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yyxgin · 3 years

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lee felix’s guide to hating you

— ♡ FIC BANNER MADE BY THE AMAZING @chogiwow !!

pairing: lee felix x fem!reader genre: college au, tutor au ; fluff, angst, slice of life, slow burn word count: 21 k warnings: mentions of alcohol, mention of weed, swearing, bad family relationships

a/n: this story is very briefly inspired by jaemin’s drama ‘the way i hate you’ :) also this idea has been in my mind for such a long time, so i’m happy i finally managed to write it. this is also my longest fic so far, i hope it’s worth it. uhh yea enjoy <3

taglist: @feyregels @missskzbiased @hyunyin @koishua @crispy-chan @rindomo @soulssung @thatrandomoneinthecorner @90shermione @chogiwow @creatichee @freckledberries @hyunnies-stars

There’s a list of things Lee Felix knew before applying for college-- and that is: 1) he really, desperately needs a degree for his grandparents to value him as an equal adult, 2) college in young adult movies seems like fun and partying and alcohol really does sound like his wettest dream, 3) he doesn’t need to work for another 4 years, which is fun and 5) he is really, horribly bad at studying.

Here’s a list of things Lee Felix, however, did not know before applying for college, and even though it’s fairly shorter, it hits you in the guts deeper, and that is: 1) studying for college means never ending chapters of insomnia and 2) he is always going to feel like the second choice for everyone.

You see, girls don’t like Felix that much. Well, that’s a lie-- girls do go after him, tell him he’s cute and his freckles are adorable, but that’s only after they find out there’s no use in chasing after his best friend Han Jisung when he gets himself a new significant other. Boys don’t go after Felix either. Why, you may ask? Read the paragraph over again-- just change the word girls to the word boys. It’s as simple as that. He’s always the second choice, the back-up plan. It feels silly to drag his grandma into this, really, but the truth is, he’s a second choice in every aspect of his life, and that, too, includes his big (and still growing) family that treats him as something less than a human just because of the fact that his grades aren’t as good as his cousin’s are and he doesn’t have a degree in biological science, although he’s too young for that and his college years only started. It’s hard, living in his shoes.

What is Felix, however, really good at?

Cheating.

Yeah, well, you see-- it’s not funny to be the outcast of the smart Lee family and it’s also not enetaining in the slightest to be the only single one at family gatherings (read as: weddings, because every single one of his relatives decided to fuck up their life with marriage in the past three years for some unknown reason). So Felix does what he’s the best at, and that is going by his favorite life motto: fake it ‘til you make it.

He cheats on every single one of his exams and believe me when I tell you he’s the top of the class just because he’s the best cheater in town. Good cheating techniques equal good grades and suddenly, Felix’s life seems much brighter when he spends his sleepless nights with creating cheat sheets instead of studying and copying essays written in korean, translating them to english and submitting them as his own because no one will ever notice-- his degree is within the reach of his hand and he can already feel all the grandmas of the family clapping in joy, maybe even wiping away a stray tear on his graduation ceremony in a few years with bouquets of flowers in their hands and expensive watches in their gift bags, ready to welcome him back into the family..

What he doesn’t expect, though, is the cute little saying of ‘every lie has short legs’ he swears he heard sometimes in his linguistic class before, coming to life right in front of his eyes as the professor of his Biology class makes him the assigned tutor of the sweet Y/N Y/L/N, because, well, he clearly doesn’t know anything-- what’s he supposed to tutor now?

The best cheating techniques?

The freckled boy sitting in front of you looks at you with furrowed brows and you wonder what’s the matter with him. Is there something on your face? Are you not dressed appropriately for the occasion? I mean, it’s only a tutoring session, so you didn’t put that much effort into it, but judging from the casual outfit enveloping his body, he didn’t really try to look fancy either. So what was it with him that made him stare you down as if you had horns on your head?

“Shall we start?” he asks once he’s done staring, voice sounding determined. You wonder if he sees the hints of nervousness on your face and if he notices the way you shrink in your seat in the mention of biology, but you guess he doesn’t know you that well to know that you fear the subject as much as you fear dying.

“Yeah, sure,” you nod, scooting closer to the edge of your seat so you’re not so far away from the table. Felix-- your new biology tutor-- is sitting opposite of you and it’s quite difficult to read the text book once it’s upside down, but you don’t dare to mention it to him for a reason that’s unknown to you as well. It’s like you don’t want to overstep any invisible boundary on your first tutoring session, and telling the person that is teaching you to turn around the text book so you can actually see and learn something seems to be one of the taboos in your eyes.

You take a quick glance at the waiter that just stopped next to your booth and smile, opening up your mouth to order yourself a meal. “Can I get you anything else?” she asks.

“No-” Felix offers her with a shy smile, but you cut him off with a voice a little higher in the octaves, not wanting your tutor coming in between you and reaching your biggest goal you’ve set for yourself.

“Actually, yes. Could I please get the chicken wings? With fries?” you ask, trying to look as innocent as you can, smiling at her in politeness. You ignore the confused look Lee Felix is offering you from the other side of the table. You mentally send him a signal to tell him to mind his own business, watching the waitress leave with a nod and a polite smile.

“Okay, now we can start,” you nod at him and focus all your attention to the boy with sandy hair in front of you.

“O...kay?” he answers, obviously trying to bat away his rising confusion, because ordering yourself chicken wings on your tutoring session is prohibited now, apparently. “So,” he starts, sighing and scratching the back of his neck, “what do you not understand from this section?”

You nervously chew on the bottom of your lip. Well, that’s a sweet question, you think. It would have been much sweeter and much easier to answer, though, if you understood at least a bit from the things you’re supposed to know. You went to university with the urge to prove something to yourself, but the only thing you’re proving to yourself right now is the fact that you are actually kind of useless, when it comes to biology.

“Just like the… whole thing, actually,” you nod, trying not to look as defeated as you feel and also trying not to burst out in a manic laugh as you always do when you feel slightly nervous about anything.

“Cool, cool, yeah,” he nods, taking a deep breath in, turning the textbook around and sighing, “I don’t think I can help you with that.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” you ask, confused.

Lee Felix is the top of the grade. He is the best at biology, he is the best at chemistry, he is the best at his farmacy class. You’re sure he’ll be a fine biochemist in a few years, when his college times are over. Lee Felix is the smartest boy in your biology class and you are, coincidentally, quite the opposite on this spectrum. Which is exactly why your teacher managed to make Felix tutor you in his free time. You weren’t surprised at the fact that the blonde boy agreed to this-- he was quite the sweetheart, really. All the girls in your class fawned upon the way his freckles shined in the sunlight and the way he opened the doors for older professors. He was quite the boy you would want to introduce to your parents. Not quite the one every girl goes after, but the one that you would want to settle down with after your college years are over.

So why is he, the sweet, but also smart boy that agreed to tutor you, now telling you he can’t help you?

“It’s just.. I’m not really good at this section, I mean-”

“Felix, you’re the top of the class. Of course you’re good at this section.” you mumble, gazing deep into his eyes, trying to search for an answer.

“I-” he says and takes a sharp breath in, stopping himself in continuing his train of thought and just opting to shrug, not giving you a proper response either.

You feel like someone just punched you in the gut, and that’s when you realise-- here it is again. Another person that doesn’t believe in you-- another person that needs proving that you really can do it, you just need a little push. You can see it in his eyes that he doesn’t think you’re smart or bright enough to pass the exams, you’re not good enough to get good grades. It’s nothing new to you, but it still haunts you just the same.

“Is it because you know I can’t do it?” you bluntly ask, sighing.

“No! No, no, I never said that-” he says, almost panicking with the way his hands fly into the air hurriedly, waving them around as if it was meant to calm you down.

“You’re acting like it, though. I promise I’m not stupid- well, maybe I am, but-”

“You’re not stupid! It’s me! I’m the stupid one here.” he says, effectively silencing you with his words as you stare at him, dumbfounded. He’s joking, right?

“How can you be stupid when you get only the best grades? Felix, if you just don’t want to waste your time here, tell me, but don’t try to hide behind poor excuses.” you roll your eyes, feeling frustrated at the boy’s antics. Does he really think you’re that stupid that you can’t see right through his lies?

“I cheat.”

You blink a few times as if to reset your brain, gazing at him with pure confusion written in your orbs. He cheats? No. That’s a lie. A person as good at biology as Felix can’t cheat. All his exams are on 100% and he never makes any mistakes. He’s the epitome of the smart kid. The little Einstein. The prodigy. There’s no way it’s all cheating.

“No.” you shake your head in disapproval. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying! Look, I genuinely, really want to help you. I really do. The thing is, though, I don’t know how to study. I make cheat sheets and I use them at every exam and every test, that’s why everyone thinks I’m super smart, but that is really not the case,” he shakes his head, staring into your eyes with his wide open in honesty, wanting you-- no,-- needing you to understand. “I would tutor you if I could, really, but I just don’t know how to,” he sighs finally, acting like he’s just given birth or ran a marathon, exhaustion written all over his face.

“So why did you offer to tutor me, then?” you ask.

He takes a moment for himself to collect his thoughts, before he speaks up again. “Well, I didn’t really want to get caught. You see, I would never turn my back to anyone. Really. So I thought I could at least try to learn something? So I could help you? But I failed, as always, so I’m just coming clean in front of you and you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

The moment the last sentence leaves his mouth, you notice the apparent fear in his eyes, realising that he just shared an information with you that nobody really knows. It’s a secret he’s been hiding and keeping from everyone just to appear as the smartest one-- fooling everyone, including you. You feel even more stupid now, under his gaze. You feel played. You came to the tutoring, hoping to finally get a grip, when all you get is a person that is stepping all over the sandcastle of your fragile dreams, kicking every little piece of sand away with his lies. You know you shouldn’t feel so invested in this. You shouldn’t feel so hurt. But somehow, you still do.

“So you just told me you are lying to everyone and cheating on tests and you want me to keep it a secret from everyone?” you ask in disbelief.

“Yes.” he nods, eyes hopeful. He’s been lying for the last year as if his life was depending on it and now he wants you to do the same-- keep quiet in front of everyone.

“And what do I do when the professor asks me why I’m not getting any better? Huh? Ever thought of that?” you leash out, harshly chewing on your bottom lip in nerves. “I want to pass. And I want to do it fair and square.” you get out in between your teeth.

“I didn’t… I didn’t think of that yet, but-”

“Leave.” you say, looking him sternly into his eyes.

“What do you mean, leave?”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. And you’re clearly not here to teach me anything, so you can just take your things and leave.” you spit out, crossing your hands over your chest.

“You leave, then,” he mutters, looking rather offended. You’re not sure why he’s the one hurt right now, but you guess that’s just how men and their egos are, there’s nothing more under his hurt eyes and shattered self-esteem.

“I ordered food, I’m not leaving.” you calmly respond. Once you say this, you’re reminded of the little quest you made for yourself. Never once did you feel silly for taking it so seriously in front of your other friends, but now, in front of Lee Felix with freckled dusted cheeks, you feel almost invisible as you realise why you even ordered the chicken wings and how you’re going to write a yelp review about them later.

Well, someone has to do it, and if not you, then who will, right? It’s the only valid way to find out who makes the best chicken wings in the town and not even your traitor-tutor is going to stop you now, when your list is only getting shorter and shorter.

He stares at you for a few moments, dumbfounded, before he sighs and accepts his defeat. “Okay, I’ll just have to text my roommate to pick me up,” he admits.

You nod, just in time the server comes back with your food, offering her a welcoming smile. “Fine. But don’t even think of talking to me from now on. I’m not interested in more lies,” you spit at him, scowling as you take a look at the plate of chicken wings sitting in front of you in their full glory. You sense a very bad review, judging from the way the chicken wings look nothing like wings, rather full on small chickens dipped in oil, but dive in nonetheless.

“Why do you have to be so dramatic?” he asks, voice coated in disbelief.

“Because I was scammed!” you yell out, mouth full of chicken, not caring a second about the way you might look in the boy’s eyes. Yes, you could have at least swallowed before speaking to him, but did you do it? No. No, you didn’t.

“Oh come on-”

“Don’t even try arguing with me!” you spit at him-- quite glad that this time, it’s not literal-- and huff out in annoyance, when the door opens and a short boy with a bucket hat on steps into the bistro, the red fabric of the seats of the booths contrasting with his shoes in a way that makes you feel captivated, your eyes refusing to tear themselves away from him.

The boy is taking quick steps to your booth and you almost choke on your chicken wings as you admire his full glory-- tanned skin and car keys in his hand, but his eyes meet the boy sitting opposite of you and that’s when everything clicks. This is not the boy of your dreams, this is Han Jisung. Your tutor’s best friend and roommate-- also known as the resident heartbreaker. You shouldn’t feel weak in your knees when you look at him, but that’s exactly what happens and you won’t feel ashamed about it. Well, not now, at least. In a few hours when you’re lying in your bed? Maybe. But I’ll tell you then.

“Yo, dude, I texted you like five minutes ago that I’m waiting for you outside, what are you still doing here?” he asks, furrowing his brows at his roommate and slowly moving his eyes to you, scanning you up and down, leaving your heart to do the stupid cartwheel you haven’t felt since, like, middle school.

“We were in the middle of an argument, so I didn’t hear my phone ring.” Felix answers, glaring at you with spiteful eyes. You almost prepare to kill him with yours, but you focus on wiping the oil from the corner of your mouth and smiling heavenly, trying to look like a lady in front of your new visitor.

“Was Felix being absolutely unbearable again?” he asks you, surprising you with his subtle way of engaging you into the conversation.

You giggle, rolling your eyes slightly. “Yeah. You know him too well, don’t you?”

“Unfortunately,” he admits, looking defeated, when he moves his eyes to Felix, looking rather sulky on the red seat in front of you as you chat with his roommate, when Jisung’s tone of voice changes into a more worried one, speaking up again, “does she… did you…?”

“Yeah,” Felix just nods.

Jisung sighs, sitting down next to his roommate, pushing him a little so he has more space in the booth. “What are you supposed to tutor her anyway?” he asks.

“Biology,” you mumble sooner than Felix gets the chance to speak up, motioning to the textbook still sitting at the table in front of you.

The boy takes a look at the papers, his face changing from a focused one to a one more lighter, his eyes scanning the papers with ease. You notice his mouth moving a little as he reads the words under his breath, catching yourself from staring when you feel Felix’s eyes burning into the crown of your head, snapping you back to reality.

“You know… maybe I could help you with that.” he says, looking like a business offering you a deal that you’re sure involves something illegal. He looks like a focused squirrel with his cheeks puffed out a little in what you sense is pride, something in his eyes glowing as you nervously chew on your bottom lip.

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course. I’m actually quite good at biology, to be honest. Well, not as much as Felix over here-” he jokes, scowling when the blonde boy punches his arm, “but I think I could tutor you a thing or two.”

“What’s the catch?” you ask, nervously watching him. Something in his composure is telling you he’ll want something in return, but you don’t know what yet. You’re quite sure you’ll sell your soul for the adorable boy in front of you if he asked you to, but it never hurts to ask beforehand, right?

“What do you mean, what’s the catch?”

“Like… what do you want in return?” you muse out, taking a bite of a fry, noticing how soggy it feels under your teeth.

“Woah, you spend 15 minutes with Felix and you already think there’s something illegal behind everything? I’ll let you know, I’m better than that.” he scoffs. “I’m just doing it because I see how miserable you are. And I also don’t want you to tell on my buddie over here.” he adds, smiling warmly.

You take notice of the way Felix’s eyes grow twice their size and how Jisung’s knee lightly bumps into his under the table. It’s subtle, but you think that maybe this is when you fully fell for the short boy in front of you-- when he offered to save his best friend’s ass by helping out a lost girl with biology. And who are you to say no now? I mean, you need the tutoring nonetheless. Who cares if the boy tutoring you is someone else? Maybe it’s even more appealing to you this way, but you’ll never admit that out loud.

“Okay then, sure.” you nod, grinning from ear to ear, feeling satisfied.

“Great. Now, give me half the fries and we can arrange our next tutoring session,” he smiles, “oh, and I’m Han Jisung, by the way.”

He winks.

You should be disturbed, but strangely, you’re not. You grin back at him, offering him the soggy fries you’re sure you’re going to give a really bad review in the evening, watching his composure change into a more laid-back one, engaging you in a conversation and slunging an arm around his best friend’s shoulders.

Lee Felix remains silent. He feels it once again-- he feels the loneliness of being left out.

And he’s sure it won’t be the last time.

Lee Felix knows damn well how it feels to be the third wheel. He’s hung out with Jisung and his potential love interests multiple times, he’s even been on double dates with the said male, yet, he always somehow ends up being left out. So why does it still feel the same? Why does he still feel that restless feeling in his stomach, the emptiness in his chest, just like the first time? I guess you never get used to some things and emotions are one of them. No matter how much you argue that you know a feeling so well it doesn’t even surprise you anymore, it still hurts the same. That’s funny about emotions. Sometimes, they can’t even make you numb.

“Hurry up dude, the bistro closes in an hour and half!” Jisung rushes the taller male (not tall, just taller. Don’t misunderstand.) with his car keys in his hand, twirling them around his fingers in a nervous manner. Felix notices his roommate has put some effort into his outfit today, considering the lemon supreme shirt enveloping his body that he saves only for special occasions, yet, Felix doesn’t realise why he had to put it on when they’re literally just going out to eat some soggy fries in the bistro close to their house. He doesn’t ask, though. He doesn’t want the car key stuck in his forehead. He also doesn’t know why they have to rush so much, since they have an hour and half left before they close, but again, he doesn’t dare to say it out loud.

Felix quickly puts his shoes on and rolls his eyes at his roommate. “I’m ready,” he announces.

Jisung swiftly takes a bottle of cologne from the table in their small hall (it’s so small they don’t even have a mirror in it, because there was no use in taking mirror selfies when all you can see on the picture is your phone case due to the fact that the room is too narrow for you to move further away) and sprays his body wit hit, efficiently confusing his roommate. “You wanna smell great for the waiter there? Because from what I remember, he was a stoner-”

“Oh, shut up. You never know when you’re gonna meet someone cute, am I right?” he asks, grinning from ear to ear like a cat, taking his backpack with him and opening the front door, “gotta look and smell presentable at all times.”

Felix wonders if this is why everyone always goes after his best friend.

No, he thinks, it cannot be the cloud of cologne hanging around his body. It’s heavy and it makes Felix cough a little, but he tries to mask it, because he’s fairly sure Jisung won’t pay for his fries today if he doesn’t. And Felix is a simple man-- if he can get something for free, he will do anything to achieve it.

They arrive at the place in a few minutes and Felix can already feel his mouth watering at the thought of the salty fries and cheeseburger he’s going to get himself, joyfully skipping inside the bistro and waiting in the queue. Jisung follows him, standing next to him, efficiently covering the smell of the oil and all the good things on this earth-- read as fast food-- making Felix scowl. The boy behind the register, is, in fact, Na Jaemin-- the resident frat boy. Felix’s heard all about him from the girls staying at the dorms and to be honest, he’s quite glad he doesn’t have to live the stories of getting caught with weed at Jaemin's party on his own. That, and the fact that hot water runs in his apartment. Na Jemin might have the weed, but he surely doesn’t have that in his college dorm room.

“Three milkshakes, two large fries, chicken wings and a cheeseburger, please.” Jisung orders, confusing Felix in one sentence. Since when is his best friend a bottomless pot for food? Is he really going to eat all of that?

“Coming right at you. Anything else?” Jaemin asks, voice considerate and polite, still turned on his customer service mode, even though Felix is sure him and Jisung have had shared a joint or two on one of his parties before.

“No, that’s all. Thanks, man,” Jisung answers, leaving with Felix right behind him.

“Who’s gonna eat all of that? I hope you know you’re paying, and before you protest, yes, I did purposefully leave my wallet at home-” he rambles, still moving, when his train of thought is cut off by a person in his view.

You are sitting there in your full glory, smiling brightly at the boys approaching you. You’re dressed nicely, he notices-- you look like you put some effort into what you’re wearing. You don’t look that much different, but he can still see the slight changes you made to look neat. You’re glowing, Felix notices. You look excited.

“Hi, Y/N,” Jisung greets, taking a seat opposite of you. He doesn’t even give Felix an answer, he doesn’t even give him an explanation. He’s left there only to take a seat next to his roommate after collecting his thoughts, chewing on his bottom lip.

The conversation never moves his way. He is silenced. Felix wonders why he was even invited, watching the people behind the window laughing with their friends, happy to order some tasty food and have fun on this Thursday evening. He watches his friend and his classmate have fun-- well, as much fun as a tutoring session could be. You’re laughing at every single one of Jisung’s jokes and he swears Jisung’s eyes never leave your face, even when he’s explaining something to you. He wonders why Jisung didn’t tell him where they’re going. He wonders why he even had to come.

Lee Felix knows how third-wheeling feels. Yet, it still makes his little foolish heart hurt just the same every time.

You nervously chew on your bottom lip, cracking your knuckles in a habit your friends always scream at you for, waiting for your tutor-- well, he’s not really your tutor anymore-- to appear in the bistro on the other side of the town. You admire the decorations for a while, liking the way it looks modern here and the purple led lights make the whole place look aesthetic. You can already imagine multiple college kids going here and taking instagram pictures to look cool. It’s nice and you’ll definitely include it in your yelp review-- it won’t make it more stars, though, if the chicken wings don’t taste like heaven.

You tug on the sleeves on your hoodie, as if you were trying to make yourself disappear. I mean, you do feel embarrassing. You feel pathetic that it had to come down to this, but you guess desperate times call for desperate solutions. You’re not here to look put-together anymore. You’re going to show him your full glory and although you regret it a little, you still have a little spark of hope in you that Han Jisung-- the boy you, admittedly, were crashing on real hard right now, won’t find out.

Felix comes into the bistro in his full VSCO boy glory, as always. He is wearing a jean jacket and his freckled cheeks are dusted pink, you’d almost think he’s blushing all the time. He doesn’t quite fit the aesthetics of this futuristic looking bistro, you notice. The retro places you’ve been to so far fit him much more-- his sandy hair contrasted well with the yellow walls and red booths. It was starting to get a little repetitive, though, you must admit.

“Hi,” he greets you as he takes his seat, smiling at you with what you can only describe as a feeling of full uncomfort. You wonder what made him feel this way about you, but you don’t dare to think of it twice as you focus on the main quest of the day-- forcing him to teach you his ways.

“Hello,” you smile.

Felix notices how natural you look-- it feels like now is the first time he’s seeing you in your full glory. You aren’t wearing your neat clothes for a meeting with Jisung and you’re not too casual like you were at your first ‘tutoring session’ either-- you’re just you. The way he doesn’t even see you in classes. He likes the fact that no one else than him can see you like this-- he likes the fact that Jisung is nowhere around, yet, he wonders why is that, exactly, since the two of you seemed to be hitting it off quite well so far.

Felix hasn’t been with Jisung when he last tutored you. He figured there’s no use, he’s going to get ignored all the time anyway.

“So… what’s the matter?” he asks, folding his hands into his lap. He dares to take a quick look at you, noticing your worn-out shirt and dark circles under your eyes, worry washing over him. Did something happen? Was Jisung a jerk to you?

“Well, I sort-of have a little problem,” you mumble out, tearing your gaze away from him. You seem shy for the first time in front of him and he wonders why. He doesn’t understand your sudden change of behaviour. This isn’t the you he’s used to. “Well, turns out, I am really stupid.” you propose, leaving Felix to gaze at you in surprise.

He chuckles. You swiftly look up at him with piercing eyes telling him to stop, and he almost does, but your face looks too adorable when it’s scrunched up like that, so he only giggles once more. “You’re not stupid.”

“I am!” you whine out, finally letting your whole shy facade fall, exposing the true you once again right in front of Felix’s eyes-- direct and fierceful. “Even Jisung’s tutoring isn’t helping and I feel so stupid with him! And I don’t want him to think that I’m stupid, even though I am, and I just… I can’t pass my exams like this, so I need your help.” you say, eyes big, looking almost pleading.

“And I am supposed to help… how? Exactly?” The confusion is written all over his face, and it almost makes you frustrated. You knew he must be smart, if his cheating has been so good he’s getting through college with straight As, but really, is he really that smart if he can’t read in between the lines?

“Help me cheat.” you quickly get out, biting down on your lower lip just as you say it, as if you were regretting it.

The silence that overtakes the two of you feels like it’s slowly going to eat you up alive, angrily biting into your skin. It feels heavy and suffocating, your palms sweating as you watch Felix blink at you with mouth agape, breathing in and out. You pray for him to make up his mind soon, or else you’re going to run out of the bistro without a yelp review, tearing the skin of your cuticles as you see him blink quickly a few times before shaking his head in disbelief, clearing his storage.

“You want me to help you cheat?” he asks for clarification, furrowing his brows at you.

“That’s correct.” you nod, chewing on the inside of your cheek. You haven’t been this nervous since you took your college entrance exams, and that shows a lot, considering you used to say that has been the most difficult experience of your life so far.

“Because Jisung…. isn’t tutoring you well enough?” he asks again, making you roll your eyes in annoyance.

“Hey, don’t put the blame on Jisung! I’m just stupid, that’s all.” you say, looking down into your lap, because his gaze suddenly feels like he’s judging you and you really don’t feel like maintaining eye contact with him when you’re under pressure.

“If you don’t stop saying that, I will kick you.”

“You wouldn’t dare-”

“I would and I will-”

“Okay, but is that a yes, then?” you look up at him with hopeful eyes, resembling a puppy just a little too much, and, well, Felix can’t just reject you now, can he?

“I.. guess…?” he says, watching your face light up in joy as you clap a few times in excitement.

“Great! Can we start today? We have to start today! I brought my text books and papers and sharpies and-” you are cut off by Felix’s face lighting up at the sight of you, his eyes looking warm and admiring. You quickly shake away the excitement before it goes too far and you actually go to hug him or something, taking a deep breath in and out to calm yourself down.

Just in that moment, the server appears with two servings of chicken wings and two large fries, making Felix look at you in confusion.

“I ordered you food, since I thought we’ll stick around for a while..” you mumble, seeing him eagerly nod and take one fry into his hand, biting down on it with a face full of pleasure.

“Perfect. Just let me eat a few of these and we can get right into work, I promise,” he mutters with a mouth full of food, prompting you to take a bite yourself. It doesn’t taste the worst-- the bistro you went to after prom last year was definitely worse than this, but still, you don’t think Felix’s face quite resembles how the food tastes. He looks as if the Queen of England made it. In reality, it’s just a soggy fry.

“Why do you always order the same thing? Aren’t you tired of eating the same thing over and over again?” he asks suddenly, examining your face with real interest. No one’s ever noticed your eating habits before, just shrugging off what you order every single time. Your little fast food experiment has been a secret so far, even though it wasn’t that hard to cover it up-- nobody really cared until now.

You feel blush creeping on your cheeks as you shrug, feeling a little embarrassed for like the hundredth time today, when you reply to the boy in front of you. You know his secret, so it only feels valid for him to know yours. “I have this experiment… like, I try chicken wings and fries at every single bistro, restaurant and fast food chain in the town to find out which one’s the best…” you mumble, looking into your plate instead of facing him out of the ugly feeling of patheticness creeping up your back.

“Oh, that’s cool!” he exclaims, pointing his fry your direction, a response you didn’t quite expect, “Where do they have the best ones so far?” he asks, genuine interest painting his features.

“Oh,” you get out, feeling your lips unvoliteraly tug into a smile, “I don’t.. I still have a few bistros and the McDonald’s on the highway out of the city left, but I’d say the best ones so far were at Wendy’s. I didn’t quite like the chicken wings there, though, so…”

“Hmm,” he nods, deep in thought, “we just get food at where’s the closest.” he says, munching on a chicken wing. “I guess we could pay a little more attention to the food from now on, because after eating this, I’m never going to eat the food from the bistro right in front of our flat again.”

“Yeah, that bistro’s really awful. I only gave it around 2.5 stars, I think-” you say, before you realise you just spilled out another secret to him, feeling your cheeks heating up.

“2.5 stars? What, do you write yelp reviews or something?” he asks, clearly amused by your accidental spill-out.

“And what if I do?” you defend yourself, glaring at him with fake annoyance. No man will ever make fun of you because you write yelp reviews. Not Lee Felix, even though he seems too nice to actually make fun of you because of something, not anyone.

“That’s cool, though! Those help so much when you travel,” he says, eagerly nodding at you with big eyes and an adorable grin plastered on his face, making you feel understood and happy with just the sudden sign of acceptance. Turns out your little weird obsession isn’t as embarrassing as you thought it was. Or Lee Felix really is the sweetest guy walking on this earth. Either one is fine in your books.

You stay there for a few hours and Felix teaches you the basic cheat codes-- never meet the teacher’s eye, never finish your tests too quickly, always forcefully pick the wrong option before scribbling it out and putting in a correct one to not seem too suspicious. He even takes a piece of paper from you and scribbles down the basic cheat-sheet making structure.

He feels good with you. He feels useful. He knows he shouldn’t be teaching you this, but really, is it really doing any harm? We all have to go through college somehow.

Yet, all evenings always end the same for Felix, with a bad feeling in his gut and a fake smile on his face hiding the true meaning behind his actions. He’ll never be the first choice and you remind him even today, after you leave the ‘tutoring session’ with a quick hug to the male, lowering your voice so only he can hear when you pay him your goodbyes.

“Don’t tell Jisung, okay?”

Of course. It’s all because you don’t want to look embarrassing in front of his best friend.

It goes all how you planned it to-- you’re sitting at your next tutoring session with two males in front of you. One of them is your supposed tutor and one of them is a boy that’s helping you pass your exams for real. You’re into one of them, even though you shouldn’t. You wonder how you even ended up in this mess. You swear you were a good student in high school, always submitting your assignments on time and making sure your tests were on 100%. It was kind of fueling your ego, in a way. You had no other plans in your life to hold on to, no dreams to dream, so you reasoned to do the only thing that you were good at-- getting good grades. You had to prove to yourself that there was a reason, a meaning behind your life. You had to prove to yourself that your existence was valid.

You watch Jisung with interest. You pray to god that he doesn’t catch you in your act, because that would surely be embarrassing. You don’t want him to find out that you’re just fine with cheating, because that meant your tutoring sessions with the male would end and there was no other reason for you to see him. You knew Han Jisung wasn’t interested in you. You were sure you’d see it on him if he was. And even then, you weren’t interested in only a short relationship without any good point. You liked Jisung, but you didn’t like his reputation. One week wasn’t long enough for you to waste your time on him and get your heart broken. You weren’t sure if he was a player, or if he just wanted to desperately find the one by trying all the possibilities, but you weren’t going to find out.

Felix watches you with interest in his eyes-- but you don’t notice. He prays that Jisung doesn’t find out about your secret little ‘tutoring sessions’, because that would mean he wouldn’t have a reason to hang out with you anymore. And Felix really doesn’t want that to happen. For some reason, he doesn’t want you to ever frown. And he’s sure that’s exactly what would happen if Jisung cancelled.

It doesn’t click to him what’s happening inside of his little, foolish heart when he sees you smile at Jisung and his stomach fills with worry.

It doesn’t click to him what’s happening with him when every time Jisung subtly takes your hand in his makes his insides twitch in frustration. He thinks it’s just because of the fact that he’s third-wheeling again, like all his life, and maybe that is partly true, but it’s not the whole reason behind the cloud around his head.

It clicks only when him and his roommate are back home, sitting at the dinner table with the left-overs from the new bistro you three went to, munching on the chicken wings and another pack of soggy french fries and the cola they had in their fridge.

“So… what do you think about Y/N?” Jisung asks suddenly, making Felix furrow his brows in confusion.

“What should I think? She’s smart, I guess…” he mumbles, mouth full of food, not quite grasping the full meaning of his roommate’s question.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jisung quickly nods in approval, “she’s getting really good. I mean, you can still see she’s having some troubles when I’m tutoring her, but at least she always gets good grades on tests now,” he says, biting down on another piece of chicken wing. Felix feels a wave of pride wash over him after hearing the words-- of course you’re doing well on exams. It’s all Felix’s doing. You’re a quick learner, when it comes to cheating.

“Yeah, she’s good,” he says.

“Well,” Jisung suddenly starts, meaning to sound nonchalantly, but only sounding like he’s determining his biggest life secret in front of his friend instead, “I like her.”

Felix almost chokes on the piece of chicken in his mouth, trying to play it off with a small chuckle. “Oh? You do?”

“Yeah. Should I.. Should I ask her on a date or something?” he asks and Felix swears he can see his friend’s cheeks reddening a little, even though the last time he’s seen Jisung embarrassed was when he accidentally called their Math’s teacher mum in eleventh grade.

“You don’t date, though,” Felix opposes.

“That’s not true-”

“Two weeks long relationships aren’t relationships, Jisung.”

“Not my fault they’re never the one! It gets boring after a while, Felix, I can’t just-”

“Why are you even asking me this?” Felix suddenly cuts him off, glaring at him. He doesn’t know why he’s reacting in such a way. It’s not like it’s the first time Jisung is going to date someone for two weeks just to break their heart, it’s not the first time they’re going to run after Felix a week after just so they can still be around the one that broke their heart. This time, though, he does not want to see another heart get broken.

“Jesus, chill, man… I was just asking, since you two seem closer. Did she mention anything about me? Is she dating anyone?” Jisung asks, eyes lighting up.

Felix could be an asshole. He could tell Jisung that you’re already dating someone, he could tell him to back off and that you’re not interested. However, he does not do that. Instead, he does the quite opposite. He pushes his best friend into asking you out, he tells him he should try it, because that’s just the kind of person he is. Besides, he knows you’re into him. Maybe the smile on your face could make him forget about the fact that you’re going to get your heart broken.

“Sure, go for it.” he shrugs, “I don’t really care anyway.”

“Fine, then-”

“I’m gonna shower.” Felix says, quickly standing up from his chair and moving to the bathroom, quickly escaping the conversation.

Only then he realises what he feeling in his gut means, only then he notices the way his sigh feels like the weight of the world is sitting on his shoulders and he can’t breathe any time you’re around Han Jisung.

He realises he likes you.

And clearly, you don’t like him back.

Emotions are something you never quite get used to. Even the emotion of feeling rejection, the emotion of always being behind his best friend’s shadow. Lee Felix is always just the friend. Never the love interest. This time, though, it feels even more heavy, because in a way, you seem way more special in his eyes than the people that went after him just to get with his best friend.

This time, he does not want to see another heart get broken. Because it’s your heart we’re talking about.

And to prevent his heart shattering to even more pieces, he has to do something.

He has to stop liking you.

As soon as possible.

“Y/N?”

“Mhhm?” you ask, raising your eyes up from the cheat sheet you’re creating with Felix’s help, the grease of the fries you’re eating glistening on your chin. You’re with him in a yet another crappy bistro, trying yet another soggy fries, and even though there’s nothing special on you to a stranger’s eye, Felix’s heart can’t help but run twice the speed of light.

“How do you stop liking someone?” he mumbles, furrowing his brows a little, deep in thought.

“Oh, do you like someone?” you ask, and Felix momentarily lights up at the thought of you caring if he’s interested in someone, but when his eyes meet yours and he notices them glistening and lightening up in curiosity, he realises it’s just because you’re happy for him. As a good friend should be.

“No, no,” he quickly shakes his head in disapproval, snickering to himself, “I’m just asking. Because, think, what if, hypothetically, there’s someone who is into someone else. Easy, right? But what if their best friend likes the same person? And you know you shouldn’t like them because they’re into their friend as well? What is there to do at that point?”

You scan his face for a few seconds, thinking to yourself. “Hmm,” you start, “I guess you have to start hating them. So the feelings disappear.” you nod, satisfied with your answer.

“How’s that possible?” he asks, scoffing.

“Well, I don’t know, since it’s all hypothetical anyway,” you giggle, focusing back on your cheat sheet. Your notes are getting smaller and smaller and Felix notices the improvement in your small lettering, making your cheat sheet less noticeable. You’re learning quickly.

“Oh come on,” he whines, kicking your leg under the table, “talk to me. How can a person start hating someone? Give me a tutorial.”

“Well, since you really need to know,” you roll your eyes, putting away the pen from your hand and resting your back against the seat of the booth, “there are a few steps you can take.”

“For example?”

“Well, you have to stop hanging out with them, first thing’s first.” you start. “Because if you don’t hang out with them, you will eventually hate the fact that they’re not near, which will, logically, make you hate them instead.”

“Is that really logical, though?” Felix asks, furrowing his brows at you. In his books, this made no sense at all, but you seemed pretty satisfied with your answer.

“Of course it is! Then, you have to find something about them that you can hate. Anything. Find even the smallest thing, and blow it up in your mind until you hate it. Easy, right?”

“...I don’t think that’s helping at all,” he says, tone of voice unsure.

“Of course it is! You’re just refusing that it can be true, because you think I’m stupid.” you stick out his tongue at him, focusing on your work instead.

He kicks you under the table, making you scowl. “Ow! What was that for?”

“I told you that if you’ll make that comment again, I will kick you. So I just did right that.” he says. “Besides, your ideas are stupid. Not you. There’s a difference in that.” he smartly points out, making you roll your eyes at him.

“So, who is it that you like?”

“No one. I told you, it’s hypothetical.” he glares at you.

“Right,” you nod, sighing, “well, I’ll just stick to that, since that means Jisung doesn’t like anyone and I still have a chance.” you smile at him, obviously missing out on the way your words just punched him into the gut. Felix laughs it out, kicking you in the shin instead.

“Right. Of course you do,” he nods. He wishes he didn’t mean that.

You two remain in silence for a moment, while you get back to your work and Felix pretends he’s playing a game on his phone. You don’t notice the way his eyes scan you over, admiring you, once in a while. No one ever does. He guesses this is the perk of always being just the friend. The one people are friends with just because they want something from him. The one that gets taken advantage of. He chooses not to think about it more. Maybe if he did, he could hate you over it, if he wasn’t so used to that feeling anyway.

“We should hang out on the weekend,” you say, taking him by surprise.

“Oh?” he mumbles out, “with Jisung?”

“No?” you furrow your brows, “look, I know I look like I’m obsessed with him, but I actually just want to hang out with you alone as friends once in a while, you know.”

“We’re hanging out now, though.”

“It’s midnight, Felix,” you point out, “and we’re working. I want to hang out with my friend, like a normal person, you know.” you shrug.

“Yeah…” he says, when your words resonate in his mind like a broken curse. ‘Don’t hang out with them.’ Don’t hang out with her. You have to hate her. He has to start hating you-- there’s no other way. And so, he turns to taking your words into consideration. He can’t meet with you if he’s not ‘tutoring’ you. There’s no way. “We’ll see. I’ll tell you if I’m free.” he smiles warmly instead, because truth be told, he’ll never tell you no to your eyes. He’s always been a bit of a coward. And he also doesn’t want you to frown. Ever.

“Great!” you smile.

And when Felix comes home that night, at 2am in the morning when his roommate is already asleep-- not knowing of your secret meetings, he lays down in his bed and repeats your advice like a broken mantra. He can’t like you. He has to hate you.

Lee Felix’s guide to hating you: 1. Don’t hang out with her. Only meet her when it’s necessary. If you don’t meet her, you’ll start hating her absence, resulting in hating her altogether. 2. Find a small thing about her to blow up so much you start to hate it.

That’s not difficult. He hates that you like Han Jisung. It’s a small mistake, a small flaw, but he’s ready to blow it up so much he hates you for it. He hates that he’s not the first choice. He hates that you don’t like him.

Maybe he would hate you more if you were dating his best friend for real.

Lee Felix’s guide to hating you: 1. Don’t hang out with her. 2. Find a thing to hate about her. SUCCESS! 3. Set her up with Han Jisung.

Now, this plan is bulletproof, isn’t it?

Felix unexpectedly breaks the first step of his guide only a few days later-- on a chilly friday afternoon, when his body is hurriedly skipping to the edge of the town centre only to meet with you. Just for the record, though, Felix didn’t intend to break the promise he gave to himself. He really wasn’t going to hang out with you if he didn’t specifically need to, but, well… you called Jisung to hang out. Felix’s heart almost skipped a few beats when he was added to a three-person big group chat with you and his roommate and at that point, he wasn’t going to reject an invitation to the fare in town, because he was fairly sure Jisung didn’t like rollercoasters and he wanted to see you laugh your ass off at him in front of everyone. Is it a little spiteful? Possibly. Does he care? Not that much.

Besides, it’s only one time. It will never happen again!!

He finds you with your black leather jacket on, stepping from one leg to the other, looking around like a lost puppy. Felix mentally curses at himself for not coming sooner so you wouldn’t feel so alone and awkward in the mass of people, when he realises he’s already 15 minutes late because of his afternoon class and his roommate is nowhere to be found.

“Thank god! I thought you were going to bail on me as well,” you call out when Felix is close enough, smiling at him.

“Where’s Jisung?”

“He texted me like 5 minutes ago that he can’t make it today. Something about his mum being in town? I’m not sure,” you furrow your brows, “at least you’re here now, though.”

Felix is met with the realisation that he’s left alone with you again, mentally cursing at himself. This surely does not look like a plan to hating you. It looks like a bullet-proof plan on how to fall even deeper for you, with how your stray hairs are flying around your head and you adorably scrunch up your nose and sniffle from the cold.

“Should we go?” he forces out of himself, looking at you hopefully.

“Yeah!” you nod, striding a few steps in front of him like a happy school girl excited to go to school for the first time. Felix can’t surpass the gentle smile forming on his lips, shaking his head in disbelief. You look so cheerful and so joyful, making his heart swell with how easily you manage to make him feel so young again.

He follows you gladly, managing to match his speed with yours, almost forgetting for a moment that he’s not on a date with you, almost forgetting about the fact that you like his best friend and the smile you’re giving him is nothing against the wide grin you offer to his roommate.

“Let’s go on that one!” you cheer, taking Felix by the hand and tugging him your way, not once giving him the opportunity of letting go as you drag him all around the fare. You remind him of his younger sister with how excited you get about the smallest things and he realises he wants to protect your heart from the world just as much as he wants to protect his little sister’s. It’s not the same feeling, though. The affection he feels for you is different.

Felix doesn’t find it in him to tell you no whenever you tug him on another ride, even when his legs are tired and his jaw hurts from smiling. He finds himself wanting to capture your image into his brain forever, imprint the happy memory in there so he can find it and look at it whenever his heart feels lonely. For the first time in ages, he forgets about everything. He forgets that he’s just the friend, the other choice. He completely forgets that Han Jisung was supposed to be there, at his place, sitting next to you on the ferris wheel as you watch the night city under you with cold cheeks and frozen bodies.

“You must be sad that Jisung isn’t here with you right now. That would surely feel much more romantic than sitting here with me,” Felix says bitterly once the reality hits him for a second, once his heart is unsheltered for a short moment and your eyes meet.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” you roll your eyes, “Jisung can’t be romantic. Besides, if I really wanted a date with him so badly, I wouldn’t have asked you to come with us, would I?” you smile at him, swinging your legs forward and backward, focusing your eyes somewhere into the distance again.

“Well, if you really want to go on a date with him, you can just ask him, you know?” he mumbles, playing with the dead skin on his thumb.

“So he can stand me up and go on a date with his mum again? I don’t know, Felix, is that really worth it?” you giggle, not noticing the way you’re messing with the boy’s head, not noticing the way a small spark of hope lights up somewhere in the deep pits of his stomach when you mention not wanting to ask his best friend out.

“I don’t know, is it?”

“I’ll have to think about it.” you muse out, and the spark is gone. Of course it’s not that simple.

Felix just nods and grins at you. The chilly air helps him hide his red cheeks when he thinks of how embarrassing his thoughts must have been in the past quick seconds. He focuses on your face, on the way your eyes crinkle up a little when you stare somewhere far into the distance and your hair flies a little with the breeze. The ferris wheel just reached the top, so he has plenty of time to keep admiring you from so close, but somehow, the moment still feels so short and he wishes he could stop the time. He wishes he could stop the time so he didn’t have to face the reality when he comes down from the ferris wheel. He wishes he didn’t have to see you fall in love with his friend, he wishes he didn’t have to act like he doesn’t care at all.

“Thanks for helping me, by the way. I wouldn’t have passed my exams if it wasn’t for you and that… that would be really hard on me.” you get out, locking your eyes with his sincerely. He sees your eyes shining even so high above the ground, convincing him the sparkles really must be the stars, when he takes a deep breath in and responds.

“It’s no problem, I get it… I mean, it’s what you gotta do. What we gotta do, when we want to pass. And graduate,” he chuckles.

Does he really want the degree, though? Or does he just need it to feel like he has some worth? Does he want to graduate or does he just want his parents to value him as an adult, does he really want to continue working so hard on passing or would he just be so much happier if he just dropped out. And saved himself so much stress. He should have known he was never smart enough for college.

“Yeah. I despise the smart kids in our class. I wish I were them,” you scoff, “I despise Jisung, in a way, too,” you add after a dramatic pause.

“Jisung?” Felix furrows his brows.

“Yeah,” you nod, like it’s the clearest thing in the world, “I mean, he’s smart enough to pass. He’s… he’s got his life figured out, in a way. He’s just fine. Getting all the girls and the guys, getting good grades, going on dinner dates with his mum on Fridays,” you giggle, “I mean, I want that. That sounds nice.”

Felix huffs, staring into the distance, “I guess you’re right.” He knows damn well how jealousy feels.

“I came to college to prove to myself that my life has some worth, but I guess the only thing I prove to myself is that I can’t even pass my exams without help.” you sigh, sounding defeated.

“Hey,” he nudges you a little with his foot, “don’t say that. Life isn’t about grades, degrees and that shit. Of course you have worth and value.”

He sees you smile in defeat, leaning your head on his shoulder. The feeling of acceptance, pure understanding washes over the two of you, when you gently speak up again. “Try to explain that to my brain.”

He lightly giggles. “I’m trying, as you can see.”

You look up at him from his shoulder, scrunching up your nose and leaning closer to him, whispering. “It’s not working.” you laugh.

“I know it’s not easy,” he shakes his head, “I’ve been trying to tell that to my family for the past 21 years.” he slips out. Something about you makes him spill out even things he’s never told anyone before, but he finds himself not caring as you approach his eyes with pure serenity mixed with melancholy.

“Is it all because of your parents?” you ask, “the cheating, I mean.”

Felix feels his eyes giving him out, so he chooses not to look at you anymore. “I mean, I would have dropped out long ago if I didn’t have to feel so worthless around my family then. Every single one of my cousins is smart, has a degree and earns a killing. I’m just me-- living from the money I earned over summer, trying not to lose my mind with biology.”

He hears you humming next to him, your head moving as you nod in understatement. The ferris wheel is slowly reaching the bottom again and Felix finds the fact quite relieving. He doesn’t mind having deep talks with you, he just fears he might spill out something both of you don’t want to hear.

“I’m glad you came with me today, Lix.” you smile at him once the two of you reach the bottom, “wanna hear a secret?”

“Spill it out,” he dares you, grinning.

“I only invited Jisung because I thought you didn’t want to hang out with me alone.” you confess, quickly turning around in your spot as you jog a few steps in front of him, carelessly, as if you just didn’t make Felix’s heart stop and insides twitch in excitement. He prays and hopes it’s not just you giving him false hope, he wishes it’s not his mind playing tricks on him.

“I-”

“And now that I know you don’t mind being around me, do you wanna go to the dog cafe with me next Wednesday? You know, the one I talked about.” you turn around, flashing him a smile worth a billion dollars, taking him by surprise as his breathing hitches and he doesn’t find it in him to reject you ever again.

“Sure.”

Second step of Lee Felix’s guide to helping you: find a small thing about you he doesn’t like to blow up so much he starts hating you altogether.

He was so sure that he found the small thing just a few days ago. He thought that the fact that you like his best friend could be enough for him to start hating you. He could sit on that thought for long enough to pick it up to the smallest pieces and over-analyse it to the point he could start hating you.

And he tries to do just that-- he lies awake at night thinking of how every single person he’s ever been interested in slipped right between his fingers just because of Jisung’s existence. He wonders why he’s never good enough to anyone, why he always has to be the second choice even for tutoring (even though it’s not even tutoring, but we won’t talk about that anymore). He thinks of how you’re so foolish to think your relationship with Jisung is going to last, because Jisung’s feelings never stay the same for long. He over-analyses the smallest things he notices on you when you’re in Jisung’s presence until the point he’s almost sure he can do it, he can hate you for it just a little, in a way, but then, the thought flies right out of the open window as his roommate crashes into his door in the middle of the night.

He startles awake, sitting up at his bed, watching the short male going in with much difficulty, sitting on his bed without a word.

“Jisung?”

“Lixie, I fucked it all up, didn’t I?” Jisung whines, laying down on the bed next to his friend. Felix doesn’t think it’s only due to the late hours of the night that his friend’s words aren’t making any sense, but he doesn’t dare to put his finger on it until he makes sure for himself.

“What are you talking about?”

“Y/N.”

Your name coming out of his lips hits Felix like a baseball bat, hurting in all the right places, as the young male finds it in him to continue the conversation.

“What about her?”

“She asked us to hang out together. And I didn’t go. I know it wasn’t my fault, because my mum was in the town, but still, I feel so bad, because now it must look like I’m not interested in her and that I don’t care and I really don’t want that, you know?” he stummers, making Felix realise his friend talks a lot when he’s under the influence of alcohol just the same second Jisung’s breath catches in Felix’s nose, only proving his point.

“You didn’t fuck it up, don’t worry.” he muses. And it’s true. Jisung could never truly fuck it up with anyone. Even his exes always crumble up around his feet, wanting attention even after getting their heart broken. Will it be the same with you?

“She must think I don’t like her. And that’s horrible-that’s- that’s- I like her. Very much,” he whines again, getting closer to Felix and wrapping his arms around the blonde’s torso in a wave of affection that only washes over him when he’s drunk.

“Sung-” he stutters, desperately trying to push him away, but even though Jisung doesn’t look like it, he is a strong individual when it comes to involuntary cuddling. Felix can never escape his arms.

“I think she’s special, you know? She’s like- I can’t explain it. It’s like with her, I actually want to try. I want to ask her on dates and love her and give her my heart, because you know, I never dared to give my heart to anyone. And no one’s ever made me feel truly special before…” he mutters, forcing his nose to Felix’s neck, “I’m rambling too much, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Felix sighs, nodding. He doesn’t battle his arms anymore. Jisung is his friend, at the end of the day. He can hold him when he needs it.

“Sorry.” he says shortly, sighing as well. The room falls into silence and Felix’s head spins again, his thoughts spiral like a tornado and the eye of the storm is you-- standing there with that stupid smile on your face and he once again realises that he needs to hate you in order to shelter his own heart, because you’re like a hurricane when it comes a to a person’s emotions.

The fact is, though, he could never hate you for liking his best friend.

Han Jisung is too likable for his own good. His heart is too big for this world, and truth be told, he’s been sharing it with everyone for such a long time now, he deserves to find someone he’s willing to give his all to.

He could never hate you for liking Jisung-- the boy who smiles at everyone in the halls, the boy that offered him to live in the flat his parent’s bought for him in freshman year, the boy that helps him hide his cheating secret every day. He could never hate you for liking Jisung, because he himself knows too well how much of a treasure his dear friend is.

He gets it. He gets why people always choose Jisung over him. He could never blame you.

“Sung?”

“Hmm?”

“Ask Y/N out to the dog cafe on Wednesday. She'll love it.”

Felix could never hate you.

Step three of Felix’s bullet-proof guide to hating you is quite simple and actually the only one he completes with success. Setting you up with Jisung on a date is easier than he ever imagined, considering the fact that his roommate decided to finally take things into his own hands and call you on a date after the drunken weeping episode in Felix’s bed.

Jisung invites you on a date to the dog café in town. The two of you go on Wednesday and although Felix feels like he just gave his roommate a piece of him, an invitation that was never meant for him in the first place, he feels at ease, because at least one part of his plan is working. He could never hate you, but at least now, it will be easier for him to ignore his growing feelings for you when you spend all your time with Jisung on dates and ice cream runs. He only has to ignore his feelings in school and at your ‘tutoring’ sessions. He wonders how long these will be a secret in front of your new boyfriend. Jisung’s not your boyfriend yet, but Felix can only imagine how short the time he isn’t is going to last.

Felix does the stupid mistake of opening the instagram app in the evening, when he’s curled up in his bed with an embarrassingly big bowl of popcorn on his bed side table, serving him as his depression food. He sees your post show up, an adorable picture of you from the dog café, a big golden retriever in your lap as you giggle at its face. The picture is candid and looks like the kind Felix would like to keep as his lock screen if he had the chance. He’s sure his best friend took it for you not only from the fact that you went out with him tonight, but also for the fact that he’s tagged in the post’s description with a big blue heart emoji.

He could stop staring at the picture if he really wanted, he could mute your posts and pretend you never existed to shelter his poor heart. He could do everything in his strength to cut all his ties with you. That would make it so much easier for him, wouldn’t it?

But he doesn't. And maybe he doesn’t even want to-- he’s used to the pain anyway, isn’t he? The bitterness, the feeling of being pushed away, ignored and left forgotten.

He was supposed to be in Jisung’s place now, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that he isn’t-- maybe it was never his place to claim anyway.

Felix stares at the picture for minutes, wondering of how things could be if you only didn’t fall for his best friend. Or if he came with you today. Who knows, maybe it wasn’t too late for him to ask you on a date. Maybe he could still change your mind. Felix likes to give up on things too quickly, though, and that is the curse that will follow him his whole life.

Lee Felix is good at cheating. He is insanely good at it, he would also say it’s the only thing he’s ever been good at. Pretending.

It’s his time to shine again. It’s time to pretend he doesn’t like you, pretend you don’t hurt him, pretend he isn’t in love with his best friend’s crush. He’s been always the best at cheating and now it’s time to cheat his way out of liking you.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

“You must be really hungry, if you’re planning to eat all of that in one setting,” Felix mumbles, watching you as you eat yet another plate of chicken wings in yet another pointless bistro in town. Felix wonders how you even know about all of these, since the one you’re both sitting in right now, in the middle of the night, looks rather lonely. It doesn’t even seem that welcoming-- it has graffiti on the walls and the seats are a little torn on the edges, but you don’t seem to care as you munch on the chicken, eyes big when you stare back at your companion.

“I eat a lot when I’m stressed,” you mutter in between your bites, mouth full. You look natural like this and Felix realises this is you in his mind-- cheeks full of food, that little wrinkle in between your brows when you look at him, eyes staring big into his like a loyal dog. This is how he knows you, in your rawest form, and this is coincidentally, also, how he likes you the most. He loves and treasures every single version of you, but your late-night meetings feel of different kind of intimacy to him that he’s sure he’s going to think of even when he’s old and his college years are dusty like an old polaroid picture.

“Stressed?” he asks, tone of voice a little more worried than usual. Felix always worries about you. Even when you quietly take out your cheat sheet from under the table and write your answers down. He doesn’t fear being caught-- he frankly doesn’t care that much, but he knows that you are having a battle with yourself and he really doesn’t want you to feel like you lost. He didn’t know it was so easy to put someone else first when you worry for the future.

“The finals are coming up.” you clarify, the words coming out a little bashful and smitten.

“Oh.” he nods.

You’re both quiet for a while. It would be cheesy to say the silence was comfortable, and Felix knows, he’s seen enough teenage dramas to know these words are used in situations like this, but the truth is, there’s no other way to describe it, and he understands that now. Your determination shines through all your edges and he’s glad you’re doing what you can with the resources you have. You’re not exactly studying for your Biology finals, but it’s still as hard and as stressful as that. It can feel a little embarrassing at times, but there’s no other way around it. You have to battle your enemy, even if it means the game is not fair.

“And those chicken wings are fucking good, dude,” you mutter after a while, offering him one of the paper baskets the server brought you a few minutes ago, looking rather stoned and not interested in your presence at all.

“Don’t tell me this rotten place is winning your chicken wings and fries contest,” Felix snickers, taking a bite that, to his surprise, actually tastes the best out of the amount of fast food chains and restaurants you’ve brought him to. You should never judge a book by its cover and this bistro is clearly one of the examples.

“I have only one place left to go, so we’ll see then, but I guess it might just be the top place right now,” you muse out, a wide grin decorating your features as you glance up at Felix that watches you scribble down your notes on a mini piece of paper.

“Wanna go with me there? After the finals, of course. We can celebrate if we pass,” you point out, licking your lips in nerves, “I don’t think I’ll need these ‘tutoring sessions’ anymore then, but I still want to hang out sometime.” you say, putting air quotes around the words tutoring session, looking at him with expectations in your eyes.

“Oh, sure,” he agrees, nodding. “I have to be there when you finally declare your last yelp review.”

You only laugh at him and shake your head, eating some more as you look down into your notes again, lost in work. “I still don’t get how you can do these so fast.”

“I already know what’s the most useful. You don’t have to copy the whole textbook on there.”

“You can never know! What if I’ll need it all?” you exclaim, only making him laugh harder.

He points his eyes out of the window, watching the empty parking lot. You didn’t come in your car today, telling Felix your house is close anyway, and Felix doesn’t dare to drive his car anywhere unless he doesn’t need to. He has a little bit of a trauma since the last time he drove with his dad and he almost ran the car into a tree, getting a shower of swear words and exclamations from his dear father, so he only drives his small white Renault when he needs to go home. Which is, coincidentally, next week.

“I really don’t want to go home next week,” he sighs.

“Your family is still onto you for the smallest shit?” you ask, tone of voice sympathetic.

“Yeah. Can’t wait to graduate so I don’t have to listen to them talking about a degree anymore,” he rolls his eyes, “I only have to find myself a partner so my grandma can shut up about me being single all the time.”

You softly laugh, making Felix look at you for a moment, his heart skipping a few beats when your eyes meet for a little more seconds than usual. “I’m sorry. You can always text me, though, if you need anyone to talk or gossip with.” you say, averting your eyes from his.

“You’d have to be on your phone 24/7, then. My mental stability comes down by 70% when I’m back home and it’s already only on 15% now,” Felix snickers.

“Oh, I don’t mind. I’ll be staying here anyway.” you say, giggling.

“You’re not coming back home?”

“No,” you shake your head in disapproval, quickly glancing into his eyes before speaking up again, “it’s my parent’s wedding anniversary, so they’re going on a holiday. There’s no use in me coming home if I’m just going to be alone there anyway,” you shrug.

Felix hums, nodding in understatement. “That makes sense. I’m sorry you can’t meet your family on holidays, though.”

“It’s okay,” you say, “I see them often anyway. One Christmas won’t kill me. I have a whole season of Game of thrones to catch up on anyway.” you light-heartedly laugh, sounding like Felix’s favorite song. He smiles with you, shaking his head in disbelief at how positively you can always see the world, when he glances out of the window for a moment again, only to be met with a surprise.

There are white flakes of snow falling from the sky and something in Felix wakes up-- something he’d call happiness, maybe even joy, when he quickly shoots up from his seat and calls you with excitement coating his voice, “Y/N! Y/N! Come on!”

“Come where? Felix, what are you-”

He doesn’t let you finish as he takes you by the hand and tugs you on your feet, tugging you out of the empty bistro out into the dark parking lot, admiring the snowflakes falling onto the ground and every surface in his sight. He sees some stick into your hair, making him giggle as his outstretched hand dusts them off subconsciously, when he starts running around like a happy child, laughter coming out of his throat filling the silence.

“It’s snowing!” you exclaim, when Felix reaches your body frozen in its place again. He reminds you of a golden retriever when he jumps a little in his place, his feet happily crouching in the snow. You laugh at his antics when he starts acting like a little boy, this side of Felix being so new to you, yet you can’t help but feel your heart swell with admiration when he asks you to catch some snow into your mouth.

“Felix! That’s disgusting!” you refuse, laughing.

“Oh come on! It’s just water!” he cheers, leaning his head back and opening his mouth wide, waiting for the snow to fall into his mouth.

“But it’s unhygienic and dirty! You have to be kidding me!” you still reject his idea, standing your ground firmly as always in your life so far, when a face of a boy looking like an angel takes you by surprise and his big eyes plead you in a way that makes you drop all your grudges and all your beliefs down, rolling your eyes when he pouts, leaning your head back as well and opening your mouth with a loud ‘aaaa’ sound to satisfy his foolish heart.

Once you both feel a snowflake hitting your tongues, you look at each other with your tongues out, laughing at how stupid the other one looks, pointing to your tongues. You shake your head. “It melted off, you stupid!”

“You did the same thing!” he bursts out laughing, bending over in the force of his emotions. You watch him with a wide grin plastered onto your face. It feels like watching a movie. You don’t think you’ll ever have a brighter memory with the boy in front of you, with his cheeks red from the snow and smile so wide it hurts both of your jaws.

You instinctively take his hands into yours, looking down on your feet as you start going around in a circle with him, going quicker and quicker as you watch your footprints in the snow mixing with his, the dry skin of his hands making you feel strange. You laugh out when your head starts spinning, looking up at him to find him already staring at you with stars in his eyes, when you wonder,

isn’t this how love is supposed to feel?

All of his life, Felix had thought that family gatherings could always either go two ways, and that is: 1) a normal, boring meet-ups where your grandma asks about how school’s going, when you’re going to finally find a partner and another one of your cousin’s announces their engagement party, or 2) the actual engagement parties-- every single family member including the senile grandma from mum’s side gets drunk and you don’t have to think about more fake reasons why you have yet to lose your virginity.

You see, Felix is wrong in a lot of things. And this was surely one of them-- it’s the December 27th and he’s sitting in his grandma’s old kitchen, the wind blowing through the cracks of her window and the sweets on the table have already melted from the heat being too high, because his aunt is always cold and they can’t compromise. That sounds fine, even usual, Felix would say, however, the fire lights up a few moments later when his head starts to hurt from all the talking and he begins to dissociate a little too much, meaning that his grandma now has to shift her attention from all of his other relatives to him, because how dare he stay quiet on a family gathering where he has nothing to add to the conversation, right?

It starts off as usual, the answers to these questions digged deep into Felix’s brain since the first year of college. He doesn’t even bat an eye when he answers the questions directed at his studies and grades, telling all of his interested relatives that he’s working hard and it’s paying off. Nobody complains or disagrees-- his grades are awesome. His degree is here soon. Felix almost thinks he’s over with when his grandma laughs at a poor joke that comes out of his mouth, but that was only a bad prediction as he moves on to questions about his love life, which are, believe me or not, much more boring and much more ego-hurting for the blonde.

“Do you have a girlfriend yet, Felix?” she asks, tone of voice sounding rather interested, but don’t believe her-- it’s only an act. She’s ready to laugh into his face when he gives her the answer she’s hoping for.

“No, not yet, grandma,” he mumbles, averting his eyes from her wrinkley face as soon as possible. He really doesn’t need to look at her any longer to know she’s silently judging him on the inside, because that’s just how his grandmother is.

“That’s such a shame… I wonder why… You’re such a pretty young boy, aren’t you?” she mutters under her nose, tone almost whiney, “what about your roommate? Jisung, was it?”

Felix takes a deep breath in, closing his eyes for a second to calm his rising heart beat. He could have predicted questions like this coming, because the conversation always somehow diverted to his roommate even when he was at home with his family. It’s crazy, how everyone just seems to adore Jisung much more than their own family member.

“He’s.. Yeah. He’s always with someone, you know him. Not now, though, now he’s single,” Felix nods, explaining.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll find someone soon,” she admits, “he’s such a gentleman. And so handsome as well, isn’t he?” she asks, his aunt from her right side nodding quickly at the mention of Han Jisung.

“He always has so many people around him, he’s so charming. If only you were more like him, maybe then someone would date you as well,” his grandma says calmly, not even noticing the way her words cut deeper and deeper into Felix’s heart, kicking him and punching him like a boxing bag, “you should try to be more like him.”

Felix bites down on his lower lip, rolling his eyes. Frustration coats his voice once he speaks up, the built-up anger living inside of him like an animal kept well in its cage. He doesn’t want to let it out, because he fears what it might do once it’s free, but he still retorts to a dig addressed to his grandma, huffing in annoyance. “Should I send Jisung home instead of me next time?”

“Oh no, Felix, what are you even saying right now?” his grandma looks rather offended, eyes twice their usual size as she glares at him.

“Well, since you like him so much.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was just saying that-”

“Leave it.” Felix says.

The atmosphere is too heavy now, all eyes on him as if he was in a circus, watching him just moments before his breaking. He realises he no longer feels welcome in this place and maybe he never did, he just chose to ignore it by now, because that’s what he always does when a problem appears-- he chooses ignorance. Ignorance is Felix’s best friend, and although it may sound like he’s running away from his problems all the time, it’s always worked so far. He’s just protecting his heart, building walls around it.

He doesn’t want to fight. He hates conflict. So, even though he’d like to snap, even though he’d like to leash out like an animal, he doesn’t. He steps back-- as he always does, taking the car keys from the table and escaping the house, hearing the calls of his mother after him. He doesn’t bother to say goodbye, he doesn’t even bother to look back nor take the Christmas gifts his grandma brought for everyone.

He sits into the small white Renault he drives once a year when he comes back home, starts the engine and speeds up to the limit, driving away from all of his problems. He doesn’t want to hear their complaints, he doesn’t want to listen. It’s the best this way. He wants to ignore the words that came out of his grandma’s mouth, but he can’t find it in him as he hears them resonate in his head over and over again.

He’s the second choice even in his own family. He’s a joke to everyone, isn’t he? Just the side character, the one that never gets the spotlight. It hurts, it hurts him so much, but he pays no attention to his blurry vision, because even though he’s fairly sure no one from his family would miss him, he doesn’t want to drive off the road and kill himself with his escape.

He parks the car in front of his and Jisung’s flat after a few hours. He’s fairly good at it, considering he never drives, and mentally puts up a middle finger to his dad in his head for screaming at him so much. He was in a much calmer headspace when he was driving with his dad than he was now, yet, he didn’t manage to drive anyone over.

Putting his feet into the cold, empty apartment, turning the heating on and plopping down on the sofa, he once again realises how lonely it feels. Not only because of the feeling of abandonment the dark flat resonates, but also due to the fact that it truly feels like now, he’s all alone in this world. The silence screams louder than any words ever could, his ears lowly ringing without any sound in the small room, which makes him wonder if he’s truly the only one that has to spend his holidays pretty much alone. Maybe it’s his fault that he’s fucked it up with his family, who knows-- but that’s a topic for another overthinking session of his, when he decides to let it go once his eyes meet the snow silently falling down behind the window.

The dark mixed with the white balls of fluff in the air remind him of you. Your bubbly laugh, the feeling of your skin on his when you held his hands and danced around with him in the snow. He feels a smile growing on his face, despite everything he’s heard today, his fingers involuntarily texting you to see if you’re doing anything and if you can hang out with him today.

He meets you at the door a few minutes later, your nose runny from the cold and hands dry, smiling at you with a sense he can only describe as belonging, because he realises, maybe you feel just as lonely as him on holidays and suddenly, he no longer feels sorry for leaving.

“Why are you even here, Lix? Shouldn’t you be at home?” you ask him when you’re taking off your shoes and hanging your coat on the hanger by the door. He bites down on his lower lip to suppress a bitter chuckle.

“Christmas got cancelled this year.” he shrugs.

It’s not like he doesn’t trust you. You know better than anyone what his struggles are-- he asked you to keep his secrets numerous times. It’s just that now that you’re here, it’s like his soul finally feels calm and he no longer wants to whine about his grandma or his aunts anymore. It’s just you and him and the empty apartment. If he was anyone else, maybe he’d try to get into your pants. He’s just Lee Felix though, and he’s absolutely, wholeheartedly in love with you, he realises, and believe me, it kind of takes him over the edge, and so he doesn’t try anything.

And you look at him in understatement, no other questions asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s all a capitalistic holiday anyway,” he shrugs.

You follow him into the living room and he throws the remote control into your lap, telling you to choose a movie before he comes back with popcorn.

“If you don’t pick anything before I’m done, we’ll just watch Venom, I don’t care,” he says, seeing you adorably scrunch up your nose at him in response.

When he comes back and you’re waiting for him with Howl’s moving castle paused on Netflix, he can’t help but grin at you. He places the popcorn on the coffee table and notices himself staring onto your body next to his far more often than the TV and wonders if he really drove away from all of his problems or if he just drove away from one problem to another, because now, it’s getting really hard to focus on staying away from you.

And when you shiver and curl up into his side, placing your head onto his shoulder, he can’t help but jolt at the contact, staring at you in surprise.

“It’s cold,” you mumble, pouting.

Felix smiles. He rolls his eyes at you, even though on the inside, he finds you absolutely adorable, taking a blanket from the side of the sofa and putting it over your cold bodies, tucking you both in. You feel warm against his side, your hand resting on his chest. He wonders if you can feel his quickening heartbeat, his stiff body and the nerves rising in his heart. Everything else disappears, the fight back home long forgotten and Han Jisung left somewhere home with his own family, the weight of your body overwhelming him when you fall asleep and that’s when he stops and thinks,

isn’t this how home’s supposed to feel like?

The halls of the university building are empty as Felix stands right in front of the closed door, silently pacing around the corridors and bumping his knee up and down. He just got his final’s results and even though his soul was supposed to be at peace, he finds himself stressing over you, currently sitting in the room behind the closed door in front of him, getting your final’s results from biology back. The professor decided to split your class into two groups for the finals so you can, quote, ‘focus better when there’s less people around’ and even though you managed to cheat on your exams without any problems, he still wonders if you did well and if you passed.

Once the voices behind the closed doors get louder and louder, he figures it’s near the end of your lecture and he can finally see you again and ask you how you did.

The last time he talked to you without the stress of finals breathing onto your back was back on Christmas break-- more than a week ago. Ever since then, you two have been meeting in the middle of the night again, preparing for your upcoming tests. You didn’t really manage to talk a lot about anything else and even though Felix didn’t mind, he still missed your mindless rambles and weird jokes you used to crack when you weren’t stressing your mind off.

The door opens and reveals people coming out, a few of them wearing a toothy grin on their faces as they glance on the paper in their hands, a few of them frowning as they pin their eyes to the ground. It’s not easy to differentiate the ones that passed and the ones who did not do that well and even though Felix feels sorry for them, he wonders why they just don’t cheat their way out of bad grades just how he does. It’s not that hard. It just takes a lot of practice.

Once he finally sees your face, a big, toothy grin decorating your lips, a big stone falls off his heart, a weight lifts itself from his shoulders, because frankly, you wouldn’t look so happy if you failed, right? You’re not a total psychopath.

“How did you-”

His words are cut off from his mouth, all air kicked out of his body once he feels you so close, the soft skin of your lips pressed up against his in a happy kiss. He’s startled, to say the least. His cheeks are reddening in the instance and he doesn’t even know if time stopped or if it’s just the rising anxiety and excitement in his chest, but he bites down the confusion and kisses you back finally, closing his eyes and bringing you close by your shoulders. The kiss is a little sloppy and messy, but he doesn’t mind-- all that’s occupying his mind right now is you, your sweet lips, your mouthy kiss, your excited hands creeping up around his neck, your bag that fell to the ground next to his feet, your exam paper marked with the big red A+ flying around the two of you when you let it fall from your grasp, your hair tickling his cheeks, you, you, you.

There’s only you. In the air he breathes, in the ground he walks on, in his hands and on his mind. You’re everywhere. Intoxicating.

You pull away from him after a while, grinning at him. It still manages to startle him a little-- how just the small gesture can light up his whole world, how your smile can make him feel like he’s the luckiest person on this earth. He sees stars in your eyes and he wonders who put them there, hoping to be the one, believing he could finally be the one, with how you look at him and hold him in your arms-

but it’s Felix’s life we’re talking about. There’s only you, you, you and maybe somewhere, far away in the distance, there could even be him, but who’s always there for sure is Han Jisung.

Han Jisung staring at the two of you from the open door, mouth agape in shock. Han Jisung with trembling hands, Han Jisung with his books clutched close to his chest as Felix’s heart drops and reality finally hits him. You were never supposed to be his to kiss. You were supposed to be Jisung’s-- his roommate’s, his best friend’s -- you fell for him long, long ago and that’s how it’s always been.

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, to comfort his dear friend that looks like he’s heart’s being broken, but he finds no words in him to console his actions. He feels bad, he feels so, so guilty when their eyes meet, but he doesn’t manage to say anything before Jisung turns around the corner and leaves.

The sound of Jisung’s quick steps is the only thing resonating in Felix’s mind like a bell, a signal for him that he fucked up, he did a really, really bad thing.

His insides clutch and eyes water in the empty college corridor when he wonders,

is this how it feels to break someone’s heart?

You kick the small rocks beneath your feet, gazing into the distance. The cold in your bones makes you shudder, your eyes trailing around the neighbourhood so foreign to you, putting your hands into your pockets so you shelter your fingers from the frozen air. You think how this place looks exactly as you imagined it to-- tall apartment complex and a single big tree in front of it, the cars parked in the driveway obviously having their spot as the neighbours have lived together for a long time to know not to park anywhere else, because it’s more efficient this way.

You’re waiting and waiting, hoping to see the one you’re waiting for soon, because you doubt your confidence will last you for any longer if you don’t talk to him now. You could lie and tell yourself it’s okay and that you’re not nervous at all, but after Jisung ran away the other day and his roommate followed him a few moments later, you feel nervousness creeping into your skin after not seeing or hearing from Felix for three days now.

You remember him telling you that he likes to go for late-night convenience store runs every evening to get his favorite snacks. It wasn’t hard to find out where he lives-- it’s the 21st century, for god’s sake. You asked a friend of his friend and here you are, waiting for him to appear in the door of his apartment complex, ready to talk to him about the events of this week.

Once you hear the door opening, you feel your head snap to its direction quicker than the speed of light, knees almost getting weak at the sight of Lee Felix standing there, confusion written all over his face once his eyes meet with yours. The frown forming on his face only deepens your stress as you wonder if he didn’t want to see you today, which, considering the fact that he’s been ignoring you for the past few days, might just be the case, but it still makes your heart break just a little when you hear him sigh once he makes his way over to you, the sound of his sneakers on the ground being the only thing heard in the middle of the night.

All the snow has melted-- as if all the bright things have left just in time with it, leaving you sad and cold, the clouds of your breath hitting the cold air being the only thing reminding you of the weather as you feel your body heating up in his presence.

“Can we talk?” you ask, voice steadier than you expected it to be.

“I- I mean,” he starts, a shaky and husky voice hitting your ears, signaling that he probably hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time now, “you’re already here, so I guess…”

You nod at him, averting your gaze quickly to the ground, when you realise you suddenly don’t know what to say. You try to search for words, yet none come out of your mouth. Your mind is blank and it seems like his presence took away all your vocabulary, but deep on the inside, you know damn well that if you don’t speak up now, you won’t have a second chance and you really have to get it now.

“Why- why…” you mutter, “why did you leave without saying anything the other day?” you ask.

The silence is overwhelming as you start to hate the sound of your own breath, opting to hold it for a few seconds as you await his response.

“I mean, isn’t it obvious?”

You shake your head in confusion, finally meeting his eyes again. “No.”

“Jisung… Jisung saw us. I didn’t feel like it was right,” he explains, cracking his knuckles in a nervous habit you noticed in him a long, long time ago when he first tried to teach you how to cheat in class without getting caught.

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“You two like each other.” he says bluntly, taking you off-guard.

The moment these words come out of his mouth, you realise not one, but two things. One of them is fairly new to you, the fact that Han Jisung liked you back was something you never knew you could experience, but even though you should be flattered, you realise it no longer holds a meaning in your heart. The second thing is connected to the first-- and that is, Lee Felix doesn’t know that you like him now. His foolish, silly mind convinced him you were still in love with his best friend, his confused and frustrated brain didn’t let him realise that for a long, long time now, the freckled boy in front of you has been the only one you thought about when you were falling asleep at night.

You don’t even know when it happened. You guess it just did. You wondered how it’d feel to know what exactly made you fall for Felix, what that moment was, but something inside of you is telling you that maybe, it was even more wonderful this way. Unexpected, but totally reasonable.

“Why would I be kissing you if I still liked Jisung?” you ask, the fear of directly confessing to him and getting rejected creeping up in your shadow.

“I- I don’t know-”

“Exactly.” you cut him off before he rambles and manages to find a stupid, silly reason in his head to justify his wrong expectations. You know how he is-- if he overthinks things hard enough, he’ll surely find an answer. There’s none, though, so you don’t dare to give him time to think about it and ponder on the thought for any longer.

“But that doesn’t matter now anyway,” he shrugs, putting his hands into his pockets.

You wonder what’s going on inside of his head right now. You wonder if he regrets what he’s done-- if he wants to turn back time and never let you kiss him. The nerves make you bite down harshly on your bottom lip and you only catch yourself when you feel iron in your mouth, quickly licking your own wound on the surface of your mouth and take a deep breath in.

“Why?” you ask.

“Why would it?” he says, eyes boring into yours.

“Because… I thought it meant something to you? I mean, it meant a lot to me, at least. That’s why I’m even here in the first place,” you chuckle airly, feeling your throat get dry.

“I’m not saying that it didn’t, I just think it had no point.”

His words feel like knives thrown into your chest, like a fire burning the pit of your stomach. You feel your legs getting weaker at his arguments, your fingers harshly tugging at the skin of your cuticles hidden in your pockets. You don’t trust your voice to sound steady this time when you speak, but you don’t care. Maybe it’s time to show your real emotions. Maybe it will change Felix’s mind.

“And why is that?”

“Because people like you don’t date people like me. You’re supposed to be in love with Jisung. You’re supposed to be dating him, he’s supposed to date you. You’re too good for me anyway.” he shrugs.

“Is this all about Jisung?” you ask, eyebrows furrowed.

You watch Felix sharply inhale in and out, averting his eyes from your figure. The distance between the two of you is unnatural, as if to singal how the two of you are slowly drifting apart. You see him fold his hands on his chest, preparing for what he’s about to say.

“It hurt him, back then. And I hate that. He loves you and I just.. I can’t do that to him, when I know how much he cares about you.” he says.

Love is a strange thing. You hear Felix say how much Jisung loves you, but is that really true? Does Han Jisung even know you? The real you?

Does Jisung know how you look with your mouth full of fries and a greasy forehead? Does he know how you look when you’re stressed out of your mind because of finals? Does he know your favorite bistro, does he know your favorite movie? Did you cuddle up with Jisung on the couch just because you wanted to be close to him, comfort him and tell him you’re there just a few days after Christmas?

Or does he just know the self you put up in front of him when you went to meet him? The put-together you that cares even about the sound of your own laugh, not wanting it to sound ugly in his ears?

Han Jisung can’t love you. He doesn’t even know you.

And you never loved him-- just for the same reason. The feelings you had for him were merely a feeling of attraction, so far away from love.

But now you know how you feel about Felix, how his smile lights up the world and how his presence makes you feel understood. How even the silence with him speaks louder than a million words, how he knows you like the back of his hand and how he treats you like his closest friend. You know that what you feel when you’re with him is stronger than anything you ever have and although it used to scare you for a moment, now you’re ready to embrace it and live with it, if he lets you.

Lee Felix doesn’t tell you he loves you. Maybe you can see it in his eyes.

Why does he have to put everything above love? Why does he care about Jisung more than you? It’s breaking your heart.

“Felix… I’m sure he’d understand. He’s a good person. I’m sure he’d want you to be happy.”

“Y/N, you don’t understand-”

“He’s a grown adult!” you yell out, the built-up emotions coming to the surface in the form of frustration, your words sunding spiteful and angry. Maybe you are furious, maybe you are full of fire right now, but it’s all because of the boy in front of you and the things he refuses to let himself enjoy.

“Why do you even care about it so much, huh? I was your fucking second choice all along anyway!”

You look at him in shock, your eyes watering at the sight of the frown sitting on his face. Something inside of you breaks and you think it’s safe to say it was your heart, choking you up as you shake your head in disapproval.

“Felix-” you protest, but there’s no use.

You see him turn around on his heel, opening the door to the apartment complex and leaving. It feels like you’re losing him, it feels like he’s gone forever. He turned his back on you, refusing all the love you were willing to give him, all the love you were offering to him right here, your heart in your hands.

He gave up on your love.

People in movies go out to party after a break-up to get drunk and numb their feelings. They either go to the club or go to a stupid college party, which is, coincidentally, your case today, but you’re not here to get drunk tonight. You’re not here to drown out your feelings and numb your pained soul-- you’re simply here to try to have some fun.

Your mum told you long, long ago that happiness is a choice. You could argue with her and tell her that depression and heartbreak aren’t a choice and that they, by themselves, are causing people the most sadness, but you had to give your mum a point. If you don’t choose to try, if you don’t do anything to at least try to stimulate your own brain, you can’t expect happiness to find you by itself. That’s just, sadly, not how life works, and you weren’t going to drown out in your own tears just because of Lee fucking Felix, because if you weren’t worth trying for him, he’s not worth any of your tears.

You appear on Lee Haechan’s end of the semester party. You have A+ finals to celebrate and although you would be much happier to drink to them with the one that basically helped you get through the semester, you won’t pass the chance to socialize. You worked hard and you did a good job-- you deserve a party. Alcohol truly isn’t the best for your brain, but you will just decide to call it selfcare. It’s not like you’re getting blacked-out drunk tonight anyway.

You manage to have small talk with a few people from your class. Though it’s not exactly what’s stimulating your brain, you don’t mind it. You barely know these people and you couldn’t care less, but you guess this is the downside of socialising.

The alcohol in your veins doesn’t give you a chance to loosen up, though. You only feel your body warmer with the beer hitting your system, but your feelings still taste of salt, your brain not cooperating with your grandiose happiness plan and you think the people talking to you notice, since no one really tries to keep you in a conversation long enough when you start to absently nod at them and pay zero attention to what they’re saying. You don’t blame them, though. You’d probably do the same in their place.

Your feet move their way to the front door when you decide that maybe your mum wasn’t right, completely ready to go home and pity yourself for a few more days before coming back to life, when a familiar voice calls you from behind, making you freeze in your spot.

“Y/N, long time no see.”

Han Jisung watches you with glossy eyes, yet he tries to look nonchalant at the sight of you. It doesn’t feel like his heart is breaking when he sees you right here and there, chewing on your bottom lip, more or less, it feels numbing to his heart and his head. It’s like he expected it all from the start-- the outcome that once so surprised him. But after all this time he spent overthinking and dwelling on the memory of seeing you kissing his best friend, it made sense to him.

“Jisung…”

He can see your eyes growing worried when you watch over him and he mentally slaps himself for not handling his emotions with more care back then. He could have spared you a lot of pain and trouble if he hadn’t reacted in such a way in the doorway of your classroom, but the truth is, Han Jisung hadn’t really known just how much a true heartbreak feels and nothing could ever prepare him for the physical pain numbing his chest. He didn’t know it could hurt so much.

He doesn’t want to worry you. You are still his friend, after all, right? That’s all you always have been and he should have understood it from the first moment he saw you gaze at his friend so lovingly in the university halls one day. He thinks you, yourself, didn’t even recognise the emotion in you when you watched over Felix with so much care, with so many stars in his eyes and a big grin on your face. He could never compare himself to Felix.

He doesn’t want to worry you anymore, and so he decides to talk to you like a friend would. You looked like you could use a friend tonight.

“How have you been?” he asks, smiling at you. He hopes his eyes convey the emotion he feels-- how after all this time, he still feels comfortable with you and desperately needs you to do the same. He can’t lose another friend. Not to love.

That happens every single time. Truth be told, Jisung used to have a problem with differentiating true love from platonic feelings sometimes. He used to think he falls out of love just as quickly as he falls in, but the truth is that it was never even love at all. Sometimes, it was just pure admiration. Feelings for a friend. And he managed to ruin all his friendships just because he started dating them.

And then, he just kept searching and searching for the right one, because no one ever felt right. No one ever made him feel loved, no one ever made him feel love. It felt suffocating, but so, so addicting. He could never give up on trying to find love.

And then he met you. And it finally made sense-- it finally felt right.

“I’m… I’m fine, thanks,” you say, smiling at him with that smile that still, admittedly, made his heart race and swell with love. He’s not afraid to call the emotion by its name. It doesn’t feel wrong. He used to think he wants it to stop, but the truth is, it still feels nice.

Love feels like loneliness sometimes. It’s a bittersweet feeling. But it’s still so, so addicting.

“Are you sure?” he asks. He knows you. He knows when something’s wrong.

He also knows your eyes have been searching for his roommate for the past few minutes of your conversation. He knows you want to meet him and avoid him all at once, love him and leave him-- it was a paradox.

He knows his roommate way too well, though. He knows he can’t fall out of love with you. He knows, though, that he’ll never act upon it. Lee Felix has always been the sweetest person in this whole entire world-- putting the needs of others before his own. He can’t keep doing this to himself.He can’t keep doing this to you.

“I think you know the answer, Jisung. Why do you keep asking, then?” you bitterly snicker, going around him and escaping the noisy house. Jisung doesn’t know if you want to leave, if you want to escape his presence, but he can’t leave you just like that, and so he follows you outside, seeing you sitting at the doorstep, as if you were waiting for him.

“You don’t have to think of me, you know that, right?” he says once he takes a seat next to you, watching your expression change into a pained one.

“It’s… I don’t know. It’s complicated. And Felix- he doesn’t think it’s right. I can’t force him into anything. It was his choice anyway,” you mutter. Jisung sighs heavily, the feeling your words on his chest heavy and solemn. He hates the fact that he is standing in the way of your happiness. He hates the fact that he is the problem, the invisible wall keeping you two from each other.

“It’s simple, though.” he shrugs.

Your eyebrows furrow in confusion, a heavy sigh escaping your lips. He takes it upon himself to explain before you begin to tell him that it’s not, opting to open your eyes on his own.

“You two are in love with each other. So you should be together. Isn’t that simple?” he asks, smiling at you subtly.

You scoff and shake your head. “He gave up on us.”

“Did he, or did he just do what he felt was right?” Jisung argues. “You can’t keep hiding from each other. You can’t keep trying to ignore your feelings just because I like you. That’s not fair for either of you.”

You don’t argue with him this time. He wonders what’s going on inside of your head at the moment, with your eyebrows furrowed and your bottom lip trapped in your teeth. You look just like all the times he watched you during your tutoring sessions-- focused and lost in thought. It will feel weird to not see you in that way anymore, but he has to try.

The same way Lee Felix always tried for him.

“You’re too sweet, Han Jisung. What a shame our timing’s off.” you say, bitterness coating your voice. He looks up at you again, wondering what your words mean. “I used to like you back then, you know,” you smile.

Here it is, the strange emotion again. The emotion of almost physical pain, a hand squeezing his heart, a knife stabbed into his back. It feels like his world is crumbling down on him, because he’s stupid-- so stupid. He could have had you back then. He could have been with you all this time, only if he wasn’t late. He missed his biggest chance, the biggest opportunity, the happiest time of his life. All because he was too hesitant.

He didn’t deserve you anyway.

“But now your timing’s right with Felix. Don’t waste that,” he says, biting through the pain.

Because the truth is, if anyone deserved love, it was his roommate. The one that refused you for him, the one that rejected you for him, the one that set him up on a date with you even though you invited him in the first place. The one who gave up on his love only so he wouldn’t hurt his friend. You could say that Jisung was too good for this world, but Lee Felix is the one that deserves the whole entire world, in his eyes.

Maybe these two were just too good of friends. Caring about the other one twice as much as about themselves. And that’s exactly why Jisung will get over this-- he’ll push you to his friend. So he could be happy, finally.

“Jisung, I don’t know-”

“Do it,” he cuts you off, “reach out to him again. Try it. For me.”

y/n: meet me at the 8Bistro at 9

Felix can’t believe himself when he finds his legs moving to the direction of the bistro at the edge of the town. He knows it’s the last one on your list, the one you invited him to so you could celebrate your finals in and he finds himself wondering if he could have gone here with you earlier only if the two of you didn’t share that kiss back then.

That damned kiss he couldn’t stop thinking about for the last few days-- even weeks, every time he opened his eyes in the morning and closed them when he was about to sleep. It kept following him like a curse, a thing he couldn’t escape, as if it was testing him like the snake tested Eve in paradise. Foreign fruit.

You’re sitting there already when he arrives, fingers playing with each other as you gaze at the door in expectation. He sees your usual order already on the table, assuming you got here early, but it’s untouched as your knee bumps up and down under the table and you bite down harshly on your bottom lip.

He takes a seat, allowing himself to look at you again after such a long time. It feels like it’s been ages, yet you still look the same to him-- the same beauty that hit him when he first met you and shared his biggest secret with you.

“Why aren’t you eating? You have to finish off your list,” he mumbles awkwardly, motioning to the food at the table.

“I wanted to wait for you.” you say. Your voice is quiet, almost shy, when you speak to him. He wonders just how much he fucked up that it made you act this way. He knows it’s probably a lot, but considering he’s sitting here right now, he can still fix it.

At least he hopes so.

“Did you.. Do you want to talk to me about something?” he asks, nervosity filling his veins as he feels his hands form a little swimming pool with just how much he’s sweating.

“Yes,” you nod, taking a deep breath in and out. He wonders if you’re just as nervous as he is. The answer is probably yes, considering your tense shoulders and restless legs, but he doesn’t comment on it as he watches you begin speaking again. “I wanted to tell you that I’m- I’m in love with you. And that it’s for real, and it’s for you and no one else,” you start, quickly wetting your lips and continuing again, “and I know you must feel like a second choice, or like you weren’t important to me at all, but that’s not true.”

“You helped me so much, really, but the more I hung out with you, the more I realised just how wonderful you are. And how your heart is so big, how you’re fun to be around…” you ramble, taking Felix by surprise with your heart-felt monologue, “and that Jisung is not the one for me, because, well, it was just.. it was just a crush. I didn’t know him. He didn’t even know me that well. Crushes… they don’t mean anything. They’re silly. But what I have with you, Felix…” you say, drifting your eyes away from him for a second,

“I know you. The real you. And you know me. You’ve seen me at my worst. You’ve seen me struggle and you know exactly how to help. You know me and I know you and the feelings I have for you are much more than a silly crush. I love you, Felix. And I don’t want to just forget about us.” you complete and Felix swears he can feel his eyes watering at your words. He chooses not to speak up, afraid of his voice breaking, afraid he’s going to embarrass himself in front of you. His emotions got the best of him and right here and now, no one else matters.

It’s you. You that feels like home, you, the only girl he’s ever loved. You, the only girl that ever loved him back, you, who he foolishly rejected.

You’re everywhere. In his veins, in his heart, in his foolish, stupid mind.

“Felix… I don’t want you to give up on us.”

He looks up, seeing your sincere eyes and a look full of worry. You seem so wonderful to him, even now. You’re everything he’s ever dreamt of, a home without a roof and walls. With you, he feels at ease. He trusts you. He’s never felt this way for anyone before.

He watches you and he hears your laugh, he hears your whines when he used to tease you so much. He hears the sound of your memories when he chased you around in the snow. He hears the opening song of Howl’s moving castle, reminding him of the warmth he felt when you hugged him so close that evening.

He used to want to hate you. He should have known that could never be the case.

You’re all he needs-- all he wants. You’re everywhere he looks, in every beauty of the world and in everything that’s dear to him.

You, you, you, you.

And so he decides-- it’s time to change his plan.

Lee Felix’s bullet-proof guide to loving you: 1) hold her hand, 2) get rid of the guilt, 3) lean in and kiss her.

“Does that mean you’re giving us a chance?” you ask, hopeful eyes glaring at him with millions of stars in them, sparkles swimming around in perfection.

“We’ll talk after you eat. You have a yelp review to write,” he laughs.

“Feli-”

Lee Felix’s bullet-proof guide to loving you: 4) shut her up by forcing french fries into her mouth.

“I love you too.”

2K notes · View notes

amor-immortalem · 3 years

Text

I Could Care Less (About You)

Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort

A/N: I wanted to write something around the time when Arella first got to the devildom. We all know Mammon didn't like the MC very much. It's my own thoughts that he was especially mean in those first few weeks up until they made the pact and I kind of wanted to explore that in terms of his and Arella's relationship.

It all started with small acts of kindness. Taking the fall for him when items would go missing so he wouldn’t get strung up from the ceiling, saving a plate for him when he was late for dinner, letting him copy her homework when he didn’t finish his in time. Mammon can’t understand it. He and this human hardly know anything about each other but here she is, doing little things that would make his life just a little bit easier. Hell, he’d even stolen multiple objects of value from Arella and yet she never ratted him out to his brother despite knowing damn well who did it. She just let it slide.

If he’s being honest, it scares him. Did she like him that much or could she possibly want from something from him? Mammon was sure she was gearing up to ask for a favor from him. He decided whatever it was he wouldn’t do it. He may have had the task of looking after this human forced upon him by Lucifer but he wasn’t about to sit back and comply with it.

The demon made sure to let the human know what an inconvenience she was to him almost every day- most typically whenever he had to cancel his own plans to escort her around town. She took it like a champ though, never seeming to let it bother her. She was so kind it was almost annoying. Maybe it really didn’t bother her. That must be the only reason she’s pestering him now. He did have to give her credit for her persistence though.

“Come on, Mammon! Lucifer left me in charge of the grocery shopping and I can’t go out alone or I’ll get eaten.” Arella said as she trailed after the Avatar of Greed. Having only been here in the Devildom for only a handful of weeks, she was still actually afraid that a lower demon might make a snack out of her.

“Ask one of my brothers ta take ya. I got plans and you’re not ruinin’ ‘em this time.”

Had any of the other brothers been home, Arella gladly would have asked one of them, but they weren’t- not even Mr. Shut-In himself! It was just her and her insensitive guardian demon.

“They’re not home, you know that.”

“I don’t give a shit, human! You got a phone. Just text ‘em. Now scram! I got a poker game ta get to and you’re holdin’ me up.”

“B-but-”

“Diavolo almighty,” Mammon groans as he turns to her, “I guess ya didn’t hear me clear enough the first time so I’ll say it again nice’ an’ slow for ya so try to keep up, ‘kay? I do not care about you. I hate the fact that I have to babysit ya. You could get eaten and I couldn’t care less. Infact, my life would be considerably easier if ya weren’t around. Got it?”

“O-Okay,” Arella squeaked under the intensity of the white-haired demon’s gaze. “Understandable, have a good night then.... hope you win a lot.”

“Whatever,” Mammon huffs with a roll of the eyes. “I don’t need your well wishes.” With that, Mammon turns and heads out the door.

As she watched him go, Arella bit her lip to hold back the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. Once she was sure the demon was gone, the human sank down to floor, quiet sobs shaking her small frame. All she wanted was just an hour or two out of his time and he wouldn’t even give her that. She had never felt so resented before in all her 21 years of life- not even when her mother was alive had it ever been this bad. Now, as she wiped at her eyes, it really set in that she was left with no other option but to do this alone- gods forbid she ask one of the others for help and then it somehow get back to Lucifer that Mammon wasn’t doing his job. She would never hear the end of it from the greedy demon.

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The trip to and from the store had gone smooth enough. No demons had really bothered to pay her any mind, not even when she slipped off one of the higher shelves and smacked her head on the shopping cart resulting in the ugly bruise that had formed on the outer edge of her right eye. Bruises were something Arella was used to covering up, so it would be a simple enough task. She only had a little way left to go before she made it back to the House of Lamentation, but nothing can ever be easy for Arella.

Standing at the gates, blocking her path, was a small pack of demons. She had seen them eyeing her up in the halls at RAD during the passing periods. As they turned to her, Arella panicked- her heart rate skyrocketing as her body screamed at her to run. She wanted to but her feet wouldn’t move. It wasn’t until her brain processed that they were moving did her body actually turn to run. By then it was too late, they were upon her in seconds, knocking her to the ground with a tackle as she struggled and let out a scream.”

“Lookit you,” the one she presumed to be the leader smiled as he brushed some of the hair away from her face. “You sure do look tasty. I wonder where we should start first with you... dark or light meat?” He took a hold of her wrist, pulling it toward his mouth. He was about to bite down when...

“Hey! The fuck do the five of ya think you’re doing?!” The Avatar of Greed snarls as he watches the scene unfold in front of him. He had been in a good night after having won nearly all the games he’d played tonight before decided to call it quits- now it was soured. “Ya know what? I’m feelin’ generous tonight, so I’ll give y’all five seconds to get off that stupid human before I gut ya and string ya up by your entrails.”

He only needed until the count of one and a change into his demon form before the pack of demons made the right choice and booked it. The Avatar of Greed let out an irritated sigh as he walked over to Arella and hoisted her up by the arm.

“You’re fucking lucky, ya know that, girly? If I didn’t come home when I did, you’d be dead right now. How are you that damn stupid, huh?”

“’m sorry, I-,” Her voice was small and a little bit slurred as she tried to get her footing.

“I don’t wanna hear any excuses, right now. Just get inside the house go lay down or somethin’- whatever it is that you humans do ta calm down.” He gave her a bit of a rough shove and she scrambled for the doors while he gathered up the bags she had dropped and brought them inside the house.

Arella made a beeline for her room and curled up under the covers. Her headache from the fall earlier was even worse and now her arm was hurting from the strength of Mammon’s grip when he pulled her up from the ground.

“I want to go home....” she sniffled quietly into her pillow. “I should have never done this.”

The human thought she’d find a place for herself on this exchange programme but now she thinks this was all a big mistake. She had no idea what exactly she was signing up for only that something in the back of her mind yelling at her to do so. These last few weeks had done nothing but to serve her late mother’s words as true: that she was trash and so deserved to be treated as such.

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

Out in the kitchen, Mammon is unloading and putting away the groceries that weren’t crushed or broken after the incident outside when he came across a bag filled exclusively with cup noodles. There had to have been at least twenty of them that she had managed to cram into the bag- all in his favorite flavor no less. A look of surprise crossed his face. He had only mentioned this in passing to her once before and he wondered how she managed to get her hands on them as this specific flavor was kept on the top shelf of that section. Not something that would be a problem for someone as tall as himself but for her? She was 4’11”! She would have had to scale the shelfs just to have even the smallest chance of reaching them.

Setting the package of cup noodles he was holding down, Mammon looked to Arella’s door before looking back to the noodles. Again, those questions rang in his head. Just what was her deal? He thinks, she’s always doin’ all these favors for me and never asks for anything in return from me. Well, no I can’t say that... She did ask one thing of me and that was ta go grocery shoppin’ with her because she was afraid ta go alone- for me ta do the one job Lucifer assigned me and I essentially told her ta fuck off. The demon thinks back to their earlier exchange- how he could see the fear in her eyes and the tears that were starting to form right before he left. Great.... Now I feel guilty... I should probably go apologize and see if I can get her to stay quiet ‘bout this whole thing...

Knocking on the door- something the demon hardly ever did- Mammon waited for a response. When he didn’t get one, he just let himself in. “Arella I-!” He stopped as there was there was a noticeable flinch from under the covers.

“I’m sorry!” She squeaked out, “Don’t hurt me.”

He raised an eyebrow at her response. Did she really think he was going to hurt her somehow? Well, all things considered, the demon can’t say he’s really all that surprised. He grabs the ends of the duvet and yanks it off of her, watching as Arella curls up and raises her arms to shield her head as if readying herself for blows that would never come.

Mammon knows that response all too intimately from the times where Lucifer would beat the ever-loving fuck out of him for indulging in his sin.

“Hey, calm down, okay. I ain’t gonna lay a hand on ya like that. Not only would Lucifer have my head, but I ain’t about beatin’ up on girls anyway.” He kneels down at the side of her bed and is horrified to see an ugly bruise marring the skin beside her eye. She does eventually calm down and pulls her arms away from her head after a few minutes of nothing happening. “Atta girl, now look at me,”

When Arella does open her pupils are dilated and now the demon is a little concerned. Humans’ pupils aren’t supposed to be that dilated, are they? That would mean... Mammon fishes his D.D.D. out of his pocket and shines the flashlight right in her eyes.

“What the fuck, Mammon!” Arella recoils as she hides her face once more and Mammon turns the flashlight off. “You’re such an ass!”

“I knew it.” He tsks, “When did you hit your head? Was it when those idiots tackled you to the ground or did you fall off one of the selves at the store?”

“I didn’t hit my head!” The human retorts, “I’m fine, my head just hurts.”

“Ya got a concussion, ya dumb human! Now out with it. Ya very obviously fell and I wanna know when it happened and how high you fell from!” For someone who couldn’t care less about her, he’s surprisingly concerned right now. If she slipped off one of the shelves at the store, he would be in hot water with Lucifer.

“I said I’m fine!” Arella abruptly stood up, swaying as she did, glaring daggers at the white-haired demon who looked up at her with a look of shock. Where did his docile little human go? “And what do you care anyway!? You said it yourself: You hate me and I’m just an inconvenience to you!”

“Now hold on a tick, I never said that exactly. You’re puttin’ words in my mouth. And you’re gonna fall standin’ on the bed like that. You’re already wobblin’.” he may not have said the part about hating her outright but at the very least he heavily implied it.

“Just get out of my ro-” She let out a yelp as she went toppling forward and the demon rushed to catch her. She landed slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“See I told ya you were gonna fall.” He huffed as he readjusted her while she pounded her fists against his back, struggling against his hold on her as he headed back out to the kitchen.

“Mammon, you put me down this instant! I’m not a sack of flour!”

“Stop being a brat and let me help ya!” The Avatar of Greed says as he places her on the island counter top. “Now stay there while I get you some ice for that bruise and some medicine for that headache of yours.”

Arella just sits there in shock of what he said. He wanted to... help her? That was new. She’s drawn out of her thoughts a few minutes later when she feels of bag of ice being pressed against the bruise. She let out a hiss as she tries to move away from it but it’s then that she notices his hand holding the other side of her face so she can’t move all that much.

“Quit squirming, will ya. It’s just a bag of ice.” He looks into her eyes before shifting the bag of ice over and running his thumb over the outside of her eye socket. “Doesn’t feel like anything’s busted in there. Ya got off lucky, kid... here take these.” he has a pill in his hand

“I’m not a kid,” Arella puffs her cheeks out in a pout. “Why’re you doing this when you said earlier that you didn’t care about me...?” she takes the medicine with a swig of water.

“Don’t get it twisted. I’m only doing this because if Lucifer finds out that you went to the store without me, I’ll be hanging from my toes for the next of the week. I’d rather not have a concussion of my own from getting dropped on my head when he decides I learned my lesson.”

“I won’t tell him if you don’t...” she says softly, “You don’t have to be nice to me. I know I don’t deserve it...”

“Huh?”

“N-nothing.”

“Now hold on there,” The demon says as he moves the bag back to where it was before, “You’re not gonna speed past that and act like ya didn’t just say what ya just said.”

“It’s nothing really,” Arella eyes dart around looking everywhere but Mammon’s. “Let’s just change the subject.”

“Alright, you can answer my earlier question then. How did you fall?”

“I slipped while climbing down from one of the shelving units at the store.... and smacked my head on the shopping cart.”

“No offense, but you’re kinda dumb. You were tryin’ ta get those noodles down, weren’t ya? You could have just grabbed whatever was at eye level or in your reach. You would have been an easy meal for a demon if you had passed out.”

“I know,” She sighed. “But that flavor is your favorite and I got everybody else’s favorites. It wouldn’t have been fair to not get yours.”

“It ain’t worth a concussion, short stack.” Once he’s sure she won’t move away, he lowers his hand from the side that isn’t icing the bruise and places it over hers. “Thanks though. And... I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I didn’t think you’d actually go out and try to get yourself eaten because I said I wouldn’t care.”

“I mean, that wasn’t my goal,” She sighed. “But I guess that’s the mess I got myself into huh?”

“Ya wouldn’t have if I would have done my job and gone with ya...” He scoots her over and then hops up on the island counter next to her. “I don’t get you, ya know...”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re too nice to me. I’ve been a jackass ta ya but you never seem to let it bother ya. You’re always coverin’ for me when I steal things from the house ta sell and you never said anything after I stole that necklace and other things from you. You save my plate at dinner when I don’t make it right away and you’ve lied right ta Lucifer’s face on multiple accounts for me... why? Why do you do these things?”

“I just wanted you to be nice to me. I know I just kind of got forced on you... I thought maybe if I extended the olive branch first, we could be at least somewhat civil with each other... but no matter what I did, it didn’t change the way you treated me so I just kept pushing harder and harder to see if maybe...”

“I get what you’re sayin’...” he hummed. “Let’s start over then... I’ll look out for ya for the rest of the year if you’ll forgive me... It would be ta both of our benefit.”

She nodded as he hopped down from the counter. “Alright, let’s go then.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Back ta the store, some of the stuff ya bought got damaged when those demons attacked ya.”

“Oh... Alright... This isn’t some kind of trick, is it? You’re not going to ditch me, are you?”

“Nah, I won’t. And if anybody wants to eat ya, they’ll have to go through me, first. Got it?” he says as holds his hand out to her. She hesitantly took it and he tugged her along after him as they headed out. She hopes that maybe they could even become friends at some point. That maybe- just maybe- this is a turning point for them.

Find more writings on my masterlist

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me swd #obey me! shall we date?#mammon angst #obey me angst #obey me mammon #obey me oc #om! mammon #arella #mammon x oc

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linkspooky · 4 years

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What do you think of Mahito, his role in the story's future, and what he might represent? I can't stop thinking of how he literally acts as an antithesis to Yuji (besides being his primary foil), humanity and the narrative itself and how that might mean that he is the main antagonist of Jujutsu Kaisen.

What are your thoughts on the new JJK chapter? With what Mahito said to Yuji at the start of the chapter?

Answering these asks together. Thank you both for sending them!

I’m going to center this analysis around Mahito’s statement that you are me, and his role as antithesis to Yuji as the anon stated above. There are two big ways you can interpret Mahito’s statement. They are the same in the sense that they are character foils, that Mahito is the Jungian Shadow to Yuji and all of his actions. The second one is based around the idea that Jujutsu Kaisen at large plays with Budhism, and BUdhist ideas, it’s an argument that Mahito and Itadori are spiritually the same. Not contradictory forces but complimentary, the whole of them each containing parts of the other. I’m not the best at explaining japanese budhism, because I myself am not a japanese budhist, but I will try my best under the cut.

1. Spiritually the Same

So, Mahito’s arguments are ones that require a certain amount of abstraction to make sense.

For example, is saving people the same as killing people? No, obviously not.

Alright, there’s your answer. Let’s go home, give me notes please. To understand Mahito’s argument you have to understand how far away from other living people his perspective is.

Mahito positions himself as a third party observing from afar. From his position everything has a tendency to look the same. Let me explain: if every living creature has a soul, then what gives weight to human souls?

Heart, weight, both of those are words that are essentially trying to give human lives “worth.” Are human lives “worth something?” Are they more worthy than the lives of animals, plants, curses, etc. The way Mahito sees it everything has a soul. Even plants have a soul. However, there’s nothing too different in the souls of humans, from the souls of say bugs. The only difference he himsel sees is that humans have a capacity for reason.

“The so-called dignity obtained by human reason”, humans assume their lives are more worthwhile, more dignified then say, the life of your dog, because a human has the intellectual capacity for logical reasoning and a full range of emotions on display, and your dog has been barking at his reflection in the mirror for twenty minutes because he thinks it’s another dog.

Ideas of good and evil are not natural laws of the universe. They are made up by human reason. They only exist because humans said they do, and give reasons to them. Mahito’s perspective is a natural one on the world.

The reason that humans are different from monkeys is just a quirk of evolution that enabled them to gain more brain mass over millions of years, and then gained higher amounts of intelligence. Everything else was reasoned out, ex posto facto. Humans come up with reasons why things happen after the fact, but they just happened. Humans just happened to evolve.

If the natural state of the universe is chaos, and there’s no foreseen hand guiding everything, then things that happen just happen. There is no particular meaning to them. You can make up a meaning, but who is to say one invented meaning is more important than the other?

There’s life on this planet, because we just so happened to be a certain distance away from the sun to enable an ideal climate for liquid water on the surface. Therefore, life is not some necessarily some thing that needs to be protected. It’s just there.

If both Mahito and Yuji are fighting up with their made up value of life, Mahito believing there is no value, and Yuji believing there’s value worth preserving, then Yuji needs to actually make an argument. If no objective right or wrong exists, Yuji needs to prove why he’s right, rather than insisting he’s doing the right thing without thought.

Yuji and Mahito are each other, because they both embody an ideal in the way life should be treated.

When Mahito is saying this, it’s because Yuji gives weight to human lives, but not weight to the light of curses. That is to say, Yuji is fixated on the idea of giving humans a “good death” because he believes they’re owed that dignity, but will absolutely brutalize and tear curses to pieces. This is something Gojou commented on in chapter three, HUH ISN’T IT WEIRD THAT YUJI DIDN’T REALLY GROW UP SURROUNDED BY CURSES AND ALL I NEEDED TO DO WAS GIVE HIM A KNIFE AND POINT AT THAT AND SAY GO KILL THAT THING AND HE DID IT.

Let’s say it wasn’t a curse for a moment. Let’s say Yuji wrestled and killed a tiger with his bare hands and afterwards you saw him skinning it. From a certain perspective his actions might look brutal. You killed and skinned a cat. Well, yeah, but I wouldn’t do this to a human. From a certain perspective his actions might look justified. There was an old lady nearby and I didn’t want to maul her. However, if you believe spiritually that humans are nothing special and all living things have equal dignity, Yuji killing and skinning that tiger is a violation of that dignity.

Yuji believes that humans have dignity and wants to perserve that dignity even in death. That’s not objective fact though, that’s his own personal belief that he’s fighting for.

The official translation even has Yuji call it a natural death rather than a good death. However, is Yuji just imposing what he believes to be good and insisting it’s the natural order of the world instead?

Mahito’s argument is essentially that there is no right or wrong, and therefore the two of them are just both presenting ideas. If the order of the world is one where creatures constantly consume each other in order to survive, then what is so wrong about the curses fighting it out with humans against who becomes top dog? Curses are shown to have sentience same as humans. They don’t have human kindness, or compassion but they’re capable of assigning thoughts, and reasons behind their actions the same way humans do. What makes one life more worthy for another? Mahito’s words are a challenge, to come up with some reason to defy him.

However, there’s a flaw in Mahito’s argument.

Mahito’s argument is one that states nothing is a reason. All life is equal therefore one life doesn’t matter or is worth more than the other. However, then he uses that to give himself moral permission to do whatever he want.

What do I mean by he needs moral permission?

Mahito is justifying his actions, excusing his actions, the same way that Yuji is.

The appearance of the black flash this chapter signifies that the universe is a neutral party to both Yuji and Mahito’s fight. The universe is indifferent to both of them. However, Mahito presents himself as someone who is also indifferent, and objective, when he’s not.

Mahito isn’t doing what he does for no reason at all. Mahito does it because he loves humans, while Yuji does it because he hates humans. Mahito tries to give permission to Junpei, he tries to give permission to himself. His views are not that of a true nihilist, because a nhilist wouldn’t seek permission like that. Mahito’s are that of a moral nihilist. All life is worthless, therefore I can do whatever I want with it. That’s not an expression of nihilism, or the abstract idea that there are no set goals or values to life. That’s just Mahito giving an excuse to why he wants to toy around with human life.

(Also, I don’t really understand japanese budhism from the perspective of a japanese person, so please feel free to correct me on any of this, I’m just trying to go off of what was presented in the story! I’d love to hear other people’s perspectives).

But basically what I’m talking about is expressed here by Mr. Yoshimura if you read Tokyo Ghoul.

If all life on this planet is just trying to survive, and in compettition with one another to survive, then the taking of all life is equally evil. A human killing a curse for survival, and a curse killing a human for survival is the same FROM THAT PERSPECTIVE.

However, I would argue that this assertion that “Life is Evil” is being said by a PERSON and that person is making a VALUE JUDGEMENT. Evil is an idea same as good. Life is neutral, life is random, life is indifferent, life is just atoms smashing around in pure utter chaos but it’s not necessarily evil and definitely not in the way Mahito takes it to be.

2. We’re like the Same Dude

The second is that Mahito and Yuji are character foils. They are characters in a narrative who are meant to reflect each other, specifically that of the protagonist, and their shadow.

Jung stated the shadow to be the unknown dark side of the personality. According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.

If Yuji and Mahito were two parts of the same whole person, like two halves of the brain, Yuji would be the sensible, reasonable half, and Mahito would be the one acting on pure emotion and instinct.

Mahito and Yuji are both curse/human hybrids. They are both individuals that blur the line between humans and curses. Mahito is specifically, a curse that was created from the human fear of one another which makes him the most human of the curses and the most adept to change or growth. Yuji is a normal kid (as far as we know) who swallowed a finger, and his entire body became curse energy. He is half curse, and half human, in the regard that he is Sukuna and he is Yuji at the same time.

Yuji and Mahito are people who both embody a vague area between human and curse, a curse that acts like a human, a human that acts like a curse in vice versa, however they choose to cling onto different apsects of their being. It’s ambiguous whether or not Mahito is a humanlike curse, but Mahito himself defines himself as only ever being a curse. Just like Yuji sees himself as a human too, he sees himself as Yuji, and not Yuji and Ryomen Sukuna at the same time.

It’s Mahito who encourages the others to act more like curses, to live on impulse than desire, instead of trying to restrain themselves for the sake of reason. However, this is ironic, because the reason that Mahito is getting raised up as the leader of the curse family is because he is the mirror to humans, and is the most humanlike of all the curses.

Mahito wants to be a pure curse, but his path requires him to become more and more human. Yuji wants to be a pure human, but his path in ingesting fingers will require him to become more and more curselike as time progresses. He will over time become more Ryomen Sukuna and less Yuji Itadori until the time comes for him to be executed after ingesting all twenty fingers. They are like opposite reflections in the mirror, clinging onto opposite parts of themselves.

It’s even shown in their foiling in the Junpei arc. They both encourage Junpei to do the opposite things. Mahito encourages Junpei to follow his baser instincts and curse other people, to resent them for what they have done to him.

Yuji however, applies to Junpei’s sense of reasoning and higher thinking. He suggests there’s a better plan than Junpei’s simple acting on. He asks Junpei not to do what he thinks is best in the moment and lash out on those feelings alone like Mahito suggested, not to follow his instinct to curse, but rather try to follow reason to find who is really at fault and then punish the correct person. Yuji appeals to the fact that Junpei have both empathy for the people he’s randomly lashing out at over his own pain, and that he has the ability to separate himself from his pain and try to search for what’s right instead.

These are opposite ideas, and Mahito and Yuji clearly look at the world with completely opposite perspectives. However, these perspectives don’t contradict, they are complimentary. The existence of a shdaow doesn’t mean the conscious mind is right. The existence of the consious mind doesn’t mean the shadow isn’t there. In other words, light and shadow don’t negate each other, light cannot exist without shadow.

In less poetic words. Whenever you make any action, your good intentions are equally as valid as your bad ones. There’s no such thing as a person without bad intentions. Anything can be seen from a both good and bad light. What Mahito argues to Yuji, is that Yuji was ignoring all along how dangerous an individual he was. Yuji uses his powers to save people, and he wants to become strong, but as has been pointed out in the manga before having all that strength collected in one person can be used oppressively and violently.

This is what Getou says to Gojou. If he was Gojou he’d have the power to kill every last human being alive and spare only the sorcerers. Gojou is someone sitting on all that power. Power alone doesn’t justify itself. Equally as important is the choices and the reasoning behind wielding that power. What Mahito was pointing out, and what the plot is emphasizing is that Yuji was wielding that power, especially the power of Ryomen Sukuna in a way that was poorly thought out.

Which is the point of this scene when Yuji realized the scope of Sukuna’s rampage. Yuji didn’t seriously think of the possibility that he was a walking bomb waiting to go off. This was brought up as an argument in the Kyoto arc, that it might be safer for everyone to just kill Yuji now so Sukuna doesn’t have the chance to get out. And then. Sukuna got out. And that’s what happened.

Mahito isn’t saying that Yuji is good or bad, he’s saying Yuji hasn’t thought about what good or bad even is. Yuji only ever saw the good intention of his actions, he saw himself as a person saving others, and because of that he didn’t think properly about the risk he inherently carrying. He didn’t realize how dangerous of a person he was for carrying Sukuna around like that. Mahito is the unacknowledged shadow of Yuji’s actions, following him through the plot, and punishing him for his ignorance.

Yuji is a good kid, but sadly the nature of the universe being true neutral good intentions don’t always lead to good results. It’s just a burden that Yuji has to think about, and carry with him as he moves on. Which I really, really want him to do. Yuji can think more, live on and live with his regrets, and still try to do the right thing even after enduring all of this because that’s what makes him human.

Just like how all reasons for fighting are made up, humans are able to make up whatever reason they want to keep fighting. It goes both way. If all lives have equal weight. You don’t have to take it from Mahito’s perspective that they’re worth nothing. You can also take it from Yuji’s perspective, that every life is worth fighting for, worth living, because you and I are worth just as much as one another.

#Anonymous #jjk meta #this is going to be really abstract and nihilistic because it's mahito #sorry #jujutsu kaisen meta #mahito #yuji itadori #itadori yuji #yuji analysis #yuji meta #metasks #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen mahito #jujutsu kaisen theory

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picnic-at-dreaming-rock · 3 years

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Top 5 New Books of 2020

A round up of the top 5 new books that I have read this year, full 2020 reading list found here

Warning for possible spoilers below the cut.

Please Don’t Hug Me - Kay Kerr

Erin is looking forward to Schoolies, at least she thinks she is. But things are not going to plan. Life is getting messy, and for Erin, who is autistic, that’s a big problem. She’s lost her job at Surf Zone after an incident that clearly was not her fault. Her driving test went badly even though she followed the instructions perfectly. Her boyfriend is not turning out to be the romantic type. And she’s missing her brother, Rudy, who left almost a year ago.

But now that she’s writing letters to him, some things are beginning to make just a tiny bit of sense.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I cannot stress enough how much I love this book. Growing up as an autistic teen girl, I really lack a lot of representation, both real and fictional, and this books is a huge step forward in remedying that. Written by an autistic woman (yes, this is an #ownvoices novel!), Please Don’t Hug Me shows autism in a new and beautiful light as to what is most commonly shown. Erin is no genius savant that is only autistic when plot relevant or has a lack of social skills used only for comedic relief, but instead a encapsulation of the ordinary and everyday autistic experience of just wanting to get through the day with as little meltdowns as possible while still maintaining your neurotypical facade.

The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams

In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Motherless and irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.

Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day, she sees a slip containing the word bondmaid flutter to the floor unclaimed. Esme seizes the word and hides it in an old wooden trunk that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. She begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

One of my favourite parts about this novel is how perfectly it showed both misogyny and classism/elitism, and how they intertwined. Although it is set in the mid/late 19th century and early 20th century, there is this sense of relatability to it that I think I lot of people might be able to recognise. Williams deals with a lot topics that I don’t often see in other media, such as menstruation without fancy allusions or making it into anything other than what it is, pregnancy out-of-wedlock without it being seen as a character flaw on the woman’s part, and showing characters one might consider like a hag or spinster to be good people worth celebrating because of things that deem them lesser rather than despite it or not at all. One main criticism I do have with this book, however, is how it seems like William just adds tragedy for the sake of moving the plot forward/to add shock value or drama. I will admit, it did get me crying at some parts, it did get a little tedious and lack-luster to have the last half of the novel just be death after life-altering event after death after life-altering event.

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I read this book for my advanced literature class earlier this year and it was a great choice on the schools part. Everyone in my class enjoyed it, even if a lot of us were crying by the end of the novel. The book itself is rich with literary techniques that enrich the actual reading if you are one of those people that like to dissect what they read. I think Zusak made a really good choice with having Death narrate, as well as how he tied in his own experiences/interjections in these mini vignette-type extracts which I found really enhanced both the overall atmosphere and environment. The only qualm I have is that there were a lot of questions left unanswered that made the story feel somewhat empty.

Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay

It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred.

Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.

They never returned.

Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I watched the Foxtel miniseries first a couple years and thoroughly enjoyed it and sought out the novel very quickly afterwards. I will be honest, I picked the novel up first around 2018/19 and dropped it until earlier this year when I reread/finished it and loved it. Lindsay’s ability to create this perfect and constant juxtaposition between the natural Australian bush and the intruding colonialism is really amazing and adds this interesting aesthetic that the academia community on this site seems to enjoy. There is also a really interesting dynamic between the female characters (which is most of the characters, to be fair) and they feel complete and authentic, something that doesn’t always exist in other works of literature. There is also one canon queer character, but there is so much subtext in the novel for so many other characters that it feels purposeful. All in all, this is the gayest straight book I ever read.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Hunger Games was one of the series in primary school that rocked my literary world (joining the ranks of The Great Brain, Harry Potter and The Books of Beginning) and helped inspire my love of reading, and when I heard about a prequel I was over the moon with nostalgia. I found it a couple days after its release at Target for $16 and I loved it. I finished it in about a week and I could barely put it down. I loved reading how the hunger games came to be and how they ended up the way they were, as well as advancing Collins’ previously established and incredible world building. The book also adds upon the themes in the original trilogy of government corruption, classism, elitism, individualism and propaganda, but from those that benefit from it (e.g. Snow) instead of those that suffer (e.g. Katniss). I have seen some criticism from people about not liking it being from Snow’s perspective but I personally think that it was the perfect choice, as no other character’s story would be able to add to the story in such a meaningful way.

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whumphoarder · 5 years

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D is for Diploma

Summary: Between all of his commitments, Peter’s grades start slipping, putting him in danger of losing his academic scholarship to Midtown. Stressed and guilt-ridden about the effect this will have on May’s finances, he ends up worrying himself sick and having a breakdown in Tony’s lab.

Word count: 3,759

Genre: emotional hurt/comfort, angst, hurt/comfort

A/N: Thanks so much to @xxx-cat-xxx and @sallyidss for beta reading and encouragement <3

Link to read on Ao3

“But how are you getting a C in gym class?” Ned balks at his friend. He’s peering over Peter’s shoulder as he scrolls through his quarterly grades on the school library computer. “Everyone gets an A. I’m getting an A. All you gotta do is show up and at least look like you’re trying and boom, automatic A.”

Peter rubs a hand at the back of his neck sheepishly. “So, remember after the Rhino dude attacked me, how I had all those bruises that didn’t heal right away?”

“Yeah...” Ned recalls, frowning. “But you said they didn’t hurt.”

“They didn’t! Not really, anyway,” Peter says quickly. “But like, I didn’t really want everyone to see that, so I kinda didn’t change into my uniform. And apparently if you don’t change, Wilson just marks you as absent.”

“Ah.” Ned gives him a sympathetic wince. “Yeah, that’s lame.”

“What I don’t understand,” MJ pipes up, glancing up from the book she’s had her nose in all afternoon, “is the D in Spanish. Rodríguez isn’t even a hard teacher.”

Peter’s face flushes with embarrassment. “So… I might have forgotten to submit a couple assignments.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “You forgot? He reminds us what’s due, like, three times every class period.”

“I mean, it was just the take-home quiz...” he mumbles. “And some of the homework sheets. Oh, and that cultural essay thing about the ancient Mayans.”

“Peter.” She blinks at him. “That was like, twenty percent of our grade.”

“Well, to be fair, I did have a concussion,” he defends. “It was a little hard to remember stuff that week.”

Ned rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, that makes it so much better.”

Peter huffs out a laugh. Honestly, between all the hours he’s been logging lately as Spider-Man, his frequent internship nights with Tony in the lab, the increasingly demanding decathlon practice schedule as their team moves toward regionals, and the weekend shifts he’s started picking up at Delmar’s (because, let’s face it, the vigilante life isn’t the most lucrative career path—the occasional free churro notwithstanding), Peter thinks he’s been doing quite well juggling everything. Sure, his grades aren’t quite the neat row of A’s and the occasional B he’s grown accustomed to throughout his school career, but it’s not like he’s failing anything.

“I’ve just got different priorities now,” Peter says with a shrug. “I still show up and I’m passing all my classes, so what does the grade matter?”

MJ returns the shrug, looking vaguely impressed with him. “It doesn’t really. I’ve always been morally opposed to using arbitrary numerical values as a measure of academic success.” She shifts her gaze back to her novel before adding, offhandedly, “But you gotta admit, the tuition break is nice.”

And in those nine little words, she might as well have punched him in the gut.

“Oh shit,” Peter breathes out. Hurriedly, he starts gathering books together and getting to his feet.

“What?” Ned asks, looking puzzled.

“Um, I gotta go,” he blurts. And then before anyone can say another word, he’s out of the library doors.

The Parkers aren’t poor, exactly.

May works full-time at her job as a neonatal nurse, besides picking up extra shifts one or two nights a month to give them a bit of cushion. Between her wages and the social security checks that come every month from Ben’s pension, the two of them get by. Sure, Peter might not have name-brand clothes or the coolest tech or even a pair of gym shoes without a bit of duct tape on the soles, but there’s always been food on the table and a roof over his head, so Peter’s never stressed that much about their financial situation.

Maybe that’s how he managed to completely forget about his academic scholarship.

He’s qualified for it ever since he passed Midtown’s entrance exams in the top tenth percentile back in eighth grade. The money is substantial—slightly over two-thirds of the tuition cost is paid for him—and the scholarship automatically renews every semester provided he maintains a grade point average of 3.3 or higher, which has never been a problem for him.

That is, up until now. Factoring in his B in history, the C’s in gym and trig, and his D in Spanish, his GPA is currently sitting at 2.9.

Peter is going to lose his scholarship.

With less than two weeks left before finals, Peter starts cramming in all the studying he can manage. He stays up late, pouring over his trigonometry notes, trying to work his way through all the practice problems he’s been slacking on. He makes a point of showing up three minutes early to gym class every day, even if he has to use a bit of his enhanced speed to get all the way there from the chem labs on the other side of the building. On the train, he quizzes himself on the names of historical figures and the dates of battles long-since fought. Some of his teachers are willing to work with him, letting him turn in late assignments for partial credit or giving him additional projects to complete.

And then there’s Spanish.

“Isn’t there some kind of extra credit project I can do?” Peter begs. “Anything?”

It’s his study hall period and he’s at Señor Rodríguez’s desk for the second day in a row, desperately hoping for anything that could give his grade the boost it needs.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” his teacher says, sounding genuinely regretful. “But you’ve had countless opportunities this semester to get your grade up via homework and test retakes, all of which you neglected to take advantage of. Coming to me with less than ten days left in the semester requesting make up work for assignments worth significant percentages of your grade is simply too little, too late.”

“But… I had a concussion that week,” Peter argues. “Like, right when it was all due. And I would have done the work before, but…” He trails off, unable to finish his sentence without explaining his unorthodox extracurriculars. “I...I was busy,” he concludes weakly.

Rodríguez raises an eyebrow a little skeptically. “I didn’t receive any notes from the nurse’s office about this concussion.”

Peter glances down to his feet. “Well, that’s because she didn’t know, exactly…”

No one did—not even May. After getting all those bruises the week before, Peter didn’t want anyone to know he was hurt again so soon. Apparently Karen hadn’t deemed the blow to the head he took severe enough to override his wishes. He’d just dealt with the headaches and brain fog the best he could and sort of floated through that week on his own. In hindsight, maybe not his best plan.

“Well, I guess this is a good life lesson for you then, Peter,” Rodríguez says. His voice is firm, but not unkind. “Part of growing up is taking responsibility and learning to communicate with authority figures before you get into trouble.”

“Right, and I get that,” Peter babbles, “I just—”

His teacher holds up a finger, quieting him. “My job is to train my students for success in the real world, and sometimes that means reminding you that actions have consequences. ¿Lo entiendes?”

And Peter finds himself nodding. Because, despite the pool of dread growing in his gut, he does understand. He wants to be mad, wants to say it’s unfair and the universe gave him a raw deal and he doesn’t deserve this. But he can’t. Rodríguez is right.

And Peter’s still fucked.

By the time Friday rolls around, Peter’s barely functioning. Besides all the extra assignments and studying for finals, he’s had three days in a row of Decathlon practices, followed by some particularly eventful evening patrols that all went quite a bit later than his usual curfew of ten p.m.

He can’t get much of his lunch down today, which does nothing to appease his friends’ concerned looks. The food seems tasteless in his mouth and he’s so tired he nearly nods off into his cafeteria chicken nuggets.

When school finally lets out, he’s surprised and a little disheartened to see the sleek black car waiting for him in the bus circle. He’d totally forgotten it was an internship weekend.

Figures.

Peter groans as he disconnects the circuits he just switched out. He’s been trying to fix a bug in his suit’s heater upgrade for the last twenty minutes now, but nothing he attempts is working and his head is throbbing so much that his vision is hazy.

“Just try again, kid,” Tony encourages absently from across the workshop. He’s not looking up, fully engrossed as he is in his own project. “You got this.”

“Yeah...” Peter mutters under his breath. Blinking a few times, he rubs a hand at his eyes to try to clear his vision.

He connects a different wire. That one doesn’t yield any better results, so he unplugs it and tries again. Then again. Then again. He’s fairly sure he’s already tried the next combination, but he’s so tired he can’t remember so he does it again just to be sure. Nothing.

Peter is so frustrated now that his hands are actually shaking. He pauses and takes a deep breath before trying again.

This time, the wire sparks at him.

“I can’t do this!” Peter exclaims, shoving the suit away from him across the table. “I can’t do anything! Why am I so fucking stupid?!”

He’s breathing heavily now, tears clouding his vision even further. Within a few seconds he feels Tony’s hand rest heavily on his shoulder. It should be comforting, but it only makes Peter feel pathetic.

“C’mon, just take a deep breath and—”

“No!” Peter blurts, shaking away from Tony’s grip. “That’s not going to fix anything! I can’t fix this—don’t you see?!”

Stepping backwards, Tony holds his hands up in front of his chest, keeping his expression perfectly neutral. “Okay…” he says carefully. “I think you might need a break.”

Tears prick at Peter’s eyes and he instantly regrets snapping at his mentor. “No, no, I didn’t mean that! I’m s-sorry, ’m fine…” he says. It would probably sound a lot more convincing if his breath would stop hitching.

Tony lifts an eyebrow. “Yeah, no, I’m pulling rank here,” he declares. “It’s break time.”

“No!” Peter protests. His hands fumble back on the table for the wires. “I gotta finish it! It’s so close, it’s just—” He cuts himself off as the images of the suit swim before his eyes, his head throbbing. “I, I need to finish…” he concludes lamely.

“Peter, just stop,” Tony says with an exasperated sigh. “You’re no good like this.”

Somehow, those words are the catalyst. Peter feels every emotion he’s been bottling up for the past week erupt inside of him. His breath hitches and his head pulses. “I, I know I’m not,” he manages to say, “but that’s why I gotta… gotta finish, then maybe—”

“Jesus, kid,” Tony breathes out. “That’s not what I meant at all. I was just saying—”

Peter cuts him off. “No, I… I know…” Tears are sliding down Peter’s cheeks now. He runs a hand through his hair, shoulders shaking. “’M sorry.”

Tony’s eyes are a mixture of concern and confusion. “Whoa, hey, what’s going on here?” Tugging the edge of his sleeve over his thumb, Tony uses it to wipe a few of the tears off his cheeks. “Talk to me.”

Honestly, Peter doesn’t even know where to begin. The frustration of his current project, the lack of sleep, his grades, the scholarship…

“I just… I-I have a headache.”

Peter doesn’t know why he says it—the pressure in his skull doesn’t even rank very high on his list of concerns at the moment, yet the simple physicality of it somehow makes it the easiest thing to admit. He rubs the back of his hand at his eyes, but his vision is still so blurry. “Can’t really see straight…”

Tony’s brows knit together. “Is it a migraine?”

“N-No,” Peter says between choked sobs. “Or... I don’t know, I don’t th-think so?” Despite never having had a migraine, he’s pretty sure that’s not what this is. The pain isn’t anything exceptional—it’s just that he can’t seem to stop crying and he’s so fucking tired.

“Either way, I think you’ll feel better once you’ve got a couple painkillers in you,” Tony reasons. “C’mon, let’s get you sorted out.”

Peter shakes his head in weak protest. “No, ’s’okay... “

“Nope,” Tony says, his voice a little more firm. “Trust me on this, you don’t want to work in a lab right now. It’s bright, and loud, and honestly, you’re a bit of a safety hazard at the moment.”

To Peter’s horror, a fresh wave of emotion comes over him and he finds himself properly crying now, his frame wracking with each sob.

“Okay, okay, alright…” Tony murmurs, and Peter feels a hand awkwardly patting him on the back.

It’s all so idiotic, Peter decides, standing in Tony’s lab, crying over things that are completely his own fault and a headache that isn’t even that bad.

“You’re okay, kid,” Tony whispers. “Just breathe.”

As Peter struggles to pull himself together, he feels the hand switch to rubbing circles on his back. It moves up to the back of his neck, but halts as soon as Tony’s fingers touch Peter’s bare skin.

Tony frowns. “Do you have a fever?”

“Wh-What?” Peter’s throat is thick.

“You’re really warm,” Tony explains. He flips his hand around to press the back of his fingers to Peter’s skin, first on his neck, then on his cheek. “Yeah. FRIDAY, can we get a read on that?”

“100.7, boss,” she supplies.

Tony hums a bit. “Yeah, that’s about what I thought…”

Peter doesn’t get it. “B-But I’m not sick,” he protests. “Just—”

“Exhausted,” Tony finishes for him. “When’s the last time you had a full night’s sleep?”

Sniffling, Peter gives a non-committal shrug.

“Yeah, that’s not good, kid,” Tony huffs. “Take it from a guy who has a bit of experience in this area—not sleeping enough will seriously mess you up.”

With a hand on Peter’s back, Tony starts gently ushering the kid out of the lab. Peter doesn’t even bother protesting anymore as he shuffles along, his lip quivering. He figures he’s caused enough trouble today.

Tony deposits him onto the couch in the living room and Peter immediately curls up against the arm rest, squeezing his eyelids shut in an effort not to think about what a fool he’s making of himself in front of his mentor. It doesn’t help much.

“You just chill out for a minute here, okay?” Tony says quietly, draping a blanket over Peter. “I’m gonna get you some meds.”

Peter nods and Tony gives his shoulder a final squeeze before stepping out.

The second he’s alone, the tears start streaming down again, hot and silent and totally uncontrollable. If he’s not working in the lab, then he really should be studying for these stupid finals, but he can’t bring himself to pull out his flash cards. He doesn’t think he can rest—not with so much hanging over his head—but he can’t work either. Tony was right; he’s just no good right now.

When Tony reenters with painkillers and a glass of water, he doesn’t say anything about how Peter is hurriedly sitting up and scrubbing his face with his hands in a pointless attempt to pull himself together. He just presses two pills into Peter’s palm.

Looking down at the painkillers in his shaking hand, Peter’s stomach twists and he’s suddenly not so sure they’ll be able to stay down. “I can’t. I feel sick,” he admits in a whisper.

With a quiet sigh, Tony perches himself on the edge of the sofa, right beside Peter’s tucked knees. “I think you’re just tired, kiddo. Sometimes that makes you feel a little sick.”

Peter doesn’t say anything so Tony passes him the glass of water. “Here. Humor me,” he says. “If I’m wrong, I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”

It’s a stupid joke, but the corners of Peter’s lips twitch anyway. “Okay,” he croaks.

Peter slips the pills into his mouth and swallows them down with a sip of water. He’s queasy, but it’s not too bad. He goes to set the cup back down on the coffee table, but his mentor shakes his head.

“Drink the whole thing,” Tony instructs.

Peter obeys. It takes him a couple of minutes, but he manages to get the entire cup down and feels just the smallest bit better for it.

Tony takes the empty glass from his hand and sets it on the table. “Think you can sleep now?”

Peter just shrugs. He wants to—god, he wants to—but he doesn’t deserve it. Not when this is all his own damn fault. His voice is barely a whisper when he speaks again:

“I think I really messed up, Mr. Stark.”

Over the next ten minutes, it all comes tumbling out: the job at Delmar’s, the decathlon requirements, the late patrols, his slipping grades, his scholarship, everything.

“I just… I don’t want to change schools,” Peter concludes softly. “I like Midtown. It was the first place I really felt like… well, like I fit in.”

Tony’s been quiet for the whole time Peter was speaking, but now his brow furrows. “Why would you need to quit Midtown?”

Peter blinks at him; isn’t it obvious? “Because the full tuition is eight thousand dollars a semester. Without the scholarship…” he trails off. “I just can’t do that to May.”

A look of relief spreads across Tony’s face. “Is that all? That’s the whole issue?” He huffs out an amused breath. “Done. Consider it paid. Problem solved.”

Peter feels his cheeks flush. He shakes his head frantically. “No, no, I didn’t mean that you should pay! Please don��t do that!”

Now it’s Tony’s turn to blink at him. “Peter. I am a multi-billionaire. Do you have any idea what eight thousand dollars is to me?”

“But you shouldn’t have t—”

“Peanuts,” Tony cuts him off. “I’ve spent more on peanuts than that.”

“But—”

“And by that I mean actual, honest-to-god peanuts,” Tony continues over the kid’s protests. “There’s this company in Peru that slow-roasts them for twenty-one days in a secret spice blend. Happy’s obsessed with ‘em—says they’re god’s gift to mankind. So, for Christmas one year—”

“You can’t pay my tuition!” Peter blurts out.

Tony stops his story abruptly. His eyes narrow at Peter. “And why exactly is that?”

“Because…” Running a hand through his hair, Peter draws in a shuddery breath. “Because… If anyone should pay, it’s me. I-I’m the one who fucked up and lost the stupid scholarship. I should be the one responsible for fixing this.”

“But you can’t fix it,” Tony says bluntly.

Peter’s caught off-guard. “Wh-What? N-No, I just need to get my grades up, and, and…”

Tony’s voice is gentler now. “You can’t, Peter. You can’t get a 2.9 up to a 3.3 by next week, no matter how well you do on your exams. You’ve gotta know that.”

(Peter does know. He’s known for days. He’s always been good at math, after all.)

“So you can’t keep going on like this, trying to make up for what happened,” Tony concludes.

Tears prick at the corners of Peter’s eyes once more. He’s determined not to let them fall this time. “But I deserve it…” he whispers.

Tony shrugs. “If we always got what we deserved, I never would have made it through the 90s.” He huffs out a short laugh. “At least nobody has to bail you out of prison. Same can’t be said for all of us.”

In spite of Peter’s earlier resolve, the traitorous tears slip out anyway. He wonders how he has any left.

Tony sobers a bit. “You’re a good kid, Pete,” he says quietly. “But you’re trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders and that’s enough to break anyone. It’s okay to ask for help sometimes. Even if you fucked up.”

Peter swallows hard. “Okay.”

“So let’s try this again,” Tony says. He makes eye contact with Peter. “What do you need, kid?”

“Right now?” Peter exhales deeply. “I dunno. A nap?”

Tony smirks slightly. “I think we can manage that.”

Peter makes it through finals.

All his extra effort and studying does yield some results. His gym grade increases to a B after Coach Wilson grades his two-page extra credit report on the rules of badminton. The trig final is rough, but he pulls in another couple points there, and the art teacher accepts a few late sketches from the unit on perspectivism. With the help of the final exam, he even manages to eek out a C- in Spanish.

When it’s all said and done, Peter’s GPA sits at 3.1.

“That wasn’t easy to do. I’m proud of you, Peter,” May says sincerely. “You know that, right?”

Peter shrugs. “I guess so.”

They’re sitting together at the apartment’s small kitchen table, May’s open laptop in front of them with all of Peter’s end of semester grades displayed. Peter’s eyes drift down from the screen to the table where a check for eight thousand dollars signed by Tony Stark himself is staring back at him. He sighs.

May plants a quick kiss on the top of her nephew’s head. “Well, I know so. So for now, I’ll just know it for the both of us.”

Peter strokes his fingers over the crisp paper of the check. Besides covering tuition, Tony has now upgraded Peter’s unofficial SI internship to a paid position—something he says he should have done long ago, given how much time Peter spends working in the lab—and that will allow him to give Mr. Delmar his two-week notice.

He knows he should be grateful, but honestly, it’s going to take him some time to wrap his head around the concept of being taken care of like this.

Getting up from the table, May moves over to retrieve a small paper bag from the counter. “That reminds me—Mr. Stark told me to give you this.” She tosses the bag to Peter, who catches it easily.

Curiously, he opens it. He’s immediately hit with the aroma of exotic spices and roasted legumes. Peter can’t help but grin.

A note inside the bag reads: Enjoy your peanuts, kid.

A/N: If you enjoyed this story, you might also like:

Viral Wisdom

Go Down Swinging

A Pressing Emergency

Fic Masterlist

#irondad fic #irondad & spiderson #sick peter parker #hurt/comfort #crying #emotional breakdown #angst #soft angst #Emotional Hurt/Comfort #headache #fever #stress #school stress #gpa

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dragonswordmaster · 4 years

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Gamers of Destiny - Day 4

Dragon and Sword Master: So…this might not be truly appropriate for the challenge, but I wanted to write some things from another perspective. Ones that I wouldn’t write otherwise. All of this is from the beginning of the incident which is two years ago.

========================================================

Two Years Ago…

Dragon was worried when she saw herself, Petal and the girl she had just met, Nightshade, standing around the Academy Grounds along with several other players who had signed in today. Something was up…and something said that the woman on top of the building in a black and red dress with skin as gray as the goop they served at school.

“Hello…and welcome to The Beacon Times. Most of you have already signed up for the elemental class of your choice and have gotten your first spell to master. But where are my manners…my name is Salem Taylor, and I am the creator of this game. I’m sure by now, that most of you young mages have realized that the log out feature is grayed out. This is not a bug, but a feature of the main game. But I am nothing but merciful; for you see…while you are in this virtual world of mine…your bodies are set in a sort of stasis. No harm will come to your physical bodies…as long as the VR Goggles aren’t removed, but alas already 1,000 young, hopeful mages have left this world because of the folly of their parents, significant others or someone else who wished to not believe that they would die once the goggles were removed. Such a pity…”

Nightshade couldn’t help it; she couldn’t stay here and not say anything. As such, she raised her voice. “What gives you the right to do this?!” she shouted before feeling the air around her leave her body and could feel her health depleting rapidly.

“What gives me the right, witch? This is MY game, MY domain! If I so wanted, I could ramp the difficulty up and watch every single one of you die right here and now! But where would the fun in that be?” Salem exclaimed as she stared down at the person who so thought dared that they could question her. Seeing that the player had been put in her place, she continued. “Now then…I’m not entirely cruel. I have made it possible for you to all have a virtual item of something of value for you, each unique to you and you alone. Whatever that is worth to you, you can equip it for a personal stat, sell it for some money, or keep it in your inventory. I do not care; however, that is all I wish to address today…I shall be waiting for a champion to come join me on the hundredth floor…if you can get that far, that is…” she stated before letting out a haughty laugh and vanishing.

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“Who was that player who called me out…?” Salem muttered as she was now in a space that no player could get to and a place where she could look over everything at once. Using a picture of who the black-haired mage was, she placed it into the computer that had everyone still alive and found just who it was.

“Interesting…who would have thought that particular user would be the former princess of the White Fang…?” she commented as she pulled up a few articles noting about Leader Ghira Belladonna and how he was stepping down. Originally, she wasn’t going to do anything but watch for a while until the time was right to insert herself into the game as a player-like character; however…perhaps a small virus to this ‘Blake Belladonna’… “It is quite tempting…” she muttered before ultimately deciding against it…for now.

“But it is a thought for later…maybe,” she muttered to herself as she went back to looking over perspective players: an ice queen, a monkey boy, the girl in the shadows…there was that guild that she had to create after all to help motivate the players to clear the higher floors…until she took the rug out from each and every one of them after all.

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Kali looked at her daughter connected with various wires and tubes with concern and despair in her eyes. Ever since they learned that she was a victim of that Beacon Game…both Ghira and Kali knew that the warnings were serious and had quickly moved her to the best hospital on Menagerie. Feeling a soft hand on her shoulder, she let out a soft sigh before relaxing, albeit lightly, into her mate’s side. “I wish there was something we could do love…”

“I know, my love…but you saw what happened on the news; people have tried forcibly disconnecting their son or daughter from the device only to have to soon bury them due to brain trauma. I don’t want that for Blake. We just have to hope and pray that our kitten is doing everything that she can…” Ghira Belladonna, new chieftain of Menagerie, replied before seeing a young girl running through the hospital in looks for Blake.

“ilia, ilia! Calm down…” Kali commented as she quickly saw the brunette running in the halls towards them. Knowing who it was based on the blue skin, she quickly disengaged from her husband in order to pull the girl into a hug.

“It can’t be true. Please Kali tell me it’s not true…” ilia cried out as tears soaked into the older woman’s shirt, not that Kali cared…especially since she knew how close the two girls were. Sadly, Kali had to tell ilia the truth…that Blake was trapped within such an accursed game.

And that there was nothing they could do to help…

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Raven was looking at her daughter with a look of anger on her face…not at Tai or her daughter, but more at herself for not realizing that this was going to happen in the first place. She had heard rumors about how the developer of the game was planning something like this, but she had no idea it was going to happen. Hearing stomping coming towards her, she winced lightly, having a feeling that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience. In fact…with Ruby being affected as well as her Yang, Raven expected the woman in white to come to her first.

…She even expected to get slapped. While she was waiting for the inevitable outcome, she kept an eye on her blonde daughter. It was the only thing that separated Yang from being considered a clone of herself all things considered. That…and her eyes. She was turned from her inner musings as she heard her full name being called and winced lightly.

“Raven Marie Branwen! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t…!”

“Ma’am, this is a hospital, please refrain from shouting if possible,” one of the nurses assigned to the two sisters requested as they took measurements and data from the various devices hooked up to them. Flinching lightly at that, Summer Rose nodded and waited for the nurse to leave.

“You’re right…you should be angry with me and want to slap me. I have no excuse for everything that has happened. I thought…I thought the fact that Salem Taylor had done something like this…” she paused for a second as she waved at the blue devices currently stuck to their daughter’s heads, “was the story of a drunkard at worst and rumor at best. I’m not perfect Summer…and I’m sorry. I’m sorry that both of our daughters are paying the price for my incompetence…” she said softly as the two mothers could do nothing but watch hopelessly on.

They just prayed that they would get their daughters back and not have to add to the statistic of burying a child with those horrible goggles on their heads.

#bumblebyweek #I'm very behind so sorry!#rwby #yang x blake #yang xiao long #blake belladonna

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furiousgoldfish · 5 years

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Actually i’m not done being pissed off at fathers and their entire culture it’s been enough of this bullshit.

Fathers have built such specific environment for themselves where they call themselves “provider” and make themselves seem fucking invaluable, heads of families and houses, the leaders, the protectors, the most important dna, the one who makes decisions, creates orders and assignments, the one worth impressing and wanting approval from, and the reality of them is so, so pathetic.

Firstly provider? That is the first straight up lie because fathers are the worst most spoiled fucking babies, they’re there to take and not provide. They’re here for the attention, support, and labour of the entire family, they will not clean, cook, tidy, iron, wash floors, do dishes, or even give basic attention and empathy to another family member unless it somehow benefits their image as a good father, and even then it’s only for other people to see! I’ve never seen anyone take attention and fish for constant praise more selfishly than fathers and I’m fucking sick of it, if you need to be paid attention and praised 24/7 call yourself a fucking baby that you are, you’re exhausting your family for your own needs and that is not what we’re here for.

I’m sickened by their fucking hypocrisy of playing the victim because “he has a job” because you know fucking what, if they had no family, they would still have to have a job, and they built the society specifically that so with a wife, and kids, they would have higher social status at their job, they have less chance of being fired because nobody wants to fire a father, they have bigger paychecks and get more tax relief for supporting children and then they turn around and call us “mouths to feed”? They literally have the nerve to take everything they can, use us to fuck up at work and get away with it! Not to mention that if they live in rural areas, they commonly force their family to take care of gardens, animals and their entire fucking property for FUCKING FREE and can you even fucking imagine how much more expensive would it be for them to live at that level if they had to pay people to cook and clean and take care of property? They’re literally gaining so much fucking value by forcing their family to do physical labour for them and then they call it “chores” AND COMPLAIN ABOUT IT NOT BEING DONE WELL ENOUGH! They still have the nerve to complain about food, complain about clothes, complain about every single fucking thing anyone does for them, oh and don’t even get me started on them being like “you’re not doing it for me, you’re doing it for yourself” A FUCKING LIE! I’ve been told this all my life and I never had one(1) benefit of anything I was ordered to do, it was literally all for his lazy, selfish, disgusting ass.

Next thing, why the fuck do they think they can append their fucking last names to us and pretend they’re heads of bloodlines, some of us would rather die than walk around shamed with their disgusting legacies of abuse and entitlement, we don’t fucking want or need their last names they can stick them up their butt.

How is it fucking possible that a family would allow their most entitles, selfish, self-serving, self-gratifying, self-important, and only-caring-for-his-own-ass member to order others around? They literally force family members to work for his benefit alone! It’s never for the good of entire family, he’s literally only looking after himself! How many times fathers look into what other family members wanna do and achieve? Literally never! They decide for everyone and it’s always in their own personal benefit! They don’t even fucking act like the rest of the family is allowed to have interests that aren’t benefiting them, they will literally decide that family should be interested in whatever he’s interested, and that whatever’s good for him should as well be good for the rest, this is not how humanity fucking works! Why the fuck should one shitty ass human decide for multiple people! Why the fuck would anyone with a brain allow another to decide what’s in their interest! Yet fathers just fucking go with that without even thinking bc they don’t view the rest of the family as equal people! Some go as fucking far as compare families to corporations and call themselves the boss, that is fucking dehumanizing and none of us are getting paid! We get no rights or benefits we should just fucking be happy with whatever we get and be grateful we’re allowed to sleep, in his fucking house! Like you’re a human being if you can berate people you live with for, you know, living with you, and making your life hella lot easier.

How many times has your father acted like you’re obliged to be interested in his interests, and take part in his hobbies while he never did the same to you? How many times did he act like you’re supposed to be working your ass off to be good enough for him and to impress him, while he never even considered you worthy of impressing? How many times has he raised his voice to make sure that you know what he is saying is a fucking ORDER like you’re a servant or a slave and not equal human being he cares about now hurting? How many times has he berated you for “not knowing what you’re doing” while he launched into his most selfish fantasies and pushed other people into working for it, because he just fucking felt like it and never even considered the labour and pain it was causing them? How many times did he humiliate and make fun of you to put off attention from what a huge fucking abusive asshole he is? How many times do fathers cause the most pain, shame, work, fear and terror for their families, and they still have the nerve to call themselves protectors and leaders? How much leading is directed into his own personal hellhole fantasies which make his life awesome and yours a servitude? How many times has he implied or stated directly that he matters more than you, his child, his family member? How many times were you reminded that he is superior to you in every single way? How many times did he berate you for resting, for not working, for not doing things for him, while he felt immensely entitled to spending as much leisure time as possible doing exactly what he likes, not thinking for one second he should instead be doing something for you?

This is not humane, this is not okay, it’s not normal, he is one, despicable, selfish human being, and calling himself father opened up thousand of possibilities of abuse, exploitation, and on top of it, playing the fucking victim and a hero at the same time. Ditch fathers. Kick them out. They’re not the providers, they’re the most spoiled babies everyone else is providing for. And most of all, they’re liars who take from others and give to themselves, constantly. Please feel free to throw all of their lies, in their face, every single day of their lives until they remember where they fucking stand, and no longer feel the right to tell you fucking anything. They are not worth wanting approval from, you’re the one they should be seeking approval from.

#father culture #anti fathers #feminism #child abuse #abusive father #toxic father #abuse #anti patriarchy

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moniloni-blog1 · 4 years

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2. Financial limit your renovating costs

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As per the specialists at the National Kitchen and Bath Association, you can foresee spreading your financial limit over these classifications, so you can get a fantasy kitchen like the one above in the home available to be purchased at 3414 E. Shore Drive, Seattle, WA 98112.

Kitchen rebuilding:

Configuration expenses: 4%

Establishment: 17%

Apparatuses and ventilation: 14%

Cabinetry and equipment: 29%

Ledges: 10%

Lighting: 5%

Ground surface: 7%

Entryways and windows: 4%

Dividers and roofs: 5%

Fixtures and plumbing: 4%

Random: 1%

home-available to be purchased in-charlotte-nc-washroom renovating venture

Furthermore, on the off chance that you long for an ace shower with a breathtaking open shower like this one in the home available to be purchased at 230 Tryon St., 1204/1304, Charlotte, NC 28202, get it going considering these rates.

Washroom rebuilding:

Configuration expenses: 4%

Establishment: 20%

Installations: 15%

Cabinetry and equipment: 16%

Ledges: 7%

Lighting and ventilation: 5%

Ground surface: 9%

Entryways and windows: 4%

Dividers and roofs: 5%

Fixtures and plumbing: 14%

Random: 1%

These rules for planning kitchen and restroom renovating tasks will help forestall sticker stun when it comes time to understand offers (fundamentally, a fixed-valued gauge) from temporary workers. The contractual worker offer sheet will give a top to bottom overview of all aspects of the rebuilding venture, including the particular expenses for the activity, in addition to a potential installment plan. Despite the fact that the contactor's offered is recorded as a hard copy, it's not unchangeable - on the off chance that you need to overhaul certain materials, or extra fixes should be made after the undertaking begins, the temporary worker will refresh the offer with a change request for you to affirm.

3. Be forthright (and legit) about the absolute spending plan

Having an unmistakable spending plan for a redesign seems like an undeniable initial step, yet being forthcoming about accounts can be clumsy for a few of us. "In some cases this discussion can be awkward, yet it's so natural to overspend on the kitchen and restroom," says Anne Reagan, editorial manager in-head of Porch.com, a startup that associates property holders with renovating experts. "These two rooms can be over the top expensive: The national normal kitchen rebuild cost is anyplace between $20,122 (for a midrange, minor kitchen redesign) to $119,909 (for an upscale, significant kitchen rebuild)." Since the course of events likewise impacts costs, realize that surging item requests will rapidly drive up the bill.

4. "Do I need a home grant for my rebuilding venture?"

Perhaps. Things like including another gas line will require a home grant. "Regularly, the expert just gets allows for the property holder, however a mortgage holder is answerable for ensuring it's done appropriately," Reagan says. Make a point to get some information about the expense of pulling home grants as it so happens and guarantee they're remembered for your financial limit.

5. Stay away from scope creep in development ventures

You realize how adding a household item to a room sporadically prompts considerably more stylistic layout buys, in light of the fact that something so new winds up pointing out the more well-adored things in the room? A solitary room redesign can motivate a similar makeover frenzy, something the experts call "scope creep." "Extension creep can be costs engaged with finding bigger issues (like significant pipes fixes, shape, or boiling water-tank issues) just as the possibility of '... while we're grinding away, how about we additionally redesign this,'" says Reagan. "I can't consider any individual who has redesigned a kitchen or washroom and halted directly at the passage to the entryway - all the time the ace shower rebuild includes the room, and the kitchen may include the lounge area." Keep limits set up to abstain from transforming a solitary room rebuild into an absolute home update.

home-available to be purchased in-san-francisco-ca-kitchen-redesigning venture

6. Think past retail cost

When taking a gander at your decisions for things like ledges or machines for your kitchen rebuild, you first take a gander at the sticker price, isn't that so? In any case, what you may not be thinking about is different costs expected to get that fantasy ledge into your kitchen. These are the "related expenses."

"For instance, in the event that you need marble ledges, you'll have to buy the whole piece (regardless of whether you needn't bother with the whole section) and pay for cutting expenses, completing charges, edging, conveyance, and then some (costs shift by district and provider). So not exclusively is marble on the very good quality per square foot, [but also] there are other higher establishment costs related with this material," Reagan says. The equivalent is valid for anything custom to your space, including tile, flooring, backdrop, and so on. So before you handle a difficult kitchen redesign like the one above, inside a congregation turned-home-available to be purchased at 653 Dolores St., San Francisco, CA 94110, ensure you're really up for the test.

7. "Would i be able to be my own general contractual worker?"

Just assume the assignment of going about as your own general contractual worker on enormous tasks like kitchen and restroom renovating in the event that you can deal with being exclusively answerable for employing subcontractors, sourcing materials and embellishments, and ensuring everything lands on schedule. By assuming the errand of sourcing these things, you can spare huge - on the things themselves, however you can dodge any abundance venture the executives type costs too. Notwithstanding shopping deals, look at compositional resale looks for deals. Living space for Humanity ReStores regularly have everything from tiles to toilets to the intermittent apparatus at an enormous markdown (besides, you bolster a decent purpose!). While a few states necessitate that general temporary workers be authorized and safeguarded, property holders can much of the time skirt these expenses by going about as proprietor manufacturer - as long as you employ authorized subcontractors to finish the work.

There are constantly different errands you can remove on to keep away from extra from pocket costs. Reagan has only a couple of expressions of alert: "I think an individual should be extremely, genuine about their expertise level and time to devote to this task ... indeed, even experienced DIYers find that they have to bring in a specialist handyman or circuit tester to carry out specific responsibilities (particularly the assignments that require a permit)."

Have you as of late handled a kitchen or restroom renovating venture? What tips do you need to share about the procedure? Remark beneath!

Bathroom Remodeling Olney MD

A Bathroom Remodeling Olney MD increases the value of your home, refreshes its style, and improves it adjusted to your present needs. Remodels are the best time to present upgrades that will serve you and your family for a considerable length of time to come.

In case you're going through cash for a restroom redesign this year, think about making one or a few of these basic changes to improve the usefulness, stockpiling, and solace of your washroom.

Toilets with concealed tanks—in which the water stockpiling vessel is mounted inside the divider—have a few advantages. They merit considering in the event that you are renovating a restroom, particularly a littler washroom, where the plan can spare space.

Covered up tank toilets (some of the time called concealed reservoir toilets) spare you valuable space, and low-stream models assist spare with watering each time you flush. It's a keen decision that expands the estimation of your home after the rebuild. These are suitable for all restrooms styles, however they fit particularly well in current and contemporary stylistic themes. However, know that normal support can be troublesome since there is typically no simple access to the tank if the inward functions need consideration.

Another style of tankless can utilizes a weight valve, for example, those regularly found in business settings or open restrooms. These are likewise choices, albeit such toilets are boisterous and will in general give a restroom a fairly modern feel.

You'll have huge amounts of ground surface, divider and tile decisions to make during your washroom rebuild. The most significant for security will be the floor tiling of your shower.

Pick a little, finished shower tile. The surface and the extra grouting will prevent your feet from slipping once the floor gets sudsy and wet. Most present day washroom tiles are anything but difficult to clean and they use grouts that oppose form, mugginess, and stains.

Artistic and porcelain tiles give you many style and stylistic layout potential outcomes. Blend and match various examples and hues for greatest visual effect, or accomplish something progressively downplayed for an agreeable look.

Such a large number of individuals add a tub to their washrooms since they have an inclination that they "should." But a bath isn't constantly a need, particularly in the event that you never clean up. While there are still realtors who contend that a restroom with a tub offers more noteworthy intrigue to imminent purchasers than one with only a shower, this is considerably less valid for the present purchasers than it used to be. Also, your significant concern ought to be with how you are going to utilize the space for the following barely any years. In the event that you love showers, at that point, definitely, remember it for your rebuild. Be that as it may, in the event that you once in a while, if at any point, scrub down, you might be greatly improved off introducing only a huge shower. A bath is to be sure all the more speaking to future purchasers who may have kids. In any case, if your home incorporates another family restroom that has a tub or tub/shower blend, there is no motivation behind why your lord shower can't overlook the bath for an extravagant shower.

Obviously, in the event that you have a huge washroom, you get presumably incorporate both without stressing a lot over space. Be that as it may, on the off chance that you need to pick, you ought to consistently go with what is generally practical for you as of now. What's more, that may mean letting the bath well enough alone for your arrangements.

#Basement Remodeling Olney MD #Bathroom Remodeling Olney MD #Remodeling Contractors Olney MD #Kitchen and Bath Remodeling Olney MD #Home Remodeling Olney MD

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temptsfate · 5 years

Text

CHRISTOPHER LOMBARDI.

RELATION: SON OF IKE LOMBARDI / BLOOD FAMILY TO DON LOMBARDI

essentially, this is war, and christopher wants to become more actively involved.

from a young age, christopher was hand-picked and groomed to assist his father as his right-hand. despite his esteemed position in the ranks as JDM’s eldest son/ his job title has been considerably “unofficial”. this was mainly due to the early age he began to learn the game. As he continued to age, it was clear that no one showed loyalty to THE KING like Christopher, and his father knew it. In the passing years, it’s without question that his father trusts his son more than anyone else in the organization. He’s known as an exclusive "soldier”, especially because of all the “sensitive” jobs JDM has entrusted to him only. The Father and Son have built a long, established agreement that Christopher would work towards the end goal as JDM’s future successor .

Still in his “glorified soldier” rank, thinks he’s ready to officially move up but there are certain recognitions that he hasn’t been given by his Father yet.

AGE, 28 yrs old

What does this character represent to you, if anything?

COMING OF AGE. - proving himself, taking on the world of business and demonstrating he is ready to move forward to an even bigger playpen despite his father’s hesitation. it’s about proving to not only the parent, but also yourself that you can produce results when jumping into the game.

What goals do you have for this character?:

Exploring how: Chris handles extra workload beyond the usual ( especially in a high pressure time for his Father, and all his inner circle) , and taking some initiative to go the extra mile in his line of work. the nature of rps/progress of character expansion are about as far as the eye can see for my goals and outcomes of this character. Looking for RP interactions that challenge Christopher with a hands-on taste in high roller’s shoes — and how he handles the new found excitement.

—【 R O L E 】—

From a young age, Christopher Lombardi has been hand-picked and groomed by his Father so he could grow into the role as his father’s “right hand” — and one day, the future successor who takes over the Royale Hotel, himself. Christopher is/has been significantly active with the Lombardi-Italians alliance. Though this is a recognized position within the ranks of Miami Beach’s crime scene, Christopher’s prominence is mainly known within the circle, and by some occasional “wannabe-associates”. Christopher is considered an untouchable because of his well-connected status and reputation for fierce loyalty to the Don and JDM. Christopher is also the youngest soldier, but exclusively handles sensitive assignments that are ONLY entrusted to him.

Christopher handles the grimier side of Miami Beach nightlife: the guy who pays off the cops, arranges escorts for well-heeled guests, catering to players in the high-stakes cabana poker game. running the hotel’s ground game, and other miscellaneous tasks that require the finesse of doing business, and obtaining information that JDM can rely on staying off the record.

Fulfillment. How well do they serve that role?

Christopher quickly adapted to this life, and continues to remain levelheaded in this fast-paced atmosphere. He has proved to be easy, and natural in the dark waters of this life. He currently struggles with taking a step back from the much more important situations that require one to strategically thinking ahead with precision. Christopher is slowly learning, and in certain cases, these learning experiences may even come at the price of some mistakes.

Personal quote and(or) motto: Exceptional performers are masterful opportunists, keenly alert to opportunity Reasons behind this motto/quote:

Sex.. Cisgender Male Ethnicity.. Italian

Occupation: Soldier for the Italian Mob in Miami Beach / GM at the Royale Hotel Lounge (Offically)

Orientation/Sexual preference: Bisexual

Any history behind their sexual orientation?: doesn’t openly reveal that he’s bisexual - family does not know, as it’s not something widely accepted amongst the family business or values. he first experienced this in a 3-some between another man and a woman (a couple) - when he was 21. Why this sexual choice?: experimental - christopher is a very sexual being at times, and likes to experiment here and there. Do they believe it's right?: he doesn’t exactly advertise his open-minded sexuality, but doesn’t believe it’s wrong. christopher just knows how to play the game, and knows what not to advocate behind. it’s risky in his family’s line of business. Are they opposed for their sexual choice?: preference for women, and has a specific type when it comes to men.

—【 P E R S O N A L I T Y 】—

Personality: dynamic, people-person, influential, smooth-talker, do-er/action taker, resourceful, adaptive, impulsive, easily bored, self-serving, sensual, fun-loving, perceptive, impatient, risk-taker, thick-skinned,sense of humor, great at improvising, bad at long term planning, not good at saving money, loyal, energized by fast results/bored by unforeseen challenges, womanizer, experimental, secretive, flirtatious, well-liked by peers and outsiders, takes criticism well, irresponsible at times, inconsiderate, oblivious to the bigger game of the mob life, hedonistic

Most prominent personality trait: Dynamic Best traits of their personality: Influential, Loyal, resourceful and great at improvising, people-person. Worst traits of their personality: Prone to impulsive behavior, and at times - still too distracted by lofty pursuit to keep a firm grip on his agenda. Jung personality test result: ESTP

Morals(and what they are): Family loyalty - not above dealing drugs, swindling others out of their money, enforcing repayment even if this means carrying out at the expense of others. The few things that count as ‘out of line’ are: sex trafficking, child labor, physical abuse towards defenseless victims

What defines right and wrong for them?: Business is business - no exceptions. He lacks a sense of morality, but upholds family loyalty as the true defining value/basis of his actions. Christopher is smooth in the dark waters of his family business, and ultimately sees their survival as the prime dictator of what is right and wrong. Do they hold their definitions of right and wrong above other people’s: Only when it comes to repayment of what is owed to him or his family. Nothing personal.

……… MENTAL, SPIRITUAL, EMOTIONAL ………

Are they logical thinkers(if they have a mentally crippling disease, this is null)?: definitely acts based on logic, than emotions. he can be a little sloppy at times - especially when it comes to spontaneous whims, but knows when NOT to fuck up.

Right brain/left brained?: Left Brained

Good habits: Always extends great hospitality and manners in business deals, unshakable loyalty, never fucks up with ground games/cards and brings his A game when the time calls for it. Never panics under pressure, nor outlashes in ill-tasting behavior/doesn’t burn bridges

Bad habits: He is notorious for being frequently being late to meetings with his Father/other higher ups, occasionally irresponsible in his business dealings (working on it now that he’s going to be more independent), and generally less "together" in his affairs than the rest of his Father and Uncle’s crew.

Zodiac: Leo Alignment(Good/evil/bystander/etc.): True Neutral

What caused their kind of personality to form?(based upon upbringing/social whatnot): Would you say their personality was influenced by their caretakers/guardians?: Yes, mainly his Father, somewhat his Uncle, and the nature of their family business. Do they like their personality?: He gets results. Christopher has always been well-liked in many aspects with business, customers and pursuits. His flirtatious nature has made it easy in the department of sexual endeavors. His influential abilities of persuasion and gregarious energy has made it easy to establish business deals, and connections. He’s used to getting what he wants if he puts his mind to it, on top of maintaining a certain dominance without having to obtain by force or aggression. Christopher can talk his way out of things, even when he messes up a bit. He’s a smooth operator, and certainly can’t complain. He knows he needs to work on being less careless with his impulses, but for him, it’s nothing he can’t fix. Christopher is an ultimate believer of himself, without the narcissism.

#about

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theadmiringbog · 5 years

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RULE 1 / Stand up straight with your shoulders back

RULE 2 / Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

RULE 3 / Make friends with people who want the best for you

RULE 4 / Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today

RULE 5 / Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

RULE 6 / Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world

RULE 7 / Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

RULE 8 / Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie

RULE 9 / Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

RULE 10 / Be precise in your speech

RULE 11 / Do not bother children when they are skateboarding

RULE 12 / Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

RULE 1 / Stand up straight with your shoulders back

If a dominant lobster is badly defeated, its brain basically dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinate’s brain—one more appropriate to its new, lowly position. Its original brain just isn’t sophisticated to manage the transformation from king to bottom dog without virtually complete dissolution and regrowth. Anyone who has experienced a painful transformation after a serious defeat in romance or career may feel some sense of kinship with the once successful crustacean.

Among the chimp troupes he studied, males who were successful in the longer term had to buttress their physical prowess with more sophisticated attributes. Even the most brutal chimp despot can be taken down, after all, by two opponents, each three-quarters as mean. In consequence, males who stay on top longer are those who form reciprocal coalitions with their lower-status compatriots, and who pay careful attention to the troupe’s females and their infants. The political ploy of baby-kissing is literally millions of years old.

“In my kingdom,” as the Red Queen tells Alice in Wonderland, “you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.”

If you have a high status, on the other hand, the counter’s cold, pre-reptilian mechanics assume that your niche is secure, productive and safe, and that you are well buttressed with social support. It thinks the chance that something will damage you is low and can be safely discounted. Change might be opportunity, instead of disaster.

If someone is badly hurt at some point in life—traumatized—the dominance counter can transform in a manner that makes additional hurt more rather than less likely. This often happens in the case of people, now adults, who were viciously bullied during childhood or adolescence. They become anxious and easily upset. They shield themselves with a defensive crouch, and avoid the direct eye contact interpretable as a dominance challenge. This means that the damage caused by the bullying (the lowering of status and confidence) can continue, even after the bullying has ended.

When the wakening occurs—when once-naïve people recognize in themselves the seeds of evil and monstrosity, and see themselves as dangerous (at least potentially)— their fear decreases. They develop more self-respect. Then, perhaps, they begin to resist oppression. They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too. They see they can and must stand up, because they begin to understand how genuinely monstrous they will become, otherwise, feeding on their resentment, transforming it into the most destructive of wishes. To say it again: There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life.

Maybe you are a loser. And maybe you’re not—but if you are, you don’t have to continue in that mode. Maybe you just have a bad habit. Maybe you’re even just a collection of bad habits. Nonetheless, even if you came by your poor posture honestly—even if you were unpopular or bullied at home or in grade school—it’s not necessarily appropriate now. Circumstances change. If you slump around, with the same bearing that characterizes a defeated lobster, people will assign you a lower status, and the old counter that you share with crustaceans, sitting at the very base of your brain, will assign you a low dominance number. Then your brain will not produce as much serotonin. This will make you less happy, and more anxious and sad, and more likely to back down when you should stand up for yourself. It will also decrease the probability that you will get to live in a good neighbourhood, have access to the highest quality resources, and obtain a healthy, desirable mate. It will render you more likely to abuse cocaine and alcohol, as you live for the present in a world full of uncertain futures. It will increase your susceptibility to heart disease, cancer and dementia. All in all, it’s just not good.

Thus strengthened and emboldened, you may choose to embrace Being, and work for its furtherance and improvement. Thus strengthened, you may be able to stand, even during the illness of a loved one, even during the death of a parent, and allow others to find strength alongside you when they would otherwise be overwhelmed with despair. Thus emboldened, you will embark on the voyage of your life, let your light shine, so to speak, on the heavenly hill, and pursue your rightful destiny. Then the meaning of your life may be sufficient to keep the corrupting influence of mortal despair at bay. Then you may be able to accept the terrible burden of the World, and find joy.

RULE 2 / Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

Perhaps Heaven is something you must build, and immortality something you must earn.

You need to consider the future and think, “What might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly? What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences? What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?”

RULE 3 / MAKE FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE WHO WANT THE BEST FOR YOU

When people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives—they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better. Freud called this a “repetition compulsion.”

Are you so sure the person crying out to be saved has not decided a thousand times to accept his lot of pointless and worsening suffering, simply because it is easier than shouldering any true responsibility? Are you enabling a delusion?

Vice is easy. Failure is easy, too. It’s easier not to shoulder a burden. It’s easier not to think, and not to do, and not to care. It’s easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today, and drown the upcoming months and years in today’s cheap pleasures. As the infamous father of the Simpson clan puts it, immediately prior to downing a jar of mayonnaise and vodka, “That’s a problem for Future Homer. Man, I don’t envy that guy!”

RULE 4 / COMPARE YOURSELF TO WHO YOU WERE YESTERDAY, NOT TO WHO SOMEONE ELSE IS TODAY

You are either a success, a comprehensive, singular, over-all good thing, or its opposite, a failure, a comprehensive, singular, irredeemably bad thing. The words imply no alternative and no middle ground. However, in a world as complex as ours, such generalizations (really, such failure to differentiate) are a sign of naive, unsophisticated or even malevolent analysis. There are vital degrees and gradations of value obliterated by this binary system, and the consequences are not good.

The world allows for many ways of Being. If you don’t succeed at one, you can try another. You can pick something better matched to your unique mix of strengths, weaknesses and situation. Furthermore, if changing games does not work, you can invent a new one.

But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning.

When the internal critic puts you down using such comparisons, here’s how it operates: First, it selects a single, arbitrary domain of comparison (fame, maybe, or power). Then it acts as if that domain is the only one that is relevant. Then it contrasts you unfavourably with someone truly stellar, within that domain. It can take that final step even further, using the unbridgeable gap between you and its target of comparison as evidence for the fundamental injustice of life.

You set the following goal: by the end of the day, I want things in my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, “What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?” Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee, in triumph. Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that’s magic. That’s compound interest. Do that for three years, and your life will be entirely different. Now you’re aiming for something higher. Now you’re wishing on a star. Now the beam is disappearing from your eye, and you’re learning to see. And what you aim at determines what you see. That’s worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see.

What would your life look like, if it were better? What would Life Itself look like? What does “better” even mean?

Everything you value is a product of unimaginably lengthy developmental processes, personal, cultural and biological. You don’t understand how what you want—and, therefore, what you see—is conditioned by the immense, abysmal, profound past.

Faith is not the childish belief in magic. That is ignorance or even willful blindness. It is instead the realization that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being.

Notice something that bothers you, that concerns you, that will not let you be, which you could fix, that you would fix. You can find such somethings by asking yourself (as if you genuinely want to know) three questions: “What is it that is bothering me?” “Is that something I could fix?” and “Would I actually be willing to fix it?”

If you find that the answer is “no,” to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day.

What if you allowed yourself a glass of wine with dinner, or curled up on the sofa and read, or watched a stupid movie, as a reward? What if you instructed your wife, or your husband, to say “good job” after you fixed whatever you fixed? Would that motivate you? The people from whom you want thanks might not be very proficient in offering it, to begin with, but that shouldn’t stop you. People can learn,

Ask yourself what you would require to be motivated to undertake the job, honestly, and listen to the answer. Don’t tell yourself, “I shouldn’t need to do that to motivate myself.” What

You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t over-estimate your self-knowledge.

Do this every day, for a while. Then do it for the rest of your life.

You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself. Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good. Now, your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully….

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

RULE 5 / DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN DO ANYTHING THAT MAKES YOU DISLIKE THEM

Children are damaged when those charged with their care, afraid of any conflict or upset, no longer dare to correct them, and leave them without guidance. I can recognize such children on the street. They are doughy and unfocused and vague. They are leaden and dull instead of golden and bright. They are uncarved blocks, trapped in a perpetual state of waiting-to-be.

RULE 6 / SET YOUR HOUSE IN PERFECT ORDER BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE THE WORLD

if one parent abused three children, and each of those children had three children, and so on, then there would be three abusers the first generation, nine the second, twenty-seven the third, eighty-one the fourth—and so on exponentially. After twenty generations, more than ten billion would have suffered childhood abuse: more people than currently inhabit the planet. But instead, abuse disappears across generations. People constrain its spread. That’s a testament to the genuine dominance of good over evil in the human heart.

When the hurricane hit New Orleans, and the town sank under the waves, was that a natural disaster? The Dutch prepare their dikes for the worst storm in ten thousand years. Had New Orleans followed that example, no tragedy would have occurred. It’s not that no one knew. The Flood Control Act of 1965 mandated improvements in the levee system that held back Lake Pontchartrain. The system was to be completed by 1978. Forty years later, only 60 percent of the work had been done. Willful blindness and corruption took the city down.

A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known—that’s sin. That’s failure to hit the mark. And the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God’s goodness—the goodness of reality—was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure. That’s insanely responsible. But the alternative is to judge reality as insufficient, to criticize Being itself, and to sink into resentment and the desire for revenge.

RULE 7 / PURSUE WHAT IS MEANINGFUL (NOT WHAT IS EXPEDIENT)

for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:16-19. KJV) What in the world should be done about that? The simplest, most obvious, and most direct answer? Pursue pleasure. Follow your impulses. Live for the moment. Do what’s expedient. Lie, cheat, steal, deceive, manipulate—but don’t get caught. In an ultimately meaningless universe, what possible difference could it make?

Benjamin Franklin once suggested that a newcomer to a neighbourhood ask a new neighbour to do him or her a favour, citing an old maxim: He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged. In Franklin’s opinion, asking someone for something (not too extreme, obviously) was the most useful and immediate invitation to social interaction. Such asking on the part of the newcomer provided the neighbour with an opportunity to show him- or herself as a good person, at first encounter.

RULE 8 / TELL THE TRUTH—OR, AT LEAST, DON'T LIE

Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.

Typical calculated ends might include “to impose my ideological beliefs,” “to prove that I am (or was) right,” “to appear competent,” “to ratchet myself up the dominance hierarchy,” “to avoid responsibility” (or its twin, “to garner credit for others’ actions”), “to be promoted,” “to attract the lion’s share of attention,” “to ensure that everyone likes me,” “to garner the benefits of martyrdom,” “to justify my cynicism,” “to rationalize my antisocial outlook,” “to minimize immediate conflict,” “to maintain my naïveté,” “to capitalize on my vulnerability,” “to always appear as the sainted one,” or (this one is particularly evil) “to ensure that it is always my unloved child’s fault.” These are all examples of what Sigmund Freud’s compatriot, the lesser-known Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler, called “life-lies.”

What did she know about her fifty-two-year-old self, when still a teenager? Even now, many years later, she has only the vaguest, lowest-resolution idea of her post-work Eden. She refuses to notice. What did her life mean, if that initial goal was wrong? She’s afraid of opening Pandora’s box, where all the troubles of the world reside. But hope is in there, too. Instead, she warps her life to fit the fantasies of a sheltered adolescent.

A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie.

If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward. This is a biological truth, as well as a conceptual truth. When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not…you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.

If you’re lucky, and you fail, and you try something new, you move ahead. If that doesn’t work, you try something different again. A minor modification will suffice in fortunate circumstances. It is therefore prudent to begin with small changes, and see if they help. Sometimes, however, the entire hierarchy of values is faulty, and the whole edifice has to be abandoned. The whole game must be changed.

Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice. To accept the truth means to sacrifice—and if you have rejected the truth for a long time, then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt.

“Did what I want happen? No. Then my aim or my methods were wrong. I still have something to learn.”

That is the voice of authenticity.

“Did what I want happen? No. Then the world is unfair. People are jealous, and too stupid to understand. It is the fault of something or someone else.”

That is the voice of inauthenticity.

It is not too far from there to “they should be stopped” or “they must be hurt” or “they must be destroyed.” Whenever you hear about something incomprehensibly brutal, such ideas have manifested themselves.

it is necessary to aim at your target, however traditional, with your eyes wide open. You have a direction, but it might be wrong. You have a plan, but it might be ill-formed. You may have been led astray by your own ignorance—and, worse, by your own unrevealed corruption. You must make friends, therefore, with what you don’t know, instead of what you know. You must remain awake to catch yourself in the act. You must remove the beam in your own eye, before you concern yourself with the mote in your brother’s. And in this way, you strengthen your own spirit, so it can tolerate the burden of existence, and you rejuvenate the state.

Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate.

You are by no means only what you already know. You are also all that which you could know, if you only would. Thus, you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. You should never give up the better that resides within for the security you already have—and certainly not when you have already caught a glimpse, an undeniable glimpse, of something beyond.

In His human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to the good, to God. In consequence, He died and was reborn. The Word that produces order from chaos sacrifices everything, even itself, to God. That single sentence, wise beyond comprehension, sums up Christianity.

Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us. In such cases, we might never recover or, if we do, we change a lot.

Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.

If you bend everything totally, blindly and willfully towards the attainment of a goal, and only that goal, you will never be able to discover if another goal would serve you, and the world, better. It is this that you sacrifice if you do not tell the truth. If, instead, you tell the truth, your values transform as you progress. If you allow yourself to be informed by the reality manifesting itself, as you struggle forward, your notions of what is important will change. You will reorient yourself, sometimes gradually, and sometimes suddenly and radically. Imagine: you

Perhaps it is better to conceptualize it this way: Everyone needs a concrete, specific goal—an ambition, and a purpose—to limit chaos and make intelligible sense of his or her life. But all such concrete goals can and should be subordinated to what might be considered a meta-goal, which is a way of approaching and formulating goals themselves. The meta-goal could be “live in truth.”

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.

RULE 9 / Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

Memory is a tool. Memory is the past’s guide to the future. If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again. That’s the purpose of memory. It’s not “to remember the past.” It’s to stop the same damn thing from happening over and over. I thought,

If I had been the adherent of a left-wing, social-justice ideology, I would have told her the first story. If I had been the adherent of a conservative ideology, I would have told her the second. And her responses after having been told either the first or the second story would have proved to my satisfaction and hers that the story I had told her was true—completely, irrefutably true. And that would have been advice.

You can be pretty smart if you can just shut up.

RULE 10 / Be precise in your speech

We see rocks, because we can throw them, and clouds, because they can rain on us, and apples, to eat, and the automobiles of other people, to get in our way and annoy us. We see tools and obstacles, not objects or things.

Here’s the terrible truth about such matters: every single voluntarily unprocessed and uncomprehended and ignored reason for marital failure will compound and conspire and will then plague that betrayed and self-betrayed woman for the rest of her life. The same goes for her husband. All she—he—they—or we—must do to ensure such an outcome is nothing: don’t notice, don’t react, don’t attend, don’t discuss, don’t consider, don’t work for peace, don’t take responsibility. Don’t confront the chaos and turn it into order—just wait, anything but naïve and innocent, for the chaos to rise up and engulf you instead.

Why refuse to specify, when specifying the problem would enable its solution? Because to specify the problem is to admit that it exists. Because to specify the problem is to allow yourself to know what you want, say, from friend or lover—and then you will know, precisely and cleanly, when you don’t get it, and that will hurt, sharply and specifically.

But you will learn something from that, and use what you learn in the future—and the alternative to that single sharp pain is the dull ache of continued hopelessness and vague failure and the sense that time, precious time, is slipping by.

RULE 11 / Do not bother children when they are skateboarding

Women have a strong proclivity to marry across or up the economic dominance hierarchy. They prefer a partner of equal or greater status. This holds true cross-culturally.184 The same does not hold, by the way, for men, who are perfectly willing to marry across or down (as the Pew data indicate), although they show a preference for somewhat younger mates.

Any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are, of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and the losers to criticize it. But (1) the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy (as some will be better and some worse at that pursuit no matter what it is) and (2) it is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends life its sustaining meaning.

We experience almost all the emotions that make life deep and engaging as a consequence of moving successfully towards something deeply desired and valued. The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequence is difference in outcome. Absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself—and then there would be nothing worth living for.

We might instead note with gratitude that a complex, sophisticated culture allows for many games and many successful players, and that a well-structured culture allows the individuals that compose it to play and to win, in many different fashions.

There are only two major reasons for resentment: being taken advantage of (or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of), or whiny refusal to adopt responsibility and grow up. If you’re resentful, look for the reasons.

Agreeable, compassionate, empathic, conflict-averse people (all those traits group together) let people walk on them, and they get bitter. They sacrifice themselves for others, sometimes excessively, and cannot comprehend why that is not reciprocated.

RULE 12 / Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

I started with my thoughts about my son. She had asked, like everyone in her situation, “Why my husband? Why me? Why this?” My realization of the tight interlinking between vulnerability and Being was the best answer I had for her. I told her an old Jewish story, which I believe is part of the commentary on the Torah. It begins with a question, structured like a Zen koan. Imagine a Being who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. What does such a Being lack?211 The answer? Limitation. If you are already everything, everywhere, always, there is nowhere to go and nothing to be. Everything that could be already is, and everything that could happen already has. And it is for this reason, so the story goes, that God created man. No limitation, no story. No story, no Being. That idea has helped me deal with the terrible fragility of Being.

Perhaps that is true prayer: the question, “What have I done wrong, and what can I do now to set things at least a little bit more right?”

#12 Rules for Life #books

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overexplainingautistic · 6 years

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What Is Pain? (Alexithymia + Sensory Processing Disorder)

Since getting top surgery, I’ve been thinking a lot more about pain and the ways I experience and define it internally. Pretty soon after I woke up after surgery, I was asked to rate my pain by assigning it a value. I said that pain scales have never been very easy for me to work with, but did offer a number to the best of my ability. I based it off of what impression I wanted them to have, instead of my own internal feeling though, because how I felt was impossible to translate, but how they should treat me was easier to aim for. Since then I’ve tried to figure out a way to make a more personalized scale that will be easier to use in the future. I ran into some problems though, which is what this post is about.

First I’m going to separate two terms that have the same word just to make it easier to use both in this post. Normally both are called pain, but I’m going to call them red-pain and white-pain. Red-pain is the pain of a cut or a bruise or a burn or anything along those lines including more painful iterations of similar things. White-pain includes red-pain, but also includes other kinds of pain that are less obvious to some. Pain from sensory processing disorder is included here. Anything defined by the person experiencing it as pain is what I’m using white-pain to mean. I don’t know if these terms are defined well enough, but hopefully my use of them will make it clearer what they mean to me. I suspect different people define red-pain differently to some degree.

Even with red-pain, I can’t really assign it to a scale. I’m hypersensitive to red-pain, and there are things that I would call red-pain that don’t feel painful to me, but are instead a hint at it that I suspect many other people don’t notice if they even experience it. At some level, red-pain for me mixes with “unpleasant sense of touch” so most points of strong contact my body has with any solid surface fall in this range. Right now, my elbow on my chair’s armrest, my foot’s two points of contact with the floor and my desk frame, and my bottom on my chair’s seat are all examples of this sensory-space where for me, red-pain blurs with something else I don’t feel justified in calling pain even though it is white-pain.

A few days after surgery, I still had surgical drains in which needed to be emptied and measured every so often. One particular time they were being drained, my mom tried to pull some of the fluid through the tube into the bulb. There was absolutely no red-pain from this. Even still it was awful and I cried held my hands over the place that felt so bad from what felt like an internal vacuum under my skin while I told my mom to stop repeatedly. At the time I felt like I was lying, in letting my mom think that it was painful, because it wasn’t red-pain, and I’ve never been good at recognising when I can call something white-pain.

I was realizing that after something similar occured when the drain tubes were removed, that maybe a pain scale that asks me to look into my brain and directly see my pain isn’t at all what I need. I connected it to alexithymia, and the way I’m pretty good at figuring out what I feel when I have a strong enough emotion to leave an impact on me outside of my brain. Maybe there are indirect clues that are better to inform me of how to quantify my pain.

I haven’t built a detailed scale for myself yet, but I think I would have much more luck putting a number to a pain, if my response to the pain is what I’m going by instead of some abstract continuous line of values.

I plan to include things such as “uncomfortable enough to try frequently to alleviate the feeling, but distractions can keep mind mostly off of it.” and “makes me take up a defensive/curled posture” and “crying” as various things that would be behaviors of my own that help define pain. I also want to include more mental things, like how hard it is to think about anything else, or how often my mind is brought back to it.

It isn’t perfect because other factors will inevitably influence some of these a bit, but that doesn’t matter much, because if i’m crying for example, even if it’s for relatively lesser pain, I’m still crying for a reason, so there’s probably still something significant to address. Maybe that reason is some sort of overload that I’m bad at recognising too, and that white pain combined with another white pain is enough to add up to a higher number.

My only question with this all is if it’s fair to classify different things similarly. My experience of when the air has a bad smell that I walk around quickly to find some someplace that doesn’t smell bad in spite of social expectations for stillness has not even a hint of red-pain. Even still my behavior for it is in essence very similar to the way I’ve been shifting in my seat to minimize my experience of my weight pressing the skin between my chair and my bones in a way that is similar to but not entirely red-pain.

Has anyone else worked out anything like this? I don’t know at all how anyone would classify my experiences, because I can’t know any one else’s experiences to compare, nor them to mine.

But basically, I’m suggesting that pain from hypersensitivities is something I never learned how to process as pain, because it isn’t red-pain. (and growing up undiagnosed, I’m sure I was told that things like that don’t hurt plenty.) So to work around that, I can understand it the same way I understand my emotions in spite of alexithymia.

#actuallyautistic #pain #disability #sensory processing disorder #alexithymia #im particularly sensitive to any pain involving pinching #be it pinching my skin between a surface and my bones #or more classical pinching #i think #I wanted this post to be less specific to my experience #and i had a slightly different direction i thought i was going to take with it #but this is how it is #and that's fine #i guess i dont know enough to be less specific to myself and my direct experience

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dwollsadventures · 4 years

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TDG Prologue 3 - Devil

After a century of imprisonment, one prisoner is finally being released. The prison guard assigned to walk him out is troubled by a single fact gnawing at his heart: Seth Farofeil Locke is the devil himself. -- AH It's finally done. The revision of the final prologue!!

If you've ever wondered who the fellow with the rainbow glasses you've seen in my galleries is, this is him. And the primary antagonist of the gang, even if he doesn't show up right away.

My original plan was to finish writing and publish it on October 30th, but I got influenza and panicked that it was actually the plague. Turns out, it wasn't! Still pretty dangerous and I've been feeling like shit, but still a big weight off my shoulders. Halloween is as good a day as any to publish it though. It is sort of scary in some parts.

Warning though, there is some verbal violence and mentioning of some violence (towards people and animals), and strong language as well. On par for demonic stuff, but he doesn't actually do any of it.

The next updates, writing-wise, include some cover art for this story and the actual first part of the TDG Acronym Pending.

Enjoy whenever you want, regardless of how thin the veil between the dead and the living is, and have a happy Halloween!

On this day, October 30th, 1961, a man was released from prison and nobody was happy about it. Except the man in question of course.

Under the fluorescent lights of the block, there was no noise except for the footsteps of the guard, miserably marching towards his cell. The absence of noise let the footsteps and their echoes bounce around, until they became so distorted it sounded as if a giant were walking through the halls. Walsh normally liked the silence of the prison. Now it was more awful than anything he could imagine.

Despite the early glow of morning light betraying the fact it was nearly six am, every inmate in the block was awake. Staring at Walsh. He wanted nothing more than to shout at them, to tell them to mind their own damn business and keep their faces away from the bars. Under normal circumstances he would have, too. Now he didn’t trust his own voice not to crack.

The pressure of all that attention hammered away at the officer’s mind. It was as if he were an inmate being wheeled away by a couple of officers for the electric chair, an act Walsh had participated in a few times, but never on this end. His fingers itched for weapons he wasn’t allowed to bring with him.

In the darkness every haggard face looked at him anxiously. They all knew where he was going. The younger inmates may have noticed the similarity to a cartoon, where an unfortunate soul looks at the trail of gunpowder light as they sit on a box of dynamite. No such connection happened. Firstly, because there were very few young prisoners in the high security Galgenvogel. Secondly, the only person in the prison who might have laughed about the situation was Locke himself.

He was the reason they were all awake. Some of them hadn’t even been able to sleep the night before, others made each other promises to wake them up before it happened. They weren’t sure what was going to happen. Most of them had never thought Seth Farofeil Locke was capable of being released from prison. Even those not skilled in algebra knew Locke equaled prison. It was like watching a fundamental piece of the universe disintegrating in front of their eyes. But if anything was going to happen they wanted good seats.

The guard continued his resolute march with his attention on the path in front of him. The scuffed steel walkway seemed so solid compared to the rows of strained faces. That comfort was short-lived. Even the honest steel in front of him seemed to melt before his eyes, twisting the floor into the red-hot road leading to Hell. Walsh’s prison was melting before his very eyes.

Galgenvogel Penitentiary was known for two things: being the oldest operating prison in Illinois, and being a huge, dull block of brutalist efficiency. Its walls were blank concrete and metal, so thick a tank would need a week to bust in and so sleek even spiders had trouble scaling them. The inside of the prison was the same; metal had only been integrated decades ago and the dark iron railing stood plainly against the dreary grey of the stone walls. Though it was primarily a medium-security prison the stark dress did nothing to correct many people’s assumption that the single maximum-security unit was its sole purpose.

Even the uniforms worn by the inmates were devoid of color: white for general circulation, black for high-security, and grey for those on watch in circulation.

Walsh, the senior-most guard, had always expressed his opinion that a good monochrome always made them feel like they were in prison. He'd go on to say that all this orange and blue and green was part of what was wrong these days, with the recidivism rates as high as they are; gang-bangers jumping in and out all the time, swapping one color for another, it made him sick.

If there were a better representative of Galgenvogel than Walsh, he'd probably shouted at them. Walsh was, in his army days, lauded by his superior officers for being "big". It had gotten him high praise and higher wages back then. Now, with nearly forty years working under his belt, he was merely big. He was as grey as the building, though usually pink in the sunlight, with a topping of black hair and a big black moustache which his wife said made him look distinguished. Galgenvogel didn't hire guards for their kindness, nor their smarts, nor their sense of justice (although Walsh did consider himself a rather judicially minded man), especially in the Twenties. All the other prison guards looked up to him. A man of his seniority and experience was highly valued in a prison like Galgenvogel. There wasn’t a nook or cranny left that he hadn’t personally reported on.

Everyone at the prison, barring the inmates, whose opinion didn’t count, knew that Walsh was a good man. Raised Christian right around Chicago with a big family and a modest one of his own. If he could name a stain upon his soul, one singular sin that made even him question his own placement in the divine firmament, it was this belief: that Seth Farofeil Locke was the devil himself.

This wasn’t some crazy delusion, he assured himself. It had taken him nearly a decade of knowing Locke to fully accept it. He had all the evidence he needed as well.

It was a secret he was loath to share with anyone. His fellow guards, the wardens, even his own wife. In his day Walsh had dealt with gangsters and dragged murderers and lunatics to the electric chair. He placed himself as a stalwart wall against the criminal darkness to protect the innocent. The fact this one, singular man posed the greatest challenge he had ever known drove Walsh up the wall.

To Walsh’s knowledge Locke was as clean as a whistle. He had never thrown a punch, participated in a riot, or said anything to incite violence in others. Which wasn’t to say every word out of his mouth was clean and shiny. No, Locke had a special way with words. His tongue could infuriate the most stoic and subdue the most homicidal. Never once had he gotten a job or joined in on any of the other inmate’s games or activities. He’d checked out two books from the prison library during his entire stay at Galgenvogel and had never bought anything from the commissary.

Locke was perfectly fine to eat whatever the prison gave him, sleep whenever the guards told him to, do anything to waste away the days until he got released. Even if it meant staring at a wall for hours on end, looking at the strange shapes the bars were morphed into by the dying sunlight.

Once Walsh had gotten permission to throw Locke into solitary for three days after he was late for a count. For three days he heard nothing and saw nothing. On the last night of the third day Walsh escorted Locke back. He had asked him about his stay in the hole. Locke shrugged noncommittally and simply replied, “been in worse holes”. And that was that.

Walsh hated him. None of the other inmates made him feel as old and slow as Locke did. The guard was a big man, even in a profession where that wasn’t much to distinguish him. Galgenvogel let him carry big weapons, weapons they got from the army when they didn’t need them anymore. There hadn’t been a man Walsh had met that couldn’t be beat down given enough time. Except Locke. Everything passed over him like a gust of wind. Physical force, verbal haranguing, harsh punishment, it was all the same to him. He was the only prisoner Walsh had ever needed to use his brain to combat.

For as long as he’d been at Galgenvogel the two had been caught in a fiendish game of cat and mouse. Just when Walsh thought he had him, Locke slipped between his fingers once more and the game continued. All those chases over all those years for it to end like this.

In front of his cell, waiting for the watchtower to unlock it, he was face to face with the present. Without the lights on it was as dark as the mouth to a dragon’s cave.

Walsh could feel the inmates’ stares burn into his back like lashes as the cell door clicked open.

Locke was waiting for him. He sat on the edge of his bed in civilian clothes given to him by the prison. No one else was inside. For some reason or another, Locke was always alone.

In his hands were probably the only personal possessions Locke had ever had, two red dominoes. At least, Walsh thought they were dominoes. They looked like dominoes at least, the color of redwood and smoothed by years of being passed from hand to hand, slipped between his fingers like a magic trick.

Once Walsh had gotten them from him during an inspection. Despite his probing they weren’t laced with drugs. The symbols on them looked like pieces from a mahjong board, and despite his insistence none of them were gang signs. During the week they were gone, Locke stuck to his cell and shambled around like a ghost. Afterwards the correctional officers classified them as “depression-alleviating equipment” and that they were not to be taken from him anymore.

Regardless, the prison guards tried their best to sneak them away from him, often failing. To their knowledge none of the other prisoners had ever laid hands on them.

One night, one of the junior guards thought he saw them sitting on Locke’s eyes while he slept, like coins for the dead. Walsh was the only guard at the prison who made the effort to keep an eye on Locke. Amongst the staff Locke was a taboo subject.

Now the dominoes were simply jingling in his pockets. Locke stood up and nodded to Walsh. He wanted to get it all over with as soon as possible. He did not look back at his cell as he left.

With little pomp and circumstance, he led Locke out and towards freedom.

As Locke made his way across the block, the other inmates stared. On their faces was a mixture of confusion, contempt, pity, and relief. No one wished Locke goodbye and good wishes. No one shook his hand. No one said anything. They just kept staring at him.

The penitent theater gazed upon the two actors on the steel stage, breaths held in anticipation. Would he burst into flames as soon as he crossed the threshold? Or would snakes shoot out of his orifices? Would he make a mad dash for the warden and slice up anyone he met on the way? They didn’t know. They just kept waiting.

Walsh was by no means a shy man. He was a regular at the baseball stadium and his boisterous cheering could carry over the roar of a Cub's game straight out to the parking lot. Now, with hundreds of faces staring at Locke, he felt like an extra in a movie, the ones all dressed in black so they could move props without getting in the way of the actors.

By the time they’d crossed the barrier out of the block Walsh’s throat felt like it was tied in knots. He picked up his equipment, including his gun which he felt immeasurably safer carrying, and wiped off his brow.

If the walk affected Locke at all he was doing an amazing job at hiding it. He just kept staring ahead, twiddling the dominoes in his hand.

To break the silence Walsh cleared his throat and asked, “No one to say goodbye to back there?” Partly to ease the tension, partly to get a name to interrogate later.

Locke shrugged.

The continued walking out of the depths of the prison. Windows now let the early morning light in, basking the two in pink light which made Locke’s hair look like wildfire.

No friends, not a single one. During his initial investigation Walsh had spoken to some of the correctional officers, to see if Locke had gang affiliations or something of the sort. Perhaps a past inclination to associate with fellows of a darker nature. Anything that would seem more likely than him being a… demon. Walsh felt too embarrassed to even think the word now.

Luck did not favor Walsh. Everyone in the prison knew Locke, he was tied to the building, like an incarcerated genie. The C.O.s had noticed other men tended to seek out Locke for little things; favors or information. And he never ate alone. There was always one group that could manage to find space for him on the bench. A young Walsh found that every man who Locke hung around with expressed dislike, even hatred for him. Locke didn’t keep his mouth shut. Jokes leapt off his tongue as easily as flies, often spiraling into venomous spiels. Personal ones, too. He had a knack for figuring out secrets and what made people tick, and how to tic them off. Yet regardless of their opinion, they always kept coming back to him. Just like he did.

Walsh was the senior-most prison guard. The rest of his sign-on buddies had left, one by one, due to injury or stress (being sissies about it, he reflected) or plain old retiring. Not Walsh. When he first came aboard it was in the twenties. After his service in the Great War, back when it was called the Great War, he'd gotten a job at his home-town's police station but got an even better deal at Galgenvogel from his old sergeant. There he avoided all of the nonsense that the market-crash brought with it and rode a secure wave all the way to the prison equivalent of tenure.

Back then he had a lot more friends, people who he could reasonably confide in. Never in a million years did he share his secret suspicion, but there were at least other people willing to acknowledge that something about Locke didn’t seem right. His old friends helped him even though they didn’t know what he was actually looking for.

The older prison guards never helped him. All he got from them were shifty eyes and downcast gazes. He’d never liked the spineless old men. He’d vowed never to give the new recruits the same treatment. Some of them wished he would, always prying into their lives, lecturing them like a father.

Locke’s official paperwork didn’t offer much enlightening evidence. The three sheets of paper that constituted his record were from decades ago and tended to get details wrong. Eye color and hair color shifted twice and all three listed his age as 33 even with multi-year gaps between the writing.

One record noted a visitation in 1914 with two of his brothers. Frustratingly the names were not listed, and no other report mentions any kind of family. Walsh reasoned they were probably former accomplices of whatever put him in jail. Even a few years into the job he’d grown suspicious of visitors into his prison. Half of them were probably making sure the inmates didn’t squeal on those outside.

Within time both the paper trail and his patience puttered out. Walsh was not a book-learned man and he had no aspirations of following the paper trail.

He had all but given up his notion when one day a key landed itself in his pocket. To this day Walsh could still not recall how it got there. In the back of his mind theories crawled like spiders, but he tried to ignore them.

The key was for a lockbox in the archives. A separate building from the blocks and main center which went underground. In the cramped, dark underground room he found his key’s home. Prison records of Galgenvogel from the years 1860-1870.

Walsh knew the prison was old. Just knowing didn’t prepare him for what he found. Reports of arrests and prisoners, hand-written in curly font that made his eyebrow twitch. Though he assured himself he didn’t have to deal with any of this pencil-pushing crap, he kept reading. And reading. And reading.

Until one report for September 31st, 1861. A prisoner report appended with an arrest report and various court documents. They read that, on the night of September 13th a man claiming to be Seth Farofeil Locke was discovered in the garden of a wealthy family from the Gold Coast of Chicago. Alongside him was the family’s sole daughter, Lily Lyehope, hung from a noose. Mr. Locke was arrested, pled guilty, and sentenced to life in prison at the newly opened Galgenvogel where the judge ruled that he, “shall be confined there for the rest of a man’s natural life.”

Walsh didn't know what to think. Obviously, there must've been some kind of mix up. Locke was probably this guy's son, or grandson. When he got back to the guard tower, the key had disappeared from his pocket.

One week later, there was a fire in the archives. The newer records were kept intact, but everything from sixty years or so ago had been tragically destroyed. This was when Walsh’s suspicions were confirmed true.

No matter what he tried to do to forget, it never left his mind. Even on the days when he didn't think about it, the memory sat in the back of his thoughts waiting for the moment to pounce on his uneasy mind. He'd come to the prison a young man and became an old one through his years of service. Walsh gained weight, lost hair, got wrinkles, grew stiff in the joints, learned to cope with his inevitable death, and even lost a finger to a man on death row. When he joined, all those years ago, he thought Locke was a young man. Time passed, and he figured he was just young-looking for his age.

As Walsh walked Locke through door after door of prison security, watching him sign legal papers, he realized Locke was the exact same man as he’d met forty years ago. The only thing that was different was the uniform.

Walsh was possibly the only man alive who knew the truth.

Around this time the façade began to crumble. He couldn’t help it. All the inmates knew Locke as the guy who was in before them, who knew the prison and everyone in it. Even the ones given life sentences, who’d been in the prison longer than Walsh had. One night, after several before devoid of sleep and full of phantom Lockes watching him from the darkness, he’s snapped and beaten a man giving him trouble well beyond the point of reason.

The warden gave him a few nights off for paid vacation, ‘to rest your mind’. It was the worst vacation of his life. At home he wrestled with the thoughts until he got an ulcer. At first, he thought he needed to hightail it out of there, get his family away from the demonic threat in the prison. Walsh did not decide to do that.

Why did he join as a prison guard in the first place? Why did he go to Europe as a young man? Because he wanted to protect people. He wanted to be a warrior, a defender of the innocent. So, he marched back to the prison reassured of his new position as the last defense against the fiends of Hell.

When he got back, he never asked about the beaten prisoner.

His mission had started ever since then. Walsh was a man who operated best when he was following orders, and as far as he could concern these orders were heaven-sent.

Not being able to tell his wife and kids was the most aggravating part. If they knew the kind of danger he was putting himself in front of every day, they would show him more respect.

It had been long and hard. These forty years took a toll on Walsh, harder than even the trenches. Keeping track of him wasn’t that hard. He never left the prison and only ever switched between general circulation and high security once. And, compared to his other duties as a prison guard Locke wasn’t dangerous. The only damage he’d ever inflicted on anyone in prison had been rhetorical, his tongue could be razor sharp when it needed to be. In truth, after his vacation Walsh had never needed mental help dealing with his feelings, like some of the other pansies he worked with. But it was still hard. If not literal hardship, then poetic hardship.

Excluding his many hardships and daunting heavenly mission, Walsh reflected that his career had been successful. Whenever he didn’t have to deal with Locke the job was steady, and he could probably sink into a comfortable life after retirement. It looked like it was all smooth sailing for Walsh.

“And what do you plan to do after re-entering society? Do you have any careers in mind?”

“Yes sir, one of my buddies hooked me up with a gig. Sweet by the looks of it. Everything I’ve ever wanted to do and more, just need to take the bus to Toledo.”

Seeing him sign his name in the warden’s office and talk with him about his plans for after he got out, it didn’t seem real. None of it did. Locke was leaving. Ever since the retrial last week, life seemed like a dream.

Walsh was called in for an inmate’s trial. Nothing new, he’d done it before, usually to provide first-hand evidence of their behavior and infractions. Informing a court with a rapt audience of some ne’er-do-well’s bad conduct was one of the little joys of the job.

When he heard the judge proclaim Locke’s name, and saw him walk in through the courtroom doors, his heart had sunk. Lights flashed before his eyes. Something was wrong. How could he have missed the name?

It was an especially hot day. A stroke of misfortune on the weather’s part brought an October heat wave. No one questioned Walsh’s perspired brow, his dry throat.

His eyes were glued on Locke the entire trial. All he did was sit there, looking thoroughly disinterested with the theatre of law and order. If the men next to him were suspicious of Walsh’s rapt gaze, they didn’t say anything. Or Walsh didn’t hear them. They didn’t matter anyway. How was Locke going to squeeze his way out of this one?

Finally, he was called for a statement.

From his spot, he could see the jury, the few seated, the lawyer, and Locke. Everyone except Locke and his lawyer was anxious and fidgeting in their seats. Even the judge had to clear his throat after a failed start-up.

“Now, Mr. Walsh, are you able to corroborate Mr. Locke’s… age?”

The pause caught him off guard.

“Age, your honor?”

The judge’s eyes swiveled around, as if he were scared the defense was listening to him.

“Yes, Mr. Locke’s age. Sir Nemo, his lawyer, has claimed Locke to be 132 years old. And thus, he has more than served his life sentence. Is there anything that you can do to confirm or deny this?”

Walsh realized it now. In any other circumstance the whole court would have been called out. But this was Locke they were talking about. His freedom hinged entirely upon Walsh’s testimony.

He wanted to lie. If it meant foiling his plans Walsh would have told the court Locke was born this morning. Something stirred within Walsh, in this moment. He had placed his hand on the Bible. He had put his faith in it entirely. Now, in his heart, he knew if he did the right thing and told the truth, Locke would be forced to give up and maybe even burst into ashes.

Walsh spoke. He told the court nothing but the truth. About the report he’d found, about how Locke didn’t age, about how he seemed to exist separate from the stream of time. He poured every inch of honesty into his speech. Pure, unadulterated faith exuded from Walsh’s pores.

It was the first time the Good Book had failed him.

His lawyer successfully managed to convince the court that the language, “rest of a man’s natural life,” technically did not qualify as an actual life sentence. Furthermore, by any medical assessment, Locke had fulfilled his time and more. No one argued. No one wanted to be in that sweltering courtroom anymore. Even releasing a murderer seemed like a small price to pay for their peace and comfort.

The gavel struck Walsh in the head and the judge’s words poured out of his ears. Seth Farofeil Locke has served his life sentence and was free to go.

Days afterward Walsh moved through the world like a ghost. His eyes were blank, and he responded to others in mere mumbles. It was as if the life had drained out of him. He didn’t tail Locke. He didn’t listen in on the inmate’s gossip. He didn’t believe it.

Locke, meanwhile, was more alive than he had been in the last century. He was getting around and talking to people. Not trading information either, he was really talking to them: sitting with them at lunch to discuss life outside, learning how to play poker (which he developed quite a knack for), even spending evenings at the library. The color had returned to Locke’s grey life.

At one point he had even gotten Tony Larone, Tony Larone the biggest meanest brick wall ever given sentience, Tony Larone the man who during Prohibition killed his two buddies after they ratted him out, Tony Larone who hadn’t smiled since Hoover was in office, to laugh. By Galgenvogel’s standards, it was a miracle.

The closer his release date came, the more Locke flourished and Walsh wilted. For the briefest moment he had considered calling in sick. Only for a moment though. He needed to see this to the end. It was what he was owed, for all those years that had been stole from him. It was hard though. Walsh’s lucidity was slipping. He kept seeing things; fire in the skies and snakes biting their own tails populated his waking and sleeping hours.

Two nights before release Locke was making more phone calls than any other inmate. He could be seen writing in a pad all across the prison and said he was working on his “escape plans”.

During a routine check in the library, before closing, Walsh found that pad. Open to the most recent page, written in cursive so ornate it looked like calligraphy:

Events of Importance: Civil War Abolition of slavery Forty-five hundred dead Indians 2 World Wars “Adam?” bombs

IMPORTANT! Remember to use “burn” cars, so mortals can’t track

Contacts (revised): Go to Toledo, by Walbridge Park. Meet Amon. Best bet to get into Hell. Make sure to bring necessary ingredients for Hellmouth

He walked to Locke’s cell and handed it to him.

None of it phased Walsh, who was so convinced the last week had been a dream that such blatant evidence which confirmed his decades-long conspiracy was clearly lazy effort on his subconscious’s part.

That was how Walsh was treating most of his day-to-day life, actually.

It wasn’t until he saw Locke finish writing the last curly “e” on his signature that reality came to drag Walsh into the terrible present. That was it. The last bit of paperwork, the last performative bureaucracy needed to prove to the world that Locke was no longer an inmate. All he needed to do was wait for the bus.

For no real reason, except perhaps shock, Walsh sat across from him in the waiting room. Soon, when the officer at the front desk left (“it’s seven am, not like anything’s going to happen in here”) they were alone, together.

Locke, in denim from toe to tip two sizes bigger than his body, looked out the window at the rising sun and the gathering storm clouds. Red dominoes slipped between his fingers faster than the eyes could see.

Walsh simply looked at the floor.

Why am I so beat up about this? He couldn’t find an answer. Locke was the devil. He should be glad to see him leave and slam the door on the way out.

But… did he ever do anything particularly devilish? Not that Walsh could recall. There was the arrest record and the archives being burned. And the writing pad with his plans to go to Hell. Aside from that though, Locke never gave Walsh any problems. Locke even spared Walsh the verbal lacerations he so readily gave out to others.

They weren’t friends. No, Locke was his nemesis. His villain. Walsh watched over him for years, decades even. He’d known Locke for too long. Longer than anyone, really. Longer than his work buddies. Longer than his neighbors. Longer than his wife.

They couldn’t be friends. Just because they’d known each other for so long didn’t mean they were friends. Walsh wasn’t friends with his kids. The brats hated him! A friend was someone you knew. Someone you set boundaries with and met with every day. Which. Walsh did do. There was probably no one alive that knew Locke as well as he did.

Friends enjoyed each other’s company though. Did Walsh enjoy Locke’s company? It was so rare that they weren’t surrounded by thugs and criminals that he didn’t really know. Perhaps, compared to the rest of the trash at Galgenvogel, Walsh did remember Locke with something akin to fondness. Maybe Locke would too.

Galgenvogel. Locke and Galgenvogel, the two were intertwined in Walsh’s head. And Walsh liked his job at the prison. Even with the bruises and scrapes he wouldn’t give up a minute of it. Now that he thought about it, Locke was an integral part of that. He was challenging. No other person had ever put Walsh through such a rigamarole as Locke did. Walsh liked that challenge.

Were they friends?

Something clicked in his head. He was sad to see Locke go. A part of Walsh was leaving through that door with him.

Maybe when Locke got his feet on the ground they could meet up, outside of the prison. That would be nice, he reflected. Walsh had never mentioned his work to his family, but that was a good thing. He didn’t want to introduce them all to Locke the Jail Devil, he wanted them to meet Locke the friend.

Wind and the smell of rain tore into the waiting room as the door opened. The bus driver stumbled through, chilled to the bone. Every evidence of that morning’s sun was gone, replaced with rain so cold it nearly froze on contact. The bus was in dire need of fuel so the inmates, or inmate as it were, could wait inside for a little bit longer.

Locke asked if he could wait on the bus.

“’S cold as dick, but if you wanna freeze I won’t stop you.”

The bus driver headed out into the cold once more as Locke stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

Spurred on by emotions unfamiliar to him, Walsh cried out “Wait!”

Locke didn’t bother to look back, but he did stop moving.

Gathering up every atom of emotional intelligence within him (which wasn’t very much) he tried to come up with a speech on the spot.

Then, Walsh said, “Before you go, I, uh, wanted to tell you something. I know you’re the devil. Or, a devil, I’m not really sure how all that works. Maybe should have paid more attention during church. But I also know you’re not as bad as all that. Throughout all the years I’ve known you, you’ve been nothing but a stand-up gentleman. And I’ve known you for quite a few years! More than half of my life to be honest. In that time, I think I’ve really gotten to know you. Really know you. So, all I’m saying is, if you ever stop by Chicago, you’d be welcome at my home. I don’t care if it’s a sin because your friendship has been worth it.”

Sweat poured off Walsh’s brow. That took more effort than he thought, he wasn’t sure how the actors did it.

Locke stood stock-still. Walsh’s perspiration began to feel like ice-cold water.

Silence stole the sound from the room. Even the clock’s tick was hushed. The only sound at all was the hazy ghost of Walsh’s speech.

Locke broke the silence, “You think we’re friends?”

If the flow of the universe were a song, his voice sounded like a discordant string killing the rhythm..

“You really think that?”

Now he had turned around. Walsh’s stomach turned sour.

“I knew you were stupid Walsh, but really? Has dementia climbed into your hollow skull already? I’m not joking is there genuinely something wrong with you?”

Though Locke spoke no quieter than a whisper in his calm, mocking tone, every word rang in Walsh's ears louder than a church-bell.

“There has to be. Why else would you think that any sane person would ever consider you a friend?”

Walsh had sat back down, trying to stammer out an apology. His voice was too quiet though, everything he said was drowned out by Locke.

“I’ve got it. You don’t know how abhorrent of a person you are. Well, allow me to add a disregard for reality to your list of mental deficiencies. Fortunately, unlike all of your other personal failings, this one I can fix.”

From where Walsh was, Locke seemed to loom over him. Shadows from outside crept through the windows and flanked him, making him seem all the taller.

“Of all the human beings I have encountered here, you are the worst. The thinnest, lowest scrapings at the bottom of the barrel of humanity, and that’s saying a lot. For a century I have been sitting in this stone midden surrounded by all sorts of gnats. I was told this place was a cage for the worst they had to offer. And yet? Most of them are shmucks, no worse than every other asshole out there, just the ones unlucky enough to get caught.”

Locke’s head scraped the ceiling, and his feet cracked the tiles of the floor.

“Even when I was in the very blackest of pits with actual monsters did I ever encounter one as repugnant as you. You willingly came here, not to preach justice and peace and kissing your grandma on the cheek, but to fight and strike and kill other men. The fact you’re in a prison is only an excuse to get away with it.”

Walsh tried to shrink back, dive into the crease between the chair's back and seat, but Locke grabbed him and held him in his hand. Everything was dark, but Locke stood blazing bright commanding Walsh's attention. All he could do was faintly whisper “No…”

“No? I’ve seen you Walsh. I’ve seen the shine in your eyes as you beat men to an early grave. You don’t care what they did. You willingly sign up to drag them off to the electric chair. You’re an old man and you still come here every night salivating for the chance to show how big and tough you are to some scared sap who stepped out of line. To remind them of how stronger you are than them. I bet you’ve jerked yourself off thinking of that feeling.”

He felt an irritation in his pants, like a hand made of brambles had grabbed his unmentionables. Walsh tried, unsuccessfully, to blink the tears out of his eyes.

“I was planning on leaving this place to go to Hell Walsh. Hell. But as I am standing here looking at your flaccid, dickless form, a thought has crossed my mind. You’re going to end up there. If I go to Hell, I will probably see you there. And now, I’m having second thoughts. Is it worth it, to continue this plan I’ve been working on for the last century, if I have to suffer the misery of being in your presence again?”

Locke was a giant now. His hair stood up and twisted like plumes of flame, his hands twisted into eagle’s claws. Between wolf-like teeth venom dribbled from his mouth.

“You are lucky I don’t have a choice. If I could, I would dive into the grave and burn every forest and scorch every sea so that I wouldn’t have to see you.”

Acting on impulse, with his last bit of strength, Walsh rose up and struck Locke. He faltered, for a moment. Then, Walsh looked down at his hand and saw how feeble of a gesture it was. Walsh hadn’t even reached half-way.

“You're as strong as an ant and as loud as a spider Walsh. I could kill you with my thumb, but you're so disgusting it wouldn't make a difference. Nobody would even notice you were gone."

A third voice came from the door. "Uh... bus is ready."

The bus-driver had walked in, wondering what was taking them so long. He found the inmate, excuse me, former inmate, talking to the guard, who looked terrified out of his mind. Weirded him out something fierce.

Shadows retreated behind their master like faithful dogs and the room returned to its previous state. No sign of the insidiousness from before could be seen.

Locke grabbed his things and left without saying another word.

Walsh only noticed he was gone when he heard the firing up of the engine and saw the bus leave Galgenvogel's gates for the last time.

As the bus left, the front-desk guard came back. No one was in the waiting room. Which was weird, since Walsh should have passed him on his way back. The chair he sat in was empty, save for a small wet patch on the seat. Later, he would call for the janitor to clean it. Later still, he would have thought it worrying that Walsh wasn’t anywhere to be found, except he was a little preoccupied with the world ending.

On the long stretch of highway between Chicago and Toledo, there's nothing to see. There isn't even a "whole lot of nothing", that would be much too imaginative and witty to describe the eye-watering boringness of the road.

Standing out like oases in the Sahara are the few towns you get the pleasure of driving through on your way there. Compared to the start of the drive and the destination they're nothing to sneeze at, but after a couple of hours behind the steering wheel they seem like tiny spots of Heaven.

In one such town, no more than a clump of streets shooting off from the stem of the highway, Ma and Pa's corner-store makes a modest living. Most of their customers are travelers desperate for a reason to stop driving or locals ready to spend an hour chatting with the owners, the eponymous Ma and Pa, while picking up a little grocery.

Because they were on the road they got a lot of people. Truckers, business trips, family-outings, reunions, the local sheriff, census workers, teenagers, and even the odd honeymooners.

They'd never seen one like this before.

Ma had been at the front for a few hours catching up on her stories when she'd heard the tinkly bell of the doors. As soon as she finished customarily thanking him for coming in, she was tearing across the pages of the Yellow-Book looking for the number of the nearest sheriff's department. Something set her nerves off.

It wasn’t the way he was dressed (which made him look like he’d escaped from prison). It wasn’t the way he talked (like a heathen). Nor was it his attitude (which put Ma in mind of those no-good greasers she saw on the telly). She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it just felt like, when he walked into the store, she felt the inexplicable urge to punch him.

The wind outside wasn’t helping her nerves either. As soon as he’d come in it had picked up, and now it was rattling the door. Bird feeders and wind chimes tried to use metal wings to fly away.

Before skulking off he drawled out, "You got candles and salt? Last dump pointed in this direction for 'em."

Ma, barely fending off the beginning of a heart-attack, pointed towards aisles three and five.

He grabbed one of the shopping baskets, knocking six of them over in the process, and walked off.

A cluck made her eye twitch. As if that hadn't been enough, for God knows what reason he'd walked in with a chicken tucked beneath his right arm. This was probably the detail that made her ignore all the warning flags and sent her into a murderous rampage. The mere thought of having to clean up chicken mess from the floor made her fingers itch towards the club under the register.

She'd expected to smell alcohol on him, but the smell filling her nostrils was more like burnt pitch, or a campfire.

Ma was having trouble deciding whether or not he was breaking out of prison to rob them or coming back from some hippy commune to sneakily pilfer something but figured the sheriff could handle either option.

In the backroom Pa sat in his chair watching the chattering television, completely unaware. The way he was looking at it made her blood boil even more. Shame on him for watching that damned thing more closely than the services at church, oblivious to the fact that we are in the midst of being robbed!

She moves to wave at him, hoping he'll notice her, but stops once the stranger walks towards the counter with his purchases.

Regaining her composure, she says on instinct, "Will this be everything?"

He mutters "sure" without looking her in the eyes, instead gazing at the swirling clouds outside. Only the last vestiges of human decency keep her from tearing his limbs off.

Ma would never consider herself a criminal, but she possessed a long and extensive knowledge of heists, robberies, and murders after reading several hundred crime novels throughout the latter half of her life. Even she was stumped as to what crime he could commit with five novelty Christmas candles, a bag of salt, and a chicken.

While ringing up his purchases, she tries to look at his coat to see if there were any bulges that hadn't been there before. But it appeared he had stolen nothing. Nothing that she could see at least.

She does notice that, in his free hands were a small rucksack with nothing but spare change, a slip of paper with a phone number on it, and a pair of dominoes with red markings on them. And his wallet, from which he fished out a five-dollar bill.

"Two twenty-five is your total, would you like a bag to put this in, sir?" He didn't deserve a dear now, much less a dearie.

"Yes, if you'd so please."

She put the strange things in his bag and tried to swipe the peanut bowl away from the chicken, who was pecking at it to get closer. This and the rough, automated noise of the receipt printing only served to worsen her temper.

Just standing next to him made her stomach turn. Which was odd, because, when she got a better look at him, he was quite good looking. If he shaved the curtains over his eyes, he actually reminded Ma of one of her old flings. Back before she was Ma, before she met Pa, when she hung around the wrong crowd.

Together they’d been the talk of the town. Her own mother hated him, which just made him all the more attractive. No boy she’d ever met before had his own car. He’d even let her drive it all the way out to Chicago.

Which made it all the more heartbreaking when he drove up to prom with her sister. Ma stood in front of them in disbelief, and they walked past her without even a ‘how do you do’. It made her so mad.

When she got home, she tore her sister’s room apart. Broke all of her nails clawing the wallpaper and ripping the pillows to shreds. Throwing paint into her wardrobe. Flooding her restroom. Putting a bit of rat poison into the cat’s dinner bowl…

A knock against the window made her look up. There was a crack in the glass.

She looked around, but the wind outside was so violent that it must have carried whatever broke the glass just as fast as it brought it. Ma shivered. She had the willies, the creeps, and the heebie-jeebies all at once.

The receipt was cold, the ink dried. Ma looked over, but the man was gone. She was alone. Just like the night of prom.

Next to her, the sunglass rack spun and nearly gave her a start. Her stranger was standing next to it, with a look of such genuine mystification that you’d think he had never seen a pair before.

In fact, Locke had never seen a pair of sunglasses before. Certain fashion trends had eluded him while imprisoned. The officers weren't allowed to wear them while working, and the inmates only got them if they were working outside.

Spectacles he'd seen before, but the tinted glass framed by wired metal seemed so astoundingly simple he wondered why no one had done it earlier. He wondered why he didn't do it earlier.

Something that obscures your face without hiding it, were the first thoughts on his mind. The second, third, and fourth whizzed by so fast that they could not be recorded in print.

He spun the rack around, marveling at the different types, until he found one that spoke to him.

A pair tinted so brilliantly rainbow that you could see nothing through them. Locke slipped one of the domino-like objects from his left hand and placed them beneath the glasses. Looking down, through his right eye, he couldn't even see their silhouette.

Ma, in the process of extending her neck vertebrae so she could see what the stranger was doing, nearly cried out when a shriek so loud it rung her ears pierced the air. The shocked woman rubbed her ears, not sure if that was the lightning outside or some sort of shrill laughter.

He turned around, glasses set firmly on his face and asked, "How much for these?" His teeth were as bright and sharp as a fork of lightning.

She responded weakly, clutching her chest, "A dollar."

Looking at the change in her hand, "Well then, I reckon you can keep the rest of that!"

With a spring in his step, he grabbed all of his things and left the store. The swing of the door once again knocked over the shopping baskets, excluding the one he walked out with.

Ma did a few things when he left as soon as she was sure she couldn't hear his footsteps in the distance.

First, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Second, she put the rest of the change in the cashier.

Third, she scoured the path he walked, looking desperately for a speck, an atom of that chicken or its droppings.

Once she was content that her store was clean, she, Fourth, went to go holler at Pa.

During this entire exchange, Pa, the doting husband of Ma for fifty years, was only visible as the back of a head outlined by the white glow of the television he was watching. Normally the two ran the shop together, but during their long periods of down time he liked to watch the TV while his wife read her stories. They kept the TV in the backroom, so he wouldn't be tempted to watch it on the job.

In any other circumstance he would get up and go to the front counter with his wife when he heard the little bell of the door. When Ma opened the backroom's door fully, he was still glued to the TV's screen.

She grabs him by his shoulders, dragging him towards the phone at the counter.

"Henry, I don't know why you didn't come in, but there was a hippy in our store, and he robbed us! I want you to get on that telephone and call the sheriff right now-"

"Judith-"

"He just left, but mark my words I bet he's heading to Chicago-"

"Judith-"

"Oh, I was this close, this close to getting the broom out and walloping him-"

"Judith there's something on the tele-"

"Yes Henry? Yes, I bet you know all about it. Honestly, the way you were looking at it, you'd think it married you instead-"

"You need to see this honey-"

"Oh, and he's got some damned chicken from the Hicken's farm, I don't know what he's planning on doing with it, but mark my words it's nothing good-"

"JUDITH."

Pa shouts, making the entire store seem so much more silent. Ma makes to get at him but stops when she notices the shell-shocked expression on his face. He looked more scared than he'd ever been in his life. Taking his wife by the arm, he shows her to the backroom, to the tiny black and white screen.

Images and videos flash across it, every channel dominated by the same headlines. 'MONSTERS SEEN ACROSS AMERICA', 'SEA-LINER TORN APART', 'WEIRD SYMBOLS SEEN IN SKY', 'GIANT FIGURES STAND OVER LONDON' and countless more. On their own local station, the reporter acts on instinct, relaying all the news in a stammering panic. Monstrous beings and supernatural entities are being spotted all over the world, with disasters playing out in real-time. Volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, storms, it's as if the very earth were waking up and releasing beasts from beneath the surface. Tears dot the reporter's eyes as news of carnage slowly devolves into unintelligible sobbing at the last headline, 'THE END OF THE WORLD'.

This all goes unheard. Soon the reporter falls onto the ground like the couple in their store. A sound tears across the sky, louder than anything in the world. Ma and Pa clutch their ears as they feel their own skeletons vibrate in tune with the sky's scream. All they can do is watch deafened from the floor at the other's expressions of pain, holding each other close.

Outside on the highway, cars have stopped, many crashing into each other. Drivers and passengers alike release horrified screams as they begin to feel the universe's dying moans drill into their skulls. Hundreds of thoughts swirl together, thoughts of the terrible, imminent end to life as they knew it, all suddenly realizing that they were unprepared for it. In their car-seats children wail with their parents, unable to come to understand the finality of life, but still just as scared. Of all the people in the road, only one can hear it all.

Locke walks down towards the city in the distance, ignoring the screams. All the panic choking the hearts of the mortals on the highway is, to him, one more straw on the proverbial camel's back. It'd take more than that to break his camel. He hadn't spent a literal century sitting on his ass to run around screaming like a baby after the first sign of the end of the world. Besides, the world wasn’t ending. He would know if it were ending. It was simply getting more interesting.

The hen can't hear it either. To her, humans were doing weird, distressing human things. Rainwater plasters her feathers down, making her a sodden heap unable to escape the creature’s grasp.

Locke tests out his reflection in the shiny black window of a truck lying upended in a ditch. To the best of his ability he can't see his own eyes past the rainbow reflection.

The man who was driving the truck begins trying to crawl through the window, cutting himself on the broken glass. Locke does not try to help him.

"These things are a damn life-saver."

He once again models them for himself, but the glasses fall off the bridge of his nose to the grass. Locke gets on his knees and gropes around for them.

Once he stands up, he finds the dominoes still in their place.

"Gonna have to do something about that."

Locke walks past the people, recovering from their twenty seconds of utter hell. They take no notice of him and he does likewise. Blood fills the nostrils of the hen, who begins wiggling in his grasp. The grip on her tightens, doing nothing to calm her down but making her move around less.

With a knife, which he did indeed steal from Ma and Pa, Locke carves a few tiny symbols into the thick temples of the glasses without looking at them.

After they're drawn, he takes the hen's neck and makes a slight incision on her forehead. Blood pools fast as he wets his finger in the red liquid. The minuscule symbols are coated in a small layer of blood, activating, so to speak.

Locke bends down ninety degrees, yet the glasses stay on. He shoots back up, throwing his head from side to side, and they stay glued to his face.

"Perfect."

Today would have been perfect too, were it not for Walsh. He’d had the entire day planned and all it took was his dumb ass to sour it all for Locke.

Light shone through the clouds.

By coincidence, rainbow-shaded lenses looked up and met their match. Further along the road, the clouds were clearing from Toledo and the rain met with the sun, forming a real rainbow. From where he stood it looked like the bridge to a new era.

Locke smiled. Oh well. It wouldn’t do to let one little mortal ruin his big day. Now that his punishment was over, it was time to show all those assholes what a real bad guy looked like. First though, he had to go take his purchases and make a few calls down-under.

And Locke didn't know any Australians.

#short story #literature #prologue #tdg #locke #devil #demon #satan #apocalypse #armageddon #halloween #acronym pending #now with cover art

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