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sillyguyhotline · 3 years

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17. “How is any of this ok?” with Joe and Sara maybe?

dude im gonna be completely honest i havent written anything in like a month so i think the quality isnt gonna be great but here goes nothing

God, Sara missed the feeling of home.

Every semblance of familiarity and comfort she’d once found in the town she’d grown up in, the house she’d spent her childhood running through, now felt chillingly foreign.

Perhaps it was the heavy burden of knowledge weighing fresh upon her shoulders: ASUNARO’s corruption seemed now to peer slyly around every corner, no matter where she went. She still didn’t know how much of the town had rotted away under its grasp, how much of the town its poison had pervaded… but she was probably better off not knowing.

Whatever was left of Midori, that miserable mix of pulsing blood and electronic emotion, had been ground to bits inside that coffin… but Sara couldn’t ignore the creeping fear that his burning, ever-present gaze would appear out of nowhere and terrorize her again.

But he wouldn’t. The death game was over, and they’d promised they would never hurt her or any of her loved ones again.

Most of the loved ones she still encountered day-to-day, gruesomely blood splattered and sitting like corpses propped up hastily in a corner, would be safe no matter if ASUNARO was fresh on her tail or a thousand miles away. What a cruel price to pay for safety, to never be hurt again.

They still lived on if Sara closed her eyes tight enough, if she listened to the twisting words of the hallucinations and let them convince her she was monstrous. But the second she dared to open her eyes, she knew they’d be dead again. Life worked in terrible ways, and that was all there was to it.

Joe’s house had always been a second home to her, ever since the two of them became friends. Joe was the farthest cry from Sara in terms of social interactions- it had taken at least 3 months for Sara to trust Joe enough to invite him over, but Joe had insisted she hang out at his house the very same day they became friendly enough to exchange more than a sentence with each other.

There was a certain sort of comfort to the warmth of his house, the constant scent of cooking food pervading the air and the little trinkets scattered in every corner. No surface of his house went without decoration, in its silly little way. It was full of pictures, too, some carefully framed and some dangling from the wall by pushpins, but Sara got the sense that none of the photos went unloved. Most of them were occupied by an orange-haired man, often carrying a younger Joe (back when he was still sporting that atrocious crew cut). Sara always assumed it was his dad, but thought it would be impolite to ask… particularly when the weeks stretched on and Sara had yet to meet that mysterious orange-haired man.

Eventually, pictures of Sara began to join the collage on the wall- pictures taken as she butchered yet another pop song during karaoke, or when they went out to get food, or when she mistakenly sat down on a traffic cone during gym (after many protests from Sara, he took that one down). As silly as the pictures were, and as obvious as it was that Joe had waited for the most embarrassing moments to take them, it was sort of sweet in a way.

Joe’s mother was always kind to her, though there was a constant weariness in her eyes that Sara always felt a bit uneasy about questioning. Sometimes she’d let the two of them cook things in the kitchen, but more often than not they’d go up to Joe’s room and screw around in there, with video games or music or the 50 times Joe tried to persuade Sara to climb out the window and sit on the roof with him before she finally agreed.

As rare as it was for Sara to agree to sit on the roof, it was even rarer for Joe to agree to study with her, much to Sara’s chagrin. Joe had always walked a fine line between passing and failing, but Sara had to admit he walked it well. When she did manage to convince him to study, though (usually the day before final exams), they’d sit on the cushy couch in his living room and somehow manage to bother each other as much as possible while feigning concentration.

The couch hadn’t changed after several years- Sara could tell that much the minute she sat down on it and avoided the urge to break eye contact with Joe’s mother. It was still well-worn, a couch that likely should have been replaced at least a decade ago but had never really been disposed of. Loose threads were protruding from the cover, drawn out from years of visitors fidgeting with them.

Sara shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the slight motion making her sink deeper into the couch’s soft cushioning. She’d only spent one minute in the house and was already sweating, whether from the heat of the home or the thousand-yard stare of the woman sitting across from her.

Ryoko was there, too, sitting to Sara’s left and gazing listlessly at the well-trodden carpet beneath her feet. …Ryoko.

Sara cast a hesitant glance around the room, duly noting the photos covering the walls. Not a single one of hers had been taken down, but several more photos had appeared with Joe’s beaming face featuring prominently in them. Joe’s presence was always enough to fill a room even when he wasn’t speaking; it took a lot to fill in the gaps left by his absence.

God, she missed him.

The wind whistled against the window-screen; Sara had memorized the familiar creak of the wooden window frame being lifted up to welcome in the mild autumn air. Sara had always thought of autumn as a beginning- she loved summer as much as any other kid, but as the haze of the weather began to wind down she was quick to grow impatient and look forward to the school year, to being productive again. Joe had always disagreed with her.

“Fall is the literal death of fun,” he’d complained once, walking home with Sara after finishing the first week of school. “Couldn’t they have pushed back the first day of school by, like, another week? You think if we got enough people to sign a petition, they’d give us an extra week of summer?”

“Oh, come on, we both know even if you had an extra week of summer you’d just be complaining a week later,” Sara had teased back.

The death of fun. It certainly felt like that, Sara decided. She’d never feared the looming darkness of fall and winter quite so much before. But now, she supposed, there was no sunshine who’d weather it with her.

“Well… Sara?” Joe’s mother spoke up, voice hoarse with the sound of repressed tears in her throat. Sara recognized the sound all too well.

There was no resentment in the woman’s eyes when Sara made eye contact with her. No anger, no frustration, nor had there been any in her measured motions when she welcomed Sara into the home. It didn’t take any words for Sara to tell that there was no blame to be foisted upon her.

She was still Joe’s best friend.

“I’m sorry to have dragged you out here on such short notice.” The woman’s voice was weak. “I don’t know all the details of what happened, of course. Haven’t heard anything, aside from the little tidbits the police told me when I dropped by the station.”

Sara’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of the police, at the idea of them pleasantly answering her questions as though they weren’t just as complicit in that tragedy as ASUNARO had been.

“And…” the woman glanced down at her hands, toughened from a lifetime of working. “I know something terrible happened to you. The circles under your eyes are darker than midnight, I know it’s so selfish of me to be dragging you out here, but… I haven’t slept a wink for weeks. Been so worried about Joe, and about you too.”

She nodded in the direction of the black-haired girl who hadn’t spoken a word the entire time. “Ryoko’s been worried about the both of you, too. Your parents weren’t answering the door, so she went to me. I hope you’ll forgive the two of us for disturbing you, Sara, but… you have the answers the police won’t give us, don’t you?”

God, her gaze was piercing.

“...Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

It was taking everything in Sara’s power not to look at the vacant seat to her right. If Joe was there, he would have been laughing and lightening the mood, completing the circle that had been left so jarringly empty.

But they wouldn’t have been having this conversation if Joe was there.

Ms. Tazuna nodded slowly. “This means the world to me, Sara. Don’t forget that.”

Sara did her best to muster a smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

The woman gave another nod, eyes defocusing as though even now, she wasn’t quite sure why she was there. “Alright. Alright. Well, then…” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Guess I should get right to the point, yeah? Is he… is… how is he…?”

So she still hadn’t quite let go of that little thread of hope, even after seeing Sara return home safe and alive with no best friend in tow. Who was Sara to judge? When hope was the only thing to cling to, it only made sense to cling to it like a lifeline.

Sara twisted her hands, the same old nervous habit she’d had for years, and wondered briefly if she’d picked it up from Ms. Tazuna. How terrible it was, to carry the news that nobody, much less any mother, ever wanted to hear.

“I… I’m sorry, Ms. Tazuna. He didn’t make it out alive.”

Sara hadn’t expected the hush that immediately fell over the room. She’d expected immediate tears, the grieving cry of a mother in pain. Instead, the room became muffled, still as a painting captured in time.

Slowly, Ryoko looked up from her bitten-down fingers, eyes rimmed red already. Ryoko had always been an emotional person, the only person Sara knew who could fluctuate from full-on sobs to cheerful giggles in less than a minute. Sara was so unused to the look that was now filling her eyes- cold, solid misery. As though there were no tears in her eyes left to cry, no more tragedies to bemoan. Just a deep and horrified comprehension of just how many things in her life had gone wrong.

And, slowly, Ms. Tazuna began to cry.

Tears had become so uncomfortable for Sara to bear witness to. Was it selfish of her to look away? It couldn’t be, not when every raw sob reminded her of the art student seeing her first (and certainly not last) death, of the broken sibling openly weeping over apologies gone unspoken, of the unknowing siblings screaming their throats out with pleas for death so the other could survive.

Especially not now. Not when every tear rang in her mind as a reminder of cold tubes piercing her best friend’s chest, of his corpse slumping and falling in a pool of blood, because oh god he wasn’t supposed to have lost so much blood, how was he supposed to live without it, of the clickclickclickclickclicking rising in volume while her attempts to save him grew feebler and feebler.

Her hands were bloodstained, no matter how many times she tried to scrub them clean. Those dreadful hands of hers had failed her, failed Joe, failed the women sobbing openly in front of her.

She swallowed back the apologies that always rose in her throat as Ms. Tazuna rushed to sniffle back her tears.

“I… god, I… he’s really gone?”

Sara couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Please… please tell me it was a peaceful death. He didn’t… suffer too much, did he?”

The resounding wave of clicks flooded her mind. “It was as peaceful as I could make it. I… he smiled at me, right before he died. I’d… very much like to think that means he was happy when he died.”

“What happened?” Ryoko’s voice came out rough, the first of it Sara had heard in weeks. “Joe told me, after our date, that he was going to walk you home, and then neither of you showed up at school the next day. And now… it’s been three weeks? And Joe… Joe’s dead? What the hell happened, Sara?”

“God,” Sara mumbled, mesmerizing herself with the twisting motions of her own hands. “I’m not sure if you’d even believe me if I told you. I don’t even know if I believe what happened myself.”

“I’d believe anything.” The sentence was firm. “I just want to know what happened.”

Sara nodded wearily. The familiar weight of her bright orange ponytail was notably missing- the day after she’d escaped, she’d demanded the hairdresser cut her hair short and crisp. She shuddered every time she thought about the ponytail brushing against her neck as she spent each argument screaming and protesting for her life. Even worse was the memory of how carefully Joe had styled her hair, forsaking his usual clumsiness to braid every strand with a remarkable tenderness. She didn’t want to remember any of it- even though, as the locks went cascading to the floor, she was reminded starkly of Keiji’s bleach-stained trauma response.

“For some reason, something to do with the mafia, we were kidnapped. And pulled into a death game. There were twenty of us, including me and Joe. I- I’m not going to get into all the specifics. It’s going to make me sick to my stomach if I do. But… they made us play this sadistic fucking game to narrow down the competition. Based on cards. Joe drew a bad card, and… they executed him.” Something in Sara’s throat tightened as she finished speaking, and she fell silent.

“Just like that?” His mother’s voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “How… how’d they kill him?”

“I’d rather not say.” There came the gushing sound of blood pulsing through the tubes. “He didn’t suffer too long” - she hoped - “but it was a gruesome way to die. I don’t want to think about it, please understand.”

It took a moment for his mother to register the words and nod, face still painted with horror.

“Why… how did the two of you even end up there in the first place?” Ryoko spoke up again. “You said something about the mafia? How the hell are you two connected with the mafia?”

“I don’t know how I am,” Sara responded immediately. “It must be something with my family. I couldn’t control any of this, I swear, but… Joe wasn’t meant to end up there at all.”

Ryoko paused. “He… he wasn’t meant to end up there?”

Sara swallowed back the lump in her throat. “The game… it was something that was being prepared for ages. There weren’t just a few ragtag kidnappers behind it, there was an entire organization. Even the police were involved. They ran AI tests, hundreds if not thousands of them, trying to calculate who’d be the most likely to win. And… when all the numbers came back, the person most likely to win… was me.”

She spread her arms wide, baring her sins and her cruelties to the world, and in that moment felt distinctly like the angel of death Keiji had branded her to be.

“They needed something to drag me down, I guess. Make the odds more balanced. So they dragged Joe into this fucking mess. I guess they thought that him being there would keep me steady enough to make everything fair.” A cold hand, dripping with tendrils of phantom blood, caressed her chin with a lethal grip. “...They were right.”

Ryoko’s gaze had gone cold again. “So Joe died just because you cared about him? What the fuck kind of death sentence is that?”

Sara shook her head numbly.

“Why did it have to be him?” The heartbreak in Ryoko’s voice was clearer than day. “So many people love you, Sara, why did it have to be him? Hell, I’m your best friend too, aren’t I? Why couldn’t it have been me? I’m a much worse person than Joe ever was, I deserved to be in his place way more. Couldn’t they have killed me instead?”

Sara winced at the growing desperation in her best friend’s voice, the raw crack she knew all too well. It should have been me, it should have been me, it should have been me. Sara could have almost fooled herself into seeing a crisp aquamarine when Ryoko’s hair flashed into the light.

“Ryoko… it could have been.”

The girl fell silent.

“They had files on you too. They knew how close we were, they knew how much you meant to me… but Joe was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they fucking killed him for it.”

Oh, how she wished she could go back to that balmy early-autumn night, see the smile on Joe’s face and listen to his lighthearted laughter again. The desire to keep one’s friend safe had become a crime deserving of a death sentence.

Ryoko’s eyes remained locked to Sara’s, devoid of any dullness. In the look they exchanged was a deep, sinking understanding, one that had nauseated Sara to the core the first time the realization struck her.

It was by no crafty strategy that Joe had died instead of Ryoko, no favoritism biased against the kindest person either of them would ever know. It was a simple, terrible twist of fate. Ryoko could have taken his place had she done something as inconsequential as offering to walk Sara home instead.

But she hadn’t.

It took everything in Sara’s power to avoid wondering what would’ve changed if she had.

“How is any of this okay?” Ryoko broke the silence weakly. “They killed him- they could have killed me, too. He was seventeen. Seventeen. How did anybody let this happen? How did this happen, Sara?”

“I- I don’t know.” Ryoko’s wrath was simmering; even though Sara knew truly that she wasn’t the subject of the anger, she still felt scalded. “I miss him so much, Ryoko. I watched him die, and nothing in my power let me save him. I miss him, Ryoko, I miss him every waking minute of every day. We were supposed to escape together and get out safe and pretend this never happened, but…” the tears were beginning to well up again. She couldn’t bear the thought of breaking down in front of anyone, especially not over him.

“I’m going to go make some coffee,” his mother interrupted suddenly. She’d been noticeably quiet, but the still-fresh streaks of tears painted down her cheeks told the story she didn’t need to vocalize. “Some coffee, and some snacks. And we’ll keep talking from there, alright? Do you guys have your phones?”

The two girls nodded uneasily.

“Please… find any pictures you have of him. I want to make this wall as bright as possible.”

Without any other words, she hurried out of the room, and it fell to silence once more. Outside the window, the cool autumn breeze began to stir the leaves in the air, gusting forward to brush against Sara’s cheek just as the hallucination had done mere minutes ago.

And the Tazuna household began to feel more like home again.

#is this worth publishing to ao3 #idk #gonna put it in the tags im feelin risky tonight #yttd #joe tazuna #sara chidouin #ryoko hirose #joesara #i guess #i just tag anything joesara at this point even if it's not outright romantic #idc whether it's romantic or platonic honestly #theyre them #and thats all that matters

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ephemerlskies · 4 years

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the lighthouse | jjk

⇢ pairing: reader x jungkook

⇢ genre: one shot, fluff (what's new), strangers to "lovers", mutual pining, so much sap you're gonna have to shower after reading this, ANGST, jungkook is a literary scholar (?) of sorts

⇢ word count: 12k

⇢ warnings: as stated before, it's Cheesy with a capital C, lots of introspection, brief mentions of death, explicit language, mommy issues, (((major plot twist)))

⇢ summary: you and jungkook had one thing in common: you were both lost souls stagnant in the search of some fulfillment. the one of many differences was that your story had been written on your sleeves, while jungkook’s was a story needed to be unriddled. was this going to be another disappointing chapter in the book of unattainable desires or could your encounter with the mysterious man who lived in the lighthouse lead to something much more?

a/n: i'm super proud of how this turned out even though it ripped my heart out of my chest... this was probably my favorite fic to write and ahh im so happy to release it!!!! i hope you lovely little angels enjoy!! :) <3

What makes us human? This question posed by your philosophy teacher had been stalking your thoughts hours after class had ended. As the rain padded against your umbrella, you piled in a few answers to this question.

What makes us human? A question that would seemingly have a clear cut answer, but when you got down to it, there was no distinct characteristic that differentiates humans from other animals. It was easy to say something such as how we have complex linguistics or industrialized civilization, but that is to discredit how the packs of wolves howl to each other, the birds sing from tree to tree, the beavers diligently construct their dams, or the dirt cities in which ants build their own societies not much different than humans.

You pondered the idea that we love so deeply, even when it is often unreturned, but there is no denying the way a mother bear strikes down any and all enemies to protect her baby cub is anything other than true love.

So, what makes us human? You sat on a bench placed on the sidelines where you could witness small scenes of the lives of passing strangers. This sonder might be what makes us human. The knowledge that each person lives and loves and cries and fears and speaks and dies in ways with which you will never begin to familiarize. Life continues on around you despite how unimportant it may seem to the rest.

Does a lion waste any moment of his time wondering how the deer had found its way to the shallow pond, whilst preparing to strike? Of course not.

You watched a couple clinging onto each other and wondered where they met. You then were captured in the peace of an old woman prodding around in the grass with her golden retriever; perhaps it was her last companion. Then, your eyes drifted towards the two boys pushing each other over but with the gentleness one could only assume that was out of friendship or perhaps brotherhood.

And then you saw him.

Gentle fingers tracing the stacks of magazines lined in a perfect column; an arm that disappeared into the sleeve of his dark, wool coat. A tweed newsboy hat sheltering his eyes, and deep chestnut Oxford shoes stepping lightly, nearing a tiptoe, between the cracks of each cement plate, weathered by the infinite other shoes that tread on those very grounds. A body so magnetizing and moving as if it were a secret, and you couldn’t imagine why no one else had been ingested by the enigma that is this man. You longed for him to reveal these secrets that hid underneath his hat and coat, though if he wouldn’t, which he most likely wouldn’t, you had no problem with seeking them out yourself.

In a city filled with young souls draped in modern streetwear, jeans, bright colors, and converse or Dr. Martens or perhaps high heels, catching this needle in the haystack plugged into every synapse of wonderment. The muted tones of his clothing gleamed the brightest out of the sea of strangers.

This is what made you human. Your desire to know everything that lies barely beyond your wingspan. Everything you could hold was close to nothing in meaning, and everything your arms could not reach was always all you could ever want. The rise of your legs, the way you replicated his every movement, running your fingers along the stack of magazines, fastidious prancing in the spaces between the cracks, and your subtle pursuit of the man just out of reach was what made you human.

Bodies bustling through your path failed to untether you from this chase. It felt far beyond your power to stop yourself from the rising excitement and allure in your chest that pulled you towards him. The man was quick and swift to dodge oncoming bystanders, however your eyes became a missile fixed on a target.

The unexpected turn he took had you floundering for you had been trapped behind an older lady and a couple walking side by side. Sadly, your memorization of the streets and landmarks had been admisal, so you found yourself in uncharted territory. Each road sign and corner store had been displayed like a foreign language, and you mentally cursed yourself for letting your silly lust for learning what shouldn’t be learned lead you into this difficult position.

You stood defeated, the man had evaded your fragile trail behind him with ease. You lost him, or maybe he got away.

It was still midday, prompting you to make an end of this means. Your eyes discovered the coast set along the edge of the town, and though this was the furthest you had ever gone, you dared to go further. This mishap of yours granted you the opportunity to introduce yourself to the shore, and the waves have always delighted your interest. So, you found it just to walk down to the sand. The sound of the water pressing into the wet sand was calming; it was something you could find yourself getting used to. Luck presented itself kindly, giving you a moment unencumbered by the rain that had ceased not long after you stepped foot on the beach.

You took this time to be with yourself and sort out all the problems that have been worrying your mind these past few weeks. Your best friend, Chaeyoung, had an upcoming birthday that had snuck up on you before you had the chance to even think about getting her a card, let alone a gift or celebration. And you would be disappointed with yourself if you failed to outdo last year’s efforts. There was also the test in your Chemistry class scheduled only a day after her birthday, curtailing your plans of staying out late because there was no way you would allow for anything less than your very most on this exam. Then, there was the essay on what makes us human that you denied any chance of regaining priority to your list of worries, knowing it would gnaw at your mind until you forcibly shut it out.

And the man that willed you to seek him out, and that wore the title of his stories as if he intentionally wished to spark your wonder to learn them.

That should have been the last of your worries. It should have been.

The day began to fade into a warm, orange dusk. Skies once gloomy and grey now covered in blankets of clouds reflecting the sun’s gentle rays and you found yourself reunited with the calming feeling similar to when you first stepped on the beach.

Not long after registering how far you had traveled along the shore, you noticed a quaint lighthouse with a house-like structure at the base. The off-white stones cemented up until a red paneled roof covered it, tempting you to know what lies behind those walls.

It looked like it was about to rain again.

Are lighthouses closed off from the public?

There’s a house, there must be someone inside that could help me find my way home.

All these comments to yourself made to premise the conclusion of entrance into this lighthouse. As you approached the door, framed in oak lining and painted red, the clouds appeared heavy once again. A few drops of condensation was enough persuasion that what was about to be done was for the good of your well being. You pushed it open and a creak echoed around the room inside.

The walls were covered with stone bricks and there was one table in the center of the room. Other than that, this house was barren and if it weren’t for the second door that you guessed led to the lighthouse you would have called a car to take you home.

Your walk was pensive and mouse-like; there was some quality about this structure that made you feel like you weren’t alone and sudden movements would disrupt an established peace. Your hand turned the cold, gold-plated handle and pulled open the door, soon being met with a warm gust of air that engulfed you into the lighthouse.

This part of the building was exponentially more decorated than the room that preceded it. A staircase cemented into the sides of the lighthouse plastered with shelves upon shelves of books spiraled along the cylindrical walls, paired with dull lanterns that illuminated each level of railing had you drawn into its magnificence.

You stared up to what looked like a platform that held a place in which one would rest and look out into the ocean. There was no one in sight, and you assumed permission to climb up the staircase. Your eyes scanned each spine, creased and slightly warped from the moisture of the air, like they had been read over and over again. Your breath became heavy and your stare was focused on the books to ignore the dizziness settling in.

Reaching the top of the staircase came as a blessing, your lungs were close to catching fire. There were two armchairs, side by side, one fashioned a knitted blanket and the other was used as a table for five to seven or so novels, and the walls behind buried in high stacks of more books. There had to be at least seventy in the first half of piles you accounted for, and before you had the chance to snoop around the rest of the room you heard a voice coated with alarm behind you.

“What are you doing in here?” Your breath halted as you turned around, about to explain why you had let yourself into this building, however no amount of words could fully justify this invasive act.

You recognized the wool coat and the tweed hat now resting in his hand instead of on his head. His eyes were shrouded in a youthful innocence despite his attire that implied he was a sophisticate of some sort.

“Are you going to answer me or do I have to call the police?” The boom of his voice was chilling, sending shivers along your neck and chest.

“Sorry, I’m-” How could you possibly defend your intrusion without sounding juvenile or absolutely insane? “I was… It was raining and I just was walking on the beach so-”

“So, you decided breaking and entering was better than getting a little wet?” His barbed responses hurdled how you plaintively stuttered around excuses. Despite his efforts to seem menacing, you couldn't let go of his boyish facial features. It was absolutely astonishing to you that someone who looked young enough to attend your own college and handsome enough to garner quite a bit of attention had anything to do with this dingy, aged lighthouse.

“No, I was going to come in here to ask for directions. I’m lost.” The pitiful temperament of this comment was not intentional, but the man who now stood in front of you felt itched by it. He couldn't ignore how your legs trembled, partly from the cold but also because of his raised voice directed at you, and how that admittedly aroused some guilt.

“It’s fine. Just-” He sighed deeply, placing his hat on the side table adjacent to the left armchair, “You can just wait here until the rain stops. Though, I have to say it looks unrelenting at the moment.” The man’s attention was captured by how the heavy rain seemed to wage war against the raging tides. You caught a glimpse of a smile. The slightest upturn of the corner of his lips almost compelling you to reveal you had spotted him in the town earlier today, and that you found yourself enamoured with his every movement, and he was ironically the reason you were stuck here.

“Are you sure? I can go, I shouldn't have been here in the first place.” The words escaped from your mouth quickly as if they were trying to race each other to be spoken.

“No, I said it’s fine.” The suddenness of this offer hushed you. He then removed his wool coat, unveiling the clothes he wore beneath it. The burgundy crew neck sweater layered tastefully over a collared shirt was just as old fashioned as every other article of clothing he sported. How intriguing.

“I'm sorry.” Your muscles grew sore from suppressing how aggressively you would have been shaking from the cold. “Thank you.” Him granting you shelter gave you motive to keep the umbrella that would suffice to protect you from the rain under wraps. The option he presented was far more favorable.

“Sit down. Please, use this blanket.” He gestured towards the throw draped over the right armchair. His eyes avoided you as much as he could manage though you had this glow emulating from your wanting eyes and soft looking skin that crept to the corner of his vision too brightly to ignore. Consequently, this comment soothed both your body and mind for he unguarded a kindness that was hidden when he first spoke to you.

“My name is ___.” He was facing the window that displayed the sea, now thrashing and falling into itself, and without moving his head, his eyes drifted towards you.

“I know who you are.”

“Wh- How?” Maybe accepting an invite in a secluded lighthouse on the beach wasn’t the safest thing you could be doing on a Friday afternoon. Anxiety pioneered a place in your breathing, turning it rushed and choked.

Before your mind could theorize all the ways in which you could make an escape from this room or how quickly you could use your hidden umbrella as a weapon he said, “I noticed you following me in the town’s square earlier today.” You sighed, releasing the terror that pricked your lungs. If anything, it was he who should be afraid of you.

“I’m not a stalker!” That weak defense was all you could push from your throat before any well constructed explanations could be put forth.

His laugh, along with his cryptic gaze towards the waves, made you feel even worse about your actions.

“You were just so stunning and I wanted to know what kind of person still wears a newsboy hat without trying to make a statement.” Your lower lip tucked between your teeth stopped the nervous laugh about to spill and expressed worry that the more you tried to explain yourself, the more this man believed you should be charged for stalking not to mention trespassing.

“Stunning?”

“I mean, like, someone I’d want to meet.”

“What were you planning on doing once I stopped somewhere, or noticed you?” He questioned you only because he relished how you were scrambling to a proper defense. He knew you weren’t any threat to him, not many people were, however he enjoyed your chatter more than the silence that would have taken its place.

“I don't know, maybe just… introduce myself?” This sheepish, yet honest, reply had you drowning in humiliation, while the man before you seemed as if he were floating effortlessly along the surface.

“I’m Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook.” Relief replaced the worry that he would turn you away, leaving you to the hands of the storm outside. The fact that any other person would have done so led you to believe Jungkook held a lot more compassion than he let on. You held your hand to greet him, finding it only polite to execute this formality. His, however, remained folded behind his back, notably denting your ego as you retracted your hand quicker than you extended it.

“Okay.” You muttered to yourself in slight embarrassment from this trivial rejection. “So, do you live here or something?” Your question was first replied to with a breath of annoyance. Jungkook was kind enough to allow you a sanctuary from the rain, exemption from the intrusion and stalking, and now he found himself having to entertain you.

“Yeah, something like that.” All this disinterested answer did was persist your attempts to break his catatonic gaze. However, his reserve had been solidified steadily over the years, so this venture was going to be tough.

“I didn’t know you could live in a lighthouse?” Your inquiry was spoken with the hopes this would ignite a lasting conversation.

“It’s not a lighthouse, technically.” Jungkook’s affirmative tone flew right over your head, conjuring even more annoyance that oddly enticed him to continue responding to your dense questions.

“Well, it looks like a lighthouse. It’s shaped like a lighthouse. It’s on the beach, just like a lighthouse.” A chuckle joined the sigh of his breath and his head that shook at your shallow observations. Jungkook eventually turned around and made his way towards the stacks of books, trying to preoccupy himself from whatever this exchange was. “All signs point to this being a lighthouse.”

“Well, it’s not. Lighthouses are meant to send signals to the ships out at sea. This doesn't,” His curt response tickled your amusement, only encouraging you to further aggravate him. “Therefore, not a lighthouse.”

“Okay,” You sounded agreeable, but this was soon followed by a doubtful comment whispered just loud enough for Jungkook’s ear to catch it, “It’s a lighthouse.” He found his stoicism melting away due to your spiteful attitude and conniving giggle in the face of his frustration. You wanted to get a rise out of him, and he knew this, and you were doing a fine job at it.

“It’s not-” His voice elevated with excitement, but he soon tamed the defensiveness threatening to spill from his lips, “Do you want to go back out into the rain?”

“Okay, okay. Sorry.” Though, you sounded all but remorseful. The sly smirk resting on your face matched Jungkook’s satisfied expression, despite these smiles surfacing for different reasons. You couldn’t deny how humorous it was to distemper this man. How all the worries you laid out like the pebbles and seashells on this beach were washed away by the tides. Meanwhile, his grin provided little contribution in masking his enjoyment of your company and relentless curiosity.

You now sat in the right armchair, bundled in the blanket. It was not necessarily a thick blanket, but the chills once disturbing you had dwindled almost immediately. You were still entranced by Jungkook's movements. His hands were now occupied with a book from one of the stacks he’d been eyeing; the way he cradled the book like it was a newborn baby further revealed he had a somewhat protective attitude towards them.

“What are you reading?” His eyes remained between the pages and lines of the book, but his focus was yet again thieved by your incessant curiosity. Jungkook thought it irritating similarly to how one would find a cat disrupting their owner from work, annoying yet ever so endearing, and adorably distracting.

“I’m not reading, I’m being bothered by you.” His snark was meant to damage your brazen pestering, but unknown to him it merely fueled it.

“Boohoo.” No matter how elementary that retort was, you still managed to fever him and hold hostage his attention.

“I’m reading The Odyssey.” Jungkook surrendered to you, placing the book on his lap that was now sitting in the armchair next to yours. “Why do you ask so many questions?” His eyes laid on you the same way they laid on the sea, filled to the brim with fascination.

“I just wanted to know what you were reading.” Even when he expressed a clear indication that he was past your nonsense, it went unnoticed like the particles of dust flitting around the darkened room. This oblivion of yours prompted your next question. “Could you read it to me?”

His eyebrows furrowed at this request. Jungkook had already found himself exhausted by your persistence, and predicted ‘no’ would not be accepted as a viable answer. He just sighed and began to read aloud.

His soft voice somehow drowned out the sea’s commotion. The words flowed off his tongue as if he wrote the book himself; such poise for a young man lured you to immerse yourself in his narration and time grew more and more abstract.

After a bit, Jungkook paused to examine how you'd received his reading and he was pleased to find your chin resting in your palm and your eyes and ears fixed onto him as if he were reading the gospel. This made it difficult, impossible, to deny entry for the subtle blush working its way on his cheeks.

“Are you satisfied?” He closed the book, peering out of the window to check if the weather had eased since you arrived. Though the intensity of the storm hadn’t lightened in the slightest, there was a new tranquility adopted by the drizzling sky waters that sank and fed into the waves.

“Never.” You replied with a hungered conviction twisted into your words, “What happens next?”

Jungkook laughed in shock of how eager you were to hear more of this story. It was unlike someone who wasn’t well versed in literature to genuinely enjoy listening to this archaic novel.

“Why are you laughing? Read more!” Your whine came off a bit childlike, but succeeded in its goal.

“It’s getting late.” He commented with a gentle sternness, though he proceeded to reopen the book. Your peculiar attention naturally drew him to oblige your desires. Even in the midst of a storm, even as the hours slipped by and the evening had been born, he continued to read.

You settled back into your chair in rejoice that you’d get to spend a bit more time with Jungkook. He was practically a stranger, and still there was a climate of comfort and intimacy that took the place of the crisp, winter air when he read from his book. He felt it too, and that was reason enough to allow you this company.

Throughout the chapter he had been working to finish, he snuck glances to find your eyes growing heavy with sleep as each page turned. Jungkook halted from reading and was trapped in the flush of your cheeks and lips and how your mouth hung slightly ajar as you inhaled the cold, wet air of the lighthouse. The puffs of breath that billowed from your lips had him yearning to know a warmth so full with life and curiosity.

“Are-” Jungkook tensed at the idea of disturbing your sleep, as if you hadn’t barged into his life without a hint of permission. “Are you asleep?”

Your head lifted slowly, then held stiff to maintain consciousness, “I was just resting my eyes. I’m not tired, I want you to read more.” You said this in spite of knowing you would drift asleep if he did.

“I think we are done reading for now.” The book closed for the last time, his hands pressing against the cover to seal his assurance. “You should head home.”

“But, I don’t know how the book ends.” This weak argument came from a place of jaded desperation. Regardless, he almost fell victim to your subdued urgency but any sensibility he could garner warned him not to allow this. You were quite obviously tired and he prefered you be safe in your own bed before the night advanced.

“Well, that’s because I only just started this book and it is very, very long.” Jungkook hoped this would usher you out even if that meant the return of loneliness would seep between the pillows of the right armchair after you left him with his solitude.

“Well, I won’t be able to get these questions out of my mind unless I finish the book.” Another weak argument drained from your inventory of excuses. Maybe a change of subject would present an opportunity to linger in his company. “Also, why do you live here all alone?”

“I just do. I feel like I don’t have to explain this to you.” Jungkook was bewildered at his admission to give you, an unannounced and uninvited visitor, any explanations and still he was close to doing exactly that. “You’re quite invested in my personal life.” As much as that was true, his withdrawal from your curiosity wasn't all that effortful. Living in secrecy and desolation had the feeling of companionship nearly vanishing from his memory and you reunited him with that warmth. And, he had not realized how it had nearly been forgotten or how much he missed it until he finally felt it again.

“You seem like someone who has better things to attend to.” The lament that stained his words bore such heartache that was soon displaced in your chest.

“No, no. My life is boring, and I don’t know. What person wouldn’t be interested in the personal life of a hermit who lives in a lighthouse?” You stood and paced around the platform towering over the swirling bookshelves below, towering over what felt like the entire world with Jungkook. The end of the blanket trailed your footstep as your drooping eyes skimmed the multicolored novels which were remarkably arranged alphabetically by author. How he had the time or patience to organize the hundreds of books he owned was beyond your comprehension. Every detail you acquired from Jungkook was stored in a compartment of your heart, almost as if it were assigned by fate. They were told in riddles and secrets and everything else meant to be deciphered.

“Not a hermit, and not a lighthouse. I couldn’t imagine someone like you being bored with your life.” His voice had become welcoming, with a hint of genuine interest, and this transition felt imminent ever since you first introduced yourself. The tilt of your head signified your agreement with his last statement and implied there was something that bothered you about this truth.

“Someone like me?”

“Someone like you. Curious, young with your whole life ahead of you. It's hard to believe you should be bored with that.”

“You say that as if you aren't the same age as me.” Jungkook shrugged lazily and scuffed his shoes against the rug as he now stood against the window sill, observing your interest of his books.

“I shouldn’t be a lot of things, and yet I am all those things. Bored, curious, and I’m here talking to a complete stranger that totally has the capability to murder me like in those movies instead of going back home.” Your comment that snuck out had wrested a soft chuckle from Jungkook. They were absentmindedly thrown into the air that filled the space between you and him, nurturing his reciprocated fascination with you. Your diligent grazing of each book had distracted how the weight of your eyelids heavied by the minute.

“It’s not like I don’t have great people in my life or a quality education that takes up most of my time, I just,” Your brief pause was to turn your attention over to Jungkook, who did not hide how he was listening intently to these confessions, alleviating from a place in need of emptying. His eyebrow was arched in a manner that jolted you back to your senses. You’d revealed one too many privacies to someone who you had been acquainted with only hours ago. Mortification would have bathed your body if not for the way Jungkook seemed to strongly engage with your openness.

“You just?” He staged his interest overtly to correct the imbalance of how your genuinity left you hanging lower than him on the emotional scale. Jungkook believed that was the least he could do to mitigate the embarrassment about to silence you.

“Uh, I just never seem to be satisfied with what I have. And that makes me seem like a greedy, spoiled child which makes me even more frustrated with myself.” You admitted, pulling the blanket over your shoulders tighter as if that would shield you from the compromising guilt slithering out of your body. “And that’s how I see myself. Ungrateful and spoiled.” This certainly scraped the barrel of your deep rooted disgust with yourself.

“Not spoiled, just lost.” His response felt like a soft and thoughtful embrace, granted that this was meant to ease the tinge of reproach in your heart. The words he spoke caressed your cheeks and told you that every horrid thing you thought of yourself was flawed.

“I’ve certainly been in your position.” He euphemized what he really wanted to say to you, that he saw himself in you. Even though you spoke very little on this, he felt himself living every experience you alluded to as if he had been right beside you your whole life. Or rather that you had witnessed his life and suffered identical desires and grievances and adversities and were simply retelling his story down to the most intricate detail; and somehow you made it sound brand new and a thousand times more aching. He was stranded in a state of amazement, ambushed by your pain and how even in moments of emotional destitution, you were unquestionably beautiful.

Likewise, this stranger, who was no longer estranged, and his kind words nearly compensated for the billions of people you could never meet, all the dreams you wanted but could never alter into incarnation, and all the disappointments that plagued your heart.

And you felt held by his words, his voice, him.

“You’ve been in my position?” You requested confirmation.

“I was. Certainly.” And he confirmed.

“Where are you now?” In turn, you wanted this to suggest, ‘where can I find you?’

This question carried profound sentiment on both the giving and receiving end of it. To you, this yearned for advice. Any piece of wisdom would gladly, gratefully be accepted to ease this rampage of constant dissatisfaction. To him, it resurfaced a series of speculations long undisturbed until you had asked this question; a place intentionally void of all attention because it was sometimes too grim to remember. A haze of difficulty crowded a definite answer, though he knew there was one. He couldn’t place his finger on a fitting response and found himself next to you in search of the answer.

Where are you now?

This haunted his mind for a bit, leaving him speechless and albeit impressed, for once, by your curiosity.

“It’s hard to say. Somewhere in between, I suppose.” Whatever meaning this carried did not resonate as sound to you. The mere idea of being on the end of perpetual longing, waiting for a clear path to the end that promised fulfillment, made it implausible to settle on being somewhere in between the two. Again, you were left unsatisfied and feeling a burden placing itself on your shoulders and wallowing a fit of disappointment in the pit of your stomach. Jungkook noticed how your eyes fell from his, down to the maroon accents of the rug, and felt out of place. Out of place, in his own lighthouse, all because your gaze and attention he’d grown used to in this short time wasn’t directed at him.

“That’s the kind of ambiguity that leaves me so hungry.” He nodded in agreeance with the twisted cruelty of his response you had pointed out. Jungkook didn’t know how or why he’d come to turn every corner and check each crevasse to find what could settle your appetite. This whole time, though, he sailed through this painstaking search without a trace of uncertainty. His illusion of disinterest and annoyance soon dissolved into the floor that your eyes hadn’t strayed from.

“Maybe if I lived in a quaint, not-lighthouse I would be satisfied with that answer, but I don’t. I live a normal, normal, normal life.” The repetition of your words stressed your fatigue of this dullness, your desire for everything just inches away from your fingertips.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a normal life. I think it’s wrong that we have put the idea of drama and excitement on a pedestal.” This outlook, unlike the last, did gain traction in stripping the thick ambiguity around Jungkook’s mind. To your surprise, you could be satisfied with the small pieces of this man’s mystery being chipped bit by bit.

He was well aware of his deep rooted appreciation that accompanied your eyes as it moved towards him once again. There was some sense of purposefulness in this glance that demoted his callousness to tender captivation.

“Can I ask one more question?”

“I have a hard time believing you only have one more question.” His doubtfulness didn’t seem to discourage you, or him.

“For real! Only one more, it’s important.” The only way to prove whether or not this question was truly important was for you to ask it. His head nodded his approval.

“What do you think makes us human?” Before he could answer, a swell of perplexity had overtaken his thoughts on this. You could tell, out of everyone, Jungkook would have a profound answer that could save you hours of contemplation over your philosophy essay’s prompt.

“That’s an interesting question.”

“An interesting question in need of an answer.” You prodded him for his response, though this was pointless if there was no response that could possibly be constructed. Not a response of reason that you seemed to require, but of feeling. Like an instinct, and that in itself made it inapplicable to this question.

“Ask me again some other time. I don’t know if the answer is that simple.”

But, of course, it was. The answer, in his eyes, was blindingly clear.

“I’ll hold you to that!” He gladly took accountability for that commitment. An unfamiliar contentment with the unknown had lodged in your chest when the promise of spending time together emerged through the once conditional circumstances. The promise that transformed those conditional circumstances to voluntary acts.

This humbling discovery left a wide grin on your face, beaming directly towards Jungkook.

Jungkook peered over to the antique clock placed on a shelf next to the window. The aversion of his eyes was to save face from how your soft smile that projected praise and attachment had effectively unnerved him; he stuffed his hands in his pockets to hide his fingers that twitched out of pure elation.

The hour hand stationed on the twelve carved in roman numerals verified how his company had erased any discern for the hours that passed. They had floated away so silently, slowly that you could have sworn time froze altogether.

“Oh shit, it’s midnight? Fuck me.” The decibels of your voice boomed against the walls, it could have shaken the stacks of books down to a pile of mess. “I’m sorry, shit. I didn’t even realize it was so late.” You unraveled yourself from the blanket and collected your belongings in a bit of a frenzy.

“It’s alright. I, um, I had a nice time.” He distanced himself from you swiftly as you dashed across the room to the edge of the stairs. Even in a hurried state, you still looked back to him and offered a smile, unsure if that was enough to suffice for a proper gesture of gratitude.

“Me too.” The words were close to inaudible, but you knew he heard them loud and clear, along with the string of implications that were laced in them.

“Oh and by the way, make good use of that umbrella. It looks like it could start raining again.” Your ears felt engorged with flames when he’d revealed his knowledge of your little secret. It was foolish of you to believe you could outsmart Jungkook because what you thought obscure was well within his range of astuteness and the umbrella, still damp from the rain, was apparent from the beginning.

You didn’t catch how he’d been smiling when you turned away bashfully, strutting down the stairs in an attempt to portray false confidence. But if you did, you would have picked up on his mutual indulgence in your visit, the absolute bliss laden in his eyes. You grasped tightly to the joy evoked from the thought of seeing him again, however your nerves held a tighter grasp that did not allow you to express this to him. Perhaps your giggles of excitement, surely heard by Jungkook, spilling from your throat as you rushed out the empty room or the way you clutched your umbrella to your chest in admittance you had purposefully kept that fact from him would give Jungkook a clue of how thankful you were to meet him. And even more so to be able to see him again.

As you parted from the lighthouse that was not a lighthouse, something in between, you felt that the comfort you once had taper off with the growing distance from the not-lighthouse. You were fraught with a gentle yearning to turn back, run up the spiraling stairs, settle yourself back into the right armchair, and ask humbly to stay a while longer.

Little did you know, Jungkook’s hopes coincided with yours like two concentric circles.

(One week later)

If it wasn’t the question left unanswered that motivated you, it was the fact that you missed the view of the beach from the window. Or maybe it was the countless supply of book titles that you didn’t get to finish inspecting. Perhaps it was that you missed how the soft blanket complimented the feathery cushion of the right armchair.

Any of these excuses could be suited to explain how you rushed through the town, determined, goal-oriented and passing down streets now ingrained in your memory, with a destination clear in mind.

But it definitely couldn't be how dearly you missed the sound of his voice when he read to you or his smile or the way he studied the waves with gentle affection. No, it couldn't be that.

Either way, you arrived at the base of the lighthouse. It had been a week since your first visit and you hoped that the invitation still stood for your return. Making your way through the empty room felt quick since you hadn't wasted time to notice how the table now had a vase of flowers in the center. Nor did you notice the new mat placed in front of the interior doorway to the lighthouse.

Your heart dropped from your chest when you reached over to the door knob only to find it was locked. You turned the handle back and forth as if that would miraculously function as a key to unlock the door. After a bit of knob fiddling had proven itself useless, you turned away with a huff of air releasing your frustration.

The click and turn of the handle had you twirling around optimistically and seeing him made all that disappointment dissolve.

“You’re back again.” He was smiling at you, then cocked his head to say come in. The moment you stepped into the lighthouse, its lackluster disappeared as if by magic. But Jungkook knew it wasn’t magic at all; it was the person that hid their umbrella, and asked him to read and promised to return as much as he promised to let you return.

“I believe you promised to keep reading to me.”

“Did I?” The reasons for your return weren’t all that important to discuss, both you and him were just glad to make your way up the stairs to the two armchairs once more, hearts both racing not because of the physical exertion from the stairs but from the excitement rasping through yours and his bodies.

“Yes, but this time I won’t fall asleep.”

“We’ll see about that.” There was no question that your intense focus wasn’t because you cared about the book he had been reading. In all honesty, you would not be able to summarize any bit of the plot if someone asked. You probably would have a hard time even naming the author of the book because what sank you into the words on the pages wasn’t the story itself, but the voice that read them. Jungkook made those languid paragraphs sound like the first words ever to be spoken; he reinvented the English language through his unique dialect, inflections and phrasing that had the words of Homer dancing off the pages. So, of course there was no question that you wouldn’t be able to name any of the characters or recognize the writing style of Homer because those details faded away, leaving only the memory of his voice with you.

This time, Jungkook didn’t have to offer you a seat. He made it clear that this spot had been reserved and waiting for you by the way the blanket had been folded and worn by the arm of the chair and the new pillow resting at the base of the chair’s backrest. You planted yourself on the cushion that felt more plump than the last time you sat in it and faced towards the large window that showcased the ocean’s energetic swaying.

“I would never get tired of this view.” You commented while Jungkook pulled back the curtains further to widen the seascape. He too was drawn to the deep blue waters making their way to and from the shore.

“I usually don’t leave the windows this open, but my love for the scenery of the ocean has rekindled.” When he said this, your eyes hadn’t budged from the window unlike Jungkook’s that peered over to you. You pretended not to notice that or the way your heartbeat had taken a quickness that had your skin growing warmer.

“How could it leave in the first place?”

“It is well known, especially by you, that having an abundance of something lessens your appreciation for it.” A corner of your lips lifted at this, knowing exactly what he had been referring to. Each wave passed by and in a comatose-like state, you wondered where on the shore it would land.

“No need to call me out already, Jungkook.” He had left the window and retrieved The Odyssey that hadn’t left the side table since the night he read it to you. This broke your trance, and you shifted to face the left armchair.

“You made it too easy, ___.”

“Okay, Hermit.” Your smile did wonders to ease the irritation in Jungkook’s chest to tenderness. Though he refused to admit it, this otherwise taunting nickname sounded affectionate coming from you.

“Technically a hermit is-”

“Technically, I don’t care about your technicalities. No amount of facts will persuade me that you aren’t a Hermit.” Jungkook dug his tongue into the side of his cheek to resist from joining in with your laughter. He’d been fidgeting with the book that was waiting to be read, but neither of you seemed to mind putting that off.

“Ho- How was your day?” You shouldn’t have felt as proud as you did for making a man who could read aloud for hours stutter over his own words, and nonetheless you were extremely flattered by this.

“It was good.” Good never really meant good, and Jungkook knew this.

“And what’s the truth?” Your playing field had once again been unleveled, the advantage returned into the palm of Jungkook’s hand in the blink of an eye. His perceptiveness had been bordering on annoying but still remained on the side of impressive.

“Well,” You bunched the blanket in your fists as an expression of worry, “My mom called today.” Anyone who could hear would be able to tell you sounded unhappy about that.

“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?” Jungkook articulated his question to get the answer he’d been looking for, finding the hostility in your voice far more interesting than the actual conversation between you and your mom.

“You don’t know my mom, but she projects her over achieving personality onto almost everyone she meets, but most of it goes onto me.” Your back had straightened when mentioning your mom, almost as if it were a reflex, like Pavlov’s dog, that you were conditioned to be on guard at the thought of her. “I don’t know why I get so mad at her when she does that because I know it comes from a place of love.”

Jungkook hummed softly, granting you space to continue talking.

“Yeah, it probably comes from a place of love but part of me doesn’t believe that. Part of me thinks every time she calls to check on me it’s really just a ploy for her to nag me on what I could be doing better.” You scoffed as the conversation from earlier in the morning played out in your head again. Envisioning the back and forth between you and your mother only fueled your frustration but you couldn’t help yourself. There was no stifling the seething anger imploding before Jungkook’s eyes. “She always says stuff like, ‘Maybe if you applied yourself more you would be doing better than this.’ or ‘I told you that you should have done this or that and now it’s too late’ or the infamous ‘Do you not care about your future?’ lecture that just gets under my skin. She’s so good at saying the wrong things at the wrong time. I don’t know how she does it but she always manages to rub dirt in the wound.”

“So, she’s never satisfied with you?” Jungkook observed.

“No, never! And you’d think a mother would be supportive or happy with all the things her child had already accomplished but somehow it’s never enough. And she knows what she’s doing. That makes it worse. She knows how she weaponizes my guilt against me.” You held your tongue from the much longer rant about to digress, feeling a sudden discomfort in the way you’d been complaining to Jungkook. You couldn’t understand why it was all too easy to talk of these kinds of things to him, why he looked so interested in what you were saying even when anyone else would have grown tired of you by now, why you found in him a warm confidant much more comforting than you’d expected, yet there was no way to dismiss this reality.

Jungkook did not offer advice, or tell you that you should be thankful or that maybe you were handling these situations poorly. He did none of that. His silence was more thoughtful than any number of things he could have said. He simply listened.

You rose from the chair to get a closer view of the sea. Past your reflection in the glass, the consecutive tides seemed to grapple over the next and the next; the previous wave always just short of reach to tackle the immediate wave. He had followed you without a word, living up to your desire to have him at your side. There was no need for mindless comments or condolences to fill the silence, only mindful amity, at your side, because watching the ocean with you was enough.

“So, that was my day.” It was the first thing spoken after a period of quiet, perfectly timed and delivered for it to bear a dry humor in its intention. Jungkook and you laughed, finding this the long needed release of tension in your head.

“Is this going to become a habitual thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Me complaining to you about my personal struggles that would have gone in my journal or somewhere far more private than this.” All said while your and Jungkook’s gazes didn’t wander from the view of the window. “Me inviting myself into your lighthouse, or not-lighthouse, whatever.”

“I wouldn’t mind that.” Two heads turned towards each other almost as if it were on que.

The way your pupils dilated and softened conveyed every bit of thanks you held in your heart but couldn’t muster the courage to voice. Jungkook’s doe-eyed smile thanked you likewise and confessed the gratitude for how you had rescued him from yet another lonesome afternoon with a curtained window, an unused blanket, an empty chair, and a melancholic silence as he read his one of thousands of books. Not including The Odyssey, that was for your ears only.

“You wouldn’t?”

“Maybe a little.” His tease succeeded to provoke that smile of yours. And even though that was a favor on his end, he was the one that felt graced by it. Realistically, a smile costs nothing yet there grew an enormous debt in his heart; and even though he couldn’t afford it, all he could do was bask in every detail your smile, of the crease of your eyes, and of the way your cheeks took the form of a sweet Spring Peach, and the scrunch of your nose and brows. Before he sank himself deeper in debt, Jungkook beckoned for the two of you to return to your seats and read all your worries away.

---

Who would have guessed that The Odyssey, of all things, would be the thing that would occupy most of your Fridays through the rest of the winter? Sometimes you visited a Sunday, and other times you’d find yourself needing to hear The Odyssey on a Wednesday evening or a Monday morning. The days on which you swung by the now familiar lighthouse would vary, but they remained a weekly occurrence.

Jungkook had grown comfortable with this routine, reading to you while you watched him and the waves, but mostly him. Occasionally, his reading would cease to an interruption of his own doing to ask how your day was in a very specific way that only Jungkook seemed to exhibit. He’d ask you say anything but ‘good’ or ‘boring’ and he’d clarify that he wanted you to not leave out any details.

“Why?” You would ask. And he’d look at you as if you set yourself on fire.

“It’s important to me.” He’d reply as if it were that simple, or the answer you were looking for. Still, if it was important to him you didn’t need any more persuading.

Like when you told him you stopped by a coffee shop, he’d tell you to specify which drink you ordered and how it tasted.

“Cinnamon.”

“Is that your favorite?”

“No, I prefer peppermint but sometimes I combine those flavors and that becomes my other favorite.”

“That sounds sweet.”

“It absolutely is.”

“Does that make you happy?”

“It makes my insides feel like Christmas.”

“Is Christmas a feeling?”

“It is to me!” He smiled at your childlike enthusiasm because it made life seem a lot more appealing than he’d ever believed. Before you, the world was a little greyer. After you, suddenly full of vibrance, saturated to the grandest extents.

Or the time you brought a candle to fill the air with something a bit more pleasant than the smell of the old, wet stones of the lighthouse.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a candle, vanilla and patchouli.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I don’t remember. I just found it in my house and thought this place needed something sweet.”

“But you’re here.” Your teeth bit down on your tongue when he said this. You almost fallen trapped in figuring out what motivated him to say this, but the flattery of his comment was all too pleasing to ignore.

“But I don’t smell like vanilla and patchouli.” You said, only to save face from the fact that you suddenly felt like a deer in headlights when he looked at you, bracing for when he would crash into you and hoping to god you can absorb the exhilaration of souls colliding; and hoping to god he would crash into you.

“Could you light it, then?”

“Of course.”

And the room filled with a sweetness that complimented your company finely. Now, whenever he would smell the scents of vanilla and patchouli he would think of you, and you of him.

He would continue asking these simple questions, and so on.

Why he thought it was essential for you to relay these almost invaluable intricacies was beyond you, but it did make you feel heard; it made you feel held as it always did. It made the value of your life gone without the need to be earned or proven, the value of the smaller moments that fell between bigger moments.

It made it all okay that you felt like you stripped the clothes from your whole life off for him to revere and that he’d rarely ever display such emotional nudity for you; you were okay with lying bare before his eyes, vulnerable and pliant to his every whim. Even when you wanted to know all of these things about Jungkook and he’d hold them captive or he’d only offer half sufficient answers, you collected as many bits of the puzzle as possible to try and piece together his story.

“How are your parents, Jungkook?”

“Long gone.”

“Oh, Jungkook… I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I watched them grow old and content and that softened the blow.”

“Are you lonely?”

Yes, it’s excruciating when you are not here. I am tormented in your absence and all too plagued with despondency and I wish you knew that.

“I’ve grown used to it.”

“So you have.”

“So I have.”

You did not want him to be lonely; you didn’t want him to ever be sad but you wanted him to be able to say that he was to you. You wanted him to be able to tell you he was lonely; you wanted him to want you to know his heart. You wanted him to feel as naked as you felt. Vagueness was all you could ever manage to arrest from his gated mind.

And for once, the little he had given was more than you could ever ask for.

Sunday mornings with Jungkook were your favorite. The ocean was tame during this time on Sundays specifically and sailed you into its calmness; you were half asleep, resting on the sill running along the base of the window panes. Spring had been approaching which meant there were radiant glimmers of the early sun that reflected and glided along the ripples of the waves. Jungkook once said that every time he looked at these little pieces of diamond rays, he believed the sun and the sea performed in devotion for you and him alone.

“I love that.” And indeed you did. The idea that no one else witnessed this ocean, not this one, not the way you and Jungkook had, was a greedy disposition but felt so true.

“Would you like me to read?” He said in place of, Is my voice properly fitting for something as lovely as this moment?

“I want you to talk, but not of books.” You blinked slowly at Jungkook, “Could you tell me about yourself? Just one thing, anything you choose.” He saw those specks of diamonds glimmering in your irises. He felt so close to you, sitting on the other end of the window, and close enough to finally surrender a bit of his gated mind.

“When I was a child, I knew my days were numbered. The details of why aren’t important, but I digress.” You stuffed a scoff down your throat at the assertion that the details weren’t important. Him, of all people, claiming the details were unimportant had you whirling in a paradox. “With this in mind, I did my best to fulfill everything any child would have wanted. And I don’t think I’ve ever stopped because that list of desires was never ending.”

Was this what he meant when he said he was in my position once? You wondered.

“I spent all my time looking for the next best thing I could achieve, because the best things that I had was, as you know, never enough. One week, the best thing would be finding a four leaf clover to give to my mother. The next, it was being the first in line for the new, long awaited comic book. Or, it was the time my father took me fishing on the lake, and then seconds after it was the first fish I caught and threw back into the water, and that best thing was soon replaced by my father’s proud smile.”

Your throat tightened as you visualized a young Jungkook sitting on the dock with his father, full of youth and excitement, and how nostalgia had ripened into your heart even though you had no place in this memory of his. This dream-like sequence had compelled a few tears to fill your eyes, fogging your vision of the older Jungkook that sat before you.

“When I grew older, in my adolescent and teenage years, the next best thing was fulfilling a newfound passion. It prompted me to buy out almost the entire library and major in World Literature. I spent the rest of my days from then on immersed in reading, as you can see. It was the only place I felt like I was achieving the next best thing, and it was cruel when I came to realize there was no way in hell I could finish all the books I’d collected in time.”

“In time for what?”

“In time... for the next best thing to come along, I guess.” This answer appeared fabricated, but was subtle enough to pass through your mind without a second thought.

“And did it? Did it come along?”

It would have made no difference if your question had been asked to a brick wall because Jungkook brushed it off as he did every other question that would have given you another piece of his puzzle. He took precautions to avoid a defeat to your pouting by walking over to the left armchair and burying his face in the book’s fortitude. Before you had the chance to reiterate your question, Jungkook began to read, making it all too clear he was evading.

“Jungkook?” You whined to which he paid no mind by continuing to read.

“Is he being serious right now?” Again, you might as well have been talking to an inanimate object. There was nothing to be done when he lodged his restraint other than joining him in your armchair, quietly, permissively.

Every day, like this one, spent with him had you convinced it couldn’t be surpassed in enjoyment. And every day, your expectations had been exceeded. That was something you’d never think could happen. Soon, the cares and worries of this Winter melted as the avenue of Spring had unfolded before you. A long path, surrounded with flower blossoms and diamond coated seas, or in other words, the unfathomable had fallen into your hands.

The remainder of this pleasant Sunday had been consumed by The Odyssey and Jungkook’s voice singing its words as smoothly as the waves surrounding the lighthouse and small conversations during the pauses of his reading. One struck you into reminiscence of the first night you met.

“You never answered my question.” He paused, flipping through the many unanswered questions he’d left with you. Jungkook raised his brow to order specification of which one you referred to.

“What makes us human?” The due date of your essay passed over two months ago, however this didn’t diminish your curiosity to know his answer.

“In all honesty,” He paused and looked to assure you would believe his answer would be honest, or honest enough to cater your satisfaction. “I think it’s our desire to achieve the last best thing.”

Every fiber in you compiled its own list of questions in regards to his yet again ambiguous answer, though you had grown to accept that as a part of Jungkook. And you sure as hell accepted Jungkook, ambiguity and all.

“Hm.” It didn’t take a mind reader to know you had theorized any and all connotations branching off from his answer and he didn’t mind that you could be lost in search of whatever the actual meaning of it was.

The moon was in its fullest bloom tonight, and tomorrow, it would begin to wane into a crescent then into nothing but an empty space full of new and perhaps fortunate opportunities. Jungkook found the romance of this lunar phase well equipped for the dusty instrument he discovered in the base of the lighthouse.

“I found something that I think you’d like.” Your ears perked like a dog when it’d been presented with treats. “But you have to go get it. It’s in the other room.”

Whatever this surprise was, it had excited you enough to ignore how you’d have to descend and re-ascend the many stairs that would surely tire you. Your eager legs would have jumped right from the platform to the bottom of the lighthouse if the reality didn’t result in broken bones. As you rushed to the door to the other room, you pushed through and discovered a telescope standing in the corner of the otherwise empty space. A few moments later you were hustling back up the stairs, the telescope making the re-ascension of the stairs ten times as strenuous. All the while, Jungkook just stared in amusement at the way you struggled your way to the platform.

“No, I don’t want any help, thank you!” You said sarcastically through grunts of exertion before positioning the instrument in front of the window.

“Well, I didn’t offer you any, so, you’re very welcome.” He stood on the other side of the telescope, admiring the way you fell so easily in love with it, hands scaling the length of the scope.

“Do I just?” You pointed to the eyepiece at the end of the rod and he nodded. You brought your eye to the magnifying glass which was flooded with the enchanting glow of the stars. You’d never seen them this close, but this little gift of Jungkook’s had catapulted you into the illuminated abyss of the night sky. A measly woah was all that squeaked from your voice, because all the other words were stolen by the stars.

“Can you find any constellations?” He’d seen all the stars in the galaxy; that he was sure of. But none had shone brighter than the person he couldn’t tear his eyes from. Three o’clock had crept onto the antique clock, this late hour had worn down Jungkook’s walls completely as the soft glow of adornment laminated his eyes.

“I think I see ORion's belt. That’s the only one I know other than the Big Dipper.” You laughed at your own lack of knowledge of the stars. Knowledge didn’t seem to matter though, the beauty of the stardusted sky had taken care of that deficiency. You lifted yourself away from the telescope, allowing Jungkook a turn to stargaze.

“Have you heard of the Astral Plane?” Jungkook asking you something other than, ‘how was your day’, was a rare occurrence which most likely meant this was of some importance.

“I’ve heard of it, but I think I’ll need you to refresh my memory.” You really did need clarification on what exactly the Astral Plane entailed, though you mainly just wanted to hear him explain it.

“Some say it lies in the fourth dimension. It isn’t tangible or something that can be touched. It lies between everything, every atom, every cell, every city and forest and mountain and even between the crevasses of one’s own mind and soul. A place like this is full of divinity and complete attainment and the way it is reached has been theorized by many.” Jungkook’s meticulous readjustments of the telescope had you wondering which constellations he was searching for, or maybe he’d been looking for Venus or Mars or the Moon. “Some say you arrive there in your dreams, or when you reach enlightenment, or when death draws its curtain on you… I-I don't know why but I’ve always thought that it was stitched into the sky. Far beyond our galaxy, maybe the Astral Plane has situated itself in between each star, just like it does our souls, and exists as the vastness of outer space.” It turned out he wasn't looking for any of those things, he was looking for the Astral Plane.

Could the heat rising throughout your body be merely adoration, or was it something along the lines of a forlorn longing? When he spoke, you felt this sensation growing dense in your bones; you felt a gravitation towards him.

“Seems about right to me.” Fondness had stained your tone which filled some void in Jungkook’s hungry heart, and he’d failed to predict you were the one that would be able to settle it. “Maybe we’ll never reach the Astral Plane, but at least I’m here with you.”

When you said this, the hairs on his arms pointed towards the ceiling. For once in a very, very long time, Jungkook felt a euphoric resurgence striking through the catacombs of his soul and hot tears dripping down the expanse of his cheeks, to the tip of his chin, and onto the glass scope that was shielding this sudden emotional combustion. He blinked away the tears to the best of his abilities and turned away from you and the telescope and the sky. Jungkook felt the push of air from your movement towards him, but he shifted further away.

“Are yo-”

“I found a cluster of stardust, go look.” He averted you from him and you always fell victim to every trick in his book.

“Wow, that’s amazing!” The grip you had on the telescope was firm, like you were trying to hold onto the stars themselves.

“Amazing.” He said. This reiteration wasn’t for the stars, however. He wondered if you knew that. He wondered if you could feel how consumed he was by your magnificence under the full moon that reigned with gentleness over the waves. The once wild tides, now moving with the same serenity and romance embedded into Jungkook and this lighthouse. He wondered if you could see he had been emotionally disrobed and bearing all his affection for you. And he wondered how he was so okay with that.

Six o’clock didn’t feel like six o’clock. Your eyes that struggled to keep open told you otherwise, so again you and him were parting ways as the sun had begun dawning over the horizon and there were no more stars to fill the hours slipping away. Jungkook did all he could to compose himself. He’d offered to walk you out; you reached the door that led to the dewy, Spring air awaiting your departure from the lighthouse.

“Wait, ___!” This exclamation echoed louder than the beating of his crimson heart. After stepping through the threshold, you turned to meet his gaze, teary-eyed from what you guessed was from lack of sleep. Teary-eyed from what he knew was because of another egregious goodbye. “Thank you.”

This moment seemed fitting to test the theory that actions speak louder than words. This moment called for the lapse of courage in need to act, not speak. This moment was the moment when you finally expressed the thankfulness that, to you, seemed to outweigh his by pressing a tender kiss to his cheek. It was much colder than your lips and the docile warmth of the morning, but once you pulled away the warmth had stained his cheek.

Jungkook felt like every cell in his body was evaporating into the space around him. Like the way a fire would extend its heat into the air or the way Spring melted away the frost ridden Winter, your act had covered him in a blanket of love and refuge from the loneliness once vaulting his heart. And it certainly spoke louder than words; all the words in every book Jungkook had ever read and the words left unsaid and the words passing between everyone in the universe.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you, Hermit! You helped me see Orion’s Belt up close and personal!” You called as your strides began a slow fleet from a laughing Jungkook. You waved, now standing a generous distance from him, and he found this gave him the space needed to finally let his tears fall.

“I love you.” He whispered, hoping the wind would carry it to your ears and heart.

A revelation had overcome him, and no matter how many times he tried to wipe the tears away, they’d be instantly replenished like a stream of water rushing from a conquered dam, spilling over endlessly, with all control suspended in the air around him.

Was it finally here? The last, best thing?

---

A week after the stargazing, your mind had mapped out the stars as you too searched for that Astral Plane. To you, Jungkook’s proposition of it being strewn in the night sky was the only theoretical that made sense. You wanted to flaunt your newfound passion for this concept he’d introduced, and admittedly - and more importantly - you wanted to kiss him again, leading to yet another blissful walk down the seashore to the lighthouse. The air was warm but not humid, carrying a breeze that evened out the sun’s heat nicely. A few pillows of clouds were cascading through the sky, never staying in one spot for too long; you’d come to appreciate each one’s temporary presence and when they passed, you grew to appreciate that as well. The gaze once fixed on the sand had now traveled to the waves of much gentler motion than ever before.

This walk, unlike the dozens of others, felt different. The streets looked lovely and the air felt clean in your chest, giving you a pleasant journey far more intimate than the last. Then you realized, it felt like you were walking back home.

When you grew closer to the lighthouse, you noticed the curtains had been drawn which was strikingly unusual for a sunny day such as this one. This was a passing observation as you made your way to the base of the lighthouse.

Through the door to the room before the lighthouse, you were taken aback to find your armchair sitting in front of the table. you walked up to discover a single, folded parchment sealed with a red wax stamp labeled with your name along the top of the paper.

This felt eerie, for some reason, and you called out his name only to be met with silence, before sitting yourself down and unsealing the note.

It read in his voice:

My Dearest, ___

I wrote this to relay a lot of things left unsaid. The first being goodbye. I’m sorry to have to leave you like this, though no amount of remorse could possibly appease my actions.

Your heartbeat had grown rampant, until your eyes read those words. It was then when it stopped altogether. Still, you continued to read.

I kept things from you like the fact that our encounter in the town’s square was all but coincidental. The truth is scary, and my truth would have turned you away from the beginning. It was selfish, I admit, but I do not think I could have endured such a loss. Forgive me for keeping you in the dark all this time, but I am beyond gratified for what you granted me in spite of that.

Maybe it might seem cruel. You are not alone in feeling that — never alone. But, we were never meant to spend every Sunday morning, or Friday evening, or Wednesday afternoon together to watch the waves float along with the hours lost reading to you; I knew this was not the end of your story, just mine.

The books I have read over and over have imprisoned me in search of the “next best thing”. To my dismay, I thought I had run out of time to find it. But then you came along. You helped set me free by allowing me to live out a few more “best things” through the way you shared your life with me, unselfishly, warmly, kindly— You helped me move on.

I know you too will move on from this. I hope I could at least leave you with the tools and courage to find each “next best thing” in store. If not that, then this lighthouse, open to you and only you, and a myriad of good memories to ease our parting. I know in my heart you deserve nothing less.

I hope you find contentment somewhere in the sea or on the sand or in the stars, or perhaps somewhere in between.

Once you do, we will meet again within the Astral Plane, my love. I swear it. And if you miss me, just look through the telescope and find me woven in the spaces amidst Orion’s Belt.

Thank you. Again and again I thank you and it is still not enough. Thank you for you, for your warmth, for your salvation, for your smile, for your endless questions, for re-introducing me to the aroma of vanilla and patchouli but it was not as sweet as your companionship, for putting good use of the right armchair and the view from our window, for making the odyssey a little less lonely to read, and thank you for stepping into my lighthouse and my life.

Don't you see, it was you. You were my last, best thing.

with love and sorrow,

Jeon Jungkook

Before you got to the end of the letter, you were racing up the spiraling stairs, ignoring the burn in your tightened chest, how the air in the lighthouse had suffocated your lungs. The dizziness that blurred your eyes had not slowed your climb up the stairs, and the wetness of your tears now seeping into his letter.

You reached the top, The Odyssey greeting you on the chair Jungkook would have been seated in. Your breaths were staggered and warm, filling the mournful emptiness of the lighthouse.

“Jungkook.” You whispered. You begged for a reply. The curtains were drawn over the window, like never before, and exposed a bronze plaque peeking out from the end of the fabric. You pushed the drapes aside to read what was engraved into the metal plate and the first page of The Odyssey that hung below it.

In loving memory of our beloved son, Jeon Jungkook. May he rest in peace. 1918-1942.

The note below read:

The Odyssey

Jeon and ___ Lighthouse.

You pieced the puzzle together, finally. And with that, came the final picture, so beautiful and mesmerizing and everything you could have ever hoped for, and more.

“Jungkook.” You repeated as a bid of farewell, with a heart full of satisfaction and content, and Jungkook. You pressed the letter to your chest in hopes his words would mend your aching heart.

And it was true, he was not your last best thing, only one of them.

But he was undoubtedly your most cherished and beloved best thing.

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takoyakitenchou · 3 years

Text

masquerade ch.8

7? idk but this one isn’t on ff or ao3 yet i think

12:58 PM Nakiri Erina: Hi, it’s been a while. Are you free the day after tomorrow?

1:03 PM Yukihira Souma: how’d u get this #?

1:04 PM Nakiri Erina: Alice gave it to me.

1:04 PM Yukihira Souma: sup

1:05 PM Nakiri Erina: I’m opening Kiralyno Haza. It’s not like I want you to show up or anything.

message opened

1:37 PM Nakiri Erina: Hello?

2:40 PM Yukihira Souma: hey sorry i just got on break. congrats nakiri!

2:41 PM Nakiri Erina: It was expected.

2:41 PM Yukihira Souma: surprised it took you so long to open. hurry up and get your 3 stars bubs then we’ll really see who’s the better chef

2:41 PM Yukihira Souma: and did you get tired of shinomiya or did he get tired of you?

2:42 PM Nakiri Erina: I got tired of him. Duh. Are you not coming?

2:42 PM Yukihira Souma: save 4 seats for me. i’ll be a balloon by the time im done w your food also i hope you have enough ingredients for a shokugeki after

“Ugh. You’re as shit at texting as ever,” Erina groaned, throwing down her phone, but then she picked it up again to stare at those four particular characters. Bubs. God, it had been so long since she’d seen that in her messages.

(under the cut to see souma and erina start to get their shit together lol)

To think that she had been the one to break the radio silence between them — good lord, that was fucking annoying. It was weird to think about. There had been plenty of opportunities for them to talk again, and yet they’d somehow managed to evade each other since they’d run into each other at Nakiri Mansion. Whether this was coincidence she had no idea, but Souma hadn’t been at the official Totsuki-sponsored 92nd gen alumni reunion, and Shinomiya had dragged Erina to some culinary conference that made her miss the freshman training camp where Souma threatened the living shits out of the poor first years but ended up not cutting anybody from the roster.

Erina had done her best not to linger on the fact that she had had to ask Alice for Souma’s new number, but goddamn would that remain at the forefront of her mind for the week following Kiralyno Haza’s debut until she got frustrated enough to the point where she damn near chucked her own phone out the window.

It was thanks to Alice that her condo was still in one piece.

The COO of the Nakiri-Totsuki Group was sitting next to her at a bar in Budapest, helping herself to her third shot of tequila, a few empty glasses and a growing tab between them. “Yukihira’s coming?”

Erina nodded, smiling despite herself. “Yeah. I guess he is.”

Taking sudden interest in her drink, Alice remained silent for a thoughtful moment before she said, “I haven’t seen you this happy since you two broke up.”

With a half-hearted huff, Erina scoffed, “Yeah, right.”

Alice gave her a long look. “I’m not kidding, Erina. Who was that other guy you were seeing? Darren?”

“Aaron. Darren was before him.”

“Doesn’t he have a 3000-seater concert hall named after him?”

“I couldn’t care less.” Erina said, and Alice knew it was 593% true.

Whenever tolerating a guy got tedious, Erina had extinguished whatever spark he thought he had ignited, pretended to be hung up on it, and started over, systematically breaking hearts left and right, all the while building titanium defenses around her own.

And then, a year and half ago, she’d seen Yukihira Souma at Nakiri Mansion, and everything had changed.

So. Much. Pining. Alice was more than a few years past sick of how long those two idiots were dragging their shit out.

Erina picked up her belongings. “We should probably stop day-drinking.”

“Sure,” Alice said, paying the tab before Erina could get her wallet out.

“I’ll pay you back for that,” Erina promised as they left the bar.

Alice put a hand on Erina’s shoulder. “You can pay me back by not fucking up your confession again.”

At this, Erina frowned. A withering counter should’ve been second nature, but she found herself incapable. She wanted to believe that whatever piece of her heart that had clung to the hope that Yukihira Souma would come back to her was nothing more than a memory. More than anything, she wished the voice at the back of her head telling her to move on and forget him and their past would finally win out, because there were people in her present waiting for her, and it would be a sin to ignore that.

But she couldn’t say the words; her heart belonged to Yukihira Souma — would always belong to him — and all broken promises and relationships notwithstanding, that was something she could not deny.

Although Souma technically hadn’t been invited to the kitchen for shift drinks when the front doors closed, he had taken the liberty of bringing a bottle of cab sauv that he and Erina finished in like ten seconds flat, to hell with sharing with staff, family, and friends.

The second she felt the words wanna come over? slip out of her atmosphere-drunk mouth, she knew it was going to take more self-control than she had not to demand he stay with her forever.

“So, Yukihira,” she said like they hadn’t been catching up for the last two hours when they were sitting on the couch in her living room with pinot noir. “How’ve you been?”

The corners of Souma’s lips twitched. “Not bad,” he replied. “Mostly cooking. A few interviews and shit. I’ve been keeping up with all your stuff, by the way. Three tastings in twelve hours next Monday seems like too much, Nakiri.”

Erina frowned. “Even if you were as talented a stalker as Mimasaka Subaru, how the fuck would you know that?”

He held up his phone. “You were signed into my calendar app when I last downloaded a backup copy four years ago. So every time I get a new phone, I transfer all the old data.”

Erina stared at him, horrified. “Holy shit. You’ve seen everything?”

Shrugging, Souma said, “Not everything. Just… your dates with Darren. And Aaron. Also, I knew about Kiralyno opening before you texted me so I’d already cleared out my schedule by then.”

Erina had stopped listening halfway through. “Wait, Yukihira…”

“It’s okay, Nakiri.” Souma waved it off. “You’re here with me now. All that matters. Let’s not look too far into our past, yeah?”

“Don’t look into my future either, idiot! Sign out of my Google calendar right now!”

Souma shook his head seriously. “Sorry, Nakiri, I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why the fuck not?”

He gazed at her intently and rested his chin on his fist. “I need to make sure I’ll still be in it.”

Erina rolled her eyes. “Don’t say sappy shit like that. It doesn’t suit you.”

“What if I just stayed?” he asked.

She sighed. “I think the question is, would I even let you? I thought we’re putting the past behind us? Don’t you want this back?” She pointed at the white cloth she was wearing on her wrist. His white cloth.

Souma ignored the second question and pulled Erina to him by her waist, close enough that she could feel his warm breath as he spoke, forehead brushing hers. “Another thing we both know is that you and I could never be just friends.”

“Take your hands off me or I swear I’m either going to spill my wine or kiss you, and I seriously do not care which.”

He leaned back with a sad smile. “You wouldn’t let me stay, would you, Nakiri?”

“I couldn’t,” she said helplessly. “We don’t even know where our lines are.”

“Do we need lines?” Souma asked, finishing his glass and balancing it on his knee. “You and I are beyond this dimension.”

Erina stared at him, memorizing every last square centimeter of his features — the way his hair seemed to get shorter every time they met until he somewhat resembled someone of his culinary pedigree; the way the creases formed on his sleeves along the contours of his toned arms.

“You know, Nakiri, if you let me stay, you wouldn’t have to stare so much.”

She tore her gaze from his collarbone, her whole face turning red. In all her twenty-one years, that had to be the most embarrassing moment of her life. “Shut up! I’m not staring!”

He was watching her with wistful eyes. “I wouldn’t mind if you were…”

And they both heard it.

I wouldn’t mind if you were mine.

#shokugeki no soma #shokugeki no souma #sorina #soueri #yukihira soma #yukihira souma #nakiri erina #CANT BELIEVE THEYRE FINALLY GETTING THEIR SHIT TOGETHER #oh wait #im the one writing this

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peaches-writes · 3 years

Text

super random prompts for today bc im feeling nostalgic~

tw // death

at 1100 years of you fulfilling your punishment as a human turned grim reaper, no one could blame you when you confess that you don’t really know yourself now if the promise you swore to chan before he died by your sword in his first life is still serious or holds meaning to you. it was a long long time ago, already muddled in your failing memories, when you swore to the joseon era prince that you would ‘find and torture him in every life he gets’ because he invaded your village and branded you as a criminal (which ultimately led to you doing the things that got you landed with your current spiritual punishment). at present, having already met different versions of him in his subsequent lives and delivering him to the afterlife each time without fail, you’re not sure anymore if you can still hold onto this promise and cause him trouble. after all, every version of him that pops up on your radar throughout the centuries never remembers what he did in his first life, let alone remember you. plus, the only time he sees you now as a grim reaper is on his death bed, when you come to fetch him and confess to causing some of the misfortunes he’s experienced in the life that he’s lived.

so imagine your surprise when the gods inform you that chan only has one reincarnation left to spend and that he’ll spend it in the 21st century seoul, right where everything started. you’re then furthermore petrified when this version you meet not only has the ability to see and interact with ghosts by his 3rd eye but also finds the journal you unknowingly drop at his neighbor’s funeral: filled with notes on him and his previous lives as well as the confusing feelings you’ve unconsciously developed over the years. the final nail in the coffin, however, is that he’s not smug about it when he eventually finds you at the local graveyard, unlike how you expected of the chan from the joseon era. instead, he asks you all about his past lives, your punishment, and what he should expect in his next life if he has any. this time, with no means of escaping from his 3rd eye and his dangerously fast biking skills, you’re forced to confront the soul of the person you once called your enemy.

more of the kids under the cut!

minho receives a google form link from you at the strike of midnight on your 1st anniversary as a couple, initially opening it on the assumption that it’s the survey form you previously coerced him into agreeing to answer for your senior thesis. the computer science major is then thoroughly surprised when the link opens to a red and pink-themed form titled, “y/n’s boyfriend application!” with questions ranging from, “full name so i can flames it with my name” to “rate my annoying habits from ‘i love them dw’ to ‘this is probably going to be one of the future reasons why we’ll break-up.’” he messages you first before anything else, asking you just exactly ‘what the fuck is this application for, babe?’ to which you only reply with a spam of winking emojis. actually, you only reply with winking emojis and actual winks when he decides to videocall you into answering him, leading minho to answer the form while you’re peeking over on a small browser on his laptop screen. your boyfriend mainly answers the questions lightheartedly, even reading his answers aloud to you after (”what number on the fan do i like? four, of course!” “minho, you’re a monster.”). that is until the last question which he only smiles at before spending the last five minutes of your videocall typing continuously then ending the call after submitting, preventing you from interrogating him and his sudden change in behavior.

it’s only after the call that you see his answer to the last question (”why do you love me”), an entire eight paragraphs of him just mindlessly rambling about whatever comes at the top of his head to answer the question: ranging from his favourite and least favourite memories of you together, the things he loves about you coupled with the things he claims to not like about you (before shyly admitting towards the end that he still finds things to love about them), and an “overall there’s a lot of reasons why i love you: some i’ve mentioned, some i haven’t, some i’ve discovered, and some i will find out about in the future when we celebrate our 2nd year anniversary, 3rd, 4th, and the ones we’ll eventually forget what number they’re supposed to be because we’ll probably be married and busy with a lot of other things ;) there’s just no one definitive answer to this question, to be honest, but this is what comes at the top of my head. happy one year, baby <3″

when the fabric of reality that blankets seoul is reported to have been ripped at the seams, you start mysteriously losing some of your personal belongings to the parallel dimension’s version of your apartment. at first you blame it on your public enemy no. 1 and roommate, changbin, who does have a habit of borrowing things without permission and forgetting to return them. when you find a blue-haired and heavily tattooed changbin using your hair dryer in the bathroom one day (clearly looking very different from the roommate you’ve been living with for 6 months who has blonde hair and piercings only), however, only then do you realize that it’s been your roommate’s parallel version who’s been unknowingly receiving your things. what’s more surprising is him getting visibly confused at you initially throwing a fit at him when you mistook him as your real roommate, explaining to you later on that he and your parallel version are dating. you purposely avoid parallel dimension changbin for a few days in embarrassment from the latter, that is until he sits you down in the living room a week later (while your dimension’s changbin is out at his part-time job) and asks you, “so, what’s your problem with my parallel self? maybe i can help!”

only parallel dimension changbin proves himself to be unhelpful when all he comments on your subsequent ramblings is a cheesy grin and, “your roommate’s probably in love with you. god, i can’t believe that even in your reality i’m stupid.”

in a world where the person who doesn’t reciprocate an individual’s strong feelings instead of the other way around, hyunjin’s had his own fair share of sick days and pharmacy runs to suppress the flowers that bloom in him from admirers who fall way too deep into his charms. he’s slightly grown desensitized to it, having already memorized what to do and what to say to the people who are forced to confront and apologize to him each and every time. when it’s you who’s suddenly confessing your sudden feelings to him, promising that you’ll get over it in a month and even stay away for a while for his sake, only then does he feel a strange mix of dread, worry, and fear at the pit of his stomach. he doesn’t want you, his best friend, to ever leave his side but at the same time he can’t find it in himself to reciprocate your feelings for you to stay. for the first time, he doesn’t know what to do nor what to say to you, the daffodils suddenly feeling heavier in his lungs the more you try and distance yourself and see new people.

jisung, unlike how the cliche trope goes, always bets everything on him missing his shot at your subdivision’s basketball court. he always says something along the lines of, “if i miss this shot, let’s go the movies!” or “if the ball falls off the rim after 5 seconds, you’ll go to the beach party with me!” despite being the star player of your high school basketball team himself. he always purposely misses for fun and gets his reward, of course, even when you remind him to shoot properly through flustered expressions and feigned huffs. this has then caused you your entire summer time and allowance, all spent glued to jisung’s hip and buying him all sorts of things from ice cream, extended time to borrow surf boards at the beach, and even a ride ticket to the travelling carnival’s ferris wheel (where he stole a kiss from you at the top like the cheesy little shit that he is).

whenever you ask him why he bets in reverse each and every time, however, only then does his confident smirk disappears into his blush and he turns his entire face away from you; too shy to admit that you make him a little too nervous whenever it’s just you watching him shoot hoops. give him a rest, he just wants more full assurance that he’ll get to spend more time with you, as boyish as that sounds.

you probably should’ve known better than to provoke chenle and wooyoung when you told them over the student council meeting that a marriage booth probably wouldn’t give you a lot of revenue since your school festival this year doesn’t fall on valentine’s day week. you probably should’ve expected that the first thing they’d do after the student assembly, when the festival is formally opened, is to drag you into said marriage booth—your english classroom decorated from top to bottom in cheap white cloth, plastic flowers, and an edit of your senior alumni bang chan as jesus—and put you into one of the flower crown veils they probably got at someone’s baptism, explaining that they need someone to kickstart the booth and attract more customers. but most of all, you probably should’ve expected that these two troublemaking vice president and secretary of yours wouldn’t hesitate to take this opportunity to torment you even further because suddenly you’re getting fake married to felix, your chem lab partner and long-time crush, who also has his own ‘sins’ to atone to chenle and wooyoung (something about ditching them at a party because he saw an injured cat stuck up on a tree on the way to the venue). the two of you stand in front of the “bang chan altar” for 10 minutes with han jisung in a questionable pope costume, the two of you attracting passersby who are mostly your classmates murmuring “oh my god, y/n and felix?” or “i knew it! those two are so cute together!” as the two of you are forced into exchanging cereal box rings and saying impromptu vows.

what you didn’t expect from this experience, however, is felix suddenly confessing in his vows, clearing his throat awkwardly while sliding the purple plastic ring on your ring finger and saying, “this isn’t how i imagined it to go but we’re both here, all of our classmates are here, and you’re looking really pretty today so, uh...y/n, i just want to say that i’ve really liked you for a long time.”

your grandmother shows you her first look of disapproval over your weaved fabrics when you start creating pieces that seem to resemble the aura of a boy. as much as you don’t want to see her disappointed, tradition still stands that you have to design your fabrics according to how you would interpret your dreams and since you turned 18, all you’ve been dreaming about is your potential soulmate. of all 7 billion in the world, you just have to be one of the rare ones with the ability to interpret your dreams on textile and have these said dreams be your soulmate bond to someone else as well. instead of arbitrary colors or shapes resembling nature like your grandmother and everyone else, you’re trying to recreate the face of a boy your age with the kindest smile you’ve ever seen and the prettiest brown eyes; instead of putting the sounds of the ocean or the chirping of birds as they would be usually heard in dreams onto colorful fabric, you’re trying to mix red, orange, and yellow dyes on threads just to try and capture seungmin’s golden voice whenever he would sing to you in your dreams. your soulmate becomes your muse, the lasting impressions he makes on you in the 3 real-time seconds of dreaming that you spend with him embedding themselves into the blanket you’ve been tasked to make for the winter.

seungmin is more than flattered of course, finding genuine fascination in what you do and excitement to see you in person once university allows him. it’s only at the end of the year, however, right on christmas day, when he finally sees you on vacation in your town with his family—finding you at the beach party his new friend hyunjin invites him to where you dance around the bonfire with your own friends, wrapped in the blanket made of warm colors that just scream his very soul and aura. your eyes meet almost as soon as he arrives because of your soulmate pull, causing you to become flustered at realizing that you’re wearing the blanket design that’s been inspired by him, and before he knows it, kim seungmin is running to you and grabbing your arm. “hi.” he pants breathlessly, his relieved smile shining brightly against the orange glow of the fire to your side. “finally. it’s you!”

jeongin stares at his laptop for a solid 5 minutes in complete and utter confusion before his roommate seungmin pokes him on the side of his head and asks if he passed his dream university, snapping him out of reality. it’s not that he didn’t pass the entrance exam, definitely not because he’s still feeling confident from answering it from almost 6 months ago. rather, it’s that the acceptance e-mail sent to him by the university is for a completely different name, your name out of all applicants out there—that one person he sat next to at cram school and turned down at the end of the summer. logging into his social media accounts, he sees people voicing out their concerns for similar incidents, that they’re getting acceptance or rejection e-mails of other applicants instead of their own, and posts that aim to track down who’s gotten who to remedy this. when seungmin hears this, he simply shrugs and urges jeongin to simply message you and get over it since the two of you are connected on social media anyway. but still, jeongin takes another hour to message you with a simple, “hi, i got your e-mail. should i forward it to you?” even closing his laptop in a hurry and running back into the comfort of his blanket as soon as he hears the dreadful ping of the messenger app. he knows he shouldn’t be flustered to message you, especially with something as important as your acceptance letter, but he can’t help but feel weak in the knees at the thought of having to talk to you again after almost a year because all he can think about is that he really shouldn’t have rejected you in that offer to go to the movies in the first place.

what’s worse is that, since he sent the message over online, his thoughts can’t help but overthink your simple “really? here’s my e-mail” reply that comes not even a second after he sends his message—even more your follow-up reply of “i got yours too btw! i’ll forward it to you when you forward mine” when he doesn’t reply immediately. jeongin’s fingers uncontrollably shake as he musters up the courage to reply, face blushing red the entire time as he e-mails you your acceptance letter. all this time, considering how the two of you haven’t talked in a long time, he only thinks about one ambitious thought: “is it a bad time? to bring up that movie offer again?”

#stray kids #skz #chan #lee know #changbin #hyunjin #han #seungmin #i.n.

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crash-cinematic-universe · 4 years

Text

Holographic Sand is a Kickass Band Name

pairing: peter maximoff/OC(graciella decuerpo) (high school AU/not canon)

summary: peter learns that a fuckton can change in the course of a week

warnings: none? bad language and peter is simp but thats it

notes **please read**: Heyyyyy how are you doing? good? that’s great. so ik this fic is a peter/oc fic, but honesty i only use her name a few times and a few defining features but like. thats it. so you can totally just imagine urself in her position. also this fic is 5,550 words exactly. that’s the most ive ever written and I am SUPER fucking proud. I think i might become one of those blogs where i write super huge monster fics that im proud of instead of just writing to fill requests.if u dont want that then just lmk and i will not do that. i dont know. maybe. also this fic is peter centric because uh it is. anyways enjoy <3

taglist: @creator-appreciator, @simonsbluee

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Monday

Peter sat across the room, his arms crossed neatly on top of his knees as he rested his chin on his forearm. He wasn’t paying attention to the lesson being taught in front of him, in fact, he wasn’t paying attention to anything at all. No, Peter was lost in his head again. Peter’s mind was a chaotic minefield of music and cheesy one-liners and random facts that he seems to just know. But this time, he wasn’t envisioning himself beating up a police officer or playing with Pink Floyd. This time, he was picturing a perfect world where nothing ever happened yet nothing was ever boring. Peter had built a utopia in his mind-- a kingdom created to his exact preferences. A blissful tower of joy and happiness and energy and satisfaction. A paradise where he stood on top of the world with Graciella DeCuerpo, the pretty girl from algebra class, standing right next to him.

Now, Peter was well aware that the pretty girl from algebra class had no idea who Peter was. The pair had never exchanged more than a few words, but somewhere within those few words, Peter managed to decide that she was his soulmate. He’d created an image of her in his head that would make God weep tears of envy, the perfect personality for the perfect person. Peter willfully ignored the fact that he was setting himself up for heartbreak as he imagined how nice it would feel to have her fingers intertwined with his.

All of Peter’s friends thought he was ridiculous, ‘you can’t love someone you don’t know,’ they’d say. Peter would only scoff and shake away their words. He absolutely can love someone he doesn’t know, it’s getting the other person to reciprocate those feelings that’s nearly impossible. However, that doesn’t stop him from fantasizing at night. That doesn’t stop him from imagining the various ways he’d confess his love to the pretty girl who doesn’t love him. Or maybe she does. Peter doesn’t know, he could never know; unless, of course, he worked up the courage to talk to her.

Scott constantly teased Peter about his one-sided infatuation, but Peter paid no mind to him. He was 100% content with his perpetual pining for someone who probably didn’t know his name. He was totally okay with the unending ache in his chest that would appear any time she walked by or met his gaze. Peter was alright with his ceaseless yearning and the eternal feeling of disappointment that overtook him every time he snapped out of one of his fantasies. He was a-okay with all of that.

So, there he was, spacing out during biology class as Professor Hargreeves struggles to teach the silver teen about photosynthesis. The Professor looked at Peter with desperate eyes, soon deciding that having his usually energetic student be quiet and still was the silver lining of the situation-- no pun intended. Professor Hargreeves droned on as Peter glanced at the clock, counting down the minutes until 7th period. Counting the seconds until he got to see the pretty girl in algebra class once again.

Tuesday

6th period was always the worst part of Peter’s day-- the dreaded english class. There were many contributing factors to Peter’s hatred for this class; the professor was a bore, the material itself was uninteresting, and Peter could never seem to sit still or retain any of the words he read in english class. Worst of all, english class seemed to go on forever, leaving Peter to impatiently wait for the bell to ring and release him to 7th period. At the end of the period every day, he was practically vibrating in his seat.

“Can anyone tell me what Juliet’s suicide is supposed to symbolize?” the Professor asked expectantly. Peter couldn’t care less about the symbolism of some chick’s suicide-- he’d much rather be studying the features of his algebra class infatuation.

She sat next to him yesterday. There were at least 5 other open seats and she sat next to him. Yes, Peter read too much into it and yes, Peter spent the entire class period trying to make himself seem naturally cool, but he didn’t care. Peter would act like the most desperate, pathetic, lovestruck loser in the world if it meant that she would like him. They didn’t talk, they didn’t exchange a single word, nevertheless, Peter was in a state of euphoria for the entire class period.

Sometimes Peter feels like a stalker. He watches her whenever he can-- he doesn’t follow her around or anything, but if she’s around, he’ll stare at her. He has her features memorized, the curve of her nose, the dark brown irises surrounding her pupils, the way that she always seems to have chipped black nail polish on. He sees the small things. He sees the way she bites her nails when he gets bored and he sees the way her leg never seems to stop bouncing. She hums the basslines to songs as opposed to the melody.

English class came to an abrupt end as the bell cut off the Professor’s teachings as well as Peter’s distant daydreaming. Peter was out of his seat within seconds, his notes and books quickly being swept up in his arms as he walked out of the room. The hallways are crowded and chaotic and busy, each individual student attempting to get to their locker then to their class on time. Peter watches as kids swing their lockers open, fatigue and weariness apparent on their faces as they disappear into their classrooms. Peter reaches his locker hastily, the few small posters of classic rocks bands adorning the inside of his locker door. A playful giddiness overcame his body as he made his way to algebra class, a small smile left on his face.

Graciella shows up across the hallway, her bright red hair catching his eye in a sea of brown and blonde and blue. His stomach flutters as they get closer and closer to each other, finally meeting outside of the classroom. Her eyes rise to meet Peter’s, and instead of pulling away, Peter keeps looking. She smiles at him before disappearing inside the classroom, and Peter felt his knees get weak. With a deep breath and a triumphant smile, he walked into the classroom.

Wednesday

Lunchtime; possibly one of the most enjoyable parts of Peter’s school day. Peter is free to kick back and stuff his face full of whatever junk the school board deems nutritious enough for highschoolers. Usually, he ate lunch under the bleachers with his friends, but in some sick twist of fate most of them were absent. So, Peter was left to eat alone in his usual spot.

The quiet was comfortable, refreshing. The gentle summer breeze would blow every few minutes and Peter would listen to the rustle of the leaves. There’s a certain tranquility to being alone; Peter can lay back and relax and just… think. No stress, no panicking, no--

“Hey, uh, Peter, right?” Peter’s eyes snap up so fast he’s afraid they would detach from his head and fall out. His breath faltered and his hands began to shake a bit-- why was he so freaked out? She was just a girl; sure, she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and yeah, he was madly in love with her, but that’s besides the point.

“Uh-- uh, yeah, P-Peter. That’s, uh, that’s me,” He chuckled awkwardly, desperately trying to stay cool. Peter was an awkward person, but he’d rather die than fuck up his chances with Grace.

“You dropped this on your way out of class yesterday, I, uhm, didn’t get to return it to you until now,” She holds out a small key chain with three small keys hanging off of it-- Peter’s house keys, along with the key to his mother’s car. He quickly takes the key chain from the red-haired girl in front of him.

“Holy shit, uh, thanks! I couldn’t get into my house yesterday so I guess you saved me from another broken window,” Peter held up his hand and showcased the scattered pattern of small cuts on his palm. Grace laughed lightly before gently running her fingers over the cuts on Peter’s palm.

“Oh fuck, dude, these look pretty bad. Maybe keep a spare key hidden under your welcome mat or something,” Peter doesn’t fully process Grace’s words; he’s too preoccupied with trying not to collapse at the feeling of her fingertips on his palm.

“Hey, you okay? You look… pale,” Grace pressed the back of her hand on Peter’s forehead in an attempt to check for illness, but that just made Peter’s skin erupt in goosebumps.

“I, um, I’m fine. I’m just st-stressed about the algebra t-test on Friday, I th-think,” To be fair, Peter was stressed about the algebra test. Peter may or may not have spent the entire class staring at Grace instead of, you know, learning the material.

“Oh! Well, if you want, I can help you study. I’m also kinda worried about it, and I study better with other people,” Peter silently thanked god for what was happening to him.

“That would be fuckin’ fantastic,” Grace smiled a smile that made Peter shiver.

“Cool! Uh, I’ll give you my phone number and we’ll meet up tomorrow. One day isn’t much time to study, but it’s better than nothing.” She pulls a pen out of her backpack and rips a small piece of paper out of one of her notebooks. Peter watches as she scribbles down her phone number and hands the paper to him.

“Thanks. For everything, the keys, the studying-- everything.” Grace smiled.

“It’s no problem, Peter, really. I’ll call you later,” And just like that, she walked away. Peter was left alone under the bleachers, a wide smile plastered on his face as he read the piece of paper in his hands over and over and over again.

Thursday

30 minutes. 30 minutes until Grace Reaper DeCuerpo, the prettiest, nicest, funniest girl Peter had ever met would show up on his doorstep. She would be inside his house for god knows how long. She would sit next to Peter-- either on the coffee table in the basement or on the floor of his bedroom. Needless to say, Peter was freaking the fuck out.

The plan was simple: Grace shows up, they study, they get comfortable, and she goes home. Yet, in those four simple steps, so much could go wrong. Wanda could interrupt, his mother could lose her temper, Lorena could start crying-- worst of all, Peter could embarrass himself and drive her away.

Peter was in the middle of reorganizing his record collection for a third time when he heard a knock at the door. His blood went cold and an electric excitement ran through his veins. Peter checked his hair in the mirror one last time before running to the door. He stood silently, staring at the chrome handle hesitantly. This was his one chance. His only chance to make his perfect kingdom real-- Peter really, really, really didn't want to fuck it up. With a deep breath, he slowly opened the door.

"Hey, Peter!" Her voice was smooth and melodic and it made Peter's heart light up. He’s about to respond with something smooth and witty when a squeaky voice chirps behind him.

“Hi!! Are you the pretty girl Peter talks about?” Peter can physically feel his face turn bright red as he turns to see his six-year-old sister, Lorena, standing behind him. She’s wearing a purple princess dress that has a syrup stain on the sleeve. Grace laughs before stepping through the doorway.

“Lorena!” Peter groans in annoyance, a pleading look on his face. The young girl just giggles before scurrying away, her dress flowing behind her.

“‘The pretty girl Peter talks about’, huh?” Grace grins at Peter cheekily. Peter runs his hand through his hair before motioning to the staircase.

“God, Lorna is quite the kid. Well, uh, we can work in my room,” He sighs. “And Grace? Uh, m-maybe don’t let Lorena change your opinion of me,” She just smirks before walking past Peter.

“Too late,” She called before disappearing down the stairs. Peter could hear the faintest trace of a smile in her voice. His heart skipped a beat as he quickly followed after her.

She was wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt and holding a backpack with various pins on it-- her left ear was pierced in three places and her right in five. The earrings she was wearing were black, or maybe grey; her bright red hair blocked Peter’s view of them. She was wearing rings, some odd words engraved in the metal. Peter couldn’t read them from where he was standing. She was wearing a skirt with fishnets, her hand buried in the pockets that seem to have been sewn in herself. She has callouses on both her hands, but Peter knew that already. Her appearance would put Aphrodite to shame-- suddenly, Peter was much less confident in himself than he was before. He ran his hand through his hair again before reaching the basement.

He held his breath as Grace looked around his room, her gaze lingering on the plethora of stolen signs and band posters covering the walls. She placed her backpack on the floor and walked over to Peter’s record collection, her fingers carefully flitting through the different albums. She seemed… impressed. It was then that Peter realized it had been silent for much too long.

“Y’know I can, uh, p-play some music if you want me to. You can just pick a record and, uh, I’ll... play it,” Peter winced at his words, cursing himself for being so awkward in front of the girl he’d been pining after since the beginning of the year. He felt like everything had spiraled out of control, and he watched idly as it happened. Then, Grace shot him a smile and pulled out a record.

“You have a good taste in music, Silver,” No one had ever called Peter ‘silver’ before. He liked it a bit more than he should. “Although, that’s not really a surprise. I had a feeling you were cool.”

“You think I’m cool?” Peter asked, shocked. He wasn’t sure he heard her correctly.

“Oh, totally. I see you in the hallways sometimes and you always seem so… carefree. Genuine. I don’t know, I guess it’s just… you, ya know? You’re naturally cool.” Every syllable that rolled off her tongue shot euphoria through Peter’s veins. Grace DeCuerpo, the girl Peter Maximoff had dreamed of for almost a full year, was telling him that she thought he was cool. Naturally cool.

“I know a lot of people who would disagree with you on that one,” Peter joked. There was truth behind his humor, but of course, he didn’t want to get into his insecurities now. “They think I’m a total loser, which isn’t totally wrong I guess.”

“Well those people are stupid,” She stated matter-of-factly with a smile. “Speaking of stupid, we should probably get to work.” Peter nodded before sitting beside her on the floor.

For three hours they poured over their algebra books. They quizzed each other and checked each other’s work; Peter’s proficiency in simplifying radicals aiding them both. Every now and then their hands would brush against each other, or the conversation would stray away from school and into their personal lives. Peter learned that Grace had two brothers, one of which passed away when she was younger. Peter talked about Lorena and Wanda and his miraculous abilities in the same way that she talked about her hometown and her own abilities. The conversation was smooth and natural-- Peter didn’t feel like he was being too annoying or too chatty and there was seldom an awkward pause. The pair were content in their time together, not a single moment went by where one wished the other would leave.

Eventually, Grace had to go home. Peter wished that she could stay forever, but of course, that would be considered kidnapping. He walked her to the door, although Peter didn’t feel like he was walking. He felt like he was floating.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Silver,” Grace said softly as she turned to face Peter. She looked him in the eye and he could feel his stomach flutter.

“Yeah, I guess so,” She opened the door, but before she left, she froze. She turned to look at Peter once again.

“Peter?” she said. “You’re not a loser.”

Friday

Peter could tell the second he walked through the front door of his high school that something had changed. The energy that radiated in the halls shifted from a dull buzz of boredom to a rush of anticipation. The students in the hallway looked the same as always; tired and anxious and wishing for the day to go by quickly. However, Peter wasn’t wishing for the end of the day, and he certainly wasn’t tired. He was determined and energized and absolutely terrified, because that morning Peter Maximoff made the most important decision a seventeen-year-old could. He decided that he was going to ask Grace out on a date.

Peter made the choice to keep this from his friends-- it’s not that he didn’t trust them, it’s just that Peter knew he would be teased for his infatuation. It’s happened before and it will happen again. He walked down the hallways with a brave face on, his eyes forward and his heart racing. Truthfully, the silver teenager was terrified of… well, everything. The looming image of a harsh rejection forced itself into his mind; the idea that she would laugh in his face made his heart break a tiny bit, even though it wasn’t real. Peter simply shook those images away and walked on.

The day flew by much faster than Peter was comfortable with, and for the first time ever, he was dreading algebra class. He was terrified that he would walk through the door and have everything be exactly the same-- he feared that Grace would go back to not knowing who he was, just like before. Peter was alright with never being her boyfriend, but he didn’t want to be a stranger. He didn’t think he could take being a stranger anymore.

So, there he stood, staring at the door to his algebra classroom from across the hall. He felt confident and prepared himself for the task at hand. In four long strides, he entered the classroom. Grace was sitting next to an empty desk, her eyes stuck on the small notebook full of doodles on her desk. Peter watched as her eyes raised to meet his, a wide smile forming on her face as she motioned him over.

“Hey, silver! I saved a seat for ya,” she called, and Peter felt his knees get weak. He then decided that he would wait until after class to ask her out.

“You did?”

“Of course,” She grinned. “I like you, dude, you’re my friend,” Peter’s heart fluttered as he sat down beside her. Grace shot an odd look his way before reaching out and placing a hand on his arm. “Hey, you look stressed. Don’t sweat it, silver, you’ll do fine. We studied for, like, 3 hours yesterday. You’re gonna ace it,”

To be frank, Peter had forgotten all about the test. The real reason he looked so stressed was because he happened to be sitting next to the love of his life, and the love of his life happened to be touching his arm.

“O-oh! Uh, yeah, thanks. I was just nervous because of… the test,” The bell rang and class began, the professor strictly laying down the rules that were to be followed while the test was in session. Peter could feel the lingering touch of her hand on his skin. It made his head feel fuzzy.

Peter soon came to learn that sitting next to Grace during a test was a huge mistake. He couldn’t focus on anything other than her-- it didn’t help that she kept shooting him glances from where she sat. The numbers and letters on the paper in front of him seemed to rearrange before his eyes, instead spelling out various taunts. He feels a little pathetic for how easily Grace can unravel him, but hey, he’s a teenager.

The silver-haired boy’s eyes were struggling to decipher the words on his page when a small folded square landed on his desk. It came from Grace’s direction, and a small smirk had formed on her lips as she solved equations. Hesitantly, he unfolded the paper and read the neatly written message.

Hey silver :)

Peter smiled softly. He quickly pulled a pad of post-it notes out of his backpack and scribbled down a quick reply.

I have no idea what I’m doing. I think Professor Stedman decided to write our tests in hieroglyphics this time.

He flicked the note onto her desk and quickly turned his face downward. Class would be over soon, and Peter knew he couldn’t turn in a blank test. He uses his enhanced speed to do his assessment in seconds. Sure, he was almost certain he’d barely reach a passing grade, but hey, he had bigger matters to focus on. By the time he finished, another note landed on his desk.

That bad, huh? Looks like we better study longer next time.

Peter’s heart swelled a bit. He really thought the study sessions were a one-time thing. He’s overjoyed to know he’ll get to see Grace semi-regularly, even if he never manages to ask her out.

I think I’d rather hang out with you without the looming threat of schoolwork.

That’s the closest Peter could get to asking her out. He put deep thought into every word, he examined the phrasing and checked the spelling of every word. His english teacher would be proud.

That can be arranged ;)

Peter had no idea that four words could make him feel so much. He had no idea that 17 letters could make him want to scream in the middle of a silent testing period. His hand was shaking and his careful planning was abandoned as he scribbled back a reply.

Oh yeah? What did you have in mind?

Patiently, he waited. He waited for Grace to finish writing her response and he waited for her to toss the note back over. He didn’t wait for more than a few minutes, but it felt like hours. He was panicking, and he was sure she could tell. She was probably joking, right? She was probably writing an awkward clarification-- she was probably explaining that she would actually rather die than be around him for non-academic reasons. He braced himself as the yellow post-it landed on the center of his desk.

My aunt owns a drive-in a few miles from here and she gave me keys to the projector room and the gate. She managed to snag a copy of The Exorcist-- I thought you’d like to join me during my midnight escapade tomorrow night.

Peter’s heart stopped. For a moment, he thought his eyes were fooling him. Maybe this was all some sick joke. Maybe he was being set up. Maybe he’ll get in her car tomorrow and she’ll drive him into the woods and murder him. To be completely honest, Peter wouldn’t mind if she murdered him. Peter wrote his reply.

Really? You want me there? I might be a drag. You could probably find at least 20 other people who would probably be more interesting than me.

Grace frowned at his response, and suddenly Peter decided he never wanted to see her frown again. She wrote confidently, her words solid and sure.

You? A drag? Impossible. I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t want to be with anyone other than you, Maximoff.

This note was his undoing. He couldn’t help himself, he read it over and over and over again-- he almost forgot to respond. He wanted to hold onto it forever, he wanted it to be framed and hung on his wall. Hell, he wanted it tattooed on his arm. Peter had never been so happy while taking a test, that’s for sure. He wasn’t sure exactly what to say; he went from heartfelt responses to witty retorts. Finally, he decided to be totally and completely honest.

I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Saturday

There was seldom a time in his life where Peter Maximoff felt wholly content. Even in the most peaceful moments, there was always something bothering him, there was always something to pull him back to reality. However, sitting in the back of Grace’s dad’s convertible with the seats down and the roof pulled back, his head resting on her shoulder as they watched a cheesy horror movie, Peter was as close to nirvana as he’d ever been.

Life had always been so hard for Peter. He’s always had to fight for his seat at the table, to claw his way into a state of mind that wasn’t a hellhole. It seemed as if the world was plotted against him; he was ostracized from society and taught that he, along with his closest family and friends, were monsters. He never met his father and his mother spent so long fighting her own battles that she forgot to love her kids. Peter had to steal to stay fed, and he had to do his best to raise his little sisters to be good people. But right there, right then? That wasn’t hard. Peter didn’t have to be anyone or do anything-- he just had to exist next to someone who wanted him. That was the easiest thing Peter had ever done.

Peter wasn’t exactly sure how he got there. Of course, he knew that they had driven to the drive-in, but he wasn’t sure how he was the person next to Grace. They had spoken for one day, maybe two, and somehow he landed himself in the most perfect spot in the entire universe. Less than a week ago, she didn’t even know his name. Or, maybe she did. Maybe she was just like Peter-- maybe she had spent the past year pining for him, and finally she worked up the nerve to just talk to him. Maybe. Peter isn’t complaining either way.

“Can I ask you a kind of cheesy question?” Peter is startled by the sound of his own voice. Grace sits up and glances at him.

“Shoot,”

“Do you-- well, uh, don’t read too much into this, but, do you believe in love at first sight?” God, he sounded awkward.

“Nope,” She said bluntly. Peter wasn’t expecting that answer, but he wasn’t exactly disappointed by it. “I mean, it’s kind of a stupid idea, ya know? Like, isn’t there a million poems and sonnets and books written about how love is this weird complicated monster of a feeling? I don’t think you can really love someone just by looking at them. You can love the idea of a person, sure, or maybe the look of a person, but you can’t love that person. Because a person is so much more than ‘first sight’,” she sighs. “I don’t know, maybe I’m being a killjoy. It just seems dumb to me-- dumb and, I don’t know, exclusive,”

Peter stops to think for a moment. He steps out of his lovesick chaotic hellbrain and looks at his feelings from an outside perspective. He thinks back to the kingdom he created in his brain-- a kingdom built on a foundation of sand. Or, less than sand. Holographic sand, because the sand he built his kingdom on wasn’t real. He made a mental note that ‘Holographic Sand’ is a kickass band name, then resumed his impromptu soul-searching. She was right-- he could see that now. Scott was right, too. You really can’t love someone you don’t know, because if you don’t know them, you fill in the gaps. You fill in the gaps with what you think fits, and then the other person stops being them and starts being parts of you. Peter suddenly felt weird.

“I’m sorry if I said something wrong,” Grace interjects after a while. Peter hadn’t realized he’d been silent for so long.

“You didn’t say anything wrong. On the contrary, you, uh, you made things a little bit more… right, in my brain. You somehow managed to take a little chunk of chaos and tame it, which is scarily impressive,” he joked. “Remind me to ask you your opinion on the meaning of life and the root of true happiness,” They’re joined in a chorus of laughter and Peter realizes that his little brain kingdom didn’t hold a candle to the red convertible he was sitting in. She slings an arm around his shoulders.

“Y’know, I might not know the meaning of life, but I am pretty close to true happiness right now,” She says, softer than before. “Maybe the root of true happiness is you, Maximoff,” She chuckles. Peter smiles. He doesn’t want the ruin the moment-- god, he is desperately trying to keep himself from fucking it up, but he feels obligated to tell her about his year of pining.

“Hey, uh, can I tell you something kinda pathetic?” He cringes at the way his voice trembled on the last word.

“Go ahead, Peter,” She used his name this time. Peter thinks she knows he’s about to say something mildly serious.

“I’ve liked you since, like, the beginning of the year. You seemed so… cool. So nice. I saw you in the hallways and my stomach would get all twisted up and my head would hurt a little bit. It was like I was allergic to you, but I enjoyed it. That sounds weird. I’m sorry,” He stopped for a moment, attempting to take the buzzing mass of words in his brain and string them into a sentence. “I was too afraid to talk to you, so I, uh, asked around. I got other people’s opinions of you and then built a little version of you in my brain. I realize now that, uhm, the little brain version of you is like, way way worse than actual you,”

When you talked to me the first time, you threw me off. I wasn’t really nervous about the test-- I mean, yeah I was nervous but that’s not why I looked so pale. I just wasn’t expecting for you to talk to me, like, willingly. So I lied because I was embarrassed. And I lied again in class yesterday. Because I was embarrassed,” He stopped talking. Peter felt like he was digging himself into a hole-- he felt like he killed the sweet sugary mood.

“Why are you telling me this?” Grace asked. She didn’t sound angry. She sounded a little confused, and she sounded like she was trying to help Peter decipher his brain.

“I don’t know, I guess I just feel bad. I feel bad for, uh, for not being honest I guess. I feel bad for being a coward,” Yep, definitely killed the mood.

“Peter, you shouldn’t feel bad for being afraid, you know,” She assures. “I would’ve done the exact same thing in your position. Hell, I did do the exact same thing in your position,” That caught Peter’s attention.

“What?”

“You didn’t drop your keys in algebra. You dropped them somewhere in bio and my friend found them. She was gonna take them to the office, but I wanted an excuse to talk to you, so I said I’d return them,” Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was being pranked, he had to be. “Being awkward and weird is like a requirement in high school. Don’t sweat it, Maximoff, really. We’re all the same in that way, I think,”

Peter felt a wave of relief wash over him. He was feeling too much at that moment, he was letting the bad drown out the good. He didn’t want to remember the day in a sad light.

“I like you. A lot. Even if you are awkward and weird,” He smiles softly. Slowly, ever so slowly, he intertwined his fingers with those of the girl beside him. It was a simple display of affection, but it made Peter feel like he was floating.

“I like you too, dork,” Peter smiled widely before placing his head back on Grace’s shoulder. Peter wasn’t paying attention to the movie, in fact, he wasn’t paying attention to anything at all. No, Peter was lost in his head again-- but this time, he wasn’t standing on a false kingdom with a false version of the girl he liked. No, this time, he was thinking about the very real girl beside him. He was thinking about the perfect world they had created in the small car they were in; a perfect world where he felt so much emotion and so, so safe. They had built a utopia in the back seat- a blissful tower of awkwardness and comfort and clumsy confessions. A paradise where he sat in the back seat of a Ford Galaxie with Graciella DeCuerpo, the pretty girl from algebra class, sitting right next to him.

#Evan Peters #peter maximoff #peter maximoff x oc #peter maximoff x reader #sorta a little bit #graciella reaper decuerpo #xmen #xmen fanfiction #xmen imagine #high school AU

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taliaglitch · 3 years

Text

because i love being annoying, here's all the other answers for the oc ask game i reblogged earlier today! under the cut. because its long

2. who loves aquariums

angel! they think fish are neat. i feel like they'd go to whatever aquariums are in chicago a lot

3. who would live off of macaroni and cheese given the chance

briar! it's a classic comfort food and they can hardly cook anything else, let them live

4. who’s favorite time of day is 2:36 in the morning

briar! it's nice and quiet and dark, etc etc. they like being alone

5. who waits for the movie to come out on dvd instead of seeing it in the theater

are movies even released on dvds anymore. maybe cecil . i dont think he'd like theatres as a concept

8. who would start a fight if someone dissed their starter pokemon

zoey! she doesnt get confrontational often. but if youre mean to oshawott she will cry, and then fight you. say goodbye to your kneecaps

9. who would always cry about Bambi’s mom no matter HOW many times they’ve watched it

also zoey! she gets it from john

10. who HAS to sleep with their socks off

people sleep with their socks on????

11. who always gets second place in mario kart and is always super salty about it

briar. the real reason they "hate" nick is because he keeps winning

13. who has WAY too many stuffed animals

zoey! theyre mostly just scattered around her room, sitting cutely & all, but she does still sleep with mr snodgrass

15. who drinks out of the carton

briar. they can't be bothered to get a glass . they stumble down into the kitchen at 3 am, mid-breakdown, tears streaming down their face, and downs half a carton in one go

16. who puts the near-empty carton back in the fridge

also briar. nick wakes up and enters the kitchen at 3 am to see briar chugging milk or orange juice or something straight from the carton, who upon noticing him slams it back down into the refrigerator and scurries back upstairs. theyre a cryptid

17. who sleepwalks

if you think about being mind controlled to plant a bomb is kind of like forcibly sleepwalking, so i guess all of them

18. who gives everyone really dumb nicknames that have literally nothing to do with their actual name

i feel like kane would but im awful at coming up with nicknames so

20. who would get flowers for themselves bc they fucking deserve it

angel! they love themself and fully know their worth & value! the rest of my buttons WISH they were them

22. who would have the dumbest superhero name

kane's the only one i have a callsign in mind for, "blindspot", which honestly. is pretty dumb. so.

23. who will immediately become ride or die for someone if they buy them food

briar! the most effective way to their heart is through their stomach. or the fourth and fifth ribs. or whatever

24. who draws in the steam on the mirror after a shower

i feel like zoey would but she may not be able to reach it well

25. who never puts anything on their hotdogs

cecil. ketchup is too spicy for him

26. who will follow the ice cream truck for like ten blocks to get what they want

i feel like zoey definitely did this as a kid! cue nick chasing her down the moment he realizes she left brainrange without telling him where she was going

(it's a miracle she never got kidnapped as a child. kane too)

27. who would fall for super cheesy pick-up lines, you know the ones

kane is a glitchmancer. the question answers itself <3

28. who likes pineapple pizza

kane. you cannot trust this man to have good taste in food

29. who will drop everything to sing and dance along to Bohemian Rhapsody whenever and wherever it comes on

kane and zoey both! they have it memorized. they try to sing every part. they go a little too hard on the "i sometimes wish i'd never been born at all"

30. who wears those logo t-shirts for halloween and conventions as a “costume”

this is the absolute maximum effort cecil would put into a costume and even then he has to be forced into it

#i wrote these backwards sorry the earlier ones are lazy lol #oc ramblings

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bad--but-sad-boy · 3 years

Note

🌻

Yayyy thank you!!

Okay after writing this im going to put it under a cut because it got really long...

Okay so I’m pretty sure i have a crush on her at this point cause my brain wouldn’t let me stop daydreaming about her last night but anyways for privacy purposes we’ll call her... Mia. First of all, her (irl) name is really cool. We both go to school together (all girls school), but she lives 12 hours away. She’s so funny and she never fails to make me laugh. One time she wasn’t feeling well so we didn’t talk for like a day and then the next day she was back and one of the first things i said to her was “damn i missed you” and she said “i missed you too!” and we’re both in drama together and we’ve done Shakespeare together a few times and she’s killed me a few times but its so hard to be serious in those scenes because she’s so over the top it just- i just love it so much. For example, the first one we did, I was her mother and she was my son, and we did a scene from The Scottish Play (its bad luck to say the name, sorry to people who don’t know Shakespeare) and she died and i had to be sad, but i couldn’t because she kept saying in a really funny voice “he has killed me mother! run away, I pray you!” (yes this was months ago and yes i have it memorized). and the second time, we did a scene from Othello which is another tragedy. Basically i was her wife and she was my husband and it had been set up to look like I was cheating on her (but i wasn't) so she (he? idk) killed me. but. first of all, death scenes are really fun and second of all, she made the man i “cheated” on her with a flower pot. i have a selfie with the flower pot. she has a selfie flipping off the flower pot. And we eat lunch together every day, and she goes on rants about fics that she’s reading (oh my god she read this one- i was highly invested in it. she facetimed me at midnight to let me know how it ended). and its just so much fun to hear her rant about it. and most days, even if theatre is online, we do it together with two of our other friends, who I’ll call... Olivia and Bella. They’re super fun too, i love them all (platonically or romantically, idk). They’re all in a dorm together, so they can hang out close. since i don’t hang out with literally anyone else, hardly even my family, i’ve become a sort of... honorary member of their dorm? i can’t go in still, but we like cuddle and hug and stuff (never without our masks on tho). anyway Bella and Mia got married (we have engagement photos, it was beautiful) and I’m their flower child and we’re all a happy family and Olivia is the lesbian enby aunt and it’s great. but anyway back to Mia. specifically things that happened today. So there’s this one teacher who’s super nice and i’ll call him Mr. Smith. Mia and I first met Mr. Smith when we were hanging out in the gym and he came in to set up for practice. He’s super nice. we’ve just kinda kept running into him and he’s actually teaching a class i hope to get into next year. anyway. today we happened to be in the lunch line right in front of us. he asked us if we were ever not together, to which we honestly replied “not really except for classes” and he said “i’ll have to talk to the academic office about that” (he totally ships us) and then the way our line works is he would be in between Mia and I and he said “no I couldn’t separate you two”. and every day Mia’s french class gets out at 3:20 and we walk to Theatre together and Mr. Smith saw me waiting outside for her and he said “oh i’ve finally caught you alone haha” and i said “yeah haha im waiting for Mia” and he said “its nice to have someone you like that much isnt it” (he really ships us) (also this has turned into a section about Mr. Smith but oh well) and apparently he saw Mia just as she was coming out of french and said “she’s waiting for you” ANYWAY yesterday Mia and I and two of our friends went to get Starbucks and it was really cold and i said “it is COLD” because thats what i do when its cold and she put her arm around me and we both complained about getting snowflakes in our eyes and she stepped in front of me to shield me from it a bit and we stared into each others eyes and she’s buried her head in my shoulder a few times now and we’ve said that we love each other (but idk if its platonic or not) and she’s bi too so yeah but anyway that’s my crush

#yay an ask!!#long post #??#idk if it applies cause i put a cut #oh well #my crush???#rhys's adventures in theatre #starship-squidlet

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ainstgirl · 4 years

Text

Finding Happines (3)

Chris Evans x Reader

Part 1, Part 2

"i can't believe your going to NY" you say while John keeps his passport in his jacket "it's for work, i'm not going for fun Y/N" "I thought we could spend this weekend together and..." saved your marriage but you didn't dare say it out loud. "i'm not going to loose this oportunity because you want to play houses" he says irritated "what does that mean?" you ask him "i say nothing when you stay up late at work and I have dinner alone so stop playing the victim" he says raising his voice. "playing the victim? this isn't about you going to NY, it's about you forgeting about our anyversary" you finally say. "Jesus Y/N" he yells at you "it's just a date nothing else" "just a date?" tears threaten to come out. "Y/N... i didn't mean it like that" he lowers his tone when he sees your glassy eyes "go" you say opening the door "Y/N" he begs you "i said go, you have a plane to catch" "Babe... don't be like that..." he trys to hold your hand. "goodbye John" you say before you close the door and put the latch. when you're alone you finally let the tears fall, it shouldn't be this hard. 10 minutes later you get a text from John "we'll talk about this went i get back okay? and we'll go out for dinner or something okay? love you" you read it a few times but you didn't answer.

On saturday you did absolutly nothing, you put a face mask on and watch movies, John had call you a couple of times when he arrived to NY but again you didn't answer. while you were changing the channels a young Chris Evans appears on the screen. You decide to send Chris a photo of the movie you were watching, he doesn't take long to respond. "please don't watch that movie" you read "you look like a baby" you send back "are you going to spend your saturday night watching that movie? that's sad" he sends "is there a better plan than seeing Chris Evans with a banana in his ass?" you joke and you could imagine his face when reading it "I don't think I can look you in the face knowing that you've seen that movie, how are we going to film on Monday?" he sends you "oh i think is going to be a good image to have when we film that scene" you laugh "okay then i guess im going to have to watch another episode of your show, i heard the episode 10 is the best" you read, episode 10 was when you hook up with someone "two can play this game" he sends another text " i hate you" you send him "no you dont" he text you back and you smile while writing back "your right i dont" everything would be easier if you did, everything.

"Don't look at me" Chris jokes when you walk to him. "shut up, that movie wasn't that bad" he looks at you and you continue "i like it" "liar" he says with a big smile. "come on, we have a scene to film later today" you say looking at the time on your phone. "can't wait" he winks at you. "you're such a dork" you smile "i think i'm going to get drunk to film that" "oh i have seen you drunk, i think the director would love that" and with that he turns around and leaves you blushing. How were you suposed to film a sex scene with him? obviusly you were attracted to him and not to mention that it has been more than two months since you have had sex, filming that scene was going to be torture, plus tonight your husband arrived from NY and you didn't feel like arguing with him when you got home. you spend all afternoon nervous about the scene when Chris knocks on your door with a bottle of vozka and two shot glasses "why do you have that?" you ask letting him get inside your trailer. "something to calm the nerves" he says. "are you sure is a good idea?" getting drunk before filming... "we are not going to get drunk Y/N relax" he says reading your mind. "okay..." you take one of the shot glasses "i'll do the toast" he takes the other glass "for your first sex scene on camera, now you're officially an actress" "for an awkward first sex scene" you say before drinking your shot and he does the same. "okay lets do this" He says taking the bottle "see you on set Y/N" he winks at you before leaving, you take a deep breath trying to calm your nerves, everything was going to be okay.

It was a private set, only the director and the camera crew were authorized to stay, when Chris enters he smiles at you, he seems as nervous as you are, he had more experience than you, so you did not understand why he was nervous. "let's start with the long shot and see if there is anything we need to change" the director explains "camera 5 get a close up shot of their faces in case i want to use that later, everyone ready? let's go"

You and Chris are in the walk in closet that the scene takes place of "thank you" you say the lines that you had memorized "for defending your family" "i'll always protect us, always" he says doing the same. "come here" you say staring at him, he gives you a half smile and slowly approaches you. You shorten the distance and kiss him, you would lie if you said you hadn't missed his lips, you feel how he smiles as he kisses you and you deepend the kiss, when you take his shirt off you can hear every women screaming in your head, focus, you remind yourself, just focus. He stops for a second to stare at you before taking off your robe, you were completely naked infront of him. There is fire in his gaze before kissing you, this time more intense that before, he clings to your body and a little moan escapes your lips. "and cut" the director says "camera number 2 get a closer look, Y/N take off his pants okay?" he asks you and you simply nod not trusting how your voice was going to sound right now, as Chris looks away to the ceiling and takes a deep breath "Action" with trembling hands you begin to remove the belt, you hope that the trembling hands seems to be due to passion and not something else, just breath you think to yourself. Chris on the other hand kept looking at the ceiling, when the belt falls to the ground you start working with the zipper all without taking your eyes off him, seeing how every little touch of your hand affects him, he's acting, you remind yourself, but why if there isn't a camera on your faces only onyour waist. When his pants were almost removed the director says cut. "okay now i need more close ups, Chris, Y/N, i need you to kiss"

After a couple more takes the director is happy with the scene. You quickly put on your robe to cover yourself and Chris does the same "now i understand why you wanted to take a shot before filming" you say to break the silent "filming sex scenes are always awkward, that helps a little" he says "i ... i have to go" "yeah.. of course, good night Evans" you bite your lip. "goodnight" you see how his eyes stray to your mouth before disappearing out the door.

A shower... you need a very cold shower. You could still feel his hands on your body, not even a bathtub full of ice would calm the heat you have right now. After your shower your phone rings, John is calling you again, you wait until he hang up. John... six years of marriage and you have never felt like you did with Chris in that room, you knew he was acting but aparently your body didn't know. You had already decided to sleep in your trailer tonight when your door slammed open.

"Chris?" you ask surprised "what are you doing here?" "i ... was going to go home and then i saw your car, it’s late and i came to see if everything was fine" he says. "oh i'm fine, i'm going to stay here tonight and..." you start saying. "i lied" he cuts you off. "okay?" you were confused now. "i wanted to see you" he suddenly says "I've been trying for an hour to convince myself not to come here" he adds. "what would you...." but he shuts you up with a kiss, he wasn't drunk, he didn't taste like alcohol, there were no cameras, this was a real kiss... you don't have time to react when he breaks the kiss "Chris..." you don't know what to say, was this really happening or did you hit your head in the shower? "just tell me you don't want this and i'll go" he says looking at you intensely "tell me to stop" he kisses you again and this time you react, you get closer to him until you can feel his heartbeat, you open your mouth giving him a better access, he doesn't waste a second to start taking your robe. You didn't have time to think about this and you didn't want to, you weren't sure if this wasn't a dream and if it was you didn't want to wake up. Chris grabs your ass and a moan scapes your lips, he carries you to the sofa and gets on top of you, his shirt already on the ground, you quickly take off his pants, this time there was no one to yell cut. You and Chris barely stop kissing to breathe and because it was something strictly necessary, he was a good kisser, you bite his lip and this time he's the one who lets out a moan. Both of you were naked when he stops kissing you to look at you, never before have you felt so much desire for someone, it felt like it would consume you. "if you tell me to stop i'll stop" he caresses your face, right now you don't want to think about the consequences of what you're doing so you kiss him letting him know you didn't want him to stop and he didn't, he didn't stop until you were both so exhausted that you fell asleep.

so... what did you think?!

MASTERLIST

Part 4

#Chris Evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fanfic #chris evans x reader #chris evans x y/n #andy barber #andy barber x reader #defending jacob #defending jacob fanfiction #celebrity fanfiction #marvel fanfic #fanficiton #fanfic #writting #masterlist updated #masterlist #Ainstgirl #MARVEL FANDOM

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dayasbun · 5 years

Text

Fame - Angus Cloud (5)

Summary- a luckily timed audition leads to you falling for your new and unexpected co-star.

Warnings- okay HI welcome to my first multi chapter series woah?! this is actually so exciting for me like wow especially since angus doesn’t have any fics yet im just really really excited- so warnings! smut for sure, bad words, lotsa fluff, angst- everything in one basically. here comes a ride and I hope you enjoy :)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 {reading now}

You woke up to an empty bed and cold covers. With a sigh you sat up, wondering where Storm and Z had gone. Grabbing your phone, you shook your head as you read the messages on your home screen.

Babygirl Z <3: Yoooo so we dipped cuz Angus's weird-ass kinda threatened us to gtfo out cuz he wanted to spend time w you but don't tell him I told you that, I don't wanna deal w him

Lil storm!: i think the hood boy in love with you or sum- it's weird.

Angus ☁️: you free today? i got some plans for us so if you ain't you free now

Angus ☁️: i'm playin btw like if you ain't free i can change shit around

You giggled as you heard your nails click against the phone's screen as you sent responses.

-mhm i'll act like i never saw this...have a good day of filming gorgeous <3

-see storm, i highly disagree

-i'm free :) is this a date mr cloud? don’t forget we have filming today

You got up brushing your teeth and washing your face. You waited for Angus's response before picking an outfit for the day, and instead decided on making breakfast for now.

Babygirl Z <3: thanks lovely same to you!!!

Lil storm! laughed at your message

Angus ☁️: shittttt ion know maybe- n yeah ik

-i'm making breakfast, come over if you want

Angus ☁️: food?? i'm already on the way

-my trailer door is unlocked so just come in

A few minutes later you heard the heavy trailer door creak open. You flipped a pancake before turning around and facing the taller man in front of you. "Gooooood morning- you look so tired?"

"Damn, thanks Y/N you look great too!" Angus said sarcastically rolling his eyes.

"Boy, I'm kidding." You grinned wrapping your arms around his waist "How'd you sleep?"

"I slept ight, you? Any dream-"

"SHUTUP!"

"I was just checking damn, just checking!"

You let off the hug and walked back over to the stove turning off the burners. "Okay, done! Pancakes and eggs- and fruit! Can't beat that." You made both you and Angus a plate and sat them down on the small table.

You both ate with smiles on your faces, talking the whole time. You learned some more about Angus and his past, and he learned more about you and what you want your future to be like. You couldn't help but laugh when he spotted a carton of store-bought sugar cookies on your counter and insisted he eat at least five. You didn't deny his request, so he polished them off with the rest of his pancakes.

As soon as the breakfast came to a close, both of your phones dinged at the exact same time.

"That's strange," You said picking up the electrical device. You quickly unlocked it as your eyes scanned the screen, and when you finished you immediately looked up at Angus. From the look on his face, you could tell that he clearly had finished reading the message as well.

"So…" he said quietly.

"Yeah."

"Yep."

The text message wasn't too big of a deal, just a simple message from Mary of a suddenly new shooting schedule. You weren't worried until you reached the paragraph that made very clear that instead of shooting you and Angus's sex scenes next week, or possibly two weeks away, they would be shot tomorrow and for the rest of the week.

Shooting the scenes wasn't exactly the problem, it was the caliber of the scenes that you two would be shooting that was the problem. Also the fact- that though there isn't much talking during the sex scenes- you would have to memorize the lines of the new episode. Even though you and Angus were more comfortable with each other, sex scenes were not anything that you two were ready for, you guys hadn't even kissed yet, whether that was a real kiss, or a kiss practicing for the scene.

"I think we need practice."

"I agree."

"So uh..." He turned red as he picked at his nails.

You let out a sigh. "Okay so look. Basically, the scene just consists of me being naked, you being naked as well, but they're going to jimmy rig something so that obviously we aren't actually doing it. Mary told me in my message that I would have some type of pad over my you know what, and you would have some type of cup on."

"But-"

"I'm not done, wait. There are covers over us; so even though I have to give the effect of riding you, I'll just kind of be awkwardly rubbing my padded- you- know- what up against the cup."

"Okay, don't we make out before?"

"Yeah, we do." You stood up and rinsed off the plates. After placing them in the dishwasher, you turned back to your male co-star. "Okay, so it's about 11 AM right now. If we practice our lines, make out some, and I awkwardly ride you clothed in my bed, I think we should be fine..what about your plans?" You asked softly.

"It’s ight, they can wait. But there's another scene- where I smash you from the back. That's the part where I gotta show my cheeks man, damn I don't wanna show my cheeks!"

You laughed a bit "You'll be fine... tomorrow we'll be shooting probably just making out, then the next day the riding scene, and then the day after that more. And I know this seems kind of shitty, but if you read over other peoples paragraphs besides just ours, a lot of their sex scenes were moved up too, and some of the pairings are a bit weird and unexpected."

"Okay let's stop talking about it and just do it."

You nodded and silently walked into your small bedroom, sitting on the messy bed. You hadn't made it because, well you didn't exactly expect to have Angus in your bedroom, let alone to do this.

"So..."

You turned to look at him with a raised brow, "What?"

"So imma kiss you."

Why did that one sentence make your heart. Skip. So. Many. Fucking. Beats.

"Yeah well, that's what the script says right?"

He nodded and licked his lips. "Come get on my lap."

"Why? That's not in the-"

"It'll be more comfortable, especially if we doing this for a minute."

You took in a breath as you went over and straddled his lap, your legs around his waist, and your arms resting comfortably on his shoulders, wrapping around his neck.

You looked into his eyes, and god they were just gorgeous. "Angus.." You said softly.

"Yeah?"

And for .2 seconds you actually debated telling him- telling him that when you kissed him, you didn't want it just to be practice for the show. Telling him that you felt like you lived for the nights that he would facetime you and tell you dumbest shit that would just have you dead tired the next day. Telling him how much he made you laugh, and how it made you so unbearably happy every time you saw his name and knew it was the cause of your phone screen lighting up. Making sure he knew that the past 2 months of your life had gotten so much brighter just because of him.

You didn't though.

But if you had? He would've told you how he felt the exact same way. He would tell you how he loved how your eyes sparkle in the sunlight, how he loved how your nose scrunched up when you laughed. About how you were the only person who would listen to his dumb Mandela effects, even though he knew you didn't believe in all of them. And how it made him blush every time you sent him a mirror selfie on Snapchat for your streak- which he always lost.

But neither of you said anything.

Instead, you made out for a full 32 minutes with absolutely no passion, no lust, no nothing. Too scared to open up to the other due to the fear of rejection.

Until he got hard.

Again.

And that was your little 'ding!' to let you know yet again, 'he wants you.'

So your hips began to move {finally, after 32 minutes of dead nothingness} and you and Angus's lips began to fight for dominance. His hands moved from being awkwardly placed on your sides to under your shirt on your waist. Feeling his hands on your bare skin, you let out a soft moan into his mouth- which you could tell completely caught him off guard.

"Fuck you moaning for?" He teased, still not letting off of the kiss.

"For you."

He bit your lip causing you to moan yet again, your hips still bucking against his hard-on- holy fuck that felt a lot better than it should've. You grinned a bit as you felt his beard brush against your face.

"God. you're so hot."

'Oh my god' you thought, 'It's happening.'

"Baby, I have nothing on you." You replied seductively, sliding your hand down from his shoulder to his crotch.

"Fuck Jess..."

You grinned as he- wait what?

Jess- right, your characters name. Reel it in, you told yourself. This is just acting, nothing more. Just acting. Though you stayed into it, something about him calling you Jess turned you off a bit. After 10 more minutes or so you stopped, getting off of his lap and sitting on the side of him.

“Wel-”

“Yeah, that was good!” You quickly cut him off. “I definitely think our awkwardness has melted away a bit.”

“But don’t you wanna talk-”

“We have some scenes to film at 1, its 12:30 right now so we should head to wardrobe.”

Angus looked at you with a confused expression on his face, but just nodded slowly and stood up following you out.

All you two had to film was the scene of you coming back, so it was a calm and chill collection of scenes to go through. Everything ran smoothly, and by the time you two were done around 9PM, you were as tired as could be.

“You're such a good fucking actress Y/N.” Angus complimented you as you two walked back to his trailer. He offered you to stay over for the night- just to sleep of course- and you couldn't reject the offer even if you wanted to- which you didn't want to. “Thank you,” you replied softly. “You’re quite talented as well.”

“Nah girl, I'm just being me.”

You two went into his warm trailer talking of filming the scenes, and how tired you both were. You both tried to avoid the topic of the scenes you had to film tomorrow and for the rest of the week; though you were supposedly ready, it was a strangely sore topic.

Soon showers were taken, clothes were changed, and all that was left to do was cuddle.

Angus flipped off the lights and then crawled into the bed with you. You moved closer to him, listening to his rapid heartbeat as you traced hearts on his chest. “Night Redhead.” you said softly, placing a kiss against his cheek.

“Goodnight Mamas.”

And as you lay next to him listening to his light snores, you thought about something. You thought about how though today had been so amazing, and finally, you felt as though the awkwardness had melted away… it was all acting.

Angus didn't like you; that's what you told yourself. Any man would get hard if an attractive woman was sitting on his lap, so that was self-explanatory. Any man would call you baby during a heated moment, any man would talk dirty to you in a heated moment. And a good man like Angus would always make you feel comfortable when you practiced for a scene- that's all he was doing, he wanted you to feel comfortable.

You couldn't be hurt about the situation, the whole point of doing any of that was just practicing for the scenes. And after all, Angus called you Jess, not Y/N.

But at the same time, a little part of you wouldn't stop screaming that you really really really wished he had said your name instead. A little part of you-

Your thoughts were interrupted by the soft glow of your phone lighting up along with a light vibration. A smile appeared on your face as you saw who the message was from.

Babygirl Z <3: GIRL

Babygirl Z <3: BABES ARE YOU UP??!

-yeah you okay? what's wrong?

Babygirl Z <3: shit I'm sorry but i have to tell you this

-what's wrong????? are you okay?

Babygirl Z <3: I'm fine but

-?????

Babygirl Z <3: fuck don't hate me ily okay this is for the best just remember that

-Z get to the point...

Babygirl Z <3: okay so...storm and i just did some digging and

-and?

Babygirl Z <3: and we think Angus got a girl back @ home

taglist:

@nikkixostan @melaninmarvel @celiajrs @siriuslycollins @patientplum @babygurlbarnes

#fezco #fezco fic #fezco euphoria #fez euphoria #fezco fluff #euphoria #hbo euphoria #angus cloud #angus cloud fic

289 notes · View notes

pathos-logical · 5 years

Text

One Picture, a Thousand Words

Roman is a wonder that cannot be put to words, Logan a marvel that ink cannot capture. They try anyway.

Hoo, this sure was a labor of love! Love because I love @bleepblopbloop56 with all my heart and labor because HOLY HECK WAS THIS HARD TO WRITE. But never mind any of that, because HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my friend!!! I absolutely adore you, and I hope your year is as fantastic as you are!!!

Trigger warnings: Food mention; a joking mention of hallucinations. I think that’s it, but please tell me if I need to add something!!

There are a thousand words Logan could use to describe Roman. He would pull a Shakespeare and invent a thousand more if it meant finding a word that could accurately chronicle the tapestry of Roman, all colorful patches and carefully stitched seams. But Logan is no artist, and his words seem an inadequate medium.

Beautiful, he thinks and immediately discards. That is too obvious, the truth of it plain to see. Lovely is- better. More intimate. But too soft, perhaps, for Roman’s flame-edged hair, the bronze of his skin and the steel in his spine.

He has tried countless words, none of them quite right. Larger-than-life. (And no, his charisma and magnetic smile absolutely did not excuse the way he didn’t seem to know how to shut up.) Captivating. (Roman did have a way with words, when he wasn’t being an idiot.) Extraordinary. (He was quite the artist and actor.) Brilliant. (Again, Roman was rather intelligent when it came down to it.) Perfect. (Technically impossible. But.)

All those words he longs to say, not one spoken aloud.

(Or- once. Alone in his room, he had tried the shape of mine on his mouth, thought about how it tasted on his lips and imagined the look in Roman’s eyes if he ever dared to say it in front of him. Once, and never again.)

Oh, he wishes. But Logan has always been better with words on the page than to other people.

Well, he thinks, looking down at the piece of paper in his hands, I suppose that’s what this is for. His eyes rove over the paper, skimming over phrases without really taking them in. If he reads it he’ll try to fix it, and at this point there’s too much of his heart in the words for him to change them.

He looks at the last paragraph. It’s the kind of declaration he sneers at in the romance novels Roman so adores, the kind of thing he would’ve sneered at barely years ago. But Roman always did have a way of making him question things he’d taken for postulates- himself included.

I tried, over the course of this letter, to pin down what exactly about you has drawn me so irrevocably into your orbit and left me floundering in unfamiliar space. However, as the length of this might indicate, I soon discovered that I could not.

You know me. It is very rare that I find myself lost for words. But I find myself unable to find the correct words to describe you, or even the correct words. Not because I have run out of things to say, or even because you have left me speechless, but because I could use a whole dictionary of love letters and fail to find the words that capture the way your eyes shine in the light when you laugh at your own jokes, and all the cliches in the world cannot express how I feel about every mundane, breathtaking thing about you.

But despite all that, I have three words for you, Roman, and I suppose there is no better day to deliver them than today (as of the day you receive this, at least).

I love you.

Roman has a sketchbook no one but him has ever seen.

The drawings are all in pencil, and Roman aches to paint them, to mix his colors until he finds shades that will truly bring them to life. But Logan is a peculiar kind of monochrome, with his navy hair and black polo shirts and countless blue ties, and Roman fears that no amount of paint could do that justice.

It’s undeniable that the warm brown of Logan’s eyes is a color he itches to find in a colored pencil, that the almond of his skin is one he longs to see redden at his touch. But those aren’t the things he really wants to capture when he puts pencil to paper anyway. No, when he draws Logan, his focus is on the subtle gleam that comes to his eyes when he speaks about something he’s passionate about, the curl of his lips when his emotionless facade breaks at some stupid comment Roman made.

Roman wishes he could show Logan the notebook, sometimes, the days when his longing overpowers his surety in the fact that it could never be reciprocated. He imagines coffee-colored eyes looking through the pages with delight, taking in the devotion clear in the meticulous lines. He pictures the hands he’s spent hours perfecting skimming over paper, taking care not to smudge the lead.

(He sees disgust settling in the curve of Logan’s lips and rejection showing in the set of his shoulders, and he pushes away the thought and hides his notebook under his pillow, pretends that he hasn’t memorized the shape of Logan’s smile.)

But he doesn’t think of any of that today. It’s Valentine’s Day, and Roman is dressed for it. He dons his armor that he definitely did not spend a whole two hours deliberating on and sets out the door armed with a kind of desperate false bravado, which is immediately undermined by how he jumps at his roommate Patton’s encouraging “go get ‘im, tiger!” shouted through the walls.

Still scowling at the door behind him, Roman briefly debates how desperate a text will make him sound before deciding, screw it.

Hey, we still on for lunch at Cream of the Cup?

The reply is prompt, as always, and Roman makes a futile attempt at smothering the smile he knows is blossoming across his lips.

>> Of course.

I’ll see you then!

Roman can so do this.

Virgil I can’t do this

>> why not?? youve been planning this for weeks, youll bbe fine

actually, knowing you, orobably months

Jfkdkfkfkfk

it’s

LOGAN

>> im aware, weve only veen best friends for years now

…

if yoy send a long rambling text ahout how wonderful logan is and how you dont deserve hkm im gonna lose it

roman i swear to god

HE’S JUST SO SMART AND AMAZING AND I’M JUST ME I DON’T DESERVE HIM AND WHAT IF I SCREW THINGS UP BETWEEN US FOREVER AND HE HATES ME OR WHAT IF IT’S AWKWARD I’M OKAY WITH JUST BEING FRIENDS REALLY HE PROBABLY DOESN’T EVEN LIKE ME THAT WAY ANYWAY I MEAN WHY WOULD HE

Whoops sorry

>> youre not

I’m not

But

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

>> okay roman, listen up, because I’m only gonna say this once.

first of all, cut it with the self-deprecating crap. one, that’s my thing. and two, I WILL pull a patton and fight you.

stop doubting yourself, it doesn’t suit you

I might not have known you as long as I’ve known logan, but I know

I can see you typing. shut up.

maybe I haven’t known you as long as I’ve known Logan, but I do know you’re a good guy, and you /clearly/ love him

KSKFKFKKFKGD W H A T

>> yes, everyone knows, no, Logan does not, LET ME FINISH

it means a LOT to him that you actually read the articles he sends you about mars rovers at 3 am and that you don’t tell him he’s annoying for infodumping about alpha centauri or whatever star system he’s planning to go to and that you deal with his hypocrisy about sleep schedules and his general inability to do emotions

also, knowing him for years means I know his type, and trust me, you’re it

and even if by some miracle he doesn’t like you back, you guys are too close to ruin your friendship. okay? so however this ends, I promise you’ll still be friends

>> But

ROMAN

listen, you don’t tune him out when he starts babbling, and he does the same for you. he loves listening to your rants about art theory, he goes to every single one of your shows, and he started learning Spanish just to impress you. yes, he’s learned more phrases than just insults, he’s just been hiding it so he can surprise (aka impress) you later

and roman? he really really does value your friendship. you know that we’ve known each other since forever, so you know I mean it when I say that I’ve NEVER seen him get so close to someone this quickly.

and… you’ve been good for him too, okay? he’s not really the type to get lonely, but that’s just because he gets so tied up in his giant brain he forgets there are people in the outside world to talk to. but it really is important to him that you’re always there for him, and… I can tell you right now that he’s told me how much he appreciates you for it

after all that? I’d say he loves you too, dude. go for it.

you can talk now

Holy heck you DO love me

>> eh

Holy HECK

Wait

Did you turn on autocorrect just to yell at me???

>> Only for you, babe.

Please never do that again

yeaj that was oncredibly unconfortable

now GO GET YOUR MAN

Roman, for all his theatrics about love at first sight and true love’s kiss, hadn’t mentioned Valentine’s Day plans once in the weeks leading up to it. Then, exactly one week ago, he’d texted Logan with a simple request to meet up at a nearby cafe. Logan knew him too well to miss the possible connotations of such an invitation. But it was entirely possible that this was merely meant to be an outing between two friends. A platonic outing.

A platonic outing where there was barely room to stand, forget sit. Logan curses under his breath. He’d decided for once to not show up fifteen minutes early, as that would only give him more time to second-guess himself, especially as Roman was notorious for being chronically late. But he had failed to account for the obvious fact that, it being both a Saturday and Valentine’s Day, the usually quiet cafe is filled to the brim with couples ordering the heart-themed specials and kissing and generally clogging the air with sweet words and PDA. And no, Logan is not irrationally annoyed about this, he’s just worried he won’t be able to secure an empty table for him and Roman.

But just as the thought crosses his mind, he catches a familiar head of fiery hair at a table against the wall, bent over his phone and apparently completely absorbed by whatever he was looking at. An incredulous “Roman?” slips from his lips unbidden, because- well, Roman had once nearly been late to the first show he was the lead in. But there he was, reserving a table at exactly 12:30 with a croissant in front of him. Maybe today really was a day for miracles.

He watches with amusement as Roman jumps and looks up at the sound of his name. His face lights up as soon as he registers who it is, and Logan abruptly goes from amused to filled with some kind of fluttery warmth he doesn’t want to quantify.

“Logan!” Roman exclaims, hurriedly tucking his phone away. “Hey! How are you?” His smile beams out like the sun, but it dims upon Logan’s next words.

“Not well, unfortunately,” Logan informs him gravely. “I fear I have been having severe auditory and visual hallucinations. For example, I am currently experiencing one so vivid that I believe I am conversing with a friend in a cafe when I know that there is no chance of him being here yet.” Maybe Logan should feel bad about the way Roman’s expression morphs from worry to alarm to overblown outrage, but the challenging gleam in his eyes arrests him as surely as that of of Roman’s heart-shaped studs, and he can’t bring himself to regret it.

“Hey, I’m not always late!” he protests so loudly several patrons turn to look at him, perhaps expecting a scene.

Logan can’t help the smirk that creeps across his face as he slides into the seat opposite Roman, surreptitiously tucking a navy blue folder besides him. Thank goodness for Roman being typically Roman and reserving a booth that could seat six for a party of two. “Roman. Once Virgil and I deliberately told you to meet up an hour after we were actually supposed to meet so that when you inevitably showed up late, it would only be by five minutes rather than fifty. And the very idea that you could be on time for something went so flagrantly against the laws of the universe that the universe struck back by making your car break down, and you missed the meeting entirely.”

“Is that what happened?” Roman asks, looking so genuinely gobsmacked that Logan can’t help the snicker that escapes him. Roman’s expression flips to one of self-satisfaction, and Logan tries to ignore the little burst of fondness in his chest at the sight. Even if the rest of today goes horribly, at least he can savor this easy banter between them.

And banter they do, debating over whether Logan’s physics professor or Roman’s marketing professor is more inept before commiserating over the “perpetual hell week” that is college. They bounce from the disappointing latest installment of one of Roman’s favorite series to a terrible documentary on aliens Logan had found on a “science” channel (“It’s called a having a basic grasp of eighth-grade geometry, Roman- which, unlike this nine-thousand year old civilization, these morons have clearly never achieved!”) to every little thing in between, their food forgotten in front of them.

It’s nothing special, technically- they’ve been friends for years now, and they often have talks about everything and nothing. But today Logan can convince himself that an electric current is charging the air between them, flushing Roman’s cheeks and lighting up his eyes as Logan is drawn in, helpless against his magnetism.

There’s no decisive moment where Logan thinks, this is it. There’s just Roman, his laughter like bells in the breeze, and Logan, gazing at him like he’d put the stars in the sky.

“Roman,” he says. That’s it- Roman.

Roman is still giggling at his rendition of the student who’d spilled their coffee on the drama professor on the first day, but he sobers at whatever look is on Logan’s face. “Hey- you good, Lo?”

The nickname catches at something in Logan’s chest, pulls it open so the next words come just a little harder, just a little easier. “Roman,” he says again, looking down. “I do not wish to… ruin the mood, but I have something to confess.”

(He’s looking down, so he misses the way Roman jumps at the last word.)

But when he meets Roman’s eyes, open and curious, Logan’s confidence abandons him. He exhales slowly in an attempt to regain some of the feeling from before, like the memory of Roman’s voice will fortify his. But all that comes out is: “I wrote- would you-”

Logan’s throat fails him entirely, something a little like dread and a little like hope clogging it up. Without another word, he slides the folder he had kept tucked at his side to Roman. When Roman raises a curious eyebrow, Logan simply smiles- a quick, brittle thing- and motions for him to open it.

Earlier, the noise in the cafe had distracted Logan, had made him frown when it rose over Roman’s voice. But suddenly it all fades into the background, the chatter of voices and clatter of spoons receding in favor of the thwip of the folder opening, the little breath Roman takes when he reads the first two words.

Dimly, Logan thinks he must have used up all his words in the letter. His fingers lay still at his sides, mind is utterly blank as he watches Roman read it. But his heart is pounding loud enough that for an absurd second, he’s sure Roman can hear it in the sudden quiet.

Logan waits for a minute, maybe five. He thinks he��d wait for Roman forever if he asked. But Roman doesn’t make him wait that long, because when he looks up his eyes are wet with tears, and when Logan uselessly opens his mouth- to do what? His voice certainly hasn’t returned- Roman lurches forward, clumsy in a way Logan has never known him, and seals their lips with a kiss.

And when they finally draw apart, Logan thinks he’s regained his words (or maybe just these three), because they force themselves out of his lips like they’ve been waiting to do so since Logan said Roman’s name. And Roman, his face a study in the kind of shock and delight that can only come from a thought-to-be-hopeless dream coming true, returns them.

#logince #roman sanders #logan sanders #sanders sides #virgil sanders #patton sanders #my writing #a whole dictionary of love letters

164 notes · View notes

chrisbangs · 5 years

Photo

so i guess i could type like a practical person for once……. maybe………. but i probably won’t so i apologize ahead of time……… anyway, so i hit? 1k…..? after remaking only 3 months ago... to me that’s pretty crazy because as a lot of my older mutuals will know, i remake like every 0.38 seconds because i’m annoying like that… to the people who’ve been here since forever (you know who you are) it means a lot that you’ve stuck with me through blog type changes (there’s like 1 or 2 of you who’ve just been around since The Beginning and wowza thank you for dealing with me like that ifnawoeiawoef)!!! and to the people who i’ve only recently become mutuals with i apologize cause at any second i will probably be like hee honk time to remake. to all of you, mutuals and followers, thank you for dealing with my stupid lame text posts about chan or my crazy ‘content creators deserve better’ campaigns!! thank you for interacting with me through dms, asks, even just liking my posts and being kind to me when i’m down- i really appreciate that. i’ve been using tumblr for a very, very long time, and tbh, i feel like its not until recently that i’ve found a group of people that i feel very comfortable and happy around. you guys are all so talented and funny and warm and friendly, and i’m so thankful for you guys in my life! thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of your dash !!! i’m really grateful if you’ve ever enjoyed my content (gifs, gfx, etc.) and i hope i can continue to make your dashes and hearts bright whether it be through content or my stupid dumb (i hope funny) tags! i love you all!

(( if theres a 🖤 next to your name!! i’ve left a little message for you under the cut ;; v ;; !!! i hope you know how much i love and appreciate all of you! (i really didn’t proof read these so like… u know… just…….. i apologize foawinefoiwna) ))

@00hj 🖤, @1095, @19gf, @3rachha, @angelhyunjin 🖤, @binnieseason, @binsungz 🖤, @boxerminho, @changbeanie, @chimneycloud, @cosmicskz 🖤, @dhalfmoonbydean, @f1owerlix 🖤, @huiracha, @ilovedowoon, @jedixuxi 🖤, @jinlix 🖤, @jisquish 🖤, @johfam 🖤, @kim-seungmins 🖤, @kim-woojins, @kimwuujin 🖤, @kqngyounghyun 🖤, @luvknow, @marriael, @momowlw, @mydays, @noairmv 🖤, @naekkung, @parkjinwoo, @prodskz 🖤, @pouringmv, @realstraykids, @seofthours, @seungminsmile, @soohao, @sk-z 🖤, @skzbffie, @skzd 🖤, @stray-kids, @straykisd, @theminho 🖤, @uayv 🖤, @ultscb 🖤, @wayvgf 🖤, @yngbok

@00hj: hello karen! wow :( it feels like forever since we’ve been mutual… like i really cannot believe it’s been??? 7/8 months since we first became friends? like it doesn’t even feel that long. i know time flies and we’re at that point in our lives where every day just flashes by but :( even in those moments that do pass by, you’re always there making me smile. through your killer content or your funny jokes or those convos where we’re both just yelling abt how much we HATE group projects… its all fun :( you always make me smile and make me want to work harder. when i see how hard you work??? it just makes me want to work /that/ much harder. from your gfx to your gifs!! you are a pillar in this community and i am so honoured to be pals with u man faionwefoaie !!! to top that off, i feel like i can always ask you anything- any dumb questions i have abt making things, anything that’s just kinda eating at me, i feel like i can talk to you about it. you’re such a comfy place !! a comfy warm person !! and i love you dearly! i hope you get to kick back with jisung and hyunjin and enjoy a slice of pie!!

@angelhyunjin: hello angi! my darling you work so so so hard! your art is always stellar and always wowing! i know sometimes you worry about posting, but please remember to put your health first;; its hard to think about yourself sometimes, i know, but remind yourself that !! to make smth nice, you need to be well first!!! anyway;; your art never fails to make me smile. like your style is sososo distinct and memorable?? and also?? you’re an amazing dancer!!! your covers are always so lovely and you do such a great job :( i can tell how passionate you are about things through both your art and your dance! thank you for always working hard and being kind to everyone around you! i love you dearly angel! hyunjin is sending his love!

@binsungz: yooooo whaTS UP HOMIE FIAWNOFANWFO HELLO BABY!! MY WHORE PARTNER!!!!!!!! MY GIRL!!!!!!!!! literally what do i even say here that i haven’t already said to you??? you’re one of my closest friends online and you ALWAYS make me laugh. from talking abt nsfw things to cute things to minecraft and gaming!!! you always always get me !!! you just have a knack for understanding me?? and that’s just :( so appreciated!!!! you !!! are !!! amazing dude!!! ur gifs are always so clean; you’re one of the reasons i started working harder to make my gifs better bc you inspired me !! you’re always so kind and warm and loving ; and i can always talk with you abt sucking dicks or eating pussy like IT REALLY DO BE LIKE THAT !!!!!!!!! i was going through my old blog and i found those videos you did where you looked through my blog and when i heard your voice again and you being like ‘omg ur so funny’ i was ready to scream cause it was still so fuiowenaowieaoe fricking cute :(((( dude I LOVE YOU!!!! like you really are one of the kindest people in the world and i can’t stop !! saying !! how thankful!!! i am for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love you so much britt !! thank you for always dealing with me and being kind to me and just fjaoweifnaow you’re really the best :((( jisung and [redacted] love u but not as much as me ok foaiwneoaiwnfia ……..

@cosmicskz: hello gumdrop!!! my love!!! thank you so much for always hyping – not just me- but everyone up!! you are sososo kind and so so so SO warm and cute and oawifenawo precious!!! please remember to take care of your health and of yourself too!! loving everyone around u is important but also take care of yourself TT TT !!! your content is also always so cute and thoughtful and you put 110% into everything you do ????? like !!!!!!!! ma’am????? so talented and pure ;; ___ ;; like i don’t know how you do it but you do !!! also thank you for ALWAYS offering to look @ my work and give me advice etc etc!! i am so appreciative of it ;; also – i know i don’t always reply that often but !!!!!!!!!!!! i love you and i’m thankful that you’re so patient with me when it comes to dms fjaowiefnawoiefn TT TT you’re ! so ! lovely and sweet and i hope you know !! i’m here for you whenever you need !!! skz and i lovelovelove you!

@f1owerlix: vale……….. vale………………. VALE……………………………. HELLO…………………. ??? i ??? can’t even find the words to tell you what you mean to me. i’d write a poem but its just gonna end up being long and i’d never be able to finish it bc i’d go back and keep adding bits and lines abt how you’re like the NICEST person in humanities history and that you’re just an all-around talented and wonderful person….. like….. are u KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!!!! she did that (that = being the kindest person EVER) you’re always using The Most amount of nicknames possible;; and it makes my heart so so so soft. not only that, but you’re also such a kind, genuine, warm person. i don’t know anyone who is as kind, and humble, and talented, and warm like you. i literally could list a billion wonderful things about you because you’re that frucaowienoawikingiawgo amazing…. dude like seriously…. we out here STANNING miss vale….. i was going through my blog a while ago and i saw this tag that was like ‘i got my vale fansite set up and we’re going to start making slogans and planning birthday events’ like past li had it right. you’re so kind and funny and warm and i always feel safe and comfy talking to you. i really appreciate the feedback you give me- because its always so thought out and GENUINE. like… you do this for EVERYONE… all the tags i read from you are so KIND and you always make ccs feel like they’re doing the best job ever…. like you really……. you really are an angel on this ea.rth…. huh….. also…? changbin is dropping by with flowers for you!!!!

@jedixuxi: hello angel;; i hope you’re doing well!!! thank you for dealing with my blog change and staying mutuals with me regardless of content differing! thank you for always being kind and being patient with me- i know i don’t reply a lot but ;; you are a really good friend to me and i am so so so thankful;; you’re so sweet and warm and such a talented artist;; like everything you draw im always like fjawifeawoej :0000 !!!!! you really have so much love and warmth inside of you and !!! that’s why ur so tall ma’am.. foawiefnoaweifno :’( aaaa thank you so much beth for always being so warm to others; your brightness is like the sun on my dash and in my dms and you always make me smile or laugh its just ;; aofwienaiwneoi I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!! and xuxi is also mailing his entire heart your way ok !!!

@jinlix: hello madam ! hello to my lov e !!! my sweet lil gum drop !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hello KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!! oh my gosh hi bb :( thank you for everything you do; firstly, your gfx?? so incredible ok?? like i know your style immediately when i see it yet you always manage to surprise me?? like your work is so fucking GOOD. how does she do it :// like us plebeians will never kno and that’s how it fuckin be ig afoiwneoaiwnfeoawi ….. omg…. ok…. and like secondly??? youre always so humble and kind to other ppl??? like your tags on anyones work is always so so so so kind TT TT you always say the nicest things- and i still remember the tags you left on one of my very first skz gfxs … like you really made my heart flutter like that huh….. hm…. guess you’re an angel or smth like… that…. gmgamoweigna TT __ TT Kelly seriously you’re such a sweet heart? you love with all your heart and its so warm and soft and whenever you talk abt hyunjin im like jfjfaiweIFAIWo …. my heart !!!!!!!!!!! like he would totally be floored by your love bc of how soft u fuckin are oh ymgmymmym go d !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyway :( i love u so much and hope you’re well angel!! hyunjin is sending all his love your way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@jisquish: ok here we go … ma’am… MA’AM… how do i even EXPLAIN the love i feel for u.. oh my gosh.. miss india.. you really exist like that.. like we STAN a whole ass legend huh… not only are you funny and smart and talented and kind and amazing?? you’re also just like.. the coolest bestest person in the world? like i still find it hard to believe you were one of my anons bc like… u just.. u r too … ://// cool… like i’m really just sitting here like… an idiot… from day 1 you’ve always been so fucking kind to me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you have just :( been so sweet and kind and just an all-around angel- and even if we only talk every now and then, i always feel so warm and happy whenever we do!! u know those ppl u don’t have to talk to 24/7 to know that there’s still a warm friendly hug waiting for you??? :(( yea you’re one of those people. you always always ALWAYS make me laugh like hfawoifenoawie :( hello how do u do this?? yet you also are so grounded and warm and understanding and like.. i can’t believe you’re also one of the most talented humans ever;; whenever i see your covers, i’m always like !!! wowowowo !!! you inspire me to work harder with my music and writing ;; you are such an angel :-( and i am so thankful for you! so so so so thankful!!! jeongin and changbin and jisung are sending all their love !!! and so am i bb !!!

@johfam: if anyone deserves a thank you- it is you. miss nita… jejejsigaweg i feel like i’m gonna cry typing this so here we go…. you’ve been friends with me for more than a year now i believe :( i think we’ve actually hit our year since we became friends which is so wild to me?? you’ve been with me through SO MANY THINGS… like you’ve been my soundboard for so many things in my life.. i can’t believe we started talking bc a spider landed on your hand… and u stabbed ur own hand with a pencil.. like ig we have to thank that spider….. ghanwegoiawen….. you’ve really stuck with me through blog changes and through me being angry abt things and you’ve allowed me to be angry- which i appreciate so much.. you know me so well :// like… idk how you do it but you always make me feel safe and warm and like i can say anything to you and you’ll hear me out?? like oaiwnefaiwenof :( you just !! you’ve supported me so much through so many bad days and i can’t thank you enough. you are made of sunshine and stardust and your heart is literally the softest and warmest. thank you !!! for !!! always enjoying frogs with me and sending me cute frog things.. like.. :( it makes me SO happy that we can enjoy those lil squishy fuckers together.. also thank u for being my source of johnny content jfjawfieawio i’ve literally unfollowed every other nct blog and you’re one of the only ones left bc i still love johnny so much and seeing him on my dash- esp with your tags- makes me so so so happy;; thank you for everything you’ve done for me and !!! and for all the love you’ve given me :( and just for being there for me through some of the toughest places in my life;; i really love and appreciate you!!!!!!!!! johnny is sending his love and some kisses through the mail :’(

@kim-seungmins: hfhawefaniow…………… hello dumm..y… :( u r the loml.. you’ve been there for me through so much shit in the short amt of the time we’ve been friends.. u were also one of my first friends in this fandom- and i’m so thankful you were bc we got really close during these last few months and it makes me so happy. you’re so funny and you always make me laugh!!! you give me so much confidence and happiness and you make me feel so warm and happy ;; !!!!!! you are a fajfowienawei whole ass angel who is always working hard both to make good content and in school. :( i’m so proud of you for all that you do dude like wowowwowo :( look @ you go ????? you’re also one of the funniest pals i have like u literally make me bust a LUNG laughing … like whenever i get any of my biases together in one screen i now literally think, without even pause, “abia voice: crumbs” likej faweiojaowefoi you’re such an icon!!!!!!!!! also?? like … you’ve just been s o kind to me and helped me with things that i’ve not talked to others with bc you never make me feel like i’ll be judged… like.. you’re so fucking understanding and warm and kind and considerate with how you reply; you always care and you’re just… :( u r angel or smth like that… i know i tease you and that’s kinda how i show my love but for real dude………………. i love u so much.. like if i could give you the whole world i really fucking would.. :( because you deserve nothing less!! thank u for always providing that good good seungmin content ;; seungmin and minho and woojin all told me to tell you that they love you!!!

@kimwuujin: hello sugar drop!! thank you for being so kind and warm and always just !!! being so sweet :( you always tag me in funny/cute content and it’s always appreciated !!! i feel like i can always be dumb and say stupid soft things abt chan with you bc you’ll understand how i feel :((( you’re so sweet and i’m so glad we started talking more !! you’re not only like faoiwenfaowi incredibly cute and sweet but you’re also so so so so funny !!! :( like you make me laugh and aofwinewaoinoi i really appreciate that!! you’re also so grounded and understanding and !! you always know what to say and i’m really appreciative of the fact that you phrase things so well and eloquently- when will my dumbass ever- anyway fhawjeofaowein i love you with all my heart and hope you’re !! doing well sweetpea !!! chan and are yeeting every ounce of love we have for you to you!!!!!!!!!!!

@kqngyounghyun: hello my love :( i can’t even remember the first time we talked bc it feels like its been so so so long; and through all of this time you’ve been one of my close friends who’s stuck around with me through so much. you’re always there, and always kind, and just always warm and friendly and a safe place to go. i love that we can bitch abt things with each other but also oiawenfowaie be super soft… but then also talk abt super nsfw things jfawieaoeif aofiwneoai you’ve always been so so kind to me and i really do appreciate it. thank you for sticking with me through all my blog changes and for always supporting me and my dumbassery;; i really hope you know how much i appreciate you and how much i love you! you’re such a hardworking person- like whenever you tell me abt the effort you’re putting in at school its just oifnawiefnaoi wowowow!!! you’re so amazing :(( !!!!! also, you were there for me during one of the Hardest Points In My Life- like a time when i really thought i was going to ofaiwneoiawen lose my mind bc of how much i was struggling……. but you seriously helped me get through that part of my life and i can never fully explain to you how thankful i am. but i love you so much and i’m so thankful. younghyun and i both love you to the ends of the earth ;; __ ;; !!!

@noairmv: hello ! ! ! miss ai!! the loml!!! angel!! bb gumdrop!! jacob’s baby!!! all names we can use to refer to you!!! :( hello baby!! thankyou! for everything! for all you do! for all you are! you are always honest with me, always genuine, always kind and understanding. you do more than i could ever fucking ask for. i’ve told this to you before but, i think you’re the one person i can go to- without fail- for like.. real life advice… like things that i feel like i cannot ask anyone else, i can ask you. i remember when i was struggling financially i immediately went to you first to talk things through. you give me a lot of clarity and you help me understand my own thoughts and talking to you always puts things into perspective for me. you’re also always there to rant abt nsfw things with which is foaiwnefoaiwn so fun afnowienfao afjfaowefiao but also i get to be super soft with you which is also really :~( the best oof……… i love u so much…….. like, thank you for always looking @ my gfxs, and for always being supportive and understanding and giving me genuine advice. i love listening to you talk abt Jacob (and being rawed by others who are not … Jacob………… ahem………) aofiwnefoaiwno thank you for always being patient with me and for being so kind (and for always faowineoawi saying yes when i propOSE FAOIWNOAIWF ;;) you’re an angel (hee honk) from above and i will always be thankful for you in my life angel bean :( thank you so much for everything ai, i love you SO fucking much… jacob also loves u – he told me to tell u that !!!

@prodskz: hello my love! ! ! ! i think i told you this once but!! my favourite kinds of relationships are those ones that have a good roast/love ratio!!! and i deeply feel that ours is that kinda relationship!!! no matter how many times we destroy each other aoiwnafienaiowe we’re always like ‘uwu anyway u r my baby’ 2 seconds later and foawinefoiane i love that!!! i love that you will send me 20 messages in a day and i’ll be like yoiNk i forgot but also let me reply to everything at once !! i love that you send me SO many skz memes throughout the day- they make me laugh so hard;; and also you always send me The Best Chan Pics so thank you for that fiawfenfoawienoiwe TT TT you’ve been so kind to me and so so so supportive of all my work ;; whether my gifs or my gfx or just my stupid posts- you are so supportive neha i :( i don’t even deserve the amt of love you give me but fjawoefawoe i ACCEPT ALL OF IT !!!!!!!!!! i’m such a dummy but please know that i love you WITH ALL MY FUCKIN HEART BABY!!!! you are so precious and talented and kind and funny and you are amazing !! like i mean it :( do not !! forget for a second how wonderful you are baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hyunjin would like to also remind you that he loves you to the moon and back (but i love u more ok)

@sk-z: hi sweet pea !!! :’) i know we only started talking very recently but i already feel so close to you! i just wanted to say thank you for being there for me that night aofinweoianfew and thank you for always being a voice of reason; you’re so understanding and warm and !!! i really am floored but how kind you are!! i know i always say sorry and that’s ifonaweifnaio really just how i am but !! you really make me comfy and it feels easy to just say anything around you and not feel stressed out or judged?? like even things that i blame myself for, you help me see reason and feel better and i just :( i can’t thank you enough for that;; you’re so bright and warm and i really hope we get to continue talking for a long time angel!! i love you!!!

@skzd: hi haleigh !! i know we haven’t talked in a while but you’re still one of my fav content creators!! even from back when i was an nctzen and we interacted there, to now over on these blogs!!! you’ve stayed such a constant in my life :( and you’ve honestly been nothing but supportive of me :( you’re always so kind whenever we do talk and you’re still one of the funniest people i know;; your tags will never fail to make me laugh;; i really appreciate your presence on my dash and i really want you to know all your content is so beautiful and appreciated;; :( you’re so talented my dude and i love you long time;; i really hope you’re doing well and taking care bc i do love you from the bottom of my heart angel!!! hyunjin is sending his love (and so am i !)

@theminho: min my little gumdrop!! my sweet sugar bean!! my lil soft angel!!!!!!! hi angel!! :( darn i think you’re one of the ppl i’ve been following longest and oof… OOF.. like :( !! i’m so glad we started talking!! you always make me smile! you are so warm and thoughtful with your words. i’m not sure i know anyone who is as eloquent or as understanding as you. you just.. you really phrase things well. whenever we talk i !! i feel so grounded and like i know oafiwenoaw what you’re saying!! and you’re always so sweet and funny and expressive with what you say :( dude you’re just amazing ok!! and your gifs are always so so so beautiful like… omg…. WOW…. an angel huh TT TT ;; whenever i see your gifs or your tags i’m always so soft!! i’m so proud of you for working hard at school, and though i miss you!! i hope you’re spending your time resting when you get a chance and that school isn’t kicking your butt too much my love!!! i am so proud of you TT TT and i’m sending all my ‘fightings!!!’ and strength your way angel bean!!!! minho is also sending his love and energy!!!

@uayv: hi darling!!! miss joyce! miss gfx queen! oh my goodness;; first of all- thank you for the BOMB ass content dude… your gfx… wowowowwo..w… secondly, thank you for sticking with me through a drastic blog change;; faoiwenfoaw i’m so glad that we’re still pals bc you’re one of those people that makes me laugh so hard from just your tags alone- and in dms i usually can’t stop smiling/laughing;; aoiwenfoiawenwa !!!!!! listen to me !!!!! the first time i found your blog was bc u rb’d one of my gfxs and left some of the nicest tags ever and i saw you had ‘gfx’ tagged in your bio so when i scrolled through your gfx and i was eMBARRASSED BC LIKE………… DUDE HOLY SHIT THIS PERSON HAD SOME OF THE BEST WORK I’D E V E R SEEN. i still think you are one of the MOST TALENTED GFX MAKERS EVER. you have so much of my respect and love and i wish i could aowiefnoawiefn give you … the whole world dude… awenfiawfeowia TT TT you are so kind to me whenever i ask for a second opinion on my gfx and you’re always so warm and funny- and your love for bread is so good- like i’m telling you whenever i see bread posts that aren’t from you i IMMEDIATELY either tag you or send them to you fawienoawien ;; you’re such a warm positive influence on my dash and in my life and i really love you from the bottom of my heart. i’m so thankful we’re pals bc you are a true angel and a true pal and just !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAA I LOVE U SO MUCH JOYCE OIANWFOIAWN TT TT (doyoung loves you loads too okay; he is sending big fat kisses ur way!)

@ultscb: hi taryn!!! miss gif queen;; faoiwenfaown holy moly; you are such a talented person- but not only are you amazing at giffing ?? you’re also just ??? an amazing warm funny kind beautiful person??? like afnoiwnefowaienof hello?? you’re somehow always making me smile; whenever we talk or through your tags?? you’re just !! so !! lovely and fantastic and i!!!! really do love you!!! you’ve been so kind and warm to me and made me smile so much even if we don’t talk that often;; you always give me such kind feedback when you look at my work and it really foanwifeanwoe blows my ego into another dimension fanoweinaowienfao i love you so much angel!!! i hope you know that you’re an amazing and talented and funny and wonderful person! changbin is sending kisses !! (and so am i!!)

@wayvgf: hi mara baby!!!!! :0 you are such a bright personality, whenever you’re excited ofiawneofai you’ll make like fawoniewi a bunch of posts back to back with 0 context and idk why that makes me laugh and feel so warm and happy- but the thought that someone who is so warm and bright exists really makes me so happy!!! you are literally the funniest and cutest person i’ve ever !! met !! you are so kind and warm and funny and idk man :(( you’ve just been very kind to me and listened to me rant abt some very dumb stuff faoiwnefoaiwne TT TT thank you for always dealing with that side of me, and for being so kind to me;; i know i always say this but : your nose is… really… afwioenaofiawoifwa the pinnacle of noses ok. u r s o cute :( and whenever i’m like “I LOVE MARA DOT ORG” i mean it !!! i love you SO much!!!!!!!!!!! you are such a fantastic, funny, hard working person and i love you SO much bb !!!!! hyunjin also loves u but :/ i love u mos t.

#li.ff #OIFANFOINAWOFIAW OK SO I POSTED THIS AND IT WAS AN ACCIDENT #IM SO SORRy #ANYWAYFOIANWFOINAWFI #I APOLOGIZE IFONAWOIFNAIW #AHHFAJWFAIW #im so dumb lf amfaomiawe fawienfaw #deceased into another realm ok #NOW i can go crawl under a rock and be dumb by myself jwejfiawoefinaw #AND IM SO EMBARRASSED RN FAJWFJOAWIFJ #i wish i could've written a message to everyone but this is just already such a long mess #oafinweoianwoiawei TT TT but please know i love all of u so much and s o dearly ;;#aahhfoaiwefnoawei TT TT

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hamelaisley · 5 years

Text

prague...dedicated to becky

PRAGUE

Chapter 1

"we could run..........you and me. we could go now and never look back"

"are you serious???"

"i have money saved up josh. i could get us new identities. create a escape route. for now just keep up appearances.........,go to berlin like were gonna shoot. well leave to go to prague from there"

"what are you saying jen?????"

"im saying i wanna be a real person again........with you. thats what you want right???? i mean this is it josh. will you run away with me????"

-XX-

"aaaaaand action!!!!" yelled francis lawrence.

any other time this would have been joshs idea of heaven. working with his friend all day. but now.... it was just really awkward and he couldnt wait until the wrap.

josh started to mumble his lines but was cut off by jen.

"im really sorry francis but........i cant do this right now......." she said and then walked off to her trailer.

it had been like this ever sense....ever sense prague.......

-XX-

josh walked up to the train platform trying to find jen. suddenly he saw her standing with a suitcase and wearing a red jacket with cute black heels on. she spotted him and immediately smiled at him. he walked over to her.

"hey!!!!! i was starting to think you werent coming!!!" she said.

josh looked down at his shoes. jen didnt notice or care. jen pulled a folder out of her purse.

"k so here are our new identities. for now on your name is thomas campbell and mine is elle sinclair. we can talk about there back stories or whatever on the train ride to prague" she said.

"jen........." josh said.

"oh dont worry about the ride......... its only a hour long and if your bored you have me to talk to" she said.

"jen i.......i dont think we should do this........."

jen looked kinda confused.

"what do you mean?????"

"i mean we..... we made a promise that we would make these movies. we have a responsibility to the fans and everyone in the movie to finish it.... this is our life jen. this fairytale about running away is nice but this is where we belong. in hollywood. living our real lives....."

"josh its not that simple....... you dont understand but everything here is fake.....but this" she said and grabbed josh's hand. ".....this is simple. this is our real life. we have to go josh...... are you coming????? please come with me josh....."

josh paused and let go of jen's hand.

"i cant......im sorry........"

-XX-

josh walked up to jen's trailer and knocked.

"jen its me.....please let me in........"

"josh no. i dont want to talk to you now"

josh could tell she was crying.

"jen......."

"go away!!!!!"

josh leaned against the door and felt a single tear on his cheek.

"ok" he whispered.

Chapter 2

things were awkward on set. jen was avoiding josh and it was making him feel awful and lonely. he was always talking and laughing with her and now that he wasnt he felt empty and hurt. he hated being alone because then your forced into listening to your own thoughts instead of someone elses voice. god he couldnt wait for this to end.

but.......but what if this awkwardness never ended?? what if jen never forgave him???

he stared at the script in his hands. he was trying to memorize his lines because he had to and to distract himself from the situation with jen. it wasnt really working. he looked out the window of his trailer and saw jen in her own trailer looking straight at him. but when she saw that he saw her she looked away.

josh threw the papers on the ground frustratedly. he needed to talk to jen. even if she didnt want to talk to him. fuck, hed tie her up and force her to listen if thats what it took.

he walked out the door and to jen's trailer. he knocked and waited for her to answer nervous that she wouldnt. but she did. thank GOD thought josh.

"hey" jen said not looking at him. she was wearing a pretty white dress that would probably blow in the wind if it was windy. it reminded josh of the first time he saw jen.

-XX-

he put some cologne on his wrists and pulled on the jacket he was wearing. then he looked in the mirror and fixed his hair. he felt like a girl but he wanted to look perfect before meeting his co-star jennifer lawrence. they talked on the phone a few days ago and he has instantly fell in love with her. she was so funny and comfortable with who she was. and josh knew she was gorgeous. he saw her at the oscars when she was nominated for winters bone. she was irresistible to josh even though he didnt meet her in person yet. but that was going to change in a few minutes if josh didnt die from his heart beating so fast that it fell out of his chest.

he looked at his watch and took a deep breath. if he didnt leave now he was gonna be late.

he left his house and got into his car and drove to jen's house. when he got there he couldnt help but laugh at the garden nomes in the yard of her house. they were cute just like her.

josh wiped his sweaty hands in his pants and rang the door bell. jen answered.

joshs mouth went dry when he saw her. even though she was wearing a super simple white dress she was still breathtaking stunning. her eyes were the bluest blue josh had ever seen. her lips were full. her cheeks were pink like she ran to the door or something, and she had a cute button nose. jen smiles and you could see her dimples.

"well what are you waiting for silly!!!!! come in the damn house its frickin cold outside hahah" she said.

josh did as was told and went Ito her house. suddenly he stopped and just looked at her. he didnt think it was possible to be more attracted to this girl but that was before he saw her in person. it was love at first sight for him.

oh god josh thought im inlove with a girl and i dont even know her full name.....

"uh.....jen???"

"thats mizz lawrence to you" she joked.

he laughed. "k so this is kinda super weird but i was wondering........ can you tell me your middle name????"

she looked at him silently for a few seconds before saying something. "shrader. my middle name is shrader" she said.

"jennifer shrader lawrence" josh said. and it was the most beautiul name hed ever heard.

-XX-

"hey......can i come in????" josh asked. jen nodded her head "yes" so josh went in.

"look josh about the other day........"

"its ok jen. really its fine like dont worry about it" josh said.

"i just really miss you so much. what happened in prague......im so sorry jennifer for hurting you. i didnt mean to hurt you. and i want us to go back to the way things were. please????? i dont wanna loose you.......... i love you"

"josh.........."

josh cut her off as he leaned forward and kissed her. to his disappointment though, she pulled away after a few seconds.

"josh..........we need to break up."

Chapter 3

"josh..........we need to break up."

out of all the things josh thought jen would say that did not even make the list. he expected that theyd need to talk some things out but.........

"....i....jen what?"

"josh its.....please dont look at me like that....i just think that were not the same people we were when we first fell in love.....i dont want to ruin our friendship"

she was right about one thing. they werent the same people they were when they first fell in love. the old jen would never do something like this to him.

-XX-

"oh you can do better than that!!!" jen yelled at josh as she flew through the air. josh laughed and pushed her back harder. his arms were getting kinda sore. who knew that pushing someone on a swing could be so much work??

"jen my arms are tired." he complained. "im gonna take a break"

"your WEAK JOSH HUTCHERSON. YOUR FUCKING WEAK!!!"

"well not all of us can be nicholas fucking hoult jen. maybe you should call him so that he can come push you" he said. but right after he said it he wished he didnt. it wasnt fair to jen. she didnt know how much it hurt him to see her with nick. and even if she did he didnt have a right to be mad. it wasnt her fault that she loved nick and not him.

"look jen im sorry" he shouted up to her. she ignored him.

he stepped back away from the swing and sat down. he watched her for a little while until suddenly jen let go of the swing and literally went flying through the air. he knew she did it on purpose because she was laughing like an idiot the whole way until she hit the mulch. but even then she was still laughing. josh ran over to her to make sure she was okay. her knees were scraped and her hair was messed up and had pieces of mulch stuck in it.

"i wanted to come sit with you but i didnt want to do the whole slowing down thing normal people do when there done swinging" she told him.

josh rolled his eyes and laughed.

"god dammit jen!!! you know i love you but you can be such an airhead sometimes!!!" he laughed. jen didnt. she stared up at him and met his eyes.

"you love me????"

josh started to panic. did he say that out loud???

"josh....do you???? love me????"

he couldnt tell if she was kidding or not. he could easily get himself out of this one. of course he loved jen. she was his best friend!!! but for some reason he didnt want to get out of anything. he wanted to tell her. there. in the hawaiian park under spring clouds.

"i.......jennifer how could i not??? ive loved you ever sense that very first phone call. sense i very first saw you. ive loved you every time weve laughed and every time weve fought. i loved you when you had a boyfriend and i loved you when i had a girlfriend. ive loved you during my proudest moments and my weakest moments. ive loved you during nothings and somethings and everything in between. so yes jennifer i love you. ive been hopelessly inlove with the girl in the white dress from the very beginning and will be right up until the end."

jen didnt say anything for a while. instead she just took his hands in hers and leaned into him so that there faces were pretty much touching. josh fought the desire to just lean forward and take those perfect lips into his own.

finally she said something. "so you DO remember what color dress i was wearing when we met!!!"

josh smiled. of course thats what she got from that.

"ya i guess i do"

"josh??"

"ya????"

"we broke up. me and nick"

josh tried not to look excited. not that he really was. he was just worried about jen.

"why would he break up with you??? your the most perfect girl in the world and if he doesnt see that then he doesnt deserve you!!!!"

"i broke up with him josh...."

"what???? why???"

"because i love you too"

and then like belle and her beast there lips met taking away the beast and leaving only a prince.

-XX-

"jen thats bullshit and you know it....." josh said to her. "you know i hate being lied to......why dont you just tell me the real reason???"

jen sighed not looking him in the eye.

"josh after prague i.....was hurt. you hurt me when you said no. it made me feel like you didnt love me and i......called someone who i knew still loved me....."

"huh??? who???"

"josh.....i called nick"

Chapter 4

"josh.....i called nick. okay?!? i called nick and one thing led to another and we decided to give our relationship another chance. im sorry josh. i didnt mean to hurt you......."

josh felt his eyes start to sting with salty tears. how could she do this to him???

"did you screw him???"

"what??"

"i said....did you screw him"

"josh......."

"answer me"

".....yes. but josh you need to understand that you hurt me....."

he didnt hear anything that she said after that. her lips were moving but there was no sound. he stared straight through her.

"josh........josh please say something......."

"you.....jen you *cheated* on me??" josh asked.

"it....we were on a break and i was hurting josh you need to know that please know that"

josh fell out of his daze after hearing that.

"god jennifer you are so full of shit"

"uh excuse me?????"

"and to think i actually felt bad about prague.... i called you 273 times after that jennifer. you didnt answer 273 times. and it turns out that was because you were too busy sleeping with someone else????"

"thats not fair-"

"actually i think it's perfectly fucking fair jennifer. god i worked my ASS off for this relationship. i felt guilty for those whole three months we didnt talk. i missed you. i just wanted to make things better and i was stupid enough to think that you wanted that too!! god im such a idiot!!!"

jen was mad.

"how dare you say that stuff to me??? do you think it was easy for me to not talk to you for three months??!?!" she yelled.

"well after what you just told me ya i do!!" he shouted.

"i thought we were taking a break!!!"

"you know what??? fuck our friendship. you fucking disgust me and i dont want anything to do with you. not anymore"

jen didnt say anything.

josh stormed out of the trailer taking jens silence as his time to leave.

-XX-

"jennifer.....im so sorry. i was scared. scared to leave behind the life ive worked for my whole life. im a coward and im sorry. i shouldnt have left you in prague. i love you"

"i know that your mad and hurt and i know that i made you feel like that and im sorry im so fucking sorry. i love you jennifer"

"its been a week now......jen your scaring me. im worried about you.....please call me so i know that your ok??"

"jen im going crazy here.....its been a month sense i last kissed you......touched you......or fucking saw you...... i know your ignoring me but..... stop ok?? i miss you"

"jen......the decision that i made in prague. i know what it looks like. i know that it looks like i chose being an actor over.......over being with you. but thats not what happened. how i feel about you is real. very very real. and i know that you know how ive felt about you for a long time..... i told you.....we told each other and......and.........look jen i know that i probably hurt you. your probably hurt that i didnt run away with you in prague........but jen......i love you. i love you and i cant live without you. so.......please call me back"

the smell of pool water and listening to his voicemails was making jen feel dizzy. she held the phone to her ear and tried not to cry. but what she and josh had.......it was over now. she was never going to let herself get hurt like that again. she was stupid to think that josh would ever run away with her. her fairytale of running away from the fame and getting married and having kids and just living.......it was never gonna happen. and part of her knew she knew it wouldnt happen before this but that didnt make it hurt less.

she took the phone away from her head and looked at it one more time before she threw it into the pool.

"hey babe who was that???" nick asked.

"no one" she said. she leaned down and kissed nick on the ear. "absolutely no one"

Chapter 5

josh was so mad at jen he didnt even know what to do. the only thing he knew was that he had to get out of here before he exploded. so he went to the only place he could think of.

"oh hi josh" jena malone said when she saw it was josh who knocked on her trailer door.

"hi jena" josh said. jena opened the door a little bit more. he didnt move.

"well what are you waiting for silly!!!!"

josh felt like he was gonna throw up when she said that. even though jena didnt know that that was what jen had said to him when they first met didnt mean it didnt bother him a lot.

"i.....actually was wondering if i could maybe......take you out tonight??"

she smiled when he said that.

"ya id love to!! just let me get my purse and we can go k??"

"ya sounds good"

-XX-

"josh??? what are you doing here??? its midnight!!!" jen said after she opened her hotel door to see josh standing there with daisies.

"tonights our last night in hawaii" he said.

"ya so we should be sleeping because getting back to LA is gonna take forever"

"no.....we should be walking to the picnic i set up on the beach for us so that we can sleep on the plane" josh said. he took a purple daisy and put it in jen's hair. after that he gave her them.

jen smiled. "alright lead me to it"

they walked down to the beach holding hands. josh loved holding her hand. it made him feel so connected to her.

"oh my god josh this is awesome!!!!!" jen said when she saw joshs picnic.

they sat down and started to eat. jen looked up at the night sky. the moon was full and reflecting on the ocean.

"this is the most beautiful thing ive ever seen" she said. she was looking at the full moon.

"sure is" josh said. he was looking at jen.

-XX-

"so where are we gonna go????" asked jena. they were in joshs car.

"lou's" he said.

"whats that????"

"a club"

"oh fun"

on the drive there joshs phone started buzzing and didnt stop.

"sheesh!!! someone must really wanna talk to you!!!" jena joked.

"huh....weird" josh said.

when they got to the club josh checked his phone"

37 missed calls from Jennifer Lawrence and 37 new voicemails. his phone started buzzing again.

josh glared at his phone before turning it off. screw her josh thought.

josh went inside the club and saw that jena had already ordered them some drinks.

"just a few shots" she said. josh smiled. this was just what he needed to get his mind off jennifer shrader lawrence.

it got later and josh and jena got more drunk. they decided to go dance on the dance floor.

josh watched jena dance and realized how pretty she was. he never thought about jena like that before because he was too busy thinking about jen like that. he got close to her and started to dance with her.

"you are so gorgeous" he said. she laughed.

"your not do bad yourself handsome" she said.

josh leaned in and kiss jena. he pulled her waist closer to him and she put her hands around his neck.

"do you wanna come home with me???" josh asked.

"yeah but were gonna have to wait because were both to drunk to drive" she said. "lets see i called her like 20 minutes ago to come get us so.... oh there she is!!!!"

josh turned around to see who jena was talking about.

standing there was jen with tears on her cheeks. she looked at him and ran to the clubs bathroom.

"whats her deal....." jena laughed.

josh didnt care about jen anymore. he couldnt care about her. and besides what right does she have being hurt when she was the one who cheated on him?!?

josh smiled at jena and kissed her again.

with each second he kissed jena he could feel himself thinking less about jen.

this was just what he needed.

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