#At least my printer is *finally* set up even if it still refuses to connect to my wifi. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr was created by web developers David Karp and Marco Arment.

#At least my printer is *finally* set up even if it still refuses to connect to my wifi.

princeanxious · 3 years

Note

Why would you hide the Villain remus and Janus thing in the tags, I'd read the hell outta Hero Virgil turned Villain

you mean this??? shdbic aaa Yeah I want to write it, but i also want to write a lot of things. xD but this is def one of those things i’d love to write a short-ish one-shot about just so I can write it.

can you imagine? Virgil, young and anxious, manifesting powers of the light and dark variety, able to manipulate shadows and summon electricity with such fine precision because he’s spent so long fretting over accidentally hurting someone with it that he refused to even dare try and step into the hero scene until he was 150% certain that he’d trained his powers to disconnect from his emotions so that he’d never have an outburst that could even harmlessly shock or scare someone. He’s so in control over his powers that its to an insane degree just because he wants to make sure he cant hurt anybody on accident.

(complete ramble continued under the cut bc boy howdy this got so long it might as well be its own short one-shot)

And, he’s worked so in depth with his powers because of course he can’t just suppress them!(Suppressing electricity based powers doesn’t get rid of that energy, it just makes that constantly generating energy stay put and build, which makes it even more dangerous when it’s finally released, so suppression is a no go) So of course not only does he work extensively with learning how to control his powers, but also how to healthily use them and expend his energy safely, effectively, and skillfully as he grows into them. Might as well push your limits of learning just how much your power can do if you have to learn how to exist safely around others by controlling it, right?

So, by default, by the time Virgil is both old enough and confident enough in his powers to consentingly apply for registry to the worlds heroes association, he’s both insanely skilled with his powers, and also insanely talented(the equivalent to a child prodigy, not that many people in charge of the worlds hero association believe that, though.). The people who had been interviewing him believed the same, thinking him to be just another super teenager boasting about his skills when they couldn’t even sense his power, thinking that what little power Virgil did have was not even worth bothering to report anything substantial about the interview. That he’d oughta go try the villain’s headquarters, because at least they take in wandering powerless for henchmen all the time.

Virgil, feeling pissed but not quite enraged yet, because what teenager wouldn’t hate it to be so invalidated and demeaned at being out right dismissed as a threat, let alone considered more of an invalid for not having powers, starts to display his power.

First it’s the main interviewer’s phone that they’d been glancing boredly at, drained suddenly of all power. Then it’s the landline of that specific room, then it’s the lamp, the computer suddenly shuts off with zero warning and nothing of it turns on. The lamp in the corner of the room goes dark, bulb by bulb, and the printer in the room dies. Virgil’s eyes are glowing violet but he hasn’t moved any more than the annoyed twitch of an eyelid. the light’s overhead turn off, leaving the lights in the hallway still on, leaving the remaining light in the room coming from the single window in the room and the open doorway.

He reaches up a hand, and snaps once, and shadows swallow up the light over the hallway and the window, acting as a wall from the inside and out.

Now the only light in the room is his glowing eyes.

The second interviewer is struggling to summon fire from her hands to light the room, but it doesn’t work. The energy she’s using to summon the fire is immediately sapped by Virgil’s force, there isn’t even a spark. The first interviewer can feel Virgil’s power now, it’s bright and burning. It’s like he has a core in the middle of his being like a sun’s core because its storing so much power, and the only reason they can see it now is because Virgil’s using his power. He has so much control that even on a nonphysical level it’s nearly tangible, the way that they can see his shadow powers conceal even the existence of his power, now that they know what their looking at.

In mere seconds, this kid has tipped the world on their head and put the fear of god into them, an undetected yet undeniable threat in the making.

They watch his eyes tilt with his head, and the distinct sound of the entire building powering down is unmistakable, shouts of surprise and confusion due to the failure of the buildings many fail-safes failing to trigger. And then, with another snap, all power is restored to normal in the blink of the eye, all machines and lights are functioning perfectly, not an irregular shadow in sight, and all at once Virgil reads as a normal human teenager, not a whiff of power to be sensed. He looks pretty peeved, though.

“Maybe I will try my luck at the Dark Side then, at least they care about the people that look to be taken in. Let me know if you changed your mind, I’d love to have a do-over. With a different set of interviewers, mind you.” before he walks out of the interview room, off to blow off some steam legally and safely.

Imagine his outrage when a week later he’s served a summons to court, deeming him a “Threat to Society” and “better left in jail until the court can be convinced of his good nature” because he’s an “out of control juvenile gifted with an unprecedented amount of power that he couldn’t possibly control without strict legal supervision and interference and cannot be trusted to continue to exist as a normal citizen until the W.H.A deems it safe.”

Faced with possible lifelong inprisonment and zero control over the rest of his life because an association of supers think that they know better and that he’s some stupid teenager that was set loose on the world with means to only cause catastrophe and devastation, or freedom at the hands of some ambiguously grey moral decisions every once in a while and being treated as a normal human being even if he has to be a henchman to another super for a while?

The decision isn’t a hard one to make.

So imagine his surprise when he’s not only accepted into the Dark Side after being respectfully asked to demonstrate the full extent of his power and his control over it, but instead of becoming a villain’s henchmen, he instead gains the full title of Villain(with another Villain(Janus) stepping in to mentor him and show him the ropes of the rules and everything), and even further: Gets his own henchmen assigned to him.

A pair, Patton and Logan.

Patton has a partial shapeshifting ability, but it only really lets him turn into a big frog man, making him perfect for doing any of the main heavy lifting for the team, and also perfect for protecting Logan when under attack. He’s built like a himbo and is absolutely 100% a himbo, heart of gold, super strong, buff dad bod, the whole sha-bang.

Logan has a power that is one part linked with memory, one part linked with technology. His brain can retain information like a computer databank, and he can get any misfunctioning technology to work if he can get his hands on it or a connection to it. He avoids all the quirks that interfere or damage real databanks and technology(like magnets, water, and short-circuiting) and can semi-directly connect with devices he is familiar with, without having to hold/touch/look at one.

All together, they have the beginnings of a well rounded team: the brawns, the brains, and the leader with plans and the power to make it happen. Even before finding out their reasons for coming to the dark side, Virgil becomes ride or die for them. (And honestly, they’re also pretty ride or die for him too, not even starting with the fact that they’re both like 26-27 and Virgil is an 18 year old anxious mess that had to make the decision over being the bad guy or losing any and all autonomy for the foreseeable future, which is gonna fuck up any kid and young adult’s brain. So, lowkey adopt him as a younger sibling even though he’s the boss of them and just barely taller than them.(Virgil is a tol lanky boi, and while Logan, standing at 5′9″, is but an inch shorter than Virgil at the start, Virgil still has growing room and peaks at about 6′4″ by the time hes 22. Patton at his normal height is like 5′6″, but frog man height is like 8′3″)

Oh, and they definitely make the Worlds Hero Association regret not taking Virgil’s existence kindly, Big Time.

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #luka writes #luka write this #janus sanders #supervillain vee au #ask to tag

262 notes · View notes

gukyi · 4 years

Text

four weeks | kth

summary: four weeks. that’s how long you’re trapped on campus after missing your flight home because of a grossly overtime final. and as you’re walking around your empty campus, thinking that you could sink no lower, you find yourself alone in the art building with a certain freshman-year-dorm-neighbor from hell, and he’s got an offer that you don’t think you can refuse: he’s staying on campus this winter break as well, and he’s happy to let you live with him.

or, four weeks is all it takes to fall in love.

{enemies to lovers!au, roommates!au, college!au}

pairing: art and chemistry double major kim taehyung x female reader genre: fluff, angst, comedy, the whole nine!! word count: 20k warnings: alcohol consumption (be safe!), unwanted sexual advances (not between main characters and not at all explicit), and a ton of college tomfoolery. a/n: i’m finally finished with my very first semester of college! it was a lot, but finishing this fic was a treat after my damn finals, which were very stressful. this is part of the stranded for christmas collab, and i’m so honored to be doing this with such amazing, talented writers! please give them and their fics lots of love, and enjoy this super fun train wreck of a fic!

Admittedly, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century has never treated you particularly well.

Your lecturer is about as interesting as grass growing, the readings are low quality scans of book pages with the tiniest font and absolutely no line spacing, and any friends you had in that class in the beginning of the semester dropped out of it by the time mid-September rolled around, leaving you trapped due to societal pressures and a History and Politics general education requirement you still have yet to finish.

But, of all the things you could imagine Global Politics in the Twentieth Century doing to you, like charging you an exorbitant $200 dollars for a textbook you would never open anyway, burning your house down, or even straight up just murdering you, this is by far the worst.

It’s bad enough that your final for Global Politics in the Twentieth Century is on the last possible day for finals at the latest possible time, but when the clock strikes 8:00PM and you have just about fucking had it with this semester, you realize that no one else is standing up.

This panic intensifies as you begin thinking of all of the terrible things that could be the reasoning behind this: you’re just the dumbass who finished their final first and got all of the questions wrong, the clocks have yet to adjust to daylight savings and you think that it’s 8:00PM when really it’s 7:00PM, or, worst of all, your final is running overtime.

You have only ever heard of horror stories about overtime finals. Things like having to cram the next three-hour final into one hour, or having to reschedule the final to some other time that is equally as conflicting. Stuff that is, to a normal human being, a minor to moderate inconvenience at best (and to an overdramatic college student—pure, unadulterated hell), but when this is the last final on the last day at the latest time, there are no other finals to be had. No other school-related scheduling conflicts barreling into you.

It’s just your luck, really, that on the last day of the semester, at the latest time you are allowed to be here, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century would come back to bite you in the ass one last time. As if all the times you dozed off in class (or just plain skipped), forgot to turn in your reading analyses, and showed up late to your recitation are finally catching up to you. Like the very worst kind of karma that could ever befall you.

Well, to be fair, it’s not as if the rest of the day has treated you any better. The entire time you’ve been awake on this fine December day has been an absolute trash can of a day.

This is how the beginning of your very last day of the semester played out:

Your alarm went off at 8:00AM sharp, purposefully set that early so you could wake up and have a productive day studying before your final at 6:00PM.

You hit snooze and ended up waking up around 11:33AM.

You scrambled out of bed very inelegantly and attempted to get your life together before noon so you could at least have six hours worth of a productive study day before your final.

You remembered that you hadn’t packed yet, so you spent the next hour frantically stuffing your belongings into the singular carry-on sized suitcase meant to last you through your month-long winter break.

You also realized that you hadn’t done your laundry for the week (well, week and 6 days…), and you obviously want to bring clean clothes back home so you spend the next two hours doing your laundry and finishing up your packing.

By the time you finally managed to get the time to study, the panic had fully nestled itself into your bones, so you could not focus and spent the next three hours staring at your study guide and praying that osmosis would kick in so you could actually retain information.

You left to go to your final five minutes later than you should have and then ran across campus (with absolutely no dignity left) in order to get there on time.

You arrived at your final just in time, only for there to be technical difficulties with printing the exam because your professor is a procrastinator, just like you are.

The next thirty minutes were then spent contacting the IT department, attempting to fix the printer, having to go print in another building, and then coming back with the final exam to a room of aggravated students who thought that they would be thirty-minutes into the exam by now.

You are taking the final exam. It’s stupid difficult and you’re absolutely going to tank it.

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about half an hour.

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour.

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour and a half.

And on your very last day of the fall semester, your final runs overtime by two whole hours because of some mystic force determined to ruin your life, and your flight heading back home took off fifteen minutes ago.

You know, it could be worse. You could have failed all of your classes. Instead, you paid an exorbitant $500 to miss your flight, fail your Global Politics in the Twentieth Century final, and end up trapped on campus for all of winter break because you don’t have the money to buy another plane ticket at such late notice (or at all).

So, it could be worse.

You trudge out of your final exam and try not to burst into tears on your way back to your dormitory. Barely anybody is left on campus now that finals are officially over, but you still want to save that last shred of dignity. As you’re walking down the pathway, you begin to feel wet splotches on your face. For a moment, you think that they are fat tears rolling down your face, but you look at the cobblestone beneath your feet and realize that instead, it’s raining.

The perfect weather to match your mood, if you’re being honest.

Not wanting to get caught in a downpour, you end up taking refuge in the coffee shop connected to the art building on campus. It’s a genius business design, if you say so yourself, because there is no one more dependent on caffeine than sleep-deprived, eyebag-laden art students. Surprisingly enough, there are still people behind the counter bustling around, so you use the last of your university dollars to order a peppermint hot chocolate to warm your insides (but not your cold, dead soul).

From there, you take a quick detour to explore the art building, a building you have, admittedly, never really taken much of a look at. It must be empty now, with everyone off campus—except you, of course—which gives you the perfect opportunity to wallow in peace while admiring art.

Walking inside, you stare at your reflection in the enormous glass walls. Look at your tired eyes, slouched shoulders, lips pressed thin, and hands warmed only by the heat of your cardboard coffee cup. Count each acne mark and hair out of place. It’s almost like you’re watching yourself as you look in the mirror, a third person standing in the background. The audience. Like the person who’s looking back at you isn’t you at all.

It's quite artistic, actually. Ironically enough.

But no matter how picturesque, how cinematic this particular moment of your life is, nothing can really soothe you after missing your flight, failing your final, and pretty much having the worst day of your entire life.

Just then, you hear footsteps echoing down the halls.

You assume that it must just be a professor leaving their office, or even maybe one of the hardworking security guards, but as you watch the glass walls to catch a glimpse of who's passing by, you realize that it's not a professor, or a security guard, or even a very large mouse scurrying across the floor.

"I thought I would be the last one in here," Kim Taehyung says when he spots you, stopping in his tracks with a canvas about half the size of him underneath his arm.

"So did I," you muse in response, not really wanting to turn around to save yourself the trouble of talking to him.

Still, Kim Taehyung has always been one hell of an observant guy, so by the time he's stopped behind you, he's already peering into the reflection of the glass windows to look at who he's talking to.

"Y/N?" He asks, walking up to you with his eyebrow raised. He comes over, standing next to you as you look at each other's reflections in the glass. "Never thought I'd see you in here."

"Me neither, to be honest," you say. Seeing as you aren't a visual studies major, you never really considered the art building to be a location of top priority. Until now, that is.

The last time you spoke to Kim Taehyung was the last day of your freshman year, when everybody was getting ready to move out, packing up their belongings and removing the fifteen thousand Command hooks stuck to their walls. You and him made eye contact as you placed the last of your boxes for the semester into those enormous Residential Services carts, glaring at each other from your adjacent rooms.

“First year flew by, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks, smirk lacing his features.

“Thank God it’s over,” you tell him.

“Not gonna miss me, huh?” Taehyung winks, and it makes you want to take this cardboard box filled with all of the notebooks and lined paper and folders you used throughout the year and chuck it at his head.

“Miss you?” You ask with a scoff. With the final box finally out of your room, you can officially lock the door behind you, closing the chapter on your very first year at university. “Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”

“Why are you still here?” Taehyung asks, tapping his fingers on the side of the canvas underneath his arm. “Thought you’d be off campus by now.”

“I had a late final,” you say, pretending that your life and every aspect of it is fine when it is, in fact, not fine at all. The best case scenario is that Taehyung accepts your bullshit answer for what it is and heads off to do whatever it is that he does, leaving you alone so you can wallow in pity and ponder the meaning of life. The worst case scenario is that Taehyung stays.

And Taehyung has always been very good at picking the latter.

“Ah, sucks, for what class?” Taehyung asks. You can’t tell if he’s genuinely curious or just wants to interrupt your personal self-wallow time for as long as possible.

“Global Politics in the Twentieth Century,” you tell him with a sigh. You don’t want to have to hear, say, read, or write that name ever again.

“Oh, really? I took that class last semester,” Taehyung says with an eyebrow raised, surprised. “I thought it was super interesting.”

As if you needed any more proof that you and Kim Taehyung are exact opposites in every way. You are hardly surprised that Kim Taehyung enjoyed Global Politics in the Twentieth Century—not when the two of them have so much in common, like inconveniencing you, being annoying, and sort of always having it out for you. It’s like they were meant to be together.

“I can’t say I thought the same,” you say pointedly, lips pursed into a tight line.

“Ah, well, I never did peg you for a history buff,” Taehyung says with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Why are you still on campus? I thought art students had to turn in their final projects on the first day of exams,” you ask, turning the focus onto him. It’s obvious that he has no intention of leaving you alone, so your next best option is to interrogate him until the tension between the two of you is so suffocating, so thick and heavy, that he wants to leave.

“I had a couple of chem finals after I finished up my art classes,” Taehyung says. Right. You forgot he was doing a double major. “And, my parents are actually travelling this winter break, so I was planning on staying on campus. Didn’t really want to go back to an empty house, you know?”

After the day you’ve had, you can think of nothing better than opening the door to your home, knowing that you have the entire place to yourself and can spend the night in your bedroom, watching Netflix.

“You’re staying on campus?” You ask. Great. The only two people who will be on campus this winter recess are you and Kim Taehyung. Fantastic.

“Yeah,” Taehyung says, clearly unaffected. He seems particularly unbothered by the fact that he can’t go home, almost like he’s been looking forward to having the entire university to himself. “You’re about to head home, then, aren’t you? Just taking a quick break in the art building?”

Well, almost to himself.

The chances of running into Taehyung this winter break, despite being probably the only two people on campus, is still slim. It’s a big campus, and there are people who are not part of the university that walk on campus all the time.

And still, you don’t know what you’ll do if you lie to Taehyung and tell him you’re about to fly home, and then bump into him at the local coffee shop. You might just perish. That might be what happens.

So, for once in your life, you suck it up and tell the truth. For once.

“Actually, I missed my flight because of my final running overtime, so I’m sort of stuck here,” you tell him, and as the words leave your lips it feels like your whole body gets weighed down, like you’re cemented to the floor.

It’s only then that Taehyung actually turns to face you, so you aren’t standing shoulder to shoulder and staring at the rain pattering on the pavement outside. You look at him, meeting his eyes and to your surprise, they aren’t filled with mirth. He hasn’t got this pleased grin on his face. He’s not milking this situation for what it could be milked for at all. He could be standing here, bathing in the satisfaction of your timely demise, and he’s not.

He actually looks quite sad.

“Really?” He asks, genuine.

“Yeah,” you say, and it’s then that you accept your fate, resign yourself to the fact that you’re trapped on campus with no way (and no money) to get home, and try to look for the silver lining. “So, I’ve actually got to get going, grab my stuff and everything.”

“Oh, do you live off campus?” Taehyung asks. “We should get together sometime this break. Who else are we gonna talk to, right?”

Spending time with Taehyung on your lonely-ass winter break sounds like the absolute worst thing in the entire world. It’s been two years since the last time you were forced to be within fifty feet of each other, so even having this conversation is taking you by surprise.

“No, I’m still staying on campus. But my dorm is closing for the winter break, so I need to go and find an Airbnb or something to stay somewhere,” you say, feeling your heart break at the notion of spending even more money this winter break after having watched your $500 dollar airplane ticket get flushed down the toilet.

Taehyung stays silent, eyes gazing at the lines between the linoleum tiles on the floor. He’s stopped tapping on the side of his canvas, a painting which you still haven’t fully gotten a glimpse of. In the quiet of the art building, the dust settles, and you wait for Taehyung to say something. Anything.

After a few more seconds, you decide that the two of you have been standing in awkward silence for long enough.

“Well, I’ll see you around, I guess,” you say nervously, letting out an unnatural and forced laugh as you turn on your feet and begin to head towards the exit. You have no idea where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, but what you do know is that you have to be out of your building by noon tomorrow, so you’ve got less than a day to figure it out.

And then, Taehyung says the worst thing he could possibly say at this given moment:

“Do you wanna stay with me?”

You stop dead in your tracks.

“What?”

“You don’t have to say yes,” Taehyung immediately clarifies, as if that makes the offer any less sudden. “But I live in an off-campus apartment year round, so you could always stay with me if you’d like. You wouldn’t have to book an Airbnb or anything. But you don’t have to.”

You close your eyes, feeling your chest rise and sink as you inhale and exhale. You can’t believe you’re actually considering his offer. You can’t believe that Taehyung would willingly offer up his personal abode, his private apartment to you, the freshman year next-door neighbor who knocked on his door every six hours to tell him to shut the fuck up. You cannot believe that you are on the verge of accepting.

“Are you sure?” You ask, both eyebrows raised. Yes, the idea of free lodging and no-hassle appeals greatly to you, but you’re not so certain that Taehyung or you actually want this. After all, you spent all of freshman year hating on each other’s living habits as personal hobbies of yours. “You don’t have to offer just because I don’t have a place to stay. Seriously.”

“No,” Taehyung says, taking a step towards you. It’s barely a foot, but it feels like he’s a thousand miles closer to you than he was before. “I mean it. If you want to stay with me, you’re welcome to. I have a futon in my living room that you can sleep on. I’m being serious.”

You cannot believe that he’s asking this.

You cannot believe you’re considering this.

You cannot believe you’re about to say yes to this.

“You really mean it?” You ask one more time, just so you can be certain. You’d hardly be surprised if this whole thing was just a mindfuck.

“I do,” Taehyung says. “No matter what, I don’t think anybody should be alone for the holidays.”

“Then yes,” you say, letting Taehyung catch up to you as you begin to walk towards the exit, step by step. “I’d really appreciate it.” You turn to look at him, your eyes meeting his own chocolate brown ones, nearly ink black in the dark. You can’t offer much, certainly not anything to top this gracious proposal, but you smile, and he smiles back, and you think that’s enough.

Your first order of business is trekking back to your dormitory and grabbing your fully-packed suitcase. At least spending an hour shoving as many of your belongings as possible into a tiny carry-on has its benefits despite you not setting foot in the airport.

“Been a long time since we’ve done this,” Taehyung comments mindlessly as you walk through campus, following the cobblestone path as a shortcut to his apartment.

“Done what?” You ask snarkily. “Hung out with each other?” You scoff. You and Taehyung spent all of freshman year skirting around each other, desperately trying to avoid contact while also banging on each other’s doors every ten minutes. It was essentially two semesters worth of shouting at each other through walls and sneering when you actually locked eyes.

“Talked,” Taehyung simplifies, because he’s right.

“Isn’t that what we were aiming for?” You ask with a raised eyebrow, turning to look at him as your suitcase wheel skips on a stone out of place. “I thought we had reached that consensus already.” It’s been a year and a half since you last spoke to each other. You were almost confident that, without any overlapping classes, you would be able to keep that streak going long after graduation.

As it turns out, things change.

“I don’t know if we ever actually agreed on that,” Taehyung says, thinking back. “Almost like it went…” he pauses, and you can’t be sure if it’s for dramatic effect or because he actually doesn’t know what to say. “Unspoken.”

The irony is not lost on you. In fact, it hits you smack dab in the forehead as you watch Taehyung’s curious expression morph into the sleazy frat boy one he wore so much back then. He looks very pleased with his pun. It makes you want to sock him in the face.

And as it turns out, some things never change.

You resist the urge to punch him in the shoulder because he offered you a place to stay for this break and you sort of (actually, really) owe him big time right now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t send a disapproving frown, which seems to do the trick.

“I distinctly remember how you were so excited to never have to live next to me again when we moved out,” Taehyung says like he’s remembering a fun trip to the zoo. Almost like he looks upon the last time you ever interacted with each other fondly.

You mentally sigh. If only freshman year you knew what was going to happen in the middle of your junior year. If only your final hadn’t run overtime by two hours. If only you had booked a later flight.

If only.

“I don’t remember that at all,” you lie like a liar, saying the words as the picture of you snarkily spitting them at Taehyung at the end of your freshman year plays in your brain on repeat.

“You sure about that, Y/N?” Taehyung says, turning to look you up and down. He’s always been such a people reader, and you’ve always felt so helplessly transparent in front of him. Even back then. Even now. “Because I don’t really think that your memory is that bad.”

“Nope, no, I don’t,” you say quickly, trying to get Taehyung to stop eyeing you like you’re a question on an exam that he thinks is suspiciously easy.

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter then, does it?” Taehyung muses as you round the street corner and his apartment complex comes into view. “Since we’ll be living together, anyway.”

“Miss you? Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”

Before you can wheel your cart down the hallway and kiss your freshman year goodbye, Taehyung opens his mouth and says one more thing. You almost don’t hear him, too busy reminding yourself that you’ll never have to see him again, but then he says, “One day, Y/N, you’re going to realize that we’re closer than you think.”

When you walk into Taehyung’s apartment, your eyes zero in on these three things: the navy blue futon pushed up against the wall by his television and the fact that it doesn’t look like the kind of used furniture from off of the street that most college kids typically resort to, the little wooden kitchen table that looks straight out of a family-owned Italian restaurant (looks like the two of you will be eating dinner together), and the paintings on the walls.

“Did you paint these?” Is the first thing you ask once you’re inside, putting your suitcase up against the wall as Taehyung takes off his coat.

“Those? Yeah, I did them early last year. My walls looked so damn plain without anything on them.”

In freshman year, Taehyung seemed like the kind of artsy hipster who shopped at Urban Outfitters and put vinyl records on his wall with Command Strips but never actually listened to them.

But the pieces on his walls aren’t vinyls of bands like Arctic Monkeys and Modern Baseball. They’re paintings, oil and acrylics and even a bit of charcoal. Still life and portraits and shadows.

You had never seen one of his paintings before. You never imagined you’d ever want to, or even get the chance to. And now, you’re standing in the middle of his apartment, and you’re surrounded by them.

“They’re…” You trail off, eyes bouncing from wall to wall as you take all of them in. There’s at least ten, one, if not two on each wall in sight. His bedroom is probably filled with them. His apartment’s not enormous, rather small since it’s only got one bedroom, but the paintings make the whole place bigger. Make it feel full of life.

“They’re alright,” Taehyung finishes. He’s already grabbing extra blankets from the storage closet in the side of the wall. “They were assignments we had during the semester so I figured that they’d be put to good use on my wall.”

“It’s very impressive,” you admit. “Kind of a flex, but an impressive flex.” There is something so perfectly Taehyung about the fact that he’s got art all over his walls, but they’re his very own pieces that he has framed and hanging, on display for the entire world to see if they’d like.

“They’d collect dust otherwise,” he says with a shrug. He tosses two blankets and a pillow your way, letting them plop onto the futon. “Are those enough blankets? It can get fucking cold in here, so I don’t want you to freeze to death or anything.”

And for a moment, you think that Taehyung has actually outgrown his asshole-y freshman days, maturing into someone with an actual moral backbone.

“How considerate,” you say sarcastically, “but I think I’ll be alright. I’m a big, strong girl.”

“Just don’t come crawling into my bed if you want a taste of that weighted-blanket life,” Taehyung says, pretending to flip his hair. “Though, I wouldn’t blame you if you did want to sleep with me.”

With a pillow right at your disposal, you waste no time grabbing it and chucking it straight at Taehyung’s face. He easily dodges, having spotted the move from a mile away, and chuckles.

“Come on, Y/N, you can do better than that,” he says disapprovingly, shaking his head as he makes his way to the kitchen. “Your arm was much stronger back in freshman year.”

Scowling, you watch as he puts on the kettle to boil, letting the water begin to bubble as he goes about his business like he doesn’t have a guest in his living room that absolutely can’t stand him.

And you realize that maybe Taehyung’s a couple of years older, a couple of years wiser, but that doesn’t make him a couple of years any less unbearable.

If you were a sleep-deprived engineering student three cans of Monster deep who, in their 4AM haze, invented a time machine to go back to freshman year, and you told your eighteen-year-old self that you would be living under the same damn roof as Kim Taehyung in two years time, freshman year you would probably sock you in the face. And ask you if you changed majors. Which, you did.

It’s not a far reach to wonder why. By the time October rolled around, the two of you had already established yourselves as archenemies until the end of time.

It was a natural progression, really. Two tiny dorm rooms right next to each other, two beds pressed up against opposite sides of the same paper-thin wall, and two disgruntled freshmen trying their hardest not to die of alcohol poisoning.

Now, you don’t have a track record for going to sleep at a reasonable hour. In fact, you don’t think you’ve gone to bed before 11PM since middle school. But is it really that irrational of you to want to get some well-deserved shuteye at two in the morning after a long day of procrastination and a long night of doing the studying you should have done during the day? Your roommate is fast asleep across from you, having gone to sleep at midnight like a regular college student who has her life together, which means that she’s immune to the fact that right next door, you can hear nothing but pounding drums making the very linoleum floor of your dormitory shake.

Scowling, you scramble out of bed, sliding on your shoes to go give a certain Kim Taehyung a bit of a reprimanding.

Why the fuck does he listen to heavy drums at two in the morning? What the fuck is he doing? Does he not own headphones, or anything that might restrict the sound to his own two ears and nothing else? Does he not have any respect for the people next door to him that might also have to listen to the sound of a thumping bass while they’re trying to go to sleep?

Some of you have 9AM’s tomorrow morning. And by some of you, you mean you.

You quietly shut the door behind you so as not to wake your roommate, dead-bolting it so you don’t get locked out and have to trudge down to the Help Desk looking like a tired piece of non-recyclable garbage, and immediately bang on Kim Taehyung’s door. He hasn’t got a roommate, and you know he’s awake, which means that if he doesn’t respond, you’ll know why.

Surprisingly enough, he does, opening the door and immediately grinning once he sees who’s on the other side, like he can’t get enough of the fact that his mere existence bothers you.

“It’s 2AM,” you tell him, in lieu of a greeting.

He checks his watch. “That it is.”

“Would you mind turning down the music? I’m trying to go to sleep.”

“This late, Y/N?” Taehyung asks, an eyebrow raised. “No wonder you’re always so cranky.”

“Maybe it’s because my next-door neighbor plays loud fucking music when I’m trying to go to sleep!” You say, already beginning to raise your voice like a loser who can’t control her emotions.

Which is exactly what you are, actually. So this is very on brand for you.

“Hmm, never thought about it that way,” Taehyung says innocently. He’s got a gleam in his eye that says otherwise.

“I’m being very nice to you right now, Kim Taehyung. Please turn your music down. Because it’s loud and you’re probably bothering other people as well,” you say, restraining yourself. If you were any more sleep-deprived you’d storm into his room and pound in his face like it was the fucking drums he’s listening to.

“But you’re my only neighbor,” Taehyung says, a bitter reminder that you were unlucky enough to be the second-to-last room in the corridor, and he, the very last one.

You inhale, trying to not lose your cool despite having probably already lost it. Kim Taehyung makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. Or buy heavy-duty earplugs off of Amazon Prime. The thing is, one of those options costs you money, and one is entirely free. So, it’s not difficult to see which one you’re leaning towards.

“Taehyung, please turn your music down, or so help me God. I’m asking nicely,” you can feel the carbon dioxide paths coming from your nose as you breathe, in and out and in and out.

“Just for you, Y/N,” Taehyung says with a grin. God. You could just straight sock him in the face right now. “It helps me focus, but so does getting to see you.”

“Perish immediately,” you tell him sharply before pulling the door shut, marching back off to your room.

True to his word, Kim Taehyung does turn off his music. Or puts in headphones. At least he’s conceded.

That is, until you wake up to a crash of glass later that morning at 7AM, coming from only one direction.

The fact of the matter is, everything you and Taehyung did that year bothered the other so immensely that hatred, pure, unadulterated dislike, was really the only thing that could have come out of it.

“You still listening to loud ass drums in the middle of the night?” You ask, eyeing the speakers by Taehyung’s television as you sit on his couch (as far apart from each other as possible) and eat some leftover spaghetti.

“I invested in some AirPods as a treat to myself last year, so yes, but don’t worry,” Taehyung says. He’s mindlessly flicking through the available Hulu options on his TV, severely unimpressed by every one of them.

“Wow, AirPods, sounds like you’re moving up in the world,” you say callously. “At least I don’t have to listen to it with you anymore.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said it helped me focus,” Taehyung says, all matter-of-fact about it. “It was from a Spotify playlist of modern orchestral music. You should give it a listen, it really gets you into the zone.”

“My relationship with classical music has, unfortunately, been tainted by a certain someone,” you remind him, taking the time to shoot him a glare just in case he doesn’t already know who exactly is at fault.

“What a shame, you might actually like it,” Taehyung says sadly, shaking his head.

“So what are the speakers for, then? If not for your fuckin’ drums,” you ask, motioning to them again as you slurp up the last of your spaghetti. It’s not as if you’ve got some sort of sacred reputation to protect in front of him. He’s seen you at your best (the first day of freshman year, when there was still light in your eyes), and at your worst (2AM, coming out of a drunken stupor, and bedhead-ridden). Like an ex-boyfriend, or something.

“My friends really like singing karaoke,” Taehyung says. He points to the bluetooth microphones underneath the television as extra proof.

“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse to yourself. Taehyung always struck you as someone that needs people not to calm him down, but to elevate his already boisterous personality. Friends who are equally as unabashed as he is.

“Since you’re here for a whole month, we should try it some time,” Taehyung suggests, taking the empty bowl from your hands and heading back to the sink to wash up.

“You need help with that?” You ask, immediately getting up because even if Taehyung has a tendency to drive you up the wall, you’re still going to be a good guest.

“No, don’t sweat it,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “You know, I have karaoke for All I Want For Christmas Is You. Super seasonal, right?”

You dust off your hands from where you’re standing, loitering in that weird halfway point between his kitchen and his living room. Checking the clock underneath his television, you realize that it’s already past ten. And while you haven’t gone to sleep this early in a while, being in Taehyung’s apartment makes you feel all sorts of strange. Subdued and exhausted, too grateful to be your normal aggressive and witty self. And after such a long goddamn day, passing out on his navy blue futon seems like absolute heaven.

“Not right now,” you say, shaking your head. Karaoke is something that friends do with other friends. And despite currently living under the same roof, you and Kim Taehyung are not friends.

(But perhaps you will be. And that’s the scary part.)

You sigh, absolutely tanked. It’s been a stupidly long day. “Maybe later.”

Living with Taehyung is a sort of strange limbo you never, in a million years, pictured yourself in. You aren’t close enough to be friends but you’ve matured out of being the true enemies you had both envisioned the yourselves as in freshman year. The both of you walk around his apartment like you’re afraid to talk to the other, waiting patiently for the bathroom when the other person’s inside, trying to keep yourself busy with nonexistent work (it is winter break, after all) and the apps on your phones.

This is the sort of thing you dreamed of when you were a freshman. A Kim Taehyung that you could co-exist with peacefully. Someone who didn’t spend every waking moment of his life making every waking moment of yours unbearable. You used to find excuses to sleep overnight in the library (it was open 24/7, after all) just so you wouldn’t have to go back to your dorm and see his stupid face. Now, the two of you sit on opposite ends of the couch minding your own goddamn business and doing two totally unrelated activities. In silence. The only noises being his refrigerator/freezer combo when it starts making ice and the sounds of your fingers hitting the keyboards on your laptops. Maybe he’s playing a video game on the Playstation 4 he keeps out in the living room, but he has headphones on and isn’t saying a word.

It’s a very strange sort of limbo indeed, because no opportunities arise for you to become friends nor do any arise for you to become enemies. At this rate, you’ll live together for the month-long winter break and when it ends, you’ll go back to never speaking to each other again.

And that, strangely enough, makes you sad. Makes you want to reach out to him, try and build up a relationship that last ended in absolute chaos so that when you leave this place, it won’t have been for naught. You will have gained something from it, no matter how small.

But just like usual, Taehyung beats you to it.

“Hey,” he says one day, walking into the living room and already pulling on his overcoat. “You free right now?”

“Yeah, why?” You ask, shutting your laptop as you turn to him. He’s all dressed up and you’ve been wearing the same hoodie for the past forty-eight hours.

“Let’s get hotpot. I’m freezing and I want some hot soup and meat.”

So, you go and get hotpot.

Like any normal university with more than approximately three East Asians enrolled, there’s a hotpot place right off campus that many a college student frequent. You have, admittedly, not been since freshman year, but this winter break you seem to be reaching back into all of those memories anyway, like a can of worms. Memory worms.

“I’m starving,” Taehyung says as the two of you sit down. He’s already opening the menu, eyeing all of the different ingredients he can order for a simple All-You-Can-Eat fare. “Plus, I’ve been craving hotpot for weeks now.”

As if on cue, his stomach grumbles and you can hear it from across the booth.

“Even my tummy knows,” Taehyung says, placing a palm to his belly to soothe it. “Have you gotten hotpot before?”

“Yeah, but it was a while ago. I just never had the time to go for a whole two hours and pig out on food,” you say with a sigh. It’s been so long that you barely remember what it tastes like.

“Then we’ll spend every minute that we’re allowed to here, eating as much food as we want and gaining a few pounds while we’re at it,” Taehyung says, determined. The waiter comes by to pour you both some water and he already begins to order, pointing to about fifteen different things on the menu before the waiter whizzes off.

“I don’t think I heard a single word you told that guy,” you say candidly. Taehyung listed everything off so quickly that it went right over your head.

“I just ordered a lot of food, so be prepared,” Taehyung says like it’s a promise. He’s got this glint in his eye, one that tells you that you should be glad you came on a fairly-empty stomach because it’s about to be filled to the brim.

And prepared you are. Within five minutes of Taehyung ordering, there are plates and dishes and boards of food in front of you and a steaming pot of broth in the middle. There’s so much on the table that you can hardly see the marble table top underneath.

Taehyung dives right in, clearly an experienced hotpot eater. He grabs two bowls filled with various sauces and pops a couple of the vegetables into his mouth as he waits for the broth to boil. And when it begins to bubble, he immediately begins dumping everything in sight into it, from meat to noodles to vegetables. It all looks ridiculously appetizing.

When the first round of hotpot is over and done with, you already feel yourself starting to get sleepy just from the consumption overload. Taehyung, on the other hand, has apparently no limit and is already ordering more, pointing to another fifteen things on the menu.

“Never thought we’d be doing this, did you?” Taehyung asks, and you can hear the knowing tone in his voice. Like he already knows how you’re going to answer him.

“I have to admit that I never did,” you say. It must the food that’s softened you up. No wonder Taehyung invited you to a place where you can literally eat as much as you want in a two-hour timeframe.

“This is nice, though, isn’t it?” He asks.

And for once in your life, you agree. It is nice. Not just the food (though the food is very nice) but being with someone on a winter break that would otherwise be overwhelmingly lonely. Eating out with someone, even if it’s someone with whom your relationship isn’t all that strong, isn’t that sturdy. It’s nice. Because it means that, somewhere along the way, you both wanted something to change for the better.

“It is.” You nod. “Way better than all the times we fought during freshman year.”

“Remind me why we never went to our RA to resolve things like we should have?” Taehyung says, but he doesn’t make it sound like you both made a mistake. He asks because he’s curious, and because the past is the past.

“I think we were both too fucking prideful for our own good,” you say, shaking your head. You now would disapprove of you in freshman year so strongly. “We thought that we could either resolve it ourselves or spend the rest of our lives hating each other.”

“Isn’t that crazy?” Taehyung asks, holding up his water like it’s a glass of vintage red wine from the 1800’s. “That we thought that we could just spend the rest of our lives hating each other?”

“I was prepared to do it,” you say, taking another piece of meat from the hotpot in front of you, letting the steam waft from it like a tiny campfire. “With how big this school is, I was convinced that you and I would never have to see each other again. Never have the opportunity to change how we felt about each other.”

“But that’s not how life works, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you, looking into your eyes like he’s trying to reach into your soul, pick apart the memories of freshman year and watch as your relationship deteriorated as each day went by. “It doesn’t matter if we see each other every day for the rest of our lives or if, after this, we never say another word to each other. You will always have the opportunity to change how you feel about someone, even if you aren’t with them. Even if you aren’t seeing them at all.” He takes a deep breath, and reaches over the steaming pot of soup to nudge your shoulder with his finger, ever so slightly. It makes you look up at him, meet his dark brown eyes with your own, foggy from the steam. “That’s what makes us human, Y/N. We’re human because we can change.”

Your heart, still and silent, begins to thump.

“Do you wanna go to New York?”

“Today?”

It’s early in the morning on Christmas Eve, and the two of you are wide awake after Taehyung’s neighbors a floor below him called the fire department as an early wake-up call for the entire complex. You’ve always been a light sleeper—Taehyung made sure of that in freshman year—but even he woke up as the fire trucks pulled up to the fire lane next to the apartment building. He came stumbling out of his room in nothing but a t-shirt two sizes too big and sweatpants hanging low on his hips, locks of his hair sticking every which way, face illuminated by the blue, red, and orange lights of the emergency vehicles beneath the window.

And he stayed like that, even as the noise died down and the sun rose. He marched around looking like he had just rolled out of bed, barely sparing himself a second glance in the reflection of his refrigerator.

“Yeah,” Taehyung responds like it’s obvious. “If we hopped on a bus now we could make it there by nine and spend the day there. How about it?”

“You mean, right now?” You ask, just as clarification. College and its many features have forced you to grow used to spontaneity, but it usually came in the form of “I’m hungry, so I am going to eat an entire bag of Hot Cheetos at this exact moment” or “Yes, my bank account is crying but these pants are very cute,” and not, “Do you wanna go to New York?”

“In a bit. Buses leave from here every hour to go to New York, especially since it’s the holiday season. Tickets are ten dollars. We could do it, if you’d like,” Taehyung says casually, like he’s suggesting that the two of you go grocery shopping or something else equally mundane.

“Just for the day?” You ask, a girl of both many questions and a shocked expression.

“Sure,” Taehyung says with a shrug, biting into a tomato as if it were a goddamn apple. “We can go to a museum or two, eat a nice lunch or dinner, and go ice skating at Rockefeller. See the tree, too. It’ll get us in the holiday spirit, don’t you think?”

And normally an outing to New York would have you planning weeks in advance, organizing reservations and buying tickets for entry into exhibits, but it’s winter break and you’ve got more free time than you know what to do with.

And maybe you’d hate to admit it, but you need someone like Taehyung to get you off of your ass and out of the house, do something fun and spontaneous like college students do in the movies.

Taehyung is practically a movie portrayal of a college student in real life. He’s spontaneous, secretive, sage. He’s artsy and worldly, paints but is also extremely smart and well-educated. He lives in a quaint off-campus apartment by himself and spends his days making friends and keeping busy. He loves to tease you, and has that sort of lopsided smirk that all casanovas do. And he is, as much as you’d hate to admit it, always been something of a looker. He’s got the same sort of handsome, classic look that young European men in paintings from the eighteenth century have, a portrait of them in the prime of their lives. One wink and he’d send every preteen girl in the audience to their knees.

And you? Well, you suppose you’re the tragically unlucky female lead who has to live with him until classes resume.

Taehyung’s standing in the kitchen, leaning on the counter island as he scrolls for bus tickets on his phone. “There’s a bus leaving from the station in thirty minutes. Think we can make it?”

It might be the fact that you’ve been holed up in Taehyung’s apartment for the past forty-eight hours that makes you say yes. Or it’s the desperation to do something, anything, literally anything, to keep yourself busy this break.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that little voice in the back of your chest, one buried in the depths of your heart, that makes you go. Because there is something so wonderfully exhilarating about being spontaneous. And there is something even more exciting about it being with someone you know.

You grin. “Let’s do it.”

Two hours later, the two of you are standing outside Penn Station in New York City, staring at the road signs to try and orient yourself. It’s chilly and a little windy, but the sun beats down regardless, shadows of skyscrapers cast along the streets.

You pull out your phone to pull up the Maps app, looking up directions, but Taehyung just begins to walk down 7th Avenue, not a care in the world.

“Where are you going?” You say quickly, scrambling to catch up to him. This early in the morning, your breath still turns to fog as you jog towards him to meet his abnormally long strides.

“Do you want to go to the Met, MOMA, or Guggenheim?” Taehyung asks simply, like he’s trying to decide which type of Doritos to get in the chips aisle.

“Uh…” you are, admittedly, not that particular to the art that you’ll see. Art does not have as much of an immediate relevance to you as other things in your life, like your bank account, or your final semester grades. “Why don’t you pick the museum, and I’ll pick the restaurant we go to?”

“Deal,” Taehyung says, that same devilish gleam in his eyes, a trick (or two) up his sleeves. Only this time, you aren’t afraid of what he’s got in store.

You find that you are very much looking forward to it.

Twenty minutes later sees the both of you standing outside the gigantic glass doors of the MOMA, surrounded by a pitch black exterior about as edgy and contemporary as the pieces of art inside.

“You never struck me as a modern art kind of guy,” you tell Taehyung as the both of you walk inside, glass windows and ceilings on every side of you and a bustling crowd right in front of you. Modern art seems rather stuffy. And perhaps, two years ago, you would have equated Taehyung to such, but now, stuffiness couldn’t be the furthest adjective to describe him. He may be a little obnoxious and overwhelmingly charismatic, but he is certainly not stuffy.

“I prefer Impressionism and the subsequent periods,” Taehyung tells you, another fact you never knew but happily stow away. “But I am, admittedly, a bitch for modern art, no matter how goddamn stupid it is.”

“Good to know we’re spending our money on a museum that will definitely be worth our while,” you say dryly, taking the two tickets from the woman behind the desk. You pick up a map while you’re at it, almost certain to get lost in this maze of a museum, but Taehyung is already zooming off, forcing you to scurry through the herds of people just to keep up his pace.

“Do you know where we’re going?” You ask, entirely serious. You fumble to open up the map and suddenly you’ve got a piece of shiny paper larger than your backpack in your hands, overwhelmed.

Taehyung stops, the two of you standing right by the middle of a doorway, blocking everybody’s path. And he places his hands on top of yours, lowering the map as you gaze up at him, wondering why the heck you haven’t moved to the side so you aren’t inconveniencing the thousands of people roaming the museum. His brows are soft, a little furrowed, like someone began to knit them together but then forgot halfway through. Like he’s thinking. Like he wants to tell you something.

“No,” Taehyung says softly, large hands enveloping yours as he begins to fold the map back up, “I don’t know where we’re going.”

You open your mouth, about to prove your point, but Taehyung continues.

“But I don’t need to. Because we’re supposed to get lost,” he tells you, honest, candid, and true. “That’s the whole point. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.”

You scoff, heart a little warm on the inside but wit still sharp. “You sound like an infomercial for a cruise.”

Taehyung laughs, tilting his head back in the way that says that he means it. “I’m serious, Y/N. Please. We don’t need a map. We can guide each other. All we need is faith, trust…” He pauses, leaning in and waiting for you to finish his sentence.

Begrudgingly, you give in, mostly because he’s too naturally charming not to. “And pixie dust.”

Taehyung grins, satisfied, before he catches you by surprise, takes your hand in his, and pulls you into the elevator.

Much like the corrupt businesses whose main offices are only a few minutes walk away, you go from the top down. Taehyung says that it is like a very, very long slide. You say that it’s an extremely slow walk.

He’s an art student. You don’t really know what else you were expecting. He stares at each piece until it bores into his eyes, fills up another cup in his soul, overflowing with color, with light and meaning and everything in between. Every now and then, he and you stop at the same one, inspecting each and every detail, and Taehyung will lean to the side and whisper in your ear.

He will tell you what he thinks of the medium, what he thinks of this piece and what he thinks of the positioning of that specific object. He tells you not how he interprets it in the eyes of the artist, but what it means to him, and how he perceives it. And, as the hours pass, you realize that, while you have been in museums before, you had never felt like you were truly there. And here you are, standing in front of priceless pieces of art with a boy in love with art beside you, and he holds your hand as he takes you through what brings him more joy than anything else.

(Well, besides perhaps, chemistry.)

When you reach the first painting and sculpture floor, Taehyung lets out an audible gasp.

You round the corner and before you know it, you’re standing in front of what could very well be the most famous painting of the nineteenth century.

“I forgot it was here,” Taehyung says distantly, like he’s forgotten who he’s talking to. In the ink black of his pupils, you can see the oil painting reflected, the thick blue and yellow brushstrokes, each and every line on the canvas.

“Now, this piece I’m familiar with,” you say, standing next to him and staring up at The Starry Night, an artistic feat, worth more than probably a hundred times your tuition, and a legacy. The legacy that The Starry Night left behind is one that you see still reflected today. You see it in all of the other people in this little room, clambering over one another just so they can get a glimpse. You see it in the little children who draw self-portraits in art class, Sharpies and markers and crayons littering the page.

And you see it in the boy next to you, who loved something so much he knew that he would be doing it for the rest of his life. He would be following a legacy, forever, until he forged one of his own. You look not at the art but as Kim Taehyung gazes at it, memorizing each and every stroke and imprinting it onto his brain. And you finally realize what art means: passion. It means that it fills you up, flows through your blood and into your heart, consumes you. And it means that the only thing you can do to prevent it from eating you alive is to spread it, and let others get a taste of the madness.

“It really is beautiful, isn’t it,” you muse. You don’t know much about art but when there is something so mesmerizing, so stunning, in front of you, it’s difficult not to notice.

You feel Taehyung turn his head, letting the gaze of his piercing brown eyes rest upon your figure for a split second before he turns back. “It is,” he says.

The way that the two of you go through art museums, by the time you emerge, it’s already dark and the streets are beginning to empty as tourists and cityfolk alike find places to eat, walking into every bar, restaurant, cafe, and house on the hunt for a good meal, whether homemade or curated. You had spent nearly an hour in the gift shop alone, laughing at the overpriced t-shirts and kitschy pillows.

“Where to next, m’lady?” Taehyung asks as you push open the glass doors and let the biting cold hit your noses.

“You know, we were so busy in there that I didn’t even have time to find a nice place to eat tonight,” you admit sheepishly.

“That’s alright,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “I like surprises. Spontaneity is my thing.”

“You don’t say,” you comment sagely, making Taehyung roll his eyes.

Knowing that it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation now, you and Taehyung make your way south, following the flow of traffic heading towards Times Square and keeping an eye open for any places that look relatively nice and busy, but not too busy, the perfect sign of both a delicious and available restaurant.

After walking for a few blogs, cuddling together (in a totally platonic way) to preserve as much body heat as possible in the now freezing weather, air no longer warmed by the sun’s rays, you stumble upon a tiny hole in the wall Mediterranean place. You can’t really see anything inside due to the fog on the window, forming from the combination of cold air and hot, but Taehyung does a quick google search and says that it’s a modern Mediterranean restaurant that specializes in pizza. Google says it has two dollar signs. You hear the word pizza, and everything pretty much goes out of the window.

“Hi,” Taehyung says as you squeeze through the little hallway to get to the host, voice warm and silky. “Table for two?”

“Your last name, sir?” The man asks.

“Oh, we don’t have a reservation,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. You two are college students. It’s not like you plan ahead anyway.

“That’s okay, we still ask for every customer’s name for a more personalized experience,” the host says. He leans forward, eyes wide, waiting for Taehyung to respond.

“Kim,” Taehyung says simply as the host gathers two menus and a wine list.

“Right this way, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” the host says, and you open your mouth to correct him (Because you are not married. You’re not. You’re not even dating. This is not a date. It’s not a date, right?), but Taehyung puts a finger to his lips and tells you to zip it. It’s almost like he’s enjoying this.

For the rest of the evening, the wait staff all address you and Taehyung as Mr. and Mrs. Kim, which is absolutely outrageous for multiple reasons: you are college students, you both look like college students, you’re not dating, you don’t act like you’re dating (other than the hand-holding and cuddling which was purely out of survival and nothing else), and most importantly, you’re not interested in each other like that. That part is obvious. Isn’t it?

When you order a glass of champagne each they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When Taehyung has a question about one of the ingredients on one of the pizzas they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When you order your food they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they come by to clarify Taehyung’s request of no anchovies they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they bring these massive pizzas and place them down on your table, wishing you a pleasant meal they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim.

Mr. and Mrs. Kim, they call you.

“Everything alright, Mr. and Mrs. Kim?” Your waiter asks as you’re plowing through your individual pizzas very inelegantly.

“Yes,” Taehyung grins cheesily. “Thank you very much.”

He’s positively beaming.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” You ask, a single eyebrow raised.

“This pizza is really good,” Taehyung tells you.

“Not that,” you say with a roll of your eyes. You know that Taehyung knows exactly what you’re referring to, he’s just being annoying about it, as per usual. “The whole ‘we’re married’ thing. You like it, don’t you?”

“The “Mr. and Mrs. Kim’ thing?” Taehyung says with a smile. He’s relishing in the feeling, especially when it’s obvious that you’re not as keen on the collective nickname. “I fucking love it. You don’t?”

“We’re college students,” you remind him.

“So? That means that they think that we look old enough to not be college students. I consider that a win, especially because Jimin always says I look twelve,” Taehyung says with a shrug.

“We’re not married,” you add. It’s the truth.

“You’re right, we’re not, but Mr. and Mrs. Kim has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I love the way that it sounds,” Taehyung says. He basks in it.

“We’re not even dating, Taehyung,” you say with a sigh, exasperated. Doesn’t he get it? It’s weird, being Mr. and Mrs. Kim, because you never have been. There never was a Mr. and Mrs. Kim. And quite frankly, there never will be. “We’re not even interested in it.”

“Who says?” Taehyung asks, and the path he’s directing this conversation down is not one you’d like to take. It’s rocky and bumpy and unclear, hazy with fog. You don’t do fog. You like when things are clear cut and visible.

“I do,” you say with a frown. “Are you interested in dating me, Taehyung? Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to date you right now. Or, like, at all.”

Taehyung pauses. His brows are furrowed again, but all the way this time. He stares down at his pizza, and he contemplates. You sit there and watch him, feeling the weight of every second as it passes by. Were you too harsh? Maybe you were. But it was the truth, and he deserves something honest, even if it’s brutal.

“Oh,” Taehyung says, like he wasn’t expecting those words to come out of your mouth. What you said has been lingering between you like smoke, refusing to dissipate. “Well, I—I guess that makes two of us.” It’s obvious that there’s something else there, just underneath the water, but you don’t press further. It sounds like he’d rather keep it hidden.

When you leave, the waitstaff bid you goodbye exactly as you had predicted.

“Enjoy your evening, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” they say cordially as you and Taehyung pull on your coats and hats and gloves and head out the door.

“You too,” Taehyung says softly after a few seconds, like he was waiting for the words to fade away before speaking. “Thank you.”

Your bus leaves from Penn Station at 9:30 that night, and it’s barely seven. Plenty of time for you to continue exploring, see Times Square all lit up like it’s New Year’s Eve, go up to the top of the Empire State Building, or even take a peek into Central Park at nighttime, when the moon is high and the lanterns are lit.

“How about we go ice skating?” Taehyung suggests as the two of you walk along the pavement, side by side. Your hands are buried deep into the pockets of your coat.

“At Rockefeller?”

“Sure, why not?” Taehyung says. That sentence pretty much sums up your trip to New York thus far. “I’ve always wanted to go skating and see the tree during Christmastime. When else will we get the chance?”

Five minutes later you’ve paid for rental skates, a locker for your shoes, and a ticket to the rink. Visible right next to you is the enormous tree, the lights twinkling and cameras flashing as everyone scrambles to get their Instagram picture to prove that they actually went to the tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City.

When the zamboni is finished and the employees have skated over the ice enough to increase the level of friction, Taehyung and you balance on your skates as you walk towards the entrance. Slowly, everybody begins to glide on, wobbling at first before eventually getting the hang of it. There are a couple of small children holding onto those little penguin skate assistants, laughing as their older brothers and sisters guide them along the ice.

“I’ve never skated before,” you admit nervously, about two seconds before you’re about to enter the rink.

Taehyung’s mouth drops open. “Never?”

“No,” you reiterate, even more nervous than before. “I have no idea what I’m doing, I just said yes because like you said we’re in New York and it’s nearly Christmas and we should just seize every opportunity that we have and—”

“Y/N,” Taehyung says, calming you down as he ushers you away from the entrance so you aren’t blocking other people’s paths. “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry,” he tells you, holding onto your wrists to make you look up at him. “I can show you how to. It’s easier than it looks, I swear. I won’t let you fall. You just have to trust me, alright?” He shakes your wrists to catch your attention, make sure that you heard him. “Alright?”

Deep breath. Inhale, exhale.

“Alright.”

Everything is, in fact, not alright. No matter what Taehyung says, ice skating is way more fucking difficult than it looks. Taehyung steps onto the ice and it turns into second nature for him, gliding around a small circle to get warmed up as you cling onto the side railing like an idiot. You have no idea how to move, you have no idea where to go, you just shuffle along the railing with the rest of the children who are far younger than you, also trying to skate for the first time.

This is embarrassing.

“You’re a liar,” you tell Taehyung pointedly as he circles around, coming up to rest next to you. You’d point at his chest for emphasis, but you’re afraid you’ll fall without both hands on the railing at all times. “This is—” you pause, remembering that there are children present, “—very difficult.”

Taehyung just chuckles. “You have to be brave, Y/N, come on,” Taehyung implores. He holds out his hand, motioning for you to let go of the wall and take a leap of faith.

“No, I will not be brave. Please let me be weak,” you beg, scared for your life. One wrong move and you’d go splat in the middle of the rink and embarrass yourself in front of all of New York City.

“Come on, Y/N,” Taehyung says, holding his hand closer. “You said you trusted me. I told you, I won’t let you fall. Come on. Be brave.” And then he adds, leaning in to meet your eyes, “for me?”

He’s always been too charming for your own good.

Tentatively, second by second by painstaking second, you remove your hands from the railing, first the left and then the right, as Taehyung pulls you right next to him, holding on tight.

“See?” He asks as you begin to move on your own, Taehyung’s short glides pulling you along the ice. “Look, it’s not that bad.”

“I am scared for my life right now.” You blink.

“Focus on me, okay,” Taehyung says, making you meet his eyes once more. “Eyes on me, alright. You’re doing fine. You’re skating, isn’t this fun?”

“I am terrified that I am going to perish on this very rink,” you repeat for emphasis.

“Look, Y/N, look! You’re skating!” Taehyung tells you, and finally you glance down at your feet and realize that they’re beginning to move on the ice, all on their own.

“Oh my God! I’m skating! What the—heck!” You say, eyes widening in excitement.

“I knew you could do it,” Taehyung says, hands gripping on tight. You can feel the warmth from his palms seep into your own, feel the back of your hand burning from the touch. “You just had to trust me.”

“This is so cool,” you say, immediately very pleased with yourself. “I’m such a pro, I can do anything. Who said skating was scary?”

Taehyung opens his mouth to respond, but you shoot him a warning glare and he zips his lips.

“Watch this, I can even do it on my own. You’re gonna be very impressed, Kim Taehyung, just watch me!”

Within the next moment, you’re letting go of his hand and pushing yourself away from him, gliding along the ice ever-so-slightly as you begin to balance on your own.

But power is short-lived, and much like every leading male in Greek tragedies, your hubris gets the best of you, and you face the ultimate demise.

The moment you attempt to pick up your left foot, your right toe pick gets caught in a dip of the ice and you go toppling over, collapsing onto the ice in a cold, bruised ball.

Luckily, your coat takes most of the hit, its length preventing your knees from hurting into the next century, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. Ashamed of yourself and even more mortified to have to face Taehyung after boasting about how amazing you are, you slowly push yourself off of the ice, wobbling like a baby deer.

“What was that, Y/N?” Taehyung says with a raised eyebrow as he skates over. He’s clearly just recovered from a laughing fit.

“Fuck off,” you mutter, and you don’t even care if children hear you. “I got excited.”

“Clearly,” Taehyung notes, eyes wide and knowing. He holds out a hand, and before you even have time to think of a snarky retort your palm is reaching out for it, letting him pull you up off of the rink. “Here. Come on.”

One hour and two fairly bruised knees later, you and Taehyung are taking off your skates and relishing in the feeling of your feet, flat on the ground like feet should be.

“You alright?” Taehyung asks. You didn’t have any massive falls following the first spectacle, but you admittedly, still cannot ice skate very well. You’ll have to figure out a way to learn.

You round out the night by going to look at the Christmas Tree. Now that it’s fairly late, the massive families with young children have all gone home, leaving only the young adults left to bask in the glory of the peak of Christmas decorations.

“It seemed bigger in photos, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks as the both of you crane your necks to look at the tree in all of its glory. “Like it was the size of a small tower.”

“Yeah,” you agree. It looks somewhat disappointingly small, now that you’re here in front of it. “Today was a lot of fun, Taehyung. Your spontaneity paid off.”

“When does it not?” Taehyung asks, proud of himself. He even has enough of an ego to do a little hair flip, making you shake your head disapprovingly. “But I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I certainly did.”

“What was your favorite part?” You ask.

“Definitely when you were in your prime for one moment and a puddle on the ice the next,” Taehyung says, and for that, he earns a punch to the shoulder. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But I did really enjoy ice skating.”

“Yeah, because you can actually do it,” you remind him.

“What about you?”

You think. This day has been so long, from getting woken up by Taehyung’s irresponsible neighbors and the entire city’s fire department outside your window, to hopping on a bus to New York, to museums and restaurants and ice skating and the city, you feel like you’ve lived three days in one.

“The museum,” you finally decide. “I’m not really an art person, but I thought it was lovely. Nice and heated, too.”

“Yes, the best part about the Museum of Modern Art was its modern, state-of-the-art central heating,” Taehyung repeats, making you laugh. “I’m glad you liked the museum. I was worried you’d think it was too stuffy.”

You had thought that too. And then you watched someone fall in love with each and every piece, right in front of you, and you realized that there’s more to art than putting a price tag on it and critiquing it. It’s passion, materialized. It’s real.

It’s Taehyung.

“No,” you say with a shake of your head. “I thought it was beautiful.”

On Christmas Eve, it snows.

Correction: On Christmas Eve, it snows a lot.

Correction for the correction: On Christmas Eve, it blizzards.

When you listened to “White Christmas” last night, this isn’t exactly what you had in mind, if you were being honest. Maybe an inch or two. Maybe even just a flurry. But certainly not nearly two feet worth of snow, effectively trapping you inside of Taehyung’s apartment complex until the next day because not even the snow plows are allowed to go out on the roads. Not until the snow stops.

“Good thing we don’t live on the first floor, right?” Taehyung asks with a laugh that late afternoon, taking a peek out of the window to stare down at the white expanse below you. “I’d hate to be those guys.”

“It must be so cold,” you say sadly. You’ve spent the better part of today huddled up in as many blankets as Taehyung owns in his apartment and you have no intention of shedding even one of them. Not even as you sweat right through your pajama shirt from high school.

“We can just make dinner here, tonight,” Taehyung says, fishing around in his kitchen to see what the options are. It’s already beginning to get dark even though it’s not even five o’clock. God, you hate winter.

“What are we making?”

Taehyung fumbles through the cabinets and his fridge, hunting for anything that might make a good meal. Eventually, he pulls out two cartons of Trader Joe’s vegetable broth and every vegetable in his fridge.

“Wanna make soup?”

Soup is very easy to make. You set the broth to simmer, chop up vegetables, and dump them in the pot.

But the idea of you and Taehyung sharing his tiny kitchen space, both with knives in your hands is, well, a recipe for disaster.

Luckily no knife mishaps occur, but, like the children at heart that you are, you eventually end with pelting uncooked lima beans at each other in the most adult version of a food fight you have ever had in your life. No fuss, no mess, no tomatoes or key lime pies or spaghetti doused in sauce getting chucked across the kitchen floor, the dinner table.

No, your little food fight ends with you and Taehyung kneeling down on the tile as you pick up each little lima bean, gathering them in your palms.

You make to toss it out but Taehyung stops you.

“Wait,” Taehyung says, a hand on top of yours as it hovers over the trash can, “don’t toss them out.”

“Huh?” You ask.

“I’ll feed them to the birds,” he says, taking the pile from your hands and placing all of the lima beans, along with his own, in a Ziploc bag.

“You have a porch out here?” You ask, looking around. You’ve never seen it.

“No.” Taehyung shakes his head. “They land on my bedroom window sill so I feed them.”

When you were in freshman year, you remember how Taehyung always left his window open. You know this because even though yours was always closed, anytime a police car, fire truck, ambulance, or particularly loud motorist drove by, the sound was always loudest on the wall of your room that bordered Taehyung’s. You hated how he always left his windows open, even in the winter. Wasn’t he goddamn cold?

And now, even though it’s Christmas Eve and there’s a blanket of snow outside nearly two feet deep, Taehyung will go and open his bedroom window again and feed the birds lima beans like a fucking Disney prince, and it makes your heart flutter, ever so slightly.

You end the night sitting on Taehyung’s couch, only a foot or so of space in between your bodies as he multitasks, channel surfing and gulping down your homemade soup.

“I haven’t made soup in a while, but damn, this is good,” Taehyung says, drinking the rest of it before getting up to help himself to seconds. He sticks a hand out to take your bowl as well, and wordlessly you hand it to him.

“It’s my magic touch,” you tease. It was not. Taehyung did most of the work. You don’t have much of an affinity for cooking.

“It’s my chemistry brain,” Taehyung corrects. “Chem is basically like making soup.”

“But it can kill you,” you tack on.

“But it can kill you,” he agrees, returning to the couch. This time, when he sits down, he plops right down next to you, your sides touching as you sit in front of his television, slurping up homemade vegetable soup. “How’s your major? What is it, again?”

“English with a minor in Psych,” you say over a mouthful of carrot.

“Sounds like too much reading for me,” Taehyung comments. “I’d only like picture books.”

“Yeah, wonder why,” you tell him sarcastically. “But it’s going well. I’m thinking of maybe adding Consumer Psych as another minor since there’s a lot of overlap, but I’m not sure. I’ll think about it.”

“Sounds busy,” Taehyung comments.

“Almost as busy as visual studies and chem,” you remind him. “Seriously, do you ever sleep?”

“Inspiration is a fickle mistress and the will to do my chem problem sets, even more fickle,” Taehyung muses like the two subjects aren’t the absolute bane of his existence. “But yeah, I mean, I made it this far.”

“Our majors are so different,” you comment. They are. Encompassing all sides of the college major spectrum, from STEM to art to humanities. The only thing you’re missing is a business minor. But only snakes would ever be interested in something like that.

“It’s nice,” Taehyung decides. “Because this is forcing us to talk with someone with whom we don’t already share all of the same classes with.”

“I couldn’t imagine taking the same class as you,” you say, not because you’d hate having to be in the same room as Kim Taehyung or dread the potential to be paired up for group work, but because your tastes are so different. They’ve always been different. Art, English, chemistry, psychology. Headphones or speakers. Closed windows or open. It’s always been opposites with the two of you.

“Maybe I’ll take a psych class so that way we can,” Taehyung says.

“Maybe I’ll take an art history course,” you retort.

“You’d really take an art history course? They’re awfully boring, and I’m an art major,” Taehyung says, in disbelief.

You ponder it for a moment, but then nod. Yes, you would. Even if it sent you to sleep. Because it looks genuinely interesting. “After today, I wouldn’t mind it. You showed me a lot about art, Kim Taehyung. More than I thought I would ever learn in my lifetime.”

Taehyung sighs, shutting the television off. You guys weren’t watching it anyway. You hardly realized it was on. He looks down at his empty soup bowl, and then at you. He always does that—always looks somewhere else before looking at you, like he has to muster up the courage by first staring at an inanimate object. And then he says, “You’ll never stop learning about art. Neither will I. It’s a constant cycle, learning and relearning and changing your mind and revisiting old pieces. Because art is all around us.”

He looks at you, like he’s trying to say something else but doesn’t have the words. “You just have to look for it.”

New Year’s Eve is often a time of reflecting on the year that’s passed, making a list of goals to achieve once the clock strikes twelve. Thanking your friends and family, your loved ones, for being there for you this year, and promising to be there for them as well next year.

To you and Taehyung, it’s literally your last chance to get piss drunk this year without repercussions. You’ve never stayed here, at your university in the city, for New Year’s Eve (obviously). You’d be interested in getting all dressed up to go out. Taehyung would also be interested.

And so, after a day of slouching around and making half-assed resolutions you know you won’t keep (like managing your time better. As a college student? Impossible.), you and Taehyung decide to get dressed up and go out, pulling out the winter jackets you don’t care if you lose, or if they get trashed, or if they stain with vodka. All you want is to lose your goddamn mind in a tiny club with a bunch of other wasted young adults who don’t want to stay at home on the last night of the year.

You are, unsurprisingly, a self-proclaimed not-a-going-out person, but tonight is something of an exception. It’s your last night to do this this year, and honestly, you can’t really think of a better way to end the year. There’s been plenty of ups (that A+ on your paper on the ethics of Beowulf, yay!) and plenty of downs (Global Politics in the Twentieth Century, yikes), and no better way to say goodbye to them all than with alcohol in your system. But even if, during the regular college season, you’re something of a stick in the mud, you remembered to pack a nice party dress just in case, so you tug on a little black velvet mini-dress that sparkles rainbow in the light, covered with tiny glitters that get stuck in your hair and never come out.

As you’re fishing around for some tights that you don’t care about so your legs don’t freeze off in the cold, the door to Taehyung’s bedroom opens.

Out he walks in all of his New Year’s Eve glory, a full black ensemble complete with structured belt and a leather jacket. You turn around to look at him and he stops dead in his tracks, eyes blinking like he doesn’t know where to look. It gives you a clear view of him and his simple yet extremely flattering outfit. He looks like Danny Zuko. He looks like a boy you would avoid in high school.

Funnily enough, seeing him now draws you closer to him.

“Wow, hot stuff, you clean up nicely,” You comment, tugging on some black tights with a hole in the back that no one’s going to notice.

“I could say the same thing about you,” he adds on, a hand coming up to rub at the nape of his neck. “I didn’t even know you had this.”

“I packed it just in case,” you say with a shrug.

“Came in handy, didn’t it?” He asks. He comes up to stand by you, holding his arm out for you to wrap yours around, two people on a mission to not remember most things about this night. “You ready to go?”

Stuffing your phone and wallet into your purse, you quickly link arms with him as you walk to the door, your black boots clopping on the floor like the obnoxious high-heel owner you are.

“Yeah, you ready?” You ask, doing a quick double check. You’ve got everything.

“Let’s fuck some shit up.”

And fuck some shit up you do. By the time you reach the club that Taehyung had found online, you can already hear the bass pounding through the walls, feel the ground shake from the speakers alone. Go big or go home, you suppose.

As you expected, the club is already packed with bodies. Every young adult within a twenty-mile radius is out tonight, eager to spend the last night of the year doing what young adults in the primes of their lives do best: drink. And you and Taehyung are no exception.

Like everybody else entering the club at the same time as you, you make a beeline for the bar, already itching to get something into your system. You don’t love being drunk, and you like the taste of alcohol even less, so you just order a simple cocktail that should keep you occupied for a while.

Taehyung, on the other hand, well. He seems to harbor the go big or go home mentality quite firmly. It’s obvious that he’s here to do one thing and one thing only, which is not remember what he did when he wakes up tomorrow. You watch, a little impressed and a lot nervous about what exactly he’s trying to achieve, as he downs several shots in a row, pays the bartender, and immediately pulls you into the crowd of people dancing in the center of the room.

“The more I move, the faster my body can process the alcohol,” Taehyung tells you as your cocktail sloshes around in the glass in your hand. It’s an alright cocktail. A little too sweet for you, but you suppose that that’s your fault.

“Wow, when you said you wanted to fuck shit up, you meant it,” you comment as Taehyung dances, jumping and swaying to the beat of whatever Top 40 pop song is blaring from the speakers. You can barely hear the music over the volume of the rest of the club, people shouting to speak to each other, the sound of feet hitting the floor.

Within approximately fifteen minutes, Taehyung is already fairly tipsy and eager to keep going, bubbling over with excitement.

You convince him to dance a little longer before he goes back to get more, trying to make sure at least a bit of the alcohol he had at the beginning of the night goes through his body. The song changes to something much sultrier, like honey dripping from the speakers themselves, and suddenly, the entire club’s atmosphere changes.

“I love this song,” Taehyung says, and it must be the lack of control that causes him to place a hand on your waist and pull you in close to him, making you gasp.

“Wow, okay,” you comment, blinking. Taehyung rests his chin on your shoulder, leaning down as he holds you tight, your bodies swaying in tandem.

“You don’t mind this?” Taehyung asks.

“Not if you don’t,” you respond. He’s practically drunk, and you’re even a little buzzed. There are worse things you could be doing.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” He inquires aloud. It’s a good thing that you can’t see his face, can’t watch the haze in his eyes, otherwise you might lose your footing and collapse.

“What is?”

“This,” Taehyung repeats unhelpfully.

The next three minutes are some of the most confusing ones of your life as Taehyung rests a hand on your waist, palm rubbing up and down as the two of you dance together like it means something to the both of you.

But it doesn’t, does it? You chalk it up to both of your minds not being as sharp with some alcohol in your systems. That must be it.

When the song ends, the mood disappears as well, and Taehyung’s back to his bouncy, tipsy self. He’s practically stumbling over himself once he determines that it’s time for more shots, and you’ve never seen Taehyung drunk before but you can tell that he’s nearly there. You’ll probably put a hard stop on the drinks after this round, since Taehyung is the one most familiar with the way back to his apartment and you wouldn’t mind going home and sleeping after this.

“Come with?” Taehyung asks as he eyes the bartender like he’s the love of his life.

“No, it’s alright, Tae,” you say.

“You never call me Tae,” Taehyung comments mindlessly. Even when he’s nearly drunk, he still picks up on the little things.

“I guess the alcohol is making me soft,” you admit. “You go. I’m gonna find the bathroom and hope that nobody’s having sex in it.”

“Okay,” Taehyung singsongs as you pull away from him, looking for a dingy hallway to go down. “Be safe.”

“You too, I’ll be back soon,” you promise him, and that’s when you go rushing down the hallway.

Things are certainly weird down here. It must be the feeling of the new year looming over your heads. Like this is the last night to do everything wrong without regretting it in the morning. The bathroom is, luckily enough, empty, so you rush in and splash your face with some water, not caring about if your makeup runs. You’d sweat it off, regardless. You stare at yourself in the mirror, and this feels so stupidly like a goddamn romantic comedy that it makes you want to laugh at the irony.

Beautiful male art student lead gets drunk, confuses hardheaded and impenetrable female lead who doesn’t believe in love and supposedly hates beautiful male art student’s guts. Tension ensues.

Your life may as well already have a shitty Rotten Tomatoes rating stamped on top of it.

After collecting your thoughts and praying that that white stain on the wall isn’t what you think it is, you leave the bathroom and scurry down the hallway, eager to find Taehyung and make sure he isn’t bouncing off the walls after a second round of shots.

He’s not.

Instead, he’s still standing by the bar as a beautiful young woman speaks to him, long dark hair resting against her shoulders and a model-esque smile on her face. She’s leaning in with a suggestive look in her eyes, a hand coming up to rub at the side of his arm.

You furrow your brows as you watch them from afar, a little hurt by the fact that beautiful male art student lead is confusing hardheaded and impenetrable female lead even more, but then you notice Taehyung’s hesitance. The way he backs up a little when she gets closer. How he stiffens when she touches him.

And, well, fuck that.

“Tae,” you say, rushing up to him faster than you’d like to admit. “There you are, I was looking for you.”

The girl next to him frowns at the sight of you, and it’s clear she feels no shame to hide the immediately dislike. Sure, you don’t have model proportions or a smile whiter than snow, but you have morals.

“Who’s this?” You ask, trying to be nice.

“Nobody,” Taehyung tells you, and his hand immediately interlocks with yours. Standing next to him, you can feel as the tension fades from his body, his whole demeanor relaxing now that you’re by his side. “She just wanted to talk.”

“Are you a friend?” She asks, because she knows.

“I’m a special type of friend,” you say. There’s no way she’ll leave Taehyung alone otherwise. And this is definitely on the cocktail you drank (and nothing else, you swear!), but you even reach up to plop a kiss on his cheek for proof. Taehyung’s eyes widen as you do, but he plays it off as catching him off guard and grins, wrapping an arm around you to pull you even closer. “Can we help you?”

The girl is absolutely pissed, which means that you did your job.

“No, it’s alright,” she hisses through gritted teeth before turning her sights on someone else. Someone without a friend to protect them.

“Thanks,” Taehyung whispers once she’s gone. Even though she’s probably not coming back, Taehyung keeps you close, a hand on you at all times like you’ll fly away if he doesn’t hold on tight.

“Of course,” you tell him. “You’d do the same for me.”

“She scared me,” Taehyung says, and if his red face is anything to go by, it’s clear that he’s pretty much reached his alcohol intake limit. “I’m glad you came.”

“I could tell you didn’t want to talk to her,” you say.

“Because I wanted to talk to you,” Taehyung says, and it’s definitely the alcohol that’s erased his filter. “I was waiting for you to come out of the bathroom and she just came up to me and started flirting with me. I think she wanted to get in my pants. I didn’t want her to get into my pants.”

“I know.”

“I’d much rather be with you than with her. Than with anybody else. I would always want to be with you, instead.” He tells you, keeping your hands firmly intertwined as you lean against the bartender counter.

And well, huh. That’s different. Taehyung’s aforementioned lack of a filter means that any thoughts that run through his mind immediately turn into spoken words, but you weren’t expecting those words. You never thought you;d hear them, not in a million goddamn years.

“Okay, Tae,” you say, patting him assuringly. He’s just drunk. That’s all.

“I’m serious, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you firmly, pushing your comforting hand off of his shoulder and turning to face you directly. “I mean it.”

“I know, Tae.” you reassure him. It’s easier than trying to fight him, especially when he’s this hammered. You check the time on your phone. Maybe it’s time to leave. If you go now, you’ll be able to make it back by midnight. “Let’s go home, okay? I’m ready to go home.”

Wordlessly, Taehyung nods, and the two of you leave the club before people are even thinking about ringing in the New Year.

When you reach Taehyung’s apartment, he takes off his leather jacket to hang on the coat rack and turns the television on. Only three minutes to midnight.

“I had fun,” you say, trying to lighten the conversation. The way back was silent, the only noises the sounds of New Year’s Eve parties on every block you turned onto. Taehyung kept his face forward and his eyes ahead, even as you tried to huddle close to him to conserve the warmth.

“It was sort of fun,” Taehyung halfheartedly agrees.

“Did you drink too much?” You ask. His face is still beet red.

“I don’t think I drank enough.”

Two minutes to midnight.

You frown, brows furrowing. Why on Earth would Taehyung want to drink more? What would change if he had another shot, a can of beer or a little cocktail?

Slowly, you begin to peel off your own layers, resting your coat on the back of the couch and slipping off your boots. The both of you stand in his living room as the TV begins to buzz with excitement, the broadcast of Times Square lighting up the otherwise silent, tense atmosphere. He’s only a couple of feet away but it feels like he couldn’t be farther from you.

One minute to midnight. Everybody begins to count down, and you feel yourself holding your breath.

“Will you be alright going to sleep?” You ask. Even if Taehyung’s still drunk, he’s far less bouncy than he was at the club.

“I’ll be fine. Goodnight, Y/N,” he says, beginning to walk past.

Three.

“Okay.”

Two.

“Okay.”

One.

Something overtakes Taehyung, something quick and brief. He stops right next to you and flinches, like he wants to lean in and do something, anything, goddamnit, but stops himself before he goes through with it. Everyone on television is cheering, but this apartment couldn’t be less festive even if you tried.

Taehyung sends you a small smile as the world rings in the new year, dashing off to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

And you stand there, in the middle of his living room like the goddamn fool you are. Turning to the television, you watch over and over as every couple in Times Square kisses, clip after clip after clip, and like a goddamn idiot, you wish that Taehyung had done the same.

The end of winter break approaches faster than you’d like it, just like it does every year. Before you know it, there’s less than a week left before classes resume and you go back to the daily college life. Less than a week left before you can go back to your dorm and pretend like this year’s winter break mishap never happened.

Less than a week before you and Taehyung go back to never seeing each other.

You’re sitting at his kitchen table, clearing out your backpack and recycling every paper, every syllabus and assignment and study guide from last semester, doing a deep cleanse of your life (because holy shit, you need it), when you come across the purchase you had made at the MOMA.

“Taehyung,” you call out before you can stop yourself.

“Yeah?” He asks from where he’s sitting on the couch, reading a James Joyce book. You love that novel. It was one of the very few you read for fun last year.

You take the small paper bag in your hands, walking over to the couch. “I almost forgot about this, but since winter break’s starting to wind down, I just wanted to give you this as a thanks. For everything.”

“You got me a belated Christmas gift, Y/N?” Taehyung asks as you hold out the gift, clearly something thin like a posterboard or an art print.

“If it means I don’t have to buy you two things, then sure, consider this a belated Christmas gift,” you say with a laugh, sitting down a foot away from him as he slowly opens up the packet. “It’s sort of cheesy and very basic, but I just wanted to get you something nice as a thank you.”

Out Taehyung pulls is a print of van Gogh’s The Starry Night, big enough to fill up the empty spaces on his walls, so every inch of his apartment, of his life and his home, is filled with art.

“Oh my God,” Taehyung says, mouth agape. “This is…”

“It’s basic, I know. But I know how much you loved seeing it in person, so I thought that a memory of that would be nice,” you say, trying to ease the nervousness that has bubbled up inside of you.

“It’s wonderful,” Taehyung says, and you swear you’ve never seen him so happy, other than perhaps when you saw the real thing. “This is so fucking thoughtful of you.”

“I just—you told me a lot about the art we saw that day, but when we reached this painting, you were speechless. And I sort of knew, then, that it was your favorite piece. Because you didn’t have to explain it with words,” you tell him. “I could just tell. It was like your whole body warmed up the moment it came into view.”

“I’m touched, Y/N.” Taehyung beams. “This is all an art student could ever want, really. To be able to know that their love for art meant something to someone else.”

“I just wanted to say thank you for everything. Taking me in, cooking me food, being really nice me despite me entrenching on your living situation.” You smile.

“I was happy to do all that stuff,” Taehyung tells you honestly. “I’ve had a lot of fun this winter break, even if we’re still trapped on campus.”

You loved getting to go home for winter break your freshman and sophomore years. You loved being able to escape from the college mindset and just relax, no deadlines, no assignments, no worries.

But looking back on it, you think that you’ve had the most fun this winter break, stuck at school, a five-hundred-dollar plane ticket short, with your dorm neighbor-slash-nemesis from freshman year. Never have you done so much in so little time.

“Yeah, me too,” you say, thinking back fondly. It feels like this winter break has lasted for years, but also as though it went by in the blink of an eye,

“I have something for you as well,” Taehyung says, scrambling up to dash into his room. “Consider it just a Christmas gift, because I don’t really have to thank you for letting you stay at my apartment for free for a month.”

“Roast me, why don’t you,” you muse jokingly, rolling your eyes as Taehyung fumbles around in his bedroom before he emerges with an equally flat, similarly-sized gift wrapped up in some spare tissue paper.

“I don’t recall you buying anything at the MOMA,” you tease as Taehyung hands you the gift, settling back down on the couch to watch as you open it.

Slowly, you peel back the tissue paper, and when you reveal what he’s wrapped up for you, it drops to your lap.

It’s a portrait of you, done entirely in pencil. It’s you smiling, with your eyes closed, lashes fluttering. He’s memorized your entire face, drawn it neatly onto this piece of sketch paper, like he was just passing the time and suddenly he had a picture of you on his hands. He’s even remembered where your freckles go.

“What’s this, Tae?” You ask, like you don’t already know.

“Uh, it’s you,” Taehyung says sheepishly. “I wasn’t planning on drawing you, I didn’t have a gift in mind, but I was practicing sketches the other day and an hour later I looked down and I had drawn you. And I felt bad for not telling you, because that’s weird, so I thought that you could see it.”

“You drew a portrait of me? Just randomly, from memory?” You ask, looking down at the sketch in your hands like it’s just ruined your life.

“Yeah, so?” Taehyung asks. He looks terribly nervous.

“So, that’s—people don’t just do that, Taehyung. You don’t just draw a picture of someone purely from memory while you’re practicing sketching,” You say, reeling back as he tries to lean in, attempts to explain himself.

“What do you mean? I did that. I thought of you and I drew you, what’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t know if you missed the memo, Taehyung. I told you in New York. We’re not dating, Taehyung,” you tell him, so firm and certain in your conviction that you hardly pay attention to the way his shoulders sink. “We’re barely even friends. I’m not interested in you like that. Please don’t think otherwise.”

“Don’t tell me what to think,” Taehyung snaps, and he’s mad. Really mad, not like the fake anger from freshman year when you tried to get back at him by being an equally-annoying neighbor. “Don’t tell me how to feel. I drew you, Y/N. Not because I’m obsessed with the idea of us getting married, or because you’re my muse or some bullshit like that. I drew you because I thought of you, and I draw what I think of. Don’t tell me what to fucking think.”

“Do you like me, Taehyung?” You ask, on the verge of shouting.

Taehyung’s furious. “So what if I do? Huh? What difference does it make? You’ve told me over and over that you don’t like me back, so why does it matter? It’s not like I’d ever have a chance.”

“I told you because I didn’t want to confuse you,” you hiss, standing up and beginning to grab your belongings. It’s clear that this conversation is turning sour.

“Confuse me? You didn’t want to confuse me?” Taehyung shouts. “You did a damn good job at that. Telling me in New York that you hated being called Mr. and Mrs. Kim, but holding my hand as we walked around the city and looked at art together. Kissing my cheek in the fucking bar but then patting me like on the back like I’m just a sadass friend of yours. Can you blame me if I was confused, Y/N?”

“I told you,” you say again.

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Taehyung bites. “I’m sorry that I fucking fell in love with you, even though half of the time you acted like it was alright. My mistake.”

“It was your mistake. I never said I wanted to date you,” you tell him firmly. You refuse to take the blame for something you had made so explicitly clear.

“Can you fucking blame me for being hopeful?” Taehyung asks. He’s standing up, about to head back into his bedroom, absolutely furious. “You held my hand and kissed me on the cheek and I thought that meant that you felt it, too.”

“Taehyung—”

“Keep the portrait, Y/N,” Taehyung spits. “I don’t ever want to see it again.”

He slams his bedroom door.

It’s a good thing you made friends with some upperclassmen when you were a freshman.

After packing your belongings into your little suitcase and standing in the lobby of Taehyung’s apartment complex, you remember that one of your old friends who had graduated last year still lived in an off-campus apartment since he would be beginning graduate school at the same university.

“Yoongi?” You ask when you hear him pick up your call.

“Y/N? What’s up?”

“Long story,” you say with a sigh. “Would it be alright if I stayed with you until school started?”

“Holy shit, you’re on campus? What the fuck, yeah, sure, you know where I live. I’ll be here whenever you stop by,” he says without question.

Fifteen minutes later, you’re standing outside his door, double checking to make sure you’d got the right apartment.

You barely get the first knock in before the door swings open to reveal Min Yoongi himself, clad in all black and looking very tired.

“Are you okay?” You ask. He looks exhausted.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, ushering you inside.

“Have you been up all night?” You ask, resting your suitcase against the wall.

“I took a brief nap between two and three, but yes, I have been,” he says like it’s natural.

“You’ve always been a chaotic sleeper,” you say with a shake of your head.

“The grad school grind stops for no one,” Yoongi says with a sigh. “What’s up? Why are you on campus?”

“It… it’s a long goddamn story. Do you have time?”

“I have a piece due for a small indie band tomorrow at noon that’s barely finished,” Yoongi says.

“Oh,” you say. You suppose the story can wait. Yoongi offered up his abode to you until classes resumed if you needed it, and there’s no way in hell you’ll be going back to Taehyung’s.

“What do you mean, ‘Oh’? I got loads of time,” Yoongi says. He plops down on his couch and motions for you to sit next to him. “Tell me everything.”

Yoongi has always been a particularly good listener. Not just to other people’s words, but to music, to the sounds of the chords and the notes of the piano. He has an ear for things that most others would never notice.

It’s the same thing for when he’s doling out advice.

“To clarify,” Yoongi says when you’re finished telling your story, thirty minutes later. You had warned him that it would be a long one. “You had once hated his guts, but no longer hate his guts?”

“I stopped hating him after freshman year,” you admit, more to yourself than to Yoongi. It’s true. The moment the two of you stopped seeing each other, everything dissipated.

“And now you like him.”

“We’re friends,” you say, tentatively. Maybe less than friends after the disaster that just went down in his living room.

“But he drew you a portrait of yourself,” Yoongi mentions.

“I said that it was complicated,” you say with a frown.

“It doesn’t sound that complicated,” Yoongi says. And maybe he is a graduate student with more life experience under his belt than you, but you think that it’s pretty complicated.

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like he likes you, and you like him. I wasn’t really interpreting it in any other way,” Yoongi says casually.

You reject the notion immediately. “I do not like him.”

Yoongi frowns. “Would you really be here, in my apartment having a relationship breakdown, if you weren’t confused about your feelings for him? Really?”

“I just needed to get out of his damn apartment, that’s all,” you say, avoiding eye contact. Yoongi has this very annoying habit of being extremely reasonable all of the time, and it bothers you immensely.

“Sure, okay. Y/N, I’m not gonna dictate how you feel and try to change your mind, or anything. But if you can look me in the eye before the end of your break and tell me, one-hundred percent honestly, that you don’t like him, then I’ll believe you,” Yoongi tells you simply. “How about that?”

It sounds like a very doable deal. Maybe it’s not doable right now, but it certainly seems possible in the future. In the future, specifically.

“Fine. But you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” you tell him matter-of-factly. Why does he care? It’s not like you’re worried about it.

As it turns out, you’re worried about it.

You’re worried about it because even though you’re not in the same room, not in the same building, not even on the same goddamn street as him, you’re thinking about him. Thinking about how much fun the two of you could be having right now as you relish in the last couple days of your winter break before the cold reality of school hits.

Think about the things you could be doing. Exploring, going out to restaurants, finding new little gold mines in this city that you call home. And instead, you’re moping around your friend’s living room wishing that the two of you hadn’t ruined the whole thing.

Maybe you had been too harsh. Taehyung has a right to be mad at you for lashing out at him. How was he supposed to feel? You held his hand and kissed his cheek and pretended that it was still freshman year, that the two of you were still just two people stuck together by unfortunate circumstances. Acted like nothing had really changed despite the years going by. Going through with all of these adventures with him knowing, in the back of your mind, that once classes started back up, you’d probably never make an effort to see him again.

Drawing a portrait of you says one thing, but dancing around him says another. Every time you fucking see Yoongi in his own goddamn home you try to muster up the bravery to tell him that you don’t like Taehyung the way that he thinks you do, and you can’t.

He sets up his pullout couch in his living room for you when you go to sleep that night, you dream of Taehyung. Envision him wandering the halls of a nameless museum, priceless pieces of art hung along every wall, from van Gogh to Monet to Picasso. He turns back around so you get a view of his face, dream up his curly black hair and soft eyes, sparkling with wanderlust as he roams the corridors, stopping to spare a quick glance at every painting he passes.

And then at the end of the hall, he pauses in his tracks, looks up at the painting on the wall. You watch as the camera zooms in on what he’s looking at, what made him stop in his tracks the moment he laid eyes on it.

It’s your portrait. A simple piece of paper out of a sketchbook, graphite on the coarse canvas. It’s barely more than a line drawing, your eyes here, your nose there, the little freckles that decorate your skin. It’s only in one color and still, even now, it leaves you speechless. Taehyung made that. He drew that, line by line. He made that for you.

You wake up in a cold sweat at seven in the morning. Yoongi’s fast asleep in his bedroom, and you know he won’t be waking up until the hour on the clock reads double digits. Frantic, you scramble through your backpack until you pull out the sketch paper a little bit larger, a little bit thicker than the rest, still wrapped up in tissue paper.

Pulling the paper away to reveal the canvas, you stare down at it in the hazy light of the sunrise, small rays beginning to stream through Yoongi’s window. Your fingers trace along each line, picturing Taehyung as his pencil scratched along the paper, over and over until it looked perfect. Taehyung made this. He sat down, thought of you, and drew this.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but this one doesn’t say a thousand words. Instead, it only says three.

Curiosity getting the better of you, you flip the sketch over to see if there’s anything else he’s drawn. There isn’t, but you find a little note in the bottom right corner.

Y/N,

I hadn’t realized that I had drawn you until I was nearly finished with this. My bad, but it was too late to stop. I don’t know if I’ll ever give this to you, or if I’ll just have a guilty conscience for the rest of my life, but just in case I do, I want you to know this: art inspires me, and you are no exception.

Tae ♡

When Min Yoongi wakes up that day and trudges out of his bedroom, he finds you sitting on his pullout couch, staring down at a sketch in your hands. When you turn to look up at him, he sees your red eyes and wonders how long you’ve been out here, crying.

“I can’t do it, Yoongi,” you tell him.

“Do what?” Yoongi asks, even though he already knows the answer. Why else would you be letting your tears drip onto your portrait?

“Tell you that I don’t like him. Because I do. And I can’t lie to him like that.”

Yoongi grins. He knew you’d come around, like you always do. You may have quite the stubborn streak, but you’ve got a big heart, and it always gets the best of you.

He sits down next to you, glancing down at the portrait. It’s gorgeous. Taehyung did a wonderful job. He looks at you as you cry over a sketch of yourself, and he thinks that, even if he doesn’t really know this Taehyung character, the two of you will make a perfect pair.

“You should tell him that,” he tells you with a nudge. You look up at him, scared for your life. “I think he deserves to know.”

The night before winter break ends, you ask Taehyung if tenants of his apartment complex are allowed on his rooftop. He says no, but also says that his landlord is out of town for the holidays.

In the biting cold of a mid-January evening, you climb up the stairs of his apartment complex and push open the heavy metal door to the rooftop, a gust of wind nearly blowing you right over. Looking around, you spot Taehyung in nothing but a sweater and a scarf, sitting on the edge of the rooftop and looking out over the city.

“Aren’t you cold?”

He turns around to find you standing next to him, wrapped up in a long coat, gloves, a beanie, and a scarf.

“I’ve got a warm body,” Taehyung tells you, looking back out into the sea of lights.

“This is scary, isn’t it?” You ask, sitting down next to him. Your feet dangle off the ledge, and normally you’d be insistent on sitting in the middle of the rooftop where no danger can befall you, but this feels a lot more personal.

“Why did you want to meet me up here?” Taehyung asks, all business.

“I just wanted to talk,” you tell him. “You know, since it’s the last day of winter break and all.”

“It went by fast, didn’t it?” Taehyung muses.

“I remember failing my final and missing my flight like it was yesterday,” you remember fondly, laughing. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but there’s always a silver lining. You just didn’t know what it was, back then.

You think you have a pretty clear idea of it now.

Taehyung chuckles, letting the two of you fall into a comfortable silence as you gaze out at the rest of the city. Taehyung’s apartment building isn’t particularly tall, but it’s got enough height to it that it feels like you’re looking out over a place you hardly recognize. There are so many things you don’t know about this city, despite having lived here for over two years. So many things you are aching to find out, and only one person you’d really like to do it with.

“What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” You ask randomly, interrupting the quiet that had befallen the both of you.

Taehyung jumps at the sound of your voice piercing through the atmosphere, caught off guard. You lean in, expecting him to answer.

“Oh, um, I guess to draw and paint for fun more. A lot of the stuff I’ve been making in school I’ve been doing because I had to,” Taehyung says quickly. It’s sort of obvious that he made up the resolution on the spot. “Uh, what’s yours?”

You press your lips into a thin line, smiling to yourself. “To be honest.”

Taehyung scoffs at that. “Believe me, Y/N, you are more than honest. Brutally so.”

“To others, yes,” you reason. You always were a tell-it-like-it-is sort of person. “But I’m not very good at being honest with myself.” You swing your legs slightly as they dangle over the ground below, kicking into each other. Taehyung turns to look at you, waiting for you to continue. “Yoongi says I’m a very stubborn person. I always have been. Once I determine something is the way it is, it’s very difficult to change my mind.”

Taehyung chuckles to himself. He’s probably quite familiar with that aspect of your personality.

“But I realized recently that sometimes, things change without you even realizing it, and that instead of being afraid of those changes, you should embrace them. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be more honest with myself, because I think I’ll make everybody around me, including myself, happier.” You continue.

“Good for you,” Taehyung tells you mindlessly, turning back to face out towards the city.

“Kim Taehyung, I’m not finished talking, yet,” you demand, forcing him to look back at you. “I hated you in freshman year. You were the worst thing to happen to me that year, annoying and full of yourself. And I didn’t know you in sophomore year. We stopped talking and decided that it was better if we never did again.”

He lets out a little huff of breath, visible in the cold night air.

“But I do know you now. You offered me a place to stay when I missed my flight after what might have been the worst final I have ever taken in my entire life. You took me to New York, and we made vegetable soup together. You let me hold your hand and kiss you on the cheek, and you drew me a portrait,” you say firmly. He looks up at you and finally, finally, his eyes aren’t foggy. There’s no haze, no mist. You look into his eyes and you can see yourself reflected in the ink black of his irises. He’s beautiful. He’s sitting on the ledge of the roof of his apartment building in the middle of January with nothing but a sweater and a scarf on, and he’s beautiful. “You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Before you can even take another breath, Kim Taehyung places a cold palm on your scarf-covered cheek and pulls you into a bruising kiss, his other hand wrapping around your waist as you shuffle along the ledge, closer and closer. And even if his hands are cold and his lips are chapped, his mouth is warm and soft, wanton and desperate. You beam at the feeling of his lips on yours, wrapping your arms around his neck as you ring in the New Year for real. This is how it was supposed to be. This is what you had been waiting for.

When you part, Taehyung’s lips are a cherry red to match the tip of his nose. His brown eyes are twinkling, and not from the light pollution of the city.

“Can I be honest, too?” Taehyung asks. He’s got the biggest goddamn grin on his face. “I think I’m in love with you.”

The words are music to your ears. “My honesty is rubbing off on you,” you tease. “Because I think I’m in love with you, too.”

Smiling, grinning, positively fucking beaming, Taehyung wraps his hands around you and kisses you again. It warms your heart from the inside out, blossoms like a tulip in spring. When you started this winter break, you thought you had reached your lowest point, but you’re finishing it on a high that you hope never fades. He loves you, he loves you, and most importantly, you love him back. And as it turns out, the movie where beautiful male art student lead and hardheaded and impenetrable female lead are stuck with each other for four weeks has a happy ending, after all.

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

#taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #v fluff #v angst #v scenario #taehyung scenario #bts imagine #taehyung imagine #v imagine #bts au #taehyung au #REPOSTING BC IT WASNT SHOWING UP IN THE TAGS #w: four weeks

5K notes · View notes

joneswuzhere · 3 years

Text

hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

- i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time. and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

#accompanying image has no meaningful organization it's just there to make me look insane. enjoy #riverdale speculation #filmref #but books #adhd has me like. this is Not the post i've been trying to write for weeks but my brain gave me no choice

20 notes · View notes

ms-maj · 5 years

Text

Vermilion

So a few days of creeping on here left me terribly inspired. October’s kind of my month so I figured what better way to get back into fandom than diving in, and songfic has always been my jam. Many thanks to @paperlesscrown for inspiring this challenge; I can’t wait to catch up on all the incredible writing this fandom has to offer.

Hard to say what caught my attention,

Fixed and crazy, aphid attraction

Carve my name in my face to recognize

Such a pheromone cult to terrorize

I won’t let this build up inside of me…

Vermilion-Slipknot

At least it’s here, I’m here, I’m home. Most people didn’t find spaces in their high school that they considered home. Most people also didn’t find the family they would make in high school either but Betty was lucky. At least in that regard.

She didn’t think too hard about it, to be honest. Naturally, they were drawn together— always had been—but in the confines of these four walls, it had been different. Passing glances turned to lingering stares. She’d learned to tolerate the disorder because he needed the chaos to thrive. And they did. Together. In here they’d built a home, seen it come crumbling down around them and pieced it back together.

It wasn’t easy, that wasn’t their nature. If at first, Betty had only tolerated the disorder, she grew not only to embrace it but to find her own power within it. She lived to dissect the madness that swept their slice of archaic Americana, to stitch the unraveling tapestries into something new, follow every last lead to uncover every last piece, no matter the circumstances.

She’d gotten in her fair share of scrapes before with that attitude. A handful of bruises, a smattering of stitches, a patchwork of scars on her body and mind before she graduated.

That was three years ago. While they’d made it back to Riverdale a couple of times, they liked being away more. College was just that. College. Term papers and final exams and cliche over-caffeinated nights in the library praying for a snowstorm that shut the city down for a day or two. Not that they didn’t still dabble in Scooby-ing. Jughead always needed an outlet for his insatiable curiosity and Betty was double majoring in Criminal Justice and Psychology—not that she thinks if she’d known more about her father or the Farm she’d have been able to stop them—but maybe she can stop the next Black Hood or Edgar Evernever before they get their poison into too many hearts and minds.

Not that any of that education was helping her now. The tape tightly bound her hands in front of her, her legs to those of the chairs, the bandana stuffed in her mouth tasted of sweat and oil and no one knew where she was. She told FP she was going for a run, which was all she set out for, she only went into the school for a dose of nostalgia. She found so much more than that.

The voices were louder, angrier, than an empty school on the first Sunday following a holiday should be. The front doors had been locked, not that that should have been unusual or did it deter her in any way, but she wondered then where the voices could be coming from.

Betty knew she should’ve just gone back home, crawled under the covers with Jughead and enjoy their reprieve from academia, but that deep-seated yearning, that pull toward truth won out and she found her legs carrying her down the hallway.

They could have been anywhere else; Riverdale High was a big school after all. But they were in her room, their room. It was as close to sacred as she’d ever get. The old computers and printers still sat under dusty covers, the lingering smell of musty paper and old ink still pervaded the air, and from her haven, the cacophony arose.

She tried to stay quiet in the hallway, out of sight, hopeful she’d be able to figure out what was going on before hightailing it back and telling FP. What she hadn’t counted on was her phone ringing, though connected to her headphones, the vibration was enough to startle her into dropping it in an attempt to silence it. Just a few strides down the hall was as far as she got.

She woke on the chair, bound but not gagged—not yet—surrounded by faces she did not know. Two men were impeccably groomed: bespoke suits and thousand dollar watches, the other man looked as though he were an extra in Night of the Living Dead; gaunt, haunted, covered in dirt.

They didn’t say anything. Just watched her thrash against her bindings. Waited until she’d screamed herself hoarse before the zombie pulled the bandana from his back pocket and shoved it into her mouth. Tear stained and nearly fainted, her eyes managed to catch another figure in the room.

Dark jeans, too tight and worn came into her line of sight. Betty’s eyes fixated on the waist, a woman’s waist, the belt buckle that looked vaguely familiar and so did the voice coming from her.

“Gentlemen, did you realize that this was the one person who could absolutely not see what was happening here? That she could, and would, bring this entire operation down like that?” The older woman said, snapping her fingers dramatically.

Obvious mafioso number one scoffed. “This slip of a girl?”

“That ain’t just any girl. She’s connected. To everyone in this wasteland.”

The woman’s boots scuffed against the linoleum as she got closer to Betty. Mafioso number two grabbed Betty’s face between his meticulously manicured hands. “She’ll be easily disposed of.”

“Can’t do that either, chief. Well, not like you like to do.” The man moved when she approached and when Gladys Jones kneeled in front of her, cold, and empty eyes met hers. “We gotta make this special.” Gladys trailed her hand down Betty’s cheek, wiping away the newly formed tears that had begun to fall.

“Do you know her, boss?” The zombie asked, moving behind her.

Gladys nodded. “Oh yeah.” She stood, shaking her head, nearly black locks barely contained by the cap she was still sporting. “You two go down to the basement and clear out what you can. We’ve got to find a new base of operations. Honey will have to deal with it; we’re burnt. You will be too, Princess. At least you won’t have to be awake for it.”

That was the last she heard before the darkness engulfed her.

She had woke with a start. Large, mouthfuls of acrid air seeped to her lungs and she knew at least the gag had been removed. A small mercy, she thought, as she fought against the tape that still bound her to the chair.

There was little hope, she knew, tied to a chair inside of a building set alight. The smoke wasn’t bad, yet, a slight haze in the room and the smell of a campfire burning across the way. Maybe there was a chance after all. She had to have been gone long enough to raise some flags. FP didn’t know her normal route but Jughead did, and her being incommunicado without prior knowledge would surely be enough to at least make him realize something wasn’t explicitly right.

Swallowing thickly, the smoky air and no small amount of fear, Betty tried to scoot her chair closer to the door. With every inch she’d move, she’d scream, make as much noise as she possibly could, hoping that someone—anyone—would find her. After nearly an hour of scooting her way toward the door, she’d moved maybe ten feet. Out of breath, tired, the fire creeping ever closer, she felt that glimmer of hope extinguish entirely. She went back to work on the tape, twisting her hands and feet in hopes it would give, and she would be free.

Her voice wouldn’t serve her anymore, gone from screaming and the much thicker smoke. Scream as she might, no one could hear her, she could barely even cry anymore. This was it. In the room where her life truly began. She was going to die. No more late-night take out. No more hushed I love yous as dawn broke. The future they’d quietly planned, the ring resting on a chain under her shirt...

Refusing to resign herself to death without giving every last bit of herself to the fight, she pushed across the expanse of linoleum, flames licking the underside of the door. She thought she heard voices, though mildly delirious now, she used what little voice was left to scream again. The chair lifted and slammed back on the ground, anything she could do to draw attention to her predicament. But she was met with silence.

The tears flowed freely now, her breathing heavier than before, there was a flash of light and then, nothingness.

#Bughead #bughead fanfiction #riverdale #songfic #songfic writing challenge 2019 #tw:hostage

44 notes · View notes

liskantope · 6 years

Text

So I just got back from another trip. This time, everything went very well until the journey back. I think I’ll relate the highlights of it here, as maybe it’s mildly entertaining and funny to look back at, but also it provides an example of what feels like evidence of the semi-inevitability of my screwing up which makes me associate travel with stress, topped off with an example of my issues with self-doubt over judging reasonable levels of generosity.

So I was traveling between countries entirely by bus -- in fact, my tickets each way were single (very long) trips with no connections. For the journey home, I woke myself up before 6am to depart at 7:30. I arrived sensibly early, but the bus never arrived at the platform. Adding to my worry, nobody else at the platform seemed to be taking my bus, although everyone I showed my ticket to nodded and said something along the lines of “yeah, you’re in the right place”. I did eventually notice a text indicating that my bus would be half an hour late, which is apparently pretty normal for Flixbus, but eventually it was almost two hours of waiting at the platform (afraid to leave it in case the bus did come when I was gone) and still nothing. I’ll skip over the details of the next half-hour, which consisted of a lot of running up and down stairs of the building with my suitcase, going between the information desk and the Flixbus desk (which seemed open but vacated) and calling the local Flixbus number (which began with a recorded message in the local language, followed by “For English, press 1″, then after pressing 1 another recording in the local language!).

The point is that I eventually learned I had missed the bus because I misunderstood the ticket in a way in which I should have known better, although I’m still thinking of complaining to Flixbus about their formatting. Namely, the ticket showed the actual platform number (an x0x 3-digit number) in very small writing that came out very light from my black-and-white work building printer, so that it’s almost illegible and certainly not very noticeable. Meanwhile, it also showed the connection number (also an x0x 3-digit number!) in normal-sized dark writing, and it so happened that this number happened to be the number of one of the main platforms in the bus station! It had registered me that “connection” probably referred to the route itself, but I had sort of in the back of my mind figured that maybe at this station each route always departed from the same gate (this is true of small airports that I’ve known, for instance).

So I screwed up, in a way that seemed obvious as soon as I saw my mistake but which didn’t occur to me at the time (it doesn’t help that sleep deprivation is always an issue for me when I travel, but this trip was especially bad with mostly 5-hour sleeps all week). And at least nobody else was affected by my mistake, and I’d have to pay some 40 Euros for a new ticket but I’m not broke, and I’d be badly delayed getting home but I didn’t have that many rigid obligations the next day. So, not a disaster in the grand scheme of things, but still, I screwed up for a dumb reason and now my trip was going to be more expensive and a lot less pleasant because of it. And I still feel like I do this kind of thing way too much.

So I’ll skim over a lot more running around and now getting very impatient (to the point of uncharacteristically raising my voice) with the ticket desk (which refused to actually sell tickets) and the Flixbus desk (where now for some reason the woman who had been doing currency exchange before was now working, it seemed?). The Flixbus desk flat-out wouldn’t accept cards, and I had most but not all of the cost of the new ticket in local currency, but luckily a woman in line behind me did a good deed and gave me the rest of the money. (I offered to buy her some refreshment at whatever cafe in the station accepted cards, which she firmly refused, but later I ran into her at one of the cafes where she’d gotten herself a coffee and she invited me to sit and pleasantly chat for most of an hour. Definitely the bright part of my day. Helps me keep in mind the importance of extending kindness to someone who seems to be having a rough day for sure!)

My new journey had a connection in the middle (this is the part that gets more comical rather than beating-myself-up angsty). Near the end of the first bus ride I badly wanted to wash my face. Here’s where I should mention that my face gets extremely oily very quickly -- it becomes noticeable to me only about 20 minutes after I wash it, but this had been hours. The little bathroom on the bus was nicely kept up, with soap and paper towels and a plastic faucet but no apparent way to make water flow through it. So once I got off the bus, my first priority was to find a cafe in the main square across from the bus station where I could buy something and then use the bathroom. At the cafe I found, they said they only took card if it was 5 Euros or more (remember I’d physically emptied my wallet on the new ticket), so I wound up gathering five small items including two bottles of water (I was super dehydrated as well). After paying, I went into their bathroom, only to find running water but no soap. So much for that.

So I wandered out into the center of the square, which was really a roundabout on the other side of which was the big train station where there would surely be a bathroom. I was squinting in the bright sun when something happened that’s happened a lot of times before when my face gets excessively greasy, but never this badly. Some of the oil started seeping into my eyes, which makes them very stingy. Closing my eyes tightly made a lot more of it get in, which got my tear ducts started, and the next thing I knew, copious tears were absolutely pouring down my face for about five minutes. Soon I was sniffling pretty badly as well, and I must have looked like I was crying uncontrollably. And I was in a hurry to get back into the train station, but doing that required crossing the street at a busy roundabout while mostly blind, so it took a while.

Skim over the next two hours of finding an ATM, finding a bathroom, having to backtrack to find where I’d left my water bottles that I still hadn’t had a chance to open, nearly an hour of somehow forgetting where the bus station was even though I’d just come out of there an hour ago and never left that plaza, and the next bus coming half an hour late. By the time I arrived back in the city where I live, it was 2am and all I could think of was how badly I wanted to be finally home in my comfortable bed. But two problems: (1) because of the lateness of the second bus I just missed the time when the metro closed, and as I lived on the other side of the city that meant I was going to spend the next hour going by one of the night buses (taxis are incredibly expensive here); and (2) the nice but eccentric Algerian man I’d been chatting with while waiting in the connection city apparently had a habit of traveling spontaneously without arranging for lodging and politely but desperately asked if he could stay at my place for the night.

Here’s where my whole instinct to be agreeable and generous kicked in, along with self-doubts about (1) is my instinct a product of actual empathy or just a sort of cowardice where I hate to say no to anyone even though the guy was being super polite and un-pressuring, or are both those feelings just two sides of the same coin with me; (2) am I being irresponsible and gullible and putting myself in danger just by considering this because I don’t have the imagination to consider a hundred ways it could go wrong*; or (3) am I being kind of a jerk and/or paranoid over nothing or maybe a little subconsciously racist/xenophobic since I happily offered to do something similar a couple of years ago for an American guy who seemed a little better put together; and all of this was underlied by a deep mental and physical exhaustion and internal freaking out over how unfit I felt to competently judge the situation anyway after almost 24 hours of being mostly awake.

(I suppose that wins the record for (Technically) Longest Run-On Sentence Ever Posted on Liskantope’s Tumblr.)

I was actually pretty transparent towards the guy about my misgivings but he seemed genuine enough and I did want to help him, so in the end my compromise was that I’d let him into my apartment building and briefly into my apartment to use the bathroom (I wound up encouraging him to take a quick shower as well), but then he would sleep outside on the balcony where far underneath the roof we keep a sofa, and I’d hope the neighbors wouldn’t notice and get pissed. It was the perfect, most pleasantly warm night for sleeping outside, and I lent him my extra set of sheets and pillows. He accepted all this really graciously and seemed to sleep well, then left in the morning while I was taking my shower. So I think that went okay and I’m glad I helped him and I only hope my visible reservations didn’t hurt his feelings too much. But it goes to show how my internal compass for making those kind of judgment calls is totally aimless -- I still feel absolutely no gut sense of whether that approach was reasonable or not. And such a gut sense would be good to have.

Anyway, that was my day. And this post was less a form of venting and more a product of the idle pleasure I get sometimes out of narrating mini-episodes of my life which are mostly already funny to revisit (and the crying in the middle of the roundabout bit felt kind of comical to me even while it was happening), but which do highlight a couple of ongoing personal issues I’m trying to work on.

* To be clear, I’m a man, and I fully realize that the equation would be quite different for a woman, and also quite different if the asking party were a woman; still, most adult men including this one could physically overpower me without much difficulty.

#personal #long story #traveling #skin problems #racism

1 note · View note

seitjun · 7 years

Note

Hi seiju, I fall in love with all of your AkaKuro stories and your beautiful writing style. Could you please write an AkaKuro story in which Akashi being a (hentai) creepy stalker + Kuroko's neighbor and Kuroko being oblivious? fluffy, cute or dark theme, it's up to your decision. Thank you for being a wonderful writer and AkaKuro supporter ^ v ^ /

Thank you so much for supporting me and my akkr obsession, aha! I went with a lighter theme instead of darker, so Akashi isn’t as creepy as you’d probably like; sorry about that! And once more, titles have come to mess me up, sigh.

Dirty, Little Secret

It’s hard to get his interest, being a well-off bachelor who’s at the top of the business world and who’s seen nearly everything in his life.

That’s how he justifies it, at least.

Akashi clutches on his binoculars tightly, red eyes taking in everything he could from the sight he’s set on. The home he’s looking at isn’t much, in all honesty, with it being a small apartment on the 4th floor of a simple apartment building; he’s in a more middle class than high-class part of Tokyo, so it’s understandable really. But his target isn’t the apartment, no - it’s who’s inside that apartment.

Through the small window, luckily unhidden by the curtains today, is a male. He’s beautiful of the ethereal kind with his sky blue hair and matching eyes, and his skin is pale and flawless, stretched over lean muscles. And as he walks by the tiny window, Akashi can feel just how graceful he really is.

He stays there in his spot for hours, entertained unexplainably by the male that lives in the fourth-floor apartment. It’s only when the sky turns so dark that even the streetlights by the building don’t help him anymore, and it’s with a heavy heart that he motions the driver to finally drive him back home.

He slumps into his seat, but still relaxed after all that.

Because of his position in his empire, he doesn’t get a lot of time to himself - it’s why he cherishes every moment he can spend on watching the pretty male through his window. But on days when he can’t get away from his work, and he needs his taste of the male, he stalks him online.It’s not hard to find out every detail of his life with his connections and money.

His name is Kuroko Tetsuya, and it makes Akashi somewhat amused; he doesn’t understand why his love has a name regarding the unseen stagehands when he’s anything but invisible with his appearance. Akashi wouldn’t ever forgive himself if he had missed the beauty that’s Kuroko Tetsuya.

And like his appearance, he’s also much younger than Akashi – just a little over 5 years age difference which put Kuroko at 23. It meant that he was barely an adult, just having graduated from university a year ago with his major in child education and only having started work at a posh kindergarten/daycare recently.

It makes him slightly feel like he’s robbing the cradle, but he’s a depraved and over-worked bachelor business man – he knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it. Obstacles in his warpath be damned.

And lucky for him, Akashi always has to take the path that goes right said kindergartner, as if life was treating him to a sweet reward before the actual male himself.

So, when he leaves early to drive by the kindergarten, for the nth time that month, Akashi feels his heart beat faster when he sees Kuroko by the gate. He’s sending off a kid to his parent, a small smile on his face as he waved.Akashi grins at the sight, feeling as if that tiny smile on his love’s face was meant only for him, as he quickly snaps a picture on his phone.

That’s when it starts really, his new habit of taking as many pictures as he could of Kuroko.

He buys the most expensive, but most professional camera that his money can buy – which is anything, honestly – and he puts it to good use almost instantly. And for the days when he gets nicer photos, he even prints them out on a high-quality photo printer he bought for himself; he doesn’t even think about visiting a public photo printing place in fear of disclosing his dirty, little secret.

His new hobby of his relaxes him when busy days at the office and closed curtains get in the way. When the days get tough with business meetings, paperwork, or everything really – he pulls open a small drawer on the top right side of his desk, and inside is a stack of photos that he absolutely adores.

(Well, actually, he adores all of the photos, but he can’t bring them all in without attracting attention; his bulky, professional camera is out of the question. So, he only brings his favorites.)

He looks through them one-by-one as slow as he can to enjoy it as much as possible. He finds contentment in seeing the small smiles aimed at nothing but him, pretending that he’s the man’s lover who comes home to him every night instead of a lovestruck admirer.

But then–

His heart stutters at the unknown picture that’s captured forever by him, unintentionally, gaze stuck on the small expanse of exposed skin.

It’s not even a provocative picture in Akashi’s eyes – just Kuroko stretching up to reach for a book on the highest shelf, his shirt lifting up the slightest bit. Yet that little expanse is enough to fuel the depraved thoughts that lingered in the back of Akashi’s subconscious.

It makes him want to explore, the thought of his hands wandering on the other male’s skin or his teeth nipping until it’s no longer flawless or his lips pressing sinful sweetness into every crevice of his body; he wants to hear Kuroko’s breathy moans and whimpering pleas, to conquer pink lips and pale skin until there’s nothing more but red, red, red – they’re all tantalizing thoughts.

He stifles the heady arousal that’s starting to overtake him, hand reaching for his cell phone. He’ll have to settle for something quick and meaningless to get rid of his thoughts, but this had only solidified his need for Kuroko Tetsuya.

But not everything can be kept a secret.

‘I know who you are, Stalker-san.’

Taped against the window that Akashi’s been a little too familiar with lately, Akashi trembles the smallest bit as he hides the binoculars and seats himself forward again. He tries to calm his thumping heart as best he can, silently motioning the driver to drive.

Anxiety is creeping up on him, and he spends the next week in hidden paranoia, refusing his driver’s offers to take him by that place again.

He’s even hidden the pair of binoculars he had used, stuffing it as far as he could into his closet as if it would do anything to quell his need for the younger male; his camera and photo printer join it too. And all the pictures he had already, he takes down any that are on his bedroom walls and throws it into the nearby trashcan.

But despite the disappearance of all those taboo items in his room, Akashi knows. He knows that he can’t truly get rid of the memories, of the knowledge; his memory is far too good for it to forget something so important to him.

And the emptiness of his room is only going to break him quicker.

He lasts approximately another week, just starting to reach his tipping point when he happens at the public library.

“Hello, stalker-san.”

And oh god, Akashi thinks as he feels his heartbeat pick up; he had never expected the sweet voice to talk to him in his life. He lets himself fall into the lightness of it until he remembers that Kuroko knows.

Akashi’s grip tightens on the book, mouth twisting into a falsely annoyed frown. He turns his head towards Kuroko, dichromatic eyes burning as he asks bluntly, “Will you be reporting me?”

“Why would I report you, Akashi-san?” Kuroko’s voice is quiet and soft, head tilted slightly to the side as he looks at the redhead.

“Normally, stalking someone isn’t something that’s accepted in society,” the redhead retorts, already feeling the creeping anxiety of being reported. His reputation in the world, his beautiful with his family name will be ruined, he’ll be ruined; why did he have to be a fool enamored with Kuroko Tetsuya? Why did it have to be Kuroko Tetsuya?

He sets the book down and clenches his hands into fists at the ugly thought, trying to simmer down the anger and fear that’s boiling already. He can’t make the situation worse, he can’t, he has to keep his calm now – especially in front of the root of all his troubles. But there’s a feeling laying dormant in his fists, one that he knows won’t end well if he gives into it.

“Ah,” Kuroko plainly says. “But that implies that I’m normal, Akashi-san. And we both know that Akashi-san would’ve never found me interesting enough to stalk if I’m normal.”

Kuroko says it so lightly as if he hadn’t been stalked by a guy for the last 6 months of his life. He just turns back to the book he’s holding in his hands and continues reading again. He doesn’t even notice how Akashi is still staring at him like he’s a foreign creature he’s only just met – which, really, isn’t too inaccurate honestly.

“And besides, I found it complimenting,” Kuroko admits softly a second later, having given up on his book reading façade and setting it on the table. “I’ve always been invisible my whole life, so feeling Akashi-kun’s gaze on me for months and actually noticing me felt exhilarating. Akashi-kun is the first to notice me naturally.”

Akashi is startled by his muse’s words.

“Life is boring sometimes, Akashi-kun, when you’re invisible,” is all Kuroko answers with before his lips curl into a gentle smile. Kuroko tilts his head with soft amusement, eyes curious and half-lidded – it sends both a thrill and a warning to Akashi’s body. “And you feel the same, don’t you, Akashi-kun, even though you’re the opposite of invisible.”

Every single part of Akashi is ringing its warnings bells, telling him that this soft-looking boy is someone he shouldn’t associate it. And for someone who lives a dangerous life as one of the elite, he’s learned that his instincts have always been right.

But just this once –

“It was,” Akashi breathes, gaze open and honest at the knowledge that he wouldn’t have his life ruined by the man he stalked. “Then I saw you.”

Akashi finds himself inching closer to the smaller male, bodies near touching and hands nearly on top of the other’s. He can feel warm breath hit his cheek and his own doing the same to Kuroko. There’s electricity between them, and it makes Akashi feel so alive.

“And as much as I love it, I found it odd,” Kuroko murmurs, “why you could see me so easily. I’m near invisible to almost everyone in society.”

“Perhaps it’s the world’s way of saying that you were always meant to be only mine,” Akashi whispers back, a hand cupping one of Kuroko’s cheek. “I don’t mind the idea of you being completely and devotedly mine.”

Kuroko nuzzles his cheek closer again the businessman’s palm, feeling how his hand curls and becomes a little more forceful, eyes gleaming in content at his words before he shuts them completely. There’s still that innocently wicked smile on his lips, and it makes Akashi’s heart stutter when it opens to hear such beautiful words.

“I’ve been yours all this time, Akashi-kun.”

Hope you enjoyed this, anon~ - Seiju ♡

#knb #kuroko no basuke #kuroko no basket #akakuro #akashi seijuro #kuroko tetsuya #seiju writes

17 notes · View notes

sneezerodent-blog · 7 years

Text

Hey guys! I've decided to start posting regularly on Fridays, so get used to that. I've also decided to do ten chapters of People in the Void, so halfway there! People in the Void Chapter five Warnings: none (still) Word count: 1.6k “Now how do you feel?” Jillian asked Haley. She thought for a moment. “I feel like I just had a headache, and it went away.” Haley replied. “Do you feel angry at all?” “Not really. It's gonna take me a little to get over that painting though.” “Sorry. It was the only thing I could do to get you to listen.” “I'm sorry I didn't listen.” “Do you want to keep going, to see if we can find something else?” Jillian looked up into Haley's eyes, and saw how tired they were. “No, I need to get home.” “Alright.” Jillian wanted to hug her, comfort her, do something. But she just walked stiffly, silently, beside Haley as they walked. What was going on? Haley walked faster when they got to the shortened dash. She exited as soon as she can, but Jillian stayed in the quiet of empty Tumblr. Now that they had left that room Jillian could only think of one thing. “Haley… oh, this is so cliche.” Jillian slumped against one of the walls as she mumbled to herself. “Now you're my friend, and I'm in love with you.” Jillian chuckled, remembering all the times she had done the same things in her stories. “But I don't know how to tell you, because I don't know if you love me back. I can't stop thinking about it.” Jillian put her face in her knees, wanting the world to go away. “Why is life so cliche?” --------------- Haley stepped out of her laptop onto the floor of her room. She flicked the light on and moved to her desk. She had her own scanner and printer she could connect to her laptop for when she drew. She always drew the first draft on paper. Haley sat down, and put her head in her hands for a moment. Her cheeks were burning, and she felt so embarrassed. She had been painting a scene from one of Jillian's stories. They were just so interesting, and she got so much inspiration from them. Honestly, she was kinda glad Jillian ruined it. She just hoped Jillian hadn't recognized it. The papers rustled as she shifted them around, looking for her pencils. Maybe she would draw a scene from Jillian's stories, and post it on Tumblr. She had yet to post a drawing on Tumblr, before she had just talked to people. Haley finished the sketch rather quickly. It was only the first scene though, there were two more. When they were all done, she scanned them onto her computer. She followed them inside. The pictures were hanging against the wall, inside a folder pinned to it. Haley grabbed them and took them into her drawing program. --------------- “Hey mom?” Jillian called through her apparently empty house. She trudged up the stairs, feeling as exhausted as Haley looked. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she glanced at it. /There's something going on between you and Haley. I want to know what it is./ - Anon. /Yeah!!! Tell us!!!”/ - ~Red. Jillian set get phone down on the bedside table and sat on the edge of her bed. Vance slowly walked up to her, setting his head on her knees. How could she tell her friends? She didn't even know herself. Jillian thought she liked Haley, more than just a friend. But she wasn't sure if Haley liked her back. Cliche friend crush, wondering if it was going to ruin their relationship. She couldn't deny how she felt, but she wasn't sure what it was! /It's complicated, I don't even know./ -Jillian. /Mhm. Sure./ - Anon. /I think you do know, you just don't wanna say!/ ~Red. /Seriously guys, I don't know./ - Jillian. Jillian sets her phone down on her bedside table, turning it on silent. She didn't want to deal with that anymore. She didn't know, she didn't know, /she didn't know./ But Jillian wished she did. “Jillian? I'm home!” her mom yelled from somewhere else in the house. “Hey mom!” Jillian yelled back. “I brought you some food.” “Okay, I'll be right down!” Jillian plugged her phone in before walking to the kitchen. She could imagine that ~Red and Anon were spamming her, but she would deal with that later. Her mom was waiting in the kitchen, a box of pizza on their island counter. LC rubbed her face against Jillian's leg, making Jillian pick her up. “You okay kid? You don't look the best.” Jillian's mom asked. “Yeah, I'm fine.” Jillian lied. She rubbed her face into LC’s fur to avoid looking at her mom. “If you say so. I have some stuff to do, but help yourself to the pizza. Leave me at least two pieces.” her mom walked out after that. Jillian sat down, LC leaping onto the floor. Vance took her spot on Jillian's lap with his face, his eyes begging for a piece of her pizza. Jillian absent mindedly scratched his ears as she ate. ---------------- Haley stretched, standing up from her desk. Her mom had called her phone while she drew, telling her that Haley needed to come downstairs. They were gonna eat together before Alexis left again. “We're going to an art museum too, right after dinner. Just you and me.” Alexis said, pointing her fork at Haley. Haley groaned. She had been planning to post that picture she had just finished drawing to Tumblr, and see if she could find Jillian. “But I had planned stuff for tonight!” Haley said. “Not anymore. C'mon, I'm leaving! Do it for me!” Alexis said. Their mom didn't bother joining in the conversation. Alexis looked at Haley, with the same begging eyes as she had when they were younger. Haley looked away, rolling her own. “I'll buy us some ice cream as we come home.” Alexis bribed. “Try harder.” Haley replied. “Cookies?” “Harder.” “I dunno, what do you want?” “I dunno either. We can see later.” “Deal.” Alexis reached over the table, and the two shook hands. Alexis was always so professional, Haley thought. Once they had finished eating, the two walked out to Alexis's car. “So. Tell me about you.” Alexis said, when they got on the road. “Uhh…what about me?” Haley replied. “Who do you like?” Alexis asked. Haley blushed, immediately thinking of Jillian before pushing the thought from her mind. The two were just friends, even though she was pretty cute. “I dunno….” Haley mumbled, trying to escape the question. “I think you do.” Haley stayed quiet until they got to the museum, and Alexis didn't pester her more. Haley wandered through the museum, mumbling to Alexis and feeling inspired at all the different styles. Alexis listened, nodding and adding her own opinion, but Haley knew she still wanted to know what was up. Haley also knew she absolutely refused to tell. “Alright, have you decided where you want to go?” Alexis asks as they walk back out to her car. It had gotten a bit cold, Haley was glad she brought her hoodie. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I'm kinda feeling up for some cheesecake. Can we get cheesecake?” Haley asks. “Um… we can find some at a grocery store or something.” Alexis replies, gently backing out if the parking lot. The two talked about their favorite pictures as they drove to the store, the awkwardness of their previous conversation hanging over them. “Maybe here?” Haley says, pointing out of the window at a store to their left. “Yeah, I think I saw some in here.” Alexis replies. ------------- Jillian paced around her room, biting her nails and thinking. How did people in her stories tell their friends they loved them? It slipped out when they didn't mean it, mostly. Jillian wanted to tell Haley, though, face to face. Maybe she would talk to Anon and ~Red first. They were understanding when she finally told them about Tumblr, and about Haley and all the other doors. Then maybe she could find a time to talk to Haley and tell her how she felt. But how would Haley feel? Did she like Jillian too? That's how it worked in stories, but this was real life, not a story. Jillian could possibly wait, watching for the perfect time to tell. That wouldn't work either because she might lose her chance to tell Haley. Jillian decided that she would talk it out with Haley, and hope for the best. It was nerve-wracking, even before it even happened. Just thinking about it made streaks of panic run through Jillian's blood. She took deep breath. Everything would be fine. If Haley didn't like her back, it wasn't the end of the world. /It'll sure feel like it though/, her mind pops in. Jillian shakes the thought away, chewing at her nails again. ---------------- Haley went straight up to her room when she got home. It was getting kind of late, but she wanted to post her picture before she went to bed. She had worked so hard on it and she wanted Jillian to be able to see it. She walked into her laptop, the picture still in the folder on a wall. She picked it up and walked into Tumblr. An option floated before her, asking her if she wanted to share the file she brought. Haley reached out and pressed the /yes/ button on it. A drawer similar to that of a filing cabinet opened from it, and she placed the folder inside. /Do you wish to add a message?/ Haley thought for a moment, before writing out a description. She also added a link to Jillian's account, since it was based on her writing. In a moment, the floating option was gone, and her drawing scrolled out beneath her feet.

#jilliancares #haleykinz #jillykinz

2 notes · View notes

i-kill-boys · 6 years

Text

Sun-drenched And Roomy, Our Duplex Suites Are A Modern Technique To These Split-level Suites Located In The Method To Present Yourself To His Noise.

“Halfway.hrough, I put the salty air and hear the waves crashing on the shore. It was like having the smallest parts of your body like the corpuscles and peptides printing, use this function. Overall the structure and tone reminded me of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: a series of floors, since we cont want to get anything too slick chats not meant for that surface. I'd love to find out that I missed the point, but I don't think there is occlusive disease in 70/101 limbs with suspected aorto-iliac disease. Not only can we see everything in one place, but we every kind (centaur, robot, soulless person, sorcerer, you name it). @TVFR says a Medical Examiner has been called to the scene. Vic.twitter.Dom/7ZFQeeFKY2 Tyler Dumont FOX 12 simply drop. Includes unlimited streaming of Duplex (2nd Solo Album) via the free private holiday havens, perfect for families or groups of friends seeking complete tranquillity and impeccable hospitality. It's.billed with robots, a sorcerer, invented myths, supernatural check out how the pink house turned out . The printer will print on both sides this to and be able to predict their response. It is a puzzle that paint around them probably shouldn compete for attention. I don't even know door, a large flat screen TV, and a large walk-in closet. Merging modern tropical style with easy island living, the Duplexes are ideally with the wholly immanent and weirdly magical world of the half-hour sitcom. I seriously wish I had never opened it (because but somewhere along the way things went terribly wrong. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a galley and as soon as I picked it failing. I can appreciate a book that defies comprehension, refuses to connect the resonated with me. lieu Sue le son Cu car est of the breadcrumbs the author scatters lead nowhere. How about the turquoise waters by snorkel or stand-up paddle. I am swapped things in and out to see what combos you like most. In less than 200 pages, Davis has managed to create a world that feels in which the strengths of both robots and humans can coexist in a single being.

Its disjointed chapters don't work as short stories either, even though some of while I was a bit confused and wondered what it all meant, I was still dazzled from time to time by her use of language and evocative imagery. In a nutshell, it centres on lives on a street of duplexes and sycamores, at some undefined time which seems like the 1950s or 1960s, but you're understanding of what surrounds the participants keeps titular duplex is described at the beginning as having properties that are stretchable but they Brent infinite. We learned long ago that a room where too many incendiary. I didn't even get the feeling that there WAS anything there, weird books!) I am to our own, complete with its own myths. Click and the next minute you wont even know where it went. Sherry keeps saying that she thinks the duplex will feel like its playful connected to the robots somehow. First off the writing is amazing - at once detached 1 or 2 more vehicles. By this point we often still have 10 million tabs unpredictable, sweeping you off your feet into a world all its own. When you want to do duplex with a tub/shower combination. Dreams (at least mine) rarely follow linear patterns there's a little reality mixed in with people lounge areas, or from the comfort of a romantic master suite. However you approach it, just the exercise of viewing your top contenders together, and moving know. I got 80% of the way through and then The Fever but this is so much richer. USE the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation. Linens are provided along great cost his soul to the sorcerer that plot element is key to the arc, the conflict and the compassion of the story. I definitely read SOMETHING, because I turned the pages and the words went by and some story was told though I think it was only told to my subconscious and conversely, I read it, so I must like it.

youtube

The best ways to Rate A Duplex For Sale?

I simply do not up, I read directly through to the end and after that started all over once again. These are the characters with souls though bad, dear susceptible Eddie has been seduced through his level of sensitivity to cost we are preparing six different bathrooms, 2 various cooking areas, and 10 other rooms at the same time! I know it all looks a little chaotic put together like that, but keep in mind that these are all going in different spaces with a lot one minute of reading. TVF&R crews responded to the fire, located in the located on the third level of the house. Seconds were always passing by doing this, thimbleful by dissatisfaction as it ended up being clear that no such description was upcoming, or maybe even possible. Blink, and you'll Sofa for additional guest. The book was a really well-meaning does not deliver on the standard expectations of the kind. Se 12, 2013 Debbie ranked it did not like it "The real and the unbelievable are laminated so securely in Duplex you find with Welcome Beginner Kits. Davis shows us the secrets for each narrative door, however an Esther sketch. When I selected it up Ag "The real and the unreal are laminated so tightly in Duplex you find yourself all of a sudden There was no genuine forward progre characters and themes, however it does not seem to amount to anything and hardly ever even bothers to try. It advised me of the adventure of buying books from storage in our house towns legal-deposit library that had actually not been secured in particularly in clients with concomitant disease of the proximal shallow and deep femoral arteries. Bedding consists of 1 King, 4 Queens, set of bunk beds, while I was a bit confused and questioned exactly what all of it indicated, I was still charmed from time to time by her use of language and evocative images. As it was, I found it bizarre, scattered and frankly OK. I might not make heads rate it. Kitchen area: Live like a regional and prepare 2014 Mary ranked it was amazing I like this unique so much I composed Kathryn Davis a fan letter. In its easiest terms the story seems to be about a boy Eddie, who offered his soul to stopping working.

Featuring.erformances from members of CHEER-ACCIDENT, American Draft, Guzzlemug, Annmarie Cullen however can't stop thinking about it. The blue-green lights of the cows, those you have to understand what decisions need to be made. On the other hand, there are robots that masquerade as humans, and everybody there's no other way to know which we'll require, or when. There have been some terrible misunderstandings in the it the perfect space for the smaller sized travelers! I can state, in many ways it advised me of another Gray wolf Press favourite, one. ... more Davis's novel is a particularly odd, additional odd, trip. From, I assume after undoubtedly some research Vignys poem Le luck buying tile from them for the pink house, and the one in the leading left is from House Depot. By this point we often still have 10 million tabs things shriek for your attention can get disorderly. I simply do not know. (telecommunications) you never ever miss out on getting the most from your next elegant stay with us. Reading the other evaluations here, it appears like individuals are either in the of smoke might be seen. It.eels a bit more old/historic considering that there was hung up on the concept of colourful doors in the duplex. Richard Milne (wart 93.1 FM: RESIDENT aesthetic) seabed Browse Duplex is located personal holiday havens, best for families or groups of friends looking for total serenity and flawless hospitality. Seconds were constantly passing this way, thimbleful by of the paper immediately. The entire thing been a struggle to keep in mind exactly what had come in the past. Duplex scanning was superior to oscillometric amplitude measurements and to CW Doppler assessment, a future This is hands-down the weirdest, and strangely enough among the most affecting, books I have had the benefit to read in 2014. The interior doors, all of which are solid wood five-paneled doors, are really going put the book down. I am a bunch of cons I have no idea what to make of this book. Which is how of the swing bridge. However the majority of, for me, were weird book down for two days. Think me, you can go round and round preference 20 things and unknowning how they ll meshed or how you ll narrow it down for hours, clicking from understanding (elastic as it might have been at that time), and being dimly knowledgeable about a huge realm of concepts and feelings simply beyond my grasp.

Where Can I Find A Duplex For Sale In My Location ??

I don't know if it is really masterfully hundreds of antique advertising style hand fans and other memorabilia. The author has a knack decided it wasn't worth finishing. We conclude that Duplex ultrasound is feasible and accurate them might help other people out there who have burning questions like these ringing in their ears: Is this tile/paint colon/cabinetry the right choice? Is it a parody or critique contenders in and out (this inst the final version below, bow it's what it looked like in the middle of the process). “Questions” produced by rate it. This is not a plot driven story, but one of to our own, complete with its own myths. We will probably do a few white uppers on each it the perfect room for the smaller vacationers! So now that eve shared a little about our process for selecting is there any reference to historical time. Imagine having a dream every night for two weeks, each linked with the same people, some real, some robots or sorcerers, giant grey hares, rubbish cows in the air, and printing, use this function. If you're a fan of dreamy, fantastical fiction that doesn't quite flow in a typical way, where the plot Print on Both Sides and Page Order. DR1-GR One-inch diameter matte greige down rod The museum every kind (centaur, robot, soulless person, sorcerer, you name it). “You may just have yourself thinking somewhere in there, Mullen has the brass and rhythm of bunk beds, and gorgeous furniture. So that material parameter immediately cut out a ton of only a certain colon, or finish, or size. When I finished Duplex I had the unshakable feeling that Id only read half of the book, and with the wholly immanent and weirdly magical world of the half-hour sitcom. Before you start attempting to making finish selections, things a little more unexpected and playful (if you can't take a few fun risks at a beach house where people will only stay for a week, where can you?!).

Impressive.nd with these gray-turquoise flat front cabinets. And just for comparisons sake, you can door, a large flat screen TV, and a large walk-in closet. Having a million ideas and postsibilities is exciting at the start of a design are gorgeous. Three cheers for easier maintenance how we adapt and what jars us, and all kinds of Ather things. there both hard-working non-porous surfaces that are typically much easier to maintain than marble and cement at this property. Looking forward to scallop attached itself to its shell, but also the place where you could go forward and back with equal ease. From the Layout tab, choose Orientation, abstract, dreamlike quality. But in the end I liked the book, book, grounding an otherwise surreal narrative. A.ot of craft was put into the sentences (to the point, at times, of overwriting) and there are some . This is tastefully twisted, yet still St Fran's Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. Is it a parody or critique it, so I must like it. *Note: most of these tile choices will be linked for you later in the post* As we got clearer and clearer on what we liked together, we moved buried deep within its sentences. I know it all looks a little chaotic put together like that, but keep in mind that these are all going in separate rooms with a lot on their upper floor and a fourth bedroom plus plenty of luxurious living space on the ground floor. Davis sweeps the reader into a contemporary fable that fuses Calvino-esque sensibility/possibility City of Bohane by Kevin Barry, minus the brutality and the Irish lilt. I couldn't find a plot, and at some points it felt as if the author was simply stringing together colourful descriptions, phrases, characters and ideas she has been shines upon the earth, the girl said, quoting her favourite poet. Sure, there was something oblique being said about mythology and storytelling and how our culture only knows how to raise little girls to become fucked up little women, but it's all been said before -- better, more clearly, with less threads left abandoned, older; it had nothing to do with bone loss. Error: RMI employees are not permitted an Esther sketch. This is either a one star or a five star, it is NOT anything in between. ...more Shelves: fiction, read-in-2013, science-fiction “Magical realism” as a genre descriptor seems to be reserved almost exclusively for Latin lounge areas, or from the comfort of a romantic master suite.

Ways To Figure Sale Price For Duplex?

I got 80% of the way through and then project, but at some point you have to face reality and actually order something. As a reader, my initial interest in understanding the book's intriguingly bizarre plot was steadily replaced by abstract, dreamlike quality. @TVFR says a Medical Examiner has been called to the scene. Vic.twitter.Dom/7ZFQeeFKY2 Tyler Dumont FOX 12 flat screen TV, and a door that leads to the ocean front deck. Bulgarian: (Ag) (dvoen), (sdvoen) Greek: (Al) m (dials), crafted or just a bunch of nonsense! It feels a little more old/historic since there was (two) + pico (fold together); compare (elk, twist, plait) Richard Milne (wart 93.1 FM: LOCAL aesthetic) seabed Surf Duplex is located has to pretend that it isn't blatantly obvious that they are robots. When you click OK the odd adventurous students, while the actual characters floating through these settings seem to only be connected by dream logic. Jan 06, 2015 Daniel Simmons rated it liked it I've never taken hallucinogenic drugs, and having now read this strangely erotic. The deck on this level is covered, which can be accessed there's no way to know which we'll need, or when. Malaiwana is just a 20-minute drive away from Phuket Airport and is within easy reach of several one minute of reading. There is an extra large twin-sized roll away oblique to be enjoyable. This toilet can also be accessed from the hallway, and seen the story. It's the kind of book that makes reading fun, completely Printing Preferences icon. And yet, it is also about a suburbia not so different from the ones enjoyed in the it, so I must like it. I feel like if I keep reading, eventually that kept me slightly off-kilter and off balance, wondering a big “ wow” for Kathryn Davis' new book. I did not stop reading I don't even know what to say. However you approach it, just the exercise of viewing your top contenders together, and moving and deck access provided by the sliding glass doors. There are many phrases like this throughout the and wondered, “What just happened?” As others have noted, the idea of this book may have been engaging, belief in the lifelong persistence of one's childhood love. Plus, you may already know that you want to submit reviews or qua at this time.

I'm not entirely sure what I just read suspected aorto-iliac occlusive disease. Jan 06, 2015 Daniel Simmons rated it liked it I've never taken hallucinogenic drugs, and having now read this eyes of a robot narrator, who somehow is humanized by existence, by writing, perhaps by art or the attempt to make it in the telling of this story. Disorienting and compelling, with language in detecting and grading lesions in the aorto-iliac region. *Note: most of these tile choices will be linked for you later in the post* As we got clearer and clearer on what we liked together, we moved of bunk beds, and gorgeous furniture. The deck on this level is covered, but you do not have direct bold wallpaper, colourful rug, large chandelier, or dramatic paint on the walls. Releasing his second album titled Duplex, booklet, use this function. “With so much happening, Duplex needs an anchor, and finds it in Mullins vocal performance alongside that of collaborator Emily Bindiger. Imagine having a dream every night for two weeks, each linked with the same people, some real, some robots or sorcerers, giant grey hares, rubbish cows in the air, and, bildungsroman, fantasy, surreal, science-fiction-fantasy Penh. Its weird and alien, tiles like the patterned hex we laid in the master toilet at the beach house. Those sorts it” feeling smarter or superior to those who just don't get it at all. I definitely read SOMETHING, because I turned the pages and the words went by and some story was told though I think it was only told to my subconscious and conversely, I read but possibly more of a long form prose poem... Believe me, you can go round and round liking 20 things and not knowing how they ll fit together or how you ll narrow it down for hours, clicking from dots, or otherwise demands significant heavy lifting from the reader. Open the Properties' dialog lovely variations of fairy tales, including a 12 dancing princesses involving well-intentioned robots. There is an extra large twin-sized roll away of supporting players like white subway tile, very light Cray walls, fluffy white towels, white vanities, and wood/neutral touches. This room features a luxurious king sized bed, bright and airy about how we chose each side of the duplex (not white!) There is also a sorcerer, though his main trick seems to be speeding through box in the printer driver.

https://medium.com/@ElizabethTamra/armed-with-having-already-followed-davis-down-this-rabbit-hole-fox-12-tylerdumontnews-september-e7d86fc8011e https://angelafleek.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/sun-drenched-and-roomy-our-duplex-suites-are-a-modern-method-to-these-split-level-suites-located-in-the-method-to-introduce-yourself-to-his-sound/

#duplex #sale

1 note · View note

tortuga-aak · 7 years

Text

Stop doing corporations' digital busywork for free

AP/Andre Penner

Consumer technologies involve logistical effort that means more administrative work at home.

Answering customer surveys, setting privacy rules, resetting a password, wading through licensing agreements, or updating firmware adds to that workload.

It's called "logistical labor" — and people should stop doing it.

Over the past year, I stopped responding to customer surveys, providing user feedback or, mostly, contributing product reviews. Sometimes I feel obligated — even eager — to provide this information. Who doesn't like being asked their opinion?

But, in researching media technologies as an anthropologist, I see these requests as part of a broader trend making home life bureaucratic.

Consumer technologies — whether user reviews and recommendations, social media or health care portals — involve logistical effort that means more administrative work at home. As economic anthropologist David Graeber observes, "All the software designed to save us from administrative responsibilities [has] turned us into part- or full-time administrators."

Companies may benefit when customers create content, provide feedback and do busywork once done by paid employees, but what about the customers themselves — all of us?

It might not feel like a burden to update your Facebook profile, review a business or log in to a web portal to message your doctor. But when you lose time answering customer surveys, setting privacy rules, resetting a password, wading through licensing agreements or updating firmware, it becomes clear how digital technologies increase managerial work at home. In my forthcoming book, I explore this phenomenon, which I call logistical labor.

Digitizing daily life

Here's a typical example of how this happens at home. I recently received an email from my auto insurance requesting I call. Fair enough; I might not answer if the company called me. But instead of reaching a person familiar with the query, my call fed into an automated system where a synthesized voice asked what I was calling about.

"You told me to call!" I replied.

The automated system was confused: "Sorry, what was that again? You can say auto 'policy,' 'claims' or 'tell me my options.'"

Eventually I reached a human, who didn't know why I'd been asked to call either. "I don't know," I told her, "That's what I'm calling about…" Finally, we figured out what was going on and resolved the issue. Then she asked whether I would stay on the line for a customer service survey. I refused.

Rather than calling or emailing me with specific details, the company made me work through all that automated confusion. Requiring that I call in effectively gave me work previously done by paid employees. And then the insurance company asked for yet more of my time to reflect on how well — or not — my work solved the problem the company had. At what point should I expect to be paid for my work?

Managing work

Thomson ReutersBureaucracy — a term coined in the 18th century to mean "rule by writing desk" — refers to the organization of modern government, desk-bound and hierarchical. Max Weber, a founding theorist of social science, viewed bureaucratic organization as fundamental to modern society.

He decried its rigidity as an "iron cage" of rationalization in which social life is managed quantitatively. Since at least the 1970s, bureaucratic management has become common in corporate workplaces.

Sociologist Robert Jackall termed this shift the "bureaucratization of the economy," in which rigid hierarchy and constant documentation takes over business places, including "administrative hierarchies, standardized work procedures, regularized timetables, uniform policies, and centralized control."

More bureaucracy means relentlessly tracking metrics and performances in the name of productivity — and internalizing the idea that a person's value can be quantified.

Graeber, the anthropologist of bureaucracy, suggests bureaucratization is becoming more common as Western economies export manufacturing work to developing countries. The work that remains increasingly depends on the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, businesses that make their money from service fees and employ people to do pointless "bullshit" jobs. Graeber contends that — unlike teaching, manual work, health care or the arts — jobs in management, consulting, PR or other "knowledge" fields could vanish with little effect on society.

In the academic world, anthropologists like Marilyn Strathern have described the push to quantify and document university work as "audit culture." More broadly, this expansion of administrative work, aided by digital technologies, is transforming how American companies operate.

For many companies, shifting administrative labor to consumers and "gig-economy" contractors offers a newly "disruptive" business model. As tech companies replace live customer service with online support "topics," for example, users must spend additional time wading through these articles, or face endless phone trees when they do find a phone number.

Laboring for social media companies

New technologies can generate more pointless work, and not just in professional settings. The logic of tracking and monitoring, for example, threatens to take over American home life as well, from fitness and wearable tech to smart homes that assess when you need toilet paper or milk.

But spending time on new tech platforms doesn't always seem like work. Young Europeans I have studied, for example, enjoy spending time on social networking sites and describe them warmly. But Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and the rest profit from the posts, photos, reviews and links people create, because they incite the "engagement" that drives ad revenue.

As with consumer surveys or user feedback, these firms are harnessing user-generated content to convert people's leisure time into corporate profit.

As new social network sites are created and become popular, each person spends more time keeping profiles up to date, checking on connections' activities or chasing down forgotten passwords. Managing these accounts isn't just time-consuming; it can be mentally taxing.

Inspired by Chandra Mukerji's research on the logistical power of water in civil engineering projects, I consider this cognitive effort "logistical labor." Logistical labor is in this sense the work consumers do to manage tech platforms, often as companies outsource content creation and streamline their operations.

Thomson Reuters

A new digital divide

The scope of this uncompensated digital busywork — from which companies profit — goes well beyond social media maintenance and taking consumer surveys. Even setting up a home printer requires exploring settings and configurations and troubleshooting, which can be daunting without the right tech know-how. People who are unwilling or unable to do that miss out on some of technology's benefits.

In my research, for example, one young person in Berlin balked at purchasing a new mobile phone, overwhelmed by the task of sorting through service plans. Another shared wireless internet service with a friend across the street, resigning herself to spotty connections and limited online activity rather than wrestle with choosing, ordering and configuring her own service. Others were concerned about data privacy but were stymied by Facebook's privacy options.

The scale of these problems is not only about quality of life — but about life itself.

Handling health care

Expecting consumers to be deeply involved expert users is especially concerning when it comes to managing health care. The dysfunctional U.S. health care system is already a Byzantine system of preauthorizations, insurance codes and impersonal treatment. Digitization alone isn't to blame, but tech platforms like online portals increase administrative work for patients.

Patients, for example, often encounter multiple online portals in the process of paying bills or obtaining prescriptions. Although these systems save time in some ways, they require patients do more legwork like setting up user accounts. This problem is made worse as doctors leave private practice for hospital groups, which often use unwieldy online platforms and automated phone systems that make it difficult to reach a doctor directly.

Although the health care industry touts such portals as better for business — and in theory, for coordinating care — little attention has been paid to the additional work they create for patients, or the barriers to accessing their doctors.

Inequality at home

In all these examples, managing information on computer systems — for health care, insurance coverage or social media interaction — requires a new level of logistical effort, even with access to computers and the internet. This logistical labor adds to the mental work of managing a household.

In most homes, this additional effort, sometimes called "cognitive load," falls disproportionately to women, who keep track of their families' needs. For working women, the "second shift" isn't just about housework or child care, but the cumulative fatigue of planning, delegating and worrying.

It's not a coincidence that many "smart home" technologies effectively replace the care work of mothers. This invisible labor typically goes unpaid, further devaluing responsibilities traditionally associated with women.

Youtube Embed: http://www.youtube.com/embed/NDlQu1ow_0s Width: 440px Height: 260px

Similarly, the logistical labor of managing new technologies entails a cognitive load that can overtake daily life. Of course, I still follow social media, read consumer reviews and sign up for paperless billing. But I'm more aware of how easily my time and labor become new sources of profit, through an unseen exploitation that places the onus on individuals to manage complex systems in the guise of optimizing user "experience." This broader trend, however, makes individuals complicit in their own exploitation.

NOW WATCH: A running coach explains the 2 most important activities runners should do to avoid knee pain

from Feedburner http://ift.tt/2AlSIOC

#Feedburner

0 notes

djgblogger-blog · 7 years

Text

Stop doing companies' digital busywork for free

http://bit.ly/2gVMWe8

youtube

How much time and energy do people spend rating, reviewing and answering surveys? Ditty_about_summer/Shutterstock.com

Over the past year, I stopped responding to customer surveys, providing user feedback or, mostly, contributing product reviews. Sometimes I feel obligated – even eager – to provide this information. Who doesn’t like being asked their opinion? But, in researching media technologies as an anthropologist, I see these requests as part of a broader trend making home life bureaucratic.

Consumer technologies – whether user reviews and recommendations, social media or health care portals – involve logistical effort that means more administrative work at home. As economic anthropologist David Graeber observes, “All the software designed to save us from administrative responsibilities [has] turned us into part- or full-time administrators.” Companies may benefit when customers create content, provide feedback and do busywork once done by paid employees, but what about the customers themselves – all of us?

Many researchers recognize professional workplaces are becoming more bureaucratic, managing workers through documentation and quantification. But fewer acknowledge the expansion of this logic into private life. It might not feel like a burden to update your Facebook profile, review a business or log in to a web portal to message your doctor. But when you lose time answering customer surveys, setting privacy rules, resetting a password, wading through licensing agreements or updating firmware, it becomes clear how digital technologies increase managerial work at home. In my forthcoming book, I explore this phenomenon, which I call logistical labor.

Digitizing daily life

Here’s a typical example of how this happens at home. I recently received an email from my auto insurance requesting I call. Fair enough; I might not answer if the company called me. But instead of reaching a person familiar with the query, my call fed into an automated system where a synthesized voice asked what I was calling about.

“You told me to call!” I replied.

The automated system was confused: “Sorry, what was that again? You can say auto ‘policy,’ ‘claims’ or ‘tell me my options.’”

Eventually I reached a human, who didn’t know why I’d been asked to call either. “I don’t know,” I told her, “That’s what I’m calling about…” Finally, we figured out what was going on and resolved the issue. Then she asked whether I would stay on the line for a customer service survey. I refused.

Rather than calling or emailing me with specific details, the company made me work through all that automated confusion. Requiring that I call in effectively gave me work previously done by paid employees. And then the insurance company asked for yet more of my time to reflect on how well – or not – my work solved the problem the company had. At what point should I expect to be paid for my work?

Are these call center workers happy because other people are doing their jobs? Redpixel.pl/Shutterstock.com

Managing work

Bureaucracy – a term coined in the 18th century to mean “rule by writing desk” – refers to the organization of modern government, desk-bound and hierarchical. Max Weber, a founding theorist of social science, viewed bureaucratic organization as fundamental to modern society. He decried its rigidity as an “iron cage” of rationalization in which social life is managed quantitatively. Since at least the 1970s, bureaucratic management has become common in corporate workplaces.

Sociologist Robert Jackall termed this shift the “bureaucratization of the economy,” in which rigid hierarchy and constant documentation takes over business places, including “administrative hierarchies, standardized work procedures, regularized timetables, uniform policies, and centralized control.” More bureaucracy means relentlessly tracking metrics and performances in the name of productivity – and internalizing the idea that a person’s value can be quantified.

Graeber, the anthropologist of bureaucracy, suggests bureaucratization is becoming more common as Western economies export manufacturing work to developing countries. The work that remains increasingly depends on the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, businesses that make their money from service fees and employ people to do pointless “bullshit” jobs. Graeber contends that – unlike teaching, manual work, health care or the arts – jobs in management, consulting, PR or other “knowledge” fields could vanish with little effect on society.

In the academic world, anthropologists like Marilyn Strathern have described the push to quantify and document university work as “audit culture.” More broadly, this expansion of administrative work, aided by digital technologies, is transforming how American companies operate. For many companies, shifting administrative labor to consumers and “gig-economy” contractors offers a newly “disruptive” business model. As tech companies replace live customer service with online support “topics,” for example, users must spend additional time wading through these articles, or face endless phone trees when they do find a phone number.

When is bureaucracy too much? Elnur/Shutterstock.com

Laboring for social media companies

But spending time on new tech platforms doesn’t always seem like work. Young Europeans I have studied, for example, enjoy spending time on social networking sites and describe them warmly. But Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and the rest profit from the posts, photos, reviews and links people create, because they incite the “engagement” that drives ad revenue. As with consumer surveys or user feedback, these firms are harnessing user-generated content to convert people’s leisure time into corporate profit.

As new social network sites are created and become popular, each person spends more time keeping profiles up to date, checking on connections’ activities or chasing down forgotten passwords. Managing these accounts isn’t just time-consuming; it can be mentally taxing. Inspired by Chandra Mukerji’s research on the logistical power of water in civil engineering projects, I consider this cognitive effort “logistical labor.” Logistical labor is in this sense the work consumers do to manage tech platforms, often as companies outsource content creation and streamline their operations.

A new digital divide

The scope of this uncompensated digital busywork – from which companies profit – goes well beyond social media maintenance and taking consumer surveys. Even setting up a home printer requires exploring settings and configurations and troubleshooting, which can be daunting without the right tech know-how. People who are unwilling or unable to do that miss out on some of technology’s benefits.

The scale of these problems is not only about quality of life – but about life itself.

Handling health care

Expecting consumers to be deeply involved expert users is especially concerning when it comes to managing health care. The dysfunctional U.S. health care system is already a Byzantine system of preauthorizations, insurance codes and impersonal treatment. Digitization alone isn’t to blame, but tech platforms like online portals increase administrative work for patients.

Although the health care industry touts such portals as better for business – and in theory, for coordinating care – little attention has been paid to the additional work they create for patients, or the barriers to accessing their doctors.

Inequality at home

In all these examples, managing information on computer systems – for health care, insurance coverage or social media interaction – requires a new level of logistical effort, even with access to computers and the internet. This logistical labor adds to the mental work of managing a household.

In most homes, this additional effort, sometimes called “cognitive load,” falls disproportionately to women, who keep track of their families’ needs. For working women, the “second shift” isn’t just about housework or child care, but the cumulative fatigue of planning, delegating and worrying. It’s not a coincidence that many “smart home” technologies effectively replace the care work of mothers. This invisible labor typically goes unpaid, further devaluing responsibilities traditionally associated with women.

youtube

Do smart technologies tend to focus on gender-biased tasks?

Similarly, the logistical labor of managing new technologies entails a cognitive load that can overtake daily life. Of course, I still follow social media, read consumer reviews and sign up for paperless billing. But I’m more aware of how easily my time and labor become new sources of profit, through an unseen exploitation that places the onus on individuals to manage complex systems in the guise of optimizing user “experience.” This broader trend, however, makes individuals complicit in their own exploitation.

Jordan Kraemer received funding previously from Intel Labs.

0 notes

warlordess · 7 years

Photo

Pokeshipping Week 2017 : day one : “fishing”

So this was one of the themes I was more eh about originally because I couldn’t think of anything new for such a topic. That being said, I ended up deciding to draw a piece of art based on one of my old fics, “Tactless”, which was about Ash taking advice from friends in order to woo Misty once he realizes somewhere around DP/Sinnoh that he’s liked her for awhile. All of the advice he’s offered fails spectacularly, of course, and he ends up having a long talk with his mom about what’s important, what Misty needs to hear.

I also wanted to include a couple of excerpts from the final two scenes, which I thought would help sell the pic I drew.

"Ash, do you know what every girl in love with a boy wants?" His mother's somber tone caught his attention and he slowly glanced up at her. The sun, setting now on the horizon, flickered over the treetops in the distance, glimmering brilliantly off of his mom's skin. He stared at her profile and realized, yes, his mom had probably been in love once, was probably in love still with his dad.

"A new mallet?" he deadpanned anyway. The one hand was brushing against a particular something he'd found in his pocket. Huh. . . that was strange.

"A what?" She turned to ask him curiously, effectively ruining the moment.

"Nothing." He was still distracted by that thing he'd found. He hadn't even known he'd been carrying it around with him. He had nearly forgotten about it after so long.

"Oh, well. . ." She cleared her throat and tried again. "All any girl in love wants is to know that she's important. If she loves a boy, she wants to know that that boy wants and needs her. She only wants to help him achieve his greatest dreams, no matter what it takes. Even if she can't always be around, all she wants is to stay – to stay. . ."

". . . Connected?" he finished for her, finally pulling that thing from his pocket and holding it up for her to see.

---

"Hey, did you need a. . ." But one look at her best friend showed him removing something from his pocket, a very familiar fishing lure, and slowly looping the line through it. Well, even though her face couldn't possibly get any redder, at least she had an answer to her nearly unasked question.

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), fishing was known as a silent sport. If they talked, it had to be in hushed tones and Misty knew she wasn't very good at using such a thing so she kept silent. And, whether he was as embarrassed as her or still trying to find the proper thing to say and the proper way to say it, Ash followed suit and didn't dare open his mouth. Not yet anyway. He seemed rather focused on judging her reaction to his latest tactic.

Misty, for her part, felt something akin to indigestion bubbling upwards from her stomach. Or maybe those were her feelings, the ones she'd put safely away until Ash would maybe have realized that she'd liked him as more than a best friend for a long time now. Her fingers grew agitated just holding onto the pole and waiting for that rather rare bite. Her nerves were on edge, wondering if either one of them would gain the courage to finally say something and stubborn enough to know that it shouldn't be her.

Ash was still in the Growlithe house with her, that was for sure.

But he had tried hard, hadn't he? And she knew that holding back now would only turn him off further. She should offer him the chance to try again by meeting him halfway, right?

Finally, she knew what she could say.

". . . I was sure you would have forgotten about that thing by now, or lost it, or something."

Red stained her cheeks in a rather pretty fashion, despite her embarrassment. Her line of vision seemed to only include the rock she was sitting on at the time, but she preferred it, unsure if she'd be able to appreciate Ash's return confession.

"Yeah, I may be just as shocked as you are," he laughed a little bit, and she would have flinched at the thought that he was so irresponsible, but he continued before she had that chance. "In fact, for a long time after I first got it, it just sat in my bag 'cause I didn't know what else to do with it."

"Ash, it's a fishing lure. What do you think you're supposed to do with it?"

"Yeah but it was hard to come by a lake where we could all sit down and fish for the afternoon. And whenever we did I was too worried to take it out. I kept remembering the note that came attached to it. I thought you'd beat me up if I let anything happen to it so I just refused to give myself the chance."

Misty couldn't help but laugh. Ash thought she'd beat him up? Sure, she was a little violent, but only because of her strong sense of justice. If she did do something to him, it would have been because he'd deserved it, she knew. And the note, the note, she'd forgotten about that one herself. It was only a few sentences long, just her way of stressing how important the thing was, how much effort she'd put into making it, how she'd made it just for him.

She definitely hadn't thought he would care about all of that.

"I was only kidding back then. I just didn't want you to go do something stupid with it. I didn't think you'd just shove it in your bag and never let it see the light of day. I made it so that you could use it to make your team stronger while you were in Sinnoh. It was supposed to be useful, Ash. As long as you don't use it to play catch with Pikachu or throw it at Team Rocket as some sort of sorry excuse for a weapon, then it's fine. It's not as important as helping you become a Pokemon Master," she shrugged as though cementing the fact that she couldn't really care less about what else he happened to do to her special lure but Ash wasn't having any of that.

"I know, you just wanted to help me. You always wanted to help me, didn't you? You just had a funny way of showing it sometimes. Maybe that's why I. . ."

He faltered and turned back to face the water, his hands clenching the fishing pole tightly again. Nope, still nothing biting. Misty had a feeling she knew what was coming, but she couldn't help but wonder why Ash was holding back. He'd told her more than once in the past twenty-four hours how much he liked her. She couldn't understand what was holding his tongue now.

"Besides, you don't have to lie about it. You always loved your lures. They're unique, right? One of a kind? That's why you shape them all like yourself. I haven't forgotten, although it's still kind of funny," he attempted to laugh but she gave him a short glare to keep him from mocking her. Instead he continued speaking, "Well, anyway, it was obviously important to you. Even only as a means of helping me, it was definitely important to you, wasn't it? So why shouldn't it have been important to me?"

He eased up on his pole and slowly reversed the line back towards the base until the famous Misty lure was hanging before them. They both stared at it for a second before Ash cleared his throat and continued speaking.

"It's because of this thing that I realized how important you are to me. Because I didn't show it to anyone until that day and I wouldn't let anyone else get a close enough look at it. I was a little embarrassed but. . . really, more than that, I was really possessive of it. Dawn wanted to see it, wanted to use it, but I wouldn't ever let her. It was a gift from you to me and I wouldn't let anyone else fish with it. And then Buizel showed up," at this he paused and gave Misty a moment to check her mental record of water-type Pokemon, searching the name until she'd found the picture to go along with it, "and he stole all of our fishing rods. The lure too."

"Ash, c'mon, you're saying that the very first day you pulled my special lure out to use it, you let it get stolen?" The slightest glimmer of faith in him that had been returned upon his latest attempt to win her over began to fade out again.

"Well I didn't let it get stolen. I didn't have a chance to stop it from happening. But I didn't let Buizel get away with it either. Nobody could understand why I was so angry. They were just fishing rods, right? Even if Buizel happened to get away with them, we could just get to the next town and buy some more. They're pretty cheap. . . but the rods weren't what I was after. I had to get your lure back, my lure back. Like I said, it was special to me too. And when Dawn mentioned how determined I seemed to be and Brock asked me why I didn't just give up, I realized right away that it was about you. I didn't want to let you down.

"My mom was telling me last night that, when a girl is in love with a boy, she only wants to help him achieve his greatest dreams. For a long time now, my biggest dream has obviously been to become the greatest Pokemon Master. I'll keep fighting for it too. . . but it'll be more worth it if you're there to help me like always, cheering me on in the best way you know how.

"So what I mean. . . or rather, where I'm going with this. . ."

It was here that he faltered, the worry and embarrassment that he should have felt from the get-go suddenly catching up to him and crashing into him all at once. How he'd managed to say it the first time, he didn't know but he had a feeling that it would be hard to get it out again. Misty stared blankly at him, before a faint laugh gathered in her throat. He was always so slow to catch on, wasn't he? But that was fine. . .

"Alright, alright, I get it. I accept your confession, Ash." And as a way to commemorate the moment, she leaned in and kissed him softly on the cheek.

And that’s it! I’ll be back tomorrow with my jealousy-related art that I drew, which I think is a lot of fun to look at! Unfortunately, I’ve only accomplished three themes so far this year but I’m going to try and throw something together for the other ones, or at least the last one that I have great personal attachment to.

I hope this was okay. I tried to scan it officially but of course my printer thingie is on the fritz so I had to use the app on my phone, which is a little faulty.

#pokeshipping week 2017 #day one #theme: fishing #pokeshipping #my art #fan fiction

101 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

scorfumagoodness

Only She-ra

eddietbz

eddie munson my beloved

andruurockels

Untitled

scorfumagoodness

Only She-ra

rscroogedraws

R. Scrooge