#Sunrise is so bad at these characters I swear | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heygerald · 2 years

Text

HEART MECHANICS - PART 1/9

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x oc

Matty Neven had dealt with her fair share of pilots throughout her life. Most of them, she has fond memories of. Her dad teaching her how to ride a bike. Her godfather sneaking her into a bar so that she could see what it’s like when she was way too young to be there. Her mother hosting a cookout reunion every couple of months for whoever was in town to catch up at.

But some of them weren’t so happy.

Soldiers insinuating that she only got her job because of her family ties. Men with starry smiles hitting on her at the bar despite the fact that she wasn’t interested. One night stands that didn’t have enough manners to wait until sunrise before kicking her out.

It was just the mechanics of it all.

And so, she made a very simple rule: love the jet, but never the pilot.

It’s a fairly easy rule to follow, right up until the moment she meets a pilot with a warm smile that seems to understand the heavy weight of family ties.

Read the story here: ... / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6 / part 7 / part 8 / part 9

Matty Neven was a lot of things.

She was the daughter of an old school pilot, famous for his time at the local Top Gun academy and arguably even more famous for his late night cocktails that he could whip up using anything found in the fridge. She was the goddaughter of the Admiral Kazansky; Iceman as the other pilots knew him by. She was the oldest of her family, the only one that had enlisted in the military in her father’s too big footsteps while her younger sisters had gone the more delicate path of motherhood. She was the first in the entire Neven family to get expelled from school—a total accident, she would swear until the day she died, though Linda Ashlington did deserve to have her eyebrows burnt off during a wayward chemistry experiment—and the only member of the Neven family to puke at her high school graduation ceremony due to the excessive hangover she had been sporting. She was the blondest of all her siblings, the tallest too, and definitely the one with the worst sailor mouth when it came to cussing out bad drivers or drunken sailors.

And right now, she was also, really, really, really fucking late.

“Jesus, Matty,” Claire's raspy voice echoed in her ear; amusement in part, but mostly annoyance. “Where the hell are you? I thought you said you were coming.”

“I am coming!” she huffed right back, phone indelicately cradled between her shoulder and her chin as she turned into the too full parking lot of The Hard Deck. Not her favorite bar by any means, but certainly one that had the most character and the least likelihood of accidental food poisoning. “I’m literally pulling into the parking lot right now.”

“How are you so late? Actually, how are you always late to everything we do?” Claire asked. Pondered, really. And as the music thrummed in the background and people were shouting over one another, Matty could practically picture the brunette arching a sharp eyebrow high onto the crown of her head while watching the boys goad some drunks into a game of darts. “I mean, seriously, we left work at the same time. And we’re in the Navy. Haven’t you learned time management by now?”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Sure, Matts, sure.”

“It’s not!” she cried. Both annoyed that her friend wouldn’t believe her and anxious that she wasn’t going to be able to find a good parking spot in the overflowing lot. She was lucky enough that someone was pulling out, though, and as she waited patiently she nervously fixed her hair in her rearview mirror. “I swear. I did everything right this time—maybe I’m cursed. Too many broken mirrors over the years or something like that. Something with salt, I think. It would explain a lot, actually.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“Dramatic but fantastically self aware,” she corrected, swiping some smeared eyeliner off her cheek as the Pontiac slowly muddled out of its spot. “Seriously though, I promise that It’s not my fault.”

“This time.”

“Oh, piss of,” she rolled her eyes. “I really think the world just hates me.”

Claire snorted. And, well, yeah, Matty would have too.

It wasn’t the best excuse she could have given for her tardiness, but it was true.

Her lateness wasn’t her own fault because despite the fact that she hadn’t wanted to spend her evening getting clambered over by the latest handful of Top Gun recruits, she had been looking forward to getting shitty at the bar with her friends after a long week at work. Plus, Eggs was one of her closest friends, and she wouldn’t have missed his birthday party for anything.

But, of course, life didn’t ever want to make things easy for her, and when she finally got home from work she didn’t have any hot water. And then her curling iron had gone bust, leaving her in a huff trying to figure out how to braid her unruly mop of hair into something half-up, half-down that Claire may have considered beachy with a splash of boho. Only to then have traffic backed up miles between her place and the bar.

So, no. It wasn’t her fault that she was late. Just fate.

She pulled into the empty parking spot with a sigh and said, “just tell Eggs to chill out, alright? I’m coming in now. Literally, parking as we speak.”

“You think Eggs would chill out if I told him?” Claire quipped. “The guy is so wound up all the time it’s amazing he even wanted to go drinking on a Friday night. He’s several beers in and is still grumbling about how he has to get up in the morning to mow his lawn before it gets too hot.”

Matty put her Jeep into park and removed her keys with a thoughtful glance at the small birthday present she had brought. “Maybe I should have gotten him a gift card for lawn maintenance instead,” she said, wondering how much he would like the leather wallet she got to replace the one he lost a few weeks ago.

“What he actually needs is some weed and a good night’s sleep.”

Matty laughed in amusement while hip-checking her door shut. The hinges squealed a little and she sighed because even though she was a damn good mechanic, some parts of her life tended to get lost in the fold.

Parts being her Jeep that she hadn’t even washed in well over six months.

Whatever. She could worry about that some other time.

Turning away, she started across the parking lot with the present in one hand, phone in the other. “Yeah, yeah, well I don’t think the Cap would be too happy with him failing his drug tests, but I am coming inside right now. That should cheer him up.”

Claire laughed. “Anyone ever tell you that you think pretty highly of yourself?”

“No. Why, have you heard something?”

“You’re an idiot,” Claire said. But as Matty opened up the front doors and was greeted with a wall of warm air and the smell of fresh beer, she hung up on her friend without bothering with a retort.

Just sighed with a glance around.

The bar was—unsurprisingly—even more packed inside than the parking lot was outside. Afterall, The Hard Deck sat in that sweet fourteen mile radius right on the edge of downtown that made getting to it easy for soldiers to get to after work and finding an uber ride home cheap enough to warrant. Uniforms lined every inch of floorboards from the pool tables to the bathrooms. A few old time veterans were perched at their unofficial seats at the bar, Penny on one side, smiling and smirking and making jokes as candidly as she could while also busting ass to serve everyone the drinks they wanted. People seemed jolly and drunk; probably a sign that some asshat had done something stupid and ended up buying everyone a round.

She was sad to have missed that. It was always fun to watch someone get thrown out on their ass. Matty made a note to ask Penny about it later.

Still despite the happy atmosphere, as someone bumped shoulders with her, Matty had to remind herself not to throw hands at every sailor that sent a beaming smile in her direction.

She was here for a good time with her friends, and though Eggs always liked to place money bets on how many egos she could bruise without even trying, Penny had warned her more than once that she couldn’t smack every boy that looked her way. Plus, she couldn’t really blame the wandering eyes. Here she was strutting around in a tight pair of jeans and a cute tank top that highlighted just enough skin to warrant some attention.

What was their fault, however, was their profession of choice. Matty was perhaps one of the only people at Miramar that disliked pilots with that sordid passion you could only get from being around them your entire life.

Sure. She had a respect for what they did, what they sacrificed, and who they were, but she also knew them well enough to keep any boy in a uniform at arm’s length.

Which was a little hard when the bar was packed shoulder to shoulder with them. Even moreso when a particularly brave one approached her.

“Hey,” he smiled, leaning close enough for her to smell the whisky on his breath. “It’s... Matty, right?”

She eyed him over, not liking his smile or his hazy eyes, but nodded all the same before sweeping her gaze back over the room in search of her friends. “Yeah, that’s me. Do I know you?”

“Ah, probably not,” he shrugged. She would have described the gesture as bashful if his eyes didn’t linger a little too long on her chest. “I’m one of the new airmen for Bravo company; just started a couple weeks ago so I haven’t gotten the chance to introduce myself to everyone just yet. I’ve heard plenty about you though.”

“Charming,” she said. despite the fact that nothing about the man was, in fact, charming. Decidedly less so, actually. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’m looking for my friends.”

She stepped right. He stepped left. Matty ground her jaw when he just batted his eyelashes at her while stepping closer.

“Let me help you.”

“No thanks.”

“Oh, it’s not a problem,” he told her, acting as if she was being bashful in refusing his help rather than flat out telling him she didn’t want nor need it. In fact, he wasn’t even taller than her, so she wasn’t quite so sure what he thought he could accomplish that she couldn’t. “I don’t mind helping out a pretty girl. You might actually help build up my ego a little bit.”

“Wonderful, but I’m not the Make-A-Wish foundation, so maybe work on your ego with something else. Like a mirror. That should fix it real quick.”

“You’re funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

He grinned as if they were sharing some sort of secret before throwing an arm over her shoulder, twisting her this way and that while looking for people she was sure that he didn’t even know. “What’s a pretty doll like you doing all alone here, anyways? I mean, are you sure that your friends are even here?”

“I’m sure.”

“Because if they aren’t,” he barreled on, “you can always hang out with me and my friends. We’re pretty fun.”

“I very much doubt that,” she deadpanned.

He laughed once more and just patted her on the shoulder while twisting around. Matty tried her best to put some space between them, but as a group of new recruits swaggered into the bar, she found herself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“Ah, I can’t find them,” he told her. She was certain that he didn’t look; even more certain that he didn’t know what to look for, but when his gaze stopped on the bar, she figured he found something else worth his time. “You want a drink while you wait?”

Matty rolled her eyes. “Not from you.”

He laughed—again—as if she had said something funny.

“Ah, c’mon. I’ll buy you whatever you want. A beer? Mixed drink? How about some Sex on the Beach?” he asked. She pursed her lips tight at that, no longer even pretending to be cordial with some gnat from the base that she wouldn’t have talked to on a normal day, and he quickly dissolved into a cheeky laugh. “The drink of course. C’mon, Matty, we only just met you know.”

“How about no. Not interested. Ever.”

“But—“

“If you want to keep that arm, kid, you’d better move it before she does for you,” a Southern voice drawled behind them; warm but somehow still ice-cold, threatening but with an easy going staccato.

They turned together. You know, because he still had his arm thrown over her shoulder and was still moving her around like a ragdoll, but Matty felt the guy go stiff on her shoulder when he took sight of the man looming in front of them.

This time, it was Matty who smiled.

How she loved Frank and the sound of him threatening someone for her.

The airman blinked between the pair. He sized Frank up for a moment, but even drunk, it didn’t take him long to realize that he would not be winning that fight. Even when Frank wasn’t trying to take up space, he practically loomed over everyone else. At a clean six foot three, with heavy shoulders, large arms, and a nose crooked from one too many brawls, he cut an imposing figure among the sea of happy, go-lucky soldiers.

The airman cleared his throat. She batted her eyelashes up at him impishly.

“What?” she chirped, amused. “You’ve never met my friend before? I’m sure you would have heard of him if you’ve heard of me. Frankie is always starting trouble on base.”

“Uh, no, I haven’t...” he shook his head while carefully and quickly retracting his arm from her shoulder before it could be done for him. When he stepped back, Matty even noticed that his face had blanched a bit. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“Offer me sex on the beach?” she asked, feigning ignorance, before blinking over at Frank. “The drink, of course.”

That spurred the airman back another foot as he shook his head back and forth, no longer even looking at Matty as he couldn’t seem to remove his gaze from Frank’s unamused look. “No. No, I wasn’t—uh. Sorry. Have a good night.”

Then he promptly disappeared into the fray.

Frank snorted at the kid’s retreat. It wasn’t the first time he had scared someone off for Matty—surely wouldn’t be the last time either—but he always seemed to find some amusement in it. Probably because he knew that Matty had a temper worse than he did, and that out of everyone here, she was the one more than likely to throw a punch at a handsy sailor more than he would.

Yet, no one ever seemed scared of her.

She wondered if that had anything to do with her pink lip-gloss and sparkly eyeshadow.

“That didn’t take long,” he noted, sipping his beer with a smirk. “You were only here, what, two minutes?”

“Yeah, well, being beautiful is hard,” Matty sighed melodramatically before glancing over at Frank. “Although, couldn’t you have showed up a little bit earlier? I think he spilled some beer on me.”

Frank rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome, dickhead.”

“It’s a new shirt, Frank,” she told him.

He didn’t care. Just eyed the garment with a look of disinterest before touting, “don’t start getting all pissy with me, Neven. It’s Diego's birthday. He gets to pick the bar and we get to pay for his drinks. Rules are rules.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, waving a hand in the air to show that even though she had heard what he was saying, she really didn’t care all that much. “All I’m saying is we could have just as easily gotten drunk at his house. Much less men to deal with there.”

“What—you got a bed time or something? You used to be fun, y’know,” Frank drawled before slinging his own arm over her shoulder. It kept any wandering eyes spurned in the opposite direction and allowed the hulking muscle of a man to pull her in the direction of their table, where the others were no doubt sitting already half-sloshed. “What happened to the girl who finished off an entire jar of moonshine that someone in the parking lot gave her?”

“Uh, she finished off an entire jar of moonshine that someone in the parking lot gave her. I don’t remember anything after the first sip, but I’m pretty sure that at one point in the night I fell off of a table.”

Frank tossed his head back with a laugh. ��You got right back up, though.”

“Yeah,” she rolled her eyes. “And then I managed to fall right into some pilot’s bed. Try waking up to that with the world’s worst hangover. I haven’t touched moonshine since.”

“Seriously? A pilot?” he whistled, making fun of both the imagery and of her.

It wasn’t a secret that Matty had grown up in a military family; everyone in the motorpool knew that story, knew which bases she had been moved to in her childhood, knew the embarrassing stories of her father scaring the shit out of her boyfriends when she was in high school. But it was a secret which particular family Matty came from. Though she was proud to be a Neven, over the years she had quickly grown tired of people obsessing over the callsigns Hollywood and Iceman. She had dealt with enough shit as is just being a woman mechanic—having people insinuate that she was only successful because of family ties had been the cherry on top of the metaphorical shit sundae.

And the best way to keep people out of her family business?

Well, that was easy. She simply avoided the people who would know the family business; people like the naked pilot she had gone to bed with a couple months ago. People exactly like the group of suave, egotistical aviators that were cluttered at the pool tables all arguing about who was the best.

“I know, I know, I broke the golden rule.”

“That’s pretty much you’re only rule,” he said.

Matty sighed. Then she glared up at him. “Yeah, well, if I remember correctly I was left alone after finishing off the moonshine.”

“Can you remember?” he teased. “It was a fuck ton of moonshine.”

She punched him in the side. Not exactly a valiant effort given that Frank was more muscle than soft spots, but he groaned all the same, and Matty smiled up at him in victory as he dragged her around the bar. A pair of pilots stood talking to Penny, but when Matty caught the bartender’s eyes, she gave her a warm wave.

It caught the pilot’s attention. The blonde one, a man with a striking smile and an ego that she could smell from there winked at her. Matty promptly gave him the finger in return, and when he dropped open his mouth at it, Penny had to smother a laugh into her hands.

Frank shot him a smug look before directing Matty towards the back patio.

“Oh. Eggs is pissed that you’re late, by the way,” he told her.

“Ugh. It’s not my fault! I tried to be here on time.” He gave her a look. The same look that meant he didn’t believe a word out of her mouth, and Matty nearly whacked a bespectacled WSO in the face when she threw her arms up in frustration. She winced, but they were already moving on past, so she figured he would live without an apology. “I did. Why does no one believe me?”

“Because you’re always late to stuff like this.”

“I am not,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “You’re the worst. You’re supposed to have my back, Frankie.”

Frank snorted. “Show up on time then.”

“I thought we were best friends. I would always defend you if something like this happened, you know.”

“Hm,” he harrumphed, though there was amusement in his eyes when he glanced down at her. Matty batted her eyelashes up at him in return, and as they stepped outside, he shook his head with a disbelieving laugh. “You’re a manipulative fucker, you know that?”

“I prefer the term iconic.”

He didn’t seem convinced. It didn’t matter because in the next moment they were arriving at their picnic table, cutting through the thread of conversation as everyone swiveled in their seats to take note of the group’s latest arrival.

“Well, well, well, look who finally showed up, eh?” Eggs chided.

“Yeah, seriously. It took you long enough,” Claire tacked on, though she grinned all the same when Matty lovingly rolled her eyes. “I didn’t realize it took fifteen minutes to walk from the parking lot.”

“I was accosted,” Matty told her.

“By... beer?” Nick asked, gesturing to the stain on the top of her shirt with a quirked brow. Matty frowned at it, then at Frank.

“I told you he spilled some on me!”

“It’s a shirt,” he said simply, both not interested in arguing and not even the slightest bit upset about the mishap. Matty might have hit him if Eggs wasn’t sitting right there, still managing to look a little upset about her tardiness.

“Eggs, I swear I tried to be here on time,” she said, figuring that her attention was better spent on apologizing to the birthday boy than convincing Frank her outfit was, in fact, fashionable. “I really, really did.”

Diego eyed her for a moment, a failed attempt at being upset, before breaking out into a cheeky grin.

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t know why I expected anything else. You’re late to everything, Matts.”

“I am not!”

“I’m just glad you showed up. Nick had a bet that you were gonna fake a heart attack and skip the party entirely—again.”

Matty swung her gaze to Nick. The kid looked a little sheepish under her glare, but he didn’t defend himself. Just offered a look halfway between a grimace and a smile.

Whatever. She could kick his ass later.

“Well, I didn’t,” she announced to the table. Then, as if remembering that she was here for a reason other than defending her life choices, Matty turned her attention back to Eggs. Handing him her present, she chirped, “happy birthday!” while planting a sloppy kiss onto his cheek.

He grunted and waved her off, though everyone knew that he enjoyed the attention as much as the next guy. “Ah, yeah, yeah, enough with the loving, alright? It’s just embarrassing at this point, Matty. You know I’m married.”

Frank snorted as Matty seated herself between him and Claire, smiling happily when Nick slid over a lukewarm beer.

“Everybody is married,” she grumbled, though the table knew well enough that Matty didn’t have any interest in that particular milestone anytime soon. “Speaking of your wife, where is she?”

“Why? Still trying to convince her to make you godmother when the new baby comes around?”

“No,” Matty said. Then, when Eggs curled a disbelieving brow at her, she threw up her hands with a huff. “Although, I still don’t know why you won’t consider me. I’m great with kids!”

“You made Julia cry last time you babysat.”

“She wanted to watch a cute movie.”

“Yeah, a cute movie. Not fucking Bambi! She’s five, for fuck’s sake.”

“I already apologized about that, but whatever. I was just wondering if Maria is coming because I love hanging out with her. Besides, I could have used some more female company; I get tired staring at your ugly faces every day.”

“Hey!” Frank ruffled her hair while Diego kicked her in the shins, but the entire table erupted into laughter at the comment.

Claire simply smirked at the boys. “She’s not wrong. You fellas are fucking hideous.”

“Are you really a fair judge of the male gender?” Eggs smarted, prompting Claire to roll her eyes with a crass flaunt of her middle finger. “I'm just saying, if you’re not interested in us, then we’re not interested in your opinion.”

“Fuck off; there’s a reason you’re not interested in men either,” she retorted.

“Well, yeah, that’s because I prefer pussy—ow!” he grunted when Matty gave him a swift kick to the shins. Glaring, he sat back in his seat with a sharp huff. “This is my birthday! Will you stop being such a dick, Matty! Christ. First you show up late, now you treat me like shit.”

Claire busted out laughing as Matty just gave the table a faultless flash of her eyelashes. Sipping on her beer, she decided to change the subject before Eggs could get distracted enough from his beer to start pouting. Glancing around, she asked, “well, why am I getting yelled at when we’re still a few boys short? I thought Boomer and George would have been here by now.”

“They are here.”

“Then where—?”

“They’ve been hustling some pilots for the last hour,” Eggs rolled his eyes, though there was an amused gleam in his eyes that he failed to hide from the table. “Boomer promised to win me some money for my birthday, but I think he has a gambling problem. He’s attracted to money like a goblin.”

“A dragon,” Claire piped up from around her beer.

Eggs blinked at her, pausing. “What?”

Claire rolled her eyes, pointing at Eggs around the rim of her beer. “You mean a dragon. Not a goblin.”

“Why would a dragon want money?”

“What? You’re kidding right? Dragons are, like, notoriously obsessed with money and gold and jewels and all that bullshit. That’s why people are always trying to kill them.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Eggs shook his head.

“It’s the truth! Don’t you know your lore?”

“My lore?” he repeated incredulously. Frank and Matty shared a knowing look—Diego liked to argue about every little thing when he was drinking, and Claire loved to prove everybody wrong—which meant that this argument wasn't likely to go anywhere good. “No, I don’t know my lore, Claire, unlike you I actually got laid in high school.”

“Oof, low blow,” Matty laughed. “Claire wasn’t even out when she was in high school.”

“I was still fucking more women than Eggs," Claire tsked.

Diego rolled his eyes; disbelieving. “Oh, yeah? Like who?"

“Like your mom.”

“Oh, fuck you!” he chortled, allowing the pair to fall into their natural stream of mindless arguments. Claire seemed all too eager to knock him a peg down; even on his birthday, the mechanic lived for destroying the opposite gender’s ego.

Matty smiled as Frank leaned in, leaving the pair to their argument.

“Do you think she’ll let him win an argument for once?” he asked.

“Doubtful.”

“Not even on his birthday?”

Matty considered his point while sipping on her beer before shaking her head. She remembered a similar incident two years prior when Claire had spent two and a half hours arguing with Boomer about the superiority of the Woman’s US soccer team in comparison to Men’s. He hadn’t conceded defeat until everyone at the party physically forced the pair apart, and even then Claire had claimed victory for the coming months.

“Doubt it. Not that it matters, though, she is right.”

“About?”

“Dragons and their love of gold. I have no idea where he got the idea that goblins are obsessed with money, but he’s way off base. Not that I’m wading into that argument any time soon,” she eyed the pair for a moment before returning her attention to her beer. Frank laughed prompting Matty to turn to him with a scornful glare. “What?”

“You were a total nerd in high school, weren’t you?” he poked.

“Seriously? You think that Dad ever would have let me indulge in my nerdish fantasies without making a big deal out of it? He practically had a heart attack when I mentioned I wanted to join the debate club.”

“Yeah, well,” Frank shrugged, “that’s because people on debate club have no friends.”

“Hey!”

He laughed, only pausing to feign pain when Matty slugged him in the shoulder with a mock glare, before settling back into his seat beside her. A cheer went up around the bar as the group of pilots finished their game of pool—no surprise, it seemed like the blonde had won the game—and she rolled her eyes in bemusement about it.

Pilots always had to be loud. Then again, her table was pretty loud too.

Frank caught her glancing. When she turned back, he had a dark brow arched on his forehead. “Thinking about finding another pilot to spend the night with?” he teased.

“Not a chance.”

“Your poor dad,” he mocked. “Does he know that you refuse to even be friends with pilots?”

“It’s not that I won’t be friends with them,” Matty corrected Frank, though there was still disbelief shimmering in his eyes that promised this argument would take more energy than she likely felt like sharing. “Oh, shut up. You know how pilots are, anyways. All good bodies but bad temperaments.”

“Did I know that about pilots?” Frank muttered aloud.

“And, yes, he does know that I don’t date pilots. Him and Ice spent years introducing me to their fair share before I finally broke down and told them that I wasn’t interested. That was a fun conversation.”

“You ever think you might be a little hard on them?”

Matty rounded on Frank with wide eyes; this time, it was her that couldn’t believe him, and when he realized what he had just said, Frank seemed in disbelief at himself as well. “Ha, since when are you an advocate for the aviators? Last I remember, you thought that Cyclone was a total prick.”

“Well, he is,” Frank shrugged.

Matty moved past that. “Anyways, it’s nothing personal about pilots, and Dad gets that. I mean, hell, I love all of his friends.”

Frank knocked his hand on the table at that. “Speaking of your dad’s friends,” he started, and, well, fuck, Matty knew exactly where this conversation was going. “I heard that Mav is back in town and—”

Matty threw her head back with a groan. “Ugh. Don’t even start.”

“What?!”

“I am not hanging out with you two again,” she declared, an idle thought to the last time she had a cookout with both of them present. She had nearly shit herself when Frank set off that homemade firework. “My neighbors are still pissed at me for that, you know.”

“It was the fourth,” he shrugged. “I was trying to be patriotic.”

She snorted; no one believed that particular lie. “Well, feel free to hang out with him on your own time, but you are still banned from Ice’s house.”

Frank rolled his eyes, grunting under his breath as he did so. “That wasn’t even my fault. It was Mav’s idea, you know. But, anyways,” he barreled on, though she knew that the conversation would be brought back up sooner rather than later. He was a rockhead like that. “Did you see him yet?”

She had.

Maverick had made it a point to stop by the garage bright and early that morning before he was to show up at the school for debrief with Cyclone. It hadn’t been too much of a surprise considering his unwavering friendship with Iceman that he got the job in the first place, but his chirpy attitude had been enough of a surprise when she thought she was alone that Matty promptly slammed the bench drawer shut on her thumb.

When she swore with more colorful language than Maverick had ever heard, he keeled over at the waist laughing. And when he had tossed her an ice pack from the back of her fridge, she had laughed too because, well shit, times really didn’t change all that much considering it had only been a handful of years since him and Ice had slapped a packet of frozen peas onto her knuckles following her first fist fight at school.

Matty glanced at the digit, playing with the thick tape wrapped around it.

Frank pointed to it curiously. “Maverick did that?”

“Unintentionally. He always was a menace.”

“Pot, meet kettle.”

Matty knocked her shoulder into his, though the pair just laughed about the idiocy of it all, as the pilots started hooting and hollering once more. This time, they were crowded around the dart board.

“So, what’s the plan this time?”

“What do you mean?”

Frank shrugged while finishing the last of his beer. Matty tried to catch up, but as the bar just got more crowded, she figured she would need to switch to hard liquor sooner rather than later if she wanted to keep from causing trouble with the wayward aviators. “Ah, come on, Mats. We both know how secretive you are about the whole family thing. Now we have Maverick teaching the latest batch of recruits? You must have some sort of plan on how to keep people from knowing you two are best pals.”

"Not best," she announced. Then cleared her throat with a shrug. "And, it's not like I'll be sitting in his class anytime soon. I can keep a distance."

“Maybe, but you don’t think his jet will be coming through the motor pool more often than the others? Rumor has it that Mav likes to play it loose and fast—that doesn’t exactly leave much room for a mechanical fuck up in his jet.”

Frank had a point.

Matty knew because she had been considering it for the better part of the day. Maverick did like to fly recklessly, and he didn’t like people he didn’t know touching things that were his. Meaning she would most likely be stuck as his personal mechanic until she could convince him that the others in the motor pool were just as capable.

And knowing Maverick? That could take years just out of sheer insolence.

Sighing, she rubbed the sore spot between her brows. “I… think tequila doesn’t sound too bad right now. You want a shot?”

Frank grinned like an idiot. “When have I ever said no to a shot with you?”

Matty rolled her eyes at his enthusiasm, but let a smile stick to her features as she turned to the rest of the table. Eggs and Claire were still knee deep in their argument. Nick had long since disappeared.

“Hey," she waved a hand between them, "you losers want some shots?”

“Do we want some shots? What sort of question is that?” Eggs guffawed.

“Tequila good?”

“Fuck no!” he shook his head at her, not even budging at the look that she shot him in return. In fact, his face split into that sort of shit-eating grin that she knew meant nothing good would be coming. “C’mon, Matty. It’s my birthday! Doesn’t the birthday boy get to pick the shots you’ll be buying him?”

She planted her hands on her hips, waving at him impatiently. “Yada, yada, yada. You talk more than a politician on Sunday. What d'ya want, Eggs?”

“You already know what I want.”

The whole table groaned together, before everyone in unison said, “not Jaeger.”

“That’s right! I fucking want some Jaeger! What do you fuckers have against it, anyways? If we’re gonna do shots, then we’re gonna do them the right way!”

“Ugh. No need to go on a tirade,” Matty patted him on the shoulder, albeit unenthusiastically. She really hated him sometimes; birthday or not. “Jaeger it is.”

“Grab the boys on your way back too, would ya?” Eggs jutted his chin towards the dart board in the back of the room where two familiar heads were lining up their shots against a crowd of uniforms. “The last thing we need is to start a color war before we can even get properly drunk, eh?”

She waved off his request while making her way to the bar.

Uniforms shifted left and right around her, a few familiar faces popping out against the sea of khaki and Tommy Bahama shirts. Matty tried not to let her eye wander too much; the last thing she needed was to embolden some sailor into trying to get her number, but the bar was unusually packed making it difficult to avoid every blue-eyed sailor that looked her way. Still, she managed to get to the bar in record time.

Penny grinned at her arrival.

“Well, well, well,” Penny chirped, slinging her dish towel over her shoulder. There was a pair of pilots that she had been talking to who both glanced up at Matty’s arrival. She recognized the man with glasses that she had almost taken out earlier, but she didn’t have any clue who the dark haired woman beside him was. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to show up.”

“You and everybody else.”

“Late again?”

Matty threw her arms up. This time, she was much more careful about not whacking anyone across the face. Still, the guy with glasses kept a good distance for safety. “I swear it wasn’t my fault.”

Penny snorted. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Matty leant forward onto the bar with a depreciating sigh. The two pilots seemed amused at her theatrics, and feeling particularly nice, she smiled at them before turning back to Penny. “I need some shots.”

“Let me guess… Jaeger?”

She grinned. “Eggs is predictable like that.”

“How many?”

“Seven.”

“Does that mean you’re gonna drag Boomer off the dart board for me when things turn South?” Penny asked with a cocked hip, gesturing to the group at the back of the bar. Matty winced; Boomer was the life of the party, but he also loved to start shit with pilots whenever he got the chance. “I don’t think Hangman’s ego will be able to endure a game of darts with him. Plus, you know, I like my bar very much un-broken.”

The woman pilot snorted into her drink.

Matty eyed her a bit oddly, before turning back to Penny with a reassuring smile. “I’ll drag him out by the feet if I have to.”

“Promise?”

“Scout’s honor,” Matty said, throwing three fingers up into the air despite the fact that she had never, in her life, been a scout. Penny either didn’t know that tidbit about her or didn’t care. Matty figured it was all the same, and grinned just a little bit brighter while wiggling her hand in the air. “Your bar will remain very un-broken, Pen, I promise.”

“Hm. You know, sometimes I think you’re more trouble than he is,” Penny told her. “Hell, than any of these boys are.”

“But I’m, like, way prettier to look at.”

Penny rolled her eyes, though doesn’t disagree. Partly because she knows that Matty would argue till her lungs gave out if she had the opportunity, partly (probably) because she knows Matty was right.

Seriously. Matty was a total smoke show. How could she not see that?

“Nothing gets broken,” Penny declared, reaffirming her biggest worry, while slowly gathering up as many shot glasses as she can handle. At this, the female pilot’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline, and Matty feels something like pride worm its way up the back of her throat. “I mean it, too, Matts.”

“Does that mean you’ll add a shot of Jose Cuervo for me?”

Penny paused. Matty gave her an impish grin with a wink, before the brunette was mumbling something to herself with the shake of her head. Still, as she disappeared down the bar, Matty watched her pull a bottle of cheap tequila from the bottom shelf.

“Tequila, huh?” the female pilot chirped.

Matty turned to look at her. The woman offered a warm smile along with an amused curl of the brows, and though Matty didn’t actively make friends with aviators, she was in too good of a mood to actively ignore one either. So, she just shrugged. “The best way to get drunk besides shine.”

“Moonshine?” Glasses asked from around her shoulder, almost worried.

“Sure. Never had it?”

“No, I–I have,” he said, clearing his throat with an awkward smile. Matty darted her gaze between him and the woman, wondering if they were friends or just unfortunate workplace associates, but the woman gave nothing away as she grinned into her beer. Apparently, the idea of Glasses drinking moonshine is just as amusing to her as it is to Matty. “Just didn’t think you could find it out here. In the South, sure, but...”

“Hm. Well, you’ve obviously never been to some of the seedier bars scattered around Miramar. You can find it. Not sure if some of it should be drank, but it’s there.”

The woman laughed. “Talking from experience?”

Matty grinned. “Something like that.”

Glasses mumbled something under his breath that caught the woman’s attention, and as they fell back into steady conversation, Matty relaxed against the bar. She waved at a few regulars, smiled even when she spotted a friend of hers from basic, and snorted when some bickering started up at the dart board just like Penny had forewarned.

Yeah. Boomer was definitely trouble, alright.

And Matty was more than happy to keep herself company as she waited for her drinks when someone new slid into the open space between her and the pilots. At first, she bristled at having someone standing so close to her, but then she realized that bar was standing room only and...

Well.

He was standing.

But then she cautioned a glance over at him to find that he was already glancing at her with a curious brow and Matty almost—almost—thanked god that he had decided to stand next to her of all people because damn if he wasn’t a fine ass drink of water. Tall, thick arms, broad chest, tan skin, bright eyes, sun-streaked hair that was accented by a soft mustache that somehow looked good on him (not like the pornstaches that half of the fucking Navy was sporting nowadays). He almost looked statuesque beside her as he absorbed the warm rays of overhead lighting, smiled under her attention with something both inviting and cool, adorable and sexy.

Attractive really in every sense of the word.

Entirely fuckable too, even without moonshine.

And Matty was even considering making some sort of flirty comment towards him that would have, at the very least, earned her ten minutes of attention from a handsome stranger at the bar as she waited for Penny to return with her drinks, but then the female pilot said something to him, actually had the audacity to call him something fucking stupid like Rooster, and—

Fuck.

He was a pilot.

Matty just couldn’t win, could she?

“You weren’t saving this spot for someone, were you?” he asked after turning back away from the female pilot. The cadence of his voice was warm and inviting despite Matty internally wishing that his voice was squeaky and unattractive.

She cleared her throat and glanced at the dark bar top. “Nope.”

“Oh, good,” he nodded, still smiling. “Did you already order, then? I think the bartender—”

“Penny is working on it,” Matty told him. He blinked, pausing slightly, before nodding once again. She supposed that he was trying to be nice, but Matty had to remind herself that nice guys were the ones she had the hardest time saying no to in the past. “It’s fine.”

“You know Penny?”

“Sure,” she shrugged, effortlessly cool, yet somehow still miserably failing at being outrightly dismissive. “Everybody around here does.”

He turned at that so that he was facing her more than he was facing his friends, settling an arm on the bar in a nonchalant way that sent ripples up his toned arms and—where was Penny with those drinks?

“Oh, well, yeah,” he said, scratching the back of his neck for a moment, before adding, “I guess I didn’t realize you were from around here.”

“Taking a census, are you?”

Her deadpan response provoked a laugh from his lips; not quite the reaction she had been going for, but for once, she didn’t really mind. He had a nice laugh that matched his even nicer smile.

And—pilot, pilot, pilot.

Matty tried to keep that in mind when he leant the fraction of an inch closer so that he didn’t have to shout so much. “Not doing a census, no, just like talking to pretty girls.”

He smiled again. This was a little flirtier, a tad bit cheekier, and damn if he couldn’t be on a calendar for Miramar pilots.

“I’m Bradley,” he told her.

I’m Matty, she almost said, the reply so smooth on her tongue that it practically felt unnatural not to give it. But she shouldn’t—couldn’t—if she wanted to stick to her rules. So, instead, she smiled right back and chirped, “yeah? Good for you.”

“Alright,” he nodded, taking her dismissal in stride. “If I buy you a drink, do I get a name?”

“I already ordered my drinks, remember?”

“Ah,” he snapped his fingers, offering up an expression of mock remembrance. “I almost forgot. You’re not waiting on someone, and you already ordered your drinks from Penny. Right. You just got it all worked out already, don’t you?”

“Pretty much.”

He tsked, shoulders sinking with a sigh, as he tapped his hand on the bar counter. “Well, then, that only leaves with me one option.”

“Oh?”

“I guess I need to just go ahead and ask for your phone number,” he shrugs, as if it really is the only thing he can do. “I mean, normally I would say some stupid pick up line and then introduce myself, get a laugh or two from you, tell you that I think your name is just as beautiful as you are—of course, that's a given—and then I would ask for your number while buying you a drink. You’re really kind of ruining my routine here.”

“A shame,” she snorts, rolling her eyes, and trying her darndest not to smile.

It’s hard though. Especially when he is so unabashed in his flirting, so unbothered by her tone, and so fucking cute.

“There’s always next time,” he whistled. “Unless you want me to start over?”

Matty leant on the bar. On the one hand, she wanted to tell him to get lost. On the other hand, he was cute and had a good sense of humor, and seemed to be in a good enough mood that she might actually feel bad if she shattered it callously just because of her silly rules not to engage with pilots.

Still, when Penny brushed by with a curious look, Matty had to remind herself that one option was better than the other. “You can try,” she said, the implication that it wouldn’t be a successful attempt clear in her tone.

Yet, for some reason, he stuck around.

“Ah, c’mon, you don’t even know what I was gonna say,” he told her, leaning on the bar with just enough of a flex of the arms that she couldn’t help but look even if she didn’t want to. Bradley’s smile widened. The little shit obviously knew what he was doing. “Ready?”

“Alright then,” she waved a hand at him impatiently. “Let’s get this over with.”

He made a show of standing up straighter, combing his hair, adjusting his shirt so that it hung just right, before leaning back onto the bar as if he had just shown up. “Hey, this is really weird, but I think there’s something wrong with me phone. Your number isn’t on it.”

Matty couldn’t help herself and laughed loud enough that the nearby pilots could hear. The blonde from earlier—having recently vacated the dart board—glared at them from across the bar top.

“That was horrible,” she told him matter-of-factly.

“In a good way, though.”

“No, in a horrible way,” she tsked, slowly calming down from her laughter, and now truly struggling to keep a smile off of her face. Rules, rules, rules, she reminded herself while clearing her throat. “Maybe you should go find someone else to waste that line on.”

“I kind of like wasting it on you though.”

Matty curled a sharp brow at that, but somehow managed to keep from smiling again. What a reckless mess that would be. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re hitting on the wrong girl.”

“That’s perfect then,” he shrugs, before smoothly saying, “because I didn’t tell you this yet, but I’m Mr. Right. I think we’d be a perfect pair.”

His friends snicker to themselves over his shoulder at the obvious line, and as Bradley turns to shoot them a dark look that effectively shuts up their eavesdropping, Matty squares her shoulders. And when he turns back to face her, she actively tries to appear as disinterested as possible.

“Look, you’re seriously wasting your time,” she tells him, only now managing to be a little bit more serious and a little less flirty. “If you had been around here much before tonight, you would know that I am not the girl to hit on. There’s plenty others though that would be totally into... this.”

Bradley arches a brow high on his forehead, nearly touching the perfectly coifed curls that were resting against his tan skin at that. His smile was still bright and gentle, but there was a shine of curiosity in his eyes now. “You a big deal around here or something?”

“Or something,” she simpers.

If her attitude was off putting, he didn’t comment on it.

Instead, he takes a long neck of his drink before gesturing to her with his free hand. “Well? Are you gonna give me an introduction? Since I’m new around here, I think it’s only fair that I know the local big deal so I don’t get myself into trouble without knowing it.”

Damn him. Matty sighs at his continued persistence; even worse was the way she found herself wanting to stick around in conversation with him. Still, she knew. Better to shoot him down now before his plane got any wind under the wings—a fiery crash on the runway was less likely to hurt them both than a nosedive from the sky.

“Alright, fine. I’m not interested.”

“Not interested, huh?” he hums while picking at the label on his beer bottle. “That’s an interesting name. Are your parents multicultural or something?”

It surprises her how quickly his response comes; so laid back, unoffended, without that familiar lightning strike of ego that boys like him often had provoked when she said something so upfront and defensive. But what surprises her more was the laugh that once again bubbles at the back of her throat.

Definitely not good.

A cute pilot with a sense of humor? Oh no, Matty knew better than to go down that road—not fucking likely if she had anything to say about it.

“Look, Buddy—” she starts.

“Bradley.”

“Bradley,” she corrects with a huff, “I don’t date flyboys.”

“Flyboys? Isn’t that term a few decades old?” Matty shoots him a baleful look at his humorous response, to which he just shrugs with that same easy going smile of his. If she had to guess—and she was usually right about these sort of things considering the majority of men all shared the same two brain cells—he was amusing himself by riling her up because his caveman brain associated a pissed off female with a horny one. “We don’t even know each other. Why are you so certain that I’m a pilot?”

To this, she cocks a brow and a hip. “Seriously?”

“I mean, I’m more than happy to play twenty questions with you, but that sort of borders first date territory, doesn’t it?” he says.

“No thanks,” she deadpans. “Besides, I’ve been around long enough to see you pilots come through training every couple of months. I knew you were one the second I laid eyes on you, buddy.”

“It’s Bradley,” he corrects once more, amused at himself and at getting the chance to poke a little fun at her. “And how do you know I’m not a backseater?”

“Because you have that look.”

“Look?”

Matty doesn’t explain, and just as he’s about to ask, Penny settles a tray of shots into the open bar space between them. She gives Matty a look—one that says what the hell are you doing still talking to him?—which only further prompts the blonde to focus on why she was here, and not why she wasn’t.

Winking at Penny, Matty turns to Bradley, and promptly tells him, “WSOs don’t have that stupid swagger that you’re walking around with.”

Bradley leans back an inch, frowning down at himself as if he's trying to pinpoint the swagger she’s indicating, and Matty takes pleasure in poking the pair of sunglasses hanging off of his shit.

“Oh, and the aviators? They are decades old and a dead fucking give away,” she tells him before promptly throwing back the shot of amber tequila. It burns all the way down, relaxing the coiled muscles in her shoulders, and as she slams the empty glass back down onto the counter, Matty finds something cheeky worming its way along her tongue. “You meet your new instructor yet?"

His frown becomes perturbed as he coils a brow at her; no longer flirty, but curious, and slightly concerned. “No?”

Matty hums. “Well, you and your friends might want to check your egos on the tarmac then; there’s really not enough room for both of them when you’re up in the sky with that smartass.”

She heaves the tray onto her shoulder before turning away from the bar.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, only to be ignored as she surveys the bar. Boomer and George were already making their way outside, and she figures it was now or never if she wanted to rein them in from their gambling. Matty winks at Glasses on her way past as Bradley shouts, “wait! Seriously. Can I at least have your phone number?”

“Like I said,” she coils a foxy look in his direction, taking pleasure in the way he stands a little straighter beside his friends. “I don’t date pilots.”

Matty never knew if he took offense to that.

Probably, considering that every pilot everywhere had the ego of a goddamned Olympian, but the crowd swallows her up before she gets the chance to see his reaction. Fine by her; she hadn’t come to the bar to get hit on by this month’s latest crew of aviators. Instead, she had come to get drunk with her friends.

Friends that hoot upon seeing her arrive with the shots.

“Fuckin’ took you long enough,” Boomer crows, grinning wildly when she lays the shots down on the table. Everyone grabs their respective glass as he juts his chin towards the bar. “Another newbie trying to fuck?”

“They get more and more resilient every year," she jokes with an airy sigh. Claire snorts, amused, and makes a crude joke about why women were always better than men as George tosses an arm over Matty's shoulder with an endearing smirk.

“Yeah, well, fuck them,” he tells her. “I’ll keep you company, Matts.”

“My hero,” she bats her eyes at him. The rest of the table laughs; all the boys having taken turns keeping Matty from fighting off pilots, all deeply amused each time it happens, so they know that despite her not needing the help, she enjoyed it all the same. Next, she turns her attention the only man she wants to spend attention on tonight. “Happy Birthday Eggs!’

Eggs laughs in response as the others share their sentiments, pink flushing his dark skin until his cheeks were the characteristic rosy color of someone that was a step too close to being drunk. He takes only a moment to think before raising his shot glass in return, proclaiming, “to fixing shit that shouldn’t be broken.”

“And to breaking shit that should never be fixed!” the rest of the table responds in their self-proclaimed motto.

Together, they clink their glasses, cheer, and then throw back the Jaeger with varying degrees of disgust. In unison, seven glasses were slammed onto the table, and suddenly Matty finds herself forgetting all about egos, pilots, and cute boys like Bradley.

Afterall, he was a pilot. And rules were rules.

She didn’t break them for anyone.

***taglist (thanks for asking!) @callsignbarb @coyotesamachado @shanimallina87

#bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster x oc #bradley bradshaw x oc #top gun maverick #top gun maverick imagine #bradley bradshaw series #rooster series #heart mechanics #more to come

113 notes · View notes

chrysochroma · 3 months

Text

Febuwhump 2024 Masterlist!

@febuwhump i made it babeyyy! thank you so much for organizing this, i had a lot of fun!!

Total Word Count: 25,212

Day 1: helpless - “show us some good entertainment"

Hermitcraft, Teen, 1.1k

TW: blood, violence, broken bones

Day 2: solitary confinement - within your walls (desire, desire, till there’s nothing left of me)

Hermitcraft, Teen, 2.4k

TW: Kidnapping, Torture, Human Experimentation, Temporary Character Death

Day 3: ALT 4: human weapon - These are the Glorious Days (TGD) Ch 1: Slice, Come Paradise

Generation Loss, Teen, 1k

TW: Major character death, Blood, Flashbacks

Day 4: ALT 1: human shield - Starting With Them

The Owl House, Teen, 1k

TW: Possession, blood, violence

Day 5: rope burns - Black skies change to blue

Tangled the Series/Varian and the 7 Kingdoms, Teen, 1.3k

TW: Blood, Injury, Rope burns, Tourniquets

Day 6: “you lied to me” - Everything Moves Ch 1: So many angles, so many lines

Varian and the 7 Kingdoms, Teen, 1k

TW: crying, yelling, betrayal

Day 7: suffering in silence - TGD Ch 2: I give you the Judgement of God!

Generation Loss, Teen, 1k

TW: Dissection/surgery, Derealization, Graphic description of dissection

Day 8: “why won’t it stop?” - Kill The Rabbit (KTR) Ch 1: Eclipse

Original Work, Mature, 3.4k

TW: Arson, Death, Derealization, Panic Attacks, Scars, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Day 9: bees - Futurum Ch 1: Humanity

Original Work, Teen, 1.2k

TW: Death

Day 10: ALT 9: lightning strike - Sacrosanctity

Original Work, Teen, 1k

TW: blood, lightning, cult ish

Day 11: time loop - KTR Ch 2: Waxing Crescent

Original Work, Mature, 3.2k

TW: Murder, Blood and Violence, some Very distasteful discussion of suicide

I just realized that i forgot to make a tumblr post for it but its too late for that now so

Day 12: ALT 6: immortality - In a Tulip Field (Tulip) Ch 1: Always More

Original Work, Teen, 232

TW: discussion of death

Day 13: “you weren’t meant to get hurt” - Everything Moves Ch 3: So many ways to see the sunrise

Varian and the 7 Kingdoms, Teen, 1.2k

TW: Violence, injury, crying

Day 14: blood stained tiles - Neon green and scarlet red

Danny Phantom, Teen, 857

TW: Dissection/vivisection/surgery, self loathing, bad parenting, blood

Day 15: “who did this to you?” - Rusty Repair Kit (RRK) Ch 1: A Bright Red Poppy

Hermitcraft, Teen, 658

TW: Mourning

Day 16: came back wrong - “You don’t remember?"

Malevolent Podcast, Teen, 642

TW: yelling, swearing

Day 17: hostage situation - I’m Gonna Win Ch 1: I’ll be Bloody and Bruised

Traffic Life, Teen, 100

TW: Defeathering, Violence, Reference to past trauma

Day 18: too weak to move - Thrill of the Chase

The Magnus Archives, Teen, 162

TW: Violence

Day 19: “please don’t” - Everything Moves Ch 2: To keep the pulse alive in you

Varian and the 7 Kingdoms, Teen, 594

TW: Yelling

Day 20: ALT 7: last words - Tulip Ch 2: Those Who Remember

Original Work, Teen, 187

TW: Discussion of death

Day 21: unresponsive - “All you have is your fire"

Traffic Life, Teen, 100

TW: Unconscious

Day 22: “you weren’t meant to be there” - I’m Gonna Win Ch 2: I’ll be Laughing Alone

Traffic Life, Teen, 200

TW: Yelling

Day 23: presumed dead - Tulip Ch 3: For Them

Original Work, Teen, 181

TW: Discussion of death

Day 24: “i’m doing this because i care about you” - Molten Gold

Traffic Life, Teen, 959

TW: Kidnapping, Flashbacks, References to past trauma, Fire powers, Yelling

Day 25: ALT 5: CPR - Make a mercy out of me

Hermitcraft, Teen, 200

TW: Drowning, Burns, Crying

Day 26: “help them” - Boogeyman

Traffic Life, Teen, 100

TW: Violence, Betrayal, Lying

Day 27: left for dead - RRK Ch 2: Bloodstained Gears

Hermitcraft, Teen, 842

TW: Violence, Blood

Day 28: “no…not like this” - TGD Ch 3: Hail His Majesty!

Generation Loss, Teen, 100

TW: Panic, Yelling

Day 29: not allowed to die - Success

Traffic Life, Teen, 100

TW: Panic, Suicidal thoughts

#writing #creative writing #febuwhump #febuwhump 2024 #masterlist #masterpost #chroma writing

3 notes · View notes

uno-lino · 1 year

Text

LACUNA: Her Missing Piece

~He was home.

He was a star glittering in the immense universe.

He was the sunrise over a daisy-dusted meadow.

He was her missing piece.~

-pairing: Hwang Hyunjin X Original Character -word count: 14k -genre: romance, angst - mutual pining :(, hurt/comfort :( -tropes: fakerelationship!au, soulmate!au, lowkey enemies to lovers -warnings: swearing, that's pretty much it *shrug* NOTE: my first public story yay! (I'm scared) :D i tend to write only horror/thriller, not romance, but I'm trying to experiment with different genres rn. this is dedicated to my best friend @unboxedfish for her birthday <33 Ilysm hun, I rly hope this is worth it :))

-summary: Hyunjin and OC suffered a bad breakup due to misunderstandings - five years later they're reunited, and the tension remains to be high...yet so is the strength of their love. -music to inspire: When someone you love becomes a memory | Playlist | - YouTube

In ’99, Ji Elena started to view the world in black and white.

Many of the high-school students who’d graduated that year remembered the summer as a carefree utopia spent among hyper-active acquaintances, a period of release from the incessant nature of education. It was a time when the musky air smelled of barbeques, and the bronzed pavements glistened with the beam of the sun. Worries ceased temporarily, as groups lounged beneath self-erected gazebos by the refreshing, rippling water of the lake of the Red-Light District; the blazing heat was unusually relentless, perhaps reflecting the high spirits of the youth.

Elena remembered the month of August as a blur of disarray spent surrounded by crumpled, tear-stained story drafts, her burdened mind racing with potential angsty ideas, all thankfully allowing her to bequeath her bitter experiences to imaginary characters. She could count on one hand how many occasions she’d exited her bedroom to meet her friends, and, even then, her attitude had been so solemn that she had returned home, regretting having gone out at all.

Needless to say, her recent breakup had affected her incredibly.

Her ex-boyfriend was amply tall, and had elegant, symmetrical features with deep, black, oval-shaped eyes with which Elena had once had a romantic infatuation. Somehow, every outfit he chose to wear - being a member of sixth-form - flattered his well-proportioned body beautifully, and his bones structured his angelic face with not a groove out of place. His caring, innocent smile was striking, but his ex-lover had first fallen for his humility: his demeanour was friendly, almost alluring, breezing through Year Thirteen as though the final exams did not bother him in the slightest, prioritising the joviality of adolescence over the futile nature of results.

This well-known airy manner had constantly enticed swarms of girls to flirt with him ingratiatingly like bees drawn to honey. Some would purposefully knock over objects in front of him which he would pick up, forging a grin; others would brush their grabby fingers over his own in the library, to be met with a patient nod of acknowledgement, but much to their disdain, nothing further.

Hwang Hyunjin’s reticent composure had only ever faltered in one person’s presence.

Elena brought out something curious from within him that frightened him due to its unfamiliarity.

She tended to stick to her own business, refusing to let others’ opinions influence her in any way. In lessons, she kept her pretty head down, engrossed in the classic Greek literature she so adored, analysing Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ as though she were in her own, distant world. Elena had always been an A-grade student, but did not give herself enough credit for her natural academic talents that she lived to further improve, being a writer, dreaming of working in publishing. It was common to find her poring over prose (typically with her protective best friend Luna who distracted her in only the best way), holding her aspirations in the back of her intelligent mind.

Opposing her stoic attitude externally, Elena was also a person to hold grudges against those who did her wrong, unforgiving until they were able to redeem themselves. Her confidence had been knocked drastically on numerous occasions, but – luckily – they had been considerably straight-forward to overcome, reaffirming within herself that doubting her abilities was futile; she was worth more than gold.

Her grudge against Hwang Hyunjin proved otherwise.

Elena couldn’t remember ever despising a person as much as she did him. Each time she just so happened to be in his unfortunate presence, her insides tingled with loathing - she couldn’t even bear to look at him, since, if she were to, she’d be reminded of how abysmally they had abandoned one another.

Why did Hyunjin seem so outwardly unaffected, though? It irritated the girl endlessly to see him acting so laid-back preceding their unspeakable breakup which had occurred nearing the end of Year Thirteen. She had even seen him smiling and laughing along with his popular group of friends only one week afterwards, evoking such crushing despair within her that she could barely travel around the grounds of Hellevator High due to such intense, anxious trepidation.

When Elena eventually came to accept her hatred, she vowed never to see Hwang Hyunjin again. Ever.

She had no idea that she’d soon face the most difficult decision of her life.

~ <3 ~

-FIVE YEARS EARLIER-

Hyunjin first realised he had a crush on Elena when he struggled to simply ask her for book recommendations for his coursework. He was shyer than he let on, one of the huge downfalls in his personality which he was self-conscious about (as well as his uncontrollable blushing habit).

‘Uh…hi,’ was his introduction, scratching the back of his neck around which his lanyard was hanging - not that anyone had to learn his name; he was famous enough.

Luna had been the first to look up, surveying Hyunjin from top to toe in curiosity. She nudged Elena - both of their unreadable stares had penetrated the boy before them, causing him to look solely down at the table of the library they were seated at.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he tried. ‘Are you free right now?’

The two grills exchanged a glance that intrigued Hyunjin. His target answered, ‘Yeah, I am. What’s up?’

‘I just want to ask you something, if that’s okay...’

Luna watched the two of them exit through the library’s glass doors, her eyes large behind her glasses. Hyunjin shuffled his feet as he and Elena came to a stop in the corridor outside, his pupils flicking all around the space, focusing on anything other than her.

‘Do you have any book recommendations for the NEA for Literature?’ he started, his voice wavering. ‘You know, the Non-Examed- I mean, the Assessment- whatever it’s called, heh.’

‘I actually already have my two texts,’ said Elena, shrugging brightly.

‘Which ones?’

‘‘The Odyssey’, and ‘Paradise Lost’.’ Her passion was evident in the way she released the words. ‘But, to be honest, picking your theme for the NEA should be totally up to you. What genres do you like?’

‘I like romance,’ Hyunjin informed, fiddling with his fingers, ‘especially when the characters go from enemies to lovers. That’s the only thing I read, really, heh.’

‘Then, that's it…Can I ask you a question, though?’ Not even awaiting an answer from him, she enquired, ‘How come you’re asking me? I mean, your friend Han Jisung is in our Literature class.’

‘Well, why not?’ He flushed maroon. ‘I figured I’d get to know you.’

‘That’s kind of you,’ she’d smiled contentedly, but her demeanour concealed something else. ‘Good luck with picking your books.’

Elena had turned to go, her black skirt swishing against her thighs, but the male had caught her wrist, his face lined with desperation as he called, ‘Wait!’

Hyunjin was silent for a minute, scanning her soft features, unfiltered. He released a deep breath, speechless by her beauty to which he had never had the honour of being so close, and his brown doe-eyes were awesome as he drowned in hers, hazel and glittery. He only realised that his grip on her sleeve was tightening when she withdrew herself, her gaze more urgent.

‘Yeah?’

‘I think we should…become better friends,’ the boy grinned.

‘That-That would be fun, I-I guess…’

But her mind was clearly foggy, and she had accepted Hyunjin’s proposal of a meeting to be held two days later without question. The reality of the situation only kicked in when Elena had hurried back to Luna, the former frowning at the strange endeavour, realising with horror what she had agreed to attend. Head in her hands as she’d slumped back into the library’s seat, she’d let out, ‘Oh, my God.’

‘What happened? What was he waffling about?’

‘Ugh…’ The girl’s face was stuffed into her forearms on the tabletop; Luna’s hand ended up on her shoulder. ‘I don’t know, he might have…asked me on a date, or something.’

‘Umm…what the hell, Mákaruh King? That’s amazing news!’

‘I could barely concentrate ‘cause I was so…mesmerised by his beautiful face!’ she whisper-shouted, annoyed at her laughable incompetence. ‘I kept stuttering, and I was so nervous…I really embarrassed myself.’

‘Babe, that doesn’t matter!’ her best friend encouraged, seeming more exuberant about Elena’s good fortune than the receiver herself. ‘So, he likes you back?’

‘He didn’t say…He said we should ‘become better friends’.’ Her fingers, nails painted a pale brown, came up to make the speech-marks. ‘So, I basically just got friendzoned. I hate romance.’

‘No-’

‘But Hwang Hyunjin, man. He’s so…perfect.’

The man in question was mirroring his lover on the other side of the building, his cringing expression buried within his large palms. His best friend, Lee Minho, was leaning back in his seat with his buff arms crossed, a Dance Theory textbook propped up on one knee. He had a surprisingly stern character, but now was actively sympathetic, his gorgeously-arched eyes observing carefully.

‘Are you…good, Hyun?’ he piped up.

‘No.’ His disbelieving voice was muffled.

‘Did she say yes?’ Minho’s eagerness was unrelenting.

‘She said yes, but it’s probably just platonic.’ Hyunjin rolled his chair back in order to collide his forehead with the surface of the table. ‘Why was I so awkward? I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Boy, she said yes!’ his companion reminded, grinning, struggling to keep his voice low. ‘Of course she likes you!’

‘But I’m so embarrassed now…That didn’t go how I had planned it out.’

‘Ya-’

‘But Ji Elena, man. She’s so…perfect.’

~ <3 ~

Hellevator Homes remained to be the pride of the Red-Light District, even after its original establishment in 1982. No other block of flats erected since had managed to surpass it in beauty, and hadn't captured the hearts of the town's inhabitants so authentically. The exterior was simple - painted a plain off-white, with few-and-far-between silver accents under each flower-lined window, - but, in such a case, a simple design proved effective. There were only five floors, resulting in a total of twenty-five expensive apartments, one of which was owned by a proud Hwang Hyunjin, strutting here and there with the self-actualising knowledge that he'd obtained a solid, leak-free home on the fourth level.

‘Hwang Hyunjin!’

The man in question was figuratively blown away by his authoritative parents, Chairman Hwang's booming tones reverberating around Number Eighteen. They'd arrived at the Red-Light District a day prior from their home city of Seoul and had already made their displeasure widely known - this small town in the west of Korea was a massive downgrade to stay in, even just for a few days.

'Hwang Hyunjin!' There had been a certain immediacy in Mr. Hwang’s conveyance. 'Get me a drink!'

Chairman Hwang was clearly a person of great superiority, the long-term director of an international publishing enterprise. The old man had a recognisable face, very hard, with a long, droopy mouth, drawing on a permanent frown. His thick, black glasses were typical to his character, and he spoke with a fitting growl, punishing all that wrongly came between him and his morals. ‘Hmm…’ he surmised, a wrinkled, bony finger tapping his hairy chin. ‘You're still as scrawny as always. Do you ever go out, boy?’

The young man being addressed made an expression of jadedness, but, in search of love, tried a second time, ‘Hi, Mum. Shall I take your coat?’

His matured wife removed said item in a brisk, sweeping movement, dumping it in all its furry glory into her son’s awaiting arms. Without a polite greeting, nor an attestation of gratitude, she strode to the leather sofas, folding one primed thigh over the other; her peacock-feather-esque skirt splayed across her lap. Fiddling with her scrupulously curled blonde tresses, she outburst, ‘Hurry up, boy! A Bourbon Whiskey!’

Aggrieved, Hyunjin set about his task, all the while under the fierce scrutiny of his father. Pulling his lips into a forced smile of somewhat-agreeance, he proffered the beverages he’d impetuously rustled-up.

‘At last,’ his father went on, at his most expansive, as he stretched his knobbly knees out in Hyunjin’s favourite armchair, ‘do you not appreciate a friendly visit from your dear family anymore?’

‘Of course, I do,’ their son ingratiated, leaning forwards from where he was settled between them both. ‘I’m just surprised.’

Then, his parents rocketed into a lengthy, characteristic series of stories about the Hwang family’s forebears, and their non-perverse indulges within the tyranny their many ancestors had created – all Hyunjin really got from the monologues was the fact that he was apparently ‘coming-of-age’; why this was so, or what said arrival would entail, he did not yet know.

That was until Mr. Hwang brought into the discourse the concept of contrived pre-picked marriage, at which point Hyunjin spilled his Dr. Pepper across the carpet.

‘I don’t understand,’ he dared to propose, eyes hooded as he surveyed his smirking oppressors. ‘You-You said I have a month to find myself a wife before you’d pick one-! I’ve still got a week, I know I can do it-!’

‘Hmm, that absolutely was the case, before you proved to us you are not able to conduct a simple task independently. That’s why we have to take matters into our own hands - like always when it comes to your incompetence, boy.’

‘It’s hard to get into a relationship so quickly!’ Hyunjin panicked. ‘I’m trying!’

‘Then, for God’s sake, try harder!’ Mrs. Hwang encroached. ‘We’re trusting you to find an adequate partner by the end of this week. Don’t make us regret this decision.’

‘No,’ he blurted back with the apparent speed of a superhuman; the idea of an arranged wedding was becoming less and less appealing the longer this went on for. ‘You’re right, I was incompetent before, but I know what I have to do now.’

‘Hmm…’ the old man repeated, stretching out his lean stature with a nauseating, loud crack of his aged bones.

��I’m not going to let you down!’ Hyunjin insisted, eyes untamed.

‘I sincerely hope not.’

‘We’ve given you a month, out of the goodness of our own hearts,’ his mother contributed. ‘It’s your own fault you’re failing so abysmally.’

‘Mum…’ Hyunjin’s whimper of the name was pitiful. ‘This is really hard for me.’

‘No, it isn’t!’ she retorted carelessly. ‘Your father and I had less than three whole conversations before our wedding day. I didn’t even know his surname.’

‘That’s you, not me! I have my own life and I am my own person. I’m not like you.’

Old Chairman Hwang craned his dewlapped neck so his purple lips made ticklish contact with his child’s earlobe, ‘You’re really disappointing me, Hwang Hyunjin. I’m embarrassed to be called your father.’

~ <3 ~

-FIVE YEARS EARLIER-

This warm afternoon, the local park of the Red-Light District was unusually busy, bustling with city folk: couples, students, and the elderly alike. The sun was still high, beating down at its peak and heating the surface of the infamous lake. A middle-aged woman lounged near the huge body of water, reading a novel; three teenage boys kicked a football between them; a father showed his toddler a plethora of different types of flowers in the bushes; a large group of about twenty people danced under a gazebo in the distance, blasting loud pop music.

Hyunjin was wringing his hands in nervousness, pondering his great luck, when Elena strode over to him, tying her dark-brown hair into a half-up-half-down ponytail and lounging next to him on the grass with a sigh. The boy’s lips contorted into a relieved smile.

‘Sorry about the wait,’ she apologised instantly. ‘Do you know Elise?’

‘Yeah, what about her?’

‘She’s having ‘boy troubles’ again with Chris Bang – one of the guys on your tennis team? I was on video call with her as I got ready. Sorry I’m a bit late.’

‘It’s alright…’ Hyunjin cleared his throat when his lover wasn’t looking, turning back with a swift, ‘These are for you!’

He withdrew his arm from behind his back, presenting a gorgeous bouquet of large, lavender-coloured roses. The thin plastic covering was a bit crinkled, but even that didn’t divert Elena’s attention from the dark-purple hearts all over it – they were original, and pure, just like Hyunjin himself. She gasped, covering her mouth, her eyes bulging open; the boy admittedly fell into a proud mindset, his nose slightly in the air whilst watching her reaction to such extravagance.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ she cooed, as he gently transferred the handle into her own grasp. ‘I don’t know what to say!’

‘Do you like them?’

‘What do you mean?!’ Her circular eyes peered out at him from above the top of the flowers. ‘I love them so much! I didn’t bring you anything…’

‘You didn’t have to,’ Hyunjin comforted, wonderfully pleased with Elena’s confirmation of his hopes. ‘I think we’re going to get on really well…I wanted to start this friendship with a bang.’

‘Thank you, Hyunjin! I’m going to take good care of them.’

The girl then rested on her stomach, looking up at him with an inquisitive gaze. He maintained her eye, losing his sanity in her deep stare, before listening intently as she started a conversation, ‘So, what do you want to talk about?’

‘I-I-...’ he stammered, unsure. ‘Uhh…Well, do you-…? Uhh…’

‘You seem very nervous,’ the other pointed out. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Yeah. It’s just…I want to make a good impression.’

Elena’s eyes widened, her heart skipping a beat.

‘How about you tell me about your family?’ Hyunjin attempted, examining his can of Pepsi a bit too intently to be considered ‘normal’.

‘It’s just me, my brother Cameron, and my parents,’ the other explained conversationally. ‘I like our quaint house in our little cul-de-sac. Our neighbours are friendly – they’re all old, but I don’t mind. One of them makes the most amazing cakes.’ She laughed, covering her smile with her hand, yet Hyunjin had grown to obsess over her beauty. ‘You’d like the man across the road: he’s amazing at Christmas games!’

Hyunjin puffed in content, speaking without thinking, ‘Wow, I wish I could see that in person one day.’

The woman looked right at him in bemusement. ‘Yeah. I wish you could see that one day, too.’

‘You do?’

She didn’t respond in words, apparently finding more interest in a tiny, green beetle making its clumsy way towards the pavement lining the park, her chin coming to rest on her palm. The boy took his time to respect her appearance: her sun-brushed curls were framing her rosy cheeks, the complexion of her skin complimenting the light-blue shade of her blouse. There was an air of elegance in her demeanour, making her out to be maturely sophisticated.

He found his voice, ‘This is quite personal, but…do you have a boyfriend?’

‘I haven’t really thought about being in a relationship,’ Elena clarified, shrugging timorously. ‘My last one was pretty shit, anyway.’

‘Ahh…I’m sorry about that, Len.’

Elena’s breath caught in her throat. ‘No one’s ever called me Len before…’

‘Sorry. Don’t you like it?’

‘I love it!’ she laughed, leaving as a passing enquiry, ‘But don’t you think it’s too early to be so close? This is our first proper conversation, you know…’

‘Who cares?’ said the boy, gulping down mouthfuls of his drink. ‘Let’s not waste time.’

The event went on with sweet, casual conversation, paired with the thrill of young, ever-blossoming romance - not that the young duo were aware of the obvious reciprocation of their little ‘crushes’.

Hyunjin enjoyed their closeness, and felt as though he could completely open-up to her; he almost dreaded nightfall, when they would be forced to depart properly. He could virtually envision their future enfolding, each passing day one filled with hope and love - as long as they were together.

And Elena noticed that she was properly satisfied for the first time in a while.

~ <3 ~

‘Ugh.’

Twenty-three-year-old Elena, now sleepy-eyed in her dim bedroom, tossed another unsatisfactory story draft into the waste-bin, leaning her head back. She’d undergone a stressful all-nighter - now it was five a.m. - and had already used up most of her ballpoint pens. Strangely, her body-clock was not yet accustomed to so many working hours, even though she’d been slaving away well into the night since the start of high-school.

She had met the strong-willed Seo Changbin shortly after graduating Hellevator High. They both shared a passion for literature and were part of a ‘creative writing club’ on Monday nights in Hellevator Hostel in which they were free to explore their academic talents together, improving their close friendship by the week.

Changbin was only a year older than her, and had fiery, defined features, his black hair sweeping over his left eye in a tender, fragrant wave. Now, he was lying atop Elena’s black bed sheets, legs crossed, his forearms behind his head as a makeshift pillow. He was scanning over the woman at her desk - on whom he was crushing enormously - out the corner of his eye, nibbling his bottom lip to seem natural as she turned to invite his opinion on a notion she’d been overthinking.

‘If you were to put dialogue in the middle of a sentence, where would you put the commas, before or after the speech marks? Or would you not put any?’

‘Uhh…’ Sitting up seamlessly, he chuckled lowly. ‘What a question, Elena.’

‘So, what do you think?’

‘I mean…Look, I know you’re concentrating, but…can we finally continue the conversation we started the other day?’

Elena’s busying hands froze, her expression out of Changbin’s eyeline. ‘Uhh…sure. What were you saying again?’

‘Just…our position,’ he dared, on tenterhooks. ‘What are you thinking about us right now?’

‘I can definitely feel…something, I guess,’ the female responded, continuing through her papers, albeit more strenuously, ‘but I just feel like it’s one-sided.’

‘Nah.’ The man shuffled along the carpet, snaking his sweaty palm into her own sensually. His romantic attraction was obvious through such a touching gesture. ‘There’s tension between us.’

‘Hey, I don’t know if I’d call it ‘tension’...’

‘Well, at least there’s something blossoming.’ Her friend grinned toothily, observing her with heart-eyes, ‘and we need to do something about it.’

‘How do you feel about me, Changbin?’ The woman’s voice was barely above a whisper.

‘You already know the answer to that. What about…you? You said it’s one-sided-’ His upbeat tones decreased in excitement.

‘I don’t want to interrupt, but we should stop this before it gets awkward,’ she interjected, pushing him away delicately. ‘We’re really good friends and I don’t want…this to ruin that.’

‘It won’t,’ the other opinionated, shaking his head in support of the statement. He was on his knees beside her now, his pupils flicking between both of her own. ‘Not when we’re already so close.’

‘That’s the thing. I think we’re too close.’ She smiled prettily.

‘Too close to have a relationship?’

‘Yes.’

The man made it no secret that he was deflated. ‘That really sucks.’

‘I don’t want to upset you, yeah?’ Elena reassured him, kind as always. ‘I want to let you down slowly so it doesn’t hurt as much.’

‘You don’t like me back, do you?’ Changbin asked, slumped over.

His friend sighed, rubbing his back in solace, her work going unnoticed. ‘Truth be known…I’m still not fully over Hwang Hyunjin.’

‘Oh, my God, Elena. Come off it.’ He face-palmed. ‘That was five whole years ago.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘You need to get over him!’ the male encouraged. ‘He was a dick to you! Don’t let him get you down anymore, girl! You’re better than that.’

Elena said nothing, picking at her tights.

‘Hmm?’ He tilted her sad face up with two fingers under her chin. ‘What have your girl friends said about it?’

‘They hate him as much as I do.’ She almost laughed at the stupidity. ‘We have group therapy. They think I should go out and find another man - someone who will treat me right.’

‘Yeah. Well, you should really take that advice. You can’t spend your whole life sulking over Hwang.’

‘It’s so hard, though…’ the woman informed, the atmosphere depressing. ‘He keeps coming back to me in dreams…and even the short stories I write are partly about him. I put my experiences and emotional trauma into my writing; I can’t help it. Everything reminds me of him.’

‘You will meet someone even better than him, you know.’ Changbin’s countenance was tepid. ‘If you go out-’

‘I’m perfectly comfortable here on my own, thanks.’ Folding her arms across her chest, she held her nose up obnoxiously like a toddler refusing vegetables. ‘I’ll just wait till someone comes along.’

‘Well, I can be that person!’ he exclaimed brightly, the words coming across more arduously than intended. ‘Let me try.’

‘No, Changbin,’ she affirmed, her buttons pushed. ‘I like us how we are, okay? No feelings attached.’

‘Oh, it’s a bit late to say that. My feelings got out of hand a while ago.’

'Do you think we should have some space from each other, then? - just for a little while.'

'But I need to help you get over Hwang.'

'Honestly, I'm okay,' Elena concluded, re-picking up her pen, an idea having just struck her with the force of a raging bull. 'I'm in control of my own life.'

‘Yeah, but you're not, though, are you?' her friend interrogated, ignoring her frantic scribbling in her chunky notebook. 'You need our help, otherwise you'll drive yourself crazy. You'll eventually blow up into smithereens.'

'I won't.' The woman was irritated now, her eyes narrowed. 'I can look after myself, Changbin. Don’t you believe that?’

‘I do, but…I still want to protect you.’

‘Don’t waste your time,’ Elena breathed. ‘Look, let's just forget about this. Tomorrow I'm going for this job interview, so I need to stay focused.'

'Yeah…Sorry for distracting you. I know how much this job means to you.'

'It means so much, like, literally,' the other confirmed, pulling her lips into a horizontal line. 'I haven't been accepted anywhere yet…and I'm really running low on options. This, kind of, is my last chance before I, I don’t know, give up on writing forever.'

‘You're going to be fine!’ Changbin persuaded in camaraderie, tapping her arm. ‘What are you so worried about? I’m sure the interviewer will appreciate you, and your talent. Hmm?’

~ <3 ~

‘You?!’

‘Yep, it’s me. It’s a small world, huh?’

Twenty-four-year-old Hwang Hyunjin was grinning sardonically, his fingers clasped around his Iced Americano as though he did not have a care in the world. The lights of the café flattered his golden features perfectly, highlighting him to be an angel, standing out from the rest of the crowd, all of them paling in comparison.

Elena almost toppled over, grabbing one of the chairs to support the weight of her whole body, its wooden legs scraping backwards along the tiled flooring. Her totebag toppled out of her grasp. 'How dare you have so much audacity?! How dare you act as though we're on good terms?!'

‘...We’re not?’

'Are you serious?’

'How nice to see you after five years.' Something in the man's tone was genuine; his eyes were adoring. 'You look…different.'

Collecting her belongings from underfoot, the woman spat in repulsion, 'This has to be a joke. Since when did you become a publisher?'

'Since five years ago.'

'Stop!' she suddenly yelled, catching the attention of a couple with a baby eating pancakes at a nearby table. 'Stop talking about five years ago. Stop reminding me of then.'

'Don't you want to be reminded of our relationship?' Hyunjin tried, leaning forward on his forearms.

'No! I do not!'

'Sit down,' the man smiled. 'Order a drink. Show me what you've brought.'

Elena froze, hyperaware that she was stuck in a sticky situation. 'Wow. Where did your manners go?'

'Away. My job is tough, Len.'

She collapsed into the seat opposite him, pointing one index into his face threateningly. 'Don't you dare call me that nickname. We're not close anymore, and you're definitely not my boyfriend anymore.'

'Alright, sorry!' Hyunjin's two palms raised either side of his head in a surrender, rolling his eyes. 'Just trying to decrease the tension!'

'Well, flattery will get you nowhere, Hwang.' Elena threw a thin booklet towards him, reclining with her arms crossed sternly, eyes focused. 'There. Read it. And you'd better like it. I refuse to accept criticism from you.'

'You're really hostile towards me,' the man pointed out obviously. 'Why?'

'I wonder,' she scoffed. 'Just read my work, Hwang, and either accept me, or don't.'

Hyunjin snatched her wrist like a flytrap. ‘You can’t just do this to me.’

‘Let go of me!’

‘Not until you treat me how I deserve. Why are you being like this?’ the man inquired, the brightness in his eyes dimming in sadness. ‘I thought we had a connection.’

‘That was years ago, Hwang.’

‘You can’t still hold a grudge against me?’

‘It’s not just a grudge,’ she corrected sternly. ‘I told you I never wanted to see you again.’

‘But, as you said, that was years ago.’ Hyunjin continued to fight his side. ‘That doesn’t matter anymore.’

‘What do you mean ‘it doesn’t matter’?!’ Elena kicked off again, fuelled by her childhood hatred. ‘I did so much for you! I loved you, Hwang! And now you’re reminding me of the time that killed me. So, thanks for nothing.’

They maintained momentary eye-contact, full of ambiguity, before the male reluctantly removed his hand from her, a faint ring of red tainting her skin. He was close to tears as he muttered, ‘Do you really…hate me?’

‘Can you really blame me, Hwang?’ Elena was hysterical. ‘I mean, after everything you did to me!’

‘You have a habit of not explaining yourself,’ the man told her, genuinely searching for a response. ‘You never told me what I did to you! What did I ever do?!’

Elena scanned her ex-boyfriend’s face begrudgingly, desperate for even the tiniest hint of regret.

Yet there was none.

In its place was…yearning?

‘Do you really not understand, Hwang?’ she challenged, her inner emotions unfathomably ambivalent. ‘Maybe you’d only properly understand if you get cheated on yourself.’

The preceding pregnant pause was deafeningly loud.

‘‘Cheated on’?’ Hyunjin echoed, the words poison on his tongue. ‘You have no idea how wrong you are.’

‘Do you want me to spell it out for you, then?’ Elena hissed, her pupils painfully anguished, flicking between his own. ‘You were seeing someone else behind my back – I know you were! That is why I left you.’

‘You left me without even saying goodbye,’ the other noted, his voice quivering with the agony of remembrance. ‘You left me without even giving me a reason.’

‘You’ve still not apologised!’ the woman laughed in disbelief, gesturing vaguely with one hand. ‘You’ve still not, at least, shown that you appreciate why I hate you! I’ve got plenty of reasons, you know!’

‘Please don’t shout at me,’ Hyunjin purred, disregarding his companion’s disgusted stare opposite him. ‘My heart is already broken enough.'

‘Do you expect me to care?’ Elena sighed. ‘You never did when you broke my heart.’

‘I NEVER MEANT TO!’ he exploded, his countenance bestial. Pausing, another heavy silence fell between them. ‘Len, this isn’t fair.’

‘Our relationship wasn’t fair.’ She was shaking, whether out of anger or fear she was not sure. ‘Life isn’t fair.’

‘You’re treating me like I’m nothing! I thought I was a good boyfriend. I thought I did everything right. For God’s sake, why didn’t you tell me I was doing it all wrong? Why?’

‘Relationships are not always perfect, Hwang.’

‘Stop calling me my surname.’

Elena carried on nevertheless, enveloped in a bluster of emotion, ‘I wanted a healthy relationship, and a healthy relationship is not what I got.’

‘I really can’t believe how selfish you’re being.’

The other clapped a hand to her mouth, letting out a high-pitched laugh of incredulity. ‘Me? The selfish one?’ She stood haphazardly, taking a moment to compose herself, her breathing weighted. ‘Please, just get away from me! I don’t want to look at you anymore, or I’ll seriously go insane-’

His pupils dilated with despairing longing, his fingers curling around her wrist again. ‘I’m not done.’

She growled, ‘I was done with you years ago.’

‘Len, please!’ Hyunjin’s blunt nails dug in tighter. ‘You’ve said your piece. Now let me say mine.’

‘I don’t want to hear it, but go on.’

‘I never cheated on you,’ he clarified, nodding surely.

‘No-’

‘Listen! You were the first person I’d ever fallen in love with, okay? As I said, I never meant to break your heart. I would never want to hurt you on purpose. I never cheated on you, Len, I swear.’

‘Aren’t you going to explain to me why your behaviour changed partway through our relationship?’ Elena argued. ‘You randomly started avoiding me, and you started hanging around more girls than you did bef-’ She stopped mid-sentence, her demeanour completely softening as she reached out to stroke his cheek. ‘What happened?’

‘Maybe if you hadn’t left me, you would know.’

She could barely even bring herself to release the sombre, ‘Hyun…’

His breath caught in his throat.

He could barely even bring himself to release the sombre, ‘Len…’

Her breath caught in her throat.

‘I just want to know what happened,’ she said. ‘I loved you so much too, and our breakup ruined me.’

‘You keep forgetting that you left me first,' he continued bitterly. 'At least you were in control. I just had to sit by and watch you go!’

‘After we broke up, you seemed unaffected,’ the female tested, arching an eyebrow. ‘You carried on with life like nothing had happened. I hated you even more for that.’

‘What did you expect me to do?!’ Hyunjin cried, his arms gesticulating. ‘You know how strict my parents are, Elena! I’m not allowed to show even the tiniest bit of emotion, or they’ll scold me and say I’m ‘weak’; ‘not a man’. You have no idea how much I struggled whenever I was alone; my confidence was absolutely knocked. Fine, you were hurt, but stop acting as though it was just you! I’m human, too!’

‘Stop,’ she blurted, unable to stop her thoughts from manifesting themselves. ‘You’re overreacting.’

‘You’re blaming everything on me again! You always make me the villain!’

‘That’s because most of the time everything is your fault!’ Elena reverberated. ‘Now, just cut the bullshit and tell me everything. I want to listen to the whole story.’

Hyunjin’s head hung and he wrung his fingers, outwardly overcome by traumatic memory. ‘My life is constantly a struggle, Len, you have to understand.’

‘Go on.’

‘A girl had liked me for a long time,’ he began, immersing them both into the scenario. ‘It got worse when the relationship between us two was made public. She did things to me...’

‘What things, Hyunjin?’

‘Things that nobody should know. All that matters is that I was threatened - badly. You need to understand, I couldn’t do anything about it, Elena. I was constantly stalked by her ‘cause she had this…obsession, so I avoided leaving my flat as much as I could. And, even then, she’d be waiting outside for literally hours just to see me. She controlled my entire life - that’s why I could never go out to meet you. I was stuck in this…cycle that I couldn’t get out of. It felt like prison.’

Dawn comprehended across Elena’s face at this awful revelation, speechless.

He was her entire life that she’d taken for granted.

‘So, do you still hate me?’ Hyunjin arched an eyebrow.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Her apology was meaningful, regret lacing her sympathetic features. ‘Oh, my God! You should have told me, Hyunjin! Why didn’t you?’

‘You would have been in so much danger if I’d got you involved, Len. I didn’t want to get you in trouble.’

‘I can look after myself,’ Elena reminded. ‘I’m strong! I could have helped you.’

‘If you were hurt in that situation, I never would have forgiven myself,’ Hyunjin protested. ‘It happened; it’s in the past. There’s nothing we can do to change it. You have to accept that.’

‘I can’t accept it!’ the other protested. ‘Whoever she is needs to get her comeuppance! That’s not okay.’

The man folded his arms, all his weight resting on his forearms on the tabletop. His eyes narrowed in suspicion, he proposed mildly, ‘I think it’s about time you apologised to me.’

‘But, Hyunjin, you have to understand how it looked from my point of view. What I saw was you doing a total one-eighty when we were dating, plus, you were giving other girls all your attention, and spending more time with them than you did with me.’

‘Well, now you know what really happened, don’t you?’

Then, neither of them were able to release comprehensible sentences. Elena’s preceding retort melted in her mouth like a sweet; instead an enormous exhale deflated her whole chest, her arms coming to swing by her sides as she merely uttered, ‘I feel like you’re trying to tell me something. Just do it.’

‘Listen…I’m giving you the job,’ the man sighed. ‘I don’t care if I’ve not read your application. You’ve always been a talented writer, so I know you’ll be a perfect assistant.’

Elena’s eyes narrowed, re-collapsing into her cushioned chair. ‘I can tell that’s not all you want.’

For a moment, Hyunjin was still, his Iced Americano going unnoticed. Something deep within his chest was inflating, a sensation he only remembered feeling once before - the moment he had officially asked Elena to be his girlfriend five years prior. The latter scanned his frozen features, nodding in encouragement.

‘Let me just put it bluntly…I need a girlfriend. Now. Like, I need to be in a relationship by the end of this week.’

‘Hyunjin, today’s Thursday,’ Elena highlighted, sceptical. ‘Why so sudden?’

‘Well, not necessarily…’ He shuffled in discomfort. ‘I’ve had a month to find someone. Obviously, I just haven’t yet.’

‘Woah, woah, slow down,’ the female encouraged, straightening her back in order to listen more intently. ‘Tell me the whole situation. Right now you’re talking in code.’

‘My parents,’ Hyunjin sighed, looking around in embarrassment. ‘They’ve…given me a month to get a girlfriend, and if I don’t, they’ll find one for me themselves - and I know they already have someone on stand-by. They’re only going to retire once I get married, and once I get their company’s assets under my own control.’

‘So, you were basically forced to work in their publishing company?’

‘I…guess you could say that. But I’ve always liked literature, anyway.’

‘That explains a lot,’ she claimed, before severely side-eyeing him in disaffection. ‘And I know what you’re trying to do here.’

‘I don’t know what to do to convince you,’ the male capitulated solemnly, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘My life is going to be ruined if I don’t find myself a girlfriend before my parents intervene. You’ve come back into my life at a perfect time. I- I need you. I don’t know how to convince you to do this, Len - especially after such short notice. I’m sorry.’

The woman’s hand clapped to her forehead, her shoulders hunched over in exhaustion - her mentality’s boundaries had been surpassed beyond imagination this one morning. ‘I hate to say it but…you’ve already convinced me. I was convinced as soon as you suggested it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My heart wants more than it should, Hyunjin,’ she groaned, raking her hair into a ponytail as though it would help reduce her increasing levels of stress. ‘It gets me into trouble all the time.’

‘That’s-’

‘But I’m just scared you’ll only be using me,’ she carried on, briskly adding, ‘I’d hate to replay everything…from before. I don’t trust this.’

‘No, it’s not-’

‘We don’t love each other, do we?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘Unless you’ve been…planning this.’ She paused, her conveyance turbulent. ‘Hyunjin, have you been waiting for me for five years?’

A wave of darkness washed over the man’s face, a muscle tensing in his jaw. ‘Yes. I have.’

‘Maybe it’s destiny that we’ve found each other again.’

‘Or maybe we’ve always been made for each other.’

Their eye-contact resurfaced thousands of evanesced memories, vibrant in all their waning colour.

‘I don’t want to continue this conversation,’ Elena suddenly said, hoisting her totebag further up her shoulder, and averting her eyes to the ground. ‘I think we need to forget about each other. And I need to forget about this job.’

‘No, no, no!’ He spun her back, tripping over a table leg in his haste. ‘We can’t! I know you need this job. And you know I need this relationship.’

‘I can’t…’ Elena shook her head towards the ground, her cracking voice no more than a tentative whisper. ‘When I told you I loved you years ago, I meant it.’

‘So did I, Len!’ the male begged. ‘So did I!’

‘What were you expecting, then? There’s no way we can get back together. I can’t risk this all over again.’

‘You know what, Elena?’ the male detonated, forcing the stapled booklet into her grasp aggressively. ‘Fucking life is about risks! Half the shit you do in your life involves taking risks! So, just take a chance! You’ll never know unless you try.’

‘But, the thing is, Hwang Hyunjin, I do know,’ Elena barked, annoyed afresh. ‘I’ve been with you before, so I do know! And I know that this risk is not worth it.'

‘Please, give me a chance! You don’t understand how much I need this!’

‘Oh, I think I do.’ Elena’s hatred was evident in her seething glare as she ran off, the subtle ding-ding of the bell above the café indicating her harsh departure.

‘Ya, you can’t leave me now!’ Hyunjin called after her. ‘I’ve only just found you!’

And, as the woman sprinted around the corner of the street, unmistakable echoes of hope disintegrating in the warm June air, the male remained marinating in his familiar depression. He realised with a painful throbbing to the skull that, for the second time, the two blatant lovers had parted without a simple, ‘Goodbye’.

~ <3 ~

‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Elena, happy birthd-’

Luna, Elise, and Bethany stopped dead in their tracks upon being met with their best friend’s unexpected misery - and on her birthday, of all days. Elena, traumatised by her recent clandestine encounter with Hyunjin, glanced up from behind her hands as her acquaintances warily made themselves known. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her red-rimmed eyes still sorrowful after hours of weeping solely, her bedroom pitch-black, reflecting her incredible gloom.

Bethany was the first to voice their thoughts as the group dropped their balloons and gifts, darting to her side, ‘What’s the matter? What happened?’

Elena - a woman who would usually have withheld her true emotions from manifesting themselves - sobbed with her whole chest, pining, ‘How did I never see this coming? I should have known he’d come back into my life at some point! Why does everything always have to fuck me over?!’ She buried her face under her duvet, relishing in Luna’s comforting hand on her shoulder.

‘Who?’ The latter’s mouth was an ‘O’, eyes wild with anticipation.

‘My ex-boyfriend! Hyunjin, Hwang, Bitch, Dickhead, whatever you want to call him! He’s back!’

‘‘Back’?’ Elise contributed, overcome with shocked abhorrence. 'How?'

'He works at the exact same publishing company I want to apply at! There's no way I'm going to work there now - no way.'

‘He works as a publisher?!’ Elise carried on, expression bemused.

‘I know, right,’ Bethany said. ‘I didn’t expect that. I swear, he only did sports in high-school.’

‘Aren’t his parents quite…controlling?’ Luna questioned, to which Elena nodded. ‘Maybe his career was basically chosen for him.’

‘Mmm,’ Bethany agreed. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Find something else,’ Elena claimed, her words muffled into the blanket she was beneath. ‘I can’t work there if he’s going to be my boss. I’m giving up on my dream of writing. My life is ruined.’

‘Girl, you’ve been looking at editing jobs for months and you’ve finally found a good one!’ Elise protested. ‘You can’t give up now!’

‘You can’t let him win!’ Luna added desperately. ‘You have to show him you’re strong! - 'cause you are strong.’

‘I mean I was strong before he ruined everything…’

The grills metaphorically slapped her back into reality, all doting on her with kind reassurances. Elena luckily managed to let out a chortle after wallowing in affliction for so long, eternally grateful for her friends who never failed to make sure that she was feeling alright - good friendships thrive on one-hundred percent effort on all sides.

‘So, you should basically go back and show him who’s boss,’ Elise finalised, relaxing.

‘But…' Elena paused, weighing her options on imaginary scales. 'He explained to me what happened five years ago. And it makes me feel…bad! This whole time, I've believed in lies! I've made him out to be the villain when…it was really me all along!' Her body shook with heavy sobs.

The grills gasped in unison, three hands clapping to three gaping mouths.

‘He was threatened badly…and he didn’t want to put me in danger by telling me back then…I can’t believe I left him without asking. I hate to think about it.’

‘How do you know he’s telling the truth?’ Luna opinionated, countenance sceptic. ‘He might have just been making excuses.’

‘But it was something about the way he said it,’ Elena clarified. ‘Something in his eyes told me he was serious. And, anyway, I know him really well.’

‘You don’t,’ Elise disagreed, folding one leg over the other, her fingers intertwined. ‘He’s been fake all his life.’

‘See, I don’t think so,’ said the youngest, shaking her head from side to side. ‘His family gives him a hard time as it is. I really do think he’s being genuine.’

‘Whatever, girl,’ Elise shrugged, getting up to grab the bags of presents in celebration of the sulking woman’s twenty-fourth birthday. ‘Open your gifts, you shouldn’t be crying on your birthday!’

‘Honestly, don’t worry about Hwang,’ Bethany advised, squeezing her friend’s hand supportively. ‘This job is going to be really good. Don’t let him take that opportunity from you.’

‘Yeah,’ Luna asserted, thrusting a soft gift wrapped in dark-pink paper into the centre of the circle the grills had formed in the room. ‘You've survived without a man for a long time, and you can carry on that way.’

Elena ran one hand over her face, releasing inquisitively, ‘I feel like there’s something really similar between me and Hyunjin…I just can’t put my finger on what it is.’

Something was missing.

Elena wanted to be his girlfriend again (even if it were fake) with every cell in her body, in spite of being able to actively point out the face-punchingly obvious defects. Her extreme passion for Hwang Hyunjin in light of five years having passed was shameful to her.

Yet, that tiny glimmer of hope remained towards the back of her conscience, an ever-present candle that refused to burn down: he’s been waiting for me.

He still loves me.

~ <3 ~

-FIVE YEARS EARLIER-

The seating area lining Hellevator High’s resident stadium provided shade due to the curved shelters – yet the humidity still coated the fidgety audience with sweat. Down below, flapping their shirts in their team-colours to cool down, the students preparing for the final tennis match of the season faced each other – Lee Felix versus Hyunjin. The latter beamed happily up to Elena - by now his good friend to whom he still had not admitted his feelings - from the side-lines, stretching in preparation, looking as fine as wine in his red and black Nike tracksuit.

She waved positively in return, the midsummer sun dusting the nape of her bare neck. This afternoon, she was attiring a cotton dress, brushing her with an ample breeze against the impenetrable June heat whenever she moved. She’d never been able to cope with degrees higher than twenty, so was fanning herself with her phone – which was not very effective, granted.

Sitting to her right was Elise, benevolently cheering for both sides of the game; she was a person with inadequate sporting knowledge, but had tagged along for a good time, anyway. Closer to the pitch was a tiny, secluded area – Royal Box-esque – in which Bethany was seated, being Head Girl, with the Head Boy, Kim Seungmin – Hellevator High’s staff was extremely fond of its student leaders.

The young, energetic Coach, Mr. Wainman, advanced towards Felix and Hyunjin, who were quaking while holding their rackets, and began to bless them with words of encouragement, and memoirs of all their previous wins which had secured their sure places in today’s final.

‘Where’s Luna at?’ Elise’s curious inquiry snapped Elena back to reality.

‘Probably getting a coffee from Jack’s,’ the latter answered, referring to the popular in-school canteen from which the sixth-formers could purchase hot drinks, fresh toasties, and pastries for breakfast.

‘Wait, look.’

The girl in question was tiptoeing across the grass of the pitch, a packet containing a Belgian waffle in one hand, and tea in a colourful, striped paper cup in the other. She shouted something to Mr. Wainman – it was inaudible to her observing friends – as she darted briskly over in her t-shirt, perhaps apologising for the brief disturbance. Luna approached her long-term boyfriend Felix – they had won ‘Best Couple’ in the yearbook, – thrusting the products into his grasp, before wishing him good luck for the match and running away again.

Elise instantly teased her as she flumped into her seat in the stands with a sigh, ‘Look at you, Mrs. ‘I only buy food for myself’.’

‘You gotta do what you gotta do,’ she chuckled back. ‘He hasn’t eaten all day.’

The firework-like sparks erupting near the back of the stadium signalled the start of the ultimate tournament of the school year. Whoop-whooping and applause imploded around the crowd, many rising to their feet – one of them was Elena, jumping up and down with a huge grin plastered across her face; another was Luna, screaming ‘GO, LIXIE!’ until her voice was hoarse.

Throughout the match, the pair of them sat by casually, chomping on the gluten-free biscuits Elena had brought along, laughing pleasantly at the joy the day was bringing. They cheered animatedly, yet casted the competitiveness of the other spectators from their minds, and enjoyed the light-hearted spirits of Hellevator High’s inhabitants.

At the end of the first set came a five-minute break in which the two sweating players collapsed into white, plastic seats in the hall, downing entire bottles of ice-cold water, supplied by the Year Eight ‘refreshment girls’. The second half flew by in a blur, Elena’s anxiety increasing as Felix’s capabilities proved to be superior to her struggling friend’s - for whom her romantic feelings were growing by the week, lest you forget.

As well as being an avid humanities nerd, Hyunjin had natural stamina, and his agility had first caught his idol Mr. Wainman by pleasant surprise his very first PE lesson with him, a new teacher, a year ago. In saying this, Hyunjin was one of the last pupils to join the squad. His mates admired him, and their performance on the field had drastically improved in a multitude of ways since his admission.

Seeing Hyunjin in his element made Elena happy.

Felix eventually won the game, the score being forty/thirty-six. He raised the trophy, relishing in the caring celebration of the audience, and, when Hyunjin appeared crest-fallen, he tackled him in an embrace of camaraderie – the close brotherhood between the boys in the tennis club had been strong since the primary try-outs. Elena’s trio in the stands hollered with pride, before many members of the crowd began to skip down the stone stairs, surrounding the two champions in a giggling gaggle, everyone whistling in comradeship.

It was amazing how public events could unite society.

Felix, a baby-faced, blonde boy whose demeanour rivalled the rays of sunshine, gallivanted over, clapping Hyunjin’s back, whisking him into the main hall. ‘Good game, Hyung!’

‘Thanks, Felix.’ The latter’s eyes were genuine.

‘You almost gave me a run for my money out there. But I’m sure you can win one day. Keep going, Hyung!’

Catching up to Elena, Hyunjin proposed, ‘So, how was I?’

‘Great!’ she assured, squeezing his shoulder; he seemed dispirited. ‘Well done!’

‘Thanks…’ he replied, hardly opening his mouth. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed the match.’

‘I did. And it doesn’t matter that you didn’t win!’

‘That’s nice of you to say.’ The man pulled his lips into a straight line.

‘What’s the matter, Hyun?’

‘I’m just a bit disappointed,’ he informed lowly, tossing his racket out of his hand as though he couldn’t bear to hold it any longer. ‘All that training I’ve done for this, and it was all for nothing.’

‘It wasn’t for nothing!’ the other disagreed profusely. ‘Did you listen to that crowd cheering for you? You’ve made this entire school happy! That’s all that matters.’

‘Are you proud of me, though?’

‘Remember, you don’t have to do anything for me to be proud of you.’

‘Yeah…’ He cleared his throat with an unflattering squeak. ‘Hey…Len, whatever happens, you’ll never leave me, will you?’

‘‘Leave you’?’ Elena recurrented, her eyebrows furrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know…you’ll never…uhh…’ He shrugged, at that moment regretting opening his mouth. But nevertheless, he tumbled down an inescapable rabbit-hole, his conveyance turbulent. ‘Whatever I…say, you won’t hate me and ruin our friendship, will you?’

She side-eyed him bombastically, shying away slightly. ‘Of course not, Hyun. You mean too much to me to go now.’

‘Wow…’ Hyunjin’s chest was heaving with laboured breaths. ‘Ah, I’ll just say it. I can’t hold it in anymore. I…like you a lot.’

Elena was frozen in place. 'You-...You what?'

'I like you…I think, more than my own good.'

Her expression of pure shock morphed into one of pure relief, a blush dusting her cheeks like dainty starlight. 'Hyunjin…'

'It's so important for me to impress you and just get your attention. I keep ignoring my feelings 'cause I know you don't feel the same - I don't expect you to! - but now I-'

'Stop,' the girl interjected slowly. 'You don't understand how much that means to me. I've liked you for ages.'

‘Quit playing. Are you…serious?’

She grinned, one hand making its way to his shoulder blades, pulling him in for a gentle kiss - a gentle kiss that spoke one-thousand unuttered words. 'I'm dead serious.'

~ <3 ~

‘Fancy seeing you here.’

Hyunjin jumped, hurtling forward off the swing he was rocking gently back and forth on, his face laced with horror at being approached so suddenly. ‘How did you know I would be here?’

‘Have you forgotten that this was our favourite place?’ Elena stepped lightly towards him, her boots leaving wedges in the long, untamed grass. One hand rising to grip one of the frames of the swing-set, she commented, brain foggy with faraway memory, ‘We used to come here every Saturday night. Don’t you remember?’

The Red-Light District homed a fair selection of play parks due to its remote, countryside location, away from the unhealthy pollution of any busy city. The largest of them had been deserted since the late nineties, blocked off due to suspicious persons; the children of the area had emigrated to the next-best one, which just so happened to leave the tiniest park empty, especially for the teenage Elena and Hyunjin, ideal in its situation near to the former’s parents’ house. To the young couple, their private hideaway was a perfect area in which to spend evenings under honey-tinted skies, philosophically reminiscing upon their newborn relationship, a concept of which was never not foreign to Elena as she would constantly capitulate to a passionate kiss from her boyfriend, his angelic features irradiating with the rippling rays of the humble moon.

Now felt no different, as though their years apart were superfluous.

Time meant nothing to reunited soulmates.

Tonight, the June sky was clear, the sun partially illuminating the earth, straining to release its final beams, marking the coming of the indecent night. Billions of stars littered the expanse of pearly-grey above, white splatters of paint on a navy canvas. The swing Hyunjin had resumed swaying on - feet on the floor, elbows locked around the chains - warped the shadows the surrounding evergreen trees were providing, demons watching the pair’s endeavours through the darkness.

‘Of course, I remember.’ The man’s voice was hushed. ‘I didn’t think you’d still remember our nights here.’

‘I’ve never forgotten.’ Elena tossed her head back as she began to swing in the spare seat beside him, grinning as the wind whipped her hair back off her forehead, delicious butterflies erupting within her tummy as she flew higher and higher in the air.

Hyunjin admired her sideways, putting his preceding inquiry bluntly, ‘Why are you still talking to me? I thought, with the way you stormed off so angrily, your hatred had been, you know…resurfaced.’

‘No,’ was all she responded, the word a blessing. ‘I just had to take some time to think.’

Instead of calming, the male fulminated, the chains of his swing rattling with his uncontrollable hostility, ‘Think about what? Yourself? Me? Us?’

‘Everything. The past is all coming back to haunt me.’

‘Len?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Talk to me.’ Hyunjin was on his knees next to her, his eyes staring up at her pleadingly; the summer breeze rustled his blonde fringe. ‘Please, tell me what you’re thinking about. We were close once; I know you, and I know when something’s wrong. I can help you - we can help each other. I know how you feel.’

‘No,’ Elena repeated, her conveyance rough - this time, the basic sound was a curse, not a blessing. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t know how I feel - not at all.’ The woman was wringing her fingers in her lap, now rooted to the ground.

Hyunjin’s hand came up to rest on her kneecap. ‘Yes, I do,’ he responded lightly. ‘Remember, I was separated from you, too. I understand your pain so much.’

‘NO, YOU DON’T!’ She suddenly lost her saint-like patience, standing, unashamed to make direct eye-contact with her ex-lover as he lost his balance, spread-eagled on the gravel. ‘You…don’t. The love of my life who I left because I thought he was cheating on me suddenly turns up after five years and tries to force me into a fake relationship just to satisfy his parents. It sounds like fiction; it sounds like a story. But that’s my life - and you have no idea how my life feels.’

‘Why did you come down here?’ the man questioned, watching her every move like an animal, ‘especially if you knew you would run into me.’

‘I needed to get out,’ Elena began to explain, her fists consciously clenching by her hips. ‘Staying in my house was…claustrophobic. It felt as though the walls were caving in on me the longer I stayed inside. I was trapped in my own head with just…the memory of our relationship, what happened at the café…and just the image of your face.’ She turned her back to him. ‘You’ve never left me, Hyunjin. Part of me wished that coming here would clear my head, and make all the thoughts disappear. But, of course, it didn’t.’

‘Ahh…’ He chuckled. ‘Now, this is the Len I remember. Where did she go?’

‘She grew up.’

For a moment, they were both silent, only the leaves of the bushes around them voicing their muzzled opinions. The female took a deep inhale, filling her lungs with refreshing, pollen-scented oxygen - such an action seemed to rejuvenate her entire being, since she continued without waiting for an answer from Hyunjin, waddling forwards, her cheeks pink with the night wind.

‘She grew up and realised that it’s a harsh world we live in. This world treats you like shit, even when you try your best. I never wanted any of this.’

Her voice broke, her eyes welling over with teardrops ready to fall. Hyunjin scampered upright haphazardly, not thinking twice before bringing her smaller figure into his sleeved arms, flexing them as though in absolute protection. The heels of his palms dug into her back as he held her close in an embrace that was long overdue, resting his chin atop her head and breathing in time with her. Surprisingly, Elena acquiesced, closing her eyes against the tassels of his purple hoodie.

It was heaven.

‘I know. Ya, look at me,’ he told her steadily, his deep voice vibrating against her muscles. Slowly, he tilted her head up, his pupils flicking between hers as he held her out, his hands firmly supporting her shoulders. ‘You’re beautiful. I want to be back in your life. I want to rekindle our spark. I want to be yours again.’

‘I don’t,’ she whispered in return, ‘because I want to leave what happened in the past. How many times do I have to say that?’

‘What can I do to change your mind?’

‘We don’t know each other anymore,’ Elena recalled, focusing down on their shoes. ‘Five years can really change a person. I’m one example. You have no idea who I am.’

‘Yes, I do.’ His grip on her bare wrist was making her dizzy. ‘I have loved you all my life-’

‘Don’t you dare even do this to me, Hwang Hyunjin!’ She recoiled, almost tripping backwards down the mound. ‘Don’t make me feel worse about myself!’

‘I don’t mean to!’ he defended, reaching out to her again. ‘Please, Len. Be my girlfriend again. It’s all I’m living for.’

‘I don’t see any benefits for me,’ the woman snapped. ‘If you get your head out of your arse for five minutes, you’ll be able to see that this is all about you. You’re doing this for yourself, just like before.’

‘Ya!’ One index finger came to point shakily; his limits had been passed. ‘That was really below the belt. Stop being so rude to me. I told you what happened five years ago. What else do you want?’

‘I want you to stop nagging me to do things I don’t want to do.’

‘You never said you don’t want to,’ Hyunjin shot back. ‘In fact, you even said you were convinced by me! You said your heart gets you in trouble too much!’

Elena was alarmed at the man’s accuracy. ‘How the hell do you remember that?’

‘‘Cause I care. I still remember things about you from five years ago, like the kiss we had here. It was over there, under that slide.’

‘Wait-’

‘I was wearing a green t-shirt my mum had ironed that same day, with the skinny jeans I was so obsessed with. You were wearing a white dress with thin straps, and your hair was down. You were wearing glasses then; you’re not now.’

‘Have you always been so observant?’ she enquired, visibly softening as his love shone through. ‘You always seemed to just go with the flow.’

‘I listen a lot more than people think.’

Elena’s lips drew into a straight line. ‘‘People’ being me, huh? I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

She released a giant exhale, ‘For not paying enough attention to you back then, what else? If I had, I would have noticed your struggle with the girl who used to follow you around.’

Hyunjin could hardly bear to say, ‘Maybe we’d still be together now if...if you had.’

‘Maybe,’ she agreed. ‘But we’re not.’

‘But we could be!’ The man’s persistence was commendable, to say the least. ‘We could be, right now. Just say yes!’

To his disbelief, Elena was smiling wryly. ‘You’re very pushy, Mister Hwang. It’s a good thing I-’ She stopped herself, her throat closing up as though it were restricting her next notion from escaping.

‘You what? What?’

‘It’s a good thing you’ve persuaded me.’

The male’s saliva caught at the back of his throat. ‘You can’t be…serious.’

‘I’ve never been more serious in my life.’ There was not a hint of falsity in Elena’s countenance.

Hyunjin’s perfect lips curved into an unbefitting smirk, his considerable underdevelopment socially rendering him less able to understand his lover’s steely deportment. ‘Even more serious than when you kissed me for the first time? That day I lost the tennis match to Lee Felix, remember?’

A plethora of neon lights lit up the heart of the city on the horizon, suppressed beats of music pumping the still air. Cicadas were disturbing the utopia, the greenery around the breathless pair rustling, indicating the movements of small animals. Otherwise, the field was completely soundless like an uninhabited island, devoid of devious, nature-wrecking human-beings.

‘To be honest, you seem a lot calmer than I am,’ the woman pointed out, already beginning to regret her impulsive decision - she’d followed her heart, definitely not her head. ‘How?’

‘You didn’t answer my question, beautiful.’

‘And you didn’t answer mine, Pretty-Boy.’

‘Wow…’ The man’s eyes were creased in a happy smile - he’d finally let himself go, his elation flooding his full sensibility. ‘This conversation is like a fairytale.’

‘What the hell kind of fairytales do you read?’ Elena enquired, arms coming up to fold across her chest.

Hyunjin stroked her cheek, electricity sparking through their bodies, souls connected through the revealing, unvarnished eye-contact. Elena couldn’t bring herself to touch him; his undisguised devotion weakened her, a flawless display of intense fidelity - fidelity that had never ceased in the wake of five empty years. Oxygen stuck in her windpipe, feeling stark naked under his deferential, benign gaze, as though he was examining all the contents of her brain.

Voice barely above a whisper, he spoke, ‘Ones that all have a happily ever after.’

~ <3 ~

His loving smile…

His adoring eyes…

His warmth as he embraced her…

‘Maybe we’ve always been made for each other.’

‘Earth to Elena?’

Changbin’s cheerful tones plummeted Elena back to reality painfully as she rocked back and forth childishly in her seat. She hadn’t yet opened her laptop in front of her, and the writing club she and her friend were attending had been in progress for half an hour already. The other participants were watching her awkwardly - she engendered sorrow, its metaphorical blue vapours basically visible. The world was not worth any more wasted tears; she remained in a state of ponderous quietude, her friend’s words from next to her piercing right through to her core.

‘Come on, then,’ the latter continued, not looking up from his hurried scribbling. ‘Tell me what’s been going on with you to make you so depressed. There’s…stuff you’re not telling me!’

Seconds passed, but they remained in an eerie silence.

‘I don’t even know anymore,’ the woman then blurted honestly, upon surmising that she unfortunately had no choice but to prolong the matter. ‘It’s…a big issue.’

‘Really?’ Changbin continued to push, as Elena chewed daintily on the inside of her cheek. ‘This has got something to do with Hwang Hyunjin, doesn’t it?’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

‘Yep, that’s what I thought. You didn’t listen to me, did you? I’ve told you so many times that he was a toxic boyfriend!’

‘Stop it!’ she cried, blushing. ‘I mean…he’s changed. He’s nice, you know, and he’s having a hard time right now.’

‘What?’ Her friend snapped his head over his shoulder to accost, ‘Are you in contact with him?’

‘He…may have been…the publisher I met for my…new job.’ The female was wringing her hands under the surface of the table, boiling to one-hundred degrees.

‘He what?!’ He spun around in his chair, giving himself a strong whiplash. ‘Are you joking?! Don’t you dare take that job!’

‘Changbin!’ the other lashed out, whisper-shouting. ‘I told you, this is my last chance! I’ve been rejected by every other job I tried to apply for which made me so unconfident! Hyunjin hired me as an assistant, and he’s my-!’ She stopped, swallowing thickly. Her voice softened, ‘You don’t understand…I have to have this. I thought you’d be…happy for me.’

‘Of course, I am,’ Changbin muttered, clasping her hands in his larger pair. ‘But - as all your other friends have said, Elena - you need to distance yourself from him. That man’s bad news. What’s the hard time he’s having?’

‘Why is it any of your business?’

‘Because I fear he’s going to ruin you again,’ he informed, his lips in a straight line. ‘He’s going to use you for his benefit, just like he did back then. For goodness’ sake, can’t you see the parallels here?’

‘I can, but this is different!’ Elena shrugged, defending herself. ‘We’ve both grown up. Grown-up life is completely different to high-school life. Do you really think he’s going to be that same teenager now?’

‘Maybe he has physically changed.’ He crossed his arms over his chest, his look condescending. ‘But I don’t think his attitude has changed at all. He’s still going to be the same two-faced, arrogant Hwang Hyunjin.’

The other shook her head back and forth vigorously. ‘No, you’re wrong. You’ve never known him the way I do. I think it’s destiny that we re-met. Maybe it was. Maybe this is a brand-new start in our relationship.’

‘There is no relationship.’

‘I can tell that you’re jealous, Changbin,’ the female barked, folding one leg over the other crossly. ‘You’ve told me countless times how much you like me. You just want a chance.’

‘Come on, that’s harsh,’ he pouted, drawing away a bit. ‘Elena, if you date him again, I’m not going to help you.’ The man left his cold comment lingering in the stifling air of the hostel visitor’s section. ‘I’ve warned you countless times, and if you’re not going to listen to me, that’s your problem. What would you call your relationship with Hwang?’

‘We…relate as individuals, I guess. We…talk.’

‘And that’s not all, is it?’

Elena released a robust exhale, evaluating all the possible lies she could spew to deter her friend; as much as she hated not being straight-up with her most loyal companions, the situation at-hand was incredibly infelicitous. ‘Aren’t you feeling worse by making such assumptions?’

Changbin wheezed in offence. ‘No, I’m being truthful.’

‘Listen…’ the woman started, abandoning any original pretence, and beginning to launch into a bundle of heartfelt confessions. ‘It shouldn’t matter to you what relationships I have with anyone, okay? I just need some time to myself to think.’

‘Then I guess that’s you telling me to shut the fuck up.’ The man seemed exasperated, withholding his true sentiments from flitting across his features - his acting degree considerably aided this. 'I see how it is.'

‘I don’t want to fall out with you,’ she cooed, eyes curiously circular.

'Neither do I…But, Elena, things are getting awkward.'

‘‘Awkward’?’ she echoed, eyebrows knitted together. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘How?’ The other’s voice cracked as he swallowed forcefully, fidgeting laboriously in his seat. ‘I make it obvious that I like you. Do you not get uncomfortable with that?’

‘No, of course not,’ Elena soothed, patting his shoulder in friendliness. ‘You can’t help how you feel about someone…even if that ‘someone’ is me.’

‘Are you sure?’ Changbin was evidently insecure, his dark eyes like a puppy’s. ‘I’ll stop talking about it if you want me to.’

‘I know how you’re feeling,’ she carried on cleverly. ‘I’m in love, too, remember. Sometimes I feel obsessed, like I want to keep talking about him all the time.’

‘I’m glad you don’t think I’m weird.’

‘Did you really think that?’ the woman questioned compassionately.

‘Yeah,’ he informed. ‘I thought our friendship was…falling apart.’

‘Of course not,’ she said genuinely. Then, holding his hands in her own (Changbin averting his attention to the floor), she confirmed with an air of finality, ‘It sounds stupid, but don’t be ashamed that you like me, okay? I’m not going to stop you from expressing yourself, that’s not what a best friend does.’

The male’s face instantly brightened. ‘‘Best friend’?’

‘Yeah. You’re an amazing friend and you’ve helped me incredibly.’

Had he, though?

Changbin for sure had been her soundboard, absorbing her many burdened thoughts she continued to spew, blessed with admirable patience; listening and rarely intervening with his own contradictions came to him with ease.

He’d been there to caress her hand when she had cried, supplying her with hearty chatter. He’d been there as a – broad – shoulder to sob on, uttering compassionate reassurances in her ear. He’d been there for a smile, his carefree nature fake with the sole intent of illuminating the space.

He’d always done all he could do.

He’d always put Elena on a pedestal.

He’d always been there.

Yet even he - who, to Elena, was a philanthropic oracle, somehow recognising a solution to every issue she put forward, a wize, omniscient wizard - could not experience her teenage heartbreak.

She hadn’t told anyone about her current situation. There was no need to involve her friends - if anything, knowing that her and Hyunjin’s resurrected ‘relationship’ was purely fake would increase their loathing of him, reaching a pique from which there was no escape.

Elena overfelt, overthought, and overloved.

Hwang Hyunjin had pointed the latter out.

~ <3 ~

Hyunjin’s bedroom in Hellevator Homes was weirdly unrecognisable to him that night - that night that seemed to drag, an endless blank space, refusing to give way to the dawn. The man seemed alienated despite being surrounded by his own snug sources of comfort, as though he were a stranger in the place he’d had so much enjoyment creating.

He should have been happy - he should have been cherishing the increased amount of precious time he’d soon be spending with Elena, each passing second with her an otherworldly paradise.

'Ya, Hyun…' He rolled his eyes, noticing he was speaking aloud. ‘She still accepted. That’s the good news.’

she accepted…

She accepted!

SHE ACCEPTED!!

Hyunjin's relief at this was indescribable. He’d reacquired an angel of a woman, a lost prize. Her appearance had changed neutrally, but her mannerisms had never faltered since adolescence. There remained to be a twinkle in her hazel eyes whenever she fully focused on him, her expression pure like a newborn baby, curious at such unrivalled beauty, wondering how something so perfect could be so real.

Hyunjin knew all too well that he was deeply, endlessly in love with Ji Elena.

And he had never stopped.

The man's feelings tended to be intense, a shortcoming to his character he’d never bothered to question; he’d just sat back and let it fester, controlling every aspect of his life and the lives of those closest to him; it made him internally unattractive, in striking contrast to his outward beauty; it made him unstable; it made him untrustworthy.

After all, who could he trust, if not himself?

~ <3 ~

-FIVE YEARS EARLIER-

College student Lim Jeongmin was known for her flirtatious demeanour. It was said that no party had ever truly begun until she had arrived, her lacquered lips smirking in the way only hers could as she strutted inside, her typically revealing outfits widening the eyes of many males at the event’s venue. On this occasion – a ‘friendly’ (sex was more or less guaranteed at house parties such as this) gathering, - her silky hair was flowing down her back, her fringe brushed aside carnally. The make-up under her cheekbones had been applied so harshly that it made them look as though they could pierce through glass. A lengthy, black, V-line dress hugged her body, the slit down her right leg not leaving much to the imagination.

Hyunjin had escaped from the raucous in the basement and was sulking in the kitchen, rueing his unjust decision to turn down a date with his own girlfriend for…this. It seemed that he was the unwilling winner of Jeongmin’s usually unobtainable attention tonight, considering his youthful handsomeness could have rivalled a supermodel at just eighteen.

‘Why do you look so rough tonight?’ Her voice had been husky; she downed a drink in one, slamming the empty glass back onto the work surface of the kitchen. ‘You look like someone’s just been murdered in front of you.’

‘I-…’ Hyunjin had sighed, rubbing one hand across his face as he leaned his lower back against the edge of the counter. ‘Sorry. I’ve just got a lot on my mind tonight.’

The invasive female flaunted towards him; the boy, taken-aback, raised his hands either side of his head in a movement of surrender as she ventured closer in proximity.

‘Loosen up, baby. You’re so tight,’ she teased, stroking the side of his blonde locks with an ingratiating smile. ‘I’ve finally…caught you.’

Before Hyunjin could release a word of protest, Jeongmin threw her arms around his neck, basically smacking their lips onto one another in a hazy moment of arduous desire. Her fists clenched in his thick hair as the male’s fingers worked their way to each of her shoulders, forcefully detaching them, shaking his head.

‘What the hell are you doing?!’ he shouted.

‘Kissing you.’

‘No, you can’t! I have a girlfriend! What is wrong with you?!’

‘Oh, yeah…Ji Alena, isn’t it?’ the girl continued to patronise. ‘I’m sure she…umm…won’t mind.’

‘No!’ Hyunjin, silhouetted in the sublime rays of the moon, was fighting between throwing a fit and throwing up. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?! You-You just-! Why would you-?!’ He paused for breath. ‘You need to stop doing this. I’m not interested in you. How many times do I need to say that?’

Somehow - it seemed impossible, - Jeongmin caved into guilty realisation and reached out to comfort him; Hyunjin smacked her away with a distressed, ‘Don’t you dare touch me! I never want to see you again.’

‘Please don’t be like that-’

But he had already rushed through the back door in a whirlwind of guilty tears.

~ <3 ~

The sky was ablaze with the fire of the setting sun, glowing with the multi-coloured life of the Red-Light District. Its slanting rays gave off an affable orange tinge, illuminating the road by the bus-stop at which Elena was waiting, leaning hesitatingly against the lone lamppost. She adjusted the elegant, scarlet dress that flattered her body just right, its attached sequined belt digging into her waist uncomfortably, her dark-brown tresses styled in a nice plait around her head. Her partially-lighted shadow joined those of the many tall, proud pine trees behind; she started violently, losing her balance, as another inky figure made itself visible, cutting into the shiny clearing.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Hyunjin said coquettishly, breaking the silence, ‘as usual.’

‘Thank you, Hyun,’ she replied lightly, recovering from her fright. Really appreciating the honest compliment, she ruffled the pleated skirt of her outfit with a shy giggle.

‘Where are you going tonight?

‘To a high-school reunion…’ Elena sighed. ‘To be honest, I’ve been dreading it for weeks…ever since I got the invitation.’

‘You shouldn’t go if you don’t want to,’ the man suggested pointedly. ‘I see you’ve really dressed up for the event, though.’

‘Yeah…I mean, it’s not that big of a deal.’ The female straightened up her posture, loosening the tight muscles of her shoulder-blades. Looking up at him fondly, she tried, ‘Maybe I should have an early night.’

He physically resisted the urge to hold her hand, keeping to himself so as to not to push her boundaries, especially since her emotions were so heightened. In affection’s place, he persuaded, ‘Not that my opinion matters, but you should, honey. Or-…’ He stopped, his chest inflated with his big inhale. ‘Or we could, you know…spend the night together?’

Elena’s expression spoke volumes; Hyunjin hurried to correct himself, ‘I mean, like…discuss things, maybe finalise things. Nothing that goes beyond our rela- I mean, fake relationship. You can come back to my house, if you- if you want. Of course, you’re always welcome there.’

The other’s face twinkled pleasantly like a shy school girl in front of her crush - in many ways, that metaphor was true. ‘That’s so kind of you…’

‘But?’

‘There’s a lot on my mind, you know,’ she confessed as though she was in the wrong. ‘This is still…a lot to process, so, I’d rather be left alone right now.’

The man’s deportment thoroughly turned upside-down. ‘Honey, what’s the matter? Are you thinking about me again? Be honest.’

Elena didn’t speak, metaphorically suffocated by her whirling mind. The other sighed, stroking the side of her face, his eyes purely caring. ‘Look…we need to discuss this again. We’ve already failed once, so we need to get this relationship right, even if it's fake.’

‘I know what you’re trying to make me say.’ Her voice broke.

‘Say it, then,’ Hyunjin dared, finally snaking his soft hand down her forearm. ‘If you really mean it, say it - right here, right now.’

‘I’m not going to!’ she cried back, eyes wild with panic. ‘I don’t want to ruin everything we have right now.’

‘Your feelings aren’t going to change anything!’ The male’s tone was husky with arduous desire. 'What are you so afraid of? Admit how you feel, please just admit it to me.’

'But I don't want to admit it.' The other withdrew her body slightly. 'I'm scared of getting my heart broken all over again.'

'We have no boundaries this time round!' Hyunjin panicked. 'There is no one to ruin what we’ve had for years - ‘cause I’ve never stopped loving you. Somewhere inside, you must know that I’ve missed you, Len.’

And there was that recognisable flipping-over of her stomach.

Hyunjin closed the gap and put his tempting lips to Elena’s.

This was no clumsy mashing of mouths, but a trusting exploration of textures and warmth. He shifted their positions so that the woman was leaning back, his face comfortably above hers. It made so much sense to her; it felt right this way. She was enjoying his gentleness; his fingers supporting the small of her back were angelic.

This was only a harmless kiss. It meant nothing.

But it felt so perfect.

Hyunjin was her soulmate she had been looking for her whole life.

He leaned in a second time, planting chaste, feather-light pecks across her forehead. Her head racing dizzyingly, she turned her back to him, cradling her shivering bare arms against her chest.

‘What else can I do to make you trust me?’ Hyunjin replied in a sing-song voice, his hands resting either side of her waist. ‘Please.’

She swatted his loving grasp away, shaking her head forcefully. Composing herself as much as possible, she faced her seemingly undesirable lover, impossible to meet his caring gaze. ‘I’m scared.’

Hyunjin’s grey eyes sparkled in the faint evening sunlight. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too,’ the other gingerly made apparent. ‘I love you so much it scares me.’

‘Please don’t leave me.’ The man’s vision clouded over with tears, his pulse pounding around his head. ‘I know you’re overwhelmed - I am, too! - but we’ve always trusted each other. It’s like we’re missing puzzle pieces. You can’t leave now, when everything we have is…fucking perfect.’

‘I’m not leaving you, Hyun,’ Elena wept. ‘I told you five years ago I would never leave you whatever happens.’

‘Hey…’ Hyunjin had started, ‘Len, whatever happens, you’ll never leave me, will you?’

‘‘Leave you’? What do you mean?’

‘You know…you’ll never…uhh…’ He’d shrugged. ‘Whatever I…say, you won’t hate me and ruin our friendship, will you?’

She had side-eyed him bombastically, shying away slightly. ‘Of course not, Hyun. You mean too much to me to go now.’

On edge, Elena tilted her head sideways, connecting the man’s delightful lips with her own for a second time - perhaps not as diligently as the first. They merged lightly, Hyunjin’s fingers grazing his beloved’s hip as though she were made of easily breakable pieces of glass; her own strayed to the small of his back, pulling him closer, living for the mind-numbing adrenaline that came with their closeness.

‘I feel like there’s something really similar between me and Hyunjin…I just can’t put my finger on what it is.’

With an extreme kaleidoscope of excitement, Elena realised that she’d found her long-awaited answer: their passion for each other had always been identical.

Hyunjin sobbed emotionally, beaming as he took his soulmate into an embrace. The woman inhaled his solacing scent - pine, with a hint of aloe vera, - relishing in the warm familiarity it brought.

Finally.

He was home.

He was a star glittering in the immense universe.

He was the sunrise over a daisy-dusted meadow.

He was her missing piece.

In ‘04, Ji Elena started to view the world in colour.

#stray kids boyfriend #stray kids #stray kids x oc #stray kids x reader #hyunjin fanfic #stray kids fanfic #hyunjin skz #hyunjin scenarios #hyunjin soft hours #stray kids oneshot #hyunjin x oc #stray kids angst

12 notes · View notes

nrdmssgs · 9 months

Text

OC ask game

Second part of answers for this request. This is quite upsetting, sorry. There are serious triggers out there: mentions of real life events, mentions of mental struggles, mentions of unhealthy behavior.

#B What inspired you to create them?

Ok, this is the fourth time, i'm starting answering this question. Lets do it like that: I'll give a short safe answer and a long one, but with TW.

So, short answer: personal trauma and a few characters/situations from popular culture.

Now to the long one. When I started this blog, I promised to myself to keep it politics free. So I'll really try to make it the first and the last time.

First and the foremost important: I know, I'm not a victim in this situation. There are people out there, whos lives are turned to hell on earth, who don't know if they see the next sunrise. So my whining about 'feeling bad about it' means nothing, and it's not a request for compassion or pity. I know, I must be nothing but happy and grateful for my calm and full life. I promise, Im working on it.

Four years ago I moved from my country to Germany. A year and a half ago my country invaded a neighboring country and started a heinous, bloody war. A number of war crimes committed by my country is multiplied daily. Never before I thought, I could cry every day, for multiple times, could stop eating, struggle to sleep. I never had depression, don't know, how real emotional problems feel. But the start of that war changed something in me, because in a few months I started committing to some unhealthy thoughts and patterns. I absolutely understood the reasoning behind possible hate towards anyone with the same citizenship as mine, I still do. I know we must feel bad, guilty not till the end of the war, but for the rest of our lives. And I swear, I do. But at some point my hate, I channeled towards myself, started to be destructing. I couldn't get professional help, as it is complicated to express your feelings in another language. I understood, that I struggle to do anything other than read news and cry. And it's actually a problem, when you are a grown adult, who is supposed to work on a thesis, do an internship, fight your cats cancer and find a job. So I clutched my teeth and just tried everything to just keep going. And one of the things was finding a hobby and reanimating this old tumblr blog.

I liked almost everything in CoD. Almost, because there was Nikolai. My problem with Nikolai was that we shared an origin, yet he wasn't a bad guy in the story. And by the time I started falling down CoD hole - I was already neck deep into self neglect because of my origin and everything, that happened. So it frustrated me, he wasn't depicted, and he wasn't feeling himself as a bad man. So when any discourse on tumblr came to him - I usually just went completely silent. That was until I found two blogs writing beautiful stories about him. My initial reaction was 'ok, those people are just super-nice and maybe they don't know about where he comes from'. But then I read one story. And all the comments. And another story. And, once again, all the comments.

I was startled. I sat before my screen and just cried. Because I saw people, looking far beyond this characters country of origin. And they loved him for who he is. By no means he was a perfect, no, but they LOVED him, they gave zero fucks, where he was born, they cared for what he was actually doing.

And at some point I thought, I have something to say about the guy, I have a story about self-acceptance, acceptance of others around you, and it means a world to me right now, because it hurts so much.

So I opened new file and started talking to myself in it. And I manifested all the pain I was dealing to myself into this poor thing, my Zhar. At first, I didn't even let her have a name or an appearance in my head, because I thought, she never deserved it. I wanted her to entertain me and others, speak to Nikolai about trust and fears. The main role in a Heart was always Niks, as it was him, who practically said her 'hey, I know, it hurts. I know, it's really bad. But I'm here to accept you, to show, you still can do something good. And I'm here to love you on this way and beyond it'. It was the hardest message to write, because i myself still struggle to 'sit before a mirror' and say it all to myself. But maybe, just maybe, its a step in a right direction.

The more I wrote, the more details Zhar got. By the third chapter I already knew, how her voice sounds, how she looks. I didn't add it in the story to not spoil it.

I took inspirations from many characters, I deeply love. There is a bit of struggle of Senua from Hellblade, there is a bit of my favorite scene with Cersei from GoT, there are little droplets of Claire Underwood being uncanny and friendly at the same time. All my favorite things. I also bring together a small playlist for Zhar that helps me a lot. But thats that - her and my story. I wish, I could tell, it's just a self-insert, but sadly it's not, at least not in a traditional way.

#F What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?

Well, now that I told her story, its only fair to admit - my heart is full of compassion for her. I wish I could hug her. I think, if I ever won her trust - we'd have quite a talk. I wish I could make it hurt not so bad, but I guess, its Nikolais work now. Hope, he doesn't give up on it.

#nrdmssgs #nrdspeaks

5 notes · View notes

ishibishie · 2 years

Text

after a long absence, it's the return of a.......

40+(?!) RANDOM HEADCANONS ABOUT STEVEN POST!

literally. i ended up writing over 40 more of these. help

- in a stark contrast to his charming person, steven can and will swear when he's certain strangers aren't around. it's not uncommon for steven to come home after a long day of work and bat off a tirade of profanities!

- if he ends up waking up before the sun rises, a thing he often does is head to the sandy beaches of mossdeep city, wade in the shallow waters, and watch the sunrise.

- steven often receives random clothing gifts from wallace, as spur of the moment "i saw this in a store and thought you'd like it" deals. the article of clothing from wallace he wears most is a "GALAR IS MY CITY" sweatshirt, first out of spite but soon unironically coming around to it.

- steven always makes sure to make wishes on any shooting stars he sees. his wishes always vary depending on circumstances: he's wished countless times for his mother to come back when he was a kid, but now wishes for more mundane things, such as a day off.

- due to his close ties with devon, a tech company, steven is a tad tech-savvy and understands a little more about technology than others. he's the guy on everyone's contact list that gets bombarded with absolutely stupid questions about how to turn the front camera of the rotom phone off.

- steven is often asked to be a guest on tv shows, whether morning news or late night shows, but always declines in fear that he'll end up saying something stupid that gets broadcast all over the world.

- he cannot take jokes well. if a personal jab is thrown his way, his only instinct is to pout and whine about said "falsifications of my character." luckily, he cools off very quickly once you remind him that the statement was made in jest, and may even laugh about it.

- steven is INCREDIBLY naive and will believe half of the things said to him if he's unfamiliar with the topic and doesn't have facts to possibly refute a claim. additionally, due to being asexual, conversations about sex fly by him and he'll straight up ask about raunchy things he's never heard of with a curious grin, much to the absolute horror of whoever's in earshot. please save this man from himself.

- he has a good singing voice! he doesn't really know any popular songs in hoenn or the rest of the world, so most of his singing is mindless ad-libbing. he harshly denies being good at singing, however.

- under his playful and kind-hearted personality, steven tends to bottle up a lot of his more negative and darker emotions, such as his complicated hatred for his father and jealously towards others who grew up privileged in a familial sense. on really bad days, he can be downright spiteful and a single comment/situation away from uncapping that bottle and going on an aggressive tirade. oftentimes, these moments are followed by a brief depressive episode, but it doesn't take too long for him to shake it off.

- he's a bit of a sore loser after hard-fought pokemon battles. not in a way that involves demeaning his opponent or putting their skill at question, but more of a "sitting quietly at home after the fact and wondering that maybe if he used THAT move instead or beating himself up for not seeing the opponent's strategy" kind of way.

- he actually hates mornings, but wakes up way earlier than anyone he knows out of habit. do not talk to him until he's had his tea.

- despite saying he has a tier list of his favorite stones, his answers change so frequently on what can be a day-by-day basis that nobody actually believes he has a tier list anymore.

- steven owns a few pride flags he got as gifts from wallace. however, due to his very limited roster of people he's actually come out to, they just sit in one of his closets with no real use just yet. but in his bedroom, there is a single mini asexual pride flag tucked in a flower vase along with some fake flora.

- he gets along very well with the other champions! his favorite moments with some of the other champions have been discussing mythology and night-sky constellations with cynthia, learning about johto's rich history with lance, and going on a "sweet tooth tour" of a bunch of cafes in lumiose city with diantha.

- steven is always polite to most everyone, but is disgustingly polite around women in particular. he claims he's simply being the gentleman he was raised to be, but secretly hopes that his kindness and somewhat playful personality will lead to a lady doting on him like a child: a kind of affection he deeply craves especially after his mother died.

- he's not a huge tv guy. the only things he'll ever watch are contest reruns, the daily news, and occasionally crime documentaries.

- whenever he visits galar, steven makes up an entire list of "errands" to run in at least five different settlements, only as an excuse to take the corviknight taxis again and again. one of his favorite things to do in galar!

- steven is both a touchy and non-touchy person. with strangers or folks he doesn't know too well, he tends to avoid any personal contact beyond a handshake. but with friends, he's often grabbing their hands, hugging them, and other friendly gestures.

- while steven does have accounts on popular social media sites, he literally never uses them. the only purpose of his accounts were to snipe usernames!

- he's a fairly competent artist! due to his habit of mindlessly doodling pokemon in his field notes over the years, he's gotten a basic understanding of how to illustrate subjects, both people and pokemon.

- something that always cheers steven up is scrolling through his device's photos and recalling the happy memories behind each photo. especially on days where he feels removed and disjointed from the rest of the world, seeing all his silly selfies with wallace never fails to remind him that he's not alone.

- between things such as his father's years-long expectations and ignorance of his true destiny, and his base of devoted 'til death fangirls, steven rarely wonders if he even truly knows himself or if the "himself" he knows is built upon the many words from others. more than a few sleepless nights have been spent on this question.

- when wearing a jacket that's not his iconic blazer, steven tends to lean towards oversized sweaters or windbreakers. and when ditching the jacket entirely, he'll occasionally trade in the belt for suspenders!

- his favorite season is winter, as hoenn tends to have pleasant temperatures in winter and other regions will get snow, a very nostalgic kind of weather for him. in contrast, his least favorite time of year is the dead heat of summer: he burns very quickly due to his pale galarian complexion.

- if asked what region he hails from, there's a good chance steven will respond that he's from galar rather than hoenn. he generally likes galar a bit more than hoenn, and has very fond memories of being raised abroad for a few years in galar as a child!

- under the influence, steven is a "what?" kind of drunk. he acts like he's paying attention and will nod his head a lot to confirm he believes he's paying attention to whatever you say, but in reality his mind has become aol dialup noise. he also tends to blurt whatever pops into his mind literally milliseconds after he thinks it, and his galarian accent becomes borderline another language with how thick it gets. and due to his small frame, he'll completely black out when he's had one drink too many.

- steven is a frequent visitor to the mossdeep space center! due to how often he visits, the staff have started letting him in for free and always tell him when they have a new exhibit up. one of his favorite memories of visiting the space center was the staff letting him press the button to launch a new rocket into space.

- on days off where he never leaves home, he'll rock the holy trinity of lazy sunday fashion: oversized sweater, sweatpants, and a blanket cape. he doesn't ever answer the door if he's dressed like this, even for friends.

- he one day wishes find the courage to "officially" come out to the world, but only as a way to shut down all the baseless rumors about his sexuality. he's more than content to give nasty side-eye glances to celebrity news reporters who shove microphones in his face and ask if he's gay in the meantime.

- steven has a bad habit of forgetting to take breaks when it comes to doing work. occasionally, he'll fall asleep at his desk doing league paperwork. and in contrast to his proper and well-kept appearance, he sometimes drools in his sleep.

- steven isn't too fond of nicknames. the only exception to this is wallace calling him "stevie," which was a nickname his mother used for him that his friend picked up. now, only wallace is allowed to use this name for him. there was a single time where cynthia picked up on this name and attempted to use it, which led steven to completely freaking out.

- steven's rock collection not in glass cases is VERY dusty. he wants to dust his collection and make them shine again, but is afraid that he'll end up knocking something over and ruining the specimen forever. infrequently, whenever he walks by his dusty collection, he'll try and blow off some dust in a vain attempt.

- he secretly likes to collect plushies! he has a full hoenn rangers collection and all of his pokemon team replicated in stuffed cotton form.

- one of steven's deepest secrets is that he actually attended a protest against the devon corporation at one point. he was wearing some hand-me-down clothing from wallace so he wouldn't be spotted, and was able to swing his accent to shout the things he'd never get the chance to say about his dad otherwise. steven tries not to think of what would happen if his father ever learned of this.

- from his many years caving and hiking around mountains, steven has incredible stamina. additionally, if he were to ever take his jacket and shirt off, he's got surprisingly toned muscles for someone with a thin frame!

- there is a very slim chance of seeing steven at a cheap johtonian take-out buffet at 10pm when he's working on league paperwork he's put off. not even the prim and proper champion of hoenn is above the allure of inexpensive ramen noodles.

- steven loves feline pokemon! unfortunately, most of the wild skitty he encounters don't seem interested in his company and flee from him. he doesn't entirely mind, though: his little aron tends to act like a typical cat.

- he tends to act a bit coldly towards those he doesn't know. sure, he'll smile, offer a playful answer or two, and generally be a polite gentleman, but he'll refuse to answer any personal questions. he'll simply stare at you with a "seriously?" face if so.

- steven is a restaurant waiter's saving grace. due to how much wealth his family has and his extremely vain attempts of getting rid of his money, he tends to grab a literal handful of cash as a tip!

- if you look very carefully at steven's face on some days, you can spot a bit of makeup! he only tends to doll himself up a bit when he's preparing for a situation that requires him to look his best, such as a meeting with other league personnel.

- on the two days of the year steven visits his mother's grave, he'll start talking as if she's still alive and right in front of him. he knows she's gone, but there's a small part of him that believes she can still hear him and is watching over him. he'll spend hours sitting in front of her grave and babbling away.

- wallace has gotten him into the act of taking selfies. he's not very good at this as half his selfies cut off over half of his face, but he has fun with it regardless.

- as a prank, steven once claimed to give out his phone number for voicemails so his fangirls could send him messages: this number he gave out was actually his father's office phone line. needless to say, steven and his father weren't on speaking terms for a while after that.

- when life gets too hectic, steven will pack up and go on an overnight camping trip in the forests of hoenn. being outside under the stars always relaxes him, and the peace and quiet is appreciated as well.

- ever since the paldea region became a thing on his radar, he's started planning an extravagant vacation plan and a massive checklist of every pokemon in the region, in hopes to see every pokemon terastalize. he's never coming back home. hoenn is doomed.

#not art #steven stone #headcanons #love this silly little rock man

27 notes · View notes

bluejaysandblackbats · 4 months

Text

The Brother Trap

Fandom: DC Comics, Flashfam

Summary: Owen wants to connect with his half-brothers for the first time. Luckily for him, they all go to the same university. Will bad blood between twins keep Owen from the family of his dreams, or is he the missing piece they've always needed?

Chapters: 5/?

Characters: Owen Mercer, Axel Walker, Thad Thawne, Bart Allen, Meloni Thawne, Deborah Morgna, Preston Lindsay, President Thaddeus Thawne Mention

Relationships: Owen Mercer/Axel Walker, Thad Thawne/Deborah Morgna, PrestonBart

Additional Tags: POV Third Person, College AU, Angst and Fluff, Family Dynamics, Family Issues, No Powers AU

Chapter Five: Sportsmanship

Owen sat at the top of the bleachers watching the sunrise. He hadn't been able to sleep, so he thought it'd be nice to be out in the open air. Someone tapped his shoulder and startled him. He turned around to look Thad in the eye. "Jeez, how'd you—? Good morning, Thad," Owen whispered.

"Morning," Thad mumbled. Owen offered him some hot tea. "No thanks."

"Thad, is something bothering you?" Owen whispered. Thad nodded and looked straight out into the horizon.

Thad wanted to say something, so Owen stayed silent. He didn't want to risk cutting Thad off and having him shut down. "Bart and I have sleeping problems. He gets restless, and I have nightmares. Sometimes, I wake up from a nightmare, and I watch him until I can go back to sleep," Thad confessed, "I think it's the nicest thing he can do for me sometimes. It's the only time when I don't feel... Inferior."

Owen took a sip of tea and nodded, waiting for Thad to continue. When he didn't, Owen asked about his nightmares. "Sometimes my mom had to go away for work, and she'd leave us with family or friends of the family... But we're twins, and sometimes that can be a lot to handle, so we'd be split up for whatever time she was gone. I'd usually stay with our grandpa, and he'd go stay with our Uncle Max," Thad took a breath, "He's not really our uncle. He just cares about us... About Bart."

"Yeah, what's your grandpa like?" Owen asked.

"Well, he was rigid, competitive, cold. Nothing I did was ever good enough," Thad explained, "Bart and I were fourteen in track together. We used to do three events each. Our third was the relay. We were evenly matched back then, so we took turns being an anchor.

Grandpa showed up to watch us race, and everything was going great. I was the anchor, but our third was slow on the exchange, and I got second. I knew what Grandpa would say, and when Bart came to congratulate me after the race, I snapped at him. I hit him, and I'll never be able to take that back.

I have nightmares about losing him all the time, but I can't tell him that. I haven't earned the right to tell him that-."

"Thad, I'm no expert on siblings or anything, but maybe telling him about stuff like that'll make you seem more human to him. I was mentored by a guy a while back to keep me out of trouble after my dad died, and I hated him. I thought he was such a jerk. Then one day, I saw him fall apart at his desk. After that, he didn't seem so terrible. He seemed like a regular guy trying to make a difference," Owen explained, "Besides, I'm sure he wouldn't want to lose you either. Maybe he thinks you hate him."

"I don't," Thad blurted out, but he understood what Owen meant. "But if I tell him about that, I'll have to tell him how I put in the applications for us to be roommates."

"He'll get over it, but I'd open with that. Bart's got a pretty short attention span," Owen replied. Thad nodded.

"Are you gonna be here for a while?" Thad questioned. Owen nodded. "I'm gonna race Bart this morning..."

"Why?" Owen asked. Thad shrank down and pulled his hood up.

"Swear you won't laugh," Thad commanded in a feeble voice.

Owen punched him in the shoulder playfully. "On my life," he answered gently.

"I wanted him to show me how to play rugby. I didn't wanna tell you that I don't know how to play because I wanted to hang out with you," Thad confessed.

"I kinda figured you didn't know what rugby was... The thing is, I don't care what we do this week. I just wanted to hang out with you," Owen revealed. As the sun rose, they heard the loud snapping noise of skateboard wheels rolling over the cracks on the sidewalk.

"Bart's here," Thad whispered. Owen offered to hold Thad's jacket for him until he got back.

He watched as Thad rushed down the bleachers to the track and met with Bart. They exchanged words, and Thad pointed up at Owen. Bart waved, and Owen waved back. "Can you tell us when?" Bart yelled.

"Let me know when you're ready!" Owen yelled as he took his duffel and Thad's jacket down to the benches by the track. Bart and Thad stretched and took their marks. Thad looked serious, but Bart seemed beside himself with joy. "Well, you're already on your marks," Owen joked, "Get set... Go!"

The twins took off with a sprint, and Owen sat down on the benches. He took out his phone and videotaped the race, which worked out in everyone's favor because it was close. Bart won by a hair, but Bart didn't stop to see who won before embracing Thad. He picked him up and swung him around. Owen scratched his head and chuckled to himself.

Bart let Thad go, and Thad dusted himself off. He said something to Bart, and they waved Owen over. He walked over to the twins, and Thad invited him to breakfast. "Do you have morning classes today?" Thad asked.

"No, I was just here to watch the sun come up," Owen answered. They walked to the Big Belly Burger together, and the girl from the night shift was back at the register. "Hey, Thad, that's the girl from the other night." He gave Thad a gentle shove forward. "Go talk to her."

Thad approached the register, and the girl smiled at him. "I like your hair," she whispered.

"Oh, I was gonna fix it-."

"Don't," she whispered, "I'm Deb."

"Thad," Thad whispered. Deb smiled at him.

"Can I take your order?" Deb asked. Thad ordered breakfast, and she wrote her number on the back of the receipt. "Maybe I could spike it for you sometime."

"Huh?" Thad asked.

"Your hair," Deb clarified. She gave him three cups, and Thad chuckled and nodded on his way to the table. Owen nudged him, and his face reddened. He took the receipt and put her number into his phone before sending a text message. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and smiled.

Bart took two cups to fill up with soda, and Thad sat up as if he'd just remembered something. "My mom plays cards twice a month. Once with me and once with Bart... My mom wanted me to ask if you wanted to join us this weekend? It's an open thing-."

"Yeah, okay," Owen answered without thinking. He took a sip of his soda and immediately changed the subject. "You should ask that girl out."

"Yeah?" Thad asked. Owen took another sip of soda and nodded.

"What'd she say to you?" Owen questioned.

"She said she liked my hair," Thad whispered. Owen smiled. "I guess it's not that bad." Thad pulled at his bangs, and Owen chuckled.

Bart sat back down and brought their food over. He had a hashbrown in his mouth. Thad took the bag and chuckled. Bart and Thad didn't say much to one another. Owen didn't mind, though. He could tell they were getting along. "There's a party Friday night," Owen announced, "We should all go."

Thad looked at Bart. "Sounds good to me," Bart replied.

"Okay, I'm game," Thad agreed. Owen smiled and snapped a picture of them. Bart went back to eating, and Thad reached for Owen's phone. "Here, let's get one good one." The three of them pulled in and took pictures together. Owen sent them to his brothers, and he saved one of the pictures as his home screen.

2 notes · View notes

quoteablebooks · 11 months

Text

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, New Adult

Rating: 2 out of 5

Trigger Warning: Death, Sexual Content, Violence, Death of parent, War, Bullying

Summary: Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away... because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise. Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret. Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die. .

*Opinions*

Listen, I know that so many people love this book and it is currently the hot read of the summer. I am happy that this world and these characters pulled people in and wouldn’t let them go. I am happy that Rebecca Yaros has found so much success and wish her the best. But, y’all, this book is not good. Now, it isn’t rage-inducingly bad like some books that I’ve read, but I am absolutely baffled that this book has such a high rating. This is going to be a critical review, so if you can’t handle that please continue on your way and have a lovely day. Let's start with the most basic thing that I had a problem with, the language that is used in this novel. Romantic Fantasy can be whatever it wants, but the language that was used in this novel pulled on so much modern-day slang that it pulled me out of the story again and again. The one that stood out to me was something “for the win, I guess”. In a fantasy novel that has dragons on a completely different planet, we are using “for the win”? That just doesn’t work for me. If I had to read about Violet’s head “tingling” one more time when Xaden was near I was going to start taking shots. Also, it felt as if Yaros just used the word “fuck” because she felt like it would make the novel seem more adult and not because it actually fits the story beat that was happening or what was being said by the characters. I have nothing against swearing, but just saying “fuck” for the hell of it seemed really juvenile and not conveying anger or even enhance whatever was happening in the scene. I quite frankly cannot call this “enemies to lovers” since Xaden mentioned, numerous times, that she was not his enemy and he did not want to kill her. Violet just refuses to believe that even though he could have killed her, literally multiple times, and she even thinks that, but still he has to want to kill her because…drama I guess. Xaden never does anything to harm her, even before she is bonded to his dragon's mate, and while she is agnostic toward him, he never does anything to her. In fact, I can almost guarantee you that in the next book, the character revealed at the end of the book will have talked about Violet a lot so he will have “loved her before he even knew her”. I can almost call it because this book is so damn predictable. Also, even when Violet is supposed to hate the big bad son of the traitor, all she talks about is how hot he is, constantly, all the time. The way that this man is objectified throughout most of the novel is actually kind of uncomfortable. He could have had “love interest” on his forehead in Sharpie and it would have been more subtle. Speaking of things that were supposed to be a thing and weren’t shown in the writing, the belief that Dain was going to be anything but a pain in the ass. We get all these words about how he is her best friend and he knew her better than anyone, which is seen nowhere in their actual conversations. Dain does nothing in this novel but yells at her, constantly, about everything. He is never her friend let alone an option for a love interest. I never trusted this man and therefore nothing he does in this novel was surprising or like “Oh my god, how could he.” He could because he is awful and has been the whole time, keep up. Violet was a possession, not a person, and he was mad that someone might break his toy. His dialogue was annoying, he was annoying, and Xaden was right to say that she gave him so many chances when he was being an ass constantly. I thought every character in this novel was rather flat, even Violet and Xaden are not super flushed out until the last five chapters. I did not care when anyone died because they were just names who we got a couple of facts about right before they were slaughtered. In fact, let’s talk about the cardboard cutout of a villain that is Jack Barlow. He was so god damn ridiculously evil and shitty that I couldn’t take him seriously. This man is just murdering people left, right, and center for no reason and there is no motivation other than “hating the weak.�� Seriously? That is his motivation? I never thought that he would kill VIolet, not because she was the main character, but because he was such a not character that it wouldn’t make narrative sense. Then again, there is a lot in this novel that doesn’t make narrative sense. The only characters who had a good bit of personality are the dragons. Tairn and Andarna had a lot of personality in the little amount of dialogue we got from them and they were the best part of this book honestly. Once they entered the novel it got a lot better. I am not going to talk about disability representation as I am not disabled. I will say that Violet’s insistence on attempting to ride on her own even though there is no way that her body would be able to was slightly frustrating as a story beat. The story's reason is that Tarin would not be able to channel his full power if he is keeping her seat, but then she also pushes against the saddle because “everyone will know I can’t keep my seat”. Babe, you have been falling multiple times every flying session, if they didn’t see it they would have heard about it by now. I am not saying anything about disabled people feeling like they have to prove they can do what other people can, but that statement that “everyone will know” is what got me. They already know. There are multiple times throughout the novel that Violet does this, not just about her disability, when she says “I don’t want everyone to know x” but has done x in front of everyone multiple times at this point. Like, what? Speaking of “not wanting everyone to know”, neither she nor Xaden are subtle about anything in their entire relationship. She calls him by his first name, her COMMANDING OFFICER IN WAR COLLEGE, and no one calls her out about it. She regularly flips him off for everyone to see, HER COMMANDING OFFICER and no one says anything about it. They spare in front of everyone and he lays on her and whispers in her ear for an uncomfortable amount of time. Yet, they both act like they are keeping their feelings secret from everyone. It makes less than no sense. It was as if they thought everyone was blind and no one would know that she was getting special treatment while obviously getting special treatment constantly. Now, let’s talk about the romance and the weirdly timed sex scenes. Xaden doesn’t change his behaviors at all, it is Violet who changes her opinion about him even though he doesn’t change anything he is doing at all. Also, MULTIPLE TIMES, Xaden warns Violet that he is keeping secrets and he can’t tell her everything and then she gets pissed when she finds out he was keeping secrets and didn’t tell her everything? Like, that scene could have still played out the same way given what he was lying about, but the whole “I am so hurt because you lied to me and I opened my heart and you didn’t.” He basically told you he wasn’t completely open to you, you didn’t listen, like you didn’t for most of the novel, Violet. That’s on you. I can guarantee that she is going to be pissed at him in the second novel for keeping the individual we meet at the end secret from her and it’s going to be so damn annoying. Let’s not even talk about the fact they say “I love you” during sex. Please, spare me. Then, the kissing and sex scenes all come at the most ridiculous times. I might be able to forgive the dragon bond sex makeout scene because I do think that the between-the-lines reading is that the dragons are attempting to get them together and so they left the channel open. However, suddenly being hot and heavy making out when a moment ago Violet was so worried about her sister's life that she had to be physically carried away? Excuse me? Multiple times she is upset or angry and then suddenly she and Xaden are kissing and that’s all that matters and I have to listen to how they are playing tonsil hockey for a couple of pages. Seriously what was with all the frenching? The poor timing of these scenes makes Violet seem extremely fickle and selfish when most of her arc is about how she is attempting to be a good person in a college that does not reward that. Also, while Violet has been training to strengthen herself throughout the novel, she still has to wrap her knees and her shoulders for long flights, yet she can have sex that breaks MULTIPLE pieces of furniture and doesn’t hurt any part of her body? Like They have sex SO HARD that the ARMOR BREAKS but she doesn’t pull or hurt anything? Again, I don’t have a disability, but given everything we were shown in the story, it was almost comical in a bad way. Don’t get me started on the fact she throws lightning around when she orgasms because… I am going to stop here because I could probably write another 1500 words about the issues I have with this novel. That being said, I have read worse and probably will get the second one from the library when it comes out. I am so happy that I didn’t buy this novel and I will not be rereading this before the next novel comes out. I am pretty sure I can remember the plot of this novel as it all happens in the last six chapters for the most part. I am giving this 1.5 stars rounded up to two because this wasn’t good, but it was compulsively readable and I guess I can see why others might like it.

#2 out of 5 stars #Fourth Wing #rebecca yarros #booklr #book review

3 notes · View notes

xandraspalace · 1 year

Text

Our Fleeting Magical Moment

----- Our Fleeting Magical Moment || Derem Kado [NIJISANJI] Birthday Fiction

Summary : Being separated from loved ones is a very painful thing. However, missing their birthday is clearly much more painful for you. Even if it's just a fleeting moment, you wanted to celebrate her birthday and wish her a happy birthday.

WC : 1577 words.

Warning : Grammar errors, lowkey angst, fluff, Genshin Impact references, Into the Light Once More references, Descendants references, lowkey lore-wise, etc.

Featured Characters : Reza Avanluna, Nagisa Arcinia.

Story Notes : This story is written with second-person point of view and the reader is gender-neutral. The personas written here are based on the avatar of the characters as vtubers, not the person behind it. Enjoy.

A/N : DEREM, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I wish you a joyful birthday! May all good things always be near you and all bad things always far away from you. Happy birthday!

Other Platform : [TWITTER] [MEDIUM]

"YOU have my permission."

Hearing that from your dean, your smile widened. "Thank you so much, Sir. Dean."

"But do remember that you can't communicate with anyone there, including your friend."

Nodding, you agreed to those terms the dean mentioned.

You planned to travel dimensions to meet your old friend. It’s not a meeting actually. More precisely, you’re about to delivering a birthday present for her. Of course, you were very sad because you couldn’t communicate with anyone, including your friend in that dimension. The dean said it was for the safety of yourself and Maralemu. But, missing your loved one’s birthday would be so much painful for you.

"I'll be back before sunrise tomorrow." you reported.

"I swear to God, Kak Ejak!" A little girl's screams were heard from the balcony of a building. Several laughs accompanied that expression of annoyance. Your ears caught one of the laughs that was quite familiar and you really miss. Of course, you could only smile.

Derem and her two friends were having fun celebrating her birthday on the balcony. Seeing a gap to sneak in, you entered Derem's room which was not far from the balcony to arrange the gifts you prepared for her.

You put a cake, a letter, and a small gift on the desk. You stared at the gifts intently without noticing a nostalgic smile starting to touch your lips.

Memories from the past started to cross your mind one by one. The memories where you and Derem would spend a lot of time together at the academy, how you and she would exchange gifts on each other's birthdays, and how you would laugh heartily when you both messed up some spells. You and Derem have so many memories together, but they are now just to be remembered.

The entrance that connects Maralemu and this dimension is indeed wide open for everyone, but not the exit. Because of that too, the dean didn't let you talk to anyone from this world or you will permanently live in that dimension.

You turned your gaze, looking at the excitement of Derem and her friends from the crack in the window. Watching her who can smile so lightly made you smile too. You always thought of leaving Maralemu and living with her. However, you are aware of your and Derem's fate.

You must remain in Maralemu. If one day Derem returns, then you will be the one to welcome her.

"Ah!" Derem gasped as her eyes caught something. She was sure her majestic heterochromic eyes had just seen something familiar. The problem was how the thing she saw passed by so fast. “That magic traces … are the mark of Maralemu's magic. Could it be…?” In her heart, Derem muttered.

“Derem, what’s wrong?”

Hearing her name being called, Derem turned to the tall man in front of her. “Oh, nothing. I guess I'm seeing things."

“Ooh, today is Friday 13th, after all,” the young man joked.

"Mas Ejak, shut it!" Derem almost threw her fist at the man.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, you were leaning against a tree not far from the building. You could still clearly see the activity on the balcony. "That was close," you sighed. You glanced up once again, watching Derem from a far.

"Oh, shoot!" You fliched when something rubbed against your leg. You instantly dropped your gaze only for you to gasp once again. “Black cat?!”

A black cat kept rubbing its body on you. You halted for a moment, trying to figure something out. "You're not a mere cat," you stated to yourself. "And you're also not mine. I left my cat in Maralemu after all.”

Then something suddenly clicked in your mind. You picked up the cat. "Oh, you're supposed to be the magical cat that will make a contract with Derem, am I wrong?"

As if it answers your question, the cat meowed. You could only smile and hug the cat. “Be kind with Derem, though. Don't run or hide too far from her, okay?”

The cat meowed again.

You stayed there a little longer, watching Derem and listening to her every laugh. Until the moon started to lean and the day changed, you turn your face from the three of them.

Right after Derem blew out the candles on her birthday cake with her friends, you whispered a spell. “I will create as was spoken. Noble steed, proud and fair, you shall take me anywhere.” With that, a dimensional gate opened.

For the last time you turned your gaze toward Derem, finding her and her two friends hugging each other so tightly and warmly.

Before you took a step into the gate, you whispered, "Happy birthday, Derem."

Together with the night wind, your whispering voice was carried flying towards the owner of the name, silently wishing her a happiest birthday.

Derem threw herself onto her bed, sighing tiredly. After making sure Nagisa and Reza got to their respective rooms, Derem immediately decided to rest. There will be lots of people wishing her happy birthday in the morning. Thus, she had to rest and prepare herself.

Derem turned his head towards the window, intending to watch the waning moon outside. However, something else caught her attention. “Oh?” Derem got up from her bed, noticing something on her desk. She walked towards her desk.

A cake, a thin gift box and a letter. Derem's beautiful eyes rounded perfectly when she found something on the letter. It was a seal shaped like the Maralemu emblem that sealed the letter.

Derem lifted the letter and turned it over to see who had sent it.

“From your dearest friend in Maralemu.”

Derem immediately opened her desk drawer, looking for the little knife she used to open things. Hastily, Derem opened the letter.

To my dearest friend, Derem…

Hello to the birthday girl, hehe. How are you, Derem? I hope you’re doing great and have a happy life.

To be honest, I was worried that you would spend your birthday alone. But if I recall again myself, you had many very caring friends there. I’m so happy. At least you won't be lonely on your birthday.

Derem, if you asked me how I and the others here are doing, you don’t have to worry about a single thing. The days go by very pleasantly even though sometimes things don't go that well. Many miss you here, including me of course.

You are my person, the most important one I must say. So, I got something for your birthday! I truly want to show you how thankful I am for you to be born as you are right now.

For your birthday, I prepared a cake that I baked myself. Just in case you miss Maralemu flavors and I hope it suits your taste. And for your info, Derem, I baked it myself, no magic include!

And one more thing, I prepared my most advanced magic stone for you. I made it a necklace so you can easily wear it. I had filled the stone with protection magic, so it could protect the user if you were to be met with a dangerous situation. Though, of course I hope you stay safe always.

Stay healthy and happy there, Derem. I hope all good things always accompany your every step the way. Until we meet again, we will exchange stories with each other.

Once again happy birthday.

With love, always. Your friend.

Tears one by one started to cover the letter paper that Derem was holding. She only realized that she was crying when she finished reading the letter. She wiped her tears with her sleeve.

“I wasn’t seeing things, huh?” Derem softly sniffled. “You were here after all.”

Derem turned her eyes to the cake and gift box that were both placed on her desk. Sweet has already washed her tongue just by looking at the cake you made for her.

Lastly, Derem opened the gift box beside the cake. Right according to what you wrote in the letter, the box contained a necklace with a beautiful magic stone.

Derem touched the necklace pendant carefully. The magic stone resonated its power with her. A smile once again touched her lips. She put down the letter that she was still holding. Derem lifted the necklace and put it on. The magical girl turned to the mirror in her room.

“So pretty,” she gasped softly.

Derem held the pendant tightly and closed her eyes. “I will create as was spoken,” she whispered a spell. "Erase all of their worries and problems, for I will send my own words to them."

After returning to Maralemu, you immediately seated yourself at your desk. With a blank stare, you stared at the bits of the magic stone you used to make Derem's necklace. You suddenly smiled.

You folded your arms on the table and buried your head on them. Tired after using quite a lot of magic, you intended to close your eyes for a while. However…

“Thank you for this absolutely amazing birthday present, [Y/N]. I miss you."

You jolted up on your seat when you heard someone whispering to you. You instantly darted your eyes around your room, trying to find the the owner of that voice. But when you realized whose voice it was, you regained your composure. You rubbed your face and smiled faintly.

To him far away, you whispered, “Sure. You're welcome, Derem. And happy birthday." ----- [FIN].

Our Fleeting Magical Moment A Fiction by Author Xandra January, 2023

#xandraspalace #xandraspalace_arc #nijisanji #nijisanji x reader #nijisanji ex-id #nijisanji ex id #derem kado

5 notes · View notes

writings-of-dumpy · 1 year

Text

Separate Ways, Worlds Apart 3: The Lake House

Warnings: major character death, gore/horror, swearing

Eddie barely slept a wink. He kept waking up and checking on Rebecca, who was sound asleep a few feet from him. By the time he finally decided he wasn’t going to get back to sleep for any amount of time, she was so close to him that when she stirred, he could feel her gently brush against him with her movements. Eddie’s heart fluttered at the sight of her sleeping in the dawn light, which he attributed to his lack of sleep delirium. He saw her body shiver slightly, and he looked around the shed for something to keep her warm in. He found an old and tattered picnic blanket that was large enough to wrap both of them in, and he gently draped it over her sleeping form. After a few minutes, she stopped shivering and Eddie let out a breath. He was borderline starving right now, so he ate a granola bar quietly as he watch the sunrise. He thought about what Dustin had told him about the Upside Down and he never would have believed that Hawkins was harboring an alternate dimension had he not seen Chrissy’s gruesome demise. Flashes of her mutilated face invaded his mind as he sat by the window of the shed. He hadn’t known her very long, but she seemed nice enough. Nice enough to warrant Rebecca’s fierce protection. Eddie wondered what would earn her protectiveness and if after this she’d think of him as needing her.

After this. Eddie was more unsure of his future now than he had ever been. He was never convinced that he’d make it out of high school, not to mention his 20s. And now with a monster on the loose killing people and Eddie being blamed, he wasn’t sure there would be an “after this” for him.

Rebecca startled awake and Eddie’s head whipped over to her.

“You okay?” he asked lowly.

She looked at him with a clammy face and nodded. “Yeah… yeah I suppose.” She looked at the blanket that covered her with a furrowed brow and looked back up at him. Eddie shrugged as he looked at her and then out the small window.

“You looked cold,” he said. He saw out of the corner of his eye Rebecca smile slightly and told the blanket up.

“Thank you… Did you sleep at all?” she asked him after a moment.

Eddie shrugged and let out a breath. “Well… not really.”

Rebecca’s face softened. “I’m sorry. You could have woken me up…”

“That’s okay, you needed to sleep,” Eddie assured. “Dustin should be here soon with some food.”

“That’s good…” Rebecca replied.

Even though he was expecting it, he still tensed up and brandished his broken beer bottle as a weapon against Dustin, Steve, Robin, and Max coming back with several bags of food.

“So, we have some good news and some bad news. Which would you like first?” Dustin asked as Eddie and Rebecca started to eat the food they’d been brought. Eddie didn’t realize how hungry he was until he started chowing down on honeycomb cereal. Rebecca dug into her own box as well.

“Bad news first, always,” Eddie scoffed with his mouth full.

“Okay, bad news… We tapped into the Hawkins PD with our Cerebro and they’re definitely looking for you guys. Also they’re pretty convinced Eddie killed Chrissy,” Dustin said.

“Like, 100% kind of convinced,” Max chimed in.

“What about me?” Rebecca asked in a small voice.

“They think Eddie’s either killed you and has hidden your body or that he kidnapped you and is planning on killing you. After they talked to Jason, they ruled out the theory that the two of you were conspiring to murder Chrissy,” Robin explained with a solemn voice.

Eddie’s face was blank, he was sure, and he looked to Robin and Steve. “And the good news?” he asked almost sarcastically.

“Your name hasn’t gone public yet. But if we found out about you, there’s only a matter of time before others do too. And once that gets out, everyone and their shallow-minded mother is going to be gunning for you,” Robin said.

Eddie’s heart sank into his stomach and he barely held himself together as he spoke again, “Hunt the freak, right?”

“Exactly,” Robin agreed.

“Shit,” Rebecca swore.

“So before that happens we need to find Vecna, kill him, and prove your innocence,” Dustin said confidently.

“That’s all, Dustin? That’s all,” Eddie asked sarcastically.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Dustin replied simply.

Robin then explained that this sort of thing wasn’t their first bout with the Upside Down and Eddie had a small amount of confidence in them.

“We usually rely on this girl who has superpowers, but, uh… those went bye-bye, so, uh…” Steve began with Dustin nodding emphatically.

“So we’re technically in more of a…” Robin trailed with hand gestures to have a word come to her.

“Brainstorming phase,” Max offered.

“Brainstorming!” Steve confirmed with a snap.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Dustin said in a manner that Eddie felt he was mostly trying to convince himself of the words he spoke. Eddie’s face dropped to one of questioned confidence.

“What if we think of something different? What if we find Vecna and don’t kill him but make him confess. That way Eddie won’t be wanted for murder. I get that I can’t just show up and say ‘hey I’m fine I was just hanging out at Eddie’s friend’s house while we waited for Vecna,’ but there has to be something more that we can do, right?” Rebecca asked. Eddie looked at her and saw a half-eaten box of lucky charms and a couple of empty orange juice bottles surrounding her.

“We’re going to figure it out, okay? The best thing for you two to do is stay hidden right now. We don’t need to have to worry about whether or not the cops have found you,” Steve said to his sister with a worried look.

“Or Vecna for that matter,” Robin interjected. Eddie’s spine froze at the thought of his own body being twisted and snapped how Chrissy’s was, and he felt sick at the thought of it happening to Rebecca, another person he couldn’t help.

“Here. Sit tight and we’ll communicate with this, okay?” Dustin said and handed Eddie a large hand-held radio.

Suddenly, sirens blared and Eddie’s senses went into high alert. He tried to figure out if the sirens were narrowing in on him or just passing through.

“Tarp! Tarp, tarp!” Robin snapped and gestured for Rebecca to get in the boat and Eddie to cover them. She climbed into the boat and the pair laid down quickly as Eddie covered them up with the tarp. Eddie could feel Rebecca’s body tense up against his and her breathing shallow. Acting on instinct alone, Eddie gently let his thumb caress a spot on Rebecca’s arm by her elbow to comfort her. Her skin was soft and felt like silk beneath his calloused thumb, and he felt her relax into his touch slightly.

“Coast is clear, guys.. but I have a bad feeling,” Steve said. Rebecca moved the tarp and sat up to look at her brother.

“What do you mean?” she asked him as he helped her out of the boat.

“I mean I think another kid is dead. There were like 4 cop cars and a coroner van,” Steve said grimly. A silence fell over the group as the thought of another brutal killing faced them.

“Well, let’s see if we can find any clues to Vecna. Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve dealt with a crime scene,” Dustin reasoned and Max smirked.

“Good idea. You two stay put and stay out of sight,” Steve ordered as the group prepared to leave the shed.

“Please be careful,” Rebecca said in a small voice.

Steve nodded and the group left Eddie and Rebecca alone again. They sat in silence for what felt like several minutes, but the sun told a different story. Eddie’s concept of time was completely backwards and the only thing that kept him grounded to what time it is was his watch. It showed military time so luckily he knew when he woke up at 6 it was the morning and not the evening.

“Eddie..?” Rebecca’s small voice said from across the room. He looked at her face, dirty from the floor of the shed and her expression as though she was about to cry. Eddie’s heart ached at the sight of her so broken.

“Yeah?” he answered calmly and watched her play with her fingers.

“I’m… I’m sorry I called you a freak. You didn’t deserve that, you don’t deserve to be judged for your hobbies or how you dress. Nobody does,” she spoke softly. Eddie’s face fell into a slight smile at her genuine apology.

“Well… You know, I’m sorry for belittling you and making fun of your friends,” he said. “I forgive you.”

Rebecca said nothing and hung her head as tears started to flow down her face and a soft whimper escaped her chest. Eddie was taken aback and his eyes went wide. He wasn’t too sure what to do about this, he was never good at expressing or dealing with others’ expression of emotion. All he knew was what he’d read in books and mirroring from his friends, and on rare occasion he acted on his intuition.

“Um…” he let out lowly. ‘Eddie, think. When Arwen was crying, what did Aragorn do?’ He thought of the half-elf woman described in his favorite book series and put himself in the Ranger’s shoes. Not that he thought of Rebecca as Arwen and himself as Aragorn, but… maybe he wanted to.

Eddie took a deep breath and slowly approached her. He placed a hand on her shoulder and smoothed it along her back to pull her into his chest. Eddie felt no resistance from her and he completely enveloped her in his hold. She sobbed for a few moments more and Eddie gently held her against him as she cried.

“It’s okay…” he comforted. He felt her hands slide under his jacket and hug him back gently and he couldn’t help but smile. He wasn’t happy that she was so upset, but he was glad to be there for her to hold and be held by him.

~*~

“Fuck,” Rebecca muttered as she looked through the bags once again.

“Nothing? All gone?” Eddie asked as he looked for any food that they may have missed.

“We really should have rationed it better, huh?” Rebecca sighed and looked over at Eddie.

He shrugged. “Well, we can just go up to the house and see what Rick’s got for now. Have to get to higher ground anyway for this to work,” Eddie said as he held up the radio. Rebecca looked outside and saw the sun was setting.

“Do you think he’s got a shower? I feel disgusting,” Rebecca said as they prepared to make their way to the house on the hill.

“It’ll be nice, yeah. And that bed again, why didn’t we do this earlier?” Eddie whispered as they hunched over and ran toward the house.

“Because it wasn’t safe, remember?” Rebecca whispered his words from a couple days ago back to him.

Eddie snorted with a smirk and opened up the back door for her and the two of them walked inside. The sun was fully set now and the two of them moved about the house in the dark. Rebecca managed to find a bathroom with a shower and nearly cried in relief.

“I’ll um… I’ll stand outside the bathroom,” Eddie told her. “In case you need anything..”

“Thanks, Eddie,” Rebecca said and turned on the shower. She got lost in her thoughts as she let the water wash away the sweat, blood, and dirt from her. She finally felt some semblance of normalcy even though after this quick rinse she would have to get back into dirty clothes. She didn’t want to think about that right now, though. She just enjoyed her time in the water, but worried about Eddie being alone. After their apologies yesterday, neither one of them were particularly stable and Rebecca didn’t like the thought of being alone for too long and thought the same for Eddie. She dried herself with a nearby towel and got her clothes back on. She opened the bathroom door and found Eddie sitting across the hall from her with his head resting on the wall and his arm on his knee that was positioned upright.

“You want a turn? Might be nice,” Rebecca offered him. Eddie looked at her for a moment and then nodded. They switched places and after Eddie’s shower, they found the bed they had previously slept in a couple nights ago and attempted to sleep.

“This is ridiculous. I’m relatively clean and this bed is comfortable… why can’t I sleep?” Eddie groaned after several minutes of tossing and turning.

“I think our minds are a bit preoccupied at the moment,” Rebecca offered. “I’m having trouble sleeping, too.”

Eddie hummed in agreement.

“Maybe try to think about something else? If we can?” Rebecca suggested as she looked up at Eddie from her position on the bed.

“Normally when I can’t sleep, I try to write campaigns until I can,” Eddie said.

“You’re running for office..?”

Eddie laughed loudly. “No. A campaign is a storyline for Dungeons and Dragons. As DM, I make the story and the players go through it. It’s like a whole new world.”

“That’s got to take some talent,” Rebecca complimented. “What else do you do?”

“Play guitar,” Eddie shrugs. “Wait a second…”

Eddie sprang out of the bed and started shuffling through the closet until Rebecca heard a musical strum and she could see through the darkness of the room Eddie with a large guitar in his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was grinning.

“I’ll play us a lullaby. Any requests?” Eddie giggled as he sat cross-legged on the bed.

Rebecca laughed. “Nothing I can think of.”

“May the Bard’s lullaby give you a restful slumber,” Eddie said in a sing-song tone and began to play a soft melody in the guitar.

“I don’t know what that means, but you play beautifully,” Rebecca said.

“You should play D&D some time. I’ll teach you everything,” Eddie said with a smile in his voice.

“Even how to play guitar?” Rebecca asked with a quirked eyebrow.

“Well, that’s not part of D&D but I am a guitar god, so if you want to learn, I’d be happy to teach you,” Eddie replied as he continued to strum.

“Wow, that’s a pretty big ego you have there,” Rebecca laughed out.

“What can I say? I call it like I see it. Jeff’s not bad, either, but there’s a reason I’m the frontman,” Eddie said and Rebecca could feel his wink in the darkness.

They continued to talk about Eddie’s band, music, and other hobbies, and Rebecca felt that sense of normalcy she felt in the shower, now with Eddie. She had no idea that he could be such good company and she felt herself growing fond of him. He eventually laid down next to her and they faced each other as they spoke and told jokes. Rebecca eventually felt herself drifting off to sleep with Eddie’s voice rambling about a time when Dustin and Lucas had saved Gareth from an ogre on a bridge that Eddie was impressed with.

Rebecca awoke to the sound of Eddie milling about in the kitchen. She walked out and saw that Eddie had found a can of Spaghetti-Os and was munching on some of them for breakfast as he walked around the house with the radio in hand.

“Hey, Dustin, this is Eddie the Banished… You there?” he said into the radio. Silence was heard over the other end. “Dustin, can you hear me? Dustin?”

Once again, no answer. Rebecca helped herself to a bowl of the pasta and started eating as she watched Eddie pace about the living room growing irritated with the silent treatment.

“Hey, it’s Nancy,” a tired female voice responded. Nancy Wheeler was involved in this? Since when?

“Wheeler, hey! We’re going to need a food delivery, like, really soon. Unless you want me going out into the world…” Eddie began.

“No, don’t do that. Stay where you are, we’ll be there as soon as we can,” Nancy said over the radio.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, can you pick me up a six pack? I know it’s stupid as shit drinking right now, but a cold beer would really calm my jangled nerves,” Eddie asked. Rebecca smirked and rolled her eyes at his request.

“Excuse me? No, you’re not going to get drunk when you’re on the run with my sister, okay?” Steve’s voice said over the radio. “By the way, where is she? Is she okay?”

Eddie handed the radio to Rebecca with a huff. “I’m fine, Steve. We’re just hungry and there’s not a lot of food left here.”

“Yeah, we’ll be there soon. Sit tight and stay hidden, okay? Love you, sis,” Steve’s voice said in a calmer and gentler tone.

“Love you, bro,” Rebecca echoed. Eddie pulled the radio out of her hand and started to talk, but was cut off by Nancy saying that she’d have to call him back.

“No, no, don’t you dare—shit,” Eddie said frantically.

“There is so much moonshine out in the shed, Eddie. I don’t think you need beer,” Rebecca told him with a grin.

“Well you heard your brother, I’m not allowed to drink anyway,” Eddie said as he sat next to her. “You sleep okay?”

“Yeah, actually. Did you?” Rebecca asked.

“I did. Finally,” Eddie said with a smile.

Rebecca looked at the clock and raised her brows. “Wow, it’s almost noon, we slept a long time.”

“We needed it,” Eddie chuckled.

The pair decided to spend the day inside the house and move back to the shed that night, but just before dusk, Rebecca heard a car pull up in the gravel driveway.

“Dustin?” Eddie asked her and she looked out the window to see Jason’s car. Her heart leapt out of her chest as adrenaline surged through her. If Jason found her and Eddie here, he would kill Eddie.

“We have to get to the shed. NOW,” Rebecca whispered frantically as she pulled Eddie’s hand toward the back door and they swiftly made it through to the shed.

“What the fuck is your fucking boyfriend doing here?!” Eddie asked in a panic.

“Looking for you, no doubt! You’re wanted for my murder, remember?!” Rebecca reminded him.

“Shit,” Eddie said and started talking on the radio.

“Dustin? Wheeler? ANYBODY?” he called into the radio. No answer. In a more pleasing tone, he said, “Dustin, please! Are you there?”

His gaze stopped at the boat and Rebecca could see the wheels turning him his eyes.

“Eddie…” she said in a warning tone. “Don’t do anything stupid…”

“If they find us here together, that’s it, I’m a goner. But if they only find one of us… then there’s a chance. You can swim, right?” Eddie began.

“Eddie, I’m not leaving you,” Rebecca decided. “Jason will KILL you.”

“Yeah, if he finds us together! Across the lake is Skull Rock, you know it, right? I’ll meet you there, but you have to go NOW,” Eddie said.

“Okay… okay,” Rebecca said and with one last look at Eddie, dove into the water. This, by far, was the most terrifying thing she had ever done. The black water was unforgivingly cold and she swam as fast as she could for as long as she could until she heard Jason’s voice yelling at Eddie, who was on the boat headed in a similar direction but away from where Rebecca was swimming.

“Hey, freak! Where do you think you’re going?!” Jason yelled. Eddie started rowing faster after a failed attempt at starting the engine of the boat. Jason and Patrick started to take their jackets off and got into the water.

“Fuck,” Rebecca swore and started to swim faster toward Skull Rock. She distanced herself between the scuffle that Jason and Patrick had begun with Eddie in the water when suddenly Patrick’s body lifted out of the water high enough for Rebecca to see over the fog. And his limbs twisted and cracked with so much force that Rebecca could hear it from how far away she was. She managed to see Eddie fall into the water and start to swim towards her as Jason was left to watch Patrick’s mangled corpse fall into the water. She wanted to call out to Patrick, to tell him to stop pranking her and how devastated Chrissy would be… Chrissy. And Jason, having witnessed Vecna’s curse had to let go of the idea that Eddie was responsible, right?

“Andy!! Andy help!!!” Jason desperately bellowed. “Eddie got Patrick, he’s getting away!”

Rebecca’s heart sank and she saw Eddie swim closer to her frantically. she couldn’t reveal herself to be safe with Eddie. Jason had been twisted in grief and now he was hysterical. Now wasn’t the time to reassure him that she was okay. Reluctantly, she turned her head from Jason and Patrick and started swimming the rest of the lake’s length toward Skull Rock. She sat on the shore for several minutes before Eddie caught up with her and sat next to her. The sirens in the distance got louder as Eddie stood up and offered his hand to Rebecca. She took it and the two of them worked their way inland toward the landmark.

“Shit.. Radio’s dead,” Rebecca said after trying to turn the device on to reach Steve.

They sunk down next to each other under the stone figure and sat in silence for a while. Rebecca was stunned and pondering the events that had just unfolded.

“It… it has to be me,” Eddie’s broken voice said through sobs. “There has to be something about me that brings death. Maybe I am a vessel for Satan or Vecna or whatever.”

Rebecca’s face crumpled in empathy. She had those same thoughts about herself. She moved closer to Eddie as he was slouched in defeat and sobbing.

“No, Eddie…” she soothed with a gentle voice. She hesitantly put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. “It isn’t you. You didn’t kill Chrissy, and you didn’t kill Patrick. And you certainly haven’t killed me.”

Eddie looked up at her with bloodshot eyes and nodded. He hung his head again and let out soft sobs. “Then why is this happening to me?”

“I don’t know. Just bad luck, I guess? But we’re going to figure this out, okay? We’re going to get through this and prove your innocence,” Rebecca promised him. Her hand moved to his cheek and he looked up at her with large brown eyes. “I promise.”

Eddie’s eyes searched hers in the dull moonlight and he leaned into her hand as he nodded his head. “Maybe I should just be a scapegoat. Then you don’t have to keep being hidden and Dustin can figure out how to stop Vecna without worrying about me getting in the way. Maybe that’s for the best.”

“Are you kidding me? Listen to me, Eddie Munson. You are innocent. And you will not go to jail for the rest of your life because of some supernatural wizard terrorizing a backwoods town, okay? Chrissy didn’t die for that. We’re going to figure this out. I’m with you,” Rebecca told him in a determined tone and held his face in her hands so he’d look at her. Eddie let out a breath as a tear rolled down his face. Rebecca wiped it away gently and let go.

Rebecca sat next to Eddie and she offered her hand for him to hold as a token of her promise. Eddie cracked a small smile and purposefully took her hand in his larger one. His skin was damp and soft despite the callouses from years of guitar playing and his palm warmed hers. It was a feeling she enjoyed. She had only ever held Jason’s hand or Steve’s when they were younger and he was tasked with looking after her, but the sensation she felt with holding Eddie’s hand now was one of a deeper meaning, like they were bonded. Their hands clasped together and they sat against the warm rock in a weak attempt to hasten the drying of their clothes.

“So… now what?” Eddie asked. “We just wait and hope this all blows over?”

“We have to find a radio. Any one will do as long as it can get different channels on it,” Rebecca said.

Eddie nodded. “There’s a construction site down there, I’ve seen them use radios before. I should be able to snag one in the morning when they show up to work.”

“Okay. I’ll take first watch, get some sleep,” Rebecca suggested.

“I doubt I’ll be able to,” Eddie shrugged.

“Same here… just figured I’d offer,” Rebecca agreed. They shared a small smile.

It was early morning when the construction workers arrived and slowly but surely an increasing amount showed up. Eddie thought he’d have the best shot by the bathroom and he was right. He easily grabbed a worker’s radio off of his belt that he’d taken off and soon they were in contact with Dustin.

“Holy shit, Eddie! Are you okay?” Dustin’s voice asked. Eddie and Rebecca both let out a relieved sigh and Eddie balled his fist in celebration.

“No, no, man, I’m pretty damn far from okay,” Eddie said with a shakey voice into the radio and a hand in his face.

“What about my sister, is she there with you?” Steve’s voice demanded.

“I’m here, Steve, don’t worry,” Rebecca said into the radio.

“Where are you?” Dustin asked frantically.

“Skull Rock, you know it?” Eddie said.

“Yeah, uh, near Cornwallis and—,” Dustin began and Steve finished.

“And Garrett. Yeah, I know the way,” Steve said over the speaker.

“Hold tight. We’re coming. We’re coming,” Dustin assured in a determined voice. Eddie nodded against the radio with his eyes closed in hope and he hung his head.

“It’s going to be okay,” Rebecca assured Eddie with a pat on his shoulder. Eddie nodded and put his hand over hers.

With every rustle in the woods, Rebecca and Eddie responded with hope, but that got dull after a few moments.

“Very Peter Pan-esque, you know. With the lake, Skull Rock, running away with the leader of the misfits,” Rebecca teased with a small smile. “Aside from the whole dead friends and being wanted for murder thing, this is quite an adventure.”

“You know, that thought did occur to me. Means I’m Peter Pan, right? Bet you I can climb up there faster than you,” Eddie smiled devilishly.

“Are you five?” Rebecca grinned at him.

Eddie grinned and mimicked Peter’s craw from the movie in a normal volume to not draw attention to them. Eddie gestured for Rebecca to follow him and the pair climbed up onto the rock with Eddie leading her. Once they reached the large apex, Eddie sat down cross-legged in the middle and beckoned her with his hand. Rebecca smiled and sat next to him carefully and looked out over the scenery. They were reasonably high up and could see the majority of the water and surrounding shore without seeing the construction site below them. She hadn’t realized how far inland they had gone from Lover’s Lake, but she could make out its shape from where she was. Sunshine from midday into early afternoon cut through the various clouds in the sky and illuminated the land before her in a way that made the foliage dream-like. The water that was so intimidating last night now glittered in the sunlight and was accented by the surrounding trees that had become lush and green with springtime approaching.

“Wow…” Rebecca said with an impressed smile. She never knew something so beautiful existed in her small town.

“It’s a pretty nice view,” Eddie said while looking at Rebecca with a soft smile.

“I get why you wanted to race me up here, it’s incredible,” Rebecca chuckled as she drank in more of the beautiful scene before her.

“Oh, yeah. I won that race, didn’t I?” Eddie concluded. “What’s my prize?”

Rebecca smirked and raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you want?”

“Well, since I’m Peter Pan… A kiss,” Eddie said confidently with a cheeky grin.

“A…. A what? From-from what? Who?” Rebecca stammered with her cheeks feeling red hot. Eddie’s grin only got wider as she fumbled with her words and he laughed heartily.

“…Skull rock! In your face,” Steve’s voice grew louder from behind them. Eddie’s laugh dropped and he and Rebecca whipped their heads in the direction the sound was coming from. They started to climb down from the rock with Rebecca’s blushing face quickly forgotten.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Dustin spoke from behind Steve.

“Yeah, yeah. Even with it staring you in the face, you can’t admit it. You just can’t admit you’re wrong, you little butthead,” Steve said. Eddie and Rebecca landed on the ground behind Steve and Dustin.

“I concur. You, Dustin Henderson, are a total butthead,” Eddie said with a slightly annoyed tone and a slight glance at Rebecca.

“Jesus, we thought you were a goner, man…” Dustin said and he went in to hug Eddie.

Steve’s attention turned to his sister and he approached her with arms outstretched. Rebecca accepted his hug gently and tried not to cry at seeing her brother.

“I brought you a change of clothes if you want,” Steve said to her when they separated.

“Thanks. I’m not changing in the woods and I know the second I go to change, the cops are going to find us because that has been my sort of luck these past three days, so I’ll just stick with this for now. Besides, I took a dip in the lake last night and Chrissy’s blood is off of me now, so at least there’s that,” Rebecca told him. He smiled slightly at her and his eyes held sadness.

“What happened to you guys?” Max asked and handed Eddie and Rebecca their respective bags of food. The pair sat down and started to eat whatever they could find in the bags. Rebecca and Eddie took turns recapping the enemy’s from last night. When one couldn’t say any more, the other picked up the story.

“When we got to shore, we tried calling you guys, but the walkie was busted, man. Drenched,” Eddie said after taking a drink of water.

Rebecca nodded and continued as Eddie ate, “So we came up here and did the thing that we do now, apparently… We hid.”

Eddie and Rebecca shared a sarcastic smile and the group in front of them appeared to be questioning the pair’s sanity.

“Do you know what time this was? The attack?” Nancy asked.

“Oh, yeah, I know exactly what time it was. The walkie wasn’t the only thing that got soaked,” Eddie said and tossed Nancy his watch.

Nancy caught the watch and nodded as she looked at the time. “9:27…”

“Same time our flashlights went kablooey,” Robin confirmed.

“Which means what, exactly?” Steve asked.

“That that surge of energy was Vecna attacking Patrick,” Nancy concluded.

“Well, we’re one step closer, we know how Vecna attacks,” Robin stated.

Rebecca looked past the group to where Dustin was pacing back and forth incessantly and gestures to Eddie with her head flicked towards the boy as Max suggested sneaking into Vecna’s lair in the Upside Down and killing him.

Eddie didn’t seem to notice as he was involved now in listing different ways to kill Vecna.

“A bullet should work in him, right?” Eddie suggested.

“I say we chop his head off,” Lucas suggested.

“We can’t do that. If we do that then there’s no way to prove Eddie’s innocence. We need to pull Vecna from the upside down and make him confess to killing Chrissy,” Rebecca said firmly. Steve looked at her with sympathy and she realized the rest of the group was looking at her the same way.

“We can’t risk that,” Robin said after a moment.

“If we bring Vecna into our world we have no idea what he’s capable of. And he’s after Max. We have to find another way to prove Eddie’s innocence,” Lucas added.

“You said the Upside Down is a parallel universe of sorts. So if he’s a scary dark wizard monster thing in the Upside Down, what is he here? A regular guy?” Rebecca asked. “He can’t be worse here than he is there.”

“Trust us, he can be,” Steve said.

“But… what about Chrissy? What about Patrick? Don’t they deserve justice? And Eddie doesn’t deserve to be blamed for this. There has to be a way to get Vecna to confess and prove Eddie’s not guilty,” Rebecca argued. Eddie stood up to meet her eye level and just as he was about to speak, Dustin bellowed into the sky, interrupting all of them and took a step forward.

“Bada… bada… boom,” Dustin said with a purposeful stare and finger pointed at Steve.

Steve wordlessly shrugged and held a blank stare at Dustin.

“I was right. Skull rock was North,” Dustin said and Steve’s jaw dropped with his arms crossed.

“Seriously? You’re serious?” Steve began insistently.

Dustin nodded with a grin, “Mm-hm.”

Steve continued, gesturing to the boulder behind them, “This is skull rock, okay? You are totally, absolutely, 100% wrong. Right now!”

“Yes. And no,” Dustin began.

“Oh my god,” Steve sighed with an eye roll.

All eyes were now focused on Dustin, who explained, “This compass worked correctly when we left the Wheelers’. It was correct when we got in the car on Curly, but it started to slip the farther east we went. Now? It’s WAY off. When I was leading us here, I wasn’t wrong, the compass was.”

“So you’re using faulty equipment. You’re still wrong!” Steve insisted. Rebecca looked at him with a quizzical smirk and her attention came back to Dustin, who was now explaining how his compass was affected by an electromagnetic field .

“But we’re nowhere near the lab,” Nancy reasoned.

“What if there’s another gate? A hate that we don’t know about?” Dustin posited.

“A gate?” Rebecca asked.

“To the Upside Down,” Dustin said. “It’d have to be smaller, way less powerful.”

“How? Why?” Rebecca asked him.

“No idea. All I know is that something is causing this disturbance and the last time we’ve seen anything like it, it was a gate,” Dustin said. “And I hope it is because then we’d have a way to Vecna and a shot at freeing Mac from this curse and proving Eddie’s innocence.”

“You mentioned the attacks had a surge of energy, what if it’s just left over from that?” Rebecca suggested.

Dustin thought for a moment and he looked at her with a pondering gaze. “The energy that would be required to leave such a lasting effect on something such as a compass would have had to be incredible.”

“Water can diffuse the field’s electrons, though, right? What if it stemmed from the lake and it’s just taking more time to diffuse because of the water?” Rebecca suggested.

“Are you saying that there’s possibly a gate inside of Lover’s Lake?” Dustin asked. Rebecca shrugged.

“Patrick was in the water when he was attacked…” she told him.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s go,” Dustin said and began to walk away.

“Hey, hey, where are you going? Eddie’s still a wanted man, we can’t just go for a hike in the woods!” Steve reasoned.

Rebecca and Dustin looked at Eddie, who was crouched down.

“What say you, Eddie the Banished?” Dustin asked. All eyes turned to Eddie, whose gaze was an expression that Rebecca couldn’t read.

“I say you’re asking me to follow you into Mordor, which… If I’m totally straight with you, I think is a really bad idea. But, uh, the Shire… the Shire is burning,” Eddie said and he looked up briefly at Rebecca before fully straightening himself up and looking back at Dustin. “So Mordor it is.”

Dustin grinned happily and jumped up and down at Eddie’s agreement and the group set off into the woods to follow Dustin’s compass.

“What is Mordor?” Steve asked under his breath.

“It’s a mythical land from The Lord of the Rings books. Eddie told me about them,” Rebecca told him, recalling one of their conversations about books and music they liked.

“Good grief,” Steve grumbled.

They trekked through the woods following Dustin’s compass and Eddie made every effort to help Rebecca over logs and rocks, to Steve’s annoyance. Rebecca was grateful for the help because even though she had eaten some, her legs were ready to give way underneath her.

It was well into the dark of night when Dustin’s compass went haywire.

“Something’s happening…” Dustin said excitedly and rushed toward where the compass was pointing him.

“Dustin, can you slow down? Dustin!” Eddie called after him like an annoyed older brother. Rebecca smiled at Eddie’s protectiveness of his friend.

“I think we’re getting close!” Dustin called to the rest of the group with his head turned back and walking forward.

“Hey! Watch your step, big guy,” Eddie said as he gripped onto Dustin’s backpack to prevent him from stepping into the lake.

“Oh, man…” Steve groaned. “Becca was right. You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

“This is confounding,” Dustin breathed out.

“Whenever the Demogorgon attacked, it always left an opening. Maybe Vecna’s the same way?” Nancy suggested.

“Only one way to find out for sure,” Steve said.

The group found the abandoned boat that Eddie used to try and escape Jason and Patrick the night prior, and both Steve and Eddie got to work settling it into the water for boarding. After a small amount of squabbling from the two boys, Eddie stood in the boat and helped Robin onto it. Dustin attempted to get on, but Eddie stopped him.

“Hey, you trying to sink us? This thing holds three people tops, okay?” Eddie reasoned.

“Okay. We’ll stay here with Max and keep an eye out for trouble.” Nancy said.

“No way, I’m coming, too,” Rebecca protested and tried to get in the boat but both Eddie and Steve stopped her.

“It’s my god damn theory!” Dustin protested.

“You heard Nance,” Robin said.

“Who put her in charge?!” Rebecca asked.

“I did,” Steve said. “And you’re going to stay here.”

“Sorry, Wendy,” Eddie said with a shrug.

“No, I am coming with you. I’m either going to swim or be in this boat but if there is a gate down there, I’m going to be there with you to find it and you absolutely cannot stop me, Steven Adam Harrington,” Rebecca declared firmly.

“She’s in charge,” Dustin smirked and handed her the compass. Rebecca held up the compass in her hand with a flat line for lips and raised brows.

“I swear to god. No, she’s not. I am,” Steve said with an exasperated sigh and snatched the compass from her hand. You are NOT coming. No complaints. Stay on this shore and out of trouble. When we find it, we’ll come up with a plan and strategize, okay?! Stay. Here,” Steve seethed. Rebecca had never seen him so angry or protective or whatever he was. She stepped back and crossed her arms as the boat took off with Steve, Eddie, and Robin. Lucas kept a lookout with his binoculars as the rest of them waited for a sign.

“Guys, what’s going on?” Dustin asked into the radio after Lucas worried that they had stopped. “Come on guys, talk to me, what’s going on?”

“Uh, Dustin, your compass has gone from wonky to wonky with a capital ‘aah!’,” Robin’s voice said over the other end.

Rebecca watched as her brother stood up and started to take his shirt off.

“Ugh, when did Steve get to hairy?” Lucas complained.

“Right? I keep telling him he needs to tame that jungle, but he claims the ladies dig it,” Dustin added.

“Let me see that,” Nancy said and pulled the binoculars out of Lucas’ grasp.

“Me next,” Max said with a small grin.

Rebecca’s face fell in disgust at Nancy and Max ogling her brother and made a sound partway between “ew”, “ugh”, and “blech”. She watched as Steve dove expertly into the lake water. He had always been a strong swimmer, but watching him disappear into the depths made her worry and remember how terrified she was when she did the same.

“You guys realize that if there’s a gate down there… it’s technically a water gate,” Dustin said after a moment. He grinned widely at Lucas and Max, who looked at him in mild disgust. “Watergate!” Dustin clarified with a childish, high-pitched chuckle.

“I’ve heard nearly all of Eddie’s jokes over the past 72 hours and nothing was as awful as that, Dustin,” Rebecca groaned with her head in her hand.

“Jesus Christ,” Nancy groaned. “How long is Steve going to be under there?”

“His record is two and a half minutes underwater, so I’ll give him until then,” Rebecca assured as the air thickened around them.

“Come on, Steve…” Nancy muttered worriedly. Rebecca always knew that Steve was never over Nancy even though she was miles ahead of him in maturity, and she never thought that Nancy would still be stuck on him after their breakup, but looking at her now and how worried she was, there had to be more there than just friendship.

Suddenly, the sound of radios clattering and voices yelling invaded the silence. The five of them looked over and saw flashing police lights and flashlights.

“Oh shit! Get down!” Rebecca said and flattened herself against the ground next to Lucas.

“It was on this shoreline!” a male voice yelled.

“Becca you are a god damn Einstein, Steve fo—“ Robin’s voice blared over the radio but was quickly shut off by Dustin.

“Cops,” Max determined with a whisper.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Dustin swore.

“They’re going to find us. Our story is that you guys just happened to find me wandering along the shoreline, okay?” Rebecca thought aloud.

“That doesn’t make any sense, why were WE out here?!” Mad spat.

“I don’t know, midnight swim?!” Rebecca spat back. “You just can’t let in that you’ve known where I was or you’ll all be in huge trouble!”

“Okay, we got it,” Nancy said as the radios got nearer.

“Shit they’re heading towards the shore. Follow my lead,” Mac said and got up. She then yelled, “Hey! Officers, over here, I found Rebecca Harrington!”

Rebecca rolled over and pretended to be unconscious to help Max come up with a story before they could be talked to individually.

“She’s still breathing, she’s alive. Get a medic. What the hell were you kids doing out here anyway?” Officer Powell said as he placed a hand on Rebecca’s neck to check her pulse.

“We were helping her brother, Steve, he’s been worried sick trying to find her,” Max said.

“Okay, well I think it’s best that you kids come with us. We’ll take care of her,” Powell said.

“I just think she’d really want a familiar face when she wakes up given what she’s been through,” Nancy said. “She and I are pretty close so I’d like to stay by her.”

“Nancy, is that you?” Rebecca grogged out.

“I’m here, Becca,” Nancy said in a soft voice and put her dainty hand on Rebecca’s as Rebecca stirred and sat up.

“What’s going on?” Rebecca asked weakly. She wanted to say she was a very good actress, but she truthfully felt awful. She could only imagine how Eddie must be feeling.

“We’re taking you to the hospital, honey,” an EMT said.

“I don’t want to be away from Nancy,” Rebecca said with tears in her eyes. “I’ve been lost, please don’t take me away from her.”

“Um… okay, Nancy can come,” Powell ceded. Rebecca knew he was a sucker for tears.

“Well, the thing is, I’m in charge of Dustin, Max, and Lucas… I’m kind of babysitting right now,” Nancy said with a small grin.

“Okay fine. We’ll go to the hospital and once Miss Harrington is discharged, I need a statement from all of you,” Officer Powell sighed.

After what felt like hours of medical testing and probing, Rebecca was discharged and the five were escorted by police to the Wheelers’ house where Dustin’s mother, Lucas’ parents and sister, and Nancy’s parents were gathered.

Rebecca noticed an additional car outside and Jason was stood with his normally neat hair slightly disheveled and looking in hope at the police car that was pulling up. Rebecca expected to feel overjoyed as she reunited with Jason, but the feeling fell slightly flat. She was happy to see him, of course, but the overwhelming feeling of relief that she felt when she saw Steve wasn’t there for Jason. She was probably just tired.

“Becca, baby, oh my god,” Jason breathed out and ran to embrace her. “I was so worried…”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Rebecca assured him as he held her close to him.

“No, baby, you’re not okay, but I can help you,” Jason told her with his hands on her face. “I can see it in your eyes, you’re not okay. And who would be after what you’ve been through? It’s okay, I’m here.” Rebecca wanted to be comforted by his words, but she mostly just wanted to get back to the lake to make sure Steve made it out and what their next move was for defeating Vecna.

“Thank you…” Rebecca whimpered out.

Rebecca and Jason made their way inside the Wheelers’ house where Max, Dustin, Lucas, and Nancy were all questioned by the police.

“You can sit up in my room. I’ll be up when I’m done, okay?” Nancy said and gently squeezed Rebecca’s hand. Jason took her up to Nancy’s room and the pair of them sat on the floor.

“I don’t know if you know this, but… Chrissy, she… We had her funeral yesterday…” Jason said delicately and placed a hand on her back.

Rebecca’s eyes went wide and they started to well up with tears. “Her funeral?”

“She was killed a few days ago. By that freak, Munson,” Jason said through gritted teeth. “He took Patrick from us, too.”

“No,” Rebecca whimpered and held her face in her hands as she cried. She knew this information, she watched it happen. But hearing it from Jason and hearing how raw his emotion was made her feel like she was hearing this for the first time and truly starting to process the death of her dear friends.

“I’m so sorry, Becca… I know she was like a sister to you. They were our family,” Jason said and he held her close to him as she cried. “But we’re going to stop him. I understand if you’re not up for joining us, but the whole town is on your side, babe. We’re going to find that cult leader Eddie and make him pay. For Chrissy. For Patrick. And for you. I know he hurt you, and I can’t imagine the kind of pain you’re in, but believe me: we’re going to put an end to him. Him and the devil. I promise. You’ll never have to be scared again.”

Rebecca’s face dropped in horror at his words. Jason’s mind has been twisted by grief and tabloids’ talk of Satanism. She thought back to Eddie’s scared expression and broken voice at this very scenario imagined. Her gut twisted and contorted in a way that made her want to puke all over Jason. She felt sorry for him, but she was mostly afraid of what he’d do if he found Eddie.

“Hey, so we can’t get ahold of Steve. He must be searching real hard for you. Do you have a place you can stay tonight?” an officer asked Rebecca from the doorway.

“She’ll stay with me,” Jason said. “I can keep her safe.”

“Actually, I.. It’s just that Nancy already offered and I told her I would and she went through all this trouble to make room for me… and I don’t want to get in your way, Jay,” Rebecca said and squeezed Jason’s hand gently. “Especially after you’ve offered to defend me.”

She felt sick saying those words, but she had to convince him to let her stay with Nancy. She couldn’t deal with breaking up with him right now, so she had to work the other way.

Jason’s face softened and he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear for her. “Whatever makes you feel comfortable.”

With a quick kiss to her cheek and a confession of his love, Jason left. For the first time since Chrissy’s death, Rebecca was alone. And she felt it. She felt the emptiness of the space beside her and the pit in her heart where the memories of Chrissy resided and the memories of the Jason she once tried to love faded to. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. When she did, the first image to pop in her mind was none other than Eddie asking her for a kiss with a cocky grin. She felt her face heat up at the thought, but allowed herself to think it, she was too tired to fight. The thought of that moment uninterrupted, would she have let him? Would she have enjoyed it? She wondered what his lips felt like. She knew the roughness of his hands and the warmth of his chest from the few times they’ve embraced, and she wondered what he would feel like in other places. She felt guilty for thinking about this so soon after Chrissy’s demise, but she honestly just let her mind wander. It wandered to the lost boy that found her and helped her get through these horrible last few days and the support he provided. In their short time together, Rebecca learned all about him. His hopes, his secrets, and some of his dreams. And she liked him. She really liked him. She… loved him?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Dustin, Lucas, and Erica bursting into Nancy’s room with a light-up toy.

“What the hell…” Rebecca asked in a low voice.

Steve, Robin and Eddie went through Watergate and they’re trying to get out. Help us put the lights in this,” Dustin said frantically.

Rebecca sprung up and helped put the lights on the board. Frantically, Lucas brought the cord and plugged it in at the nearest free plug and the lights came on brightly.

“Okay you guys seeing this?” Dustin bellowed.

“They can hear us?” Rebecca asked. The toy’s bulbs raised and lowered in intensity a few times.

“Holy shit!” Erica cheered as Dustin cackled victoriously.

“We’re not going to move it, but we’re going to unplug it, okay? Stand by!” Dustin yelled again. He turned to Lucas and told him, “Yank it.”

Lucas unplugged the cord and the lights went out. After Dustin called for them to try again, the word “Hi” lit on the board.

“That worked!!” Dustin cheered.

The word “stuck” then appeared and the four of them started talking.

“Okay, they’re stuck in the Upside Down,” Lucas concluded.

“Okay.. okay, you can’t get back through Watergate?” Dustin asked loudly.

After a moment, the word “No.” appeared and Rebecca could hear Steve’s expression in the words she was sure he was writing. Other letters started appearing and Dustin read them as they lit up.

“Guar..? Guard, oh guarded,” Dustin said. “We have a theory that can help with that. We think that there’s a gate at every murder site.”

The lights lit up a question mark.

“Oh my god, just go to Eddie’s house, we will meet you there!” Rebecca yelled.

The next letters that appeared next were “OK” and the four of them cheered.

“Okay, we have to get to Eddie’s…” Dustin said. “And grab Nancy and Max. You guys go out the window and we’ll meet you down there with our bikes.”

“I’m so glad I’m wearing pants now,” Rebecca said to herself and she and Lucas shimmied down the side of the house’s makeshift fire escape of metal bars against the brick. It wasn’t the most efficient way, but it worked and shortly after grabbing the bikes, the five were off to Eddie’s trailer.

#eddie x oc

1 note · View note