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solarwonux · 3 years

Text

6. “Feel free to admire me.”

19. “Give me a kiss please.”

non!idol taehyung x f!reader

warnings: angst if you squint, slight mentions of going crazy, a teeny tiny bit suggestive, minimal editing,

note: helloooo, thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy this one, and if it’s bad I apologize from the bottom of my heart, it’s my first time writing anything but academic papers in like 3 months. And it’s my first time writing for bts, so i’m dusting off the cobwebs. Either way thank you for reading it means the world to me.xx

masterlist || drabble game

You were acting strange

Taehyung noted as he watched you scramble around the apartment, running a frustrated hand through your hair, mumbling underneath your breath as you tore the apartment apart looking for your glasses.

You had been doing that a lot. Living up in the clouds, distracted. Your mind racing to the point you would forget what you were saying mid-sentence or misplacing things you had just been using in obvious places. He knew something was bothering you, keeping you from grounding yourself back down to Earth, and he so badly wanted to know. But after almost being together for almost a decade he knew that asking you what was happening would only frustrate you and keep you from coming back down to Earth. To him.

So he sat back, a small smiling forming against his face. He cradled his almost empty wine glass between his index and middle fingers, the setting sun reflecting off your glasses on the coffee table. The same place you had left them earlier before walking to the bathroom to wash your face. He could tell you, to stop your endless pacing and ease your mind a little. But he was oddly amused as you made your way around the living room, retracing your steps, endlessly.

The movie the two of you had been watching, paused. The wine bottle you had refused to share with him was reaching its wilts end as he kept refilling it every time you sat down next to him silently looking around for a few minutes and then getting up again to make your way around the living for the umpteenth time.

“I’m going crazy Tae.” You blew out a raspberry, blowing away the few strands of hair that had escaped your ponytail. “How can my glasses just disappear, I was literally just wearing them.” You threw your hands up in the air as you made your way into the kitchen. Lifting up the stacks of manila folders you had brought home from work to peacefully look over throughout the long weekend.

“Have you checked the bathroom?” He said, hiding his smirk behind his glass of wine taking the last sip. You scoffed, throwing your arms up in the air before walking down the hallway to the bathroom.

Taehyung shook his head reaching for the wine bottle on the coffee table. “Your eyesight isn’t even that bad, you don’t need your glasses to watch the movie.” He said emptying the rest of the wine into his glass and sat back on the couch, tilting his head to the side as you stomped your way back into the living room.

You gave him a pointed look before rounding the corner of the couch and sitting down next to him again. “Babe, I’m sorry.” You exclaimed dramatically, hiding your face into the side of his body, making him laugh softly. “I’m going insane and now you’re stuck with me till death do us apart.” You whined, huffing out a loud sigh. His soft boyish laugh ringing in your ears. The slight irritation you had gained during your impossible quest, bubbling in the pit of your stomach.

“Sounds like a dream.” The sarcasm burning brightly in his vocal chord and you could almost feel him rolling his eyes. “Now, give me a kiss please.” He placed his fingers underneath your chin lifting your face up gently as he puckered his lips drastically.

Annoyed you pushed his face away, crossing your arms in front of you and pouting your lips. Mock hurt evident in his features. “You don’t deserve one all you did was watch me as I slowly lost my mind.”

“I can’t admire my beautiful wife now?”

“I mean...feel free to admire me, but not when I’m one step away from being admitted into a psych ward.” You leaned over, taking his wine glass out of his hand, bringing it up to your lips. A drink is what you needed. A small sip to calm down your racing thoughts, before you got up to look for your glasses again.

You threw your head back, waiting for the red liquid to reach your lips, savoring the taste before it even reached your mouth or your taste. And when it did, when it coated your lips enough for a drop to enter your mouth, your eyes grew wide in panic, remembering why you had been refused to drink with Taehyung tonight and why you had been so up in your head lately.

Taehyung watched as the scene unfolds in front of him. Instantly he had felt your rush of panic and his worries got the best of him. Acting on his fight or flight instincts he immediately took the glass from your hand, setting it down on the coffee table next to your forgotten glasses. “What’s wrong? I didn’t want to ask, but now you’re worrying me.” He placed his hands on your shoulders shaking you slightly, bringing you back to him.

Your eyes were glossy and distant as you breathed out a sigh looking into his eyes for a slight second before planting your gaze on the beige throw pillow you had been hugging earlier. It had helped ease your nerves before and now with Taeyhyungs piercing stare, burning holes into the top of your head. It was failing to do what you had wanted it to do. Comfort you.“I don’t know if I’m ready to tell you.” You whispered, playing with the little tassel on one of the four ends. “I mean I want to tell you, but I don’t know why I am so scared.”

“Is it something bad?” He said carefully. He could feel the air getting caught in the back of his throat as he tried to keep himself from thinking of every possible scenario, good or bad, to have you acting the way you were.

You lifted your head, chewing on your bottom lip. “It depends.” You shrugged slightly avoiding his eyes and settling upon the tv screen. The paused movie nowhere to be seen as it was now asking you if you wanted to keep watching.

“Depends on what? You’re scaring me.” The softens of his voice faltering as his grip on your arms got tighter, trying to keep himself from breaking down.

“On your reaction. I thought I would have more time to come to terms with it but I don’t think I can hold it in any longer,” you said in a haste. Your words combining with one another as Taehyung tried to keep up with your fever.

“Just say it...please. I can feel my heart trying to leave my body.”

“Taehyung,” you took a deep breath, digging your nails into the pillow, and turned to face the only man you had ever loved. “I’m pregnant.” You whispered with wide eyes. Maybe you weren’t going crazy but after finding out three weeks ago that you were with child, the thought of telling your husband the news was driving you to the point of no return.

It wasn’t like you and Taehyung didn’t want kids, the two of you had been trying for more than a year with little to no success. But the second you saw the little positive symbol on the pink and white stick, you couldn’t believe it. So you took another and another and another until you had about ten positive pregnancy tests staring back at you, mocking you. All you could do was cry.

Taehyung’s eyes sparkled with tears as he threw the pillow you were holding to the side and hugged you tightly. He buried his face into the crock of your neck leaving behind a trail of loving kissing trying to comfort your shaking form.

His biggest wish had finally come true.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier you big idiot?” He raised his head. His hands trailed up your spine until they reached your head. His thumbs swiping underneath your eyes taking your falling tears with him. “Why were you scared?”

“I just...it finally happened and I couldn’t believe it. I thought that if I said it outloud I would wake up from a dream or something.” You hiccuped.

Taehyung shook his head in disbelief a slight chuckle falling out of his lips as he leaned over and kissed your cheek. “That head of yours is your biggest enemy. No wonder you were in such a dreamlike daze the last two weeks.”

“Are you happy?” You pouted slightly, holding his arms gently, scared he would let you go.

“I’m more than happy, I’m so excited. I could literally run down the street naked, waking up the whole neighborhood, risking a public offense violation, just to let the whole world know that I am finally going to be a dad”

You laughed, throwing your arms around his neck and bringing him closer to you. “I’m starting to regret ever saying anything, I should’ve just kept it a secret for the next eight months.”

“Hmm, and here I was thinking that I should probably tell you where you left your glasses. Now I think I’m going to keep it a secret for the next eight months.” Teahyung stuck out his tongue at you before settling into the couch and bringing you along with him, making you whine in annoyance.

“I knew you knew where they were.” You grumbled crossing your arms in front of your chest. “I’ll let you decide on the first letter of your childs name if you tell me.” You sang, poking his side gently, making him yelp out in pain.

He turned to you, pouting, rubbing his side in pain, “first letter and their first outfit when we leave the hospital.” He challenged, sticking his hand out for you to shake.

“Kim Taehyung, it looks like you got yourself a solid deal.” You said, encasing your hand in his, giving it a firm shake before pulling you into his side. His arm entrapping you to keep you from moving and placed a loving kiss against your forehead.

“You left them on the coffee table.” He pulled away, presenting your clear framed glasses to you. You let out a sigh of relief, quickly grabbing them, slippin them on and cuddling into his side.

“You could’ve told me earlier, I really thought I was losing my mind for a second back there.”

“If I didn’t would I have found out about our lovely baby bean?” He grabbed the remote, pressing the ‘continue watching’ button on the t.v. and unpaused the movie.

“I see your point.” You settled further into the side, finally letting yourself enjoy the movie. Earlier you had been ansty, pushing his hands away as they kept traveling to your lower belly. Though, his intentions were far naughtier then what was playing in your mind. But you were afraid he would finally figure it out.

Five minutes

Five minutes was all it took before Tayhung paused the movie again and sat up in panic. “Oh my god,” He mumbled before turning to face you, eyes wide in horror and shook. “Babe I’m going to be a dad.”

You laughed, squishing his cheeks in between the palm of your hands. “Yeah I know, I thought I made that pretty clear a few minutes ago.” You teased as his eyes raced from your face and down to your midsection.

“I know but I was thinking about how we had sex last night and now I’m scared. Like what if we hurt the baby, what if I hurt the baby.”

“I don’t think that’s possible. You’re fine Tae, just play the movie.” You patted his cheeks lightly before getting up and walking into the kitchen, “do you want popcorn?”

He stood up and quickly made his way to the kitchen, leaning his forearms against the counter, watching as you placed the bag of popcorn into the microwave. “How can you be so calm about this, how do we know the babies okay? We need to call the doctor now and book an appointment.”

“Stop worrying, I’m sure baby is fine, but you can ask the doctor in a week during my first ultrasound.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive, now do you want popcorn or not?”

“That’s a stupid question, I always want popcorn.”

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curiousconch · 3 years

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Scarlet Letters

Chapter 2 of Ricochet (An Open Heart AU)

Catch up here: Prologue | Chapter 1

Chapter Synopsis: Grappling with the aftermath of her breakup with Rafael, Heather is faced by yet another threat, forcing her out of her apartment. Bryce and her other friends come to her aide.

Pairings: Rafael Aveiro x MC (Dr. Heather Song) | Bryce Lahela x MC (Dr. Heather Song)

Words: 2.4k+ | Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Romance

Rating/Warnings: Mature (16+) / language, hints of violence

Author’s Notes: Majority of the characters are owned by Pixelberry, except the main character Heather Song. Please let me know if you want me to tag you in the next chapters. Comments and suggestions are certainly very welcome! Thank you for reading!

Heather can't remember how she covered the distance to her building, nor how she arrived in front of her apartment door. Grateful for the silence that embraced her as she got inside, she went directly to her room. Once the door shut closed, she finally let go of the flood that brimmed from her eyes. Crouching down on the carpeted floor, in that dark rainy night, she sobbed like never before.

What she can only remember is how hopeful she was tonight before it all ended.

She planned the surprise for him on the first day she landed in Maryland, coming to the realization that she was waging an unnecessary war against him and his efforts to comfort her. It never occurred to her that she will be too late.

She squinted at the picture of the bodies entangled in Rafael's living room couch. She can still vividly see it, along with the sound of the breaking bottle of wine she bought at the airport.

She heard rumors. That's all she thought it was - baseless whispers of people seeing Rafael with someone else. Even her friends Sienna and Elijah tried to warn her of what was happening, but she was so deep in denial that she didn't dare to listen. She trusted him that much.

Her sweet and charming Raf. Her savior. Her love. She never wanted to be so wrong as badly as she did at that moment.

The man whom she thought she exactly needed and wanted was the same person who wreaked havoc in her soul.

She wanted to forgive him, in her heart she wanted to give him another chance. But her brain screamed against it, her past life bursting in all shades of red inside her mind.

The portraits of her teenage years flashed before her eyes one by one, like horrific creatures escaping from her personal Pandora's box:

That fateful day she came home early because she was sick during her junior year in high school, the sound of voices in the master bedroom.

Her dad and a strange woman enamored.

The bags and boxes containing her father's belongings. The divorce and its fallout.

Her mom working night and day to put her through school, leaving her alone most of the time.

Cancer. Losing her mom because of it. The reason why she wanted to be a doctor.

It cost her half of her life to submerge those experiences in the trenches of her adolescence. But now, all of it was bursting over the surface, like large waves in the sea of her present. She felt like drowning.

Helpless, she wailed, wanting nothing but the indescribable hurt to fade away. But it didn't, instead, it stayed, for how long she have no idea.

With her ears ringing and her whole body sore, she fell into a troubled slumber. It wasn't until the next morning that she saw the scarlet letters painted on her walls.

***

Jordan huffed as he jogged away from the sidewalk into the alley nearby. His black hoodie cast a shadow dark enough to hide his face.

He discarded the plastic bags in the dumpster, a soft thump sounded as the spray paint canisters rattled against the bottom.

He found his way to his parked car nearby and jumped in, removing his leather gloves and shoving it into the compartment. He briefly looked at his watch - 10:36pm. He roughly had about 24 minutes before the meeting.

Backing up from the alley, he drove out to the main street and made sure he wasn't being followed. He took the next turn to the highway, flipping on his radio, humming along the music.

When he arrived at his destination, he found a nearly-empty parking lot. He found a solitary Lexus near the back fence and parked his car several meters away. He took a discreet path towards the black car and hopped inside, pulling the hood off his head.

"It's done," he spoke to a man in a suit at the back seat, and showed a picture of red spray paint on blue walls. "You'll hear it on the news tomorrow."

The man beside him silently nodded, sneering at the image. He withdrew a thick manila envelope from his side and gave it to Jordan.

"As requested,"

Jordan peeked into the contents, revealing a thick wad of cash and a glint of black metal.

Contented, he stepped out of the vehicle and got back to his own. Turning on the ignition, he thought to himself - Phase 1 check. Time for phase 2.

***

The sound of scrambling footsteps overlapped with the loud and panicked shrieks within the walls of Heather's bedroom.

Jackie came in first, ready to curse the abomination of Heather's screams as she came in to the apartment, after pulling an all-nighter. She stopped in her tracks darting at the direction where the other's frightened gaze was fixated.

After hearing Jackie's panicked shouts, Sienna and Elijah followed suit into Heather's bedroom. Upon entering, all their eyes shot across the pale blue wallpaper, a scene right out of a horror movie, coming to life in front of them.

LEAVE BOSTON NOW, OR ELSE.

The characters were sloppily written in red spray paint, as if someone spelled it in haste.

Sienna was the first one to rush to Heather's side, sliding an arm around her in an attempt to comfort her. Elijah got out of the room to call 911, muffling Jackie as she cursed with a mouth of sailor.

Within 15 minutes, the police arrived.

Elijah also sent a text to their group chat, alerting Aurora and the rest of their friends as to what just transpired.

A flurry of replies came in right after. Bryce's was among those text messages.

His face crumpled with anxiety as he sat staring blankly at his phone. He was in his office, his oak desk was filled with case files, all of which he recently dug out from the records department to assist on the reopening of the investigation.

This recent attempt to terrorize his star witness made him speechless. The person behind this is getting bold, he observed.

He decided to abandon his attempt to work on a Saturday, unable to quell his worries. He stood up, got his leather briefcase and made his way to the parking lot.

He drove as fast as he could, plying through traffic effortlessly, navigating the familiar route using muscle memory. He ran into their apartment building, and practically raced to the closing elevator to bring him to the penthouse.

When the familiar door came into view open, he let himself in, his eyes darting around.

Gone was the serenity of the brunches he shared with the group. The scene he stepped into was just chaos.

A barrage of yellow markers were strewn in the apartment, while several people were trying to collect any traces of evidence left behind by the perp. Police tape marked one doorway, a few voices discussing possible theories as to how the events unfolded.

In the middle of it was a frail figure wrapped in a thick gray blanket, and he instantly recognized who it was. "Hey," he managed to say coolly as he strode towards her.

Heather looked up at the towering figure who just crossed the living room. She offered a weak smile, trying to hide the turbulent emotions inside her.

Bryce could see right through her though, but he just smiled back, understanding that she wasn't quite ready to open up yet. As he reached out to touch her hand, he was interrupted by the sound of Rafael's booming voice as he stormed into the room.

"I came as I heard, are you alright?" Heather's boyfriend said as he rushed in to kneel down in front of her, looking very much concerned.

"What are you doing here?" The hatred in Heather's quiet voice made Bryce's eyebrows shoot up.

He saw Rafael immediately retreat, an apologetic look in his face, as if he forgot who he was. He saw Raf's instantaneous shift, then went to leave them to talk to the police at the now cordoned room.

He gently nudged Heather, a wordless question in his face. She shook her head and frowned, peeking at her roommates and the CSI team moving about the apartment.

Clearly, she didn't want to discuss it with strangers around, Bryce figured. He nodded, his eyes softening as he realized that there was more events to uncover beyond what he can see.

After an hour, the deputy in charge motioned for the group to gather in the living room. Once they were all there, he began to explain that Heather's room will be a designated crime scene indefinitely.

"I strongly suggest staying somewhere else, we don't know the and exact nature of this, at least not yet. Choose a place that offers the the most security, but preferably somewhere nearby."

With this, Bryce saw Rafael about to raise his hand. Seeing the panic in Heather's face, he quickly blocked the other man's attempt.

"Keiki's in boarding school, so I have a spare bedroom. You can stay there temporarily," he winked at Heather, assuring her that he got her back.

"Why should she stay with you? Rafael's an FBI agent. She should stay with him," Jackie contradicted as she stood behind Heather, unable to see her discomfort.

"But that's what exactly the attacker expects. We have to get one step ahead of them." Bryce countered.

"But Rafael's her -"

"Enough." One stern look from Heather was all it took to shut Jackie up, her other roommates visibly confused. She shot them each a pleading glance, making all eyes shift to Rafael's tall figure across the room. He immediately hunched his shoulders as if in concession.

"I'm staying with Bryce temporarily. He's right, we have to be at least a step ahead if I want to stay alive." She mouthed a thank you to Bryce, then turned back to her other friends. "Sienna, can I please borrow a few of your clothes? I can't touch anything in my room, except the suitcase I brought in from my trip."

"Of course." Sienna left the room while the others still shared a puzzled look between Heather and Rafael.

Agreeing to her new housing arrangements, the deputy nodded and excused himself, stepping out the apartment. He beckoned the rest of his team out before leaving behind his card, asking them to give him a call if they remember anything new. Taking that as his queue to leave, Rafael left after, looking deflated.

When the group was all that's left in the penthouse, Heather told them about the breakup, clearing the awkwardness from the room. She told them everything - from catching an early flight to surprise Rafael, to her ending up being the one surprised, witnessing her boyfriend's betrayal.

"That son-ov-a-bitch!" Jackie cussed, Elijah only shook his head. Bryce's reaction was a mixture of speechlessness and confusion.

"I-I know I've told you about my suspicions, but I had no idea Rafael had it in him to prove them right," a meek Sienna told Heather, her firm hand rubbing against her arm.

"Well however you look at it, he fucked up. So bad." Bryce whistled, his mouth stiff with the effort to wrestle with the truth bomb Heather just dropped.

"For once in this life, I agree with you, meathead," Jackie nodded to his direction, her eyes softening as she turned to comfort Heather in her own way.

They each tried to console her, but Heather insisted she was fine. Bryce saw her defensive body language, so he made it his mission to provide Heather an escape route.

"All right people, don't you have sleep to get to? Gotta keep you all well-rested. Can't have you bitten off your asses by Dr. Ramsey, am I right?" Apparently, the mention of the infamous grumpy attending was more than enough to make them back off.

He grabbed the duffel bag Sienna produced and grabbed her black suitcase along. Heather removed the thick blanket around her and replaced it with her brown trench coat hanging on the couch.

After what seemed like endless hugging and assuring each of them that she'll be fine, she followed Bryce into the elevator to the garage.

They loaded the bags onto his silver Camry's trunk in silence, and got into the car. Heather instantly sighed in relief as she settled into the passenger's seat. Bryce navigated his way out of the basement and into the street, his amber eyes alternately darting from the road to his friend.

"Well, you look like shit."

"Thanks?" she smiled back at him, unable to stifle a chuckle.

"No problem. You know I'm not one to give false commentary." He grinned, before finally focusing in his driving.

It wasn't long before they arrived in Bryce's sleek condominium complex. She knew the building was newly-built and probably the most secure residence in the city money can afford. Bryce called it Boston's Fort Knox, so when he offered his place, it seemed to be the best solution.

It was initially a bachelor's pad, with enough space for a kitchen, a living area with floor to ceiling windows, and two bedrooms. But over the past few months, it transformed into something more homey, a place where the Lahela siblings can call their own.

It wasn't Heather's first time there. She spent many of her day offs there, all just to help him with his relationship with Keiki, Bryce's teenage sister. She also had the most hand in how it looks inside now.

As they stepped into the condo, Bryce couldn't help but notice how Heather's looked around. The sight of her in his place brought back fond memories.

After a few moments, he urged her to move forward, and led her to the bedroom across the hall.

He unlocked the door and let her in, a mixture of yellow, blue and white interiors welcomed her. It was a homage to the sun, sea and sand of their native state Hawaii.

"Do you want anything? A drink? Something to eat? Boxing gloves to punch someone with?" Bryce leaned on the room's doorway, watching her as she settled in.

As if on queue, her stomach rumbled, and he can't help but laugh.

"Do you still have a pack of ramyun here? I'll come out to cook once I don't look like the piece of shit you just called me." Heather rolled her eyes at him, grabbing a towel from the nearby dresser.

"Nah, I'll whip it up myself you just make yourself presentable to eat my majestic korean noodles." He bowed to her like a butler would before setting course back to the kitchen.

She snickered as she stepped into the shower. Leave it to Bryce Lahela to lighten up the mood.

Tags - @choicesficwriterscreations @eleanorbloom @ramsey-lahela

#open heart #open heart 2 #rafael aveiro #rafael aveiro x mc #bryce lahela #choices fanfiction #choices #open heart fanfiction #choices fic writers creations #bryce lahela x mc #bryce x mc #rafael x mc

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aesop1 · 4 years

Text

the office documentary [2]

jungkook x reader

a/n: okay before anyone questions me: yes, i get all of my romantic scenes from the sims because ive never experienced love. everything you read is because i fall in love so easily in the sims.

word count: 9.2k

warnings: none

_________

jungkook was, to put it simply, flabbergasted. yes, that's right, flabbergasted. shook, frazzled, flustered, whatever the word may be. his eyebrow had shot up, his eyes had narrowed into slits, his lips pursed into a thin line. he had to have sat there for a good minute or two, just staring at his two higher ups as if he misheard something. oh, he must've misheard something. they couldn't have said what he thought they just said.

"pardon?" he cleared his throat, his voice having raised a pitch higher than usual.

"it's unorthodox, I know," Nick held out his hands, as if about to begin a lecture. "but just listen." jungkook's head twitched to the side with an unintentional hint of attitude, awaiting for some plausible explanation to the bedlam just spoken. "you should've seen the faces on those people."

"truly, you two captured their attention more than any other footage we showed them." Thomas chimed in, hands planted on his desk with an obnoxiously bright grin trying to coax jungkook onto their side. "I still remember an elderly woman clutched her husband's hand the minute you dropped your camera and ran to (y/n)."

"a couple ladies awed after you bandaged her hands."

"and should I even read you some of the reviews they wrote down?" Thomas pulled out a few sheets from a Manila folder, scanning through them before jungkook sputtered out of his trance.

"no, no, really, I'm okay," he quickly spat out. he took a moment to gather himself, eyes closed whilst containing his panic. "really, I'm okay. I don't need to hear the reviews." something about the opinion of others seemed unnerving to jungkook, as if their words could sway his already conflicted mind.

"oh, okay," Thomas chuckled out, stacking the sheets again and tucking them into their folder. Nick took the opportunity to continue his speech.

"jungkook, you have the option to refuse this offer, but keep in mind the consequences. you will be the one at fault for any loss of reviews we may have. this is (y/n)'s opportunity, this could be her break." jungkook frowned his brows, his mind already betraying him with the inevitable tale of woe that will occur if jungkook refused. "if she doesn't get enough views, we're going to have to either transfer her, or fire her."

there it was. the words that would determine jungkook's answer. his heart thudded painfully against his chest, making his fears ever apparent to his conscious. not that it mattered, since his mind was going just as haywire. to make things worst, her smile seemed to have imprinted itself into his vision, reminding him of what he'd be tarnishing. what he'd be ruining.

god, that smile. what it did to him, how it affected him. he couldn't imagine ever making her frown, the thought was far more daunting than anything he could ever conjure in his mind. what he could imagine, however, was that gorgeous grin that'll occupy her face when she learns what he was willing to sacrifice to keep her happy. that damned smile directed at him, those captivating eyes glistening with adoration to him and him only.

"jungkook?" Nick's voice broke jungkook from his daydreaming, now realizing he was in fact staring off into nothingness with a dumbstruck grin adorning his face. "so is that a yes?"

jungkook blinked, trying to rationalize everything before answering, but his mind was too preoccupied with his chivalric hero arc that could preside over his life soon. what really hit the cherry on top for his decision, the piece de resistance that left his mind in a state of delusion, was the over exaggerated scene of (y/n) clinging to his arm, hands lying atop his biceps whilst she stared up longingly into him, whispering, "my hero," and peppering kisses on his shoulder, the scene itself reminding him of some paperback romance novel middle aged women would read and fawn over.

"yes."

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"you can't be serious." jimin wheezed, one hand clamped over his mouth and the other wrapped around his convulsing stomach. hoseok bit down on his lip, coughing to disguise his own laughter. namjoon and taehyung remained emotionless, taehyung more so displaying slight intrigue compared to namjoon's shock. "you have to actually date the ice queen herself."

"don't call her that, idiot," namjoon grumbled, turning to face jungkook from across the table. "did they tell you anything else? like what you're to do when she denies you?"

just like that, jungkook's mind hit a dead end, a figurative record scratch signalling the end of his train of thought. after hours of envisioning what dating (y/n) would be like, he's finally hit a potential bump in the road: she may not like him.

you don't like her either, doofus, stay focused.

"well, it's not like she can reject an offer like that, she needs her job too much to deny jungkook." taehyung took a long sip from his coke, shrugging and leaning back into the booth seat afterwards. "it would just be a dumb move on her part if she actually does opt to transfer."

jungkook sat quietly, eyes averting to the other patrons of the diner.

"right, jungkook?" taehyung continued, but was met with silence. taehyung stared at jungkook blankly, fitting together the pieces of jungkook's broken story rather quickly. "jungkook."

the children consuming straight syrup from across the room seemed much more interesting than the conversation taking place as his eyes refused to stray from the scene. to ensure his distance from the topic, he stuffed a handful of fries into his mouth. sure he was already regretting the extra dosage of sodium in his system, just as long as he didn't have to face the disapproving looks of his associates. he could already feel taehyung's cold stare chipping away at his resolve, his own leg beginning to bounce anxiously once he caught a sliver of namjoon's realization in his peripheral vision.

"oh my god." namjoon groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance once he realized the issue at hand.

"you're not allowed to tell her." taehyung clarified aloud, in case there was any confusion that could be present at the table. hoseok whipped his head around to jungkook in disbelief, never expecting his friend to stoop this low for some god forsaken job.

"they said the footage would be too... artificial. to just leave it to me, instead."

jungkook wasn't stupid. he realized how deceitful the whole situation seemed. he realized that although he's preserving her job, he's also playing her like a ventriloquist, tugging at strings to work in his favor; coercing her into a false state of security. he could see she was only just beginning to grow comfortable around him, and he knew if she found out about this, she'd close herself off again for good.

wait.

if.

"if." jungkook finally met taehyung's hard gaze with his own wide eyed one. "if she finds out."

"you're not actually doing this," hoseok whispered out. the situation was becoming more and more real, and although he didn't know (y/n) very well, he knew she wasn't being respected in this way and didn't deserve this. "jungkook, you're insane if you actually do this."

"I don't know, guys," jimin wiped a stray tear from his eyes, shoulders still bouncing with silent laughter. "I think this is good for her."

even jungkook doubted jimin's words, his only follower so far.

"elaborate please?" namjoon asked, face still buried in his hands.

"she's probably so uptight because she's never had a relationship." jimin leaned over and snatched taehyung's soda, drinking a bit and then continuing his spiel. "never experienced that warmth from holding someone's hand." namjoon began peeling away his hands, now turning to look at jimin. "never experienced the excitement of a text message from someone." hoseok was gradually leaning further into the table, eyebrows curved in despair at (y/n)'s potential sad life. "never experienced love in general." hoseok awed to himself, hand resting atop his heart with his jaw agape at jimin's narrative.

"so you want jungkook to go in there, probably shatter her fragile little heart, and call it a day?" taehyung asked, leaning on to the table to look over namjoon at jimin. he digested taehyung's accusation, aerating like he's been given the finest wine of Italy.

"yes," he answered in a simple statement. before he took another swig of soda, he pointed at taehyung one last time. "for development."

"well, who's to say I will break her heart?" jungkook countered, eyebrows creased in worry at the aspect of him hurting her. "what if the break up is amicable?"

"well then she'll develop in maturity," jimin continued. "once again, for development."

jungkook could see taehyung's brow twitch, almost as if considering jimin's words. soon, the aerating travelled around the table, everyone taking a sip of jimin's figurative wine and reaching a conclusion.

"for development." namjoon sighed out, the first one to give in to jimin's ideology. a devilish grin creeped up onto jimin, a side glance to namjoon showing just how sure he was he'd get people on his side.

"for development," hoseok joined in, more sure of his answer than namjoon. he lifted his soda and leaned over, clinking the paper cup with jimin and tossing back whatever he had left in the cup.

"for development," taehyung rested his head on his hand, a glum expression taking place as if he was still doubting the validity of this predicament.

that being said, jungkook was once again at the decision point. all eyes on him. basically saying, he had to decide whether to tell (y/n) and screw up his bosses ploy for views, or he keeps this hidden and just offers (y/n) a first hand experience of relationships.

you don't like her, idiot. this will only benefit her, you don't have to feel guilty.

one brief pause for last minute decision changes... nothing.

"for development."

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

jungkook was leaning outside of accounting, his camera in hand pointing at his shoes. inside his head, he claimed to be checking the diagnostics of the camera, but really he was just delaying his reunion with (y/n). he didn't want to face her now knowing something she didn't. he felt like he was scheming against her, but he knew what he was doing was for the greater good... of her. he kept repeating in his head how this was all going to benefit her and only her in the end, but he still felt the tugs of guilt on his heart. she didn't deserve this mistreatment. she deserved all the good the earth had to offer.

you don't like her. focus.

swiveling around, he finally cracked open the door, peeking in briefly just to warm him up. his eyes naturally gravitated to her desk where she sat adjacent to namjoon. her eyes were rolled back and facing the ceiling, lips twitching as if mumbling an incoherent incantation. after a few seconds, she quickly went back to her computer and began typing.

jungkook grinned, his nerves melting away at the familiar quirk of her doing her mental math, and he slipped into the room with as little noise as possible. the other accountants paid no mind to him already used to his presence at this point. namjoon, however, stiffened when he heard the click of the door shutting and saw (y/n) glance up.

namjoon also saw the way the girl's eyes lit up upon spotting jungkook, something he's only ever seen when acquainted with someone, causing him to sit up and stare because she doesn't even look at him like that and he's her closest friend in the office.

"hi namjoon," jungkook greeted his friend before turning to (y/n). his stomach churned into knots as he racked his brain for anything he could say to her. somehow, everything felt different even though he hasn't even started on his task. "hi (y/n)."

"hi jungkook." she answered back softly, turning back to her computer to keep working.

well that was simple enough. maybe he could delay his task for one more day, instead work on his friendship with her for now. jungkook leaned against his usual filing cabinet, camera lifted and aimed at her. it took five minutes of their usual routine for namjoon to realize that jungkook wasn't going to say anything above a greeting. namjoon glared at his friend who assumed being friendly would win (y/n)'s heart; a rare feat no living person has ever accomplished. and here stands jungkook, all two braincells frolicking away in his head with his camera in place as if documenting her arithmetic was going to do anything for him and his mission.

"so, (y/n)," namjoon spoke cautiously, eyes trained on jungkook's ignorant self. "have you ever tried bubble tea?"

"bubble tea?" she asked, head tilted but eyes still focused on her work.

"yeah, it's really good." namjoon cleared his throat as if signalling for jungkook's attention. "the boys and I are planning on getting some after work, if you're interested."

"oh, that's so polite," she finally broke away from her computer to face her friend. offering a hand over her heart, she pouted her lips as if she just witnessed the cutest display of affections ever. then, with a cold and apathetic glare, she turned back to her computer. "no."

namjoon turned again to jungkook who looked back at him. namjoon raised his brow, as if challenging jungkook, and jungkook never backs down from a challenge.

"I didn't know we were getting bubble tea," jungkook fibbed, silently cursing himself for his horrible acting. this is one reason as to why he was behind the camera and not in front of it.

"yes, taehyung and I were going to tell you later." if jungkook was a bad actor, namjoon was the worst possible actor to ever walk the surface of the earth.

(y/n) side eyed the two of them, amused by their obvious attempts to get her out of the house. it was always a trial for namjoon to get her to do anything, but for some reason, she felt reasonably soft for her colleague today.

"alright namjoon," she sighed, lifting her coffee mug up to her lips. "what in God's good name is bubble tea?"

she snickered at his bewildered expression, sipping her warm beverage without even acknowledging jungkook's equally as shocked face.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"you have to do something big to get her attention," jimin explained in a low whisper so only the boys could hear him. it wasn't as if anyone else could, considering they were huddled conspicuously in the corner of the cafe away from any wandering ears. any sane person would believe they were conspiring against the establishment; instead, they were giving love advice to their youngest. "Will Smith said that is the first step to winning a girl's attention, and I don't think your whole act of valour was enough for her. she's kinda dense, not going to lie."

"alright first of all, she completed calculus 2 before she even got out of highschool, which is how she was able to get into her position so quickly." namjoon interjected, followed by an aggressive shush from taehyung. "meanwhile," he continued, voice hushed into a whisper-scream hybrid. "you can't even fucking measure two teaspoons of honey properly."

"wait, why Will Smith?" hoseok suddenly asked, just now processing jimin's guiding words.

"wow you're still on this shit, joon?" jimin stood straight, voice crescendoed into a regular speaking voice causing hoseok to grab the back of his head and yank him back down. "I'll have you know, an event about my measuring abilities, which happened a whole year ago, thank you very much, has nothing to do with my intellect."

"he's referencing the movie Hitch, hobi," taehyung answered the question from before. hoseok gave a low "ah" in acknowledgement, reminiscing on the movie night the boys had a few weeks back.

"I think the whole bandaging thing was kinda cute," hoseok added, trying to direct the conversation back to jungkook's predicament. "I mean, if I were a girl, I would remember that."

"thank you, that's where I was heading." namjoon nodded to hoseok in gratitude. "secondly, I saw how she looked at you today." at that, jungkook felt his heart flutter. perhaps just from having a girl like him, like a highschool secret admirer, but nothing more. he doesn't like her, as he's reminded himself many times already. this was purely to benefit her. he kept reminding himself of this, whenever he felt his emotions spiraling into something remotely deeper than camaraderie. namjoon's slight scoff drew jungkook back to reality. "I've never seen that girl admire something more than you, not even her friends receive that same glint."

and there he goes. jungkook's heart stuttered as he took a sharp inhale, unheard by the boys who drowned out his shock with a chorus of "ooh."

"admiration isn't love," taehyung warned. jungkook blinked away his ardor, a whole new sense of confusion taking place at taehyung's newfound pessimism. "admiration is watching your favorite movie after a long day, or nursing a flower into adulthood; it's temporary, and not very big." just as quickly as he had bloomed with joy, he deflated with taehyung's words. his friend was always one for looking at the brighter side of things, ever the sanguine soul, yet here he was showing rationale? this taehyung was completely foreign to jungkook, the usual glimmer in his friend's eye now dissipated in favor of a more stern look.

"wow," namjoon sighed, jutting his jaw out to the side in thought. "you're kind of right."

it seemed jungkook's rollercoaster of emotions plummeted as he mulled over the discussion. maybe taehyung's rarity was needed to ground himself back to reality; to remind him that this was an awful idea. for development? yeah, she'll be getting experience in relationships, but was he willing to be the one to break her? to be her first heartbreak? he couldn't even tell her what was going on. this was all far too cunning on his part. never would he have imagined he would be dating for his job... as a cameraman. maybe back in his highschool days when he was just one failed quiz away from dropping out and pursuing the career of a stripper, but not now when everything was just falling into place for him.

"that's close enough," jimin broke the silence, a thumbs up from him appearing in the center of their circle. "you're in there, dude, you just have to dig in deeper."

"guys, I'm not so sure about this anymore–"

at that moment, the door to the tea shop opened, a faint ringing carrying through the establishment as the boys all turned to see who had entered. as expected, it was (y/n) finally arriving, scanning the area for her promised associates. jungkook always thought it intriguing how apparent she became once one got to know her. to an outsider's perspective, she may have appeared to be a confident patron here for tea, a sense of dominion with every step she took. past that stone facade of hers, however, lied a nervous girl who was constantly unsure of where she was, questioning whether she should've come at all. this, however, was not what had jungkook frozen in his place.

he could not tear his gaze from the ever hypnotizing being before him. from her cold glare which called for the attention of everyone around her to the way her usual pinned hair now lied loose over her shoulders, she had him completely under her spell– unintentional at that. like an arrow to his heart, she just had to grin their way and shuffle over to the group; a juxtaposing shy act exuding from her nearly suffocating aura of preeminence.

a familiar jarring sensation in his gut sunk him even deeper in his train of thoughts, taking him back to the overwhelming comfort he felt from her casual attire in her apartment. here she stands in a sweater and loose jeans, stealing away jungkook's breath without even acknowledging the power she holds over him. it absolutely didn't help that the short length of the sweater revealed a sliver of stomach, and that small area of skin completely threw jungkook off as he was so accustomed to most of her skin being hidden away for work.

"I'm sorry for being late," she bowed her head in embarrassment, face already showing hints of a rosy hue. "had I known you would all be here by now, I would've arrived earlier."

"no need to apologize," jimin answered, waving her off with a smile. "we just showed up unreasonably early."

jungkook couldn't process anything that was happening as his eyes were trained solely on her. his feet carried him off with the group as they all entered the line to order, all the while his mind worked double time to memorize every small detail about her.

jungkook was completely at a loss. never before has he ever wanted to memorize something for himself. he always depended on his beloved /physical/ memory storage, but the moment at hand seemed inappropriate for documenting as she was always before a camera. if he were to take a picture of her lovely profile or record the pushing back of hair behind her ear, it would have to be on his phone, which seemed drastically unworthy of filming such a surreal deity like herself.

his fingers itched by his side, begging to capture at least one blurry picture of her, but his conscious held him back. she deserved a moment of peace without cameras directed at her.

"what are you getting?" his jaw fell open as the apple of his eye spun around, question directed to him of all people.

"I'm not sure yet," he chuckled out, voice having turned slightly scratchy from his mouth devoid of saliva. "perhaps just some... bubble milk tea." what was he talking about, he only ever drank the fruity bubble tea. right now, his mind was on auto pilot, and apparently coasting a rather bumpy ride.

"I was thinking peach." she turned back to the board displaying all of the options, head tilting in thought. "I love peaches." the tilt of her head was unbearably close to his shoulder and he was forced to resist the many soft thoughts coursing through his head. God, he just wanted to pull her head into his chest and let her rest her worries away.

"peach is good," he sighed out, biting down on his cheek to resist the urge of resting his chin on her crown. "you'll like it." she will like it, he was sure of that. again, having recorded her for many weeks now, he's grown to know quite a bit about her, such as her active sweet tooth which left her secretly slipping out fruity sticks of gum from her bag to ease away the urges of treats. she glanced over to him again, an oblivious smile forming.

"how do you think so?" she inquired, and as if blessed by the mighty archangel himself, the cashier called for (y/n) to order before he was obligated to answer her inquiry. jungkook faintly heard the words 'peach boba' leave her mouth, but he was too far gone thinking about her.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

the initial get together went off without a hitch, everyone having bonded over their bubble tea and getting to know the newcomer. as predicted, jungkook was seated beside (y/n), silent encouragement passed over to him throughout the encounter without her noticing. although he was grateful for the motivation, he never wanted to murder a group of people more than his friends when (y/n) offered a sip of her tea to him, having noticed him gag at his drink. he knew he wouldn't hear the end of it from his friends, at least until the next sickeningly sweet moment shared between the two.

currently, the group made their way down the main street of their town, storefronts and light posts illuminating their path as they walked without any care in the world. jungkook and (y/n) stuck to the back of the gang, whether intentional or not, beside each other. his thoughts were far too fogged to process whatever the boys were saying ahead and also to strike up a conversation with the obscenely silent woman beside him.

I mean, I don't think I have to try to make conversation right now. I think the boba incident was enough for one night, right?

his thoughts were halted by the arrival of two girls intercepting their travels.

"hello," one of them shyly muttered out. "w-we're big fans of the office, and we were just wondering if we could get a picture with you guys?"

jungkook almost forgot that the office was an actual documentary seen by actual people and not just a figment of his own cameraman fantasy. this was quite possibly the first time he's ever witnessed a fan and he was, to put it simply, startled. more so when he saw one of the girls blush at namjoon holding her shoulder and lifting her camera up. actual girls like this loser of an accountant.

speaking of accountants.

he finally took note of (y/n)'s retreating figure, taking refuge behind him and clinging to his sleeve softly. oh, how his heart ached at that simple gesture. two occurrences in one night, he was definitely on a roll. though his mind refused to celebrate his accomplishment, opting instead for sympathizing with the apparently invisible girl. she was only just beginning to make her presence known this season, so it was understandable that these girls wouldn't want pictures of her.

"excuse me?" a voice broke jungkook from his thoughts and he instead focused on one of the girls from before who was now standing in front of him. "I'm sorry to intrude, but are you (y/n) (l/n)?"

silence. (y/n) was tongue tied, not expecting such a development when she had agreed to come out for tea this night. someone is actually asking her for her identification. someone she's never met before. this girl knows her, and she has no idea who this person is. the concept was unnerving, but nonetheless... slightly flattering.

"she is," jungkook responded, free hand slipping over one of her own, still gripping his sleeve.

"may I have a picture with you?"

and just like that, (y/n) was borderline about to faint. someone wants her picture. they could've very well gone ahead and neglected her, but thought she was important enough to waste some time on. with that encouraging thought in her head, she nodded and scuffled over to the fan.

"wait for me!" the other girl groaned in annoyance, leaping over to her friend who's phone was already raised and shimmying into the frame. (y/n)'s heart swelled with validation, grinning impossibly wide for the two expectant girls.

meanwhile, jungkook admired the scene before him. these two girls wanting to forever remember the day they met (y/n), a simple accountant from some documentary turned comedy. he felt the urge to laugh in his manager's face, show him how she racked in a fan base from doing nothing. oh, how he could only imagine what the result of this third season would be, now having more attention directed to her; to be validated as she deserves.

just like clockwork, jungkook's breathe faltered at her smile, eyes falling to his for just a brief moment as the girls pulled the others in for a group photo. reminding him of his first day meeting her, how she called for the attention of everyone in the room by just walking in, he was once again reminded of how breathtaking her natural beauty is. how could he have been so ignorant all these years, so absorbed in his camera that he couldn't realize that there are just some things a camera can't capture to it's full extent– she's one of them.

"excuse me?" jungkook looked down to find one of the girls holding her phone out to him with a courteous smile. "could you take a picture of us for me?"

"yeah, of course," jungkook took the phone and held it up, waiting for the group to gather together as the girls instructed. as jimin chastised the girls, supposedly about how they wanted him in the front because of his height, taehyung waltzed over to jungkook, a cocky grin on his face.

"so how's it going?" he asked, his voice laced with a teasing tone.

"what do you mean?" jungkook asked, eyes trained on the screen rather than his friend.

"you know what I mean." taehyung chuckled, although namjoon's laughter from a meter away was far louder than the one next to his ear. "I see how you look at her." jungkook gulped, hands squeezing tighter around the phone as the group counted down for him. with one last statement from taehyung, jungkook took the photo, eyes now focused on one subject of the photo. "you actually like her, don't you?"

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

it had been a week since the group went on their bubble tea outing, and it had been a week since jungkook's last move on (y/n). following the event of taehyung's acknowledgement, jungkook found himself completely flustered upon any encounter with said girl. it didn't help his case that he was also always around her for his profession.

he kept his eyes focused on the screen at all times, never daring to peek at her real form, knowing he'd become a blushing mess upon the resurfacing of his conflicted emotions. he knew he shouldn't like her, he knew that liking her would only cause heartache for not only him, but also for her. he knew he had to keep things distant, and to let her off easy, but he feared his nearing "relationship" with her, and the inevitable fallout. while her meer presence filled him with dread and anxiety, there were also the softest ebbs of warmth and comfort whenever he captured her smiling or fiddling around with the items on her desk.

it was as if the polar opposite applied for (y/n), however, as she found herself growing more comfortable around the cameraman constantly filming her. she's grown more adjusted to being filmed these past few weeks than she ever had these past few years, and she likes to believe it was because of jungkook. her heart always seemed to ease into a state of serenity whenever she gazed upon him. his curly locks which fell over his eyes like a curtain always calmed her during her most fretful of times, his soft, boyish charms awakening something within her which she believed to be dead at times. yet with all of these emotions stirring within, there was always a small voice whispering to her far in the recesses of her mind; a constant reminder to her that this bond she wished to be real was strictly taboo, and knowing jungkook, he would never risk his job for the likings of her.

and to namjoon, he experienced immense pain everyday as he had to watch the exchanges between the two. at this point, he didn't know who liked who, if not both of them liking the other. he knew ever since the knife incident, something altered between the pair, but he couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was.

all he was sure about was that he was growing tired of the subtle, nervous glances and the soft sighs that were passed by the others in the room but him. he just had to put an end to this somehow, knowing the both of them are far too shy and oblivious for their own good.

devising a plan was much harder than namjoon could've ever imagined, as he wanted to keep everything natural and allow for a smooth execution. however, he already had one in mind before noon even hit, deciding it be best to initiate his scheme during their lunch hour.

namjoon and (y/n) usually decided to eat at their desks as it served as an easier (and lazier) route to get back to work. so as they ate and conversed, jungkook sat and filmed, barely paying attention to their words as his eyes zeroed in on (y/n)'s awkward grin at namjoon's cheesy joke, her cheeks rounded by the food in her mouth.

"alright, alright, enough," namjoon chuckled out, taking a sip of his water to wash down his food, deciding it best to change the topic at hand to better steer his ploy in the right direction. "I am not looking forward to this weekend."

"why not?" she asked, turning back to her lunch.

"my mom is deciding to visit, so I have to go grocery shopping to cook for her since she always expects a meal from me. I'm not even a chef, as you can clearly see." he raised his half eaten sandwich in the air, taking another bite and dropping it back onto it's respective napkin.

"speak for yourself." (y/n) raised her salad to him, before shaking her head and shoveling more lettuce into her mouth, mumbling out her next sentence. "I didn't even make this, my roommate made it for me."

"I wish I had a roommate to make me lunch," namjoon grumbled, side eyeing jungkook and taking note of his dazed expression. "but yeah, busy weekend. you?"

"I never really do anything on the weekends." she explained, tilting her head in thought. "I would like to go window shopping, just for fun, but I probably won't go."

"why not?" namjoon pressed, his interest now piqued at the smooth progression of his plan. "why not take your roommate?"

"I don't know, Macy usually spends her days with either her boyfriend or her other friends. Cindi is usually the exact same." (y/n) casted her gaze down to the gray surface of her desk, mood dropping at the reminder of how alone she was. meanwhile, namjoon had to bite back the smile threatening to break his temperament.

"well, you've got the guys to take you." namjoon turned over again to jungkook who hadn't processed one word of the exchange. rolling his eyes to himself, namjoon coughed obnoxiously loud in jungkook's direction, clearing his throat and sipping more water to keep the illusion of having choked. meanwhile, jungkook blinked away his disorient and looked to namjoon in concern. "pardon my... dysfunctional esophagus which can't swallow food apparently." the breathy laugh coming from (y/n) truly grounded jungkook as he was now very aware of his surroundings. "I'm sure one of them would be more than happy to take you out."

"it feels..." she paused for a moment, eyes upturned in thought as she considered her words, filing through her emotions for a valid explanation. "unfulfilling... to take one of the boys with me."

"well, just consider the offer," namjoon didn't have to turn to jungkook this time around, knowing that he had caught on and was ever grateful to his elder for the opportunity.

it was a few minutes past five now, everyone packing up for the day and ready to head out. jungkook had been buzzing in his seat all day, waiting for the perfect moment to ask her. technically, he was asking her out on their first date, or at least hoping this rendezvous would escalate into a date. if this didn't work out, he wouldn't know what else to do. he was stubborn, though, and willing to keep pushing for however long before she completely cut him off.

with that one last determined thought in his mind, he puffed out a heavy sigh and made his way over to accounting.

by now, the route to the department was second nature to jungkook, as if his feet would carry him directly to there even if he hadn't been thinking it. so it was natural for jungkook to have floundered rather obviously as he now stood before her desk, his thoughts too consumed with how to ask her out that he didn't even realize he had reached his destination.

"hello, jungkook," she greeted, eyes trained on her computer as she logged out for the day. "I thought you were heading home."

"I was," he hesitated, cursing how out of breathe he sounded. just focus on the task at hand, idiot. you have to ask her out eventually, might as well do it now. "I just... remembered something."

"and what would that be?" she stared at the blue screen of her desktop, eyeing his reflection secretly. she could tell he wasn't his usual self, head down casted to his twiddling thumbs as he racked his brain for the simplest of words to begin his ploy.

"I..." his voice was barely audible, barely a breathe, and yet she could pinpoint the nerves that must be going haywire within him, and so she finally turned around to give him the benefit of the doubt. when jungkook met her stare, he froze for a moment. she was just as beautiful as the day he first saw her, except maybe even more so today, for he has grown rather acquainted with her and her eyes which spoke to him so clearly and thoughtfully like the most expressive of sonnets. those hypnotizing eyes which shone with such intrigue and kindness that he couldn't believe he ever thought she were stuck up. with these thoughts, he took in a huff of breathe and clenched his jaw, persevering through his anxieties and announcing his inquiry. "I was wondering if you would be interested in maybe going out with me. maybe this weekend if you're not busy."

jungkook stood silently as she blinked up at him, eyebrows risen up a fraction in surprise. to anyone else, it may have looked like jungkook was but moments away from rejection; jungkook knew otherwise as his mouth began twitching into a smile. he blessed those dazzling eyes of hers for being windows into her soul which he found himself becoming rather fluent in. he could just see the mirth kindling in her, growing rapidly as she fully processed his words.

what started as slow nods morphed into rapid ones, a smile blossoming across her face. jungkook laughed at her glee, arms gravitating to her midsection in a loose grasp. she held his shoulders just as softly, giggles bubbling within her once her giddiness reached an all time high. for the briefest of moments, jungkook allowed himself to soak in her happiness before he was reminded of his scheme. he was only doing his job.

clearing his throat, he pulled away hesitantly, still smiling as he bowed his head.

"I'll pick you up this Saturday?" he asked, biting the inside of his lip to straighten out his face.

"yeah, that sounds like a plan."

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"focus," jungkook muttered to himself as he stepped foot into the elevator. "you're doing your job." he rolled his shoulders, the action doing nothing to ease his tense muscles. he jerked his head to the side, successfully cracking his neck and alleviating some stiffness, albeit not a lot. as the elevator reached her floor, he steadied his breathing, striding out and smoothing out his yellow button up. "it's a professional date, nothing more." he silently counted the door numbers up to hers, sighing out before knocking gently. "nothing less."

in the few moments that jungkook waited outside the door, he rehearsed everything he learned in his training course with jimin, eye twitching at how jimin's main source of knowledge still came from Hitch with Will Smith. memories of jimin forcing him to sit in his living room for a second time, pausing every few minutes as they watched Hitch to discuss something said or done. jungkook was now seeing why he should never get advice from his friends.

his thoughts were disrupted by the swinging open door in front of him, revealing a girl he had yet to meet.

"you must be jungkook!" jungkook internally cringed at her overly cheery tone this early in the morning. without another word, she grabbed his forearm and dragged him into the apartment. "I'm Macy, I'm (y/n)'s roommate!" jungkook nodded, his shy nature appearing as he hadn't any clue to what to say next, although it seemed like he needn't worry as Macy continued to speak. "(y/n) will be out any minute! I've been helping her get ready for today. you know, you're the first date I've seen (y/n) go out with since I've been her roommate for the past few years."

jungkook furrowed his brows as he listened to her. he knew (y/n) wasn't one for dating or social interactions at all, but hearing that this was the first time in probably ages that she's gone on a date or an outing was a surprise to him; someone with her looks must be sought out by many, surely.

"oh, I should probably stop talking." Macy laughed, covering her mouth and turning back to the hall of (y/n)'s room. "I'm sorry, I'm just so excited for her. I love seeing her happy."

"me too," jungkook sighed out, clamping his mouth shut after realizing his subconscious words. before Macy could respond, a door opening ended the conversation and the both of them stood at attention, peering at the figure emerging. jungkook's breath caught at his throat, nearly causing him to choke if he didn't clear his throat in time. if he thought she looked beautiful before, at this very moment, she was very nearly ethereal– angelic, even.

rather than sporting her usual mute and neutral tones of grays and tans, she wore a mini white dress which seemed to be the epitome of summer in heaven. the slight puff to her sleeves reminded him that of a princess of sorts, and he suddenly felt the urge to recite poetry to her, professing his undying love for the noblewoman before him. he had to remind himself that he is indeed a man of the 21st century and not a simple peasant living off his lute's tunes whilst battling a plague. a simple gold necklace adorned her neck, resting beneath her collarbones and adding to her overall aura of elegance. she looked untouchable, as if he would be scolded if he were to even breathe next to her, like the most treasured of diamonds stood before him in human form. beautiful, pure, glowing–

"look at you!" Macy squealed loudly, rushing over to her friend and engulfing her in a hug. "my beautiful friend! aren't you just perfect!"

"thank you," (y/n) whispered out, her face turning redder by the minute, but her smile growing tenfold. she was released by Macy and pushed towards jungkook, the former girl still giggling away in the background. "hi." (y/n) still spoke in a low volume, her inner panic increasing even more so as she took in jungkook's appearance. it was as simple as ever, something she'd find him wearing at work often when he ran out of shirts and sweaters, but it was much more endearing when he hadn't a camera placed atop his shoulder.

"hello," he replied, grinning as he saw how nervous she was. from this proximity, he could see the light makeup highlighting her features, culprit most likely the female behind her. it was soft and natural with natural glimmers here and there, just adding to her already breathtaking appearance. jungkook didn't know if he could survive after today, knowing he'd have to eventually stop looking at her for good when... when?

when would he have to break up with her?

"alright you two," Macy clapped loudly, snapping jungkook out of his thoughts with a fright. "be home by 10– it's still girl's night, remember?" she pointed at (y/n) in an accusatory manner as if knowing she'd forget. "and you." she shifted her finger to jungkook. "take care of her please. I really don't want to file any police reports of sorts if you wind up being a serial killer." jungkook snickered and turned back to (y/n), his prior worries fading away into the white noise of the recesses of his mind.

"come on, pretty girl." he tilted his head towards the door, allowing her to step forward first and for him to trail behind, a hesitant hand hovering near hers, but opting to remain by his side.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"I like this one," (y/n) whined, stretching her arm over to jungkook as he parked in front of her apartment complex. he reached up to turn the interior lights on, squinting down at her hand which held one of the many photo booth strips they had obtained. upon analysis of the photo, however, jungkook began shaking his head.

"no, that one's mine." he began to unbuckle his seatbelt, signalling his decision was cemented and he was not going to fight her on the matter. she stomped her foot in dismay, pressing her lips together and whining some more.

"I like your smile here, though," she pointed to one of the pictures, which just so happened to also be one of his favorites consisting of her pouting with an angry expression and him laughing at her as she tried to convince him to join her before the timer ran out. "you look cute, I like your nose when it's all scrunched up like that." jungkook fought back a smile, taking a moment to admire her once more. even in the dim lighting of his car, she still held the beauty that of Aphrodite. just like the picture being discussed, she pouted cutely. oh, if only she knew how much she had affected him this day.

from the moment he took her out to breakfast, where she had let him take pictures of her and her breakfast, he was already struggling to keep his composure. he had tried to keep to mundane activities like window shopping downtown, but failed as he saw a fair in town and insisted they go. his set line of professionalism was blurring rapidly with every second he spent with her. he didn't even regret winning her that stuffed penguin she had fawned over at the baseball toss booth, just glad he didn't fumble and make a fool of himself that night like he usually does. it seems to him that his competitiveness has finally come to use as he is now practiced in every fair game possible.

"no," he stated again, blinking away his delirium and shifting his gaze back to the picture. he lifted his hand to settle beneath hers, thumb tapping against her face on the film. "I don't have a pouty you yet. it's mine." he plucked it out of her hands and slipped it into the center console of his car.

"if you're so insistent on collecting pictures of me like pokemon cards, I can just pout for you right now." he raised a brow, glancing over to her as she grumbled to herself.

"okay." he pulled out his phone, never one to back out of a potential photo op. as he held up his phone, focused on her sudden pouty face, he reddened at the realization of the many pictures he took of her today. he couldn't resist, especially with such a subject as her at his will. with a slide of his thumb, he pressed record, still holding up his phone like he was taking a picture of her still pouty face. "but I'm not giving you the picture." and with that, her jaw dropped and her eyes narrowed, causing him to start laughing away at his new video.

"you know what, I don't need this. I don't need this, I'm leaving." she jokingly grabbed all of her stuff and opened the door, marching over to her apartment complex with her chin held high.

"(y/n)!" he continued to laugh as he turned off his car, rushing over to her ever persistent form. "(y/n), baby." he held her bicep, sighing out his last snicker as she finally halted, turning around to face him. "thank you for the picture."

"I can promise you, I'm getting that picture. it's going to be mine." she turned around again, entering the elevator with him right behind her, his hand sliding down her arm to her own. the hand holding became a quick habit, thankfully, as she kept lagging behind in the crowds of downtown, inevitably leading to jungkook having to maneuver her through and finding it easiest to guide her by holding her.

"I'll be sure to hide it then, thank you very much."

the elevator ride was short, but it gave him enough time to think everything over. how perfect his day was, how perfect /she/ was. he couldn't deny the giddiness he felt with the slightest touch shared, and he knew he was falling dangerously close to liking her, but he couldn't find it within himself to restrain his affections. he was becoming addicted to holding her, any part of her he could. his heart was betraying him, as if it were never a part of whatever plan him and his friends had come up with and only wanted (y/n). wherever she went, it seemed to follow.

he didn't even realize when the elevator had stopped and she had begun to lead him over to her apartment. he only acknowledged his settings when she released him, his hand falling slowly back to it's original position at his hip as she turned over to face him.

he gazed down upon her, eyes glazed over with such intense admiration towards the subject of his attention; a ferocity akin to a victim of cupid. the desire to hold her against him was ever apparent as he felt his arms twitching by his sides, aching to just be near her. his heart throbbed almost painfully as she shyly dropped her head to face the floor. nevertheless, jungkook could see a bashful grin stretching across her face. she twiddled her fingers, keys jingling in her loose grip – just as hitch had warned him.

"I had one of the most... amazing days of my life today, jungkook," she spoke quietly, barely above a whisper as if afraid of shattering the tranquil bubble formed between the two. her words brought an even wider smile to jungkook, and he was thankful that her gaze wasn't on his embarrassingly joyful expression at the validation given to him. "I don't know how to thank you."

"hey," struck by a sudden pang of confidence, he tamed the joker like smile he once had, opting for a smirk, yet his happiness was still transparent through it. his finger rose to rest under chin, tilting her head up to meet his stare. naturally, his finger slid up her jawline, soon becoming his whole hand now against her cheek as she leaned more so into his touch. how endearing. "why would you ever need to thank me when you gave me an equally, if not more, lovely day."

she blushed, lips tightening into a line to hold back her own wide smile. her hand now lied upon his, pushing her face more so into his touch. jungkook didn't think it was possible, but his heart melted at the gesture, and he could feel the warmth from his ever weak vascular organ dripping into his fluttering stomach, coating his innards with a sweet warmth like freshly baked bread.

truly, this was what love was. it had to be, as he could not imagine a greater feeling than this very moment. with will smith's words ringing in his ears, encouraging him to go forward, he bumped his forehead gently against hers, giving her plenty of time to pull away, but she never did. instead, she slowly rose to her toes and pressed her lips against his.

and just like that, jungkook was gone. all of his muscles loosened, practically sagging as he fell victim to the sickeningly sweet sensation which came with kissing (y/n). he was actually kissing her, something he now cursed himself for not imagining more so before, but also thanking as this was better than anything he could've wasted his time imagining.

the taste of her cherry lipgloss and strawberry icecream hit him like a tsunami, pushing him further and further into this state of blissful unconsciousness he found himself spiraling into, much like his feelings falling more and more in love with the woman in his arms. pulling her flush against chest, he deepened the kiss, head tilting naturally as she buried a hand into his hair.

love. pure, unadulterated, head-over-heels, over-the-moon love. that's what he was feeling. nothing else could describe that addicting, adrenaline like feeling plaguing his thudding heart, even after they pulled away from their kiss. her hand loosened from his hair, about to drop when he shot his own hand up to keep hers there, pushing his head into her touch like she had done to him.

this was paradise. standing here, outside her apartment in the hallway of her building, faded beige walls as the only witness to the nearly Disney movie sort of kiss just shared. all he could do was stand there, holding her hand so delicately, like the most fragile of porcelain.

"I should go," she giggled, scratching her nails gently against his scalp. with one last dreamy sigh, jungkook dragged her hand down his cheek to his lips, pressing the gentlest of kisses against her palm. he held her there against his lips for just a brief moment, trying to memorize the silk like skin which sparked flames beneath his own. pulling away, he brushed his nose against her knuckles, eyes sealing shut in his intense emotions.

"I adore you." it was barely a whisper, coming straight from his aching heart as he tried to regain his sense of reason, but it was just loud enough for her to hear. loud enough for her to completely crumble any last walls that blocked off her heart before, and she was already diving headfirst into her love for jungkook.

she pulled him closer to her, pressing another, doting kiss to his lips before quickly turning to unlock her door. the sooner she was away from him, the sooner her palpitating heart could ease away its excitement. as she slipped in, she spared one last glance to jungkook who stood mesmerized in the middle of the hallway, a dopey grin slapped across his handsome features.

"I adore you," she whispered back to him, closing the door before his starstruck expression could hit her. she pressed her back against the wood, biting her lip for probably the hundredth time that day, trying to calm herself down. she loved him. she loved jungkook.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

#jungkook fanfic #Jungkook Fanfiction #jungkook x reader #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts x reader

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porcelaine-whispers · 3 years

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RED RUBIES OF AFFLICTION | PW

“What a familiar sight of a successful figure, Atty. Fuentes.” A sudden greeting from a woman in a wine-red dress, with jewelry that reflects its stones of red rubies. Her eyes sparkled. She had the sweet smile of an angel. In events like these, meeting familiar faces were no surprise. Her presence was comforting as if her greetings were anticipated. It made me feel safe.

‘Atty. Valentina Ally Fuentes; the only heir of Fuentes Pharmaceutical.’

Spoiled rich girl? Such a stereotype I refuse to be associated with. My mother is publicly recognized as Dra. Amelia Fuentes, the owner of Fuentes Pharmaceutical. As for my father, he is the company’s CLO, Atty. Christophe Fuentes. Our business is the fruit of my parents’ sacrifices. Having the title of being one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the country, Fuentes Pharmaceutical continues to flourish. Knowing that our family business is a growing company still astounds me, but along with the wealth it brings is a deprivation that silently suffocates.

After passing the board exam five years ago, my father offered me a job to work under the company’s legal department. Years of working experience exposed me to the environment and exhaustion that comes with handling the company’s legal matters. There was no special treatment, for I am an employee of my parents and I wish to keep it professional in that manner. Having to work for my current title was an endless cycle of sleepless nights.

‘Atty. Valentina Ally Fuentes.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)’

It is a title I have brought upon my name through perseverance. I have always wanted to be known for being Valentina Ally Fuentes and not only as of the daughter of my parents. With determination, I am with pride to say that I have successfully created a name for myself. I proved that I am more than just the heir of Fuentes Pharmaceuticals, that I deserve the company because of my hard work. I am to be remembered as Atty. Valentina Ally Fuentes, a lawyer, successor of the leading pharmaceutical company in the Philippines, and most importantly, a woman of her person.

Being an only child, I grew up in an environment too mature for my age. My parents were often preoccupied with the stress of managing the company. Being in the industry made it hard for them to provide time for me. I have always had a close bond with my mother. Although she used to be the CEO of Fuentes Pharmaceutical, I know how she would consistently check up on me and my state of coping with school. My energy is at its fullest when I am with my mother. She became the source of my motivation if ever I disappointed myself. Her voice gave me the peace that made me realize how valuable her presence is in my life. She is the comfort I will continue to long for.

“I apologize for my mother’s absence. On behalf of Dra. Fuentes, it was a pleasure catching up with you, Dr. Cabrera.”

I flew to Manila to assess the Fuentes Pharmaceutical Laboratory in Makati. My mother usually does the inspections of the laboratories; unfortunately, she is currently unavailable because of her emergency conference at Torres Medical Hospital. Upon arriving at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, I placed my carry-on baggage in the trunk of the car and had Ashton drive me to the laboratory. Ashton is the son of our maid, Agatha, but he is now residing here in Manila after getting married. Even before my existence, Agatha has been working for our family. She worked as the caretaker of my grandmother, but because of my grandmother’s passing, she now works to take care of us.

Our laboratory in Makati is our second biggest after the main laboratory in Mandaue. I met up with Dr. Cabrera, a member of the board of directors and a trusted family friend. He toured me around the offices and introduced me to the staff. I never really introduced myself to staff due to some being intimidated by my presence.

So far, the laboratories are exquisitely designed. All were accessible and had a system that made it easier to inspect, and at the same time keep order and cleanliness. Of course, cleanliness is a sector that I meticulously assess. We are a pharmaceutical company after all, how could we risk the lives of our consumers as well as our staff?

After completing the inspections, I had to immediately catch my flight home to Cebu. It was around 5:35 in the afternoon when I called Ashton to pick me up and drive me to the airport. During the car ride, I felt this fear and uncertainty. I started sweating and trembling, not knowing the reason for my abrupt shivers. I calmly looked out my window, diverting my attention to the towering buildings in the area. City lights remind me of the times I used to come home late with my mother since I would always insist on coming home with her after my student council meetings. If only I could go back to the days where I am in the comfort of my mother’s warmth. I instantly avoided the sight, trying so hard to forget the distinct memories instilled in my mind.

“Oh my god! If I walked to the airport, I would have probably arrived there by now. Is this a sign to stay the night?” I said in annoyance.

The traffic in Manila is dreadful. Imagine sitting in a vehicle for almost an hour, what a hassle. If only I could just spend the night in my condo at Rockwell Makati, which is only a few minutes away from the laboratory. Unfortunately, I do not have all the time in the world especially now that I have duties to attend to back in Cebu. Good thing my secretary, Mrs. Aphelion, booked a flight at 9:25 PM so I do not have to worry about missing my plane. What would I do if I miss my flight due to traffic? At last, we arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport before the expected boarding time. Ashton assisted me with the door whilst saying his goodbyes. I boarded the plane, tired from all the wandering I did the entire day.

Upon my arrival at Mactan International Airport, I went to the parking lot and decided to drive myself home. I was on my way home when a sudden buzzing came from my phone. I ignored the call because I was driving, and I did not want to kill someone with my awful driving skills. Driving is not something I would do often. I barely passed my driver's license test. What choice do I have now that I am driving on the road together with reckless drivers?

“Urgh! Who again is calling?!…” I answered the phone when it rang again at the stoplight. It was Emsie, one of our maids. She rarely calls me, why would she call me multiple times now? I was about to speak when I heard her voice of fear.

“Ally, you need to come home right now! Please...” She sounds muffled. Her voice was breaking as if she was restricted from breathing. I felt needles puncture my skin, anxious about the reason for her flowing emotions.

“Madam is—”

“Ally, your mother is—” The call ended.

My mother? Did something happen at the conference? My thoughts were jumbled. I started imagining things I should not be imagining. My mind was too occupied with the thought of what had happened to my mother. From there, I knew it was something serious. I said how driving was never my expertise; but with shock, I drove fast and even forgot to breathe.

As I arrived home, the guards opened the gates with panic seen in their gestures. I ran inside as fast as I was capable of, not even caring about the glass sculpture I broke while rushing to find my father. The staff were in tears, I was confused. They pointed in the direction of the study. When I barged into the room, I saw a group of men talking to my father. They have dressed in navy blue uniforms with one holding a folder; they were policemen. My father’s eyes shifted and met with mine when he saw me, panting from all the running. I could not comprehend what was happening in front of me. I love my mother so much that I did not even bother to ask about what happened; instead, I screamed in pain asking where she is.

“Where is my mother?! Where is she?! I want to see her now...” My vision became blurry, tears filled my eyes. I was trembling, my body felt pain in the numbness; I was paralyzed. I could hardly stand properly when the policeman holding the folder turned to me. He looked disappointed.

“I am sorry for what happened, Attorney Fuentes. Three men have been suspected of the incident; it was an ambush. Dra. Fuentes was shot multiple times, hitting her neck and chest. I am sorry Atty., but Doctor Fuentes died at the scene due to excessive blood loss...”

They handed over a clear plastic bag. It was a set of jewelry with shining red rubies.

My mother’s signature set.

She believed that rubies are stones that can bring happiness and passion into the life of the wearer. Thus, her signature stone being ruby. I remember clearly how she would get ready in her vanity, with a smile on her face as she puts on her earring of shining red rubies. Ruby is a stone believed to protect the wearer from negative entities that leach positive energy, promoting spiritual vitality and wellness overall. My mother is an optimistic spirit. Her words are gentle and comforting; yet what am I now that those words of comfort could never be heard in the same voice ever again?

I collapsed, closing my eyes as a flood of tears gushed down my ashen cheeks.

My mother...is gone. I could never hear her voice, see her smile, and feel her warmth again. All was so sudden that I did not have the chance to say what I wanted to say to her. I felt a pang of guilt in me, it was like she died without knowing how much I loved her. Just like a nightmare, this is the horror that never wanted to happen in my life, yet it did. So many questions came to mind; my thoughts are distorted.

I felt a sharp sting in my chest, a puncture in my stomach, and a bullet through my head. I was in suffering.

“Ally be careful with your dosage! Are you even aware of the amount you intake?!” Hearing the voice of my father, I gradually opened my eyes. I look over to see my psychiatrist checking the bottle of pills. Was it all a vivid flashback?

I then realized how my thoughts took over my body. Driving home and seeing flashing city lights triggered the memories of my mother to flood my mind with thoughts of her tragic death. I felt tightness in my throat, rapid palpitations in my chest. I reached for my medication, unaware of the amount I am taking, hoping that it could relieve the choking sensation that silently suffocated me. With the sound of aggressive honking, I drove drained of strength and energy. Arriving home, my body began to respond to the side effects that came with my medication; It led to my slumber.

After being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Dr. Torres prescribed me pills to cope with my sudden anxiety attacks. The death of my mother scarred me. My mother died in an ambush when I was 15 years old, almost 20 years ago. I am now 35 years old, a lawyer, a CEO, and a woman determined to grow my mother’s legacy. I know how sentimental the company is to my mother, so I continue to work hard to make what she started to flourish into a company she sacrificed for.

‘A goal without a plan is not a goal, it is only a dream.

- Dra. Amelia Fuentes.’

When she died, I saw how she still looked glowing. Although she died blood-soaked in a silk dress, her beauty was radiant. My mother is the woman that ensured to raise me with passion in all my works. She has left me with the knowledge that made me grow into the woman I am today. Her wisdom will forever remain with me; the most valuable gift she has ever given.

Even after 20 years, it still haunts me, yet I decide to focus on the path ahead of me, instead of longing for the past that I could never bring back. I may not be able to go back to the days we spent as a complete family, but I gradually accepted that my mother is now home in the heavens. Her presence is something I have been longing for ever since she left. I would even hallucinate seeing her in events, imagining her voice of greetings, her smile of an angel, and her gentle touch.

She is now an angel that continues to protect my father and me from this selfish world. I may not feel her warmth anymore, but I feel her presence.

"My mother will forever be the source of my tranquility.

She will forever be my angel."

-----

[Porcelaine Whispers]

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Where in Fiction Would You Spend Christmas?

https://ift.tt/34FuLCB

It’s been a staying-in kind of year. That New Year’s Resolution you made to travel more? It’s gained 20 pounds, started cutting its own hair and is now in a jigsaw club with your neighbour Ken. The only marathon you’ve completed in 2020 is a Battlestar Galactica rewatch. The only mountain you’ve climbed is the metaphorical one it takes to shower daily. That beach trip you’d planned? It went okay actually. You made some bells by selling coconuts to Nook’s Cranny and dug up a bunch of Manila Clams with a flimsy shovel.

For obvious reasons, escape is on our minds this year more than most. So we started thinking, if you had your wishing socks on, where in the collected imaginations of everyone who’s ever dreamt up a film, TV show, game or book, would you spend the holidays? On the holodeck of the Starship Enterprise or roasting on an open fire with The Simpsons, exchanging gifts with Ewoks or witnessing Scrooge McDuck’s transformation from miser to philanthropist first hand?

To get things started, here’s what our writers picked…

Alec Bojalad would spend Christmas … reveling with the Sterling Cooper staff on Mad Men

If I’m to indulge this hypothetical in which I’m torn away from one reality and thrust into another, one thing is very clear: I will have to be extremely intoxicated to avoid my heart exploding from the stressful terror of it all. Thankfully, I know exactly where in pop culture to go to get absolutely blitzed: Mad Men. In terms of sheer debauchery, a Sterling Cooper Christmas party probably falls somewhere between a Bacchanalian orgy and Valhalla itself. As Don, Roger, Bert, Peggy, and company gather together to celebrate another successful year schmoozing clients and sexually harassing one another, I will don my finest 1960s attire and infiltrate the festive event.

As Don Draper wonders who this soft-bodied weirdo in an ill-fitting suit is, I’ll catch up with Harry Crane about television. Then I’ll ask to see Bert Cooper’s weird tentacle porn painting. Sometime around my 9th J&B Whisky on the rocks I’ll visit the secretarial pool and beg them to demand better treatment because “you’ree ssssooo strong and eleganttt. Don’t listen to thessseee men. They’re Mad Men.” Hopefully I’ll be taken away to an old-timey hospital at that point, given electroshock treatment, and return back to my own continuity.

Ryan Britt would spend Christmas… at Deanna and Will’s cabin from Star Trek: Picard

When Jean-Luc Picard uses the spatial projector to zap himself and Soji across the galaxy to the planet Nepethene, the result is a cozy pizza dinner with Will Riker, Deanna Troi and their daughter Kestra. For those who had been pining for more ‘90s nostalgia in this Trek series, the episode ‘Nepthene’ delivered, but with a strong shot of realism. Although Picard was written and created before the Covid-19 pandemic, the idea that Riker and Troi would leave the busy and crowded life of Starfleet, and retire in a remote cabin to protect their family is a choice many have actually faced in 2020. As people around the world have fled pandemic epicenters and tried to put shields around their own families, the peaceful and remote home of the Riker-Trois represents the optimistic ideal of Star Trek with a quiet, and very close-to-home twist.

Spending time with the Riker-Troi family would mean great conversation, great music (oh the jazz!) and, above all, great food. I would happily put my own family in their ‘pod’ if only so Kestra could teach my three-year-old daughter the best way to construct a bow and arrow, and of course, how to learn that secret language of butterflies.

Then, after the kids were in bed, having a glass of wine or some Romulan whiskey with Will out on the porch sounds pretty damn perfect. 2020 has been tough. A bear hug from Riker seems like the perfect Christmas gift of all.

Caroline Preece would spend Christmas… at The Muppet Christmas Carol’s Penguin Skating Party

Ever since young-me set eyes on the ultra-festive world of The Muppet Christmas Carol I’ve wanted to visit. I can’t imagine a better way to spend Christmas Eve than in the cuddly version of Dickens’ cautionary tale, helping Kermit and his co-workers tidy up Scrooge’s office for the holidays, dancing down the snowy London streets and attending the Penguins’ annual Christmas skating party as the ultimate topper to a perfect evening.

As well as being super-merry and joyous (‘tis the season), judging by Kermit’s performance on the ice, they let anyone take part.

It could just be the general lack of socialising and festive frivolity in 2020, but Bob Cratchit’s hopeful walk home from the office (remember the office?!?) on the night before Christmas has always epitomised the idea that the anticipation of Christmas Day is the best part. Add to that a trip to the market to pick up some singing vegetables, or the cosy Cratchit dinner with Miss Piggy and their gaggle of pig and frog offspring, and it’s a version of old-timey festive cheer that will always hold a place in my heart.

Louisa Mellor would spend Christmas… with the strippers in Hustlers

This choice won’t reflect well on me. It’s neither edifying nor improving and has a core of savage capitalist consumerism, which is probably what makes it so Christmassy. Midway through Lorraine Scafaria’s Hustlers – a film about a group of strippers who right the wrongs of the 2008 financial crisis by drugging Wall Street guys to run up their company credit cards – there’s a scene that’d make anyone’s heart grow three sizes.

A dozen lap dancers gather for Christmas in a high-end apartment, their daughters and a grandmother in tow. Dressed in luxe loungewear and chunky gold, their skin glowing like a sucked butterscotch, they swap gifts, smile and sing and dance and thank the lord for their sisters. Expensive elegance is everywhere. Someone gets a fur coat, somebody else a pair of animal-print Louboutins. The woman who dips the dancers’ tits in bowls of ice before they go on stage is given an iPhone 4. Mostly though, they give each other affirmation. Without a natural hair colour, nude fingernail or a man in sight, it’s a dream family Christmas. Picture a Norman Rockwell painting with Jennifer Lopez in gold lamé, a cashmere Santa hat and a balcony bra. Feel-good festive perfection.

Michael Ahr would spend Christmas… secluded in Hogwarts

Some may have found Harry Potter’s winter holidays without his friends rather lonely, but I can think of nothing more magical than having the vast empty halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry all to myself. Why let the staff have the warm, dry, magical snow that fell annually in the Great Hall all to themselves? Not being of school age myself anymore, I might choose to share a butterbeer (or perhaps a hot buttered rum) with Dumbledore and Hagrid by a roaring fire.

I might even be tempted to make the trip to Hogsmeade to see all the shops decked out with lights and blanketed in snow. I’d still be able to enjoy the comparative solitude without all the kids running around, but I’m almost certain there would be a group of carolers wandering about the square, never mind the singing enchanted suits of armor back at the school. And of course, if I could pick a particular present, I’d choose to receive the same amazing gift Harry received that first Christmas from Dumbledore: his father’s Invisibility Cloak. I’d likewise pass it along as a family heirloom to my own children on some Christmas morning to come.

Jamie Andrew would spend Christmas… in a Deep Space Nine Holosuite

At first, I entertained the idea of spending Christmas in Baltimore with the denizens of The Wire, mainly because I liked the idea of children running up and down the streets hollering, ‘Omar’s coming!’ moments before the shotgun-wielding Robin Hood of the Hood came swaggering down the street wearing a big red coat and a white beard, tossing out bank notes and whistling ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’. Then I realised that the chances of me ending up a corpse inside a boarded-up derelict building before the turkey was even cooked were surprisingly high, so I thought I’d try Christmas with Frasier Crane and family instead. Unfortunately, my foreknowledge of Martin’s and Eddie’s deaths would cloud the occasion, and I’d probably spend all night slumped crying in Martin’s recliner, unable to tell anyone why I was so upset without violating the temporal time directive.

Best, then, to spend Yule time on Deep Space Nine. Christianity and its associated festive traditions don’t appear to exist in the 24th Century, so after saying hello to Sisko and co., and maybe playing a bit of Dabo at Quark’s, I’d probably spend the rest of my time in a faithful Holosuite reproduction of a 1990s Irish bar on New Year’s Eve getting absolutely wasted with fellow Celt Chief O’Brien. Now THAT’S what I call Christmas.

Juliette Harrisson would spend Christmas… in Narnia

Not, of course, the White Witch’s eternal winter, when it’s always winter but never Christmas, but a regular Christmas in Narnia. It would, of course, be a white Christmas because otherwise, how would Father Christmas come and deliver presents to everyone? So I could spend the season in a snowy woodland surrounded by magical creatures, and be in with a chance of a really good present. Or possibly a sewing machine.

Movies

Why Chronicles of Narnia’s Santa Claus Celebrates Christmas with Weapons of War

By Juliette Harrisson

Movies

The Rod Serling Christmas Movie You Never Saw

By Chris Farnell

On the first moonlit night when there’s snow on the ground, Narnian fauns, dryads, and dwarfs perform the Great Snow Dance, with the fauns and dryads dancing around while the dwarfs throw snowballs that don’t hit them (an often forgotten detail from the book version of The Silver Chair!). I would join in, although possibly not throw any snowballs as my aim isn’t that good. Then I’d go back to Mr Tumnus’s for sardines and cake on Christmas Eve and talk to him about his somewhat dubious taste in books (just what is Nymphs And Their Ways about, eh Tumnus?). I’d spend Christmas Day up at the castle of Cair Paravel, eating and drinking like a Queen, and then I’d go visit Mr and Mrs Beaver on Boxing Day for a feast of leftovers and maybe a little light ice fishing.

John Saavedra would spend Christmas…celebrating Life Day with Star Wars’ Poe Dameron

No one has ever cared so much about Life Day, the Star Wars galaxy’s own version of Christmas, as much as ace pilot Poe Dameron does in the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special. From decorating the Millennium Falcon and choosing the right Life Day sweater to roasting the traditional tip-yip (also known as Endorian chicken), Poe shows there’s something much stronger than the Force in the Star Wars universe: holiday spirit. Who knew the Resistance hero best known for his knack at blowing stuff up had such a soft spot?

Hanging with Poe on Life Day would mean chestnuts roasting on an open exhaust engine, drinking whatever passes for cocoa in the Star Wars galaxy, hanging out with Wookiees on their homeworld of Kashyyyk, singing festive carols in Huttese, and finding just the right Life Day tree for the Falcon. It’d also mean dancing to the hip tunes of Max Rebo’s drum (the rest of his band is unfortunately no longer with us) and partying with Lando Calrissian, Finn, Rose, Rey, Jannah, Mon Calamari, Jawas, Rodians, Ewoks, and maybe even Chewie’s son Lumpy. If you’re not sold by now, your taste in holiday parties might be bantha poodoo.

Elizabeth Donoghue would spend Christmas…. at The Office’s Classy Christmas

Dunder Mifflin has many memorable Christmas parties, but Steve Carell’s final festive special includes some of my favourite things about The Office; weird Gabe, Michael’s enduring hatred of Toby, and Michael and Holly’s adorable relationship.

After Toby announces he is taking a leave of absence for jury duty (‘Thank you, Scranton Strangler. I love you. You just took one more person’s breath away’) Michael learns that Holly will be returning to Scranton and demands that Pam’s regular Christmas party must get classy. What makes a Christmas classy? A backwards Kangol-esque Santa hat, a red velvet smoking jacket and a quarter of a jazz quartet of course.

I would actively enjoy watching Dwight take down Jim in their snowball fight (total bully, needs to be taken down a peg or two), get drunk with Kelly and Meredith, dance with Phyllis and Erin and learn more about the enigma that is Creed. And although it is slightly more subdued than their Benihana and Moroccan Christmas parties, I’m sure we could keep the party going at a Poor Richard’s after-party.

Kayti Burt would spend Christmas … on Themyscira

The Amazons’ decision to opt out of the “Patriarch’s World” has always been a relatable one, but never so much as in The Year 2020. Historically, I’m not really a beach person, but Themyscira, aka Paradise Island, has a lot going for it: warm weather, a supportive community, and live sporting events where you don’t have to worry about some drunken dudebro spilling cheap beer on your toga.

As far as I can tell from the Wonder Woman movies, no one (besides Young Diana, who’s usually working through some stuff) ever seems to be having a bad time on Themyscira. And why would you? The pre-Crisis comics incarnation of the island (which I am going to choose to accept as my holiday canon) includes indigeneous kangaroo-like creatures called Kangas that the Amazons ride like horses. Diana’s is called Jumpa; mine will be called Jimmy Hoppa, and we will explore the island’s cascading waterfalls and cliffside terraces together. In the evenings, I will attend performances at the Themysciran amphitheater with my new Amazonian friends or, if I’m feeling introverted, catch up on my book reading and crossword puzzles.

Listen, I wouldn’t want to spend forever on Themyscira—I’d miss my friends, family, and TV shows (Themyscira doesn’t seem to get a good wireless signal)—but a few weeks (or months, especially as I will be quarantining for my first two weeks) for Christmas 2020? Bring me to the enchanted feminist utopia.

Alana Joli Abbott would spend Yule… at the coven house from the Nightcraft Quartet

Witchkind, as presented in Shannon Page’s Nightcraft Quartet, don’t celebrate Christmas, but they do love a good Yuletide celebration. Page’s witches and warlocks are separate from humans, long lived, and magical. Young witches train in the magical arts at a coven house, living there like a dorm; the adult women of the coven (always numbering thirteen) may be involved in scientific research (like protagonist Callie), medicine and healing, or reading Tarot, and they teach their specialties to the young witches. The coven house is a central place where women gather to live, to practice magic together, to celebrate, and to honor traditional rituals. While Callie’s coven in San Francisco has their problems, the community there is caring and genuine, full of both youthful energy and centuries of experienced witchery.

One of the perks of editing this series is that I get sneak peeks into parts of the story readers haven’t seen yet—including Yule decorations. Rather than cutting down dead trees, witches coax living fir boughs to weave along the walls and mantles, accented with red ribbon and gold—coins, beads, chains. I can imagine the cozy San Francisco coven house filled with witches all rushing to perform their tasks to make the perfect celebration, some of them convincing the fir boughs to expand in just the right ways while others brew hot chocolate or prepare the feast. I picture them eating in the large hall, voices lifted in joyful chatter, and then making their way out to the grounds beyond the house to celebrate beneath the stars, singing midwinter songs and looking forward to the next year. After months of 2020 with smaller communities and less human contact, being surrounded by such a vibrant, magical group of women sounds like just the right way to end my year.

Rosie Fletcher would spend Christmas… with the Roy family from Succession

Go hard or go home, they say, so since I can’t go home this year, I’m going round the Roys. That is, of course, the family at the centre of Succession, a show peopled by the very wealthiest and utterly worst. Festivities would be held at the home of patriarch Logan Roy. His children and their partners would be obliged to attend. Logan would hire a chef to cook, waiting staff to serve, some of whom he would abuse. I would give them sympathetic “I’m sorry” looks but do nothing, secretly thankful Logan’s ire wasn’t focused on me.

In all likelihood I would be a figure like Greg (the egg), or Tom Wambsgans – mostly tolerated, vaguely despised and very much the second class citizens of the Roy clan, skulking on the periphery as Kendall, Roman and Shiv compete for Logan’s love and oldest son Connor comes up will another entirely ridiculous life plan – I dunno, maybe this year he’s decided that his next career move is to become Santa Claus.

The food would be extraordinary. The booze the very finest – how long before, like Greg, I would be claiming the bottle of vintage rose champagne I had just motored through was ‘not my favourite’? And the dinner table conversation would be electric. Electric like an electric shock – sharp, painful, disorientating, unexpected.

So Christmas has become too commercialised? Fine, fuck it. I’ll take the eye-wateringly expensive gift that’s grudgingly bestowed on me, I will gorge on the finest cheeses known to man and coat my tongue with port made from molten rubies, knowing I am on my way to moral bankruptcy and doing it anyway. Go hard or go home…

Kirsten Howard would spend Christmas… singing along in the closing moments of Scrooged

You’d be hard-pressed to find a Christmas movie that feels as genuinely uplifting during its climax as 1988’s Scrooged. Bill Murray’s arrogant TV boss Frank Cross, having been visited by the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future, disrupts a live broadcast of A Christmas Carol to rant openly and honestly at the cast and crew (and eventually you) as he makes a passionate case for a life less invested in exploitation and capitalism, and eventually kicks off a collective singalong of Annie Lennox and Al Green’s version of ‘Put a Little Love in Your Heart’.

That’s where I’d like to be this Christmas. Not just to sing along with Bill, but to be around people immediately swept along by the much-less-explored altruistic route of ‘no fucks given’.

Also hanging out with Bill Murray, though, of course.

So much of the last few years has been a public race to the bottom of Nothing Matters Mountain, but even if it hadn’t all been so demoralising and forced so many of us to reevaluate our priorities, Frank’s message of redemption in love and living as well as we can, while shrugging off our own heavy expectations of success, still feels really special.

This Christmas, there is light at the end of the tunnel. We may not be able to grab the nearest stranger and sing “put a little love in your heart!” at them right now, but we CAN carry that feeling with us into 2021. As Frank says: “There are people who are having trouble making their miracle happen”. We can always try and find time to stop focusing on our own for a while and to help them.

David Crow would spend Christmas… chilling with Harold and Kumar

Not many people are aware of this, but A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas is the best Harold and Kumar. It may not have the pop culture cache of their medicinal-fueled quest for mini-cheeseburgers, but it does have something very special, indeed: Wafflebot. If you’ve had the misfortune of living your life oblivious to Wafflebot’s existence, allow me to introduce you to a greater world of wonder and magic.

Wafflebot is the best Christmas present to ever come out of Santa’s Workshop. Displaying an eerily sophisticated artificial intelligence for a toy meant only to cook delicious breakfasts, Wafflebot can make you waffles any time by just popping the top and letting that batter drop. But he can also do so much more! Vaguely aware of the concept of friendship, this brunching Frankenstein can learn how to love and appreciate his owners… and defend them from any threat with scalding hot projectile syrup!

With the ability to serve breakfast, save your life, be manipulated into dangerous attack mode, and learn how to see the real you, all while playing a mean drum solo, Wafflebot would make any Christmas a sweetly warm experience. And then Harold and Kumar, and I could also steal a Christmas tree from NPH or something.

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kingofdirtandnothing · 4 years

Text

@polyfacetious whoops this is four thousand words long

“So Parker was right. This is where you’ve been spending your gardening leave.” Rose Teller has a remarkable gift for looking exhausted, no matter the time of day. Alice has always respected her for it, for not giving in to wearing make up, for not slipping into the loo to touch up lipstick or eyeliner before dealing with a suspect. They played to different roles, and Teller’s role was that of the put upon school marm.

Even here, where she’s followed Peter’s lack of good sense to find Alice where she wasn’t supposed to be.

It was a bit like a bruise, or a bad tooth. Something Alice couldn’t stop probing, feeling the pang that came with sitting here and remembering Henry Madsen, hanging by his fingernails and begging to be saved. He didn’t much like when she asked if Adrian had begged to be saved as well. Or Gabriella. Or Emma, who Alice dug out with her own two hands.

Liar! Her voice had rung out through the big, empty space around them, ricocheting accusingly back down on them both. There were few things in this world that Alice hated more than a liar. But Madsen had given her the information she needed, and Peter Parker, he of the endlessly loyal friend variety, had hung up the phone. Plausible deniability.

Teller was still talking. Alice blinks, dragging her mind up through the depths of the past and into the present, just in time to hear “- have the Madsen verdict. Given the exceptional circumstances, the inquiry have found no grounds for disciplinary action. Which means you’re back...if you want it.”

Alice had thought about it once, very briefly. What it would be like to give up the job. To bin her badge and walk away. Travel the world. Swim with the sharks. Be an honest to God person and not a string of late nights turned second shifts with corpses dancing behind her eyelids every time she dared close them.

“I want it.”

She gets the speech about following orders and being a good girl. Alice makes sure to compliment Teller on the speech. Staying on the boss’s good side was paramount right now. And it’s the thought that fills her head until she’s brought up to the car, and the green eyed little puppy of a Sergeant who was waiting for them. He says welcome back, or whatever.

DS Klaus Hargreeves. Alice shakes his hand. Teller leaves them be. Well, it looked like she’d have a new babysitter. “Do we need to have the talk, DS Hargreeves?” It was like Rose’s exhaustion was contagious. It wasn’t yet nine in the morning and already Alice felt like she was swimming in mud. Hargreeves murmurs a worried little the talk, ma’am and Alice waves that away. “Ma’am is Teller. Boss is fine. The talk is simply...I was unwell.” Liar. “I got better. Nothing more.”

Hargreeves nods along, an eager little puppy. Alice would guess middle child. Only ever managed to get attention by acting out. Now he was trying to do it the “right way”. He tells her that he’s been lobbying to work with her for nine months now. Chasing it up in writing three times a week. Well. The puppy was very stubborn. Some of the ice in her chest thaws. “Tell me about the case.”

Conversation is easy after that. Hargreeves--Klaus hands her the folder and starts towards the scene. “Home invasion.” Alice hides her smile in the manila folder as Klaus swallows a ‘ma’am’. Mommy issues, maybe. He didn’t feel like daddy issues. “Victim is Zoe Luther. Humanitarian lawyer. Found dead in the home. Trauma to the back of the head. Broken neck.”

Alice flips the page over, asks who found her. “The husband. John Luther. Owns a used bookshop. He said he was at the shops, got a call from the wife saying someone was in the home. By the time he made it back, she was dead. Call records do show that Zoe Luther’s phone had a seven minute outbound call to the husband’s phone. 999 call was made an additional four minutes after, from the husband’s phone.”

She bites down on her thumbnail, looking over the words. Alice tries not to let herself make any assumptions this early. She lets the data points wash over her, so that the sediment of them can settle into her mind. “Witnesses?”

Klaus turns onto a quaint little street, lit up by blues and twos splashing their colors along the sides of the houses. There were couples and families huddled on their porches, breathing through the relief of knowing they’d survived something terrible, somehow. “Neighbors saw the husband come home in a rush. Heard screams. One called 999 approximately thirty seconds after the husband did.”

They step out of the car, and Alice is grateful she chose flats today. Heels were for office days, when she needed to cut a particular image when dealing with the suspect. She kept a pair in the bottom drawer of her desk, just for that reason. Alice badges the uniform standing guard in front of all the rubber-neckers with their phones. Klaus holds the caution tape up for her to slip under. What a gentleman.

There are flowers on the front stoop, petals spilling out of the cheap plastic lining. A few have been trampled by CSI, carrying bootprints against soft yellows and pinks. There’s dust on the forced lock, though she doubts they’ll get any fingerprints that belong to someone other than the homeowners.

The living room is a picture of normalcy. A glass of wine on the coffee table, the TV turned low and the news playing on in the background. It was only stepping into the kitchen that the truth of the night unfolded. Alice stays there, just inside of the doorway and lets all of it wash over her.

A broken glass, a broken dish. A photo frame knocked over onto the floor. Scratches on the parquette from the kitchen table being forcefully pushed back. And Zoe Luther. A cold heap on the floor, looking like a discarded doll with her halo of dark curls and her wool socks. “Cutlery isn’t silver. The coffee machine is nice, expensive enough to pawn.”

Klaus steps up behind her, and clever boy, he picks up the thread of her thought and keeps going. “Nothing was taken, according to the husband.” There it is. The heavy stone growing in the pit of her stomach. A feeling of going against the grain, beneath her skin.

“So we have a home invasion. Obvious signs of rage.” Alice gestures idly towards the broken pantry door. “No sexual abuse. Nothing stolen. Does any of this sound right to you, DS Hargreeves?”

She likes Hargreeves all the more for the fact that he doesn’t answer immediately. He looks the room over, looks the body over. “No. Nothing about this seems right.”

“Because it’s not.”

-------------------

They stop off on the way back to the station to get real coffee, and Alice gets a muffin that she picks at during the drive. She bins the bottom half of it when they walk into the precinct. Teller is already waiting. The husband is in the interview room. Hargreeves mutters christ, that’s a big lad and Alice has to agree.

John Luther nearly fills the side of the screen where he’s slumped in the interview chair, wearing one of the paper suits they give to suspects and pick ups who come in covered in blood. Uniforms that responded to the call wrote in the file that he was cradling his wife’s body when they made it to the scene. Which means he spent at least ten or fifteen minutes in the back of a patrol car with his wife’s brain matter stuck to his shirt.

Teller gives her a look. Alice stops by her desk. She touches up her red lipstick and pulls the pair of black patent leather pumps from her bottom drawer and replaces her sensible flats with those. Hargreeves steals a look, and then looks away. Good boy.

Alice knows how it changes her. Her demeanor, her gait. Her posture. She plucks the folder from the desk and strides into the interview room, so that she can get her first real impression of John Luther.

“Mr. Luther. I’m DCI Alice Morgan. I’m the senior investigating officer on the case. Do you mind if I sit?” His eyes flit briefly to her legs, and then skip away. A normal response. And given the day he’s had, it may well be the sound of them drawing his attention. Luther nods, big hands curled into loose fists on the table in front of him.

On first whiff, nothing about him rings any alarm bells. A big lad, as Hargreeves phrased it, but Luther wasn’t weaponizing it. His slouch didn’t feel calculated. It felt tired. She asks him as much, gets a gravelly ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired’ in response. Alice touches the corner of her mouth with her thumb, and comes away with a smudge of red.

“I know everything must seem bleak right now, Mr. Luther.” Alice has given this speech so many times that she could do it in her sleep. She’s learned to make her voice soft, her eyes soft. No matter what she’s really thinking, families of victims needed to feel empathized with. “But I promise you, I will do everything in my power to find who did this, and bring them to justice.”

Alice reaches across the table, finger hovering over the button for the recorder. Luther nods before she has the chance to ask. The sound of the recorder spinning up carries in the quiet. “Unfortunately, John-” A calculated risk. He doesn’t seem upset by it. Alice pushes on. “I’ll need to ask you some very uncomfortable questions. Can you think of anyone who might have held a grudge against your wife? You don’t need proof or excuses, it can simply be a feeling of unease.”

Like the one sitting at the base of her skull that Alice couldn’t banish, no matter the evidence laid out in front of her. The primal part of her mind, the dark corners who existed solely to keep her alive, they were ringing hard bells. This man was a killer. She didn’t know how, but she knew.

Luther scrubs a hand over his mouth. His voice shakes when he tells her that he can’t think of anyone, that Zoe was a good woman, a gracious woman that used her time to help people, that he couldn’t think of anyone who would want to hurt her-

His voice breaks, and the emotion in it is genuine. Just like the emotion in his dark eyes.

“Alright. Take a breath for me now. It’s alright.” It feels like rote sometimes, coming in here and saying these things. Alice’s strengths were in the field, it was in reading the minds of the corrupt and the cruel. She wasn’t made for dealing with bereaved loved ones. “Now I have to ask. Were there any marital problems? Were you two working on things? Zoe didn’t have her wedding ring on.”

John’s head tilts there, just a fraction of an inch. Alice thinks gotcha gleefully to herself. “We had a trial separation. We tried it, we didn’t like it. Zoe told me to come home. So I did.” There. There, there, there, each warning clang of a church bell in the back of her skull was watching some of that grief get burned away. By anger. (No mention of the ring. He knew it was gone. Bastard.)

“The thing is John, this is a very singular crime. There was no sign of robbery, and I’m very sorry for having to say these things... no sign of sexual assault.” Alice watches for a flinch, for some kind of reaction. Nothing. Just dark, clever eyes focused on her. But his hands were perfectly still on the table. Not fists. “Crimes like this aren’t random, they’re never without motive. And you can see why our first thought would be here, with you.”

He breaks then, looking away for a moment as the tears well and he blinks them back. Well. No time like the present. Alice puts on a big yawn, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m very sorry. It’s been an exhausting day, as I’m sure it has been for you.” John watches her with watery eyes. He speaks gently, tells her he understands. “How about a coffee?” He asks for tea. It’s the perfect chance to step out.

Alice strides back over to the desk where Teller, Hargreeves and Parker have ringed around Alice’s computer, watching the video footage straight from the interview room. “He killed her.” Alice gestures at the screen. “Peter, am I wrong?”

Peter Parker, perennially single and married to his work all at once, nods. The words are given into his cup of coffee, but she hears them all the same. “You’re not wrong.”

“He didn’t yawn.” Peter is rolling his eyes, and Hargreeves is watching her like she’s mad. “Yawning is contagious.” Teller yawns, because she’s nothing if not suggestible. Hargreeves is looking a little green around the gills, but he works up the nerve to speak up. Ma’am, that research has been debunked- Alice waves the sentence away, though she does appreciate the puppy being brave enough to speak up.

“It’s not about empathy or the brain or anything like that. He’s working so hard to put on that grieving husband facade that he didn’t have time to realize he should have reacted. By the time he did. It was too late. He’s our killer.”

Teller is pleased, but Alice can see the ultimatum coming. We have nothing. Timeline alone is enough to get this laughed out. I need proof. Solid proof. All we have right now is - “Absence.” It smacks her right in the bloody face. “The absence of proof. The door screams crime of passion, but everything else is meticulous. Why stay at the scene if he could have alibi’ed himself at the shops and been done with all of this?”

Little Hargreeves, already worth his weight in silver, if not gold, lifts his hand like this is primary school. Peter laughs so hard he inhales coffee and has to turn away to cough. “I spoke to the neighbors. They said that Zoe has been having a gentleman caller. That Luther hasn’t been home in months. Found the bloke’s name, it’s Mark North. He was at work the entire time, airtight alibi. But he says the only person who didn’t know the separation was final was John.”

That was it, then. Alice can feel her heart racing. “That’s what it is. He’s a narcissist. Acting on compulsion. Everything we found out, it’s because he wanted us to find it. He wanted us to know that his wife was being unfaithful. He wants to punish her, that’s why he took the ring. He wants the media to crow that the loving husband did no wrong, that it’s the wife who went astray and paid for it.” The next words out of Teller’s mouth are the ones Alice doesn’t want to hear.

Find me the ring, then. Or we have to cut him loose.

Tea, first. Alice makes them both a cup, and just like John Luther, she cuts the bullshit when she walks back into the room, sliding him over a cup. Asks if he’s comfortable. The mask is firmly back in place now, the exhausted, grieving husband who tells her that it’s fine, really.

“Sometimes.” Alice was hitting the ground running, now. No room left in her brain for Henry Madsen or her empty flat. Just the chase. “We like to make one of the legs shorter than the other, you know. It keeps the suspect off balance. It makes it so that they can never get comfortable.” It’s only because she’s watching near his elbow that Alice sees the nearly imperceptible bunch of muscle at his hip. Testing out the chair.

“We also use the right police officers for the job. Take me, for instance.” Alice gestures to herself, and takes a sip of her tea. She’ll blame that wave of warmth on weak, too hot tea and not on the feel of those eyes moving over her. “I’ll be sent in to deal with men who are narcissists. Men who are women beaters, who are rapists. Who think they’re better than a woman. It makes them angry, to have to deal with someone they see as beneath them.”

There isn’t so much as a flicker of anger across John Luther’s expressive face. But there is something there, tucked into the corners of his eyes. Curiosity.

“Have you ever heard of Occam’s razor?” John nods, watching her when she stands from her seat and paces over to lean against the wall, hands tucked behind her. It keeps them from fluttering. John rumbles back the definition. But he’s waiting for something. “The only person known to have been at the house was you, John.”

John scoffs a little at her. “Absence of evidence doesn’t necessarily mean evidence of absence.” He’s got Alice’s attention now. And it seems to be mutual. Luther leans forward, tapping his temple. “I see what you’re doing there. A leap.” Alice answers without thinking. A hop, really. “But you’re wrong. Was my marriage strained? Yes. Was my wife sleeping around? Yes. Did I kill her? No.”

John’s entire affect has changed now. No hint of tears at the eyes, no downturned mouth. He’s watching Alice like she’s the only thing in the world and it’s making her feel a little dizzy as she asks can you prove that? John laughs. He actually laughs. It’s faint and over in an instant, but it’s a laugh. “Can’t prove a negative, that means the burden of proof is on you, DCI Morgan. If you think I did this, then you need to demonstrate how and when.”

They were so deeply beyond is he the killer that Alice has circled back around to how can I prove that he’s the killer? No doubt in her mind. “But I won’t be able to do that, now will I?” The audio on the camera, even the recorder won’t have picked it up. But Alice hears that you can try as if it were whispered against her ear. She has goosebumps. “Because you, John, you don’t interact with the world in the way it assumes you will. It makes you hard to understand. And it’s your absence that’s more telling than your speech.”

“Is that a compliment?” There is something predatory in the way his curls those words over his tongue, eyes like a shark and long, powerful body like a crouched panther. Alice doesn’t know why she says it. But ‘yes’ slips past her lips like a confession. Bloody hell.

John leans back in the chair, a pleased little ‘ah’ slipping past his lips. Just like that, his demeanor has softened. Gone was the hunter. “Are you trying to beguile me?”

They’re sparring now. Alice crosses her legs so that she doesn’t have the urge to bounce her knee. “No, John. I wouldn’t be so foolish.” He was a narcissist. The best thing she could do was play to his ego. (It wasn’t a lie.) “But.” She lifts a careful, manicured finger there. “You can be sure that I will find the proof I need. And you will go down. Criminals are never as clever as they think they are.”

“That must get monotonous, for someone as brilliant as you, Alice.” Her name feels illicit where it sits on the tip of his tongue. Alice closes the folder and gathers it in hands that she keeps still and straight with sheer force of will. Out in the hall, she has to take a deep breath before she can face the peanut gallery again.

Time was up. They couldn’t hold him any longer, and no amount of possible ideas to hold him from Hargreeves (good boy) was enough to stop the inevitable. It didn’t matter that it was obvious, that anyone with eyes could see that Luther was excited by them knowing. (She doesn’t say them, Alice says he’s excited that I know and she ignores the look from Peter it gets her.) Teller gives the call to cut him loose. Peter, protective in his own silly way, offers to be the one to let him know. Alice wonders if her cheeks are as pink as they feel.

On his way out, John Luther, used book salesman and murderer, stops by Alice’s desk. “I did enjoy our little chat. You’re very interesting.” He pats the edge of her folder and walks away. Alice has never wanted to break a chair over someone’s back so fiercely in all her life.

------------------------

Her apartment is chilly and uninviting, even with a light left on in every room, an old habit left over from her time in University that she’s never been able to shake. Alice kicks off her ridiculous heels and her overcoat, and pads to the kitchen on bare feet. The curry in the styrofoam box in her refrigerator still smells passable.

She eats it right there in the kitchen, because her table is overflowing with cold case files and the kind of photographs that would put anyone off of their dinner. Alice’s mind wanders while she eats, replaying the crime scene over in her mind’s eye with startling clarity. There was something she was missing. Something that wasn’t right.

Stomach full but no more satisfied, Alice sits on the side of the tub and draws herself a bath. While it’s running, she cleans the lipstick away, spending a moment staring at the red smear on the cloth wipe.

Once the tub is full and dusted with soft smelling bubbles, Alice strips down, leaving her work clothes in a heap outside of the bathroom door, like maybe she can hide from all of it if she just shuts the door behind her.

The water is deliciously hot, and it eases the ache building in her arches from wearing those heels for the rest of the afternoon. Alice pins her hair up off of her nape with a pen balanced on the notepad she kept next to the sink, and slips down into the water, her eyes falling closed.

It’s been a long time since Alice made an attempt at a life. Bertrand had been wonderful in his own way, full of fire and intellect. But the challenge of arguments lost their luster when they always came back to the same thing. Her job. You spend more time with the dead than you do with me, Alice. By the time he moved out, she was more angry than hurt.

Without any direct input from her mind, her thoughts trail back to the morning. To John Luther, cut from marble even in the paltry paper suit that sat too short on his forearms and his calves, because of his size. With his bright, clever eyes and his lovely, long fingered hands…

It’s only because she hasn’t been on a date in a few years. That’s why her fingers trace down the inside of her thigh, with the thought of John’s careful mask slipping away dancing behind her closed eyelids.

She thinks of what it would be like to put herself across his lap. In this ridiculous fantasy, she’s wearing a skirt. They’re never practical for work, but there’s nothing practical about fingering yourself while thinking about a murderer.

In her fantasy, he’s in trousers she can work the zipper down. And he’s running his big palms up from her knee to her hip, her skin lit up like streelights following the dusk beneath his touch. His eyes never leave hers, clever and sure of what he’s doing to her.

In her fantasy, he catches a finger at the hip of her knickers and pulls, the flimsy fabric rending like wet paper beneath the strength of his hands. Alice moans, both in the place in her mind and the place in her tub.

In her fantasy, John balls up the fabric and shoves it into his pocket. A trophy to keep. A reminder of what he was doing.

In her bathroom, Alice sits bolt upright in her bath, hands catching on the sides and sending water sloshing onto the floor with loud slaps.

“The ring!”

#ch: alice #polyfacetious #polyfacetious | luther #v: dci morgan #boy did this ever get away from me #my brain is tired now #queued

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split-n-splice · 5 years

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"Her reputation going sour was no secret." – a line of interest from Ch1 of The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie. ;3 Just throwin’ that out there. Also! A definite nod to the cupcakery here, because headcanon: those recipes were taken from Drakken’s cookbook. Also headcanon: Drakken likes baking, fite me. This makes sense to me since Ron likes baking, and since Drakken’s shown interest in recipes.

Edited by @gogofordrakgo ♥ (ohlawd thnx for putting up w/ me)

[Chapter Guide]

7. Enabler – 4

As his first day alone in more than two weeks wore on, Dr. Drakken became increasingly aware he was off his game.

He haphazardly wrapped up the order of power staves and shipped them off to free up his schedule. Even left with a surplus of free time on his hands, left in the total privacy of his lab with no one to hover and no distracting upgrades to personalized combat gear to win himself brownie points, he made very little headway on his drones.

He managed to get one robot up and running, so to speak, but commands that seemed so simple like stand and walk just didn’t compute. Yet the buggy self-aware machine managed to rise on its own accord and point to the unassembled duplicates strewn about in a thousand different pieces on his worktable. Worst of all, the bare-bones robot began chanting, “sisters, sisters, sisters,” incessantly until something Drakken said or did caused its head to snap his direction. Preservation activated and an artificial fight or flight drive tripped, unfortunately geared toward fight. The skeletal droid abruptly announced him a threat to the sisters and lurched into action. Lucky for him, there was still a plug to pull.

He could have used some assistance in disabling the mutinous drone, but he managed on his own, as he always had. He shut down the project for the day to tend to a swollen lip received in the collision of steel knuckles and his face.

Back in his quarters, he couldn’t help casting glances to the phone, itching to dial – to dial someone. Anyone. He knew exactly who he wanted to ring up and give an earful to, but he clenched his fists and stamped a foot and grunted to himself as he stalked away from the landline. He had a headache and didn’t need to deal with her attitude now anyway.

Solitude was still disheartening. If he had expected a call from the runaway that evening to update him of her progress or lack thereof, or even to say goodnight or make small talk or anything at all, then he was sorely disappointed.

Drakken knew she wouldn’t have approved – in fact he was certain she would have been furious with him if she’d known – but he’d taken the liberty of sending out henchmen to gather intel on the superhuman. Granted, he’d lost those resourceful fellows, who’d only just returned from the assignment with their haul a day before getting the axe.

As Drakken lugged the overflowing box out of the storage room the next day, he reasoned with himself that he deserved to know who he’d been harboring, especially if he planned to continue to do so. He’d been just a little too wary to touch the box before, lest she pop up behind him to catch him red handed.

He deposited it on his coffee table and locked the door to his quarters for good measure, just in case the woman returned and came barging in at an especially undesirable time.

An abundance of manila folders stuffed with news articles topped the box, and if the men hadn’t already been fired, Drakken might have tipped whoever was responsible for courteously ordering the articles by date, even if he’d nearly scattered them as he unthinkingly tossed them aside while rummaging. VHS and cassette tapes at the bottom of the box made up the other half of the heft. Infiltrating a Global Justice base to steal her official records had been asking too much of the henchman, but an excess of media coverage to expose her would have to be good enough.

With the Bebe bots a bust and a woman who wasn’t even present distracting him still, Drakken settled in to squander his day reading what the sacked henchmen had scrounged up. He could spend an entire week reviewing her hero streak, reading the articles and watching the news reports or listening to interviews on tape, but he elected to skim through the past the four years worth of clippings, pulling out a folder from the bottom of the stack to begin.

A few nights ago, at three in the morning, he had been woken by the girl slamming his “front” door and stalking to his kitchen, the green embers glittering over her skin burning off perspiration and nearly setting her pajamas ablaze. She forwent a glass and drank straight from the faucet before hanging over his sink to hold her head under the stream of water, cursing about a comet. She’d looked just a little too unstable for him to hazard questioning her then, and had returned to his room to let her raid his kitchen for a midnight snack in peace.

So Dr. Drakken wasn’t altogether surprised when the earliest scant news coverage regarded a chip off a comet that had struck down in the suburbs of Go City. It had come so fast and so sudden that there had only been a couple blurry shots of the meteorite’s decent and recovery to accompany the articles. That it hadn’t left a bigger crater or caused fatalities was a mystery, but there was no mention of five quarantined adolescents caught up in the catastrophe either, so a cover-up wasn’t improbable.

Within the year, a trio of teenagers in uniform were garnering admiration of the general populace with their heroic feats. Front-page photos of a distantly familiar girl with her hair still short and boyish beside defeated villains bound up and posed with like trophies, frequently smiling smugly for the camera, should have been enough to make any villain in his right mind reconsider taking her in. Drakken wanted to believe he knew her better than that – that she wasn’t the vigilante she claimed she never wanted to be, and that there was no chance she might be on her way back to his lair with her teammates to hand his ass to him at any moment – but it wasn’t so easy.

Guiltily, he came realize that maybe she hadn’t been pulling his leg about her piloting capability after all when he found a clipping from last fall, featuring a photograph of a far more recognizable woman in uniform along with two young men like her in front of a jet as colorful as their suits, which had been generously donated to them by Global Justice. The Go Tower constructed in the bay a year earlier served as a monument and a base, and Dr. Drakken would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little envious that some superhuman youths had it all handed to them on a silver platter just for swearing an oath to use their gifts for good.

The set of gloves he’d fashioned paled in comparison to the extravagant gifts from Global Justice and Go City. Clearly, giving her things was no way to win her allegiance, because the girl’s hero career had been short-lived. She’d served little more than three years. If she’d only abided by their rules, she could have been living it up, yet she’d formally quit her team months ago.

As of this year, there was a marked change in the tone of the headers. There was less and less praise to be found, until there was next to none at all. If he’d been hoping to find reassurance she was genuinely a bad seed, he got it, though snooping made him feel worse with each article he skimmed over.

Nasty gossip sprung up like weeds. Disbelief and speculation aplenty could be found in clippings from newspapers and magazines as to why she’d abandoned her occupation as a beloved hero. The supply of libel following her resignation was endless. If he had to guess, serving under Global Justice had kept such publications suppressed before, but she’d lost that perk when she put her foot down on doing their bidding.

Blasting scandalous, one popular rumor circulated that she’d withdrawn because she was a typical case of irresponsible teen pregnancy, such negligence marking her unfit to be a role model any longer. That she was still occasionally seen in uniform despite her quitting should have proven she wasn’t expecting – but instead it inspired ridicule and controversy over endangerment and abortion. There was no wining on that front without a good lawyer, which he doubted the girl behind the mask could afford without Global Justice’s charity.

That lost traction when the former hero lashed out at a news reporter on live television. Written accounts played it off as if it had been unprovoked, but Dr. Drakken found a tape on the incident at the bottom of the box that proved otherwise. He was hesitant to hit play on the copy of the broadcast. The masked young woman trying to escape a bombardment of questions was hard to watch as she was confronted by the press with the matter of substance abuse, among other things, all because marijuana was said to be smelled on her clothes. Once detox was mentioned, the cornered superhuman – disheveled and fresh out of an unsanctioned battle – lost her cool and attacked the reporter outright. It was all caught on camera until she was swept away screaming profanities by her gorilla of a brother.

Less than a month later, paparazzi spotted her outside of her hero attire, a familiar ponytail and mismatched boots enough to give her away. It was bad enough she was recognized without her uniform and mask, but she was caught smoking with some punks on a school campus. The snapshot was fuzzy, and there was no way to distinguish what was probably only a cigarette from anything else, but nevertheless it brought an impending graduation into question.

It did not help when some wacked-out addict, an unreliable source if there ever was one, came forward claiming to have taught her the art of cooking meth. The junkie was later found battered and left on the steps of a rehab center. Her signature plasma burns left on the man sparked ever more gossip as to her changing demeanor and bad habits.

On the hero scene, Shego had been golden – but after quitting, the press wasted no time in tarnishing her reputation. Her worsening temper and foul mouth didn’t help the backlash. Her name had been drug through the mud over the past six months, with only a few gems of praise from faithful groupies to be found among the stack of slander.

Dr. Drakken wouldn’t be surprised if it was all true, even the conspiracy theories mixed in about her being from another planet.

"This is why I don't like the hero scene. Everyone knows everything," she’d told him the night he’d found her wandering down a highway in the dark. He hadn’t had much to lose that night when he went with a gut feeling and sprung the proposition on the downtrodden young woman, but whether or not it was the right decision remained to be seen.

Given the stress of the media hounding her every move, both on and off duty, and the family turmoil he’d witnessed from a distance, Dr. Drakken had to bottle his pity for how discontent the runaway must have been to actually jump in a car with an utter stranger and just go.

Before the guilt of prying could get to him too badly, he called it quits and stuffed everything back into the box, double-checking the VCR to be sure he didn’t forget anything she might find later. She’d made it explicitly clear she didn’t want him digging into her past. Even if the box contained publicly available media – for the most part – going through it left a bad taste in his mouth, as if he’d been reading her diary.

Despite the evidence he had that she was indeed a bad apple with a slim chance of returning to her old life, it still felt unwise to put everything on the line for an ex-hero that could easily thwart his plans from the inside. Drakken sat back and shut his eyes, straining to take her words to heart no matter how difficult it was to do so.

“Trust her,” he snorted. “Trust her to what? Bring her brothers to my doorstep?”

But then, he supposed she could have done that already. If she’d wanted to stop him before he could become a major threat, she could have cornered him back in Go City, when she had her team close by to back her up. And even once she was in the lair, she’d had ample time to call in the hounds, and plenty of opportunity to hack into his computers to uncover any master plans, yet she hadn’t busted him yet.

Drakken slumped with his head thrown back over the spine of the couch, stewing a short while on how trustworthy this new partner of his really was, before tuning in to Go City broadcasts to watch the news. She’d only been gone about thirty hours, but he still waited with the bleak expectation to hear some breaking news announcement of her return to the metropolis, anticipating it to be a reason to rejoice. None came, but it still served to worry him.

Leaving the television on, he gave it just a little longer as his stomach drew him toward his kitchen. He’d never had breakfast. He wasn’t even sure if he’d had dinner yesterday. The phone drew his eye though, and he forcibly looked away from it and to the fridge as he took inventory. It was getting a tad late to start on any lab projects, and he could still taste a sore reminder of yesterday’s mishap on his lip.

A check through his cookbook and he found himself gravitating back toward the phone once again. He grudgingly made a call, although it wasn’t the number his fingers itched to dial, and greeted his mother with a weary, “Hello,” and waited for the next half hour for the woman’s exuberance to die down enough to get a word in edgewise.

“That one?” chirped his mother. “Honey, are you feeling alright?”

Drakken blinked and sucked on his split lip. “Relatively speaking,” he slipped. He fished out his notebook and spread it open, eager to get the call over with. “Um. The market will be closing soon,” he lied. “So can I get that recipe?”

“Only if you call me later to tell me how they turn out,” the woman haggled haughtily.

“I’ve made devil’s food before, mother,” he sighed, drumming his pen on the pad. He noticed the pages of memos on the recent gloves and flipped to a fresh page with a small snort.

“Not with my recipe, you haven’t,” chided the woman, and proceeded to let him in on the family secrets in detail. Word for word, he copied down the recipe she knew by heart, running the instructions and ingredients by her once before thanking his mother and heading out the door.

By midnight, a sweet tooth had been satisfied, but sitting alone at the counter with a warm devil’s food muffin drizzled with chocolate ganache just brought his awareness to a weird sort of cavity he wasn’t unfamiliar with but had been successful in ignoring for years – until now, apparently.

He decided he’d have to tell his mother about the muffins tomorrow. It was late, and if he dared pick up the phone now, he might dial the wrong number accidentally on purpose.

The third day alone wasn’t any more productive than the last, but at least he didn’t spend it holed up in his quarters gorging on muffins. True, he’d slept through his alarm, but he gave himself the excuse that it was Sunday, and he’d spent the latter half of his night lying wide awake staring at his ceiling in a vain effort to get some shut eye.

He could tell himself all he wanted that fresh air would do him some good, but it was a lie. Testing out a back-burner product on new targets the henchmen had been tasked to whip up did little to improve his mood. The vaporizing rifle prototype did its job fine, obliterating the targets, though the sight was off and it really needed work to fix an issue of kickback that just about dislocated his shoulder.

Other than taking down a couple memos to be sure he did that, he didn’t make any progress to speak of on his projects. The random destruction of dummies and henchmen fearing they’d be the next targets did little to inspire him and get his head back in the game.

He knew exactly who to blame for it, too. Little ol’ her was a troublesome woman. Though he wasn’t sure if he was worried for her wellbeing – maybe a little, but maybe not – he was certainly stressed enough worrying about the potential consequences letting her go could have. The thorn in his side wasn’t even here and she had him more distracted and frazzled than ever.

Drakken shoved the elaborate rifle into the hands of the henchman on standby and ordered him to return the contraption to the closet, but the henchman didn’t march off immediately, and instead asked something as daringly out of line and ludicrous as, “Rough breakup?” Which sent Drakken reeling as if he’d been cut, and he vehemently ordered the goon to get a move on if he didn’t want to be booted along with the rest.

He ate another damn muffin for lunch, knowing damn well the sweet confection wouldn’t improve his bitter mood.

When the phone rang, he was all too quick to dive for it. Answering was a mistake, and he struggled with the balance of taking bites of savory chocolate and holding a conversation with his nosy mother. She accused him of being upset and went through a list of every likely reason why, and he denied every possibility. If the nagging didn’t alleviate the loneliness somewhat, he would have hung up.

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” his mother finally guessed, and Drakken had to bite his tongue and hold the phone out lest she hear his weary groan. No matter how wildly far off the mark she was, it was an inevitable question she always fired off at some point – only this time, maybe for the first time in history, she was actually right. Sort of. But he sure wasn’t going to admit that.

“No, mother,” he droned. “It’s just been a rough week,” he assured her for the umpteenth time. It really hadn’t been. Slaving over unique gloves had actually been quite rewarding, the worst part of the week being the part where his car got hijacked and he was left worrying if the new recruit would be friend or foe when she came back, if she came back at all.

After the phone call, he eyed the plate of delectable muffins sitting out on the counter, and decided it best to stow the remaining half dozen of them in the refrigerator out of sight before he could make himself sick.

The next day, Drakken was drilling it into his own head that he didn’t miss having anyone to hover, breathe down his neck, or criticize him as he tinkered with the fine inner workings of a robot brain. If he could only get the droids up and running like half-operational human beings, the Bebes would theoretically fill the human need for company. And even if they didn’t, he still had three organic subordinates – the henchmen – to fall back on. He didn’t need a snarky girl leaning on him and giving him sass trying to get his goat.

His lip was curled at the very thought of someone breaching his personal bubble uninvited when suddenly his subject booted up. It took him a second of staring back at the robot before the Bebe blinked mechanically and he leapt back. What really scared the bejeebers out of him was the fact the android hadn’t even been plugged in to a power source. Before she could fully start up, he reached into the Bebe’s cranium to pull out the CPU to put her to sleep for a nice long while until he was ready to deal with self-aware robots sporting hyperactive preservation drives again. The other two dormant severed heads received the same treatment just to be on the safe side.

His heart was still thudding from the first surprise when he received another unwelcomed jolt.

The room flashed red and a bone-rattling siren buzzed to announce a threat. Either someone had sounded the alarm, something had been tripped, or something malfunctioned. Whatever the case, he was in too much of a foul mood to be pleased by the uncharacteristically swift response of two of his henchmen cutting through the lab with their staves ready.

False alarms were more common than not at this point. There must have been one at least once a month for the past year since establishing his Nevada lair.

Dr. Drakken cast aside his tools and replaced his goggles with his eyeglasses, ready to storm out after the goons to find out what the hullaballoo was all about. It was probably just another unfortunate raccoon stuck in the fence.

Before he could take three steps from his work station, a henchman’s voice crackling over the intercom made him jump once more. “Dr. Drakken, sir, you’re needed outside,” came the urgent summon, and Drakken heard a thunderous snarl booming before the intercom clicked off.

It certainly didn’t sound like snared wildlife.

The insistent siren alone induced a dreadfully unwanted adrenaline rush, urging him to hurry and shut the alarm off at the lab desk. Even without the blaring system that had left his ears ringing, he swore he could still feel a rumble under his feet, and cast a nervous glance upwards at the stalactites holding steady before he exited the lab.

He all but ran down to the garage. The second he opened the door and stomped out from the foyer, he heard the rumble of a jet engine dying down to a whine, and if he didn’t associate the sound with military, he might not be so concerned of the trouble that could be brewing.

The thought that he should have brought a weapon with him was fleeting.

Before he could make it outside to search the sky for the source of the rumble, his jaw dropped.

He wasn’t anticipating a jet to come rolling out of the dark and into the half-lit hangar, the wingspan barely making it through the broad garage door. The flashy new sky beast sported multicolored streaks and bolts, and as it came to a stop in the middle of the scrap-filled warehouse, it dawned on Drakken exactly where it had come from. He’d seen that jet before in a photograph just the other day.

As his men rushed in after the aircraft in the hot wake of the engines, their electrified rods raised in defense, Drakken stormed toward it, his livid glare locked on the single figure onboard.

The top popped and rose with a hiss to reveal the pilot, whose hands were held up in peace for a moment to give the henchmen pause before the intruder pulled off the helmet and mask. The aloof subordinate stood up in the cockpit, shook out her hair, and shot an outrageously smug smirk to Dr. Drakken.

++X++

Shego slid down from the body of the aircraft and didn’t have a chance to appreciate solid ground or even utter a greeting before Dr. Drakken reached her, and she could only stare in a surprised stupor as he raised a hand at her.

Next she was wide-eyed in shock and reaching up for the sting across her cheek. It hadn’t hurt, but it didn’t change the fact he’d slapped her. She was taken aback for a moment. “What was that?” she blurted, turning a sneer back to him. “You hit like a baby!” Honestly, her baby brothers had whopped her worse than that.

And what was that he’d said about the next man to lay a hand on her?

She could get him back later, she decided, because she was pleased to be back regardless of his indiscernible sputtering and tantrum. Though she couldn’t pretend to understand what had his panties in a twist. She’d kept her word, hadn’t she?

What she could do was chortle when the fuming man made a grab for her before he could calm down enough to think twice. It was hard to hold him at fault when he was a villain and had likely conditioned himself to act out, assuming he wasn’t already violent by nature, but she wouldn’t hesitate to teach him not to take out that temper on her if he pushed his luck any further.

Curious if he would however, she let him catch her roughly by the arm. But Drakken faltered once he had her – it was clear he hadn’t expected it to be that easy, or maybe some sense caught up to him – and his moment of surprise made it easy for her to pull her arm away.

Catching him off guard, she slipped behind his back. Her hands snuck up his suit jacket to find the back pockets of his trousers, making him jump. His yelp wasn’t particularly masculine.

“Yoink,” she chirped, making off with his wallet as the startled man swung around.

Shego impishly remained two steps ahead of Dr. Drakken in pursuit of her, purely for the sake of egging him on although he was clearly riled up enough. She stole a gander at his driver’s license as she shuffled backwards. “Andrew?” she snorted. He sputtered something with a note of embarrassment and lunged for it. She jumped back, plucked a twenty from the wallet, and finally surrendered it.

Drakken roughly snatched his wallet back from her outstretched hand, still practically shaking in his tantrum, a funny shade of purple creeping over his face. The indignant doctor barked her name furiously and lurched toward her again, but she leapt back out of reach for good measure.

“Missed me, missed me,” she sang childishly, skipping back and smiling wryly at the hotheaded man.

He wasn’t calming down, none too pleased to be played with. Before she could knock it off on her own accord, Dr. Drakken gnashed his teeth and finally exploded something coherent, “SEIZE HER!”

To which Shego cocked a brow, and before she knew it, she was being restrained and shoved to her knees by a pair of henchmen, her arms twisted and secured behind her back. She knew she could still get the better of them, but she chose not to fight it as she watched suspiciously, once again curious to see just what Dr. Drakken thought he was going to do. She was done playing now though. Did he really think she would accept being slapped and manhandled, just like that? With him glaring as harshly as he was, she had half a mind to spit plasma at him when he stalked up to her.

The mad scientist opened his mouth and raised a finger to lay into her verbally when she sighed heavily and relaxed against the henchmen’s clutches. “Okay,” she began. “So I lost your car, but I got the jet, didn’t I?”

Drakken’s purple-faced humiliation and anger ebbed as he threw a glance back, and his rigid shoulders slumped. She could see his temper cooling he studied the aircraft parked in his garage. She’d stayed true to her word, but it seemed like he was only just now registering that she had in fact brought him a jet.

“Where did you get it?” he quizzed suspiciously as he turned back to eyeball her. Just about anyone else would have received plasma to the face for eyeing her body, but Shego had the funny feeling he was looking less at her figure and more at her pristine new uniform she’d stolen from the Go Tower – although the nature of his stare made it only slightly less unnerving.

“Just something from home,” she said flippantly, fixing a wry smile on her face.

“You stole tech from Global Justice,” he uttered.

“Not really, I mean – it was a gift,” she grumbled, casting her eyes down. That didn’t change the fact that big brother monitored its usage.

Drakken must have realized that, because his eyes shot wide in dismay an instant before the anger from moments ago boiled back to the surface. “They can track it here!” he gasped in alarm as he whirled on the threat in his lair.

Shego, on the other hand, lacked the same fear. The fact she remained unbothered seemed to enough to distress him.

“Cool the engines, Dr. D,” she called nonchalantly before he could fret over how to get a beacon out of his lair. “I squashed a few bugs, snipped a few wires. Give me some credit. I’m not just another stupid thug here.” He looked back to her as she nodded back to the henchmen holding her to make a point, but it hardly calmed him.

She tried to add a smile and a cheery on top, “Oh, and – it can hover. It’s a hover jet. Far out, right?” She was really quite proud of herself, and couldn’t help beaming as she patiently waited to be commended. An order for her release would be nice, at least.

Dr. Drakken stepped back from her and ran a hand down his face. He held it over his mouth and stifled a whine, and Shego noticed he looked almost pained as he glanced back to the stolen mass of technology. “Release her,” he grunted to his men with a dismissive wave, and stalked away to go inspect the aircraft. As Shego crept up carefully behind him, she heard him muttering incredulously to himself, “I can use this. I can really use this.”

“So, uh,” she started, and he flashed a glower back at her over his shoulder. She smiled sheepishly. “Does this make up for taking off and losing your car?” She decided, maybe, he didn’t need to know yet that she’s driven it off a pier and sank it in the ocean in the heat of the moment whilst fleeing the police earlier. She hoped there hadn’t been anything important in it.

Dr. Drakken surveyed her, his brow creased and his expression that of indecision as he considered the loss of his car in return for the multi-million-dollar aircraft. He settled for giving Shego’s shoulder a ginger pat. “I think I’ll keep you,” he said finally.

#The Company You Keep fic #drakgo

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thehungrykat1 · 1 year

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Pizza and Beer Find a New Home at Nolita Joe’s in Poblacion

Two concepts join forces to create the first Pizza Bar in Manila. The mouthwatering combo of pizza and beer is taking over Poblacion, as Nolita Joe’s opens its doors this May. A union between Nolita Pizza and Joe’s Brew, the new pizza-beer joint offers the best of both worlds, with the former’s beloved fully loaded and freshly made pies and the latter’s best-selling craft ales and brews.

Originally separate entities, Pat Santos of Nolita and Joey and Marco Viray of Joe’s Brew struck a partnership that resulted in the refreshed F&B concept located in the heart of Makati. Nolita Joe’s is located at 5666 Don Pedro Street, Barangay Poblacion, Makati City, and is open on Tuesdays to Sundays from 6pm to 3am.

Known for their authentic New York-style pizzas that feature a crust with a unique combination of crunch and chewiness and in flavors inspired by the city that never sleeps, Nolita’s pies have cemented their name in the casual dining scene.

Joe’s Brew, on the other hand, boasts a truly homegrown mark, starting from the Virays’ garage and eventually finding its space in Poblacion. Following the effects of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, the two found the opportunity to team up and deliver handcrafted flavors topped with a unique concept not yet found in the area.

Perfect for a late afternoon snack to wind down after work, a starting point for a night out in Poblacion, or even a nightcap post-dancing and bar hopping, guests can savor a fuss-free meal with their favorite Nolita pizza flavors. Choose from the melt-in-your-mouth Four Cheese, the sumptuous Chicken Parmesan, rustic yet robust Wild Mushroom, or crowd-favorite SPM - that’s sausage, pepperoni and mushroom - just to name a few, and get it served hot by the slice or as a whole in 12”, 16” and even 21” pies.

Each order is made complete when paired with Joe’s Brew’s signature craft beverages from lighter hops like the Fish Rider Pale Ale and Sierra Madre Wheat Ale, to full-bodied brews such as 34th Pursuit IPA and Sunsweeper IPA.

Adventurous patrons can also sample experimental IPA and Pale Ale brews. Nolita Joe’s fully stocked bar also offers drinks on the rocks, cocktails, natural wines and more. Fans of both brands should also be on the lookout for menu updates, as more beloved classics will soon be offered.

No time to dine in? Order through Nolita Joe’s hotline, website or GrabFood for freshly made whole pizzas and cold beer bottles delivered straight to your doorstep.

The classic pairing is elevated at the first Pizza Bar in Manila, thanks not only to the F&B offerings, but also to the space inspired by a typical New York dive bar, the neighborhood go-to that everyone can rely on for a fun, yet relaxed hangout. It features a fusion of Nolita’s industrial design, with subway tiles and metal fixtures, and Joe’s Brew’s steampunk aesthetic, with one-of-a-kind retrofuture decor and accents.

The pizza bar will also be home to events for all crowds, with karaoke nights, live DJs and watch parties for Formula 1, football and more. Diners can also host their own gatherings, as Nolita Joe’s is open for private events.

There’s no better way to kick off or end the night, than with a pizza in one hand, a beer in the other and your friends all around. Swing by the new Nolita Joe’s today or order in to grab a freshly made slice of the Big Apple and take a swig of the best local brews.

Selected menu items are also available for pickup and delivery within Greater Metro Manila. Order via Nolita Joe’s website, GrabFood or hotline at (0945) 328-2561. Book a private event at Nolita Joe’s by sending a message on Instagram (@nolitajoes) or via hotline at 0945 328 2561. For more information and updates on offers, follow Nolita Joe’s on Instagram (@nolitajoes).

#NolitaPizza #NolitaJoes #JoesBrew #Poblacion #Makati #Restaurant #Bar #Pizza #Beer

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mwcowan · 4 years

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Mark and Georgia’s Big (and getting ever Bigger) Trip

Chapter 16 – When a Trip Becomes Life as Usual

I’m back after taking a week off. Everyone needs a vacation now and then, even when on vacation. And we’re still here, without a scheduled return date yet. Some of you may know that we were originally ticketed to return on April 27, but by early last month the flights out of Manila were still being canceled, with an expected resumption by mid-May. So, we decided to give it one more month and re-booked for May 28 – just a couple days after making this change the government decided to extend the “enhanced quarantine” and the airlines decided to extend the cancellations, through May at least. So as of today we’re not booked. One event that we were needing to get back for, my son Tommy’s June wedding, has been postponed until September, so at least there’s no pressure to get back. Mid-June sounds like a good time, maybe we’ll give that a try. We’ll think about it while drinking our San Migs by the pool.

Speaking of our San Migs, there’s one thing about the quarantine over here that I haven’t griped about yet – a ban on liquor sales. The government, in the wisdom all governments possess, decided that alcoholic beverages encourage partying, and partying does not encourage social distancing. Although we usually have a good supply on hand, we weren’t expecting the zombie apocalypse and ran out a few weeks after the quarantine started. However, in times like this, people with needs find people who have what they need. A few phone calls and we were put into contact with a local businessman who was willing to sell us San Mig. Drive into town, spot the contact waiting by the red gate at the side of the road, the gate opens up with a knock. I back the car in and the gate quickly closes behind me. Money exchanges hands and a couple guys load 4 cases into the back of our car and cover them with cardboard. The gate opens up and we’re back on the road home in a couple minutes. Very cool, just like prohibition! All the scene needed was a couple thugs named Sonny and Luigi with Tommy guns guarding outside the gate and jumping on the running boards as we sped away. We’ve also found a source for good wines which we’ve visited a couple times. Life’s not bad; like everyone we just have to adapt in these difficult times. Cheers!

We’re still working on our landscaping. Georgia’s been directing a backyard makeover with the installation of rock steps and terraces (rock material courtesy of Kawayan Cove) and many new plants (courtesy of other homeowners here). The large spiky palm tree thing was rescued from another caretaker who’d just cut it down and was throwing it away – until Georgia walked by and saw it.

Jungle Arts and Crafts

I’ve mentioned a few times the boo drums, which at last thought I was planning to turn them into a giant wind chime. I had about 4 drums with nice enough tone – but as they dried, they all cracked! The article I have on making them does say you need to use an oil or polyurethane finish to prevent this, but with the hardware stores closed, I can’t get any.

With an outdoor shower, you need of course to have an outside towel rack. A piece of rough-hewn local mahogany (Ranny supplied me with a 10-12’ length of this a while back) and some simple bamboo craft made just the thing.

Unless some other necessity come up, it’s back to regular wind chimes. I have a few orders from home I need to get to work on.

Things That Will Kill You, Vol. 3

I don’t often admit my deepest fears, but I’ll let you in on one… spiders! I hate spiders, of all kinds, shapes, and sizes. I once had to let a tarantula crawl on my arm to show a group of schoolkids that they were harmless and it was the most terrifying moment of my life! Anyway, there are SPIDERS here in the Philippines!

This kind appears to like bathroom fixtures, and it jumps. The one below (note it’s about the same diameter as the sink drain) jumped out at me when I bent over to wash my face. Another jumped at me when I went to use the toilet – it hit me in the stomach and luckily bounced off, giving me the break I needed to escape the bathroom and come back with a broom. You can be sure I carefully check both sides of the toilet lid and seat before I sit down!

I haven’t seen this one jump, in fact it seems pretty lethargic. It’s 3-4” in diameter and strings a large and sturdy web. I think it traps small children and pets.

This last guy won’t actually kill you, except in a B-horror movie “Attack of the Monster Beetles”, or if you happen to be a young coconut tree. This is known here as an Uang; it’s an Asian Rhinoceros beetle. It’s almost 2” long, and as far as I can tell those pincers are just for show; the mouth is on the bottom side of the head, from which the lower pincer extends. Oh yeah, this one was already dead when we found it; otherwise I’d probably never have touched it!

Sunset(s) of the Week

Something we never tire of; we still keep to our evening ritual of seeing the sun safely to bed, with a drink in hand, out on one of the decks. We’ve continued to have just the right clouds to produce real beauties, this week I couldn’t choose so you get a pair.

From the deck outside the guest bedrooms.

This panorama was taken hanging out our living room window.

Take care everyone, stay healthy!

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imchick · 4 years

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November 24, 2019, the most magical day of my life. ❤

Okay! Hard part is over! 😛 I don’t really like being the center of attention and all. You might say it’s the same since everyone will still be looking at us the entire time. But, with the other half, the reception — people are more relaxed. Everyone will be dancing, talking to each other, singing and eating their hearts out! So, less judging and critical eyes on us. 😀

Our Reception was held at Aquila Crystal Palace. It’s about 30 – 40 minutes from our Ceremony. We had time to relax and just talk to each other in the car on the way there. Mind you, we were still with our bride & groom assistants.

To give you a preview – here’s what it looked like. ❤

BUT BUT BUT! Before we get to that, let’s go back to the start. Shall we? While we were taking our post-nup pictorial, we prepared welcome snacks and drinks for our guests!

Our supplier for this Gabrielle’s Appetizer. We prepared 200 mini sandwiches (cucumber & kani, chicken salad, tuna salad, egg & bacon), 150 mini burgers (chicken and beef), 200 crostinis (gorgonzola bacon, goat cheese & fig ham, prosciutto & brie, smoked salmon) and 2 gallons of cucumber lemonade

I’m so happy to be hearing good feedback from our guests! Their favorites? the mini burgers! But before they can eat, they will pass by our Signages!

I’m proud to say that I designed all the layouts, with the help of my husband, of course. ❤ We decided to maintain the theme of our invitation – White Marble is such a classic and classy design. Aside from the welcome signage, I wanted to add a little extra! – An Infographic of our love story. ❤

While others are eating or taking a photo in our photobooth, we also prepared some games before everything starts!

I personally created a Word Search Game with Startbucks GC for their prizes! I devised a personalized puzzle with words that have roles or connected to our relationship. For instance – Management Trainee (we were both Management Trainees in a bank. This is how we met) 😀 Everything is so much more special when it is personalized. Do you agree?

Before they officially enter the reception area, I also insisted that I wanted a signage for their Seating Arrangement:

I’m definitely proud of this! I’m a huge, huge fan of F.R.I.E.N.D.S! I insisted to insert the friends theme in our seating arrangement! The heading is The One Where We got Married (just like how all their titles are worded). ❤ I also named our tables with all the memorable lines / quirks of the series such as Pivot, Big Fat Goalie, How you Doin and etc.

I also asked our host to ask our guests whether they know what theme our seating arrangement is. I prepared a FRIENDS themed prize also, which I bought online (a Friends Door Keychain).

The One thing that will welcome our guests upon entering the place is our Animated Monogram.

At first, I wanted a White Background with Gold font for our names. But our coordinator pointed out that I may not be seen if the background is also white. 😛 So, we decided to switch to Dark Green, still in line with our theme. ❤

Okay! So when we arrived at the scene, it’s time for our make-up retouch and time to fill our stomach with the incredible feast we chose for our guest. ❤ It was really delicious. While we were having our early dinner, there’s another game inside the reception: TRIVIA GAME where we gave out bags of chocolates for every correct answer. Some of the questions were: First movie together, Who said I love you first, Term of Enderament, Favorite Series Marathon food. (Some of the answers to the questions were posted in our Infographic) 😀 Clever. Huh?

Initally, we wanted the Fireworks at the end of the program. But we were also hesitant to schedule it after since it was Sunday and our guests might leave early.

Proven! Guests really do enjoy the fireworks! It also elevates your event! ❤ After the fireworks, guests were asked to return to their seats for the Grand Entrance. 😛

Our Bridal Squad were introduced in the tune of Dura by Daddy Yankee. while our Groom Squad danced to Boneless by Steve Aoki.

As you can see, our male squad is definitely more coordinated with Matt Stefanina dance moves. Hence, they won the challenge of who’s better. 😛

Followed by the entrance of our esteemed entourage, our Prenup / Save the Date Video was shown to all of our guests.

And our Grand Entrance in the tune of Good Life by One Republic, inspired by our Wedding Hashtag of #itsJANNAbeaJUDElife transalated as It’s gonna be a good life.

TIP: Please please be witty enough to think of your own wedding hashtags! One, it’s simply fun. Two, it will encourage your guests to use your hashtag. Three, you’ll have an easier time in collating pictures and videos related to your event if it’s clear that YOU are the only ones using it instead of #JudeandJannaforever or #JudeandJanna2019. Maximize the power of hashtag!

For our Grand Entrance, we decided to use our Indoor Fireworks (which is not shown in the photo) plus this heart shaped confetti free of charge from our Coordinator. ❤

Followed quickly by our entrance, we gave a bit of our opening remarks to our family, friends and loved ones who celebrated with us.

Our first ever dance as a married couple is in the tune of Say you won’t let go by James Arthur. 🙂 This is also the song I was singing to when he proposed. ❤ This song is really special. ❤ Again, there were Indoor Fireworks and confetti as well.

Wedding Traditions followed such as Cake Cutting and Wine Toasting!

Our 3 tier carrot cake is designed with pure white with gold highlights with huge floral appliques. It’s so good! I’m actually sad that we forgot that it was in our ref.

The wine that we toasted is free from our package with Aquila Crystal Palace. If I remember it correctly, it was not hard because I finished it instantly. ❤

My sister, one of the Matrons of Honor started the speech followed by my Brother in law and finally, my Best friend ended the speeches by inviting everyone to offer a toast for our marriage. ❤

After the long speeches, it’s time for the most awaited time of our guests! Dinner time. ❤ The cousins of my groom, Seth and Yohan led the prayer.

While the guests were eating or in line to get their food, some of the music that we chose to be played are the following: The way you look tonight, Collide, The last time, if I ain’t got you, Everything, Perfect and Close to you among others.

Well, you know how this goes already. . . . . before they can even line up to the buffet, they all have to take a picture with us. ❤ Here are some of them.

While eating, another batch of Speeches coming from our Principal Sponsors.

Principal Sponsor speeches! We had to choose one from each of our side. My God mother, sister of my father gave a speech while it was a Family friend from the Groom’s side. After the speeches, a couple of games again — which is the second best game! Minute to Win It – Wedding edition. ❤

So we filmed a one time, one shot games of: Segregate it, Pingpong Ball, Shoot the Ball etc. Each table have to guess who won whether it’s the Bride and the Groom! Everyone turned out to be competitive at this part. ❤

After an interactive game, it’s the Parent Dances!

We decided to dance simultaneously to the tune of You are so Beautiful by Joe Cocker. 😀 I was scaring my dad and reminding him of their speech! 😛 while I think my mother in law is having the best time dancing with his son. ❤

After a bit serious of dances, it’s fuckin time for another game! Another game? We can never miss out on Single’s Game! To get the suspicion out of their minds, our host called them like they are about to receive a prize.

Men are lined up in front – a music is played and whoever dances the right move first gets to seat down! The following music were played – Watch me whip, Soulja Boy, Teach me How to Dougie, Gangnam, Level Up, Stayin Alive, Thriller and Can’t Touch this.

Then whoever doesn’t dance, will remain in front and the ladies will start searching for the safety pin. The lady who doesn’t find a single pin, loses. ❤

The losers of both games, or rather the last man and woman standing wins a Starbucks GC which they can use to go on their ‘date’ – a little matchmaker doesn’t lose its touch on weddings!

It’s my husband’s colleague and one of my closes high school friend! ❤ And after this fun game, our host now calls on both of our parent’s for the wise words.

It’s the Welcome to the Family speech! It’s such a cliche but really overwhelming. It warms your heart, right? I felt really happy to hear it goes both ways. ❤ I have no better way of saying this but it felt really good.

Before the night is over, we prepared some awards to be given to our guests.

Cool Tito Award (right picture) and Fab Tita Award where we award the Best Dressed one – we gave them Wine and a Tefal Pan. ❤ We also awarded Dressed to Kill (Upper Right) for the Best Dressed Millenial and we gave them a 6-pack beers and a Make Up Kit. Lastly, we gave out a Grand Prize (Lower Right) for the best picture and handed them a powerbank.

Then we played our On Site Photo and our Save the Date Video. ❤

Look at our faces!! ❤ Our Photo Team is led by TJ of Timoteo Photo and our SDE was created by Mac by Stories by Supermac! Extremely in awe, hearts bursting with joy and overwhelmed with gratitude and love. ❤

Before our night ends, we said our Thank yous and invited them for a night full of dancing and drinking!

Look at our ceiling treatment filled with an all white embellishments and gold highlights and black draping to make our ceiling pop out! ❤

The night ends as mentioned, with drinking and dancing! ❤ ❤ ❤

Our last picture before our guests go back to Manila! First up, my colleagues!

My brother and his girlfriend before they fled out of the scene. 😛 Haha. Next? Our Wedding Buddies, one week apart and now, we’re all married. ❤

I always come in threes, Don’t I? And Of course, My Bestfriends since High School.

It always put a smile on my face when I see my friends from different groups come together like this. 🙂

And before this day ends, I need a picture with my husband. ❤

I love you so much, husband! ❤ ❤ It’s been five months and it’s still the Best Day of My Life. ❤

EVERYDAY: Our Wedding (Reception) November 24, 2019, the most magical day of my life. ❤ Okay! Hard part is over! 😛 I don't really like being the center of attention and all.

#Animated Monogram #Aquila Crystal Palace #bride & breakfast #fireworks #Gabrielle&039;s Appetizer #marriage #Reception #wedding #Wedding Dances #Wedding Games #Wedding Speeches #Wedding Traditions

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caffeineivore · 5 years

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Cheer up emo R/J

For @coppercrane2 specifically because she wanted this scene but also for whoever else wants it and needs some R/J cheer up emo.

If JFK is a post-apocalyptic wasteland where manners and dreams went to die, LAX is simply a clusterfuck. Raven Fletcher isn’t stupid enough to mean-mug the smarmy-looking TSA agent at the end of the line, not exactly, but the smile in place on her face is about as gruesome as Heath Ledger’s Joker. She had the whole system down pat by now-- plastic bag of toiletries, no belt, no hat, no jacket, no sunglasses, shoes that could easily be slipped off and on, no electronics and items in the pockets-- but the whole process is a drag, anyway. And of course, they still always gave her crap, and this time is no exception.

“What were you doing in LA?”

“Meeting up with some clients in the industry, catching up, making plans for New York Fashion Week.”

“So you live in New York, then?”

“Yeah. I thought it says so on my license.” And moreover, she certainly didn’t sound like a Californian, now did she?

The TSA agent gives her a warning look; her sass is clearly not appreciated, and undoubtedly he’d use it as an excuse to make her suffer in the next five to ten minutes and probably go through every last bit of her bags, down to counting how many tampons she stashed in and probably testing her makeup wipes to ensure that nothing was radioactive. Raven bites her tongue and tries not to roll her eyes as he beckons over a female officer to pat her down even as he paws through all her belongings. He shakes out a Dior dress that’s tucked into her garment bag that’s likely worth more than the X-ray machine that the bag just passed through, and Raven wants to ask that he change his damn gloves first, but at this rate, if he goes any slower, she’d miss her connection. Sunny weather or not, she’d be damned if she got stuck in LA for another day.

Finally, the ordeal comes to an end, which leaves her roughly half an hour to get from one end of the airport to the other on four-inch Louboutins. Raven has no problem with mowing through crowds-- sharp elbows and the aggressive New Yorker walk does wonders-- but to have to do so just to get to her gate in time is aggravating when it was certainly not her fault that the security check took so long. She certainly couldn’t just crumple up the damned Dior and stuff it back into the garment bag-- she had a client dinner right after getting back in town, and on no planet did Raven Fletcher appear at such events anything less than perfectly dressed and groomed.

There’s the moving walkway up ahead, and she strides on, a woman on a mission, long legs eating up the length of the conveyor. Raven is a petite woman, five-foot-four before the stiletto heels and too short for the modeling work that she immerses herself in dealing with on a daily basis, but she’s leggy, and can walk, jog and possibly do step aerobics in heels with the best of them. She steps off at the end of the moving walkway, leading with her shoulders, and smacks painfully into a solid male chest.

“I’m so sorry. Are you all right, miss?” A pair of big hands wrap around her elbows and pull her up, and had she landed any harder, she probably would have broken a thousand-dollar heel, and perhaps an ankle. Raven looks up from legs clad in casual gray chinos to a torso in blue tweed, with brown elbow patches, up into an almost-unforgivably handsome face, all golden California tan and tousled, sun-bleached blond hair, wearing horn-rimmed glasses over his baby blues. And... headphones. Of course. Because it would certainly be too much to ask for a man to be too perfect, so this particular specimen had to be moseying through the airport deaf to his surroundings like an oblivious moron.

“I would be better if you were watching where you were going, but forget about it.” She bypasses the hand he holds out to help her up, and snags both her garment bag and her briefcase. Her ankle gives her a twinge as she stands up, but she stalks off without a backward glance. If she hurried, she’d have just enough time to pop into the Starbucks by her gate for a quad venti iced macchiato to wash down the Excedrin before getting on the plane.

The boarding process, after she reaches her gate, and where someone else might have passed their time sleeping or watching a movie or two on the five-hour flight, Raven opens her briefcase after the plane reaches cruising altitude to organize her files for the upcoming client dinner. Not that there is much to do, really, because Morgan Austen, even at age seventeen, didn’t exactly require much of an introduction. Blonde and willowy and charming and self-assured, the girl’s celebrity background might have gotten her in the door, but she’d certainly lived up to all the hype. Only too often were the celebrity actor-model types unforgivably uppity and spoiled, and while a small, petty part of Raven enjoyed putting them in their place as needed, it always came as a pleasant surprise when someone didn’t have to get told off for their own good.

Her heart gives a pitter-patter, though, when she reaches inside the bag and feels, underneath her manicured fingertips, a bunch of manila folders rather than the sleek leather portfolio that should be contained in that compartment. Cautiously, she draws out the papers, then only barely manages to avoid swearing loudly and noticeably in the airplane cabin.

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. This is a joke. A really bad joke.”

In place of the carefully-curated and prepped collection of headshots and polaroids of Morgan Austen is a collection of lab reports, all with the header of ‘153BH, UCLA/Huntley’. Raven has exactly zero interest in the subject of Nucleotide Metabolism, and the worst part about it is the fact that she has a whole three and a half hours before the plane lands and she can even get on her phone to do something about this mishap.

It’s the longest three and a half hours of her life, feels like, and she pulls out her cell phone almost before the flight attendants turn off the seatbelt sign, calls the agency to postpone the dinner with the rep from Michael Kors.

“Yeah, there’s been a problem with my bag. Stupid LAX. Can you just... tell them my flight was delayed, or something? They’ll be a-o-fucking-kay because they’re getting Morgan Austen to walk their damn show in a month and it’ll be the biggest thing to happen to them since dude designed Michelle Obama’s official portrait dress. Thanks, Luna. You’re a whole bag of organic non-GMO peaches. And... someone’s calling, and it’s a 310 area code, so I’m going to let you go.”

She recognizes the area code as Los Angeles, of course, and expects that it’s some minion from some customer service desk in LAX reporting that they’d found her bag, but the voice which comes through is male and sounds oddly familiar, with that faint Calfornian drawl. “Am I speaking to Ms. Raven Fletcher?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“My name is Jude Huntley, and we bumped into each other at the airport? I seem to have your work bag rather than mine.” The tone is summery-smooth and apologetic, the cadence quick yet lacking the almost-harsh briskness of Manhattan. “It’s entirely my fault, and I’m going to get your bag back to you, but could you tell me where you’d like to pick it up?”

“Well, if you can’t tell, I’m kinda on the opposite coast to you now, buddy. Elite Models, New York, New York. We’re on 5th Avenue.” He doesn’t seem at all fazed by her slightly snotty tone, which takes the wind out of her sails, just a little. “Look, pal, if you want to send off my bag to New York, that’d be great. I can do the same with yours. UCLA, right? At least it’s summertime. Hopefully school’s out for you. Shitty time for me to lose my bag because summer’s prime time for campaigns, but it’s not like my stuff can just magically appear overnight.” All around her, people are rising up from their seats, and Raven scowls at nothing in particular. “I gotta get off the plane. Look, since you clearly got my number from my card, you can get the address, too. I’ll get your bag back to you as soon as I can.”

She hangs up, and seethes from the gate all the way to the taxi stand and then all the way to her apartment, before kicking off the heels and unapologetically ordering pizza delivery, to be consumed with wine while soaking in the tub. After the day she’d had, it was the least she deserved.

Raven arrives at the agency at eight o’clock sharp the next morning, with the briefcase-that-is-not-hers in one hand, a giant to-go cup of coffee in the other, and spends the first hour of her day making a phone call to the reps at Michael Kors to explain her bag mishap and reschedule the dinner meeting. Thankfully, Morgan Austen’s name is enough to negate any wrath which might have been incurred at the inconvenience, and, crisis averted, she’s just about ready to schedule a conference call-- with a talent scout out in BFE, Cornfields, Small-town USA somewhere-or-another-- when her assistant Phoebe knocks on the door. The diminuitive brunette has a peculiar look in her beady eyes.

“Someone’s here to see you. No appointment. Great face but I doubt he’s a model, unless he’s doing some sort of ad for Geek Chic. Says his name is Jude. Do you know a Jude? I didn’t think you knew a Jude, though this guy’s sort of got the hot younger Jude Law thing going on so...”

Raven’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. She’s only made the acquaintance of one individual by that name, and certainly Phoebe is wrong. There is no freaking way that the man from the airport in Los Angeles was actually in New York at this very second. She waves in a vague manner at Phoebe, who takes it as assent to let him in, and then her jaw drops. It’s the man from the airport, all right. Still wearing his tweed jacket and his horn-rimmed glasses, but now sporting dark-blond five-o’clock shadow like gold dust smudged against his chiseled jaw and deep shadows under those blue eyes. But his lips quirk into a smile when he sees her, and he holds out her bag, like an olive branch.

“You asked for it to be overnighted, didn’t you? I took the red-eye over.”

“But--- but---why?” Flying a red-eye from coast to coast is the worst, and doing so on standby just seemed like her own idea of Hell on Earth. “You could’ve just dropped it off at a FedEx. I...” She had barely been civil to him on the phone, and definitely was on the wrong side of rude when they’d bumped into each other at the airport. Under no circumstance could Raven see a reason for a man-- especially one who looked as though he had a job and a life well on the other side of the country-- to drop everything just to bring her her bag back in person.

But rather than give her a hard time, the man named Jude smiles, and it’s a great smile, with a dimple in both cheeks and in the chin. Geek chic indeed... “Well, I need those lab reports back, too. Summer class. I have a commitment to my students to get it back to them by Friday, and they’re kind of time consuming to grade. Call it an impulse, I guess.” He’s still holding out her bag, and this time she takes it, and belatedly hands him his own. “Anyway, let’s start over again. My name is Jude Huntley, and I’m an assistant professor at UCLA’s Chemistry department.”

“Raven Fletcher. I’m an agent here at Elite Models. Nice to meet you.” Two almost-identical bags switch hands, just before his fingers close around hers, and the touch is warm and sharp with the brush of static electricity. Raven’s fairly sure that her spine is, metaphorically speaking, stainless steel. And yet a shiver works its way up and down as he holds on for just a moment too long, and a decidedly unfamiliar warmth creeps up into her cheeks as he smiles at her again.

“The pleasure is definitely all mine.”

#R/J #coppercrane2 #ssminibang #fanfiction #fanfic #sailor moon #senshi/shitennou

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