he’d have himself, so he never bothered wanting it.

The novelty ended as soon as his stomach gurgled. With a final look to Neal, he walked through the doorway to see Gold sitting at the kitchen table and Belle leaning against the counter, coffee mugs wrapped in both their hands.

Belle saw him first. “Good morning,” she chirped.

“You’re up early,” Gold said, turning. “It’s not even 9 o’clock.”

“Only cause Neal woke me up. Good morning,” he said to his mother, trotting over as if being pulled by a magnet. She smiled at him, holding an arm out for a hug, which he was more than happy to give.

Gold took a sip of his coffee. “You, Neal, have done the impossible.” He winked at him over his mug.

Neal didn’t say anything, but considering he was the closest one to Gold now, Bae considered it a win.

“How about some breakfast?” Gold suggested. “Still interested in eggs in a basket?”

Neal nodded when it became clear no one else was going to answer for him.

“Great. Would you like to help? I promise they’re a lot more fun to make than pizza dough.”

“Okay,” Neal said. His eyes flickered to the fridge, then to Bae, who was leaning against Belle, her arm slung around his shoulders. “I finished,” he blurted, holding his paper up like proof, like a shield.

“Ah.” Gold’s eyes were drawn downward, to where he could only see the blank side. He set his cup on the table. “May I—see it?”

Neal shot a look at Bae again. “Okay,” he said, taking another slow step towards Gold.

Bae looked up at Belle, hoping to share an exasperated eye-roll, but her full attention was on the scene before them. Neal must not share his artwork all that much.

When Neal was finally close enough and holding his paper out, Gold carefully took it from his hands.

Bae watched his eyebrows rise as he took it in. “Well,” he said around the beginnings of a delighted smile. “Look at this.”

“I can redo it if you want. Make it pink.”

“Oh no. No, no, no. Neal,” Gold scooted his chair back slightly, making room for Neal to step closer. “This is perfect.”

“I got to see it first,” Bae said as Neal’s ears turned bright pink.

“Needed your seal of approval, hm?” Belle asked, running a hand through his hair.

“This is an amazing exercise in color theory,” Gold said, and Bae could see every thought of breakfast go out of his head.

“What’s that?” Neal asked.

“See how well all the colors go together? Even though you have all kinds of different shades, they don’t clash, or look garish.”

“Garish,” Neal repeated. “That means ugly.”

“Tacky,” Gold corrected. “But I can say definitively that this is neither.”

Neal shrugged, looking self-conscious even as he pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. “I just didn’t want to use pink.”

Gold huffed. “You’re a natural.” He risked placing a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong with pink?”

Neal’s shoulders twitched like he wanted to shrug but didn’t want to displace Gold’s hand. “Dumb color, is all.”

“It’s historic,” he said. “Old Victorians like this one were often painted loud colors, like yellow or purple or, well, pink. It helped enhance the details of the building itself. That was before the first World War, though, because—“

“Papa, I’m hungry.” If they didn’t stop him now, they’d never get breakfast finished.

Gold looked over to where Bae and Belle were still standing.

“Ah. Yes. Of course. Let’s get started on something to eat, hm?” His gaze drew back to the paper on the table. “I...may I keep this?”

Neal’s eyes were round when he nodded.

Gold smiled, and giving Neal’s shoulder one last squeeze he pulled himself from his chair and limped over to the refrigerator, where he proudly stuck the drawing to the front with a magnet.

All throughout breakfast, Neal would steal glances at the fridge, the drawing the only burst of color across the steel.

“Can I call tonight?” Bae asked as he watched Neal tie his shoes.

The day had been spent inside, safe and warm in the pink Victorian. Gold had dug out all the pictures he had of Bae, and he and Belle spent the rest of the morning comparing childhoods; the growth spurts and bandages, the obligations, birthday parties and first days of school.

Gold had expected Bae to suggest another excursion out in the town, but he had been quiet as breakfast ended. After helping clear the table and load the dishwasher, he and Neal had retreated to the den and like the night before had stayed close even as they did their own activities.

It was...nice. Familiar. Again, Gold felt how easy it was to be with Belle and Neal, to have them there as if this was what all their Sundays were.

It made Belle’s constant look to the clock all the more sour.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, right after dinner,” Belle said. Her own shoes were firmly on her feet, her coat buttoned, her overnight bag resolutely at her feet.

Neal looped the laces together, pulling on the loops of the bow. He pulled too far, and the ends slipped through the knot. He started over.

“Can we go to Boston next weekend, Papa?” Bae asked, switching tactics. “We can go back to the science museum, and we can show Neal the parts he missed.”

“You have Emma’s birthday party next weekend,” Gold reminded him.

“Oh. Well, Neal can come,” he said, hardly pausing for breath.

“Bae—”

“No, that’s perfect! He can see that she’s really cool and her parties are always fun with lots of—”

He cut off when Belle hugged him. She pulled back to kiss his forehead, her smile sweet. “We’ll see you soon, okay Bae? I promise.”

Bae sighed. Shrugged. Neal pulled his laces tight, the bow finally staying in place.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Mr. A-Aaron?”

Gold looked to see Neal staring up at him, his backpack slung over his shoulder.

Neal shot a glance to his mom, who was currently locked in a phone call negotiation with Bae. Gold had a moment to admire her will power before two skinny arms wrapped around his middle.

“Thank you for letting us stay,” Neal said, his voice muffled from where it pressed into his waistcoat.

Gold laid a hand on his head, fingers carding through his son’s short hair. “Any time, lad,” he said. He hooked his cane to the stairs so he could hug Neal properly.

“See you next time,” Neal said, ears pink, when he pulled back.

“I can’t wait,” Gold said honestly.

“Tomorrow,” Belle repeated firmly. “And we can talk for as long as you like if your homework’s done.”

“Careful with that promise, Belle,” Gold said as the front door opened. She smiled at him, and with a final wave from her and Neal, walked out.

They were cleaning up the remains of dinner when Bae’s eyes trailed over to the fridge, to Neal’s drawing that was hanging proudly by the magnet.

“You can’t throw it away,” Bae said, nodding to it.

Gold covered what was left of the pasta. “Of course I won’t throw it away.”

“I mean it. You have to keep it on the fridge forever.”

“Forever, hm?” Gold said, raising an eyebrow.

Bae scowled, not appreciating the banter. “I mean it. Gaston throws away Neal’s drawings. You have to keep it.”

Any humor left Gold’s face. His lips pursed, as if he had just bit into a lemon. “He tell you that?”

“No, but Gaston’s an asshole,” he said. “And that’s what assholes do.”

“Language,” Gold chided even as he nodded in agreement, frowning as he studied the picture. “I’m not going to throw it away, Bae,” he said, softly.

“Yeah.” He blew a loud breath through his nose. “Neal asked me if you were gay.”

A short bark of laughter escaped purely from surprise, but maybe he should have seen that one coming.

“It’s not funny,” Bae scowled again. “He asked it like, like, you were sick or something.”

“You’re right, it’s not.” Gold put his hands on the counter. The marble was smooth and clean, cold against his hands. He remembered the hug Neal had given him, and how sweet his smile was at his praise. “I don’t think he meant it like that.”

“Whatever,” Bae said. He walked out of the kitchen, and soon Gold heard his heavy steps on the stairs.

He looked out into his garden. There was an itch in the back of his mind, a thought that he had once pushed very firmly back. Here it was again, though, tantalizing in its underhandedness. Pursuing the thought would likely mean setting aflame the bridge he was building with Belle, or watching it crumble into the gorge. He might lose any chance he had at a friendly relationship with her, intimate or otherwise.

It was either burn that bridge or watch as Neal was poisoned by a man who held no love for the boy.

Really, the choice was easy.

It was a crisp fall evening on a Sunday, and he pulled out his phone to call his lawyer.

#rumbelle fic #two years is the perfect amount of time to let things marinate

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videogamesincolor · 6 years

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Resident Evil 2 (2019) - Not quite the ‘re-imagining’ it purports to be (SPOILERS)

[Written: Feb 4-25, 2019. As always, act brand new on my post, you will catch the fastest block in the west.]

The 2019 iteration of Resident Evil 2 shares a lot of common ground with games like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories versus something like Bluepoint Games’ Shadow of the Colossus or even Sega’s Yakuza Kiwami series.

The first game is a re-imagining – effectively a reboot –, recreated from the ground up with almost little to do with its predecessor. The others are genuine remakes that change very little in the way of the framework or structure of the game and merely recreate or repair its presentation with the graphical fidelity (or control schemes) of the present era.

While both profit and rely on nostalgia, a remake has the specific ‘obligation’ to maintain what came before it. A re-imagining has cart blanche to do what it wants under the pretense that it has no obligation to restore or replicate. In the case of Resident Evil 2, it’s a bit funny in the fact that the existence of its reboot was reliant on the 2002 remake of Resident Evil.

During the re-release of the 2002 Resident Evil remake in 2015, Capcom more or less ransomed the idea of making a “remake” of Resident Evil 2 by placing the burden of that reality on the shoulders of Resident Evil HD. Or rather, the shoulders of their consumer base.

If Resident Evil HD didn’t meet publisher sales expectations, no “remake”. It was an easy sell, of course, because the Gamecube remake was not a game everyone played (on account of Nintendo console exclusivity). To no surprise, Resident Evil HD ended up being their “fastest selling digital title” in 2015. That same year, Capcom officially announced the Resident Evil 2 “remake” was becoming reality, went radio silent, and the aged fandom wept.

Common knowledge, but Capcom originally wanted a remake for RE2O in the vein of the 2002 remake. Mikami, however, was preoccupied with Resident Evil 4. He would never return to look back on the series because Capcom was Capcom, which inspired Mikami to depart from the company.

I think the assumption folk made (at the time), was that because the reboot was necessitated by the financial success of Resident Evil HD, Capcom might go for an experience similar to the 2002 remake, but with the graphical fidelity of present day consoles.

Graphical remasters and remakes are a “hit and miss” production. They happen because publishers (and by extension, developers), know there is profit to made in the machine of nostalgia, not (necessarily) because they’re interested in preserving or restoring old games. You see developers clearly holding back the desire to remix instead of being completely restorative, removing things they either didn’t like or expanding on things that couldn’t be done with previous hardware.

Yet, “if it ain’t broke, just update the visuals, maintain the rest”, is an adage some prefer. More often than not, remakes end up splitting older and younger audiences down the middle regardless of what changes or what remains. And that’s without taking into account bugged and half-hearted releases that never get addressed by devs.

But, Resident Evil 7 (“we swear it’s not a reboot”) happened, and it was fairly clear what direction Capcom was going to go in. While Capcom and fanbase for the game were content with calling Resident Evil 2 a “remake”, Capcom later insisted, “This is not a remake. It’s a retelling, a new game built from the ground up.” So, on the surface, RE2R definitely has more common with Shattered Memories than it does 2002’s Resident Evil. But, where Shattered Memories wasn’t interested in treading so familiar waters, the same cannot be said of this reboot.

The 2019 iteration of Resident Evil 2 is a monkey’s paw wish of a game, just based on the observation of how the established fanbase is reacting and my own personal feelings (as someone with no nostalgia for it). For some, they got exactly the experience they wanted (more RE7). For others, modifying the game (on PC, naturally) to recreate an experience closer to the 1998 release is a must. And then there are some who are simply disinterested in the game, content with the original, or dissatisfied with the creative or business choices made by Capcom (and given Capcom’s track record, I can’t blame them).

Within the game itself, there is a lot about the reboot that feels unfocused, hindered by budget, last minute decisions, a blandly retold narrative, and trying to cling to abstract bones in an effort to maintain the audience it courted, when abandoning those bones might’ve been a better idea.

I. Presentation – The "Realistic” “Re-Imagining”

If Marvin’s final moments with Leon or Claire weren’t enough to convince you the of the severity of the situation, maybe a emotionally manipulative scene with Dad and Zombie child will.

The Resident Evil series is not one known for its screenwriting. If anyone’s being real honest themselves, the shit’s bad 90% of the time, reached peak stupidity in RE6 and just kinda self-destructed from there. YMMV, but Resident Evil is the “so-bad-bad-its-good” game you could enjoy up to a point. The 2002 Resident Evil remake took a particularly poor script localization and improved upon its delivery, right down to the voice direction (which could still be a bit stilted). Yet, you never got the feeling RE1R was striving to be anything other than what it was: A cinematic-based video game that reveled in the aesthetic of Gothic environment design, mood, and b-movie monsters with a world domination plot thrown for extra spice. It had a decent sense of humor, and often poked fun at itself.

RE2O built its foundation on the basic principles of the original (isolation, aesthetic, framing, mood), but focused a little more on its humor, body horror and action-movie flair. The plot of RE2O was as bare-bones as it got with the presentation of its narrative. A new cop and an AWOL cop’s bike enthusiast sister wind up trapped in a police station, accidentally stumble across a corporate conspiracy and must escape a giant underground complex before it blows up. Simple stuff. And the dialog – with a fairly improved localization and English performances – got you from point A to point B.

For everything I didn’t like about RE7 (from its aesthetic, plot, combat, creature design, and its bologna white characters), it was, to some degree, an attempt to recapture the camp and b-movie horror that RE4 so firmly embraced without damaging its atmosphere. RE7 was self-aware enough to embrace the inanity that was its premise in a way the series had only recently attempted again in Resident Evil Revelations 2, which also had its tongue firmly placed in its cheek. Resident Evil is a game comfortable with its silliness, but can still deliver a tense mood and atmosphere.

It’s disappointing that RE2R adopts the tone of, “Please, take me seriously”, with all the self-awareness that RE6 had when it tried to be an action/thriller.

RE2R’s primary issue is tone and presentation. From the jump you can tell the scenario writers of RE2R want the game to be this gritty drama with “complex characters”, grounded in reality, right down to the HBO-levels of profanity and the redundant use of “bitch” littered throughout the script. In an attempt to remold a cast of characters designed for the absurd into “realistic” persons, what you get characters largely disinterested in their circumstances. Claire and Leon seem only mildly inconvenienced by the end of the world. They casually shout over explosions (that might as well not have happened), and often can’t be arsed to sound anything other than annoyed by most events that unfold around them as repetitive canned reactions regurgitate through the speakers.

The script doesn’t trust scenes like Leon’s one-to-one moments with Marvin to sell the dire circumstance. So, casually chauvinistic characters like the Gunshop owner (who got comically bodied by zombies) becomes a saccharine drama piece that stalls the progression of the plot in what might be one of most disingenuous moments I’ve seen in a game. When monsters like William Birkin, Mr. X, the Licker, and the plant monsters eventually begin to appear, they stand out and heighten the already problematic uncanny valley present in the game, and seem better suited for the elder games of the series.

You never really get moments like Chief Irons sorrowfully lamenting, “And to think taxidermy used to be my hobby”, Ada shrugging dismissively at Leon’s pride as a police officer, Annette getting conked upside the head by falling debris, or Claire tricking Mr. X into jumping over the ledge to go after the G-Virus hidden in Sherry’s locket and straight up calling him a sucker. The drab, washed out presentation of the plot, played so deadly serious, honestly made for a joyless experience.

RE2R asks and answers the questions like, “What if Leon was wearing civvies on the way to work?” or “What if Ada Wong pretended to be an FBI agent?” A lot of it comes off like a fan novelization that proudly boasts “My version of how Resident Evil 2 would go”. The first time you read it, maybe it’s an interesting take to indulge, but the more you revisit it, the more unessential or cosmetic the changes end up feeling. (The only real cosmetic change that doesn’t seem weird to me is the idea that the police hijacked a museum and made it their dumping grounds.)

A lot of changes to the plot seem to function largely on the assumption that things like Ada posing as a civilian, Sherry being sent to the police station by her parents (as opposed to leaving her in a unprotected living residence with no immediate help), the RPD knowing about the Mansion Incident and brushing off the survivors (Chris, Jill, Barry, etc.), or Ben the reporter locking himself a jail cell to avoid other monsters, are things that strain suspension of belief or just wouldn’t happen in “real life”. So things of that nature either get removed or reworked altogether, often times for jump scares telegraphed a mile away, or left hanging for prequel baiting (because Capcom knows folk are going to be clamoring for another remake of RE1 and RE3).

The plot and its progression feels condensed down to something that’s like the bullet points version of RE2O. It over-simplifies what was already a simpleton of a narrative, largely to compress a lot of events into two campaigns that now never work in harmony. To add insult to that injury, Claire and Leon never communicate, let alone work together. They pretty much forget the other exists, thus making that friendship pretty non-existent.

Say hello to your friends. Say hello people who care. Nothing’s better than friends.

With regard to the two campaigns, for all the focus Capcom places on Leon – the mascot of the reboot itself –, Claire’s campaign is probably a better presentation of a rebooted RE2O, even with its drawbacks to Claire as a character overall (more on that later). The highlight of Claire’s campaign is the fact that her friendship with Sherry Birkin remains intact. I actually think it gets a better representation here than in the original, or what was only marginally improved in side-games like Darkside Chronicles. The downside is that the two interact even less than they did in RE2O, the plot separating them immediately after forming a partnership.

There are some genuine moments of scripted walk-n-talk between Claire and Sherry as they explore the early parts of the game, which in turn makes Claire a far more engaging character than she is with Leon (who is devoid of any real charm or personality in this reboot). The downside, however, is that Sherry is reduced to a prop, where she was a far more proactive party in the original game. That and by the end of Claire’s campaign, there is a lot of “shitty mom” apologia from Claire, whose basic human decency makes her better guardian than Annette Birkin.

Annette Birkin is questionably re-framed as a sympathetic and even tragic hero character who “never meant for this to happen”, never-mind she and her husband (who is also framed as a victim) were involved in the testing, abuse and deaths of orphaned children in the name of science. Then there’s the whole virus that turns people into zombies. But, yeah, what a tragic figure.

My primary issue with the narrative of Leon’s campaign is that they decide to tie him more into the Umbrella plot (aka, Ada and Claire’s shtick) instead of having him focus on finding a way out and helping other people. The reboot actually had the opportunity to employ the “help the other survivors” bit I always felt was dropped in the original (but revisited in Outbreak), and put Leon’s altruistic character into more action. But, then the reboot removes this motivation altogether by making Marvin and RPD’s rescue efforts a complete and utter failure (thanks, Capcom).

His plot lacks any real momentum, largely because the game nixes his original cast dynamic. Despite nothing crucial happening in his campaign until the end of it, his bears the greatest consequence on the reboot’s compressed narrative. The outright removal of his friendship with Claire, and even the briefest interaction he has with Sherry, makes Leon pretty bland as hell.

The only time he comes off as remotely personable is when he interacted with Marvin. Otherwise, it’s one eye open, one eye closed with this iteration of the character. The fact that he’s less of a take charge personality, and more of pushover (to sad degrees) also makes for less entertaining interaction all around.

You can tell someone with no ability to write or direct romantic subplots handled this. Whoof.

And while I’m not against reworking the Ada/Leon dynamic where the start of an attraction is a little less like a brick to the head (”Ada wouldn’t do that. I KNOW her!”)? A): this is Capcom, so that didn’t happen, B): It’s still pretty much like a brick to the head, only this time it’s last minute, with less foundation, and outright unimaginative. Nothing about the execution of the “romance” in this game works at all. Where Ada and Leon at the very least had a functional rapport and partnership in RE2O, in the reboot the majority of their time is spent in passive aggressive disharmony. The outright antagonism between the two characters in the reboot is not only boring, but not remotely conducive for what follows near the climax.

As something that takes up the majority of his narrative, for worse instead of better, a lot the dialog – a direct consequence of what they choose to do with Ada – is comprised of uninspired “enemies-to-lovers” shtick, right down to drab flirt dialog and throwing one’s words back at the other (“I didn’t realize you were keeping score” / “I didn’t realize we were keeping score”).

The worst thing about his campaign is Ada’s depiction. The reboot effectively turns her into a character who does more damage to her own agenda than Leon being remotely present. I get the writers think having Ada posing as a federal agent is “smart” or “realistic”, but the character instead comes off as more suspicious than a civvie with a gun. She’s a pretty terrible spy in this reboot. Reboot Ada is an antagonistic character with zero charisma or personality, there’s no fun in finding out her ulterior motives. On top of that, the FBI shtick is probably the dullest iteration of the character since her “fringe observer” status in her RE6 campaign.

But, where you had complete control of her and she was motivated by her own subplot (that did intersect with Leon, sometimes), realized in gameplay and plot, RE2R reduces Ada to a purely cinematic and expositional tag-along character with no agency in the narrative. A lot of what was done to and happens to Ada’s character is purely in service of Leon’s plot and actions. They really fire-bombed the character, but if you’re a hardcore Ada/Leon shipper, then her function will have served its purpose, both for you and Leon’s arc.

Marvin Branagh is humanized on such a level he is no longer the same character from the original game, but his role is effectively the same one. Like Ada, Marvin was re-contextualized largely as a sacrifice to Leon’s character arc (this is not a vibe you get with Claire’s campaign ever). Chief Irons, who feels like he appears out of nowhere, with no buildup, has been reduced to this kind’ve ineffectual kidnapper who disappears just as quickly.

Resident Evil is at its best when it knows it’s an interactive horror b-movie – with action elements – and has a director who knows how to balance all those elements. Beyond the singular moment wherein Claire Redfield declares “I’m gonna kill the monster” while wielding a six shooter and Annette Birkin is actively cheering for the death of her Frankenstein husband, RE2R never tries to be that kind’ve game. It actively runs away from schlock, and so it is the less remarkable product.

Things gleamed from Resident Evil 2′s abandoned direction offer a far more interesting “re-imagining” than 2019 end result. To a degree.

Part of the problem with Capcom’s attempt to “re-imagine” RE2O is that it wants to cling so badly to the framework and story beats of the original game instead of creating an identity of its own. It wants the ability to say, “we’re a totally different story!”, but at the same time does very little to become a different story, and exiles itself to this island of nowhere because it actively alienates the connections to the games that come before and after it.

This is where I think, while a lot of people disliked Shattered Memories, it’s a better re-imagining of the original Silent Hill, because its bold enough to actually commit to that definition. Capcom’s execution here is pretty half-hearted, deliberately so.

I’ve only just chosen to acknowledge the prototype of Resident Evil 2, but despite knowing the devs were not happy with the end result (and just scrapped it), it does a lot of things that this reboot honestly should’ve at least attempted.

Not only does it handle the character plots in a way where scenario nonsense would not be a problem, you basically had (what are now) established (or nixed) characters in different roles, reasonably isolated from the RE1 plot, working in tandem with your player characters (Eliza and Leon) and their cast of characters, who were never designed to meet until the apparent end of the game. Also, Marvin had a larger role and a functional relationship with Leon (I hate Capcom).

As a “retelling” of RE2O, RE2R is pretty weak. There are so many ways Capcom could’ve “re-imagine” RE2O if they were being genuine about that, but the final product more or less proves they weren’t. It’s over-reliance on referencing or leaning on things from RE2O hinders more than helps the game. It invites comparison to what is a better product despite its age.

The reboot wants to be taken seriously, and does everything it can to project that image to the detriment of its presentation. RE2O more or less reveled in its silliness, and shlocky horror movie tropes and knew you would enjoy the ride anyway.

Separate Ways, Broken Scenarios

Claire and Leon working together, solving the problems...

RE2O’s scenario system was a fairly interesting way of presenting the story of two characters, and I always wondered why this was never more of a thing in games. Claire and Leon’s plot were separated on two discs (PS1). Leon was first, Claire, second. Completing one character’s “A Scenario” unlocked the other character’s “B Scenario”. Certain gameplay actions created minor consequences to affect the respective character’s scenarios (if you took a certain weapon or item over another, it wouldn’t appear in the other character’s alternate scenario).

The scenario system and the corresponding plots of the player characters were clearly developed in tandem with each other. Whatever goofs arose from therein, the narrative position of the characters remained firmly in place (largely because they were told through cinematics).

Claire’s B scenario always felt the most changed because the cinematics had to accommodate for a change to get Claire in places I was otherwise unaccustomed to seeing her. Legit, some of the cinematic differences were wild.

Back in June 2018, Capcom made it clear that RE2R was not intended to have a scenario campaign at all. The decision was (apparently) made back in 2017, when it was clear doing an A/B scenario was going to be costly on a AAA budget. It was only going to be a single campaign for Leon and Claire. So, Claire and Leon’s campaigns in RE2R are, structurally and plot-wise, “Scenario A and B did a fusion dance”.

In execution, their campaigns are like choose your own adventures. It asks the question “what if you went with Claire?” and its answer is “Leon de-spawns and doesn’t appear again until the end of the game”. It’s definitely not “Two strangers walkie-talkie a plan to escape a zombie infested city”.

Inside or outside, the B Scenario for the player characters barely differentiates itself from Scenario A

In this case, they should’ve stuck to their guns, just released one campaign per character (it’s not exactly like the absence of the B scenarios would actually impact their sales. Not with the fans whipped into a frenzy) and focused on getting their plot to work a little better.

“Claire B” and “Leon B” come off like a slapdash cut-and-paste job that made me question whether or not I had hit something on the controller that was causing the sequences to skip right through whole gameplay segments. Yet, now armed with the knowledge of a year before, it would explain why nothing in this game’s presentation ever feels like it gels, or was hastily put together.

Another issue the RE2R’s alternate scenarios make is not maintaining the characters static narrative placement as RE2O did. I think this is where you really start to see how little interest Capcom had in Claire as a character versus Leon.

RE2R’s “Claire A” Scenario opens with a brief clip of Claire on her bike, talking to someone on the phone about Chris, then hearing something in the gas station store. The game then proceeds to put her in the exact same circumstances as Leon, which is baffling. They really have her doing the Leon shtick and repeats what she did in “Leon A”, but inside the gas station. Whack.

If you play “Leon A” first, she appears out of nowhere like she’s been attacked outside the gas station somewhere nearby. Her motorcycle isn’t even anywhere in view, so, the natural assumption you make is that maybe they’ll show that later when you play “Claire B”. Maybe there’s another area you can explore.

Nah. In “Claire B” the exact same cinematic plays again, trailer music starts, cut to black, and, it jumps to her intro scene in “Leon A”. At no point are you given a unique gameplay level or cinematic for Claire to bridge the gap between Leon heading for the store exit and Claire being chased by zombies that suddenly surrounded the gas station. She lit. just spawned into the area! Whack.

Now for some awkward car dialog

The original game was smart enough to give you a cinematic where she scoped out an empty diner and happened across some zombies while Leon’s boots were being accosted outside by zombies near his jeep. It really sold the idea of events happening concurrently to two different people within the same area.

Claire in “Claire B” doesn’t even get a section where she runs through the city after escaping the T-bone incident. The game just drops you in the graveyard, and then drops you at the rear police station gate where Leon spots her outside. You do a lot of backtracking in RPD with zero character interaction, and then, about an hour into the game, you end up on the exact same track as you did in “Claire A” (meeting Sherry, saving Sherry, Birkin #3-5 fight, escape) with no scene restructuring or whatnot, just the standard “Extended Ending” shtick.

“Leon B” in RE2R shares the exact same problems as “Claire B”. It feels like an abridged version of “Leon A”. Beyond Leon standing outside the gas station store and instant transmission’ing to the back of the police station there are zero story differences. But, with Leon you always have the reassurance that you can just play “Leon A” if you want a more complete experience.

Driving motorcycles in the rain is, factually, an accident waiting to happen

Claire regardless of the scenario you choose for her, A or B, will never get a unique starting gameplay moment of her own. While I think they did a far better job of reworking “Claire A” better than either of Leon’s scenarios, that’s disappointing. Claire really feels like something of a afterthought.

Other detractors from the scenario nightmare include Mr. X following you around in the A Scenario and the B Scenario, instead of the B scenario only. Mr. X went from a fairly unsettling stalker of a boss enemy, who worked on slasher movie principals (the monster appears out of nowhere when you least expect him), then quickly transformed in a wearying exercise of dodging an enemy type that overstays its welcome. Both scenarios feature the helicopter crash and skylight Licker ambush, etc., etc..

If they couldn’t build upon or better realize what the 1998 game did, then the B Scenario was best left to the wayside. Naturally, Capcom didn’t follow their own advice and the want to cater to nostalgia bit them in the ass.

Water is wet.

II. Gameplay – Night of the Living Bullet Sponges

Lickers (who are still terrifying) are practically one-hit-kill monsters now. Yippie.

There is a lot about the cinematic presentation of the elder Resident Evil games that defines much of its identity. An identity strong enough that most games that came out during the high point of its career were content to copy or refine its formula (Temco’s Fatal Frame, Konami’s Silent Hill 3, and Capcom’s Onimusha and Haunting Ground for example). There is a lot that loses the more it – a two decade old franchise – attempts to keep up with an ever-changing landscape of what’s considered modern-gaming-at-the-moment, instead of going to sleep like Onimusha, or even being forcefully put out to pasture like Silent Hill and Dead Space.

RE2R is a standard third person shooter that de-emphasizes cinematic presentation within its plot and its game space. There are no establishing cinematics, and the Kamiya action-movie-esque flair that made the last stretch of the climax what it is, is thoroughly absent. RE2R instead opts to – present the plot of the game completely within the game space itself with minimal cinematics. Sometimes it works, other times, it doesn’t.

Lickers drop unceremoniously on your head in your first encounter, Mr. X just appears out of nowhere then hounds you like Jehovah’s Witnesses, the sound of a helicopter crash goes whizzing by in time for you to walk past the model that’s already in the wall, Marvin becomes a zombie with no real sense of mourning or terror about his passing, Ada Wong gets the worst on-screen send off, etc. Cinematic moments that were meant to emphasize and foreshadow the decaying situation of the police station and the stakes of the characters are just kinda nullified.

Sherry Birkin’s gameplay segment is one of my favorite parts of the reboot.

I think one of the reasons Claire’s campaign leaves a better impression on me than that of Leon’s is what they decided to with Sherry Birkin’s part in her plot. Leon’s scenario has Ada trudging through a boring sewer corridor hunting for fuse boxes and then the game knocks her out so Leon can come to her rescue. With Sherry, you get something a little more creative, something that doesn’t treat her like a momentary distraction from the player character like it does with Ada. The entire orphanage level, from its presentation, to its level design, is probably what I would’ve liked to haven seen more of in the game.

The game puts you in the shoes of Sherry, but instead of traveling through sewers on your own, you’re exploring and searching an empty building that invokes a mood similar to – but not like – 2002’s Resident Evil. Obviously, this choice was made to keep Leon and Claire’s paths from intersecting (fuck that, I guess), and in a lot of ways, the game abandons the mechanics of Resident Evil and becomes a modern Clocktower game.

Chief Irons becomes the scissorman to Sherry’s Jennifer Simpson, and you, the player, have to navigate a fairly limited space to get away from him. They basically expand upon the Natalia stealth segments from Resident Evil Revelations 2 and create a fantastic gameplay segment full of distressing near misses and a legitimate win for Sherry. (I only wish they had allowed her to lock Irons in the bathroom. He would’ve Nicholson’ed his way out anyway.) Unfortunately, it ends with a Deus Ex Birkin appearance and leaves the player asking more questions that it’s not interested in answering on any level. Also Mr. X just spontaneously appears as well, which only compounds the Deus Ex Birkin thing.

Where you could soccer kick a head from a zombie in the original, Claire and Leon can barely expend energy to shake ‘em off their shins. Fantastic.

Combat wise, in a lot of ways, RE2R feels like a chore. A regression of the advancements that RE4 and RE1R was able to strike a balance with, but later iterations leaned too heavily on or used too little. Hell, I even think it’s a regression of how Dead Space approached combat. RE1R encouraged the player of doing away with zombies much in the same fashion as its counterpart and RE2O, with tactile and visible indicators that the zombies were dead (pools of blood under the body, dismemberment, headshots), but, it also threw in the risk of dealing with a new threat (Crimson Heads) if you chose not to oil and burn the bodies you left behind as you cleared the area. The gameplay was solid about letting the player know their resources had been put to good use.

RE4 encouraged smarter gunplay, aided by laser sight, and critical damage hits to other areas of the Ganados. The risk of taking headshots were being attacked by the parasites that could take large chunks of your health out in tandem with the mobs that – one way or another – would catch up to you. Dead Space took the critical hit system of RE4 and transformed it into a mechanic that made the complete dismemberment of the Necromorph critical to survival. Effectively, both you and the enemies were fairly balanced against each the other. You were never so strong that you could blast through your opponents and your opponents were never so OP that you lost unnecessary resources trying to kill them.

The same really cannot be said of RE2R. Nothing about the combat or enemy encounters feels particularly balanced for much of anything save busywork and resource death. There is no real balance between yours and the strength your opponent. I’ve heard RE4’s adaptive difficulty is still in play here, but if it is, its implementation here is not great. I certainly never reached that flow-state where I felt I was in harmony with the game.

Yeah, I didn’t miss this bit at all.

Headshots are nullified in a way they’ve never been in the series, and right off you can tell what the devs consider a “challenge” in terms of gameplay. Zombies eat bullets as badly as any mid-tier B.O.W., regardless of what difficulty setting you choose. In standard I saw six-to-nine bullets go into the head of a zombie and there was no guarantee they were dead until you saw their head explode or maybe saw them twitch. In hardcore (my sister’s preferred mode), zombies will eat eight-to-twelve-or-more bullets to the head and the consequence is the same.

It’s imperative to try and incapacitate the undead, because minimizing your enemy count in RE2R is an exercise of frustration and often, a waste of bullets. Zombies move far faster than they did the original iteration of this game, practically zapping over to you no matter how much space is between you and them. They do just about the same, if not more, damage to you. The common defense against this is grenades, flashbangs and knives. If you haven’t used them for other things (like Ninja vanishing or crowd control), it’s the quickest way to get out of their hold. It’s simply not as reliable or was enjoyable a method to fight the zombies off in the vein RE4 provided (German Suplexes, kicks, elbows to the face, a knife that isn’t dollar store plastic, dodging, etc.).

If you can avoid them, by all means, avoid them. The consequence, however, is if you have to backtrack, well, you might be running into a bigger crowd, one that may include the problem monster of the given area (Lickers, Mr. X, Dogs, Plant Monsters, etc.) and potentially less resources. It’s a particular problem in the police station with Mr. X following you everywhere and not being remotely helpful enough to do some of the killing for you. He just gently pushes them out of the way.

A lot of the time, my sister was preoccupied with head-shots (against all odds) while I spent my time (trying to) cap their knees, and remove their limbs (so they couldn’t grab us after I capped their knees) so we could sprint our way through environments when the opportunity presented itself (largely to save ammo for another problem area). She’s the better shot, I’m only great with projectile weapons (so Claire’s campaign is even better to me in that regard), which I largely prefer on principal of strength. For me, there is no real satisfaction in the game’s combat, not even in a fight-or-flight sense (prime example: the village and castle encounters in RE4), or on a level capable of inducing the worst panic attack in me like Dead Space 2′s opening hospital sequence.

I was frustrated with near misses. My sister was a little more forgiving about the changes despite never being to make the clean headshots she wanted. We only really agreed on mutual dislike of the boss battles, but’s more or less how we feel about all of RE’s bosses. There is not a single one we’ve enjoyed fighting, and the worst ones were all in RE6 (which literally had us not talking to each other for days afterward) and Revelations 2.

Local zombie mocks police station’s lack of shutters

RE2R is pretty generous with its ammo cashes, with most of what you need readily available. The map, for the most part, makes locating items easier, but spotting them poorly lit environments, and around mini horde-like numbers that seemingly materialize out of nowhere is a bit of chore. Rarer types of ammo, like shotgun or automatic weapon ammo are often hidden in safes or lockers with combination locks.

Resource management returns in the reboot, copy-pasted from RE7, right down to the stark menu and a minimalist design that makes item management, I guess, less busy (color wise). It works, so it doesn’t bother me in context. The maps are definitely easier to read and a little more explicit about what items are where, but have otherwise maintained the “cleared” / “in progress” blue and red dynamic.

Depending on the difficulty level you’re playing on --- easy (assisted), normal (standard), or hard (hardcore) ---, your resources will be readily available to you, somewhere in the middle, or few and far between (in practice). Hard mode will have you rely on ink ribbons to save your game (like a standard PS1-PS2 game), and I think there are no checkpoints. Save points are scattered in new locations and are a brief safe haven.

Puzzles in Resident Evil have always been a series of frustrating events, particularly slide-and-complete-the-picture and “find the missing themed piece” puzzles. But, this game actually made me appreciate them, largely because the gun-play is no longer a satisfying aspect (and probably will never be again).

Mechanically speaking, a lot of the puzzles or item hunts from RE2O are sort’ve retained, but they’ve been mixed up or their importance to getting to one place or another has been (extremely) reduced or made even more convoluted. The reboot is definitely not that interested in puzzles, so it feels and is designed less like a dungeon crawler.

Item hunting in order to solve puzzles requires you backtrack quite a number of times through the environment-of-the-moment. However, backtracking is perhaps more nightmare-ish and gauntlet-like than previous entries because it seems like the game spawns more zombies into the area. And with Mr. X basically breaking the exploratory pace of the game, the want to explore your environment is actively discouraged.

[Sighs Loudly For a Thousand Years]

Despite the game’s over-reliance on Mr. X, breaking from the series formula of not over-exposing its mini-bosses (the Regeneradors, Verdugo, or even that huge Centipede in a Trenchcoat for example, were not following you everywhere), Mr. X was, for a short time, the only ‘combat’ element in this game that invoked the right kind of déjà vu.

It was actually satisfying knocking him down, and ducking his punches at the last minute. I mean, at least it was in levels having nothing to do that Ada Wong segment. (Then. he. kept. coming. back.)

Ending him isn’t quite as satisfying as it is in the original game. Not because he effectively became an SNK boss, but because the component that makes that fun (The Resurrection of Ada Wong and the emancipation of the Rocket Launcher) was removed entirely from the game for a sequence far, far blander in comparison.

III. Non-Union for Billion Dollar Corporations

Around 2015 or so, there were rumblings (outright vocalizations) from unionized voice actors that shed some light on some particularly horrible business practices that developers and publishers were carrying out on voice actors. They were either not being paid their due, or not allowed proper rest-time during the jobs they worked on. Big studios like Insomniac Games, EA Games, Activison, and the like were mistreating voice actors, often to the point where some confessed to experiencing vocal damage, stress or injuries sustained from shitty work conditions and people who clearly viewed their occupation as a lesser division of their project’s production.

At the same time, well before the strike became officiated, Capcom made the conscious decision not to hire unionized voice actors for the production of the Resident Evil 2 reboot. No one knew about this until 2017, when the game was well on its way to being released the following year (before a delay pushed it to 2019) and the Strike was ongoing. Alyson Court (on-again-off-again VA of Claire Redfield), Matthew Mercer (the most recent VA for Leon), and Courtenay Taylor (the most recent VA for Ada Wong) all announced that they weren’t reprising their roles in the game because the reboot was not a union project, but it was not a result of the strike.

Some vocalized their displeasure with this, even going as far as to say that they wouldn’t buy the game in a show of support of the actors. Others aren’t sparing it a glance because they’re otherwise disappointed with the creative direction anyway. But if the reception of the game from basic users – aware of the circumstances or not – is anything to go by, solidarity will typically lose out to FOMA (Fear of Missing Out). Especially if you’re not getting anything out of it personally or emotionally as a consumer of media.

I’m not particularly interested in demeaning non-union voice actors, (I’ve watched and paid for many a-thing that used non-union labor). Capcom, despite working on union projects, also continues to dabble in non-union label as well. I know Capcom’s likely wasn’t interested nor aiming to help voice actors not represented by SAG-AFTRA (or other organizations) become better known or gain better opportunities.

The less money they can probably shell out with non-union work, the better it is for them in the long run. Knowing the striking voice actors didn’t remotely get what they wanted out of negations (and probably didn’t get the support they wanted on account of whataboutism) will probably only embolden Capcom and other publishers and developers to make/continue behavior like this, whether or not another strike ever occur.

Resident Evil has never been particularly known for its voice acting beyond the scope of how terribly it started out in 1996 and kinda petered out on the platform of “meh, it’s not completely terrible” with later entries.

The series could hire some fantastic voice actors (Rino Ramano, Karen Dyer, Sally Cahill, and Paul Mercier, for example), and a lot of them can deliver some dud performances regardless of experience. At the end of the day, unless they have an equally strong director and screenwriter, you’re going to end up with an embarrassment of riches that may become memes one day (“Complete. Global. Saturation.”).

That said, RE2R’s issue seems to lie primarily within the writing. In an attempt “humanize” characters, major to minor, the script is often littered with profanity that not only distracts from the point of what you’re reading or listening to, but adds unnecessary fat to a script that’s already bogged down with dialog and text.

The downside to a rebooting a 20 year old game, is when corporations indulge in fandom bullshit. RE2R is pretty rife with cutesy dialog meant to whip the “Cleon” shippers into a frenzy. Its nauseating, really.

Claire and Leon’s conversation at the back of the police station is a prime example of that: Instead of having the dialog delivering urgency of the scene, the objective of the characters we get an aimless exchange full of flirty dialog, and two characters not all that concerned with zombies materializing behind them (given they take forever to put the fire under their boots). In RE2O, at least the writers were smart enough to have the characters meet in a zombie-free room or hall.

I’ve seen people make the Realism™ argument constantly with this game (esp. when counterpointing the gameplay criticisms), but, "realism” is a weak argument and esp. when you’re simply looking to be dismissive. When dialog begins to wander from its point, when profanity hinders more than helps your delivery, your story not only loses impact, it rather shows you’re a mite lazy or weak as a writer.

Comparatively, RE2O was able to communicate the urgency, anger and tone of their characters, and under no circumstances were they this reliant on profanity or long-winded dialog. The issue isn’t that profanity is present, or that the game is text or dialog heavy, it’s how its executed. And at present, the execution is lacking in a strong focus or reduces the game to script written by someone who just realized, “wait, I can make characters swear????”

I can honestly see why a lot of protagonists in survival-horror games were silent for so long outside of cinematics, or simply had substituted thoughts (”I better find Ashley quick”). Running commentary really does break the immersion.

Claire and Leon go from mildly relatable to mechanical models spewing canned reactions that lost their bite forty minutes ago. It’s like being stuck with multiple versions of the Generic Husband from RE7 who “what the fucks?” at every single thing when given the opportunity. So, in a lot of ways, it has a lot of the same problems that made the dialog in Resident Evil Revelations 2 anguish to listen to (hello, Moria Burton), but it lacks such charming (/s) quips like, “Holy balls, my life is awesome!”

That said, not all of the performances are terrible. The voice actors for Claire (Stephanie Panisello), Marvin (Christopher Mychael Watson) and Sherry (Eliza Pryor) probably leave the greatest impression, and are arguably the strongest performers in the game. Christopher Mychael Watson in particular gives a wildly different performance depending on who you’re playing as (Leon or Claire) and has the strongest rapport with Stephanie Panisello.

Nick Apostolides, on the other hand, he just turns in a really unremarkable performance as Leon. Like, in comparison to Mercer, Mercier, he simply does not charisma to inject personality into what is an otherwise really boring version of Leon. He definitely doesn’t have the hammy, but dead-serious delivery of Paul ”why does no one listen to me?” Haddad (Leon’s original VA).

I think one of the more disappointing sequences in the game is when Leon returns to the main lobby in the station and gets jumped by zombie Marvin. Instead of sounding devastated, Leon just sounds mildly disappointed his C.O is a zombie (Panisello gives you a better impression of Claire’s heartbreak). And because this scene isn’t a cinematic, you as a player are just running around in circles hoping you have enough ammo to kill the bullet sponge zombie Marvin. When Marvin is finally a gory mess on the ground, Leon saying, “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I’ll stop this” (paraphrasing) to the pieces of Marvin’s body, comes off as unintentionally hilarious, right down to the delivery of Apostolides.

My feelings are about the same on Jolene Andersen (but we all can’t be Sally Cahill, can we?), but also makes me wonder why Capcom didn’t go the distance to hire a Chinese-American voice actress for Ada. They clearly had the opportunity to do so, they found a Black actor for Marvin, but they just didn’t bother with Ada.

The worst performances out of the bunch is probably Daddy Gunshop owner, “Hello Human” reporter guy, Annette “You’ll Never Get the G-Virus” Birkin, and Chief Irons.

IV. Capcom’s Adventures in Sexism Rebooted

One of these characters had some thought put into their design. It’s not the character on the left.

The Resident Evil series is no stranger the sexualization or objectification of female characters. Historically, for every step forward Resident Evil takes with the presentation of its female characters, it takes six steps back. If there is a female character in the series, the chances are she’s going to be wearing something meant purely for the male gaze, while her male companions wear something far more appropriate for the game’s plot. It only gets worse with alternate costumes, which are typically comprised of sexy school girl fantasies, Daisy Duke hot pants, anti-Black fetishism, and little red riding hood looks. (And no, costumes like Chris’ Sailor Man and Mad Max looks aren’t a counterpoint gotcha.)

RE2R, on the surface, seems to be yet another step-up in the presentation department for female characters in the series. Claire is wearing a leather jacket over a black tank top and sports jeans instead of shorts in new her default costume, they even presented Ada Wong in a world’s ugliest looking trenchcoat. Even better, one of Claire’s alternate costumes is a suit pants and shirt look. Claire has three alternate costumes that aren’t even remotely fanservice-y in the least and it’s great.

Then Capcom announced the “Classic Costume” for Claire and finally revealed Ada Wong without the trenchcoat, and it was business as usual. Claire Redfield’s “Classic Costume” in the reboot is, for lack of a better word, closer to fanservice-y than the original leotard under shorts, black shirt, and vest combo ever turned out to be. The only marked improvement made are the shorts are equal to the length of the leotards and no longer look like underwear.

Where the tank top worked with her new jacket and jeans, it throws the entire look of the original costume’s framing off, and based on the cinematics. While it’s nowhere near as sexualized as her Revelations 2 alt costume, Capcom’s intent here is pretty clear.

Effectively, Claire looks closer to a character who would appear in a Michael Bay produced horror film, whose talking points are usually how sexy the actress makes being terrified look. In the original she was simply meant to look “cool”. When she removed the vest, and wore the holster over her black shirt, she did.

Ada Wong goes from wearing a halter top dress with leggings, and flat heeled shoes that looked fairly maneuverable in, to looking as though she’s been zip-locked into a red slip that doesn’t fit her, finished off with a tacky tiny black bow, a choker and two inch heels.

The entire look of it rather screams at you like a flashing ad banner advertising for an explicit website fetishizing Chinese-American woman. A lot of the fan art coming out of the fandom for Ada Wong in the remake is reflecting more or less that, so the target audience has been completely satisfied in this regard.

She looks absolutely ridiculous in gameplay segments because the dress was designed with no reactionary physics. It doesn’t flex the way a dress does around legs. It looks like a bad mod made by a fan that wanted a “sexier” looking Ada Wong.

Even outside the context of alternate costumes, female characters like 18-Year old Rebecca Chambers (who isn’t even in this game) ends up being oddly sexualized in a photograph where she was originally just sitting on the ground with a basketball in front of her leg, grinning like a goofy kid on a Scholastic paperback from the 90s.

Were it not for the fact that they were legitimately aiming to make Annette Birkin look undesirable, I’d be surprised that she didn’t appear in this game wearing a lab coat, half-open dress shirt, office skirt and three inch heels with heavy makeup.

Meanwhile, Leon Kennedy gets a “Classic Costume” that gets no [major] alternations to its look and thus is restored, unlike Claire or Ada, normal civilian clothing, and a Noir costume. Ada basically got no alternate costumes despite her playability, and I think it was the same with Sherry as well?

Standard, tried and true sexism aside, when it comes right down to it, even if your female character has the reputation of characters like Leon, “How can I make her sexier?” is a question Capcom all too readily answers instead of being creative.

V. RE Engine or, a Trip into the Dark Valley of Uncanny Gray People Land

Photorealism in games isn’t something I’m crazy about and how I react to it ultimately depends on the developer. A lot of video games have been worse for it – dead eye and plastic looking characters is an issue that persists – while very few have used it to the advantage of their creativity.

The major thing that puts me off is the blandness of a photo-realistic white faces. Developers are have shown they can sleepwalk a photo-realistic white face with no issues, but when it comes to the faces of people of color, well, either their biases start to show in the designs (its real easy to make a caricature of Black or non-Black face for video game devs) or their limitations are inherent in their how they see faces that don’t look like them.

I find myself struggling to say what I enjoyed about this game on a visual aspect, because its biggest detriment is without a doubt the RE Engine.

Environment Design - You want it Darker

Creative Assembly’s Alien Isolation did something I really liked. And that’s make the player reliant upon its darkness. You spend as much time in the light as you do enshrouded in the dark. The A.I. systems of Amanda Ripley’s enemies: Hostile humans, androids on an aggressive warpath of helpfulness, and the Xenomorph make hyper-aware of just how exposed you are bathed in the light, just as the dark and shadow make you equally aware that you’re just as open to an attack from the Xenomorph who needs no light to see you should it ever spot you therein.

A lot of the design philosophies in RE2R were built on the groundwork established by RE7, but its disadvantage was the player’s familiarity with RE2O’s level design. In a lot ways, I think they opted for pitch black environments to break that confidence. There are several environments throughout the presentation of RE2R that are turn-the-lights-off dark (which makes for an unpleasant experience for my eyes), but in a way that’s more superficial than essential.

Most areas in the game contain low-level lightning most of the series is known for, but it lacks any of the color and saturation from older games that make set pieces stand out. The most light you’ll see in RE2R is within the lobby, library and upper offices of the police station and the underground lab at the climax of the game.

The closest the game ever gets to replicating the atmosphere and mood of the older Resident Evil games is probably the orphanage level and the later street level in Claire’s campaign. The lightning and shadows are perfect there. But, more often than not, RE2R is content to plunge you into a adversarial darkness repeatedly with a flashlight. In addition to the game’s muted or desaturated colors and washed out look, nothing about the environment design really stands out as remarkable outside of the aforementioned levels.

I don’t think I’ve read so many complaints about having to adjust the contrast, color, brightness, and etc just to get one area or another to look normal before this game (in relation to RE). It’s apparently bad enough that PC Modders are creating mods that fix the overall presentation of the game (more color contrast, sharper image, improved lightning). Devil May Cry 5‘s environment and lightning design tends to looks leagues better than this game, and its got its fair share of bland looking levels.

The screenshot is edited, but this is a solid approximation of how dark it is in a lot of areas.

Where almost no light worked in a game like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA, Penumbra, or even Silent Hill, RE2R’s design template actively discourages exploration in a way the older games did the opposite. It gives you the impression that the game has more to hide than it does to show you. The 2002 Resident Evil remake is still one of the best examples of cinematic light, dark, and shadow created purely for navigation purposes. The game is seventeen years old (holy shit), and legit, I don’t think there is a Resident Evil game in the series that nails how essential lightning is to your environment like this one.

On an aesthetic level, the reboot fails to capture the period of the world that its predecessor was basically developed, lived and breathed in. Setting aside product placement (“Pepsi”) and musical cues (“Baby one More Time”) is beyond Capcom’s budget, it’s the little things about the environment and level design in the reboot that really fails to say, “Here lay 1998. We’re a year away from the full-blown Y2K craze, floppy discs, and pagers were still a thing.”

There’s a tape recorder, yes, there are big, blocky computers sitting on hardwood desks and gas prices I still can’t believe my father grouched over in comparison to the shit they have us paying now, but, a lot of those things feel like superficial window dressing on a poster board.

The environment design and world of RE2R feels very much like a 2019 era world with very little ringing true of the 90s.. I don’t think any damages the authenticity of the world much like the design of the characters – who look a little too 21st century as opposed to individuals trapped in a moment of time – now twenty years ago – and the same can be said of the secret evil lair of the Umbrella Corporation.

Everything in the final level of the game feels like something of Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil (The HIVE), and less like a lab that was built and constructed with what a 90s era architect would think was cutting edge tech and aesthetic of the late 1990s. It got to a point where I honestly think they should’ve just set the reboot in 2018.

Character Design - Petrified Faces and Awkward Mouths

He’s lit. melting in the rain right now.

Photo-realistic characters live and die by how well they imitate life without setting off the alarms in your mind. RE2R falls on the spectrum of “missing your mark” in a lot of ways. Characters in RE7 had the look of wax mannequin dolls walking around terrorizing you’re equally doll-esque player characters (with no heads). Nothing about how these characters were rendered and animated was particularly great, and it constantly triggered the meant response of “there is something wrong with what I’m looking at” that often comes with the uncanny valley.

The biggest issue facing the grand majority of the white characters RE2R is the fact that Capcom is still manipulating faces like they’re still using stylized animation and not an engine “based in reality” to its detriment. Characters are puppet-esque, or look particularly unfinished in the washed out environment and desaturated colors. This is noticeable in throwaway characters like the trucker in the opening cinematic (eating a burger that reacts unlike food) with a face that seems ready to melt off of its model at any moment, Chief Irons, “Hello Human” reporter guy, and the father and zombie daughter from the trite Gunshop sequence begging for its SAG award. None of these characters emote or animate well and draw the eye to the imperfections of the engine than wow you with its animation.

Among the central cast, the characters that look the worst rendered in the RE Engine are probably Claire Redfield and Annette Birkin. Both characters look as though the face models simply did not cooperate with Capcom tweaking the faces. Annette is more puppet-like than say, Claire (who at least has genuine moments of humanity). The less than stellar facial and lip animation is extremely noticeable on Annette's model who might’ve been promoted to minor antagonist at the last minute, because she has no business moving so robotically. It probably doesn’t help matters that Capcom designed her character with the philosophy of “working women don’t care about their appearances” (paraphrased) in mind, which makes their changes to Ada and Claire all the more suspect.

Claire’s biggest issue seems to be that Capcom simply spent less time on her than they did Leon. The model’s face is often stiff and under-animated, so it looks like Claire’s face is struggling to emote. This is especially notifiable when you compare Claire’s model to her living counterpart (who is far more expressive in a still image than her 3D model). Capcom more than likely tweaked the model’s face more than a little bit, and to the character’s detriment. Honestly, it’s comparable to how she ended up looking in CGI film Degeneration (where her face barley animated). Claire’s model really, really, really needed more work, or Capcom needed to find a face they could work with better than the one they chose.

Leon is the character they clearly spent more time on, at least in terms of details. In general, his animations are probably stiffer than Claire. Most of the cinematics involving close-ups of Leon’s face make it appear as though Leon has mastered the art of talking through one’s teeth without moving their lips, and he’s not particularly emotive unless the emotion is an extreme one.

Out of the characters with any remote screen-time or plot-related dialog, the only ones that look slightly more remarkable are Ada Wong and Marvin Branagh. Marvin in particular might be the best example of what the RE Engine can do with unique faces and competent performance from the animators and the actor.

Ada Wong looks better than she ever did in Resident Evil 6, and while this not my favorite rendition of her character on any level, she is only female character in the game – in terms of character design – that got a decent face model.

The only drawback with these two characters that Marvin looks as ashy white as the white characters (and no blood-loss isn’t a justification for that) and he shares the same thousand yard dead-eye look in his eyes that a lot of the other characters have. The less-than-stellar facial animation is more than a little noticeable in Ada Wong’s sequences a well (was she snarling or trying to annunciate words at Annette?).

The zombies and non-human enemy types look better suited the grayscale, clay-esque look the RE Engine gives everything. Zombies require almost little to no real facial animation, but against the backdrop of reality they are truly out of place (to reiterate). The same can be said of characters like Mr. X or William Birkin’s monster form.

The big sell Capcom made with the zombies and monsters in RE2R is that they could render insane amounts of gore, based on the human anatomy. On paper, it definitely sounds like a cool idea, in execution? I’ve been so desensitized to gore and human guts – within the fictional spectrum – that this really doesn’t impress me. (My sister, on the other hand, needed a moment.)

It’s like, “Yeah, that guy’s arm is are hanging off alright.” But, unless you’re giving me RE4 or Dead Space level styled deaths, where the gore is put on display with a sort’ve Evil Dead irreverence, well, the most your doing is just demonstrating gross anatomy. It’s cool, but not exactly satisfying, esp. when taking the clay-esque look of the models into consideration. The masturbatory gore dislay is also probably a big reason why firearms and explosives against zombies no longer have the desired effect. The most you’ll be doing a lot of the time is peeling the skin off of a model, which I guess, is your cue to go, “Wow, look these physics, look at that gore.”

There are some developers who really know how to work with photo-realistic environments and, even moreso, how to render photo-realistic characters, be they based on living people or not. Remedy Entertainment (using the in-house engine, Northlight Engine), is one, and Naughty Dog – who still rely heavily on stylization – has only recently entered that threshold during the PS4 era.

A lot of this of course, is a consequence of experience with that medium. Naughty Dog’s history with more animated styles definitely helps more than harms their photo-realistic models and environment. Remedy Entertainment’s persistent desire to render the real world in a 3D environment has simply improved as the tech has gotten better.

Capcom, like Square Enix and the late Konami, was always at its best with hybrid blend of animation and photo-realism. Resident Evil was rendered and designed in such a way that it straddled the line of photo-realism and stylistic animation in way no other games did. It wasn’t too real, and it wasn’t too cartoony.

That creative style lent itself to their level design as one was often not without the other. The Gothic horror design of mansions or European countries, and the stark familiarity of places like a police station, a cruise ship or a prison island, were often picture-esque or surreal by design. The RE Engine is probably the biggest step backward in terms of design and atmosphere.

VI. Conclusion – “All Employees Proceed to the Bottom Platform.”

Hey, look, a callback to Resident Evil 2. Neat.

As a game I played with my sister, passing he controller to her every fifteen minutes, I had fun based purely on how she reacted to the game. Whatever my quibbles, the most fun I’ve had with this game is probably screaming and yelling with my sister, and acting as her personal exposition machine.

She asks so many questions about what the hell is going on in the greater scheme of the plot. She doesn’t care, per-say, but she asks anyway because she knows I like reading Wikipedia and thus have the answers. I can only tell her what I know from the previous games, which I know effectively don’t count for shit with this reboot.

That said, the reboot just made me weirdly appreciative of what went into the creation of the original Resident Evil 2, especially in terms of structure, gameplay and presentation. The reboot is ultimately something that feels like it was produced within a AAA space, right down to its paid DLC offerings, which once would’ve been natural unlockables in the game. It’s budget was probably sunk by the over-lavish requirements of the RE Engine, and just from looking at it, this game had budget it was straining against. It ultimately ends up making its predecessor all the more crucial and unique.

It kinda highlights just how useless exploiting nostalgia is in the process of replicating things. You don’t get the same results, and in the end you’re only playing an imitation of something that was a consequence of the right people coming together at the right period of time. It’s what makes things like polygonal character skins, or “play this game with lower resolution settings”, give the impression that devs largely miss the point or misunderstand what people like or continue to like about older productions, even when a newer imitation of it comes out (the discussions people have about Metal Gear Solid vs. The Twin Snakes highlights this best, I think).

I enjoyed Bluepoint’s Shadow of the Colossus, they went above and beyond the call of duty to reproduce the original, but I often find myself playing the older far more than its 2018 remake, because the latter ultimately lacks what Team Ico put into that game.

In its attempts to be a retelling of the game, RE2R probably would’ve been better off abandoning the entire framework and creating something entirely new (I say again). But because it never tries to be different enough from its counterpart, especially in terms of story beats, the end result is a condensed soup with missing flavor. Otherwise, I think restorative would’ve been a better move than remixing it. Not something I could say about Shattered Memories. If I could describe RE2R, outside of the interaction I had with it in the company of my sister, “boring” would be the kindest descriptor I could give it. Everything about its aesthetic, to the delivery as a much toned down version of RE2O, was not gripping [for] me.

Comparing this reboot to something like DMC5, something using the same engine, but manages to be more vibrant in design and presentation, makes RE2R look unremarkable in comparison. The visual quality of the game tended to remind me of the presentation of Ready at Dawn’s The Order 1886, which was also heavily reliant on photo-realistic graphics and a washed out presentation.

This game is nowhere near as engaging as its original. And because the campaigns are basically a Frankenstein hybrid of the original A/B set up, a lot of the changes to the plot seem really superfluous or detrimental to the structure overall.

They really did Ada dirty in this game.

Playing the events of RE2O as more overly dramatic or serious effectively makes for a really dull game. A more reality-based RE isn’t something I’m particularly interested in, especially since the end result appears to be a less exciting product. The fact that they did so little with or reduced characters like Marvin and Ada – who are nowhere near as present or independent of the scenario characters as they should be, just makes for a greater disappointment.

RE2R is a reboot of the original 1998 game in all the ways that are reflective of RE7’s design principals, carrying the pretense of realism on its shoulders. RE2R keeps some of the bones of RE2O, but discards the rest in exchange for something trying really hard to be different, but familiar enough to invoke déjà vu. If you spent the radio silence hoping for the lavish recreation Mikami made of his 1996 original in 2002 for Gamecube audiences, you sadly won’t find it here. If anything this more or less proves something like that will never happen again.

RE2R strives to be a third person iteration of RE7 with an older title. If you weren’t crazy for what a lot of people more or less called “Resident Evil in Name Only” when it was released in 2017, chances are you won’t enjoy your time with RE2R. If you were completely and utterly for RE7, the RE Engine and all that this blueprint entails, you’ll basically have a good time with RE2R and whatever else gets remade under this umbrella.

The last temptation I have toward this game is playing it heavily modified on the PC because the mods for this game actually look like something to mess with. I’m just waiting for the “Classic Ada” costume mod, because that dress is some of the laziest character design I’ve ever seen.

#resident evil 2 remake #resident evil #capcom #re engine #re2 remake spoilers #videogamesincolor #marvin branagh #reboot ada wong #resident evil series #resident evil 2 reimagined

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chopper-witch · 5 years

Text

AWOMOD: I’m Impressed (Ch 7)

Characters: Loki x OC (Ashira)

Warnings: blood, stabbing, boredom induced fighting

Locations: Her ship

Word Count: 3000+

Summary: Loki figures things out; Ashira is restless.

A/N: There are probably still like a thousand mistakes in this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Also, all the fighting is like super, super quick and only within the span of a few minutes. Also, as fanfic writer I’m entitled to do whatever the fuck I want and you can’t stop me.

AWOMD master

The following morning, they leave again with a new set of respect and trust. Instead of messing around with weapons, Ashira decided to stay in the pilot’s seat, mindlessly fidgeting with a dagger as she stared out to the stars. This gave Loki time to rack his brain for everything he knew of Greek mythology.

“Athena,” Loki declares after five hours.

Loki’s voice causes Ashira to jump from her seat. The pure white dagger clatters to the ground, droplets of blood with it after knocking her thumb. Her right hand flies to grasp her chest, her left lifting to her lips to stop the bleeding.

“Do not scare me like that, oh my god.” Ashira exhales loudly. “I could have just sent us anywhere, fuck.”

“Athena,” Loki claims again, coming to stand in front of Ashira. “If she is Selene and translations are messy, Athena. Or Artemis.”

Ashira laughs at his far too focused face. “Surprised? Athena is not a tall, glorious warrior yet instead is a short, kind of chubby runaway.”

“I mean Norse mythology claims I gave birth to Odin’s horse... so I know things get sloppy.”

Ashira blinks a few times to try and adjust her reality, ensuring what he just said is real. Rumors and stories always have a drop of truth to them and thinking he gave birth to a horse is not something you just make up out of thin air.

“I don’t even want to know why they would think that.”

Loki shrugs with a smile before it fades just as quickly as it happened, a suddenly confused twist to his features. “Then why are you so weary of magic? Wasn’t Hecate like the Goddess of Magic."

“Her name is Helene, Selene’s younger sister.” Ashira leans her head back. “And no, not really. She was just a major drama queen, like her sister.”

“So then why is Greek mythology so full of mysticism and magic?”

Ashira raises a brow as if it is so obvious. “It’s called high tech science that humans weren’t able to make sense of.”

“I have a hard time believing that.” Loki slips into the co-pilot seat. “There is amazing technology on Asgard and we still use and practice magic.”

“That’s fine with me.” Her head tilts back upright. “You’ll see.” A mildly evil grin appears on her face. “You’ll see.”

—

And he does see, three days later.

They landed on a planet Loki has already forgotten the name of about four miles outside of the closest village (forget city) yesterday. Today Loki is sitting beneath one of the trees in the prairie while Ashira sorts through her weapons. While he much rather be inside where it is cooler, after he witnessed her grabbing a a live bomb seconds before it touched the ground and detonated, he decided to hang outside.

Surprisingly enough, he isn’t in the mood to die, especially by the hands of stupidity on her part.

So he doesn’t think of anything of the sounds of her walking around the opening in the field as she has already done so several times to layout various equipment.

Ashira then towers in front of him, the bit of sun he was using to read blocked by the secondary shadow.

“Here.” A pure black dagger falls on top of Loki’s book.

It’s entirely matte and unbelievably smooth everywhere but a few spots along the handle where there is clearly texture added to help the grip.

“What’s this?” He asks.

“A dagger,” she replies slowly. “I assumed you knew.”

Loki scowls. “Of course I did. Why did you give it to me?”

She shrugs. “I’m bored.”

“So you’d like me to kill you?” Loki questions, mildly concerned about her phrasing.

“I want you to fight me.”

Loki finally looks up from his novel to the person blocking his sunlight. Ashira is standing above him, right arm across her body so both hands can rest on her jutted left hip, yet another different outfit donning her body. This one is unusual however: it is simply very short shorts and a tight half-length top without sleeves, both in the same deep royal blue as the items he has identified were likely either standard issue or part of a uniform from her home world. Her hair is braided back into a ponytail for once instead of its normal partly down or entirely braided state.

And gosh, it’s long even when tied up.

How fast does her hair grow?

“You want me to fight you?”

“I’m bored and haven’t gotten in any real fights recently and you’ve done sparring before so why not?”

Loki shrugs. “I must ask before we begin: the outfit, standard training wear from your home?”

Ashira looks down at her clothes, even picking up her right foot to observe her specialized ankle height shoes.

“Only worn for running and weightlifting, not for this kind of training but it’s hot and my armor is buried deep among other stuff.”

“You still have your armor?”

“Of course. I still have everything. It was my ship I took to get off Hala.”

Loki’s brows furrow. “Wait you escaped Hala? I thought you escaped your home?”

Ashira’s eyes narrow as her face twists at his stupidity. “Has all the chatter on the radio talking about also trying to attack the Kree been erased from your mind or are you just stupid?”

“I just don’t get why you would be there.”

“They have bodies to spare to test powers and also it was decided I would be better suited in their facilities while things were figured out.” Ashira shrugs, ignoring the annoying tiny nagging voice in the back of her mind reminding her that they promised to be honest with each other. “Until of course it was no longer about testing and more about training. Their little experiment program, Inhumans, was then a good source of bodies. Powered enough to face off, not powered enough to actually hurt me.”

Loki nods. “So they kept you there.”

“So they kept me there.”

Loki looks down at the dagger, twisting it between his hands. “Alright, I’ll fight.”

“But no magic and I won’t accidentally disintegrate myself, deal?”

“Can I at least have more than one dagger?”

“Summon it now.”

Loki summons a second dagger, changing it to match the one Ashira gave him. He admits this all black look is nice. He stands and carefully leaves the book by the tree.

“And exactly what will you be fighting with?”

“If I need anything, I can grab it,” Ashira smiles. “I’ll be fine.”

“Alright. But I have to ask you something that has been bothering me now that you are basically baring yourself to me, what’s with all the scars? Do you normally hide them with cosmetics or something?” Loki asks, twirling around the daggers.

“Cosmetics?” Ashira chuckles. “No, a biomorphic nanomask that I just stick to my skin and it smooths it over.”

Loki has never seen anything like that before. “Alright, then why are there so many deep ones with such hacked edges? That’s not torture or surgery.”

“Well I couldn’t just walk out of there.” Ashira walks closer to him as he stays against the tree. “Had to rid of stuff implanted in me since a few days after my birth. Right wrist tracker, left wrist biomonitor, and near my tailbone was what we called a carousel. Needed any medication? It was fed through there.” She steps closer yet again. Loki presses himself further against the tree to the point where he feels the bark pressing into his skin. “Left upper arm is where they put this disk thing that confined me to the facility I was being held at before I escaped and oh, my neck.” She forces him to stay against the tree, tilting her head to the left to exposing the jagged scar. “Here on my neck is the lovely place where I started my hack job. Whatever bar implant thing they put here was keeping me mostly subdued and basically enslaved.”

“That does sound like a pain,” Loki replies. He’s grinning.

Ashira doesn’t reply. She knows he is going to attempt to attack her, likely by her arms. So while he thinks she is still focused on the scars littering her body, she really is thinking of the best spots to hit him.

His right leg swings between her legs and hooks around her right knee. While he expects her to fall, she instead throws herself backwards into a handstand, Loki losing his balance as she does so. She stays upside down and turns herself to face him.

He’s growling now, body bent over awkwardly from falling. Without a though he flings the dagger in his left hand directly towards her.

It’s flying towards her right side so she lifts her right arm up and tilts her whole body to the right. Just as the dagger tip flies past her she reaches out and grabs the handle.

Now upright, Loki is not any happier with her.

He lunges towards her. She doges by twisting her upper body away. Her hand switches the grip of the dagger and moves it so that the blunt end lands between the tendons in his right wrist.

He involuntarily releases the dagger and she grasps it in her left hand.

And as he pulls away she knees his stomach yet again. The prince falls back into the tree with each dagger crossed over his neck.

“I’m impressed.” He throws his arms up in defeat.

Ashira smirks. She tosses the daggers to the side, standing and walking from Loki. As she walks away, Loki takes a moment to stand, honestly impressed with fighting style and technique. And he cannot help but watch her walk away. He catches sight of white along her spine and looks closer. A tattoo, it appears, of some form. A combination of swirling organic shapes and perfectly geometric cubes from what he can tell, even though he can only see half.

“Wait, you have a tattoo?”

Ashira looks back over her shoulder to him. “You never noticed?”

“No…” Loki huffs. “No I haven’t.”

“Besides when we go out I don’t try to cover… though I guess my hair does a pretty good job at that.” She glances down her spine where only the bottom half of it is visible.

“So your tattoo, what does it symbolize?”

“Well do they symbolize things back home on Asgard?”

“Not typically. Decoration only sort of thing, though sometimes people will get family crests.”

Ashira nods once before moving her hair from her neck. “Well the spinal tattoo is basically the history of a person on Ares. It begins on the neck with their birth rank which is why I have such a bizarre pattern near my hairline and then goes down from there: battles, kill count, awards, discoveries. Those weird swirls? Got those for making new technology.”

“And all those tiny little dots?”

“Kill count.“

While he cannot count every single one (mostly due to the nature of her shirt) there are easily thousands of little white dots totaling somewhere near 6,000 that he can see, forget the ones he can’t.

Ashira chuckles at his slightly agape mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re frightened.”

He looks back to her face. “Curious.”

“Good.” Ashira turns back to face him. “Again?”

“I’ll beat you this time.”

“No you won’t.”

He summons the daggers into his hands again.

They both go charging at each other, this time Ashira jumping over him and grabbing a branch easily. Loki spins to slash at her but she just lifts her legs up with the rest of her body as he goes charging back towards the tree.

He spins around again. Before he can get far, however, Ashira drops her legs down, thighs wrapping tightly around his neck, ankles crossing. She releases the branch and throws her torso towards the ground. Her hands touch the grass just as Loki grips her calves with the knives tucked in his thumbs. His fingers press into the underside of her knees to attempt to force her legs to move, but she just yanks him forward as her hands finally touch the ground.

Loki skids forward and catching himself right before he lands face first. He looks up to see Ashira coming down from a handstand perfectly.

She grins at his nearly fallen form.

Then he charges at her with his daggers ready. His right hand swings out to swipe at her but she simply ducks, grabbing his left arm and pinching between the tendons on his forearm and he involuntarily drops the dagger.

Now they stand opposite to their previous stances, his left dagger now in Ashira’s left hand.

“Ready?” Ashira teases.

“For what?”

No words are said as she charges at him. He ducks to avoid her and possibly catch her with his dagger only for her to jump up again suddenly. Before Loki even knows what’s happening the dagger lands in his shoulder and Ashira perfectly rolls upright.

“Ah!” He screeches, hand flying to grab his left shoulder with his right hand.

“Sorry.” Ashira shrugs. “Not really though.”

“By Valhalla and Hel you couldn’t just tap me instead?”

Ashira shakes her head as she attempts to hide her smile. “Nah. And I know you heal quick enough for it to not be a problem. I’ll grab something if you’d like to seal it entirely right now.”

“That’d be lovely.” He grunts as he yanks the dagger out.

She comes back a minute later with a tube no larger than her pinky finger in her hands. Loki has fallen back against the tree. His seidr isn’t working as well as he hopes it would for healing - in fact, it is doing absolutely nothing.

“Here.”

Loki grabs the bottle from her. While he fumbles with opening something so small, she leans against the tree as well, internally laughing at how ungraceful he is at the moment.

The second the gel hits his skin he hisses. It stings; it stings worse than that time Thor thought it would be funny to pour wine mixed with salt in one of his worse cuts from a training incident gone wrong. But then it seals over like he was never cut in the first place. He watches as his skin and muscles and nerves stitch themselves back together, miniature tendrils attaching back to one another.

“Huh.” Loki touches his skin gently. No pain, no blood.

“Yeah, huh.” She pushes away from the tree and turns on her toes to face him. “Now, go ahead and use your magic. But try to keep up.”

She reaches her left hand out towards the ship. A pair of white batons goes flying through the between them, landing in each of her hands.��

Loki’s brows furrow. “You know magic?”

“It’s called science, like I said.” She twirls the batons around. “Let’s do some science versus magic fighting. Show you why the humans were wrong.”

So he goes for his magic instantly. Any form of memory reading or even an attempt to usually puts people down for a moment or two.

He presses his palm to her forehead.

Instead of memories, it’s blank, fuzziness. Static, just like before. No, not like before. Even worse. It’s pure blackness in her mind.

Loki, the stubborn asshole he is, keeps trying to push into her mind.

While he is distracted trying to pick her mind, Ashira grabs his left hand and pins the wrists together. Loki pulls back at this. Ashira knees his stomach, pulling herself back to extend his arms behind him as he falls to his face. Her grip causes both of his arms to pull uncomfortably behind his back. Then she steps onto his back with her right foot, wedging it between the shoulders and pulls up.

Loki yelps at the twist in his upper back as she forces his muscles to separate in ways that are most definitely not natural.

“Science,” Ashira gloats, releasing his arms and stepping away from him. She calls her batons back to her hands.

Loki stands slowly. “I’m impressed, I’ll admit. But how do I know you aren’t using magic as well?”

“Truce, for now, so I can show you.” Loki nods once. “Alright, here.” She switches both of her batons to her right hand and extends her left. “Feel.”

Loki takes her hand tentatively. She could flip him over even if she is cupping her hand and she has no legitimate traction.

“Feel it. There’s a bit in there like a magnet.”

His thumbs run over the crevices in her hand. He uses his magic to feel for different particles in her hands, finding an entire circuitry of electronics within her. There is a device in the center of her left palm, little tendrils of metal reaching up her wrist, deeply embedded in her arm’s nerves, extending as far as her brain stem.

“My right hand only has the magnet. I’m left handed so this was installed to go through my left arm to align with any of my weaponry.”

“So you can call anything to you?”

“Not anything, but things aligned with it. Batons, my sword, most of guns and grenades... Important things.”

Loki drops her hand. “What if you need to improvise?”

“You did just see me beat your ass like a bunch of times, right? And stab you?” Loki rolls his eyes. “Plus near anything makes a weapon.”

“Suppose you aren’t wrong about that. I must say, I’m impressed.”

“That’s why I am weary of magic. If it can be done through mystical means, it can be done with science.” She rests her hands on her left hip again. “Science is proven, nearly infallible once everything is factored in. Magic is messy.”

Loki cocks an eyebrow. “Science is still messy.”

“Yes but it makes sense.” She motions with her batons still pressed against her hip. “Magic doesn’t.” She points at him with the baton in her left hand

“Alright, another question. Why is all your stuff white? Why white?”

“Every planet has its colors, right?”

“Right.”

“Well Ares’ colors are that blue color and silver and white,” she taps the left toe of her shoe on the grass and leaves it there, weight moving almost entirely to her right leg. “As you get higher in rank, people can change their weaponry from the blue and silver to another color or a custom pattern. Most people go to all blue or all silver or something simple like that, but I wanted something different. So all of it is a pure white.”

“Interesting. But doesn’t white get dirty easily?”

A very terrifying grin pulls at her lips. “The blood falls right off.”

Loki opens his mouth to ask how that is possible, but closes it. He doesn’t want to know. Sort of scared to ask in the event she just tries to swipe at him to show him.

“Now come on, we should move soon. This planet actually has a Kree and Aresian outpost on it and capture or death is not in my plan for today.”

He gapes at that.

“How stupid can you get?”

“Oh, it can get a lot worse.” Ashira tosses both batons to flip them around. “For real, we need to leave. The radars degrade the cloaking over time and there is approximately two hours before it will be entirely uncloaked.”

“It’s like you want to be captured.”

The ex-princess simply shrugs and sighs. “I know the limits of the technology because I either built it myself or with Er -” She stops herself suddenly.

No, she reminds herself, don’t bring it up.

“Some others.”

The prince knows she cut herself off to avoid telling him something. A name, most likely.

Something too personal to her. Something she won’t share.

Or maybe something she can’t.

___

Taglist:

@illogicalfangirl @tarynkauai

#loki x oc #loki fic #loki fanfic #marvel fic #marvel fanfic #loki imagine #marvel imagine #awomod #a weapon of my own design

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nuka-nuke · 6 years

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|Avdotya Ilyinichna Luzhkov-Valle|

|Director of the Institute, Overboss of Nuka World|

Age: 28 (238)

Birthday: October 20th, 2049

Zodiac: Libra

Nicknames: By Nataniel, Dunya. By her mother and father, Dunechka; both are diminutives of her real name. By everyone else, Ilya.

Height & Build: 5'4, 119 lbs. Short and slender

References: Here

Physical Traits: She has tattoos all along both arms and legs, a rose tattoo on her ass, her son's name and a spade on her neck, as well as a huge upside down moth tattoo right below her chest. All of her tattoos were from before the war except for the "N" on her right cheek which was done by herself while mourning the death of her husband, Nataniel. She has freckles across her nose and the tops of her shoulders. She has a scar going across her right eye as well as a huge burn on the left side of her forehead (covered always by her bangs) from a mishap with a poorly made molotov that exploded in her hand.

Before the war, her hair was always dyed black. Now without the luxuries of professional cosmetics, it returned to the very light blonde she had naturally. With malnutrition, radiation, and residual effects of being frozen for 200 years and then exposed to bright sun again, it lost just about all the blonde pigment.

Personality: Ilya was always very charismatic, cultivated by her intense fear of being alone. She can convince anyone to do anything, and still sound genuine and sweet while blatantly manipulating them to do her bidding. However magnetic her personality normally is though, she also has overwhelming depressive spells during which she will drink herself blind and refuse to speak to anyone (but still needs someone with her anyway, lest her abandonment anxiety kick in on top of the depression). These up and down emotions have often been the cause of strife in her personal relationships, but the high is so good that that alone can usually delude people into sticking with her.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L: Str 4 - Per 7 - End 6 - Cha 15 - Int 2 - Agi 6 - Luck 3

Noteworthy Skills & Perks: Black Widow, Bird Spotter, Locksmith, Ghoulish (The gift of Atom as the Children of Atom call it), Inspirational, Commando

Weapon of Choice: The Problem Solver, a Pack handmade rifle given to her by Mason after she intimidated him into taking her seriously.

Home Region: She was raised in Burlington, Vermont to Russian immigrant parents, but having immigrated when she was only a few months old she doesn't remember anything of Russia. Now she resides in an old warehouse in Cambridge which she has fixed up to be as nice of a home as is possible in a wasteland.

Affiliations: The Institute, Nuka World Raiders. Formerly the Railroad. She still has residual sympathy for synths.

Family:

Nataniel Valle, husband (deceased)

Shaun Valle, son (deceased)

Ilya Luzhkov, father (deceased)

Olesya Luzhkova, mother (deceased)

Associates:

Porter Gage, lover and 'business' partner

Bertrand Watanabe (Birdie), 'ex'-lover

Robert Joseph MacCready, friend of Birdie, hired help for her

Piper Wright, ex-lover

Enemies: Nisha, Preston Garvey, The Brotherhood of Steel, The Railroad

History:

Avdotya was born in Russia to Ilya Luzhkov and Olesya Luzhkova. She immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was just a few months old when her father, a scientist, got a job working for the government. It was difficult for them initially due to the stigma and fear of all things potentially communist, but her father proved his loyalty to America through his beneficial research and willingness to reject his homeland. They lived a comfortable life out of Vermont, with him regularly absent traveling to DC for work. Avdotya chose to call herself Ilya, her middle name being the patronymic of Ilya, for the sake of it sounding more American to her. She was always closer to her mother, who was kind, loving, spoiled her and doted upon her as if she could do no wrong. Her father was strict and cynical, always insisting she could be doing more with her life than making friends, goofing off, and getting tattoos. Because of this Ilya was always striving to win his approval, hoping one day she might be able to be loved by him, or at the very least, accepted. That day never came. He died before she turned 19, still saying he regretted bringing a child into a world he knew would be destroyed.

Ilya met her future husband, Nataniel, when she was 21. She was visiting Boston with her mother, who loved to study classic American architecture, as she was an artist who enjoyed painting buildings more than people. Ilya had very little interest in history but would do anything to make her mother happy, including going on dozens of tours a day of old cities. Nataniel was part of one of the tour groups they took, with his classmates from university, and he caught her eye immediately. While her mother chatted with the guide about 18th century America, Ilya poured on the charm to this tall handsome man. Nataniel was shy and sweet, and quite obviously trying to conceal a slight native Boston accent as they chatted. Ilya loved him right away.

It wasn't long until they began dating seriously, but the long distance was strenuous on their new relationship, especially because Ilya had never been very good at being apart from those she loves for too long. Olesya could tell how important this man was to her daughter, and therefore she was the one who suggested they move to Boston "for her art career". They got married when she was 23, and they remained deeply in love for all five years of their marriage until the bitter end.

More Recent History: After the Great War, Ilya struggled severely with the loss of everyone and everything she ever loved. She knew her son was still lost in this new world, but the depression was overwhelming and debilitating. Her first few days out of the vault included sitting in the dilapidated bedroom of her broken home, holding the note and earrings from Nataniel which was to be her birthday gift, and drinking 200 year old bottles of bourbon. She had the pistol found in Vault 111 placed on the floor in front of her. She didn't want to push forward in this life without Nati, and considered ending it here. But the remaining vision of her son being taken burned in her memory, and drove her to finally motivate herself to leave Sanctuary six days after her 28th birthday.

From then the up and down emotional roller coaster of trauma and BPD continued to disable her. When she was down, she could barely bring herself to move. When she was up she would go days without sleep, living off of Nuka Cola Quantum and bourbon, taking on any crazy task offered and shmoozing people into paying exorbitant fees to get their jobs done. It was during this turbulant time that she happened upon Diamond City, and the first person she met here being a raven haired beauty Piper. Immediately after meeting her, Ilya decided that she would make for an attractive distraction from the war plaguing her mind every day. Piper was strong willed and personable, which Ilya liked about her, and Ilya was charismatic and dangerous, which Piper liked. It didn't take much effort to have Piper wrapped around her finger.

Unfortunately, Piper fell hard and fast for the prewar enigma. Ilya quickly lost patience for her constant need for affection and reassurance. The relationship became boring to her, and she couldn't care less if it hurt Piper's feelings when she would leave without telling her to go on a bender in Goodneighbor or flirt blatantly with someone else right in front of her. Sooner or later if became too much for Piper to excuse, and they had a hostile split.

While taking jobs on her own after storming out of Piper's home for the last time, Ilya travelled to Forest Grove Marsh on a quest for radiation healing ferns for the Diamond City local drug dealer. It was here, while balancing on top of hastily laid boards across the roofs of half submerged prewar homes, that she came upon a figure in a gas mask sniping ferals from the roof of an old ammo shop. When she spoke to him after the gunfire ceased, she was vaguely confused as to whether he was joking around, or really just that ditzy. She felt the complusive need to bring him with her, simply because she was worried about his safety being so lost and out in the middle of nowhere, but did not expect to eventually form a strong bond with the younger boy. He was goofy and weird, and made her laugh, which was uncommon for her in this life. He stabilized her and kept her grounded, even though he was only kind of stable on his own. When she had her panic attacks, he was always there to comfort her. And even though he was deathly afraid of germs and touching other humans, eventually he convinced himself that she couldn't kill him and made an exception for her. They trusted each other with their lives, and barely ever spent time apart from one another, which was an amazing new phenomenon for the sniper who was ostracized from his previous home and abandoned by all those he knew. She couldn't admit it to herself without feeling like she was betraying Nati, but she had fallen in love with him.

Ilya discovered the Railroad while traversing with Birdie through the prewar historical ruins that used to bring her mother so much joy. They were honest folks trying to make life better for the beaten down synths, and Ilya respected their efforts. Also, they paid well. She joined up as 'Charmer', even though she hated the nickname, and devoted fully into their cause, accepting graciously the help they offered for finding her son. Until she actually found him.

When she was reunited with Shaun, nothing else mattered to her. She abandoned her new life and poured herself into his. Not once did she return to the Railroad headquarters to report back about how the teleportation had succeeded. She desired only to make him proud of her, like the Grandfather he never knew yet resembled in personality, appearance, and intelligence. She did anything he asked of her, and even though she still had the lingering, gnawing sympathy for the synths, she could never bring herself to do anything to harm what her son had worked his entire life to achieve.

He asked her to betray her former friends with the Railroad, and she did so without question.

With the passing of her son, Ilya lost all the formulated stability she had worked to achieve. She hid in a dark depression in the Cambridge home she shared with Birdie, refusing to eat or sleep, and drank. She couldn't face the Institute without Shaun. She couldn't even think about it without breaking down. She lost the one thing keeping her tied to Nataniel and her past life, the one glimpse into the old world she loved.

And then, to top it off while trying to console the mourning mother, Birdie accidentally let it slip that he loved her. At first, she told him he didn't know what love is, to which he admitted she was probably right, but there was no other person in the world he cared about like her, that he would die for her.

So later in the night while he slept, she fled. She would not allow another person to love her and die for her to continue on alone. She would not allow herself to admit that she loved him also, and she would not allow herself to replace Nataniel's memory. She ran away without telling him why...

And ended up in Nuka World. The worst and best place, for someone with no will to live who just wants to watch the world burn. She cut all ties with the group she previously befriended yet rejected becoming general of, The Minutemen, and turned on their leader when he confronted her about her poor choices. From there, she began a whirlwind relationship with her new second in command, Gage, out of lust and loneliness and mutual emotionally destructive behavior, but still never gets sweet little Birdie far out of her mind.

(Profile layout created by the wonderful @radbeetle)

#and that's where we are now #if you read this far... thank you #you're the real mvp #fo4 spoilers #fallout oc #fallout 4 #ilya valle #my oc #fallout 4 spoilers #oc profile #oc references

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zhannabelle-eng · 4 years

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Why are Zhannabelle’s seminars so expensive?

What is the true cost of success and health?

We all want to be healthy, happy and successful. But not all of us are capable of achieving that. Today we are talking to Zhannabelle about ways to do it and the cost of individual practices or a magical protective talisman.

- They probably often tell you that the price of your practice is too high?

Zhannabelle: Yes, I hear that quite often. But you have to assess properly what to compare it with. As a rule, people simply do not understand the real price of such trainings. They have never faced this kind of energy. They have never used this kind of service in their life. At the same time, air tickets are also very expensive, and this fact does not seem surprising to anyone. After all, there is no other way to get to another continent quickly.

If you need to get to an island on the other side of the planet, it will cost you more than one thousand Euros. And you don’t argue about it.

- And yet, they don’t travel to distant lands often and your classes are regular...

Zhannabelle: Sure. Still, many people drink coffee every day, spending the same amount of money on coffee a week as paying for one group session. Going to the movies costs almost as much. People will gladly spend money and time to visit the premiere of a film. That's what everyone does, so it is customary. New movies in the film industry usually have extensive advertising campaigns. But when people are invited to seminars, they wonder about benefits they get from it.

The problem is that they are unaware of the true value of the knowledge that we give. Some people are sure they're buying a pig in a poke)). What's the point, for example, of purifying karma? A person has no idea what the result of this ritual will be.

Gadgets, clothes, cars are material and obvious purchases which are advertised all the time.

- In fact, there is advertising everywhere. It's hard to imagine how we lived without it before, without knowing which yogurt is the most useful one and which cream is the most effective one...

Zhannabelle: Indeed. For example, they show us photo models in the cream advertising: beautiful, well-groomed, with good skin. All women try to buy the same cream, not paying attention to its high price. After all, they expect to have the same posh skin as in the ad using this cream. Almost always their expectations so not materialize.

Still hoping, people keep spending money on what they see in advertising.

It happens because they have an idea of what the result can be. But they don’t know what result to expect from karma purification. It is difficult for them to realize that this procedure can change their lives dramatically. They will be healed. They will solve their problems in relationship with their partners, help all members of their family become healthy, happy and successful.

- Is karma purification really that expensive?

Zhannabelle: If they ask you a question about the price of your health, can you name it? No. Because it’s priceless! When a person comes to my seminars and starts regular classes, his health is greatly improved.

Many people had big health problems and have been unsuccessfully treated in different clinics for many years, spending a lot of money on drugs and medical care before joining our classes. No one has guessed to advise them to cleanse their karma! On the contrary, they recommended new drugs and surgeries.

The person was totally sure that expensive treatment will certainly be effective. Maybe such treatment helped someone else, but not him.

The treatment was ineffective; the money was wasted in his case. But the person still hopes for the best, and everything starts over again. Reminds of Samsara wheel…

- Why it happens this way?

Zhannabelle: It's no surprising. There are three industries at the heart of our lives.

First of all, it's food. Buying food, culinary delicacies eats up most of our money. There is a supermarket in every building. We eat too much. Sometimes we get lost in our desires, and we don’t know what tasty dish we want treat ourselves with. We don’t even eat the food we have but we fill the fridge with another serving again. Excess eating and lack of mobility cause weight problems and various diseases.

If we get sick, we use help of another industry - pharmaceuticals. As well as grocery stores, there is a pharmacy in every street. We buy numerous drugs trying to cure diseases caused by malnutrition.

We turn to the next industry - the beauty industry – right after that. It allows us to hide all our problems and diseases under a layer of cosmetics or with the help of plastic surgeries.

Nails, skin, eyebrows, eyelashes, expensive balms for wrinkles and bruises under eyes - all these products only create a false image of a beautiful and healthy person.

Hiding our defects s under the mask of expensive cosmetics, we lose time that could be used to heal.

- People just don't know another way to live.

Zhannabelle: But it's in our power to change the situation! No, you can't buy energy for money, nor can you buy happiness or health. But you can really get energy from the universe, from nature, from the Place of Power. To learn how to use this power, you must regularly attend our classes, which are currently held online and are available to everyone!

You can gain a unique experience of individual practice and experience the protective properties of talismans, learn how it works at my seminars.

And then you will realize that the cost of seminars is not really that high, because in return you will receive invaluable knowledge and skills that will change you dramatically, make you healthy, successful and happy.

At the seminars you will meet other students of mine, hear their wonderful stories about my classes that have turned their lives upside down.

You will see with your own eyes what an ordinary person can achieve by improving the energy abilities that nature itself has put in you.

You'll never see it in commercials or on television. That is why you must make your choice with your heart. Choose the path of spiritual development to make your life and that of your family better, more successful, happier.

The Higher Powers will help you do that. It is important to open your heart to these changes, to let this energy transmitted by your mentor into your heart. You will be able to buy protective talismans that will strengthen your energy. The result will surprise you a lot.

When choosing between a vacation on Hawaiian beaches or a retreat at the Place of Power, make the right decision!

It probably won't be much different in value, but what you get at the retreat is simply disproportionate in price. It is well-being, happiness, wonderful changes in life, health and beauty from nature!

Divine power has chosen me to be your guide, and I can help you find the right path!

#self improvement #coaching #spirituality #karma #zhannabelle

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homelilys · 4 years

Text

Declutter 101: how to declutter your home and your life

Very few things feel better than having a junk-free home. The thought of having a well-arranged life with less stuff is so refreshing. There are so many upsides of having fewer possessions; fewer things to organize obviously and consequently, less stress and time during clean up especially for the woman who is a homemaker. Fewer items in a home also make it look clean, cozy and in fashion. Gone are the days when people kept unnecessary stuff they don’t need in their houses.

Through one’s busy schedule, it is kind of hard to make everything in place. There are some days that a person cannot fix and arrange some papers on the table, or even clean up the utensils after cooking around. Sometimes, due to late night work, they tend to forget to tidy these items they used such as electronic gadgets or a mug of coffee. Afterward, as they wake up in the morning, they just forget about it. Others somehow carelessly pull their clothes from the closet which made everything unfolded and disorganized. These are some issues people tend to face which causes a lot of more unpleasant Fengshui for their home.

A lot of individuals are facing this kind of circumstance from which unorganized stuff is seen all around. It is truly a challenge to fix all things at the same time and to mostly maintain its greatest look. If you try to find a missing item at home, you cannot see it right away, and if you need to use a particular object for today, you still have a hard time uncovering other things. As an example, if people need to find a tiny key for their car, they still need to run around the house to find it. They still need to check it in the bedroom, on the kitchen tops, or even in the living room. After about 15 minutes, they will figure out how they just got too late for their meeting. Indeed, having so much cluttering at home is a challenge. The only solution is to declutter.

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Deciding to declutter your home might seem overwhelming and tiring at first, you begin to ask yourself, where do I start from? The truth is, we cannot say the process will be entirely free from stress and work. But what we do know is that there are better ways to go junk free for your home that has proven to be fun and less stressful. These creative tips to declutter and organize are geared towards helping people who honestly do not know where to start. But first, what is decluttering?

What is decluttering?

To prevent the above said distressing situations, it is better for you to find your time in fixing your things from all the parts of your house. That is what you called decluttering. Decluttering or being unclutter to your things can make your life easier. It is simply organizing stuff you always need in your daily lives, and even items you may store for a while. Decluttering is a technique that leads your place to be systematized, categorized and arranged depending on most used items. As an analogy, you may think of a box of first aid kit. You can place the box in your bathroom. In it, It may contain cotton tips, band-aids, bandages, alcohol, or items to clean wounds. It may also compose of medicines. Through putting together these things, you can easily find the thing you need. If there is an emergency, you know where to run and where to get it.

This post shows decluttering tips for hoarders. In fact, this photo is a real home for a hoarder.

When to start decluttering?

It is hard to decide when to start decluttering, but you may try planning a schedule first, and then start cleaning up some things or throwing unnecessary items. Afterward, you can do it step by step all over your home, so everything will look better as time goes by. However, the key to making it is to prepare yourself and be motivated to start to declutter. As soon as possible, you hurriedly need to decide.

Who needs to declutter?

Well, it is your own responsibility to do this decluttering, and not for your nannies or helpers to do this task. If you let other people fix your things, you will have issue of knowing where they had stored those things. You will also be confused about how they have had organized those items. Also, it will get difficult for you to memorize all the things they fix and place. Maybe you just ask for some help and support, but you must be a hundred percent determined to fix your own things.

Undeniably, starting this kind of home project is somehow overwhelming. You badly need a huge amount of determination to take this challenge. Lots of time and endless patience are the keys to make this activity work. Also, extra effort and courage must be brought to manage your own home. Always remember that this will pay off in the long term. However, right now, you may be thinking of how are you going to start?

How to start decluttering?

First, prepare yourself and do little by little. Start from the easiest and simplest before jumping onto the most complex decluttering. Try a drawer or a corner of a room. Afterward, practice decluttering. You may begin it as a new task, but you can make it as a habit. Start placing it to the original location after you used something.

Secondly, you may write about your plan. Feel free to decide where to clean first or what area needs to be decluttered right away. For example, the hallway, kitchen tops, bedroom, bathroom sink, and cabinets. Then, plot the schedule you may follow and your tasks for the day. You may also indicate your goals for the week and month. Through this, you will be all guided and well planned.

Most importantly before starting to declutter, you must not worry about perfection. It is advisable for you to take this task easily. You may be overwhelmed by the idea, but you can do this. You do not need to have perfection in arranging and fixing everything. As long as you are contented and in peace, your home will be nice and neat.

Three (3) decluttering strategies

Decluttering doesn’t have to be done in one day, just like earlier stated, it can span for days or weeks, in little bits. You can choose any of the following methods listed below to fit into your schedule, especially if you’re not up for the stress that comes from doing it all at once.

First, Focus on the primary areas

If you usually bump into stuff near the kitchen area, clear that first. If you have trouble dressing up for work every day because your dressing table is usually crapped up and you can’t seem to find anything that should be your primary focus. Declutter places that affect you more critically every day first, this will help lessen the burden.

Second, Start from the front door

You can decide to plan your clean up in a way that I very organized by deciding to start from the front door of the living area and then move in, area by area until the back door leading out of the house is clear. This way you always nowhere else is left to clean up, so if you’re done with one room, you know the kitchen is next.

Third, Do a clean sweep daily

Each day just gets a trash can or bag and deposit any visible item that isn’t useful to you. This is a gradual approach to having a junk-free home. From old clothes lying around to bad kitchen utensils, cosmetic products that are long overdue, you can just trash without thinking twice.

declutting strategory involves the need for tools in addition to the daily sweeping. For instance , check this under stair storage concept by Ikea or this cabniet system which helps improve the look and feel of your home tremendously.

Where and how to declutter?

Kitchen decluttering 101

You should start in the heart of your home, from where the satisfaction from food takes place. It is none other than your kitchen. You may start cleaning up your sink by washing all the dishes in there. You may sanitize your utensils first and arrange them orderly in their cabinets. Try to separate spoons, forks, to other utensils. The mugs and glasses must also be arranged properly. Different plates are needed to be in assembled based on their shape, size, and designs. Afterward, all the cooking equipment should be put in a single place. Kitchen accessories like table mats should also be in a single ware.

You may create extended cabinet storage for you to divide each item in the kitchen. You can have a quick Do-It-Yourself (DIY) project using some spare woods. These cabinets can separate cups from the plates and pans from the kettle. Furthermore, you can easily find the utensil you need once you are done arranging the materials based on their use and category.

Then, you may put some labels on any rack of your cabinet. Nicely printed labels or calligraphy plated labels could make a big difference for you to be more organized and more familiar of your own kitchen. This saves a lot of time figuring up where you place the wine opener, especially when you seriously need a glass of wine.

Some experts also revealed kitchen hacks to save and maximize some spaces. Other use hanged cabinets or holders that can be fixed on the walls. This will be a great help to easily locate utensils that are needed most of the time. Others are hanging their frying pans, strainers, whisker, spatulas and other light-weighted kitchen utensils. On the other hand, others use bars of magnets to attach magnetic knives and arranged those by size. Some hang their mugs, cups, or wine glasses. These hanging styles of kitchen items can also add some decorative and functional to maximize the area inside the kitchen.

As for the sink, you may use an appealing and adorable hand soap pumps together with your liquid dish soap. You can also hang your sponge, hand and table towels to let it dry right away.

Further suggestions to declutter your kitchen is the handy spice organizers from where you can place different spices like oregano, thyme, paprika, and more. Through this organizer found beside your stove, you can get the mix the flavors you need for your tasteful recipe. You may also store these spices in glass containers with the same figures with each other. Put some label, and arrange it by color or by name.

After all these reminders, you may step up to your refrigerator and start arranging the food in them. First, try to clean the freezer, and put the frozen products by layer. A container of ice cream, hotdogs, frozen fish fillet, and others must be placed accordingly. Then, separate the ice packs onto them. Afterward, clean your refrigerator. Throw unimportant products there. Then, divide the fresh vegetables and fruits from the food in there. Arrange them by category.

Indeed, the kitchen and dining room is so big for a starter. However, after accomplishing your task here, you will get more motivated to clean everything. Start little by little, as you try to fix more and more.

Bathroom decluttering 101

After a big assignment to your kitchen, you jump into your bathroom. You just need to clean the sink, toilet, and shower area. Fix the storage bins for your towels, toiletries, and other cleaning products.

First, remove all things inside your bathroom. Brush the sink, wipe the mirrors, and clean the toilet bowl. Then, brush the shower area. After that, start placing the floor mats to prevent slipping.

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Secondly, arrange your toiletries such as soap, shampoo, conditioner, and scrubs, inside the shower area. Then go to your storage bins to organize your towels according to their size and color. Afterward, pull the cabinets for your beauty products to see if there are expired products. Throw those to clean up unnecessary items. Get your lotions, colognes, body sprays, deodorants and arrange them properly to your cabinet or even at the side of your sink.

Others also use hooks and holders to hang towels, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. But some use a nice jar or glass to place their toothbrush. As for cotton, cotton buds, and face pads, they store it in uniform glass containers with lids. These prevent dust or other foreign materials to enter their hygienic products.

Another secret tip for your bathroom, you may use the space under the sink as storage. You can have one to two baskets to place large towels or bathroom cleaners such as brushes, toilet scrub, and wastebaskets. These could hide your cleaning materials inside the bathroom, especially when you have guests. You may also throw old shower curtains and replace it with a new one. In that case, you will have brighter covers without any molds or dark holes.

Besides this appearance satisfaction, it also important to maintain the refreshing and pleasant smell of your bathroom. Please use covered waste bins as proper sanitization. Then, you may also use some air fresheners or bathroom colognes to give more comfort in using your bathroom. Toilet bar fresheners are also helpful, you may hang it beside the toilet or beneath the sink. Through this, you will get more excited to have your satisfying shower after a long day at work.

Bedroom decluttering 101

Decluttering the bedroom will also be fulfilling to everyone. You may start fixing the bed itself by fitting the sheets to the bed and by suiting the pillowcases to the pillows. Folding the blankets or fixing the comforters will also be helpful. Afterward, you clean up the side tables, the chargers you just used, and the cords you just plugged off. Then, you also fix the table for the television or radio.

According to experts on clutter, it is essential to have a bin or basket beside your bed or beneath your open side table to create an undercover bin for dirty clothes, or throw pillows. You can also hide some magazines in there.

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EASY ACCESS & CLUTTER-FREE STORAGE — Front and top zipper opening makes it easy to store and remove contents — Multi-purpose for seasonal clothing, bedding, blankets, comforters, linens, holiday decorations, books , toys, baby clothes, shoes, handbags, and more

PORTABLE WITH LABEL HOLDER — Secure carry handles for easy transport — Allows quick packing/unpacking between seasons, traveling, moving, or as needed — Zips close to protect contents from dust, pest, water damage, moths, and smell — Card holder on side allows for easy content labeling

STACKABLE & FOLDABLE — Sturdy frame stacks above/beneath additional organizers — Collapses flat and tucks away when not in use — Store on shelves, in larger chests, closets, buffet hutches, garage, basement, attic, or under bed in home, office, dorm —To use, metal frame pops open into a very large storage bin

CLEAR WINDOW DESIGN — Has 2 clear windows to view contents at glance with 2 zippered flap doors for protection — Metal wire frame sustains shape— Easy set-up, frame simply pops open into a large storage cube — Made of 100% polyester — Dust-proof, moisture-proof, moth-proof — Clean with damp cloth and air dry — Measures approximately 19.75" L X 16" W X 13.75" H

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Inside the bedroom, you may also have your cabinets and shelves of clothing. You may also take time folding your bedroom clothes and place it directly to the wash bins. Then, before jumping onto the shower, you may decide first of what to wear. As you decide on the outfit of the day, you may start arranging your clothes according to their color and category. Pants should be with pants and separated from shorts. You may also separate the tops from bottoms. Then, your undergarments must be folded accurately and placed hidden to the front side of the shelf.

You may also arrange your clothing accessories like belts and hats to a separate box or drawer. Other accessories like you watch and jewelry should be stored properly for they are quite expensive. Your shoes must also be arranged based on their use, color, and type.

Others also have books inside their bedroom. You may fix your shelves of books based on their genres and alphabetical order. It will just be like a mini-library. On the other hand, some individuals prefer to put a bench at the end of their beds. This could also be extra storage for other items inside your bedroom.

Living room decluttering 101

A peaceful living room is the goal of anyone to make this room in according to its name “living”. The room must be warm and cozy, and messy things should definitely be not included. Thus, decluttering is the major key.

The center table or sometimes even called coffee table is also placed at the focal point of the living room. It must be cleaned, neat, and tidy. There should be no plates, papers, or unnecessary objects to be seen there. Some tried to place two to three layers of books and magazines. Others used a variety of sizes and colors of candles and flowers. These minimal items could work, however, it is advisable to have a clutter-free center table. According to a stylist named Stephanie Hanes, the center table should be 75% clear. Well, you can still on with some table clothing, but mostly it must be clear.

NISUNS OT01 Linen Folding Storage Ottoman Cube Footrest Seat, 12 X 12 X 12 Inches (Linen Orange)

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Size: 12"x12"x12", can afford 100kg/220lbs. Foldable side: 12'x12'x1.6". Weight: 1.5kg/3.3lbs.

Generous Storage: store magazines, books, pillows, throws, TV remotes, kid toys, dog toys blankets and so on, de-clutter your living room or bedroom.

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As for the furniture, a few pieces could work. The size and position of the couches matter. Some are in L-shape, some are just separated from each other and some are in round-shape. As long as it looks satisfactory and agreeing with the color combination, it is acceptable. To declutter the objects there, the pillows must be arranged properly. Less number of pillows could do better, as it plays a little color and style, but definitely less cluttering. Moreover, some pieces of blankets may also be added, but it should be suitably fitted to the couch.

The floor mats or carpets can also be played with its color, design, and material. Printed carpets can be paired with your plain colored couches. However, if you so many colors on the couch, you may choose to have simpler carpets to make it more contrast.

To make your living room look brighter, you may use color-coordinated curtains that can uplift the room’s mood. The length and style depending on your taste, but it should be clipped most of the time, and pulled off if it is too bright or sunny outside.

Another factor in your living room is the lightings. You may try easy-to-clean lamps or small chandeliers to be hanged at the ceilings. You can also put not so bright lanterns to have different choices.

Through all these suggestions, it is most important to think that the living room must look cozy and appealing. This room welcomes the guests, and you do not want to have a bad impression as they enter your home. The living room sets the standard of how you clutter or how you declutter.

Four (4) simple steps to declutter your home Fast

Now that you have general ideas on how to declutter your kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room, let’s delves into a more organized and simple 4 step process to declutter on a budget. Here you go:

a- Identify the clutters

As a homemaker, before you begin taking all the stuff out, you need to clearly define what clutter is. It is not uncommon for people to be hesitant towards letting go of things they do not need because they say to themselves, “it might be useful someday”. Often times, that day never comes, leading to more and more junk piling up. So the question now is, what is clutter? Clutter is any item in your home that you do not need or have any use for, Decluttering or uncluttering is simply taking unnecessary stuff out in order to make room for those that matter. If you look at the stuff in your home, you will be able to use this simple definition to point out things that you really need to take out. Just a side note, some people would consider decluttering as a process towards the minimalist lifestyle.

declutter fast how to get your home in order almost immediately. Learn where to start organizing your home using these decluttering tips and tricks. Via

b- Set a Goal

Now that you have been able to pinpoint what matters in your home and what has really overstayed its welcome, the next step is goal setting. This means drawing up a plan that will make the whole process unnecessarily daunting. Part of your goal setting is to consider the time-frame i.e. would you want to declutter in one day or declutter in a month’s time? All this makes a difference. In fact, keeping the goal will also help you keep abreast of what has been done and what is yet to be cleared. You can follow the below steps;

Identify and write down the cluttered spots in your home: Be sure to tackle every room, nuke, and cranny.

Prioritize which rooms to clean up first: Perhaps the first room to consider is how to declutter a bedroom. This is because the bedroom is where you spend the quality night to recover for the hectic day. Next which room needs to be cleaned first shall be based on the severity of its clutter.

Set a deadline: This might be in hours or days depending on how much stuff needs to be uncluttered. Setting a time limit serves as a reminder that you need to get things going, and on time too. It could also feel like taking up a challenge which makes it more fun. Some people would suggest the 31 days to clean the house but for me, the timeline shall be split into different chunk i.e. Short term, medium terms and long terms, which shall span from one day to 6 months.

Now that you have done with your goal setting towards minimalist living, the next step is to see which method to use. These goal setting will show you how to be a minimalist.

c- Choose a sorting method

Before you get started on the selection and sorting process, it would be wise to know what method to apply to make the decluttering process faster and easier. One of the most popular methods is the three-box method. In this system, you pick three boxes or three containers of your choice and label them, either mentally or physically. One of the boxes should be for stuff you want to “keep”, another for stuff you want to “get rid of” and the third for “storage”. After the entire decluttering is over and spaces are clear, you will need to arrange all items in the “keep” box neatly where they belong. The content of the “get rid of” box should be carried away, either for giving out or for trashing. Finally, the storage box should be carried to the storage area, to keep them from lying around.

d- Get Rid of Unnecessary Items

This is basically the main part of the whole exercise, the actual decluttering. After you have sorted all your possessions out into the three boxes, what happens to the ones you do not want anymore. Well, you have a lot of options about what to do with them.

Recycle them: This is especially particular to home items like glass, plastic, electronics etc. that are recyclable. You can put them in the recycle bin or take them to the nearest recycling location and drop them. This is a way of also doing your bit to ensure an eco-friendly environment.

Donate them: This applies to things that can still be useful, not just to you. Clothing, books and some other household items fall into this category. There are lots of charity organizations (I support salvation army) that accept these offers and help with distributing them to homes that need them If you know someone or family that needs these items, you could also give them directly.

Sell them through Garage sale: Well how about getting some extra cash from stuff that could come in handy to other people? If there’s any association nearby that helps to organize these mini-sales events, you can register to participate and make some little money from your decluttered items. Think of it as a reward for your hard work. Similar to the garage sale, you can also put them on eBay or on online classified ads.

Haul them away: If there’s so much garbage to be thrown out, you should really consider renting a dumpster to roll them away. Try to check with your neighbors to see if anyone needs this service too so that the bill can be split.

Conclusion remark on decluttering 101

Decluttering a home can be so much fun if you toss in the right tactics. Imagine a home free from all the stuff that has consistently made your life more depressing and harder. Your entire mood is affected by how your house looks and the organization of stuff in them. Take time out to declutter once in a while to keep yourself happy and feeling fulfilled. You can splatter the home with decorations like wallpapers, flowers, and accents. A change in the arrangement pattern of the entire home once in a while will lift up your spirit.

To sum everything, you need to remember that the house will reflect on the householder. It is your responsibility to clean up and make time to maintain your place happy and cozy. It is advisable to take this decluttering seriously for it will help you have a cleaner environment that will protect you from diseases and other forms of unpleasant circumstances. As long as you are being hands-on to your home and its appearance, hidden or unhidden corners, you will be more satisfied. A clean home will reflect on your minimalist lifestyle. This sums up my tips on becoming a minimalist and on decluttering inspiration.

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Cluttered Mess to Organized Success Workbook: Declutter and Organize your Home and Life with over 100 Checklists and Worksheets (Plus Free Full Downloads)

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MISSLO Dual Sided Hanging Jewelry Organizer with 40 Pockets and 24 Hook & Loops Closet Necklace Holder for Earring Bracelet Ring Chain with Hanger, Black

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