#also reminds me of the quote that goes something like 'being loved is like feeling the sun shine on both sides' idk <3

[boyfhee]

FAIR AND SQUARE › lhs

SYNOPSIS › one thing about life— it's unpredictable. for example, you made a note to yourself about not associating too much with heeseung for your own peace of mind, letting him stay as the academic rival slash classmate that he is, instead of allowing him to be something more, except one thing leads to another and you find yourself face to face with the said man with your feelings all over the place. a lowkey confession leading to a mere competition, let the game begin.

WORD COUNT › 20.2k

GENRE › academic rivals / friends to lovers, mutual pinning because they're just competitive and oblivious ft in denial, fem reader, quite the 'he fell first but she fell harder' thing eye guess . . .

WARNINGS › mentions drinking, sheds light on family issues ( mostly on the reader's side ) bruise and injury, slightest of angst, arguments, suggestive ( fourth section, towards the end ) profanities, let me know if you spot more

PLAYLIST › tune in for a better experience

NOTE › i love this fic with all my heart and lungs, even more. anyway, i'm sorry to academic rivals fans, this doesn't have academic blood and gore, as quoted by my dear mai. SPEAKING OF MAI EVERYONE THANK @maiverie FOR BETAREADING THIS FIC!!!!!! im not lying when i say i wouldn't have finished writing this yesterday if it wasn't for her, like thank u for ur super helpful review that got my brain juices flowing :< luv u fr. ALSO both heeseung and reader are taking post grad course so of course, they're aged up ( no ages specified ) have fun reading.

I. BANE OF EXISTENCE

one thing about life— it’s unpredictable. 

for example, you’re in the library writing and reading papers on the topic you love, the one that you’re supposed to enjoy and the one that will become the reason behind your earnings in the near future, but here you are, sitting with a headache and a cup of coffee on the side. who knew the subject you've liked since grade one will betray you and become the potential bane of your existence? not you, surely enough. wednesday noons are for basketball matches, which explains why the library and hallways are quieter and emptier than usual. even the teachers make time for the tournaments off their busy schedules, it’s understandable— your university is known for having one of the best sports teams in the league, and the basketball team being the defending champions does nothing but fuel the pride of students and staffs as if they’re the ones on the court, trying to get the ball in the basket.

you wouldn’t say you don’t like being a part of the crowd because you’ve been to the badminton tournaments and know that watching matches is as interesting as playing, if not more. you just don’t have the time to attend any. with assignments piling up and exams ‘round the corner, you’d rather spend your last two months of the semester studying instead of yelling at the bleachers. you can always get the recordings if you ever feel like watching one, as for the results, the word goes around faster in your department than anywhere else, all because of one of the students being on the team. 

you try focusing, you really do, but your cup is just as empty as your brain and your phone is going up with notifications. you don’t see the point of miyeon spamming the gc with updates on the match when everyone in the group, except you, is with her, watching and cheering alongside. muting is a choice which you choose not to do, and the reason is between you and god, to be honest. long story short, it’s the lack of motivation clogging your thought process and the realisation that your friends are out there enjoying themselves unlike you is blocking any means of logical thinking. a day or two spent not studying wouldn’t make you fail the classes, and even if the guilt is pooling inside, you pack your stuff and walk out of the library, making your way to the indoor basketball court. 

the screams grow louder as you approach, each step reminding you that you still can go back as you choose to ignore it. exams can wait, you tell yourself, a day to myself can’t. your mother would tell you to take breaks and go out instead of studying all day, but being on top is an addiction. it’s no good, you wish other students would believe you, it’s a struggle, on the top, at the bottom, everywhere. you expect to turn a few heads as soon as you walk inside, which doesn’t happen, but you expected it. you don’t watch matches, this could easily be your third or fourth one, and the first basketball match, to be more specific. once you realise that everyone is busy watching the plays instead of noticing who comes and goes from the court, you make your way up to the one friend you manage to spot amidst the crowd— sung hanbin. indoor bleachers feel more compact than the outdoor ones. you've been to the football match last semester, courtesy of miyeon, and everything being outdoors really helps with the crowd and noise. 

“didn’t expect to see you here,” hanbin stands next to you, offering you a sip or two from his drink, which you politely refuse, eyes fixed on the court as if it was the home they’ve been searching for. “i thought you hate heeseung,” it isn’t until he takes his name that your gaze averts to heeseung. you don’t even know why hanbin would outright assume you’re here for heeseung. in fact, that man’s name didn’t even cross your mind until he was mentioned.

“hate is a big word, ‘bin,” your words are more of a whisper laced with hesitation, as if you aren’t sure of what you’re saying. hate, actually, is a very big and heavy word. despite its constant usage with your friends, you realise the weight it holds and the impact it has. hate and dislike— they’re different and yet similar enough to be used synonymously at times. not by you, of course, you have a clear distinction between the two, and as of now, you don’t know if what you feel for heeseung is a mere dislike or pure hatred. “i just don’t like him,” 

when he successfully shoots a three-pointer, you come to the decision that you definitely don’t hate him. heeseung is, more or less, the typical all-rounder straight-A student, the jack of all trades and fortunately enough, the master of all as well. he's the student teachers use as an example, the son parents wish for, the boyfriend people wished they had. lee heeseung is many things, and one of those is being the reason why you have the second highest score in your department instead of the first position, unlike how it used to be two semesters ago. 

heeseung transferred departments about thirty weeks ago, from chemistry to bioinformatics. it had been surprising on your side because not many opted for bioinformatics until they were certain of their goal. the course in itself is vast, like an ocean of several different fields and each and every one of them opens a door to a different outcome. bioinformatics isn’t something students picked overnight just because it had the vacancy and they didn’t like their initially chosen courses. as fun as the subject sounds, it demands consistency and time, something that heeseung lacks. you had seen him attend classes the first few weeks regularly, and then the ghost of him started sitting on the empty seat that belongs to him. skipping classes, arriving late, delayed submission of a couple of projects— you knew he wasn’t here to stay. it was to pass time, or whatever, you couldn’t care, didn’t care, not until he started acing the tests, practically dethroning you from your infamous ‘perfect all kill’ title that you had for getting nothing less than a perfect score, most of the time, give and take a few here and there. 

you still get good scores, amazing even, full score in theory and the same in practicals. it’s going well in lab manuals and project works but heeseung seems to get a perfect score in those too, something you started missing ever since he came into the picture. perhaps, it was something in the way he phrased his essays— you hoped it was. rumour has it that heeseung used to be a literature student, which could explain his outstanding english skills and his eloquent way of speaking. you even looked up his debate videos on youtube only to find more evidence on how skilled he is in public speaking. 

but above all, heeseung is, actually, just a really damn annoying student, quite literally the bane of your existence. he’s always set on stealing people’s spotlight during lessons, with you being the people, obviously, always answering questions with information that’s unrelated and probably even unnecessary. and for the shortest time, you even considered taking him off your ‘things i hate’ list because you were no different in highschool. when you’re the top student, it becomes a habit to talk about things as if you know them in your bones and impress teachers. hell, you even had rivals in highschool, although none of them got on your nerves the way heeseung does. basically, he has no reason to call you by weird names everytime you both pass each other in the hallways, or remind you that he’s the top student. ‘this is the vice-captain of the basketball team and the best student of the biotechnology department, lee heeseung, informing you on the up—’ seriously, no one wants to hear him introduce himself like that when you’re around. you’re pretty sure it’s engraved inside your brain with the amount of times he repeats it everyday. minjeong even says that heeseung is becoming more and more like sunghoon, and you would not know how or why because you didn’t attend highschool with sunghoon, unlike her. 

the court flares up with cheers when heeseung goes for a dunk which ultimately leads to their team winning the match, and you reach the conclusion that maybe you don’t hate heeseung but actually want to bang his head against the walls. your eyes follow him around the court, analysing his conduct during the match, the way he communicates so effortlessly with teammates using hand signs or quick phrases, the way he holds the team together when the ball is with him, despite not being the captain. heeseung might be the most unbearable person you’ve met so far, he’s actually just fine when his target is not you. you’re sure any other player is doing just as good but nothing comes close to how you see heeseung. it’s different, the light he is in, it’s unique, incredible, and inexplicably addictive. heeseung juggles between classes and basketball, you remember sunghoon talking about his part-time job when you passed by their lockers the other day. he doesn’t have it easy, you don’t either, but you had those all perfect kills by spending hours in your study while heeseung does better than you while winning matches, making money. 

it doesn’t take you long to realise that what you have for him could be dislike with a hint of jealousy, and you wonder if all the people would react the same way once they know who heeseung really is— a devil behind an angelic face, one who deliberately likes ruining things for you, as if his life depends on it. you still remember the day he personally texted you the wrong syllabus for a test, claiming that it had been updated and the professor had asked him to notify everyone. ‘and as you know, i have not been added in the group chat yet so i’m texting everyone personally,’ he had lied ever so smoothly as if his words consist of nothing but truth, as if lies are something he hasn’t even heard of. kudos to you for studying the original and correct syllabi beforehand, you still aced the test, if heeseung scoring the first rank is overlooked. 

you’re dragged back from your thoughts to the reality when a boy bumps into you while hurrying down to the players, hoping to get noticed. half of the students act like the team is actually a boy-band, you can see them on the front page of every single edition of university magazine. usually, you prefer waiting for the crowd to disperse before taking your leave from wherever you are, but a sudden reminder about the tests over text from your professor gives you a reason to leave early, all to make sure you could catch up to heeseung. you rush your way out of the bleachers once the teams start leaving the court, eyes fixed on heeseung to take a note of the direction he leaves. hanbin gives you a confused look before the words find their way out of his mouth. “where are you going?” 

“basketball shower room,” and your words could give him, and the other people who might’ve heard you, a wrong idea but you couldn’t care less. the goal was to see heeseung before he leaves the campus, which was highly likely because no one has it in them to attend four hours of classes after an exhausting match, not even heeseung, no matter how amazing he is. 

you make your way through the ocean of people, bumping into a few in the process as you make your way to the club room. a silent profanity leaves your mouth once you realise that the club room entrance might be filled with fangirls and boys, left and right, and the thought of shuffling your way out of the crowd to meet heeseung makes you reconsider your actions. heeseung might be a star student but isn’t amazing enough for you to step out of your comfort zone and do things to see him. 

“well, this is surprising,” your voice manages to turn his head towards the door. “thought you’d be busy with your fangirls, lee,” and it is surprising indeed because the hallways are unexpectedly empty with only a few people around. you would say they learnt to give the players their space after a game but that would be a lie considering the embarrassing history of students when it comes to people on the sports team. 

“they’re probably busy with jake,” heeseung responds with a smile, and even though he turns to his locker just as quickly, you could see the smile dancing on the corner of his lips. 

jake is rather a new player, a junior to be specific, and jay personally spent days waiting outside the physics department to get the guy on the basketball team. explains why he’s popular amidst students, he’s talented, good at studies— seriously, you wouldn’t understand how these people manage academics with sports. you couldn’t, and even if you managed to, you would end up passing out every few days. “does it suck to lose your fan-following to a newbie?” 

“not really. i still have you here,” heeseung wouldn’t call it ‘losing’ his fan-following because he’s using jake as bait to escape the crowd of students as quickly as possible. a junior has to make sacrifices, in this case it’s to save heeseung by sacrificing himself to the public. although, saying that he still has you looking for him even though a hundred others aren’t makes him feel better about himself. “no but seriously, what did you come here for?” 

“oh, it’s for the test on friday,” you pull out your phone, opening the group chat with the professor and the students who took the same course. it’s laughable how the universe put you in the exact same situation twice, although with the tables turned this time, and it takes everything in you to not tell him a made-up, wrong syllabi, and do what is rational. “the syllabi was extended up to chapter fourteen, till page three-ninety-seven. they sent it in the group chat this morning but i’m sure you hardly have time even to think about something else except basketball,” 

you’ve known heeseung for two semesters but that’s for the people to say. the truth is, you don’t know him outside what he shows to everyone else. you see him come and go, spot him around the bar with his friends on weekends you pass by it. you know he skips classes and asks students for notes. it’s not necessarily from you, though you’d prefer if he would ask you since you’re the best student in the whole department, after him, as much as you hate to admit it. on some days, you see him in the library, earphones plugged in. if you manage to sneak a glance or two, you’d catch him watching the match recordings and taking notes, you wouldn’t know what notes someone could take from matches. in short, you don’t know heeseung more than how everyone knows him. coming to the shower rooms and notifying him about the test might just be a discreet attempt at striking up more conversations with him, but also, you’re just fine with him being the academic rival slash classmate that he is. 

“yeah, semi-finals,” heeseung shuts his locker close, a sigh falling off his lips just like the water drops falling on his shoulder from the tips of his hair, after a shower. “doesn’t help that they’re at the same time as the quarterly assessments. thank you for telling me even though it means you’ll end up losing the first position to me once again,” and of course, the heeseung you know wouldn’t waste an opportunity to strike up a competition. it would be a lie if you claim to hate it because despite the sour look on your face, a part of you loves these little academic races with him. heeseung makes you strive to do better, he’s like the driving force you lacked which made college a whole lot better. after all, where’s the fun in getting a perfect score with the bare minimum effort, without some challenges knocking at your door? 

“what can i do, i’m all about fair play,” there’s a subtle shade behind your words, reckoning to the multiple incidents of him ruining things for you. this could take a really nasty turn if you were to resort to his ways, except you won’t because you’re better than him. “good luck, and we’ll see who loses the first position to whom,” 

heeseung wipes his hair before switching to texting on his phone, the smile still adorning his face like a jewel. you assume it’s the delight from winning a match, it’s obvious. his eyes couldn’t help but sparkle at every little achievement, always looking forward to something more, something challenging, that’s lee heeseung for you— someone who knows he has an easier way around things but would deliberately walk down another path and test his limits. shocking how it took you one basketball match to see the passion he has for things he’s interested in, that he’s more than a sport jock or a straight nerd, he’s more than someone who takes courses to pass time, more than someone who is just a show-off.

“heeseung,” the dislike, the hatred, the envy, it might all be a lie. “well played today,” because in the end, there’s a minimal possibility that you’re leaving the room with nothing but the slightest of admiration for the guy who is nothing but an obstacle between you and that first position in upcoming finals in two months. 

and it would be a lie too to claim that your words didn’t catch heeseung by surprise.

II. RIVALRY, FEELINGS, ETCETERA. 

it has been a little over one day since heeseung’s conversation with you outside the shower rooms, twenty-seven hours to be exact. twenty-seven hours of him hearing the same last words over and over again, twenty-seven hours of him failing all and any attempts at straight thinking and twenty-seven hours of him not thinking about anything except you. all of it ends up in three hours of practice and not one good shot from heeseung. the sighs and snickers from teammates fill the court every few seconds— truthfully, they never leave. heeseung is simply too lost to pay attention to them. 

“heeseung, you good?” a pat on shoulder from jake and the words following soon after manage to pull him out of his spiral of thought, even if it’s for a brief second. 

“he’s not, won’t be anytime soon,” sunghoon replies as if the answer was on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be revealed. “yn came to watch the last match, after all,” there’s a smirk on sunghoon’s face, heeseung can tell it in the intonation of his words. 

jay pauses just seconds before going for a layup, joining the conversation. “wait, she did?” 

“yep, saw her standing next to that hanbin guy or something,” 

“mate, you cannot be acting like this over a girl and that too, four days before finals,” this conversation, as a whole, is beyond jake’s comprehension. a part of the reason could be because he joined the team late, thus missing out on a huge chunk of internal jokes and gossip and goes amidst the players. and no amount of reasons can convince him into thinking that it’s fine to act out-of-character before important matches just because your crush showed up at one of your matches. 

“she’s not just some random girl. she never attends matches, but she came to watch my match,” heeseung clarifies as if the reasons behind his antics are valid and acceptable. “you wouldn’t know how i feel right now,” 

“you’re on cloud nine, we know, your crush gave you the attention you’ve been lacking but trust me, she would ignore you just as efficiently if she sees you perform like this,” 

“she’s not a crush,” and despite it being a well known fact amongst the basketball team that heeseung has a thing or two for you, he always refuses to accept it. one can say it’s the pride thing. you barely even talk to him unless it’s about studies, and your conversations are mostly along the lines of who outdoes whom in tests and assessments. moreover, everyone knows heeseung is the reason why you’re the second best student in the department— as much as you hate to admit it, again— because he transferred and flipped your world, probably even dribbled around with it like a basketball. a word goes around every few days about you glaring at him in class, which is not true, you’re instead focusing your eyes on something in an attempt to think. he just happens to sit right in front of you and be the object of focus. heeseung might as well believe that you hate him, even though yesterday’s conversation was far from how people talk when they hate each other, and his assumptions could account for the constant words of denial that fall off his lips. 

jay snickers before landing a hook successfully. “yeah, and i’m a pigeon,” 

“oh, shut it, jay,” heeseung turns to look at the other boy. “she’s just someone i admire. have you read her essays? her papers? god, we’re a year away from graduation but she’s already writing mind-blowing papers, one of them was even published in the monthly issue of some magazine. she’s already on her best performance and still tries to do better, always down to guide juniors with lab work and also is on the research team for the paediatrics department at asan medical centre. all this, and she studies all day. if i were her, i’d pass out. i can’t go a day without entering the court,” 

“and he says he doesn’t have a crush oh her,” sunghoon rolls his eyes, it’s like if he heard another line of excuses from heeseung, he could see the back of his skull and have a look at hs big, fat brain. 

“because i don’t? you guys never had someone you admired so much that they practically became your role model despite being in the same year?” unlike other things that heeseung does, calling you his role model has a reason. first, it can give him a reason to talk to you. heeseung is almost convinced that you hate him, and if this persists, it would get harder and harder for him to approach you, but with the lie— half lie— of you being his role model and so wonderful that he couldn’t help but admire you from afar while trying to overcome his social anxiety gives him a reason to talk to you. plus, it sounds plausible, he doesn’t understand why his brother says it’s bound to fail. 

the second reason and more to do with his friend group. no one in his friend circle is capable of keeping a secret— jay ends up spilling tea unconsciously, jake tells one person who he trust and that person turns out to be the most untrustworthy person ever, beomgyu, well he’s on the team but telling him would be like standing on a stage and announcing to the whole campus, and sunghoon, he’s the mother, he cannot digest food without disclosing secrets. even if it’s common knowledge that heeseung has a tiny crush on you, denying it in front of the whole campus everytime one of them brings it up helps him with his reputation and fortunately, ends up keeping it a secret. besides, he’d rather have people tease him for calling you his role model than having a crush on you. 

“i surely don’t have someone i admire to the point i read all their papers and know each and everything they’ve volunteered for,” jay argues back, set on proving his point. “tell me what am i gonna do knowing that she’s on the paediatrics research team?” 

“i think this is the most i’ve known about yn ever since classes started and that too, because of heeseung,” beomgyu chuckles, earning a side eye from heeseung in the process. 

“enough, let’s get back to practice,” heeseung intervenes in an attempt to change the topic. he does not want his closest friends making fun of him for liking someone— it’s supposed to be human nature to have a crush. 

“you get back to practice because you’re the only one fucking up because of your silly little crush. i’m done, jay, call me when we’re having a practice match because i need to attend theology or my professor would write me up,” taehyun passes the ball to sunghoon, the latter yelping in surprise at the sudden yet successful catch. 

“i don’t have a crush—”

“of course, let’s get you back to practice,” jake cuts heeseung off mid sentence, moving back to take his position as sunghoon passes the ball to heeseung, who, as expected, misses the catch due to lack of concentration.

it’s going to be a long day for the team. 

. 

. 

.

“a little birdie told me you went to see heeseung in the shower rooms?” are the words you hear as soon as your classes are dismissed, miyeon walking up to you and hanbin discussing the set of questions your professor distributed just a few minutes ago. 

“i didn’t go into the shower rooms, i was outside, near the lockers,” and there’s a difference. to be in the shower room implies you were there in the shower, which definitely gives rise to several wrong ideas of different levels. specifically, you didn’t even enter the locker room. you were outside, leaning against the door, watching heeseung as he walked freshly out of the shower, a towel around his neck, you both strike up a small talk. yeah, that was the scene, not with you in the shower and whatever miyeon’s imagination leads to after that. 

“so you did go!” she claps her hands together as if it’s a celebratory occasion, turning her head to look at the boy next to you. “what were you saying about yn not having a crush, habin?”

“it’s not a crush, miyeon,” and it’s true— heeseung is not a crush. he’s a classmate, a rival, an over-qualified and impossibly competitive student, someone you would want to take your time to study. “what, i can’t even go to tell a classmate about the updated syllabus for a test now? i would’ve done that for anyone, not just heeseung,” 

hanbin sighs, packing his bag. “sure, but he’s in the groupchat. he could’ve checked it himself,” 

“um, i doubt that,” you’re preparing a powerpoint in your head, multiple slides on why you needed to do what you did. “he’s busy with basketball and i know how he gets when the matches are around the corner. don’t you remember how he skipped two weeks of classes straight because of matches last semester? and it’s the finals this time, i don’t think he even opens texts about anything that’s not basketball. i mean, he responded to my messages six days later because he was busy with practice,” 

you say it like you’ve known heeseung for a decade and have been through the ups and downs with him. you wouldn’t care about who does what in the classes, if it’s a paper plane flying right over you, landing just second to the first row of seats or if it’s someone being brave enough and playing music during lectures. biology, in your opinion, is a subject for those who are serious about doing something unique while staying in the academic field. you don’t encounter troublemakers often, once a blue moon if the heavens make a mistake. on other days, it’s quieter than a library, emptier than cemeteries at night. 

to think your life as a biotechnology major got interesting after heeseung switched majors is astonishing and equally debatable. 

“i don’t see why i should remember all that about ‘just a classmate’ but thanks for telling,” and before you know it, hanbin and miyeon are out of the class, on their way to wherever their next stop is. seriously, they’re having it easier than you. they go to games, movies, drink on weekends— something you haven’t had a taste on ever since the year started. somewhere, you could be blamed for your hectic schedules. studies, lab work, and thesis, they suffice for all the stress a student in post graduation studies can handle. volunteering and writing papers is on you, things wouldn’t have been arduous if you had decided to move slowly, one step at a time. sometimes, the hunger for more leaves you starving— quite literally. 

you spend an hour or so in the classroom along with a few other students, going through the same old routine of yours— watch videos, take notes, transfer them to your document in your own words and make it sound as innovative and convincing as possible. heeseung would be better at this than you. you’re exhausted to the point that accepting your defeat to him doesn’t even faze you anymore. he used to be a literature student, had english as a side course as an undergrad, he’s bound to be better than making essays sound they came right out of shakespeare's drafts, phrases and metaphors that would put fitzgerald to shame. 

you didn’t care about what went down in your classes until heeseung came along. call it craziness or the weird impression you have of students in your field, heeseung is far from the typical biotechnology student aiming for a postgraduate degree. he skips classes, plays basketball as if studies are a side business, and yet still manages to ace every test like an all-rounder. he shouldn’t even be in classroom, he should be in the labs, being the most important subject of studies. there are days you think of him as a social experiment— how quickly can a robot piss off a straight-A student with its impeccable skills— of course, the subjects wouldn’t know it’s a robot but you do, you’re almost convinced he is one. there’s no way he’s the top student with the amount of effort he puts in. one would claim that he studies after classes, at home slash dorms, but you can bet your life he doesn’t. there have been numerous instances when you’ve spotted him in the background of someone’s picture at a bar. he’s always with people, he has a humongous friend group, god knows how someone can live like that. at first, you were convinced he isn’t real, as worrisome as it sounds, and if he is real then he needs to be studied. 

which leads to what you’re doing right now— making your way to the basketball court. you don’t know how or why you’re doing it. you started with your studies, ended up thinking about heeseung, and now you’re on your way to the basketball court. although, it’s not half a bad idea, now that you think about it once again. 

your mind goes all the way back to when you watched him play for the first time, which was just a day ago actually. you don’t know anything about basketball, you don’t know much about heeseung either, but there’s one thing you’re sure of— heeseung is class and heeseung on the court, they’re different. you’ve noticed the way he clicks his pen relentlessly out of nervousness when he can’t solve a question, the way his back tenses up for a fraction of a second as soon as he’s asked to explain something. you’ve seen the hints of fear in his eyes when he asked you for notes last semester just three days before exams, scared that he would fail. heeseung isn’t sure of a lot of things and basketball isn’t one of those. 

“you’re not practising?” you ask him when you swim out of your thoughts, watching him climb up the bleachers and sit next to you. the court seems much better when it’s empty, free from the loud cheers of spectators, but that could be just you. 

“i was, as you see, but i saw you up here and thought it was time for a break,” you could see his teammates shake heads at him in disappointment, proceeding to continue with their practice. “what’s up?” 

you don’t respond to him and instead, take your time watching the others practise their shots. you watch the way one of them, who you think is taehyun, goes for a dunk, credits to hanbin for telling you names for a few shots. next to you, heeseung shouts out a tip or two for the boy for him to have an easier and effective approach at the said move. heeseung is good at dunks, you’ve heard it from students, you’ve seen it in the last match as well. just one shot was enough to tell you how good he is at it, it’s like basketball flows in his veins, like he can close his eyes and still manage to get a basket. 

your eyes ghost up the court and shift to him— there’s a content smile on his face, a relaxed posture as if there’s nothing for him to worry about. he takes a sip from his energy drink, you wonder if he, or anyone from the team, even gets time to have their meals. the expression on his face, it’s something you’ve never seen on him during lessons. it takes you back to the match, how he looked on court a day before, certain of every move he made, every step, every breath, without doubts, no second thoughts. you’ve done enough lab projects with heeseung to know how his hands shake when he’s preparing a slide or extracting a sample from a centrifuge, afraid that one wrong move and he would mess up the efforts of everyone in the group. that hesitation is nowhere to be seen on the court, gone like it has never existed. as if lee heeseung, the star student and player, has never had an encounter with nervousness and hesitation in his life. there’s a thin line between studies and sport for him, you finally realise it after much consideration. maybe, you’re going beyond your boundaries and making assumptions about a guy you barely know, even if you would never voice all these thoughts to him, you think you know the reason why there’s a different him on the stage when the ball is in hands.  

“how did you realise that you like basketball? you know, like it enough to devote so much of your time and have it alongside studies?” because even if biotech is something he’s studying and wants to make a career in, you guess that it’s just a source of satisfaction. in your eyes, through your perception, basketball is what makes him truly happy. 

you don’t know why someone wouldn’t pick satisfaction over happiness, especially when it’s coming with its hands full of opportunities to grab that bag.

“eh, i don’t have a sob story about it, if that is what you’re hoping for,” he chugs down the contents of the can before crushing it to the slightest, eyes squinting at the opposite wall before they move back to meet yours. “i never had to sit and think about basketball and studies, you know, as in how am i going to manage both of them. it just happened. i started playing basketball in middle school and it has been with me ever since,” 

heeseung’s side of the story is simple— a mediocre guy who was introduced to sports by his older brother and now, it’s one of the most important things in his life. middle school heeseung preferred staying in and playing video games instead of going out. in fact, middle school heeseung resembles you in all the ways that make him different from you right now. he has been good at learning and remembering things, he takes liking to things quicker than others do. basketball was like for him— easy, quick, fun, like a way to release all the stress after a long day at school. in heeseung’s story, there isn’t a main character who helped him choose the path he’s walking right now. instead, all he had was his family who introduced him to the various aspects and opportunities, and he simply ended up joining hands with the ones he liked, deciding to not let it go before the dead end. 

“i want to have that passion for things,” a soft laughter falls off your lips, it’s an attempt to make your sob story look less pitiful. “i used to paint and play piano— but painting, mostly, was really good at it. i learnt how to draw before i learnt how to tie my shoelaces. i couldn’t go a day without painting, but then highschool happened, i had pressure to do well, expectations from friends and family, had a dream outside painting, and now, i haven’t painted in years,” 

unlike heeseung, art started as more than just a side business to you. it’s not something you were introduced to in the middle of your life but rather is something you grew up with. you can blame or credit your mother for making paintings and having them in almost every corner of your house. it’s one of the reasons why at five years old you were beyond fascinated at all the patterns and colours. no one would’ve guessed that science would manage to sweep you off your feet right from the first grade, given the way your hands danced a duet to their own melody along with a paintbrush, as if each stroke has a conscious life of its own. no one would’ve guessed that your mother would tell you to stop painting and focus on studies, neither would they have known that she would become the reason why you no longer feel the same way about art. as stated before, life is unpredictable— because no one would’ve guessed that sitting here on the bleachers with heeseung and sharing a piece of your life would water the seeds of doubts in your heart, the ones that bloom at the sight of him.

he thinks your story is sad— with all due respect, without sarcasm, of course. it’s the best he can say. “i think it’s more of a ‘connection’ thing. you think you’ve lost the connection but you simply need to pickup a canvas and some colours to relink, if you get me,” because heeseung has had somewhat of a same experience, with music, and sitting front of a piano to play one of sibelius’ symphonies after senior year highschool finals was all it took him to find his lost interest in music. even though it’s nothing more than just a hobby, even if it's just something he considers as a way to pass time, heeseung knows how it feels to let go of something that is an integral part of one’s life. 

“it has always been about timing, heeseung,” you shake your head, trying to prove him wrong using your own arguments. “you think i haven’t tried painting again? i still have art supplies stacked up in my cupboard. it’s all about timing. when you like something, you only get a few chances to make sure it stays with you for a lifetime. how many people do you know who have given up on their hobbies because they claim to have lost interest? the thing is, the interest is still there, it’s the inability and fear of not being able to do it again. if you timing is off, no matter how much you try, things won’t work, and what you love will end up becoming a closed chapter of your life,” 

a pause. he sits still, eyes admiring your face while his mind is busy replaying your words in the back of his head. heeseung wonders how valid they are when it comes to people. he likes you, despite the constant denial which is only for show, by the way. it doesn’t take a scientist to read him. reading him isn’t even close to rocket science, he doesn’t understand how you haven’t caught up even after being incredibly smart. he has seen you hang out with hanbin— heeseung hates that guy, by the way. there’s no solid logic, it’s just that hanbin seems to be around you all the time and heeseung thinks of him as a leech sucking blood off its host. heeseung would never admit but it’s just his jealousy playing tricks on him, and even though it doesn’t look like you have any romantic feelings towards that guy, it would be fucking embarrassing for heeseung lose you to a guy who isn’t even half as qualified as him. ( yes, he is judging characters based on academic qualifications, no heeseung wouldn’t explain why )

“i like you,” and so, he lets his feelings win for once, deciding to let his heart take control instead, closing doors to any room for rational thinking like it never existed. “you said it was about timing, about trying hard enough and having only a few chances, perhaps, just one bullet, and i’m shooting my shot right now. i don’t want to remember you as a closed chapter of my life,” 

it would be such a waste of chemistry if you end up becoming just a closed chapter of his life. heeseung has done his research, more like reading tons of books and watching hundreds of movies to understand the potential that two academic rivals have. no one knows this, not even his closest friends, but heeseung’s favourite genre might simply be enemies to lovers and living that trope doesn’t sound as bad when it’s with you. he has spent hours thinking about the number of productive library dates you could have, working on projects together and brainstorming about the next biggest revolution in the RDT world, changing the public’s outlook at genetics forever. it sounds stupid and makes him sound even stupider, even as a lost cause, but heeseung doesn’t care. in his mind, it’s the best date someone could have. to live and become successful together, it sounds like a perfect plan to him.   

truthfully, you have always been a part of heeseung’s future, near or distant. he always always pictures you in his life, standing next to him during graduation, bidding goodbyes at farewell, exchanging shy greetings at reunions ten years later while reminiscing about everything he did to irritate you, that would sound embarrassing a decade later. your presence will always be significant to him, he just hopes to remember you as something more than just a rival, just a classmate he never really got to know, just a person he spent his two years hating upon, just a crush he didn’t get to confess to. 

the catch— heeseung has already started picturing his future and you are not even sure of your present— and while he is looking at you for an answer, you’re lost inside your head, looking for words to articulate. 

heeseung is someone you planned to stay away from for the rest of your university life. him stepping into your life already costs you a lot, namely: dropping in ranks and losing your infamous title. his actions cost you the time you could use to study, which is actually upon you because you can simply ignore him instead of spending hours on thinking about his hows, whens and whats. heeseung was supposed to be the academic rival slash classmate that he is, instead of allowing him to be something more, but beyond rivalry, feelings, etcetera. you knew the way you felt about him, even though you couldn’t be as certain as him, or even to claim you see him the same way he feels about you.

turns out, heeseung has always been sure of certain things in his life. 

“heeseung, i’m—”

“not sure? busy? stressed? i know you have a lot of things going on right now. take your time, study for the finals, finish your papers, sort out your own issues and then come back to me. i’ll be waiting,” it’s like he’s not only good at studying but also at reading minds, because heeseung seems to have guessed a part of exactly what you’ve been thinking. call it timing, jay calls him to get back to practice just a few seconds later— a perfect excuse to leave. “looks like my break is over,” 

you sit speechless, watching him walk away like an opportunity that just walked out of your hand. it feels like a slight defeat, like a test you failed when you could've scored better, if not a full score. it's funny because this wasn't a competition, you weren't rejected, more like you rejected him, but it still feels like he has the upper hand. it's funny and equally annoying because heeseung is supposed to be nothing more than just a nobody, somebody you aren't even supposed to spare two thoughts on, but here you are sitting with the guy with your feelings all over the place. 

“heeseung,” you stand up, your voice making him turn to look at you, both of you ignoring the sight of his teammates standing motionless in their positions, too stunned at your voice reverberating in the almost empty court. “let’s do this: if you manage to stand first in the finals, i’ll date you,”

a lowkey confession leading to a mere competition. his lips morph into a smirk, the ones he'd pass you before tests, an open challenge offered directly to you. “and if i don’t?”

and you mirror the same smirk back at him, you weren't going to back off simply because it's about the person you possibly have a crush on. “i become just a closed chapter of your life,” 

let the game begin. 

III. LIAR AND THE LOVER

despite heeseung’s sudden confession, you’re doing quite well, taking it better than expected. you had your moment of confusion back when the words of proposal fell off his lips— anyone would. after all, it’s lee heeseung we’re talking about. you can only imagine the saddened faces of his fangirls once they hear about him confessing to you.  

“jay told me you made a bet with heeseung?” hanbin’s question catches your attention as soon as he steps into the cafe, managing to turn a few heads towards you in the process. 

“you know jay?” 

he sits next to you, pulling out his laptop in a hurry. you can guess it’s because of his essay that’s due before six in the evening, one he could’ve written last night instead of getting wasted at his friend’s birthday gathering. “we share history, also, that’s not the answer to my question,” 

“it’s not a bet, ‘bin,” your words aren’t half wrong. “just a silly game, y’know? i didn’t even expect him to agree,” frankly, even you don’t know why or how you came up with such a bizarre idea in broad daylight. usually, people get bouts of excitement or embarrassment while confessing or being confessed to, but in your case, you jumped over the fence and made a proposal that you have only seen in fiction. 

“nah, no way you’re setting up your whole love life for failure and calling it a silly game,” the disappointment is evident in hanbin’s voice as his fingers danced over his keyboard, typing with a speed that could leave the trains behind. well, people tend to get like that when you have an assignment due and the deadline is just a few hours to go. you guess that he’s too busy to even listen to your reasoning, which is appreciated considering you have no reasoning as for why you did what you did. 

“you made a bet with heeseung,” you turn your head around, making the boy next to you do the same in the process. it’s miyeon— you should’ve seen it coming, honestly. your actions have consequences, as always, and one of them is dealing with her non-stop interrogation as if you’re the prime suspect for some gruesome crime and every question answered wrong opens gates to capital punishment. sometimes, you wonder why she didn’t go with studying law instead. 

“how do you know?”

“everyone knows, yn. it’s all they’ve been talking about,” she sighs, sitting opposite to you while taking a look at hanbin’s laptop. “even the football fanatics are talking about attending the game, god, hanbin we better hurry that day or we’re not getting a seat,” you should’ve seen it coming, honestly. miyeon might not be the most social person, but she definitely is the most updated. nothing escapes her, every tiny incident reaches her ears one way or another, and if not, then she just finds out about it using her sources, given you don’t know about her sources. it’s one of the reasons why you’re almost convinced that she runs a shady side business alongside her career in bioengineering. 

you take a sharp breath, going through the bunch of papers arranged in your file. “it’s not that serious. he confessed to me and i said i’d date him if he manages to secure the first position in the finals as well,” 

“you did that knowing he hasn’t been studying because of games while you’re studying like your life depends on it? there’s no way he’s going to be first, and everything aside, it was a wrong fucking move to play with his feelings,” play with his feelings— a pause, you don’t like how it sounds. you’re not playing with his feelings, that’s far from what you’re doing. it’s a game, a competition, new to your friends but you and heeseung have always been familiar with it. there’s an unspoken rule to test each other’s limits. the last time you and heeseung did something like this, it resulted with you writing ‘lee heeseung is smarter than ln yn,’ in bold on a sheet of paper and putting it on the notice board for the whole campus to see. in your eyes, it's history repeating itself yet again. sure, there is something else at stake, but the rules are the same, and you don’t know why your friends are acting like you’ve done something terribly unethical. 

“no one’s playing with his feelings, miyeon, and i know for a fact he’s making time to study for finals,” you clarify your side, slight annoyance evident in your voice. “besides, it doesn’t matter. it’s not like this is serious, i only did this to buy time to figure out my feelings while the game gives me a reason to study and not get distracted. you know how i get when i lose focus,” 

that could be the reasoning behind your actions, of course. even while sitting in a cafe with your friends and having a conversation that is about to make your blood boil, you’re thinking of heeseung in the back of your head. his words play over and over again like a broken record player, the image of him on court or studying pops up in your mind every now and then. obsession is a disease and you have it bad. it’s crazy to be thinking about someone so much without being absolutely floored for them. 

“so you’ll date him despite the outcome?” hanbin drags you out of the well of your thoughts, a question that leaves miyeon flabbergasted. 

“if i manage to figure out my feelings then of course,” a chuckle falls off your lips. “i’m telling you guys, it’s not that serious. i’m sure he knows it too,” and you’re really confident about this— it usually never ends on a good note. 

“and if he doesn’t? what if it’s serious for him? yn, you never know how one thing might affect someone, and feelings are not something to gamble on. you should’ve told him you need some time to think instead of giving him a false hope or whatsoever,” it’s now that you start having second thoughts. the next two hours go by amidst silence, a few small talks blooming here and there, but dissolving just as quickly within the ticking clock of deadlines for assignments and exams. 

it doesn’t take a scientist to know when miyeon is upset, for she isn’t the best at masking her emotions. through the sneaky glances at her that you’ve stolen over time, you can tell she’d rather spend the evening in silence than talk to you, which is a challenge with herself because she’s really talkative. it takes two to sing a duet, two to play and game, two people to make a relationship work. heeseung and you— the two of you are enough to make decisions for yourselves, decide what’s right and wrong and, something about miyeon questioning your choices doesn’t sit right with you. 

too many cooks spoil the broth, it’s the principle of your life, the words you’ve been following to this date. it was your decision to have a few friends instead of a fifty— quality over quantity, as one might call it— and there has never been a moment when you regretted having a handful of people to call friends. instead of consulting too many people about your major in university, you simply went with what your parents and homeroom teacher suggested. life has been good so far. the more the better is something that isn’t applicable in your case. instead of telling everyone about your dilemma regarding heeseung, you decided to keep it to yourself, eventually opening up to heeseung when the time comes. you’re doing just fine on your own, it doesn’t make sense to you why a third person’s opinion is making you doubt your decision making abilities that you’ve been so proud of. 

this is not a gamble, you tell yourself, it’s a fair play. you gave him options, he made the choice, it’s consensual. you didn’t force him into this game, he didn’t pressure you to respond, it’s a harmless competition that’s bound to have a positive outcome. you even spend a good fifteen minutes wondering if you should go back to heeseung and take it all back in case he finds it insensitive to put his feelings on the line. doing it in person seemed impossible so you resorted to texts, typing and deleting your message before giving up altogether. in your head, this was an okay decision. a sweet confession, a person with unsure feelings, a harmless competition. 

you hope it doesn’t backfire ten times worse. 

. 

. 

.

three days later, you find yourself on the way to basketball club rooms once again. you checked the court, it was empty, and your only option was to check the club slash locker rooms if you wanted to see heeseung. okay, first things first, you don’t miss him— maybe a little, but it’s because you miss hearing his weird ass answers in class even though they’re right. heeseung just has an unique approach to things, in other words he simply knows how to buy time and go in detail about things he’s an expert at to impress the professors. however, that doesn’t seem to be the case for him because he has approached you six times in the past three days, asking if you’re free to hangout. 

you like to think he misses you or that his requests were because he wanted to make sure you don’t study and lose to him, either could be true. knowing heeseung, he’s capable of going both ways. whatever may be the reason, you turned him down all six times, and it’s not because you have something against him— of course, you don’t. that’s common knowledge by now— your reason for not hanging out with him is studies, as expected of you honestly. the bet aside, you had way too many chapters to learn before exams and all heeseung ever does is take up your headspace everytime you sit down with your books spread open. avoiding him in thoughts wasn’t possible so avoiding him in person was your last straw. 

which leads to the present : you rushing to heeseung, again,  not because you miss him but because you need his help, though one of the reasons could be that you feel bad for turning him down six times. you can hear muffled laughter from a distance as you approach the club rooms, a bang against one of the lockers, a loud profanity that follows afterwards. their humour is beyond your level of understanding. 

“heese— oh, um—” you greet and turn away just as quickly when you realise that one of them is shirtless. it’s obviously heeseung, you can’t mistake his face for someone else. and you’re guessing he’s the last one to come out of shower because everyone else is dressed, maybe he’s someone who likes to take his time showering— you seriously need to stop thinking before your imagination goes bonkers. “sorry, can you come outside for a second when you’re ready?”

another round of laughter follows, more like teasing remarks because you can swear you heard a few of them refer to you as his girlfriend, and it gets you a little flustered, you won’t lie. you even hear one of them yell ‘ooh, get it, heeseung,’ as heeseung walks out, fixing his t-shirt, responding back with his middle finger up at whoever made the comment. 

“hi,” his voice isn’t much louder than a whisper, eyes fluttering between you, the floor, and his teammates who pretend to not look when you peek inside. there’s a soft smile on his face— it’s cute, you think, and then rethink what you just thought. heeseung is, well, not cute— usually. he’s good-looking, handsome, hot, sexy, even, since you’re on the topic of finding adverbs that suit heeseung. cute is rarely one of them, you don’t think you’ve seen him as flustered as he is right now— rubbing his nape, a tint of pink on his cheeks, avoiding eye-contact— that’s far from the heeseung you’ve been seeing for past two semesters. 

“hi, can you send me the pdf of the extra set of questions that prof sent last week? i think i accidentally deleted it while clearing up my storage,” you get straight to the point, trying not to waste much of your precious time. “i could’ve texted you but figured you’d be too busy with practice to check messages,” you remember what happened last time; he took six days to reply to your texts. you’re quite a patient person otherwise but in this case, you’re in dire need of questions to practise for tomorrow’s mock. 

“ah, sure, give me a minute,” and he pulls out his phone, scrolling through an ocean of files and documents to look for the one you need. you do think he’s gorgeous though, it’s a well known fact that he’s stunning, but you think this look of heeseung surpasses the other ones quite easily— hairs wet after shower, partially covering his forehead, a white t-shirt that’s slightly wet near the shoulders because of the water dripping down— you wish he’d at least dry his hair before catching a cold. “actually, i would have replied to your texts if you had— oh, yes, there you go. do you want me to email it to you or…?”

“oh, just texts would be fine, thank you,” 

“done,” a pause, you feel his eyes on you as you go through the pdf to take a brief look at the contents. “do you want to go for a walk? or are you getting back to studies?” at this point, you’re sure that question is a way to tease you about your obsession with studies. heeseung may think you’re overdoing it because you want to win, but it’s no more than the normal amount of hours you spend studying. he never paid you any attention to care about that. 

“no, i’m done for today, actually,” and that’s a big fat lie considering you were planning to solve some questions and revise two chapters before leaving the campus, but it’s fine. you feel bad for rejecting him six times either way. 

never in your life did you imagine that you’d be going on a walk with heeseung. it’s nothing serious, you just didn’t think there would be a day where you two would have normal people conversation while doing normal people activities instead of trying to disparage each other based on grades and academic performances. to think about it now, heeseung isn’t half bad, it was all in your head. it’s not like you had vile assumptions about him, you did find him annoying and way too prideful— anyone like him would be, actually, and heeseung is still quite humble about his achievements because if it was someone else, they sure would have made it everyone’s problem. 

actually, heeseung is insufferable as well. you remember your first encounter with him, first and so far, the worst— in the laboratory. you and heeseung sat next to each other and when the professor asked him to briefly explain his experiment, you realised it’s oddly similar to yours. you had accused him of cheating, like any sane person would, which led to him getting two scores less than a perfect. he only lost one score because of you, actually, and that too because you were professor’s favourite and heeseung was new to the department. the other score, you don’t know where he missed, but that incident led to heeseung deleting your powerpoint thirty minutes before your presentation, which led you stealing his notes and selling it some junior through an undercover twitter account, which led to the professor asking you to help him with notes before exams, and everything ultimately led to the realisation that heeseung is actually quite decent if you behave with decency as well. the give and take is serious for him, because he gave you notes and so, you had to take his offer of going on a walk. even though it seemed like you had a choice, a part of you knew it was a mirage. you would’ve ended up on a walk with heeseung one way or another. 

“i come here whenever i’m tired or just not feeling well,” he says and you wake up from your daydream of memories you shared with heeseung. the way he phrases his words makes it sound like he has brought you to one of his most secret locations, one that no one knows except taehyun, probably, considering they’re close friends, but in reality, it’s the playground you pass by every single day on your way from your apartment to university. 

“oh, are you okay? are you nervous for tomorrow’s match?” you continue, deciding you shouldn’t ruin his favourite place for him. honestly, no one would’ve guessed that lee heeseung would come to a children’s park on bad days. 

“actually, this walk was for you, you looked like you’d pass out if you spent another hour in front of books,” and you’re done, standing speechless with your eyes wide open at his words that he says with a victorious smile on his face. “you should start taking breaks, yn. it’s not a bad thing to go home earlier when you’re tired,” 

he’s right, oh, you know he’s absolutely right about everything he just said, from passing out to going home. a part of him probably even feels glad to have you out on his little walk with him, you’re getting your well deserved rest, thanks to him. heeseung might even ask if he can walk you home considering you’re ‘done for today,’ which is very thoughtful of him— but what does this make you? a liar? miyeon was right, you’re gambling, even though it’s not that serious. so far, you’ve lied about being done with your studies and the bet you made with heeseung because at this point, it’s more like a prank, except it’s not funny and that it might end up with him getting upset with you because tomorrow is basketball tournament’s finals and you’re here wasting his time, all because you lied. 

a liar and a lover, on a date at children’s park— match made in theatre club, you’d say. 

“are you sure this is not your way to manipulate into not studying and losing to you, just so you can date me?” you try to play it cool, knowing very well that it can be one of his tricks or whatsoever. after all, it’s the same heeseung who made you trip in front of your class just three days after being transferred. 

“i was being genuine but it doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” of course, it doesn’t. he gets to win, after all. “can i walk you home?” just as you had guessed. 

“i would love to go home but my bag is still in the library,” you had considered taking it with you, actually, but dismissed the thought once you realised you had to come back to the library and continue with your studies. albeit, you’re not studying, that’s on you for lying into oblivion and giving into his requests.  

once again, you two are back to walking, this time back to the university campus. it’s nice, having a walk with heeseung, it’s sweet, slow, comforting, like slow music flowing around and engulfing you in its arms. the unsaid words are weighing on your shoulders, you can feel the pressure, but it’s not awkward. above the busy hustle of the city and blaring horns, it’s a quiet world with heeseung, it’s nice, like a warm hug after a long day. you didn’t think you had it in yourself to spend a minute next to him without overthinking and possibly starting a banter. you didn’t think heeseung had it in him either, to make a walk feel so close to home.  

“so, how are you coping knowing you’re going to lose once again?” and, it’s back again. everything is a hoax actually— his looks? a trap. his smile? a trap. it’s all a facade because once he opens his mouth, nothing but horseshit comes out of it. 

“very well, in fact, because i know i’m the one getting that first spot this time,” call it overconfidence but you really do think you’ll get your title back this time. you’ve been studying well and hard enough, solving questions and going through every extra set of notes and exercises your professor sent. although, you would claim to beat heeseung had you been prepared or not because it’s fun messing with him. 

“i’d rather have you show some mercy, in that case,” before you know it, you’re already standing in front of the library. “academic defeat and a heartbreak, it already sounds painful. i hope you go easy on me,” it’s sarcastic, of course, all these saccharine words of confessions made you forget how he is under the layers of smiles and winks that adorn his face. a session full of silence follows, the comforting tranquillity morphing into something tensed as he steps closer, your breath getting caught up in your throat as your mind dysfunctions— it’s the effect he has. 

“heeseung,” you put a finger on his lips— the only thing between him and you, the only thing helping you stay sane and composed at the moment, because only you know the struggle of pulling yourself together while standing inches away from heeseung as he grabs your wrist and plants a soft kiss on your finger before removing it from his lips. 

“why, that’s unfair. you get to see me anytime you want while i have to wait because you’re busy studying, you even get to see me shirtless, and i can’t even get a kiss?” and you hate the look in his eyes, you hate how close he is standing and how it makes your heart go crazy. this isn’t even the beginning and you hate how you feel like you’ve already lost, and you hate how confident he is with every breath he breathes against your lips. “just kidding, see you tomorrow,” 

and you hate how this is where you realise that you’ve fallen deep, and you’ve fallen hard. 

IV. PLANET TO A SUN

heeseung has been thinking about the walk for an hour and twenty-seven minutes— actually more, ever since the moment he got home last night, but that is how long he has been practising for, eyes on the ball but mind revolving around you like a planet to a sun. you had texted him about a rule this morning— no kissing before finals. actually no kissing before we start dating, lee— your exact words. they have been holding him back from thinking straight, even made him practise an apology while looking in the mirror if in case his actions offended you in any way. lost in thought, heeseung manages to get another shot in. that’s twenty-third in a row ever since he stepped on the court, which is unbelievable, even for him. 

“is it just me or did heeseung’s performance improve overnight?” jake looks up at jay, fastening his shoelace, a chuckle escaping his lips that goes unnoticed. 

the latter offers a hand to jake, helping him stand as they share a laugh before jay passes him the ball. “well, of course it will. he has to impress his girlfriend today at finals,”

“she’s not my girlfriend,” heeseung grunts almost as if hearing you and the word girlfriend in the same sentences cuts ten years from his lifespan. he knows it doesn’t, he’d kill to call you his’. the reason behind his edgy behaviour is your text and the weird rule you’ve inserted in an already weird bet— it’s not like he minds it, the bet, obviously. heeseung definitely minds not getting to kiss you for the next few weeks. 

“yet,” jay clarifies, emphasising enough for the world to understand that his words are supposed to be in italics. “she will be if you score more than her in finals, which i don’t think is possible because unlike you, she has been studying all day everyday. i don’t know how she’s still alive,” and jay isn’t half bad student himself. juniors in business have his name residing on the tips of their tongues. he simply thinks you’re a freak for being in no clubs and not participating in anything that doesn’t involve studying. 

“she’s the top student for a reason,” jake adds. 

“i am the top student,” and hearing his friends call you the top students hurts heeseung’s ego a little bit. crushes aside, you’re his rival before his girlfriend, and you’re not even his girlfriend. you’re basically just a rival. “also, it’s not hard to study all day if you’re used to it,” 

and jay scoffs in disbelief. “right, you would know something about it, lee i can’t go a day without playing basketball heeseung,” 

“hey, everyone,” your voice reverberating in the court is what stops heeseung from responding to jay with a snarky remark. “just wanted to wish you all goodluck. i really hope you guys win the tournament or else, it’s going to be hard for heeseung to deal with two loses after i beat him in finals as well,” 

heeseung rolls his eyes in disbelief, you hear taehyun exclaim that he has been team yn since the very first day, a claim that few others proceed to back up, especially sunghoon, with his own lore of how he prays everyday for you to win the bet with heeseung. you’re honoured to receive such support, to some extent. a part of you still wishes for the whole thing to be a secret restricted to just heeseung and you but again, it was your fault for placing bets in court, in front of the entirety of the basketball team to witness, even their coach. 

“you’re a little too confident, don’t you think so?” he smirks, taking a few steps towards you with the ball supported between his arms and torso. “let me know where you’d like to go for our first date,” and it turns out heeseung is just as confident about winning the bet as you, perhaps even more. you are not surprised, being defending champions does that to people, or so you believe.

“mhm, let’s have you score a date first, lee,” you would have loved to talk more but decide to bid your goodbyes as soon as hanbin’s message pops up on your phone, the little scowl on heeseung’s face going unnoticed the moment he sees his name on your phone screen. heeseung would never in his wildest dream confess to being jealous— it doesn’t even make sense for him to be jealous of hanbin because he confessed to you, and you seem to like him back. his worries are pointless just like the useless art projects his art teacher used to assign in middle school. 

your fingers dance on the keyboard of your phone as you reply to hanbin, the subtle taps synchronous with your steps with you rushing across the quadrangle, taking the nearest flight of stairs to the library. you wanted to spend the day at your apartment since classes are suspended for the rest of the day on account of the match. however, hanbin managed to convince you into coming to the library to help him with a few assignments here and there. you’re not opposed to studying on days-off, in fact you think it’s better since you get all twenty-four hours to yourself instead of investing any of it in classes. the match gave you an excuse to call in for a break, or an excuse to take your time choosing the outfits as if you’re the main character on such a big day. 

the librarian gestures to you to slow down the moment you almost avoid slipping on the tiled floor, in the process of holding the door frame to stop yourself, an embarrassed apology makes its way from you to her as you spot hanbin in the further corner with his airpods plugged in. your first instinct is to scare him from behind but the thought leaves your mind as soon as you remember that you’re in a library, and getting kicked out on a day that has been treating you well so far doesn’t sound so smart. 

so, you settle with approaching normal, instead of pulling random stunts, pulling out the chair opposite to him quietly to not make any sounds, mumbling a soft ‘hi’ as he takes out one of his airpods. “where’s miyeon?” 

“sick, she’s skipping today’s match as well,” hanbin replies, eyes fixed on the notes he's copying from the laptop to loose sheets of paper, before looking up at you with another question on the tip of his tongue. “are you two still not talking?” 

“we did, none of us brought up what happened that day, though,” you shrug as if it doesn't bother you anymore, as if you don't want it to bother you more than it already does.

miyeon and you have known each other since university, she was a senior in undergrad course who was forced by financial circumstances to skip one academic year, thus rejoining in third year along with you and hanbin. seeing her was less frequent while she was still a senior, although you're not sure if you've spent more than three days away from her ever since postgrad school started. a heavy tension masks all your conversations with her, over texts or in person, and even though you're trying to act like the small talks with her don't hurt you, a part of you is starting to miss the best friend you used to talk to all night, about wasted matters and sharing useless gossip.

silence fills in for the lack of words between you and hanbin and you allow it to do so, deciding not to disturb the decorum of the library anymore. you scroll through your phone mindlessly, there’s nothing to look at except people going crazy about the evening's match. you even manage to stumble upon a thread of arguments featuring students of your university and the one the team is going against. it’s all empty threats, seriously, ‘kys’ and ‘ur mom’s in my bed’ aren’t even insults at this point. they’re funny, sometimes, but you’ll never understand why or how they ended up being insults. ( honestly, you don’t see the potential ) 

“are you serious about heeseung?” a crack in the ice, hanbin's question catches you off guard, with a number of questions running back and forth in your mind before you settle with the one to respond with in return.

you blink in confusion. “i guess so, why?” 

“nothing, it’s just i never expected it to be him, y’know, considering your history,” you think it's unavoidable, questions along these lines, they would've been asked sooner or later. truthfully, even you didn't expect yourself to fall for heeseung.

your history, what even is there to call history except blood and war? both you and heeseung have been up each other's neck from the moment your gazes collided. it sounds like a stupid beef between highschool students, almost embarrassing now that you both are nearing post graduation. with all the days that you’ve spent thinking about ways to get on his nerves, or worse— ruin his projects, it wasn’t just you who resorted to ruining each other’s hard work— no one would have known you and heeseung would ever end up on this note, with him chasing you and you pinning for him, all under the blankets of a silly bet.

“well, as i always say, hanbin, life is unpredictable,” there’s a smile dancing on your lips, a dazzling hint of factuality in your eyes. “besides, he’s a nice guy behind all the annoying things he does. i think he's pretty serious about me, or us, too,”

hanbin has noticed the way you smile at your phone. it doesn’t always happen, only when you’re talking with miyeon or a few friends from highschool, now heeseung ranks up on that list as well. he’d be lying if the uneasiness doesn’t bother him, it’s bound to surface when he remembers all the nights you spent complaining about heeseung. actually, the rant session included hanbin, you and miyeon, but she would rather go to sleep than listen to you complain like a child for hours on roll, leaving you and hanbin driving the conversation. he has lost count of the amount of times you’ve ended up crying in the process, or the amount of times he has hung up on you only to show up at your place late at night to make sure you’re doing okay, and the nights you two have spent watching movies and falling asleep on the couch, followed by the mornings gone by with miyeon being salty over the fact that none of you invited her to your impromptu nightover. 

the thought of heeseung confessing to you still surprises hanbin, it’s one of the things he deemed as impossible since forever. and he can go, warn heeseung about hurting you, dropping all sorts of threats at the boy. hanbin can go on for hours about how he would make heeseung’s life a living hell if he ever broke your heart. he can prove the righteous friend that he is, but at the end of day, he would always be the third person between you and heeseung. hanbin can only assume so much about you two, not even sure if all of it is right. he can only wish so much for you to have eyes for someone else. 

and so, all he does is shoot a smile at you. “i hope he is,” 

. 

. 

.

the only time you step out of the library is exactly three hours and thirty three minutes later, to sprint towards the basketball knowing that you absolutely cannot afford losing seats in the first two rows. fortunately, or unfortunately enough, you’re not the only student going crazy about the game. you can swear at least a dozen came out of the library right after you, even though all of them may not attend the game.

you’re already running late— well, still twenty minutes early but that doesn’t give you much time to meet the team and secure the front row seats. and meeting the team is an excuse, let’s be honest. you want to meet heeseung, have a quick private talk, kiss him good luck, you don’t know; you wouldn’t. your head is in a mess, behind you hanbin is yelling for you to slow down as you run down the stairs. half of you is worrying about seats and the other half is wording her sentences out for you to say when you meet heeseung, and the team. you can wish them all the luck in the world, after all, it’s the university team and you would love to see them win. the whole craze about sports doesn’t feel real and worth the hype but things start coming full circle when you’re the one watching. slowly, as one would expect, but you are starting to understand why everyone goes bonkers during tournament season. 

“damn, slow down,” hanbin huffs, grabbing your arm for you to slow down. “it’s not like they wouldn’t start without you,” 

“that’s the problem. what if they start without me?” but your legs wouldn’t rest before arriving at the court. you know your words sound funny, painting you as if the result of today’s match depends on you. it feels crazy to be this excited about a mere basketball match, nonetheless you know it’s not the match you’re actually looking forward to. “besides, i’m more worried about seats,” 

“i asked hao to save two for us. he’s friends with heeseung, i think he will do that much for his friend’s girlfriend or whatsoever,” you see him roll his eyes at his own words, proceeding to slide his hands into yours before continuing on your way to the venue, this time a little slower. 

you have heard about hao from hanbin and miyeon a few times. he’s pursuing a masters in music, wants to teach violin professionally according to hanbin. miyeon has even attended one of his recitals last autumn, something from sibelius, if you remember correctly. he is popular, and you see the depths of his popularity as soon as you spot him on the bleachers, surrounded by people left and right, one of them trying to grab a seat next to him before he points at you and hanbin, and the crowd goes mild, ultimately dissolves as the players step in. 

“i didn’t know heeseung had a girlfriend,” you don’t know what you were expecting, perhaps a few words of greetings, hi’s and hello’s since you two are meeting for the first time. anything, except that question. 

“believe me, i didn’t either,” and why even is heeseung going around telling everyone that you’re his girlfriend?        

the court breaks into cheers as soon as the game commences and yet, it feels a little quite. perhaps, it’s miyeon’s absence getting to you. had it been her next to you instead of hanbin and hao— who are busy amongst themselves by the way, talking about anything but the match— she would’ve been eating snacks non-stop, giving you a little talk on every player, like a resume. it’s take her fifteen minutes to give you summaries on players from each team, their achievements, girlfriends and probably even mothers, who knows. although, you haven’t attend many games with miyeon to pinpoint every good and bad thing about her impromptu presentation, her unofficial commentary helped you sit throughout the match. it feels incomplete without her, not just the game but days in general. it’s definitely her absence making your surroundings feel quieter. 

so, long story short, you don’t have a clue of what’s happening. well, you do, a little. you know what a dunk and a three pointer is besides the names of players on your university team, but that basically sums up your knowledge about basketball. all sorts of voices are mingling in the air but you’re busy following the ball around the court with your gaze, occasionally cursing and clapping when the team misses a close basket or scores a comparatively difficult basket. the tension between the two teams keeps rising as the game continues. you notice sunghoon groan in disappointment as one of the players from the opposite team gets in a banked shot from the wings, scoring two points for the team. a part of the crowd goes quieter at jay’s failed attempt to save the score for his team, beomgyu patting on jay’s back while muttering something along the lines of ‘good job.’ involuntarily, your eyes travel to heeseung, whose expression stiffens at the sight of the scoreboard displaying a two-point lag.

a time out call follows as the players move back to their respective ends, and it physically hurts you to see the difference in atmosphere between the two teams, or the frowns on the faces of players on your university team. for a second, you even consider walking down to them as they gather around the coach, grabbing water bottles and towels while nodding at the coach’s words between heavy breaths. you catch jake looking in your direction for a brief second, a smile makes its way to your lips before he responds with one as well, proceeding to nudge heeseung’s arm and pointing in your direction. his actions are left with no response— it hurts a little, although you are aware that anything else falls after winning the match on his priority list— and they get back on the court as the game resumes. 

“they need to catch up soon,” hanbin mutters, taking a look at the clock. and even if it’s just a two point difference, you’re starting to understand why it creates a huge gap. it’s almost like scores on a test. going from eighty-three to ninety then hundred is easier than going from ninety-eight to hundred. greater differences are easier to overcome; for you have so many rooms for improvisation and thus, so many chances at closing the gap. the closer you are to a perfect score, the narrower are the chances and it’s almost impossible to pin-point and work on every single weakness of yours within those two points. you’re pretty sure your words would hardly make sense to anyone else, but nonetheless you understand why everyone on the court looks more attentive, probably like meerkats on the lookout for preys and predators. 

much to your disappointment, the play continues with the rivals dominating the court, giving low to zero chances for the opposition to get their hands on the balls. you even see a few of them trying to provoke heeseung, the latter trying his best to not react but you’re afraid he would start throwing punches if another one of the players passed by him with his middle finger up heeseung’s face. one of them, who you assume is the captain judging from the way he has been directing his team, goes in for a hook, immediately getting blocked by taehyun as the court bursts into loud cheers once again. 

“that was a little too far for a hook,” hao comments, and you nod as if you understand his words and know exactly how a hook is supposed to be. you didn’t even know about a hook until now, and you’re still not sure what it is since all the shots look almost the same to you. 

from that second onwards, it felt as if the control transferred to heeseung’s teams as they transition quickly from defence to offence, making quick passes and running the court, practically catching the opposite team off guard. jay passes the ball to jake, who takes a leap from half court, driving towards the unguarded basket. a quick layup using the backboard, as you hear hanbin name the shot, and basically everyone runs to jake for scoring two points for the team as the scoreboards displays a sour tie. it’s a seemingly easy match after that, especially when the players look like they’re back into the game. sunghoon passes the ball to heeseung who goes for another layup and fails, much to his despair, before going in for a dunk and scoring yet another basket for the team, leading it by two points. you see him passing a cocky smirk at the player from before as jake pats him in the back with heeseung almost stumbling in the process. 

heeseung shoots you a wink before focusing on sunghoon’s words as they get back into position, and even amidst the butterflies you got by his recent actions, you don’t miss the way he stretches his fingers, ring-finger specifically, pointing something about the movements to jay before getting his focus back to the game; and you just hope it isn’t what you’re thinking it is. 

it’s a slow game after that, no points scored, four fouls with two of them back to back, one by each team respectively. the frustration increases on the court, evident in each step taken by the players, groans and sighs fill the atmosphere and get louder than the cheers that have gone quieter once again. it isn’t until a few minutes later that all the players run to the front court as soon as they see an opportunity for a fast break with taehyun taking the lead, passing the ball to jay just a few seconds after, who passes it to heeseung— and call it the lack of efficiency or bad timing, heeseung bumps into one of the players from opposite team, an uneven balance, and falls directly on his right knee, as one of the opposite players throws the ball off-bounds to stop the play. 

the medics take him to the benches, bringing ice packs and everything else before escorting him inside. you considered following him inside before hanbin tells you that the officials aren’t letting anyone meet him, probably until they receive updates of his situations. you bite the inside of your cheeks in nervousness, palms sweating as if you’re about to appear for an exam you weren’t informed about until five minutes ago, or maybe it’s even worse. the murmurs from the crowd or the group of girls behind you, to be more specific, do nothing but make you feel more anxious. zhang hao, being a sports medicine student, tries to give you an insight on heeseung’s injury, telling you that even if he fell directly on his knee and it could result in a patella fracture, or perhaps just dislocation— words that compel you to yell at him to shut up before he ensures that heeseung will be fine. hanbin does that for you, noticing your slightly panicked state, telling hao to talk about anything but anatomy of how badly a simple injury can affect a player, and when sunghoon and taehyun return to the officials with an update on heeseung and a pale face, you knew you had to run to your heeseung as if it’s the end of the world. 

“heeseung,” you breathe out, stepping aside to let the nurse from the infirmary leave before you walk closer to him. the awkwardness between you and other players, namely jay, jake and beomgyu, besides the coach, rings all the bells to remind you that coming here was probably a bad idea. well, of course, you like heeseung and are worried for him, but the tension in the air makes you feel like you showed up uninvited. “are you okay?” 

you ask nonetheless, voice close to a whisper, as you stand at a distance, looking at the bruise on his knee. the smell of antiseptic spray fills your lungs, nose scrunching at the way you could almost taste the diclofenac at the back of your mouth. 

“not really,” he inhales sharply, exhaling a reply once everyone left, knowing they had a game to get back to. “look at you, are you worried for me?”

“i’m regretting coming here now,” liar. and then you let the silence carry the conversation with itself for the next few minutes. you don’t know what to say— what can you say? all you do is sit next to him, hands brushing against his as his winces at the slightest touch. heeseung opened his mouth to say something before dismissing his words with a heavy sigh the very next moment. you almost hold his hand— almost, thinking of holding it ever so carefully as if it’s glass with thousands of cracks, and then you’d kiss it ever so delicately, you did it— almost, but then, it’s just you getting upset over the fact that he played even after hurting his hand.

“so, they’re benching you,” you say in an attempt to strike a conversation, a little conflicted with your choice of words, wondering if he even wants to hear about something related to the match at the moment. 

“of course,” he says it like a matter of fact, a fact whose impact doesn’t seem to touch him. “please tell me they have jeno substituting for me. i’ve barely been getting updates in the group chat,” the least he expected was for one of the substitute players to keep him updated about the game through texts, and heeseung planned to get back to the court until you showed up, taking a seat next to him on the benches in the locker room. you don’t understand why they didn’t take him to the infirmary, and decided to think it’s because locker rooms are closer and if there’s anything heeseung should not be doing right now, it’s moving his injured leg. 

you shrug. “i don’t know, i’ll ask hanbin,”

“thanks,” and even though heeseung isn’t really fond of your friend for reasons that are widely known, at least amidst his friend group, he really hopes hanbin is of some use. 

it’s quiet now. you can hear faint cheers buried in the layers of walls and rooms that stand between the court and the locker room, a few muffled footsteps filling up any spaces left in the air, here and there. you assume it’s his fans trying to check up on him, as annoying as it sounds to you for you’d rather have this moment with him all to yourself. you hear him sigh heavily once every few minutes, trying to ball his injured fingers up in a fist to allow the slightest of moments and ensure healthy circulation, a soft hiss leaving his lips at the sensation of striking pain shooting up his nerves. unlike heeseung, your attention shifts to his injured knee with a faint chill running down your spine as you look at his bruise, which now looks more bluish than it was when you had arrived, signifying the possibly alarming amount of blood that has now clotted in the tissues. 

“you can cry,” nudge him with your shoulders and heeseung directs you to the most disgusted face in return. “what? it’s the finals and you’re injured so you won’t be able to play today. any normal person would sob their eyes out,” 

“i’m not a kid, yn,” he nudges back, a chuckle slipping off his lips. 

“trying to act all cool but you’re probably going to cry yourself to sleep for days, or even weeks,” he holds out his hand for you to hold it as you stand up, an action you give into without opposition, intertwining your fingers with his. there’s a smug smile on your face and he sees it as well, although only you know the way your heart is somersaulting at the way your hands fit his’ like pieces of a puzzle. “i know what you are, heeseung,”

he scoffs at your words, hands still entwined, a lovesick glow in his eyes— it’s your first time seeing this side of him, you’re glad to be one of the people to see it. silence has never felt so comfortable to you. the distant noise from court feels like it rushed on its way to you and heeseung, and stopped at the doors, as if you two are beyond its reach. you might never say it to him, but everything seemingly ceases to exist when you’re with him, and the world feels timeless. it’s embarrassing, cringe, and it’s making your heart beat faster with the way he looks at you. “you need to shut up,”

“make me?” a quick response, one that was supposed to be a joke, a joke which was supposed to be accompanied by laughter and brushed off as another baseless comment, but another second passes as you continue to look into his eyes, and you realise you’re actually considering it— leaning in towards him while giving his hand a light tug to pull him towards you the slightest, your other hand cupping his face as your gaze ghosts up his eyes and settles on his lips. when it comes to him, rationality is out of the window and your lips are on his’ planting the softest kiss at the corner of his mouth before pulling away like nothing ever happened.  

a pause; you could hear the silence ringing in your years, eyes fixed over him as if you’re spilling all your secrets to him, waiting for him to take a hint. “what even happened to the ‘no kissing before finals’ rule?’”

and you realise you had actually forgotten about it, for better and never for the worse, because as you said and as he repeated, it’s all about timing. empty locker rooms, quiet hallways with not a soul around, your hand in his, his eyes on you— the timing couldn’t be better, and you know better than messing up and letting heeseung become just a closed chapter of your life. “yeah, i could care less about that,”

there are a lot of things you could care less about, like the cold metal that stings against your back as he pushes you against the lockers, or the fact that anyone could walk in, any minute; you don’t care, don’t know. his lips are on yours and his hands are on your waist, it feels euphoric the way his lips move in synchrony with yours, fitting like puzzle pieces. heeseung tugs you closer by your waist, a faint gasp escaping your mouth that dissolves immediately into your breaths mingling together. it’s intoxicating and is making you go insane, the way he manages to sweep you off your feet with the smallest of actions and simplest of words— from the very first day. 

heeseung was right, and you as well, it’s all about timing. from the day you first looked at him in a seminar, to the day he switched to biotech— you plan on asking him why because so far, all your guesses seem implausible— down to the day he confessed, leading up to this moment with you pressing against the lockers and his lips against against yours. heeseung sighs softly, cupping your cheeks and tilting your head to deepen the kiss, and you could feel the heat of his breath against your lips when you pull away just when it was about to get better, avoiding his lips when he leans in to chase yours barely a millisecond later. your eyes shift down to his hand, one that has been injured during the game, and you proceed to hold it carefully, brushing your lips over the bruise lightly before adorning it with feathery kisses as his other hand travels down to your waist once again, pulling you closer. “you should go easy on yourself,”

you whisper the exact same words he had told you a day ago, traversing your eyes back towards him while your gazes have a conversation so foreign, as if it’s only for the silence to understand. and it’s quite literally just the two of you basking in silence as he rests his head against the crook of your neck, planting a few kisses here and there before pulling you even closer, as if you were going to disappear any second. “i think, i’m in love with you,” 

and timing be damned— because heeseung confesses to you once again, and then he’s kissing you once again, slowly, sweetly, in love, and timing doesn’t even matter because every second feels right with him. with the same air of delighted indifference he comes to know well in the gleam of your touch and the curl of your lips, you simply kiss him back as if to say, hate to admit, but i’m in love with you too. and timing really be damned because you hear loud rounds of cheers as you feel his shoulders stiffen. a slight disconnection between you and heeseung makes you wonder if he’s thinking about the results of the game, which is inevitable, but this is about you and him, and nothing else. you hear the notifications from his phone go off, hinting that the match is probably over, and you pull him into another kiss, another round of selfishness guised as an outlet for him to forget about the game, another round of messy make outs, tasting the freedom of ignorance. 

and then you don’t hear from heeseung again.  

V. OBJECT OF ALL DESIRES

days without heeseung feel like they’re forty-eight hours long.

you think it’s a disease or some sort of withdrawal syndrome. this isn’t your first time without him, in fact, you used to do just fine without him in your life until you let him in. at this point, it isn’t even about not being able to see him— heeseung has been absent for almost seven days. you even asked jay about him to see if he has been in contact with any of his teammates but much to your disappointment, he disappeared off the face of earth like he never existed. taehyun has constantly been reminding you to not fret too much, knowing that heeseung gets a little dramatic after losing matches. you can take his word, obviously, a friend from highschool would know heeseung better than a girl who started talking to him normally barely weeks ago, although you couldn’t help but worry about him as seconds passed like water dripping down the tap, disturbing the silence. 

you know how losses feel— like a part of you has been taken out and you’re left to bleed. it’s worse when it’s about something you’ve loved all your life. you’ve walked next to losses, hand in hand. when you know you’ve lost something while having it in the palms of your hands the whole time, the feeling eats you inside. you wonder if heeseung is feeling the same way you think he is, even if he didn’t show it a week ago when you had met him in the clubroom, the feeling starts to sink in when you’re alone amidst the ghosts of nobodies. even though he was smiling and acting like the little shit he is, you felt anger and regret in the way he kissed you. there was a sense of numbness dripping down his fingertips in the way they brushed against your cheeks, cupping your face. you could’ve been a sweet escape— it hurts to admit that the emotions weren’t possibly real, but you couldn’t blame him. 

losing a match, to put it in your words, meant failing in a test; and losing because of an injury, it’s like skipping a test you prepared for, because of fever. except tests can be rescheduled for students who missed— a luxury heeseung, as a basketball player, cannot enjoy. even you couldn’t believe your eyes when the students on the forum started talking about the lost match, all sorts of comments going around, though none targeted at heeseung, fortunately. yet, your first instinct was to dial his number— out of reach, the first thing you hear on the other side of the line, and all you’ve been hearing for days now. 

you had considered cutting ties with him, not literally, but as in stopping to chase him as if he’s the oxygen you inspire. you could’ve showed up at miyeon’s place with apologies, her favourite snacks and a brief explanation of why you did what you did, and everything that has happened as the consequences of your own actions. with weekends approaching, you could’ve planned a two-day trip with her and hanbin before the winter snow made it hard to commute— just anything to get your mind off heeseung, since apparently, you weren’t on his mind either. albeit, you end up doing nothing, no trips, no plans to see miyeon, it’s just you and your bruised heart with soju on the side. your mind is way too cluttered with thoughts about heeseung to focus on studying and at the same time, it’s way too empty to try doing anything else.  

so, you simply venture down the hallways, drowning in all kinds of thoughts, good and bad. you can use the time to study but concentration has been far out of your reach ever since the match, or ever since he went underground, to be more specific. the impromptu make out session was probably his last straw— it makes sense. you kissed someone who had been walked out of a match because of an injury instead of consoling them. you let your feelings get the best of you, making everything about yourself yet again. you won’t be surprised if heeseung decides to ghost you for the rest of his life after that; or maybe, that’s not possible since you see a familiar figure sitting in the outdoor basketball court, spinning the ball with it’s axis on the ground in a directionless manner. 

“heeseung?” you notice his back tense at the sound of you calling his name, head down low as if he’s responding with an exasperated sigh. “where the hell have you been? i’ve been trying to reach you— heck, even your friends haven’t heard a word from you in days,”

“not now, yn, leave me alone,” and an exasperated sigh is what it was. 

“look, i know—”

“just, what part of leaving me alone do you not understand?” you try to speak but heeseung cuts you off just as efficiently as he does other things, with annoyance heavily evident in his words. had it not been heeseung, you would’ve left already, for you have more important things to tend to, and you’re certainly not interested in matters you’re not supposed to be included in, if only it wasn’t heeseung, and if only you weren’t crazily worried for him. 

“oh, i understand it clearly, every part, actually, and i also understand that you’re upset and leaving you alone would certainly not be the best move considering the way you went MIA for a week,” and you understand his impulses about disappearing into thin air, wishing the ground eats him up or for the walls to cave in till he’s entombed in them, but a person as smart as him should know taking out helps better than thinking about wanting to vanish. “we can sit and have a talk if you stop being such an asshole about it. i’m down to listen to—”

“fine, what do you want to hear about?” he cuts you off in annoyances, the ball rolls down to a distance like your heart when you see the unfamiliar emotion in his eyes. “you were right. i went home and have been crying myself to sleep. i haven’t been eating well either. i skipped five out of nine mocks and barely passed the four i gave, let’s add that too. is that enough?” 

you don’t like the way he puts it, as if it’s supposed to make you feel better. maybe about the bet, maybe, since he’s supposed to rank above you in finals to get around dating you, and maybe watching him lose is supposed to offer you some sort of relief— seriously, what you’re feeling right now is far from that. guilt, anger, shame, you’re not unfamiliar with those emotions. they eat you inside and it’s not because you’ve met with defeat, it’s because of falling off all the expectations people had, giving them another reason to point fingers and laugh. you could be really over-reacting, but if you didn’t have your parents telling you it’s going to be fine every time you didn’t do well on tests, you don’t know where you would’ve been right now. and you think you can play a part of the same for heeseung, if not all. 

you sit next to him, nose scrunching at the sight of dust on the cement laid with cracks. that’s what you get with an outdoor court no longer in use. you can see little plantlets germinating from the soil, emerging through the cracks, the rusted ring catches your eye. heeseung huffs as you settle next to him, wondering exactly how long the court has been unused for, considering its lack of maintenance. “let’s date,” 

and your words are not what you were planning to say or what should be said in this situation, but they still manage to extract a response from him. “don’t play with me,” 

“i’m not, in fact, that is what i’ve been wanting to say to you for days. of course, this isn’t the best timing, but i don’t know what else to say,” you pause in what feels like embarrassment. too bad, his crush is not good at conversations. sometimes you end up nodding and blinking for five minutes straight before saying anything, after a person opens up to you with tears and blood. “and, i’m not going to tell you to stop acting like a child or whatever because the team lost such an important match and somewhere, you’re blaming yourself for it, which you shouldn’t, by the way. all i need to say is that you still have the next year to make up for what you’ve lost now,” 

second chances come with higher expectations from people along with words that end up making one feel worse about their situation. you’ve already heard a few students talk about how heeseung should’ve been more ‘careful’— as if it was his choice to get injured and lose the match. you know it wasn’t going to be easy, especially with his injury that probably requires him out of the court for weeks, but you hope that amidst whatever he’s feeling, between self-loath and regret, heeseung manages to find himself once again. 

“actually, i’m planning to drop out of the team next year and focus on studies. my parents were already against me playing basketball during postgrad, i’m finally starting to notice why,” basketball could’ve been his entire career if heeseung’s grandmother had not wished for him to go into the medical field. seeing the insides of a person makes him want to empty his bowel from the mouth so biotechnology was his next option. heeseung thought having two hands would give him the benefit of managing basketball and academics together, unlike how his parents had wished for, but his recent mock scores and lack of time devoted to studies is making him question his choices. “and what the hell were you on about dating, by the way?” 

you’re half immersed in your own thoughts until heeseung directs the question at you— brows furrowed, confusion shadowing his face— you realise it’s your turn to do the talking. “oh, you know, dating. i think we should start dating already, it’s quite inevitable after that day in the clubroom,” 

it is evitable, really, but you’re down bad— with all due respect. 

you haven’t been okay ever since you realised that you like heeseung, and you’ve been trying to act normal about it, attempting to not lose your cool-hard-to-get-girl composure— miyeon’s words, and they make you cringe— while the thought of him is eating your brain slowly and gradually, making you go insane. if you were to narrate from where you opened and closed the door at, it would be a slippery slope, you don’t know how someone ends up falling for the person they despise. the yn from a month or two ago would be knowing, you can see her shrugging and getting back to her books, saying see saw it coming. ( it’s miyeon’s fault for making you even think about having a mind blowing chemistry with heeseung ) the you from two semesters ago, when he first transferred, would hate you and call you a traitor, might even write whore on a mirror while looking at it because you fold at the sight of hot, smart and sporty men who are perfect at everything, even at ruining someone’s life, like he’s ruining yours; and the yn from highschool, you see her squealing on the floor because oh, what a fan of enemies to lovers she was— heeseung wouldn’t even have been in the current picture if your highschool crush slash rival liked you back. the current you, well, she’s a goner, and in denial that she’s a goner. too much pride does something to a person, especially when you’re an over-scorer and an academic weapon. you’ve lost all your abilities of letting your guard down even once, refusing to give up and accept defeat, no matter how tortuous it is on the inside. 

the current you is more like a victorian man looking at ankles for the very first time. 

“and the bet? what happened to it?” he chuckles, of course, anyone would, considering the way you’ve lost after placing the bet with utmost confidence slash overconfidence. see, it never ends well, anything, with overconfidence, it doesn’t end well, never have and never will. and you, you don’t learn, sitting with the very well known fact that if you were given the chance, you would place the bet with him again.  

“ah, i didn’t mean to do that, honestly. i was confused when you confessed, it was so sudden, i didn’t know how to respond. the bet was the best i could come up with,” miyeon was right, you could’ve used something along the lines of ‘i need some time,’ that day instead of pulling out a bet right out of your ass, and now you don’t know how to save face. at least the fact that heeseung confessed first makes you feel a little better about yourself. “c’mon, i know you love challenges. i was just trying to see if it gets you turned on or something,” 

and heeseung scoffs in disbelief, eyeing you at your choice of words. “yeah, i feel very turned on knowing my crush dragged me into a bet that i’ve been working so hard for and she wasn’t even serious about it,” 

“working hard? from what i saw, the only thing you worked hard for was basketball,” you raise your brows, a taunting intonation in your voice. a part of you regrets the choice of words, knowing that basketball is seemingly quite a sensitive topic to bring up at the moment. albeit, the slight fear evaporates off when he laughs and dismisses your words and nothings. 

he leans a little closer, hands touching yours. “you never know what i’m up to at home,” 

a pause; you look in his eyes and then at his lips, he mirrors your actions with a smirk on his face. you guess that there’s a second meaning to his words, not sure what, but the look in his eyes tells you something about it. “i think we should get back to when you were talking mental and i was talking you down,” 

and you could grab his face and kiss him with no one around, on the unmaintained basketball court for the grey and cloudy skies to see. you could run your hands through his hairs and tell him how crazy he makes you while planting kisses down his neck. you can kiss him till both of your lungs are begging for oxygen, and that's when you'd tell him how he makes you feel— breathless and drowning, a little insane every time you see him flirting with someone that's not you. you can kiss him till the sun goes down and evening takes over, it doesn't matter if you're outside for the world to see. you would've kissed him if heeseung hadn't leaned back, looking at the ball lying stray at a distance.

“by the way, i’d love to date you,” he smiles at the infinite horizon before looking at you, as if waiting for a response already known.

“yeah, i figured that,” you try to play it cool as if you’re all knowing. it’s partially true, he did confess to you first. “let’s make another bet: no kissing before finals, and the one who ends up giving in first has to buy dinner,” you come up with yet another bet, your voice hinting the enthusiasm for no apparent reason.  

heeseung squints at you, a little conflicted, quite unsure of your words. it sounds like a moment of deja vu, hopefully on a better note this time ‘round. “that’s not even valid, we made out not even a week ago,” 

“let bygones be bygones, hee,” he likes the sound of the little nickname you've given him, unlike bygones, the word you use to refer to your very first kiss with him as if it's an unfortunate memory. “it’s decided then, no kissing before finals and the loser has to buy dinner, and i won’t be satisfied with anything less than a five star meal,” 

you squint, index finger pointing at him, a challenging composure. another chuckle from him makes it’s way to you, lips curling into a faint smile. it takes you all the way back to the day you placed your first bet with him, with head empty and no logic, for the entirety of the basketball team to see, hear, and talk about it as if it’s supposed to be on the headlines of the national newspaper. your eyes spark up in anticipation, wondering if the two of you are down for another bet, one that doesn’t proceed towards failure, hopefully.

“the last time you did something like this, you ended up running back to me and asking me to date you,” he scoffs softly, side-eyeing you with a mocking gaze, quite ready to pull out the receipts if you ever deny his words. you hate how correct he is, all the time, actually, and you hate how you don’t have words to argue back.

lee heeseung, a nobody to you till he switched to your department, just some student who was there to pass time until he started ranking above you on tests and flipped your whole world upside down. you tried to not think about him and failed every time— still beats you why. you’ve never let distractions get the best of you, but heeseung, perhaps he’s more than just a distraction, or maybe he isn’t a distraction at all. he’s like a plant in your garden that you could care less about— should care less about, it’s growing without harming your plants, but it’s creeping against a wall with pretty flowers for show, and before you know it, it’s demanding for all your attention that you offer without second thoughts, unwillingly at first. 

he’s the bane of your existence and object of all your desires, to put it simply and make it sound cliché. you’ve had your moments trying to run away from him, get him out of your head, annoy him to the point he’d prefer flying to the other side of the globe, or that could be you too, anywhere, far from him. but life, for the thousandth time, is unpredictable. when was the last time something worked out exactly how you had planned— can’t remember, obviously, just like the way you don’t remember when heeseung started occupying a corner of your brain, popping in and out at random times and disrupting your thought process. the more you tried to ignore him, the further he housed in your head, the deeper in your heart, closer, within your reach, as if for you to grab his hands and let him enter your side of the world. 

and so, you kiss him again, pulling him towards you with the collars of his jacket. you feel him smile, a triumphant smile, as expected from someone who is used to winning. you don't think you can say you've lost, not at the way he cups your cheeks and tilts his head to deepen the kiss just moments before you pull away. “i always run back to you, don’t i?” 

and you're a child infatuated with their favourite sport, a painter falling in love with strokes, a pianist dancing to the melody of rachmaninoff, a student addicted to getting a perfect score, a player addicted to winning. you trace back to things you like, you always run back to heeseung,

and you always would. 

TEN MINUTES LATER :

heeseung plants a soft peck on your lips. “dinner’s on you,” 

“fuck!” 

#—approved. #@ : fas. #k-labels #kflixnet #enhypen #enhypen imagines #enhypen scenarios #enhypen fic #enhypen fanfic #enhypen fluff #enhypen angst #lee heeseung #heeseung #heeseung imagines #heeseung scenarios #heeseung fic #heeseung fanfic #heeseung x reader #heeseung x y/n #enhypen x reader #enhypen x y/n #heeseung fluff #heeseung angst #kpop fic #kpop fanfic #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #lee heeseung x reader #lee heeseung x y/n

[krisdreaming]

Baby Fever

Pairing: Miya Atsumu x f!reader

WC: 1.2k

Summary: Osamu and his wife just had a baby. Now Atsumu sees them everywhere.

A/N: This kind of took a very different direction than I was originally planning and tbh, I kinda hate it now, but I spent over two hours writing it, so I'm gonna roll with it anyway. Maybe when I re-read it in the morning, I'll hate it less 😅

There's a term for it. Atsumu isn't sure what it is, but he knows that as soon as you're exposed to something new, you start noticing it around you more and more. That must be why, ever since Osamu's son was born, he's been seeing babies everywhere. They're at the grocery store. They're at the park. Suddenly, half of his teammates have been expanding their families like it's some kind of competition.

Suffice to say, Atsumu has seen more than his share of babies over the past few weeks. Sure, they're cute, or whatever. When a baby smiles at you, you can't help but smile back. When they grab onto your finger, you let them hold it for as long as they want. When they engage you in a staring contest across the grocery store aisle, you only put up a little bit of a fight before giving them the satisfaction of winning, flashing a sheepish smile at their mom or dad as you turn the corner.

The sight of the little monsters has started to trigger a strange twinge in Atsumu's middle, which he chalks up to the fact that he's an uncle now. There's a brand new member of his family, and he's really happy for Osamu and his wife. Seeing the babies everywhere reminds him of that. That's all it is.

See, the two of you had talked about this. You aren't ready for kids right now. He's in the prime of his volleyball career, and you love your job. You're both happy as just the two of you, spending your free time together doing the things you enjoy and getting a full eight hours of sleep each night. Having a baby would change everything. Your last discussion on the topic, right after Osamu and his wife had shared their pregnancy with the two of you, had ended on that exact note. He's pretty confident that's still how you feel. He's relatively confident that's still how he feels, too.

Of course, the longer it goes on, the harder it is to explain away. He watches Osamu doting on his son, snuggling him close and kissing his cheeks and smiling bigger than Atsumu's ever seen before. He knows his brother is tired, but he doesn't seem to care. He watches the way he looks at his wife, and the way both of them look at their son, and it softens something inside him. He sees you cradling your nephew close, cooing down at him with a soft smile, and his heart turns over in his chest.

Finally, one day, he comes to Osamu with a question.

"What's it like?" Osamu is wiping down the counter at Onigiri Miya, clearly trying to disguise his surprise and mild consternation at seeing his brother show up out of the blue, five minutes before closing time.

"What's what like?" He grunts, scrubbing at a ground-in glob of rice.

"Y'know," Atsumu gestures vaguely, "Being a dad."

"Ah," Osamu hums, grasping that quickly what this is all about. "It's incredible. I mean, don't get me wrong," He chuckles, "It ain't easy. It's way worse than whatever ya try to imagine based off a' everybody's helpful advice," He lifts his hands in air quotes. "But somehow, it's also worth it, in a way ya never could've imagined it would be. The way ya feel every time ya look at 'em - ya can't even put it into words."

Atsumu isn't sure how he's supposed to respond to that, so he just nods. Osamu smiles, looking him up and down with a too-critical eye. "Any special reason yer asking?"

"No," Atsumu says with a quick shake of his head, "Just curious, 's all."

Osamu nods, not saying another word, but the smirk on his face is more than enough to make Atsumu want to knock it clean off. Osamu's answer is exactly what he'd been afraid of.

It comes to a head one sunny Saturday afternoon when the two of you meet up with Osamu and his wife and son to visit a festival. The afternoon is starting to wind down when Osamu unceremoniously dumps the baby into Atsumu's arms. "Hey, mind watching him while we go to the bathroom quick?"

"Ah, sure," Atsumu says to his brother's already-retreating back. You poke at the baby's irresistibly pudgy cheeks, giggling along with him when your attentions illicit a bout of laughter.

"Oh my, what a sweetheart!" The elderly woman seems to appear out of nowhere, something Osamu is constantly describing but which Atsumu hasn't experienced until this moment. "Such a happy baby," She grins. "How old is he?" She looks expectantly at you, and after you gather your wits, you answer her.

The woman nods knowingly, as if she'd predicted as much. "Are you having a fun day with Mommy and Daddy?" She asks next in a goofy voice, completely oblivious to the way Atsumu chokes on the breath he'd just been inhaling and you shoot him a wide-eyed glance.

"Ah, well, actually-" You stammer out, at the same time Atsumu blurts, "We're not his parents."

"I see," She says good-naturedly, "Well even so, he looks very happy with you." With that, she goes on her merry way, and you and Atsumu share a bewildered look. Osamu and his wife return from the bathroom, and neither of you mentions the awkward encounter. It doesn't come up until later that evening, when the two of you are lying in bed.

"That was really somethin' today, huh?" Atsumu asks, trying to ignore the fact that his stomach is suddenly in knots.

"The old lady?" You chuckle weakly. "Yeah, 'Samu's right, they really don't have any shame, do they?"

"Yeah," Atsumu says, then takes a deep breath. "Do ya think, maybe, it's time to have that conversation again?"

You're silent for a few moments, and he can't quite place the emotions that cross your face. He doesn't have to explain which conversation he means.

"Maybe," You finally agree in a low voice. "Are you saying that your decision might be different this time?" It could be his imagination, but Atsumu almost thinks that you look hopeful.

"Maybe," He says carefully. "Would yours?"

"Maybe," You echo him, but there's a smile playing at the corners of your mouth.

"There would be a lot of changes," He says softly, fingertips tracing aimless shapes up and down your arm.

"Maybe we're ready for those changes," You murmur back, catching his hand in yours and letting him twine your fingers together.

He brings your hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it. "As long as I've got you, I think I might be."

"Me too," You say, leaning in slightly to nudge the tip of your nose against his. When he kisses you, he hopes the pressure of his lips can convey even the things he can't put into words. He can't imagine living this life with anyone else.

#haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fluff #miya atsumu #miya atsumu x reader #atsumu x reader

[portraitofariel]

I came across this brilliant post and it reminded me of a dream I had a while ago about the show’s future. In my dream, Carmy eventually got back together with Claire out of loneliness and a last ditch effort to make it work because he’s too broken to go after Sydney but the relationship falls apart again. The Grand Opening is a success but not enough to generate long term interest that covers overhead, and by the end of the year, The Bear runs out of money. Cicero reluctantly calls it quits, as he can’t keep loaning them money, and there’s also internal problems. The death of Marcus’ mother is so devastating that he steps down to be with his family, Nat has a difficult birth which leaves her out of commission and motherhood is exhausting.

Carmy and Sydney don’t resolve their issues but the flame within keeps going, yet they both run from their feelings even after The Bear closes. In desperate need of a life change, Carm applies to some art schools and actually gets accepted to one in Florence, Italy. Alone and more broken than ever before, he quickly starts a new life in a foreign county—mirroring his choice to leave home for Denmark. The one exception being he doesn’t tell anyone where he is; he occasionally checks in with Sugar but only tells her he’s “somewhere safe” and “not to worry about him”.

Sydney finds herself at a crossroads. She poured everything she had into The Bear and now that’s gone, she goes through a bout of depression. She still loves to cook but her drive wains, leaving her to question what’s next for her. She considers her other passions: writing, sewing, textiles, management—and after a few months of going through the motions, she thinks about maybe stepping away from cooking as well. Emmanuel supports this idea as well and encourages her to try something new, even if it’s just for a little while. He also reiterates that she didn’t fail at The Bear and that she created something truly special, even if only for a while.

Months go by and still not a word from Carmy. She talks to Nat often, even spends time with the baby, but she stopped asking about Carm months ago. She tries to pretend his disappearance doesn’t hurt but she misses him more each day. Why, she doesn’t care to know anymore. He made his choice and now she needs to make her own.

One night while having dinner with Nat and Pete, they talk about plans for the future. Nat tells Syd she remembers that navy sweater with the hand stitched embroidery at the collar and on the sleeve (2x02 ‘SYD’ sweater with green stitching). Syd mentions her love of patterns and fabrics, and she tells them she’s been hand-sewing since middle school. She always liked bespoke items and she wishes she would’ve done more with that particular skill. This segues into a conversation about how Carmy was the one who wasn’t afraid to follow his dreams when he went to Copenhagen and Nat wagers that’s probably where he is now, or back in New York.

Syd shrugs and changes the subject to travel, stating she thought about going back to New York but says it’s not far enough (Sug’s comment about Carmy possibly being there discourages her from going). Nat lightens the mood with a joke, “I don’t think a single Berzatto has been to Italy. Pete and I have always wanted to but with Benny (Benicio—their infant son), its not gonna happen any time soon”. Syd tells she went to Paris once with her dad for her 21st birthday, but always wishes they would’ve taken the train to Milan. The culture, food, fashion, and architecture resonate with her and she always wanted to experience it firsthand. Pete chimes in “You know, there’s a fashion school there: Polimoda. My brother and his girlfriend, Louisa—they live in Florence and she goes there. I can talk to Chris (his brother) and have him email you or something. He’s a nice guy.”

Syd rebuffs the idea at first, thanking him but telling him she’s not sure she’s the “fashionista type” (air-quoting with her fingers). Then Nat interjects “Oh please! Syd, you such a unique style and perspective. You might be surprised just how much you enioy stepping away from the kitchen for a while.”

“Let’s say I entertain the idea. Nat, how would I even pay for this? I mean, yeah I’ve saved up here and there but come on, Florence? I don’t see how I could afford classes and what about housing? It’s a fever dream if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Maybe you could stay with Chris and Louisa. They have a gorgeous house, they send us pictures all the time. Look-” Pete jumps up to get his laptop and shows her the photos.

Now Sydney knows she’s lost, or is drunk, if she’s considering living with strangers in a foreign country. As the night goes on, Pete reaches out to his brother and Syd finds herself dreaming of Italy after they take her home.

Two days later she gets an email from Chris and she can’t believe he contacted her. Over the next week they Skype and discuss how this would work and if she’s a good fit. Chris and Louisa say they heard amazing things about her and her work at The Bear, and they’d love to have her. She’s overwhelmed with emotion that she’s really thinking about going and after she talks to her dad, he’s cautious but amendable. He tells her she has to decide for herself what’s best and that he trusts her to make good choices, especially after her short success at The Bear. But he also tells her not to rush or pour everything into yet another venture.

But truthfully she wants to get away, and forget about how the restaurant for a while. And so after much deliberation, she decides to do it. She figures she’ll get a job cooking part-time to supplement her expenses but focus on being more than a chef. She wants to enjoy herself for once; to live for more than trying to make everything a thing.

A month later she lands in Florence and some time later while out to dinner with Louisa, she nearly passes out when she and Carmy spot each other that night.

#charged and sexy #platonic and messy #carmy x sydney #chefs kiss #syd adamu #sydcarmy #the bear #the bear hulu #you with the dark curls #you with the watercolor eyes #wet hot and sweet #carmy the bear #syd x carmy #carmy berzatto #carmen berzatto #the bear fx #sydney adamu

[buterccup]

could you do Nsfw HCs of Hoodie and AFAB! Reader if you have any?

Hoodie/Brian Thomas NSFW HCS

NSFW POST MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS DNI 18+

Warnings: praise, degradation, dirty talk, mention of pp size, public sex, mention of slapping(Consensual ofc), Overstimulation, AFAB, sex toys(Vibrator), pet names, oral, blowjobs, sir kink, Punishment kink

Character(s): Hoodie/Brian Thomas x Reader

I feel like Hoodie is a big boy.

He really may not seem like it but he is.

Hoodie would always praise you for taking it in so well too. But that doesn't stop him from degrading you.

"You're taking it in so well darling~"

"You're so small but it's fitting inside your slutty pussy so well, doll."

Hoodie is the type to overstimulate and fuck his darling dumb.

Just the sight of you all teary-eyed and covered in his cum just drives him crazy.

And I quote "More beautiful."

And If Hoodie ever comes back from a stressful or tiring mission make sure you're ready for him to beeline his way to you.

This man would grip your hips like this is going to be the last time he gets to hold you only moving them to squeeze and slap your ass or thighs.

Hoodie doesn't care what your body looks like either, he loves you from head to toe.

And if there is something that made Hoodie unhappy or jealous he is always ready to teach his darling how to act.

Or if you need to be reminded how perfect you look to him he will always be ready to fuck you into thinking so. No matter how many times he needs to remind you, he will.

Sex toys.

Especially vibrators.

Just hearing you squeal and call out his name just makes him want to fuck you more.

Mostly all the toys he gifts you are black, red and purple because he thinks it goes well with your body.

Hoodie isn't the type to care where you both do it, he likes the risk.

Of course he wouldn't want anyone walking in but if they do, they do.

His favourite places to do it are while you are on missions together in one of the cars or in the target's house just for fun.

Oh and this man loves his blowjobs.

Just seeing you all pretty on his cock is everything to him

And the sight of his darling with white pearls of his cum running down their face- ah it's just a huge turn-on in his opinion

But he isn't opposed to treating you as well.

He just loves hearing your moans as he grips your thighs in his hands, squeezing them every so often, as he slurps your juices up.

This man eats you out like it's his last me.

Hoodie has a sir kink.

Just hearing your sweet voice call him "sir" as he pounds into your pussy makes him pound into you faster

"Who is making you feel this good?"

"You s, sir!"

It may sound weird but it feels like a breath of fresh air to him.

After having a hard time and being bossed about by Slender and hearing you call him sir makes him harder.

And if you wanted to, Hoodie also wouldn't mind having one or two of his friends join in the fun.

It's like Jeff, the trust you both have mean a lot to him. It just soothes his soul. And he reminds you that sometimes during aftercare. You are really the light of his world.

But also like Jeff if he sees you wearing his hoodie during or after sex it just makes him so flustered and comforted.

Aftercare is a must for this man.

He will do his best to make sure you are okay after your time together.

He will always go out of his way to treat you too.

Hoodie always makes sure to know if he went too far or hurt you in any way.

He really does care about his darling and he would hate it if he did end up hurting you.

Requests: Open

#creepypasta headcanons #creepypasta smut #creepypasta fanfic #creepypasta #hoodie x reader #hoodie headcanons #hoodie smut #hoodie x reader smut #hoodie x reader headcanons #creepypasta x reader smut #creepypasta x reader

[jinkookspencil]

things bts would love & do with their curvy s.o.

a little long author’s note - fluff and suggestive and a little smutty / ot7 scenarios / a bit of a drabble, because i didn't say everything i wanted to and i don't think i said it as well. but i had this in the drafts for a while & i was feeling a bit self-conscious about my curves recently & had to remind myself of my own words and scenarios. here’s to self-love in 2023, everyone! and just because this fits with what i’m saying and the post - don’t wait for someone else or a man to love every single thing about you! you deserve all the love on your own and everyone reading this is a lovable beauty <3 this goes for your inner and outer selves - even this post is mainly focused on outer (& isn’t meant to stereotype at all! this post also has no mentions of food - unfortunately, many authors only associate curviness to food and include stuff like "cooking together" all the time.). i made it more nsfw than it was at the last minute because i really realized we don't have enough curvy girl content here! on that note if anyone has any curvy girl scenarios with bts or an ot7 members lis like this they want to see me write about lmk - requests are open in general but i love writing about & for my fellow curvy/chubby girls 💕 lots of love - pen ✎

namjoon

this is gonna sound a bit weird but I think namjoon would go crazy for

1. your silhouette - the CURVES WILL DRIVE HIM INSANE - he would literally write an entire song about being mesermized by your curves 

2. your boobs - sskskssk sorry nothing will convince me namjoon is not a boob man. i know curvy doesn’t always = big boobs but it’s the combination of BOOBS and curves that’ll drive him nuts, no matter their size. having his hand roam your body while his head is stuffed between your boobs? his idea of heaven.

sorry, i think i had just read a namjoon smut when i wrote that

anyways, he’s obsessed

and namjoon being namjoon, he’ll be obsessed with unique features that come with being curvy

which are, again, curves, but also: stretch marks, cellulite, love handles, a muffin top, etc - he’ll be fascinated and guess what? he will find beautiful ways to describe them, and he’ll make you see them in a new light as well

this would be his response if you complained about “imperfections” and called them as such, for example: “you know what type of art I find the most beautiful? the ones with quote unquote imperfections. those imperfections - or the unique details, i should say, showed an artist, a human was behind the painting. how boring would it be if all art was the same? if all bodies were the same? our ‘details’ and differences make us who we are, make us different.  ‘imperfection’ is perfection, honey. you, your body…. you’re a work of art.” (gonna end up writing a mini namjoon drabble with some of that)

seokjin

seokjin would love every. single. thing. about you. 

like it or not i genuinely believe he’s the most likely out of bts to love a curvy girl and that they’re actually his type

you know how most guys see chubby girls as cute rather than hot? fuck that, to seokjin you’re incredibly hot AND incredibly cute. 

he’d be utterly obsessed with every inch of your body… i’m serious. 

butt? yes. waist? yes. hips? yes. thighs? yes. arms? yes. tummy? YES. cheeks? YES!

& a thing about seokjin is that he’s not just in love with you and your body, he’s clever. he knows that chubby girls can get a ton of shit. like he’ll be totally aware of that fact or it won’t take long for him to realize it. and it’ll make him mad

but mostly, he’ll keep his cool and be strategic about it

so something seokjin would love is hyping you up AND showing!! you!! OFF!!!!!!!!!!

though he’s not a fan of pda, when he’s out with you in public, he’ll show you off in his ways, like holding your hand, playing with your hands and hair... but he'll also have his arm around your waist, resting on your soft hips and he'll lovingly caress your cheek and pinch it and he’ll keep saying “my beautiful girlfriend / my fiancee / my wife” etc to literally anyone

someone's giving you weird looks? catch seokjin suddenly throw off the entire situation by yelling - just to no one - "MY GIRLFRIEND IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND I LOVE HER" - the looks would frustrate him but he'll enjoy hyping you up and seeing you all flustered when he does that

he’d handle your insecure days and “low days” really well, but i honestly think that you spend enough time with seokjin and you’ll end up loving your body as much as he does.  he's without a doubt the type of boyfriend to make you feel as sexy as he sees you... well as sexy and beautiful as you actually are!!

anyways he’ll weirdly enjoy consoling you when you have those days though. he’ll be so so sensitive and understanding and clever as i said, but he’ll just love telling you how beautiful you are, he doesn’t tire of it nor does he get frustrated you do talk about your insecurities. like namjoon, he'll find some very unique way to see it

and he would LOVE tickling you and squishing all your soft bits <3  you can beg him to stop, but you will grow to love it…. he’ll make sure of it!

low-key the type to buy you lingerie and almost force you into it because he knows you'll look beautiful in it (it's not just for him, it's for you - he loves seeing you all shy when you get into it though.... but that shyness will wear off with time and your confidence will only drive seokjin madder)

on that note, he won't have that "i can't do this thing in bed because i'm chubby" attitude - he'll make sure he finds any way to ensure you do everything you want to....

and he will ask you to do things for him

would smother his face in every part soft and squishy part of you and will definitely definitely squeeze you during sex

and he will definitely ask you to sit on his face and suffocate him with your thighs... :)

yoongi

coming up with an answer for yoongi was incredibly tough because

i think yoongi is so chill, something about yoongi screams “i really don’t care about what you look like, it’s the personality that makes a person attractive or not”

like no matter what, i think he’d love you for you.

love is love

no matter who the other person is or how they look like

BUT - he will fold and fall

and the intense physical attraction will follow once he gets to know you (again, this is not specific to curvy people, i think this is just how yoongi might be)

but this is about curvy people so let’s dive into that

if you wear something that shows a little more, perhaps lingerie or a form-fitting dress, and he’ll get so flustered and he will avoid eye-contact (especially if you don’t wear that style regularly)

like jin and jimin, yoongi would also be a person who knows that curvy/chubby women can go through so much shit just for the bodies being the way they are, and it’ll aggravate him just as much as it would jin… but it’s questionable whether yoongi would be able to keep his cool… because it’s you.

and low-key that energy could translate into his love for you too… in a very yoongi “harshly gentle” way. 

if you express any insecurity in regards to your body, he’d caress your face and stare deeply into your eyes & and just very seriously and quietly be like "??? so??? i love you more than anything in this world already, do you think i give a fuck that you have a lil belly??? hmm, why are you trying to hide it? i see you every day, do you think i don’t know what your body looks like? be fr, y/n. you’re beautiful (then he’ll poke your belly cutely, before the energy shifts and gets intense) don’t say that shit about yourself or about me. (then he’ll kiss you so softly)” <3 

hoseok

hoseok would LOVE it when you show off your figure and your curves!!!

he's a hips and ass man, i'm sure of it.

he would AUDIBLY AND PROUDLY hype you tf up when you wear something a little more form-fitting!! 

and it’s something he always always encouraged, asking you to try bolder styles and colors

hobi simply will not take the “i can’t wear that because i’m chubby” saying

“you want to wear it? it suits you? FUCKING WEAR IT YOU LOOK FUCKING INCREDIBLE. WHO CARES IF YOUR TUMMY AND HIPS ARE EMPHASIZED THAT’S A GOOD THING YOU’RE SEXY AS FUCK”

so when you as far as to dress in something a little risque? oof hobi will go crazy

do a lil dance for him? goodbye, hobi’s on the floor.

also we all know hoseok is a fashion expert, and chubby girls know it isn’t that easy to find clothes that fit our proportions/sizes/bodies…. but not if you’re with hoseok. this man will do whatever he can to make sure you can wear what you want, whether it's finding international brands that have your style+size or literally surprising you with a custom made outfit

"that brand doesn't carry your size? you like it but the proportions are just slightly off? don't worry about it baby i have your christmas gift sorted xx"

he won't be shy to hype you up just as loudly in public and on social media too

the type to encourage you to shake everything you've got in the club while grabbing onto you...

jimin

this is gonna sound cliched but bear with me

jimin will be incredibly attracted to your confidence and your energy

i think confidence is something jimin is attracted to no matter what, but if he sees the way you just radiate self-love and your confidence shining out of you through the way you dress, talk, carry yourself....

(i.e. “i can pull any man i want energy”, tight/skimpy dresses, STRUT instead of walking, good posture, etc while KNOWING the extra shit you could get for it & not giving a fuck??)

oh my god. oh my god.

to say jimin’s heart will flutter would be an understatement

you’d walk into the room, like you own it, and jimin would feel like he wants to do whatever he can to actually give it to you

and, similar to jin and yoongi, he knows curvy girls get a ton of shit just for existing - but it's almost double when they’re (loudly) confident, despite the fact that they should be that way!

so that respect and attraction he'll have for you will just be amplified and he’ll admire you even more (i hope this is coming off in a good way, the way I meant it - i can see this being misinterpreted but i can’t think of another way to word it - he’ll be like YES I’M SO GLAD YOU KNOW HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE AND YOU ALSO SAY FUCK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE!!! THAT’S SO HOT OF YOU!!!)

& if someone says something shitty about you in front of him… - he’ll pick up on even the slightest jabs or comments or looks - and there’s no way jimin would be able to keep this cool. good luck to whoever tried to insult you.  >.< jimin will make them regret their entire existence let alone their comment

jimin’s still jimin, so he’d try to flirt with you, and if you meet that with the same energy? OH MAN he’ll fold (maybe even a little more if you somehow reject him… and definitely a lot more if you bring that energy into the bedroom)

pls i can't shake the idea of jimin being so so so happily dominated by a plus size woman and dominatrix.... his idea of heaven, actually

and when you have an insecure day he’ll remind you of your beauty and your confidence in any and *every* way possible.

and even though it all started with the attraction to confidence, it’s not like the attraction will fade off if you have an insecure day!!! he won’t even be a little angry about it - i can especially imagine him being so gentle and understanding. in fact, he'll be all over you

taehyung

i think taehyung would love your squishiness and your warmth <3 and more

i hope that doesn’t sound weird but let me explain the first bit

he would definitely squish your cheeks, in any scenario

like when you’re down and he’s reassuring you or taking care of you…

or even in a passionate kiss…. 

he will find any and every excuse to hug you, and his hugs are SQUISHYYY

it’s just so comforting to him

in taehyung’s eyes it’s all just warm and feel-good

he’ll love hugging you at the end of a long day - cuddles is just your default state together

but when he’s in ~the mood~ which I suspect is often, his hands will roam and he’ll go crazy…

especially for your hips!!!!

and your boobs, but mostly your hips

and when it comes down to ~ actually doing the dirty ~ oh he’ll think you’re BEAUTIFUL in the heat of the moment. he thinks you’re beautiful regardless, but ~during it~ he’ll  almost be in a high from just seeing you in that state…. he'll say that that's when you truly let go and feel like yourself and be yourself.

the type to swat your arm away if you tried using it to cover your tummy in photos

he’ll make you feel more loved than any other person, and he’d kiss and bite you everywhere…. especially your squishy bits. 

similar to jimin, he'd be incredibly attracted to your confidence

like if he just sees you shaking it at the club and calling yourself beautiful? loudly and proudly?

i honestly think taehyung would be so damn attracted to you that he'd be more clingy than he ever was

again, that energy and mindset of "the world gives me enough shit for existing so i might as well have fun and not give a damn" would be so refreshing to taehyung and he'll really respect and love you for it

jungkook 

this man will not leave you alone.

why? because he loves you, sure, but also because jungkook’s an ass man 

& he would be so obsessed with your butt

there’s!! just!! so!! much!! more!! to !! hold!! and !! slap!!!! and SQUISH!!!

and your THIGHS TOO?!?!??!? 

jungkook’s favorite places to let his hands rest while you’re making out.

i say “rest” loosely because guess what? he’s definitely squishing and feeling you up

he especially likes your thighs because they’re such a treat when he actually can squeeze them and hold them, whereas he has constant access to your butt, and your boobs, squeezing them on the regular. 

yeah, just accept that you're jungkook's sexy little stress ball

i mention squeezing and squishing a lot in this post but jungkook's the biggest criminal, he'll take any aNY opportunity to squish anything he can

which is why he'll have so much fun with you!! so much more to hold!! and squish!!

jungkook is a curious boy™️ so i think he’ll love tracing and feeling your stretch marks… he’ll be fascinated by them

something tells me jungkook won't easily pick up on slight jabs people make of you or even weird stares - but honestly it's just because he's too busy lovingly ogling you to notice.

but if you're ever insecure he’ll shower you with love… but if you ever doubt his love on any of your insecure days, he’ll be really hurt. 

also? I read this in a couple of pics but the idea never left my head:

jungkook would be determined to carry you. and like jin he will be determined to make sure you live out any sexual fantasy you had. he won’t take any shit about “I’m too heavy, etc etc” - he WILL carry you. first bridal style, then until he can lift you up during a kiss or during sex. then?…. he might just train to do the dirty dancing lift. this boy is determined.

he will simply refuse to let you miss out on anything just because you weigh a little more. so what? why shouldn’t he train a little more to carry you? especially considering putting on more muscle and making his girlfriend happy are two of his favorite things to do <3 

and if something in the world stops you from being able to experience a thing you want to, simply because you're chubby, he'll be so mad at the world that you'll have to end up consoling him.

he'll make sure you experience something even better though <3

#ot7 reaction #bts reaction #ot7 fluff #bts fluff #ot7 reactions #bts reactions #bts scenario #bts scenarios #ot7 scenario #ot7 scenarios #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts smut #namjoon fluff #jin fluff #yoongi fluff #hobi fluff #jimin fluff #taehyung fluff #jungkook fluff #jungkook scenario #jin scenarios #namjoon scenarios #jimin scenarios #yoongi scenarios #ot7 #bts x chubby reader #bts x curvy reader #bts x plus size reader

[majorapandahero]

Aight I give up

Of course I started reading a Satoru Gojo x reader fic on my "for you" page and the page reset. So i have resigned myself to ask for help.

I will now try to remember everything i read before it reloaded.

It was an Arranged Marriage kind of AU! Where Gojo and Reader were childhood friends. Reader stayed in the village and wrote Gojo letters while he was away and he never responded; so after a year and a half reader just stopped sending them all together. Stopped asking his whereabouts 2 years in. (turns out Gojo never received them AT ALL)

When Satoru comes back they are both under the impression the other hates them, but when a nasty guy comes up to reader ;introducing himself as a suitor; she backs away, rushing out of the party to throw up in some bushes when Gojo comes out to comfort them. Reader's Mother finds them alone together, shenanigans happen and now they both must be married like... yesterday.

It's a slow burn to a feast they must both host for the clan as leaders. Both walking on eggshells, mostly in the reader's pov; only coming down for breakfast or dinner to speak to Satoru.

At the feast, they are finally getting into a good banter. Even joking on hiding under the table like they use to since the reader doesn't like how many people are at the feast. Geto shows up, introductions are made, and then Geto takes Gojo away to discuss something. Another girl is there, she has many admirers. Reader looks at her then at where Gojo and Geto are and see's that Gojo is looking over at the girl. Girl does a finger beckon call towards Satoru, and he apparently follows.

Of course Misunderstanding, older clan members are asking "where did Satoru go?", "Is he with a mistress?" you know the old people no boundary kind of questions. Reader is heartbroken, but also believes that Satoru doesn't want this marriage in the first place. Geto tries to explain what happened later to the reader over breakfast with gojo nowhere to be seen.

Geto: "I promise it was no what it looked like."

Reader: "What Gojo does is his business," "Maybe I too will find my own way in this marriage." "Geto, I ruined his life didn't I?"

Before Gojo goes away to visit another clan, he tries to talk to reader through the door of her bedroom. She hasn't spoken a word to him since the feast, not coming down for meals or anything. He simply knocks, asks if he can explain, talk or see her. She walks close to the door but doesn't open it. She blows out the candle and head back to bed. Gojo tries again, but gives up and leave her be. It was almost 6 weeks i believe of Satoru being gone.

The reader is plagued with thought of Gojo, hoping he is ok, that this visit shouldn't be taking this long. Others in the clan have also filled her head with thoughts that he is just out there cheating her the reader.

When he does come back, he's splattered with blood (he swears isn't his) and scared the readers maid "Myra" half to death by demanding she get out of the reader's room right then and there.

Gojo thought the reader was going to cheat cause of the "Maybe I too will find my own way in this marriage." Thinking that the time he was gone, he was going to find another man in her chambers. He didn't cause even after feeling heartbroken, Reader still loyal to him. But reader also calls him out for leaving her at the feast alone to go with another woman.

Misunderstandings are finally understood, a quote i remember Satoru said was "If all it took to marry you was to get you alone, i would have shoved you in a closet as soon as you walked into that party."

They both loved each other since childhood, and as soon as they were making up

my screen reset. and i lost it to the tumblr maze of fanfics and hell.

So i ask for help that if anyone knows this fic, the author, anything that can help me find it; i've been scrolling for days and finally lost the will to keep looking without help.

I thank the tumblr users in advance, and a reminder that this is not my idea and i just want to find the writer to appreciate them and love them for their writing was so freaking amazing.

#satoru gojo x reader #jjk x reader #gojo satoru #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu gojo #jujustsu kaisen x reader #jjk gojo #jjk satoru #jujutsu satoru #gojou satoru x reader #satoru gojo #gojo saturo #jujustu kaisen #jjk #arranged marriage #childhood friends #angst #i really hope the writer didn't delete their blog and fic #it happens so often #this was one long fic btw #fanfic #tumblr get a better search function im begging you #someone please help

[lord-of-the-ducks]

Ok so I already made a brief post about the scene about halfway through s5e5 between Guillermo and his mother, and I tacked on an edit about potentially expanding my thoughts into a full length post, but I’m gonna be honest, when I wrote that I did so with the expectation that it would be yet another thing that I would say that I’m totally gonna do without ever getting around to it. Now it’s barely an hour later and I still can’t get it out of my fucking head and so I need to speak my thoughts into the void in hopes of getting validation from strangers on the internet.

I’m gonna put this all below the cut, both because of potential spoilers and some sensitive topics like religious trauma and queerphobia, but also because I know this is going to be long and I don’t want to clog up people’s dashboards.

Okie dokie let’s get into it

I was vague on purpose about The Scene I would be discussing above just in case anyone who hadn’t seen the episode accidentally stumbled on this, but just to clarify, I’m specifically referencing the scene after Guillermo’s family has left and it’s just him and his mom. I hesitate to say that it’s the most emotionally heart wrenching scene in the entire series, but it’s in the top 5 at the very least.

However, I just want to laser focus in on the moment where Sylvia puts the crucifix around Guillermo’s neck. Right after she notices it missing from Guillermo’s neck, she immediately goes to give him another one, because he “needs” it. I wanted to point out that phrase in particular, because it’s not that she would feel better if he wore it, it’s entirely for Guillermo’s benefit.

This reminds me of a particular quote from Dracula, where it’s really beginning to set in that Jonathan is a prisoner, and he thinks back to one of the villagers who gave him a crucifix:

“Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! for it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort?”

I bring this up because in the scene between Sylvia and Guillermo, the crucifix serves less as a Christian symbol, and more as a demonstration of Sylvia’s love for her son. It’s even stated that it used to belong to Guillermo’s grandmother, giving it even more of an explicit connection to familial bonds. Hell, even in Dracula, Jonathan is told to wear the crucifix for his mother’s sake. I didn’t really need to quote Dracula to make this point, but I’m gonna be honest, I thought it was pretty cool how in both of these instances, any specific powers a crucifix might have aren’t ascribed to a divine being, but a more motherly power.

And all of that would be nice and cool, but unfortunately, What We Do In the Shadows has gone with the specific brand of lore where crucifixes are a vampire weakness, meaning that this symbol of motherly love is actually harmful for him. Watching the scene where Sylvia puts it around Guillermo’s neck, I honestly got chills, because you know that Sylvia is doing it for entirely altruistic reasons. However, the way the scene was shot combined with Guillermo’s reaction were a lot more brutal, and I just remember thinking how much it looked like he was being strangled. And then once it’s on his neck, they both turn to look in the mirror, and Sylvia is lovingly rubbing Guillermo’s back, and Guillermo is trying to smile even though he’s very visibly in pain. 

Like I said in my original post, I do kinda wish we got badass dhampir!Guillermo who is immune to crucifixes and other vampire repellents, and I actually thought that the moment Sylvia put the crucifix around Guillermo’s neck would be the moment that this superpower would be revealed to Guillermo and the audience. I’m gonna be honest though, I cannot imagine a better way to visualize the idea of genuinely believing that you are helping someone, when in actuality you’re hurting them. 

Here’s the part where you can stop reading if you’d like, because we’re about to enter the territory of “Red starts projecting their own issues onto Guillermo and calling it media analysis”, aka, “the part that is way too long”. I considered making all of this it’s own post, but it felt relevant to the ideas expressed in the scene I just discussed, and also I kinda just don’t feel like it. I hope other people can relate, but it’s purely my subjective feelings, and I’m not gonna pretend that this is universal. And if you’re someone who knows me in real life and you already made it this far uh... you are allowed to keep reading, but if you say anything about this to me in conversation I will actually die of embarrassment.

I found myself wondering a bit about what the crucifix scene was specifically a metaphor for, since Guillermo has already come out of the closet in season 4 (and also admitting that he wants to be a vampire), and his family loved him unconditionally. This is arguably a bit silly on my part, since the entire point of that kind of metaphor is that it doesn’t have to mean anything specific, it can represent a lot of things to a lot of people. 

Which is why I’m gonna spend the rest of this post talking about how I think Guillermo’s vampire transformation is a metaphor for transgenderism because nobody can stop me.

I am not the first person to read Guillermo as a trans adjacent character, and people who are way smarter than me have made some fantastic posts about why he might be particularly relatable to a trans audience. I never particularly related to Guillermo for that reason (actually that’s a big fat lie I absolutely related to Guillermo because of my own angst about being in the closet) and I never thought of Guillermo as a trans character or a trans allegory until the start of the season 5, when I drew a connection between Guillermo going through Changes that would hopefully bring him closer to his ideal form and the fact that I personally just started taking HRT in early June. I never really had a reason to make any posts about it, since most of the connections I was making were pretty flimsy, and it was hard to make any actual arguments besides “it’s my comfort show and I get to choose the coping mechanisms”.

Then episode 5 came in with the steel chair.

My body is changing. A lot of it is barely noticeable, but it’s happening, and I know from hours of research that it’s going to be a lot more difficult to hide as a go along. And as dramatic as it might seem, I’m beginning to ask myself if there are people who I might never speak to again as a result. For the most part, I live my day to day life as Red, but there are people who still know me by my dead name because I purposely haven’t given them any reason to believe otherwise. Sometimes I feel like I’m being unfair by never allowing people to make up their own mind about my transition,  but it’s terrifying to imagine how drastically people’s opinion of me might change if they knew The Truth about me. 

Which is why Guillermo’s interactions with his family hit really close to home, because it’s clear that he loves them and they love him. But he’s turning into a vampire, and they’re vampire hunters. And it’s only a matter of time before that causes some serious problems. It’s entirely possible that he could tell them that he’s a vampire and it goes as well as when he came out the first time, but when the worst case scenario is having a stake driven through your heart, sometimes it’s better to just disappear, and leave them with memories of the person they thought they knew.

The crucifix scene in particular struck a cord with me, because so much of the time, people have done things that hurt me, and they have absolutely no idea how much they’re hurting me, because I don’t want to know how much they’re hurting me. Part of it is because I’ve convinced myself that any suffering I experience is worth it if I’m the only one suffering, but another part is that the only thing that scares me more than the pain is that if I tell them how much it hurts, they’ll do it anyway.

Letting go is hard though. Something I didn’t notice the first time I watched the crucifix scene is that after Guillermo leaves the apartment, Sylvia makes a comment to Miguel about how it’s the third time this month that he’s come to make that grand goodbye, and how he’ll probably be back again next week. I don’t really have anything to add to that to be honest, Guillermo loves his mom and will always love his mom and you just know that he’s gonna come up with any excuse to see her “just one last time”.

OK ANGST OVER. Wow, I honestly didn’t know I was about to get that depressing but that’s what happened so... I hope y’all enjoyed, and maybe it’s time to explain what tumblr is to my therapist

#wwdits #wwdits spoilers #what we do in the shadows spoilers #wwdits s5 #guillermo de la cruz

[bonefall]

Oooh, can you talk about the meta reason you rewrote the blizzard holly relationship and blackstar's backstory?

HOKAY

But I'm gonna preface this one; I hate Blackfoot's Reckoning. I think it's one of the most "solid" written books in the series and I still fucking hate it. I talk about authoritarianism on this blog a lot, and I think BFR was the one time that the series actually tried to textually address what they'd put on the page.

So TW for fascism, including discussion of an incredibly unfortunate quote from the book that is either an accidental or purposeful invocation of the Nuremberg Defense.

Blackfoot's Reckoning is a book that's supposed to delve into Blackfoot's backstory, what made him the cat he was during TPB. Throughout the book they're questioning, "what made him act the way he did?" And trying to drive home that Blackfoot needs to learn from his mistakes so that he doesn't repeat them

But, at the same time, they cling to their slimy Good and Evil dichotomy. So the book decides that Blackstar wasn't an Evil cat, no, he was just a Good Mislead Boy Who Loved His Clan. He's constantly lied to, mislead, people are murdered and he's duped into believing whoever gets framed, suppressing critical thought about his actions. They're trying to both write a "reckoning," but also make his motivations more sympathetic.

So in between questions of, "Is Blackstar really a Bad Boy?" and happy rewards for Blackstar when he goes through a memory, they've decided to shove in replays of Blackstar's most gruesome moments but this time he frowns :( and feels Guilty when he does them. In the eyes of the writers, if you feel sad doing hate crimes, that means there's a goodness inside of you actually.

And just like Clear Sky, all Blackstar "needed" was divine intervention. You can simply retcon in a "reckoning," even if it was never in the main series for the 10+ years the character was alive and active.

But it's not enough that Blackstar himself was getting a stupid retcondemption. No, see, they have to remind you that he was following evil people. The dichotomy inherently crunches away the nuance-- Good and Evil are inherent qualities. Tigerstar and Brokenstar are Evil People. Blackstar asks, "If I was following Evil People, what does that make me?"

The narrative concludes, "A Good Person, but mislead."

And because they can't have nuance with their Good and Evil dichotomy (or couldn't at the time), they failed to address the authoritarianism spectacularly. Think I'm reaching?

They literally wrote the Nuremberg Defense into their book. I'm not doing hyperbole, Blackstar word-for-word thinks the Nuremberg Defense, "I Was Just Following Orders," but then they bury it in a barrage of scenes showing he's Actually A Nice Guy who is Sad to do Bad Things. Either they attempted and failed to do something more meaningful with this book, OR they are so fucking stupid they accidentally included the famous Nazi officer legal defense for a character who DOES A HATE CRIME for a racist dictator.

What was IN TPB was a Blackstar who supported a massacre and expulsion against another group, was complicit in the use of child soldiers, and rehearsed a public execution for a mixed-race character. Like it or not, this is a really heavy subject... and what they decided to do was downplay every one of his actions, because he was good deep down.

And I just find that disgusting. This was ABSOLUTELY the wrong conclusion. They can't show Blackstar ACTUALLY being bigoted. They can't delve into REAL hate, or the idea that maybe he LIKED the power he had over people. Those are Evil People Things. He has to "know," deep down, that what he's doing is wrong.

He cannot have a real change, in spite of the title of the shitty book being Blackfoot's "RECKONING," because he is not bad to begin with.

So, Hollyflower and Blizzardwing.

To recap for everyone who didn't read BFR; Hollyflower is raising her three kits alone because Blizzardwing cheated on Featherstorm with her. Black only learns that he is an accident because he stayed up late one night and overheard an argument. By day, he gets bullied by Clawpaw specifically that he might be mixed-Clan and has to seethe over the truth he knows.

it's dumb. I'm sorry. This is dumb and boring, which is even worse

The war criminal was bullied as a child and that's why he did bad things :( He was good all along he was just sad :( shut up shut up shut up

The "bad environment" he was raised into was... having a single mom and being suspected of maybe being half-clan, but then learning that he isn't half-clan, and being indignant that he can't just share the information he knows about because it would make things complicated or something idk

None of this particularly contributes to his mindset as an adult because he does not HAVE a unique mindset as an adult.

He was just nebulously Sad and followed whatever strongman leader came along, constantly being tricked and bamboozled by outright lies.

"Omg WindClan killed Raggedstar >:0 ??? Oughhhhh that butters my biscuits... was it wrong that Brokenstar sent my baby nephew to battle? No, nevermind that thought that makes me uncomfortable :("

He never has any particular bigotries that were exploited, he was just tricked and mislead the entire time, while also being sad, because God Forbid Blackstar ever have been an 'evil cat'

He gets THANKED by his dead parents for keeping the secret??????????????????? girl ok.....

as usual the bully itself never really gets addressed

It was cheap and easy to just make Blackfoot's backstory the same shitty 'bullying' they write for most villains. This bullying is how he ends up bonding with Brokenkit, a villainous 5-year-old who says, "other cats don't matter" because he's eeeeeevil.

They're supposed to have a commonality connection, Blackstar who is Good Deep Down and Brokenstar who is Evil Deep Down, and that is supposed to serve as the reason why Blackstar willingly blinds himself to the incredibly obviously evil things that his superiors do.

His flaw isn't that he had bad intentions, it's that he didn't think.

FUCK that. FUCK this book. FUCK the Erins for trying to say that there are fundamentally good and bad people. That with the death of Tigerstar, of Brokenstar, of whoever, the society gets to return to 'peace' because now there's no Evil Tyrant to lead everyone astray.

The Erin's depictions of hard childhoods are sauceless. Dry, unbuttered, burnt bread. You want to see a BAD home environment? I'll SHOW you a bad home environment, not just a single teenager being rude. You wanna see the sorts of conditions that prime young people to joining radical causes for a sense of belonging? I'll GIVE you those conditions. Let's TALK about what bounces around in the head of people who aid and abet tyrants.

It's not this dumb ass sadboy shit I'll tell you that much

#warrior cats analysis #tw authoritarianism #tw fascism #bone babble #They were probably trying to address the sorts of people who do actually 'just follow orders' #but you can't DO that with a character who is in a POSITION OF POWER #That is a VERY different person from. say. a secretary or prison guard #Black is equivalent to some kind of General or Vice President position #And NO those people were NOT 'just following orders' that's why they hanged. That's why the defense didn't WORK #It's a MITIGATING FACTOR and it doesn't apply to ILLEGAL ORDERS #People as high up as this character were executed because they had power in this position YOU FOOLS #You can't be THIS high up and have no thoughts or underlying ideology

[agentrouka-blog]

(1/7) You know @rose-of-red-lake's theory about Dany being eaten by one of her dragons? The imagery used in these passages reminded me of these in AGoT, Arya III and Arya IV where she stumbles upon the dragons skulls under the Red Keep:

(7) I wonder if it could foreshadow Arya being the one killing the last living dragon(s?) after it goes fully wild and kills even its own “mother”. It would tie nicely with her training amongst the Faceless Men who were originally slaves working under the Fourteen Flames of Valyria and may be behind the Doom but also with Brandon Snow who wanted to assassinate Balerion Vhagar and Meraxes but was talked out of it by his brother. Arya the Dragonslayer sounds like quite the epic tale. Any thoughts?

Hi anon!

I left out the in-between messages, as they contained the relevant book quotes here, for ease of reading:

By the time she had reached eighty-seven, the room had begun to lighten as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her eyes and bit her lip and sent the fear away. When she looked again, the monsters would be gone. Would never have been. She pretended that Syrio was beside her in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still water, she told herself. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes again. The monsters were still there, but the fear was gone. Arya got to her feet, moving warily. The heads were all around her. She touched one, curious, wondering if it was real. Her fingertips brushed a massive jaw. It felt real enough. The bone was smooth beneath her hand, cold and hard to the touch. She ran her fingers down a tooth, black and sharp, a dagger made of darkness. It made her shiver. "It's dead," she said aloud. "It's just a skull, it can't hurt me." Yet somehow the monster seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. She edged away from the skull and backed into a second, larger than the first. For an instant she could feel its teeth digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted a bite of her flesh. Arya whirled, felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then she was running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against the door. (AGOT, Arya III)

and

This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. Arya held the candle over her head. With each step she took, the shadows moved against the walls, as if they were turning to watch her pass. "Dragons," she whispered. She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand. (AGOT, Arya IV)

There is definitely a strong association between Arya and a confrontation with dragons. Whether that is simply being present during the burning of King's Landing, or whether this involves more is something I am not sure of.

I've moved away a bit from the idea of Arya killing Dany directly, but I don't doubt that her Faceless Man training, Syrio's training, her experiences in tunnels and darkness, warging, spying and deception will play a significant role.

I felt curiously reminded of this scene from ADWD, where Quentyn enters the dragon lair in the basement of the pyramid:

It was black beyond the doors, a sullen stygian darkness that seemed alive and threatening, hungry. Quentyn could sense that there was something in that darkness, coiled and waiting. Warrior, grant me courage, he prayed. He did not want to do this, but he saw no other way. Why else would Daenerys have shown me the dragons? She wants me to prove myself to her. Gerris handed him a torch. He stepped through the doors. The green one is Rhaegal, the white Viserion, he reminded himself. Use their names, command them, speak to them calmly but sternly. Master them, as Daenerys mastered Drogon in the pit. The girl had been alone, clad in wisps of silk, but fearless. I must not be afraid. She did it, so can I. The main thing was to show no fear. Animals can smell fear, and dragons … What did he know of dragons? What does any man know of dragons? They have been gone from the world for more than a century. (ADWD, The Dragontamer)

Darkness. No fear. Animals. Courage. Something you simply have to do. Something a girl can do.

Maybe, maybe not.

#rouka queue #asoiaf speculation #arya stark #dragonslayer #anti daenerys targaryen #<- for filtering #rouka ask

[velvetjune]

All my thoughts on Alan Wake 2: The Final Draft below! Major Spoilers for the game (and Control 2019). This is a very long post, but this game has taken over my mind.

The Final Draft was good! I’ve never played NewGame+ versions of games before, so I don’t know if this is usually how it goes. The additional material and introduction/ending makes it all worth it, although I wish there was a way to speed up the case board process, since I completed almost all of it my first go.

My immediate concern is. What is ‘a master of many worlds’? What does that MEAN?? Surface level, he can already exert power over his world and the dark place, so that was the two he was initially referring to. Since Door said the Dark Place was a mirror that reflected other realities, is that why Alan now holds power of them? No matter what, he is Way too confident for someone who’s been an absolute mess. The power of being loved and reaching out to others is just that good.

I’ve vaguely known about this draft’s ending and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Actually playing through again helped me lose that negativity, although I still prefer the first ending! Hearing Saga’s relief at Logan being alive and Alan rising from the dead was one amazing sequence. Visually beautiful and acted out.

The EXPRESSION you can see on Saga the second Logan picks up. I was so happy for her. Having Logan and Casey by her side. No matter what comes next, they succeeded in saving both of them. Now—are Saga, Casey, and Alan all in the dark place? In an overlap? Or Bright Falls?

The “love is strange” quote was a personal favorite. Sometimes you love someone so much, both of you ascend past your humanly self and become so intertwined in thought and memory that you’re always with each other. Love is strange.

Is anyone else ridiculously nervous about what’ll happen with Alan and Alice?? They both seem to be in states that are tied to each other and the dark place. I don’t know if they can technically leave. Read some theories on Alice being the bullet of light, but I took it as a sort of symbolic gesture, with her still being an agent moving in the dark place. Similar to Zane or Darling. Idk.

The ‘Spiral’ writer’s room video got to me even more than the ending! Bringing up how time is overlapping, which means Alan IS already at the end of the spiral, as an enlightened figure, potentially “playing a secret game” or “building something”. There’s an inevitability to Alan’s fate that stresses me out. Describing himself as a demiurge or demon too,, somehow he made everything 10x more unsettling. So thanks for that Alan. Love it for the horror, but also I just want Alice and Alan to reunite with Barry… it’s not looking so good.

I was already a fan of the cliffhanger-ish ending, but, even after seeing this one with more confirmations, I don’t understand comments I’ve seen about having to play the Final Draft to get the actual/true ending. The first ending was emotionally satisfying and left a bigger impression imo. It was the turning point of this entire cycle Alan was stuck in and is what makes the Final Draft’s ending feel earned. It didn’t need confirmation on Logan answering back or Alan ascending because Alice’s post-credit video implied that was what would eventually happen. I still like this final draft’s ending, but I don’t think it’s to the detriment of the original playthrough and won’t hurt if anyone doesn’t end up playing through it (Kinda how I view AWAN too—although I haven’t finished it)

Dr. Darling my beloved. My everything. Remedy took their chance at making the funniest crossover. Alan repeating text over and over, being what’s keeping the dark place formed in its current shape—reminded me of the final nursery rhyme. This could’ve been creepier, but Darling’s reaction of “let’s not think too much about that” for the voice was golden. And what is there even to say about Zane and Darling. They got to flirt, so good for them. The ramifications of this could be dire or stay as some gag.

My conclusion on the situation with Alan, Zane, and Scratch is “I don’t think we’ll ever really know.” All the same person, but also every iteration is their own person. Their existences are too muddled and changed and distorted to ever find an origin or who made who.

I do find it fun that generally Zane IS helping Alan/Scratch and wanted to collaborate with Alan, and Scratch also wanted to become one with Alan, be the heart, bring an enteral deerfest that celebrates Alan. They’re both dangerous and/or manipulative, but it doesn’t seem to be out of hate.

My game had a bug where I could never talk with Odin and Tor apart from the mandatory scenes to move the game, so I missed everything near her trailer AND whatever they were standing around for in the Final Draft 😔

The Lake House page is making me excited for the DLC with the same name! Big fan of Remedy’s love for mad scientists and their death-by-hubris. Another Darling name drop that further shows how annoyed some FBC employees are at Darling’s golden boy reputation and his smug confidence. Incredible.

The Night Springs intro video!! Literally lays out what happens. Alan succeeds, transcends, and becomes a master of these realities he was inspired from. Interested in what this means for the Night Springs DLC. Will it make characters experience one of these other realities or will it remain grounded in the real world of Alan Wake 2?

I’m in love with how Alan Wake 2 repeatedly tells the player what the story and themes are, and outright says reveals and the ending before it plays out. The Yötön Yö song about Scratch, the Zane film of the same name spoiling “It’s not a loop it’s a spiral” and Alice+Alan in the Final Draft, this Night Springs intro confirming his success, all the nursery rhymes predicting Saga’s life, etc. Telling out what will happen through different mediums of art. It’s a clever way of making everything fit together and imply that Door, Zane, Alice, etc. aren’t as affected by the loop’s cycles restarting.

There’s mysteries that haven’t gotten answered at all. Nothing for Tim’s future and underlying connection to Door (I know it’s related to Quantum Break, but haven’t played). The 103 door a guest at the lodge kept banging and screaming at, which I think had the square looped symbol at the Oceanview Motel in Control. The employees door at Oh Deer Diner was always closed off.

Glad to have officially played through Alan Wake 2! Need that DLC trailer to drop soon

#alan wake 2 #final draft spoilers #alan wake 2 spoilers #I needed to put my mess of thoughts somewhere #this gameeeee #I don’t talk much about it either but this game is wonderful with its approach to mental health too. #Saga’s dark place in her mind is emotional every time. and seeing alan and saga work together. it’s 🩷💖💘

[moldybonessmell]

Okay, but can we talk about this one Christmas scene in BBC Sherlock S2E2?

Let's take a look at this one dialog that occured when John needs to stay with Sherlock to comfort him after Irene's death and his girlfriend is upset:

"You're a great boyfriend!" "Okay, that's good. I mean, I always thought I was great-" "And Sherlock Holmes is a very lucky man." "Oh, Jeanette please"

John has his priorities and it's very obvious to everyone involved (even tho I do think that staying with your best friend after the death of a person who was important to him is a valid reason to miss a celebration) I suppose it just was the last straw for her

"No, I mean it. It's heartwarming. You'll do anything for him. And he can't even tell your girlfriends apart!"

The fact that John's love is so unconditional he doesn't even care if Sherlock returns it reminds me so much of this one episode of Doctor Who where River Song compared loving Doctor to loving sun: "You don't expect the sun to love you back!" or something like this, I don't remember the quote and it breaks my heart so much.

(Yes I did a wholock reference, what are you gonna do about it?)

And I also see here how much he tries to move on knowing that sun will not love him back but he just can't.

"No, I'll do anything for you, just tell me what it is, I'm not doing, tell me!" "Don't make me compete with Sherlock Holmes!"

This quote is so important because even Jeanette knows and understands the entirety of the situation John's in.

Compete with Sherlock Holmes is something nobody can do (all his enemies get defeated as we know) but not only villians are a threat, even loved ones will always be on a second place for John. The first place is forever taken by this one nerd not knowing the Earth is moving around the Sun (even tho he's the sun himself).

"I'll walk your dog for you. There, I've said it now, I'll even walk your dog." "I don't have a dog!" "No, because that was the last one- Okay."

Even John himself admits his defeat and realises what he got himself into.

(He did marry Mary eventually, and even tho I love her character, I can't help but see her being another one of "escapes" for John.)

Please don't witchhunt me for "hating on straight ships" or whatever, complain at the directors and writers who made John so unbearably closeted any other of his ships just doesn't sail (pun fully intended).

All I see here is a man desperately stuck in his one-sided feelings and fear of being out, he goes through the struggle a lot of queer people experienced in their life.

Yes, it's been done many times before, but I can't help but say that the production crew are cowards for not making John canonically queer when his writing is so authentic it makes me experience almost physical pain.

Coming back to the topic of Mary btw, I think it was fucking lame in the way her destiny turned out to be. She deserved to have a good life with loving husband and a child, but writers put her in the story just to make John not so openly queer coded (bi and pan people exist btw but it's a topic for another conversation unfortunately) and they just killed her off to "sail" the johnlock ship in the end because they are cowards to actually follow through with queerbaiting (that's what the quotes for, because they haven't actually sailed it). I hate, and I mean HATE when a woman is added to a story just for a man's character development and gets killed off and BBC's Sherlock situation is exactly like this. Why even add her to the story if you don't plan on making her stay with John? The last season makes no sense and makes me so angry I often pretend it doesn't exist "BOO TOMATOES TOMATOES-" (it's the reason I don't want any new Sherlock seasons tbh)

Okay, this post is all over the place, at this point I'm more just ranting instead of doing a proper topic analysis but I hope you liked it anyway. Share your opinion if you have any, ig the Sherlock tag is too full at this point I don't really see people taking about stuff while checking the tag (saying this as if the first season didn't come out like 13 years ago)

Have a good day :)

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock bbc #sherlock holmes #sherlock fandom #john watson #johnlock #mary elizabeth watson #mary watson #wholock

[jeanmoreaux]

top 9 books

tagged forever ago by @doctorsrose & @rosesau (🫶🫶🫶)

tagging: @lvnchs | @permanentreverie | @tolerateit | @speaknowtv | @henwilsons | @newtmsa | @greenribon | @brimay | @hollyfhumberstone | @tbosas | @alinastarkovz (ofc no pressure <3 would love to hear about your fav books in whatever way you wanna share and if you don't then that's okay too!)

rules: list your top 9 books obviously. like the people before me and probably most people who did this i cheated and put series or several books by the same author as one thing bc rules are made for breaking <3 this is very much both an 'off the top of my head' as well as a 'laboured over this for hours' kind of list that's heavily biased to the present moment.

(1.) all for the game by nora sakavic; i don't even know what to say about this. either you read it and Get why this is on my list or you Don't. and if you haven't read it this is not a recommendation btw. this is just me saying these books did irreparable damage to my developing teenage brain. hit me like no other series probably ever will again because i read this at the Right Time while being the exact right amount of Insane. and just like seed mentioned in her list if you want to know Me and Understand Me then you need to know this series. i am sure there are traces of it in my dna by now.

(2.) the raven cycle by maggie stiefvater; same goes for this one tbh. if you want to know Me and Understand Me then you need to know this series. another instance of Right Time and Right Me. these books burrowed themselves deep into my bones and became a part of my dna. they shaped soo much of my taste in prose, storytelling techniques, tropes, and dynamics. this story and these characters took me apart and put me back together again but rearranged some essential parts inside of me. much like with aftg, i came out of this series irreversibly changed and drenched in blood final girl style.

(3.) frankenstein by mary shelley; a beautifully written story with soooo much room for whatever literary lens you want to apply to it. i know i answered an ask once where i talked about my love for this book in detail but i can't find it. but i found this rant on frankenstein and the creature. i think a lot of my love for this story comes from the fact that i had the chance to work closely with the text several times. but also it's just a heart-wrenching tale about how we define humanity and how love is essential nourishment for the soul. it reminds me of that one quote from the good place: "people improve when they get external love and support. how can we hold it against them when they don’t?" because frankenstein basically answers the question what happens when someone gives you a life you didn't ask for and then opts out of any (emotional) responsibility and leaves you desolate and utterly forsaken.

(4.) the green bone saga by fonda lee; an epic family saga i still think about A Lot. kinda succession without logan but make it fantasy mafia. sibling relationships are a big part of this story too. which if you know me. big fan of that. it's also a series that grows in scope (world building wise) and keeps adding complexity So Naturally it's impressive. amazing storytelling craft at work fr. definitely an underhyped series in my opinion.

(5.) the sword of kaigen by m.l. wang; another fantasy story focusing on family dynamics but also functioning as a character study. it's a self-published work and it shows in the BEST way. there's just something about it that makes me insane one a storytelling level because it breaks so many conventions and you either hate that or love that but no matter your opinion on it i think it's undeniable that this book has some of the best character work written in recent years. i desperately need to reread.

(6.) on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong; another book that fucked me up with its beautiful prose and incredibly gut-wrenching emotional honesty. it really feels like you're reading about someone ripping out the most vulnerable and messed up and complex parts of their soul and laying them bare for you to see expecting nothing but acknowledgement in return. and while my own lived experience is nothing close to ocean vuong's the emotional core of this book rings so true. also i just have to say it again. the prose fucks severely.

(7.) the grisha trilogy & the six of crows duology by leigh bardugo; another (two) series i read in my teens that shaped my taste to a drastic degree. the crows are just forever ingrained in my brain. alina's story will forever fuck me up. you all know. you all understand. w're not getting into it. i think the fact that tgt is so misunderstood and undervalued just makes me love it more. because if you get it. damn. devastating. if you don't. so sorry for you because you're missing out.

(8.) the song of achilles & circe by madeline miller; tbh both of these retellings did something to my brain. you all know these i don't have to elaborate. it's very typical queer of me to fawn over anything to do with greek mythology and retellings but. these two just HIT different. also, the prose? makes me a little insane.

(9.) giovanni’s room by james baldwin; this book has some of the most insane prose i have ever read. baldwin's grasp on language is uncanny fr. every other sentence packs a punch in one way or another. he manages to capture some aspects of the queer (specifically the bi) experience in a way that felt so familiar to me and put words to so many of my internal experiences. it's about the self and identity and being lost and refusing to let yourself be found. it's also about human connections and how you'll wither when you deny yourself to open up to the people closest to you. it's about so many things without being about one think in particular. like all the other books on this list, love and belonging are at the core of it, but in a very distorted way. i don't think you can really understand unless you've read it. it's So Good.

honorable mentions; emma by jane austen (cunty women RULE), wuthering heights by emily brontë (severely fucked up in the most entertaining way. that's how you write drama.) east of eden by john steinbeck (cain and abel shit and deranged women? sign me up), these violent delights by micah nemerever (be gay do crime in the most mentally ill way possible), if we were villains (love it when characters haunt a narrative. also definitely a book about the gay sex that is not happening), women in love by d.h. lawrence (still currently making my way through this one but it's so deliciously messed up and queer i am almost certain it will leave a permanent mark)

#none of these are actual recommendations. just books that eat at my brain and shaped Me as A Person. #tho a good few of these books i do recommend or did recommend on other occasions #but this is very much a 'essentials to mish's fav books' list #that doesn't have more meaning behind it than my messy little brain coming up with it. #tag game #books #abt me

[televisionbodiez]

hey <3 i also love monty the biggest amounts and i think you should share your awesome thoughts about him (and his awesome friendship to gregory) with me and the world okay??

pls pls pls begging-

SORRY IT TOOK ME A SEC TO GET TO THIS BECAUSE IVE BEEN BUSY WITH SCHOOL LATELY (°ロ°) !!!

BUT OMG HAI HAI ⭐️ THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING ME THIS I ABSOLUTELY LOVE MONTY!!!!!!! I HAVE SO MUCH TO SHARE!! JUST A LOT OF HEADCANONS N STUFF ^^

IM STARTING WITH ANGST.. IJUST THINK ABOUT MONTY ANGST SOOOO MUCH

- The quote "im not a violent dog, I don't know why I bite" reminds me of Monty SO MUCH. He is so prone to anger but he hates that side of himself. He can't control it. And being self aware of his anger just makes him feel even worse. He wishes that he could he softer and nicer, he just hates how he is so much. Monty feels stuck and is always longing for a more peaceful existence.

OKAY MOVING PAST THE ANGST!!!

- As a way for him to cope with his anger better, Fazbear Entertainment started to require that he goes to the daycare and hangs out with Sun. Think of it as unofficial "anger management."

- Sun has experience with dealing with emotional kids so it is genuinely good for Monty !!! He gets to participate in arts and crafts and the kids there are excited over him !!!!

- it's funny to think about him looking so oversized when sitting at the arts and crafts tables surrounded by all of the kids

- Initially, Monty REALLY REALLY HATED GOING THERE. AND WAS REALLY MEAN TOWARDS SUN, but Sun still remained nice and friendly because he was eager to befriend Monty nonetheless

- AND THEY DID END UP AS FRIENDS!! In their own time, Sun had opened up to Monty about how he deals with difficult emotions as well. Monty hearing someone else endure something similar to his struggles was eye opening

- Roxy and Monty are so siblings/bffs, they absolutely gossip with eachother and Monty let's Roxy practice makeup on him

- I THINK MONTY AND CHICA WOULD BE SUCH CUTE BFFS.

- Monty's "rivalry" with Freddy is one sided and VERY unserious, Freddy is so friendly with him and Monty gets all grumpy (but he does like Freddy, he just doesn't want to admit it. He's his self proclaimed "enemy")

- HIS TAIL WAGS WHEN HES EXCITED.

- I have a headcanon that depending on the animatronic, they're programmed to work better with a certain age group and Monty is more targeted towards older kids and teens

- Monty loves cute things but he really wants to keep up his cool Rockstar persona SO HE HIDES HIS LIKING TOWARDS CUTE STUFF.... but the rest of the glamrocks can see how obvious it is when kids give him gifts and his tail starts wagging over recieving a Hello Kitty plushie or something

- so he isn't the best at dealing with little kids and gets awkward at times

- BUT YOUNGER KIDS SEEM TO LIKE HIM SO MUCH. he reminds them of a dinosaur AND KIDS LOVE DINOSAURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- even if he's all awkward with the younger kids it's okay, the kids find it funny and he gets more familiar with dealing with them as time goes on

MONTY N GREGORY TIME!!!

- With him and Gregory, both of them would end up being so mischievous at the expense of the other glamrocks,, they would absolutely pull really stupid pranks and test out stupid things

- Monty is like the fun uncle who encourages Gregory's recklessness WHICH IS A NIGHTMARE DUO FOR FREDDY WHO GETS SO CONCERNED ABOUT GREGORYS SAFETY

- but tbh I think Monty and Gregory are less like an uncle and nephew and more like an older brother an younger brother

- like they tease eachother and will argue over dumb things😭

- thinking about Monty and Gregory getting temporarily banned from the daycare because Monty was trying to throw Gregory into the ballpit from as high as possible

#I ENDED UP TYPING SO MUCH HELP #ignore any mistakes this is all incoherent rambling #i love monty hes a goober #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #security breach #help wanted 2 #fnaf ruin #montgomery gator #monty fnaf #sundrop #sun fnaf #daycare attendant #glamrock freddy #roxanne wolf #roxy fnaf #glamrock chica #gregory fnaf

[wetcatspellcaster]

I read the latest chapter of Honest Lie: it was devastating. I was smashed to the floor, it was incredible.

I loved the support group feedback.

Something I’m looking forward to is seeing how Rosalie deals with allowing Astarion to ascend. Rosalie’s straightforward ways of dealing with good things and bad things are something that I find difficult to comprehend - I think I personally am much more willing to compromise on good and evil for a person I love and a person I hate. I wonder if the party’s adoration for Rose is partially because she provides that strong moral compass that they all so desperately are looking for being

Good —————————- Power? Power!

(See companions vacillating between both spectrums, with Karlach being the exception, in my opinion)

And I do love Astarion’s cautiously made point, which (maybe? I feel?) that Rosalie hasn’t quite yet seemed to express fully in my reading - that people should be allowed to choose. There’s this line from a book that often resonates with me (I’ve put it below!! Please excuse my quoting another author at you, you being my respected and much loved author!) which states basically that choice is the most important thing to preserve, because it lets us choose to be whoever we want to be, which!! I love that BG3 seems to show us, that we persuade the companion but the companion makes the actual final choices!!

I’m super looking forward to the next installments!!! I enjoy reading so much your good and amazing works! Wishing you a great month ahead :)

“It was the right thing to do because it gave us choices. Having a choice is the most important thing.”

I’d heard that before. It’s a bullet-point line in the graduation handbook: As a general rule, regardless of the specific situation in which you find yourself, at every step you must take care to preserve or widen the number of your options. It hadn’t quite sunk in properly, but now it did. Having a choice meant being able to choose something that worked for you and whatever you were carrying and whatever you’d prepared. Having a choice meant you got to choose getting out.”

The Last Graduate, Naomi Novik

hey lovely, thank you for the message and feedback on the chapter, I'm glad that you enjoyed it!

I just want to give a quick reminder that Astarion doesn't Ascend in An Honest Lie! That is not my canon playthrough narrative and Pieces has the tagline 'Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence' for this reason. I only bring it up to put the lingering fears of any readers to bed, but also because it informs my response to your message!

Because, um, we've already *seen* the timeline where Rosalie gives Astarion full and free reign of choice... and that is, in fact, Pieces Still Stuck In Your Teeth :'))))

I totally get where you're coming from. I love that BG3 post that goes around occasionally being like 'I believe in supporting my friends' choices and BG3 really tests that by making my friends want to commit mass murder, become a God, kill a defenceless woman...' bc it sums up my feelings pretty succinctly. While in theory, I'd love a world where Astarion is given space to fix himself and then makes the choice a good Tav wants him to make, the fact of the matter is that if you do not make the (admittedly low DC) persuasion check, if left to his own devices Astarion will always choose to Ascend.

I've thought about that choice by Larian a lot. It's part of what made Pieces so compelling to me as a worst timeline, because that crucial moment seemed to become a perfect storm of 1. Rosalie doubting herself and her own values, choosing to put love first but in a way that is essentially, more self-sacrifice and self-effacement and self-doubt, and 2. Astarion losing a key source of support at the scariest moment in his life and suddenly feeling lost and alone. Rose doesn't speak to him once, past the flashback, in that timeline - she lets him take the lead.

So in response to your question, I operate on the belief, however subjective, that Rosalie's refusal to give in actually is what opens up more choice for Astarion, not the other way around. Because (as plenty of other meta posts that come before me have said much better than I could) he thinks the world works a certain way, and all his decisions are made within that matrix and the assumption that this is the only way the world works. Rose is offering a new model of behaviour - I'm not saying it's flawless, or even correct (it's mostly just autistic). It's just an alternative perspective that I believe (inevitably, as its author) is needed.

A secondary example of that, is him mechanising love in the Chapter 11 argument to try and get his way - he knows he can get people to do what he wants through sex, surely love is just a more powerful version of that? This is the way the world works. But Rosalie refusing to back down despite being in love with him, or love manifesting in a way that isn't immediate acquiescence, also challenges that perspective. It shows that sometimes love or sex or attraction isn't the automatic tool to a person's complacency, and that in fact sometimes love is actively working to better yourself, if you care about a person enough. Sometimes love/attraction isn't making the other person do something for you, but doing something for them instead.

I agree people should be allowed to choose... but sometimes people need support and also, to be quite honest, coaching to get through the most difficult times in their lives without turning into the worst version of themselves. That's not a failing of the person, it's just proof that things are easier when you have a support network. Astarion wants independence as freedom but I don't think independence as loneliness serves him, as it reinforces his worldview, of choices as survival and nothing else.

#asks #wip: an honest lie #long posts #I'm not saying I'm right I'm just saying that's the interpretation behind the fic and its choices #also when i say 'worst version' please don't come for me. I mean evil ending i don't mean bad ending. #in the words of my very intelligent mutual '7000 deaths is something of a dealbreaker'

[mrs-gauche]

The “Flip it” Theory

(I’m sorry, it’s like 3am and I couldn’t come up with a better title. lol)

So.. Here’s another fun little DA tinfoil hat theory that you might have already heard about, but I don’t think I’ve seen it discussed on here before? It also probably sounds super unhinged, but at this point, can we even get any more unhinged in terms of theories? lol So, we might as well just embrace it. It’s just one of those theories that simply won’t leave my mind (especially when trying to sleep at 3am lol), so writing it down will hopefully put it to rest. 😁

Okay, so we all know that, in the Fade, the laws of gravity or physics in general don’t really apply and are all over the place, right? There’s no real sense of time or space, no real “up” or “down” as the Fade does not follow any rules of the waking world and is somewhat shaped by whatever the person dreaming expects reality to look like or quote, “is reflected by the mind of the living”.

So when we see the Inquisitor fall into Fade in “Here Lies the Abyss”, it’s even emphasized by how the camera movement in-game and the environment in the Fade has to “adjust” according to how the Inquisitor expects gravity to work, or rather, what the world’s supposed to look like to us, meaning the sky has to be up and the ground has to be down. lol

Additionally in Trespasser, we see that, not only is the Vir Dirthara scattered all over the place, but in parts also completely flipped upside down.

(I’m so sorry btw, I just now realized that looking at these gifs for too long can make you feel super dizzy. lol)

The reason I’m pointing this out, is because it keeps reminding me, for one, of this mural.

Of course, since this mural was first shown in the teaser trailer in 2020 and has been thoroughly analyzed by the fandom, it seems pretty clear by now that, with the way this mural is composed, particularly with the two upside down figures, BioWare intentionally encourages us to look at this image upside down. What’s even more intriguing to me, seeing as the Dread Wolf appears to break into the Black City here, “releasing” the raw magic of the Fade with its non existent rules of reality to the waking world and in doing so, figuratively and in some respects quite literally “turning the world upside down”.

Though while most people seem to focus on the two figures here (that are most definitely the two remaining Evanuris still sleeping/imprisoned or something like that, but that’s not the topic of this post lol), you might have heard of this other crazy theory suggesting that, when looking at this mural upside down, the shape of the Dread Wolf appears to roughly resemble that of a mountain.

(I warned you this leans VERY heavy on the tinfoil hat, but please don’t leave yet lol) Okay so, as far as I understand it, the theory suggests a potential connection to a particular mountain mentioned in the lore, called Belenas.

In a legend of the Avvar, it is said that Korth the Mountain-Father kept his throne at the peak of the mountain Belenas, which “lay at the center of the world”. The tale goes as follows:

Korth took his heart out of his chest and hid it within the Frostback Mountains to avoid being weakened by love. When his lack of heart turned him bitter and cruel, the Lady of the Skies sent her children to retrieve it. Though after all her children had failed to do so, the ptarmigan volunteered for the search. The Lady refused to give the tiny bird her blessing, as she thought the mountains was too fierce, but the ptarmigan succeeded where everyone else had failed. It found and freed the heart, allowing it to jump back into Korth's chest, where Hakkon Wintersbreath bound it once again. For her great deed, the ptarmigan was honored by the gods.

When Korth grew tired of heroes barging into his hall to claim the honors they thought they were due for climbing the mountain of the gods, he spoke to the Lady of the Skies, who then lifted Belenas from the earth into her realm, so no one could reach it anymore.

Legend says that Belenas was eventually destroyed during a battle between Korth and the serpent Nathramar, leaving only a vast crater behind that the Lady of the Skies “filled with her tears” and formed what we now know as Lake Calenhad.

Okay, so there’s a lot to dissect here, so I try to make it as brief as possible, but in short, people have noticed a number of intriguing parallels to different pieces of elven lore and theories in this tale, or what could be interpreted as such.

So I’m going to try and take this on one by one. Let’s start with this:

- Korth’s throne sits at the peak of mountain Belenas, at “the center of the world”.

- When looking at the mural from the teaser upside down again, it places the Black City (or the “Maker’s throne”, if you will) at the “peak” of the Dread Wolf shaped “mountain”. It is also known that the Black City sits at “the center of the Fade”, where no one is able to reach it.

- Korth takes his heart out of his chest and hides it within the Frostback Mountains. When his lack of heart turns him bitter and cruel, the Lady of the Skies sends her children to retrieve it.

- If we put in “Titan” for Korth and “Mythal” for the Lady of the Skies, this part is kinda reminiscent of what we know (or suspect) of Mythal, her conquering of the Titans (which would be the Frostback mountains in this comparison) and the theory of the ancient elves killing the Titans and obtaining their hearts, enabling them to create the foci/orbs/vessels of dreams that gives them god like powers. So Mythal sends out her “children”/army in the attempt to conquer the Titan and obtain its heart.

- After all the Lady’s children fail, the ptarmigan volunteers for the search. She refuses to give the tiny bird her blessing, as she thinks the mountains are too fierce, but the ptarmigan succeeds and retrieves the heart.

- Now, this part might be a bit of a reach, but when taking this even further and comparing this whole story to Mythal’s war against the Titans, looking at this tiny little nondescript bird defying the odds and ultimately leading the Lady of the Skies to “victory”, am I the only one who’s a little reminded of Greek mythology here (which, as I’ve mentioned numerous times before now, seems to be at least partially BioWare’s inspiration for the ancient elves), and how in Greek mythology, the Olympians’ victory over the (literal) Titans was the result of a cunning trick devised by Prometheus, who deserted from the Titans’ army beforehand.

And I know I’m certainly not the only one to have noticed a lot of odd similarities between the role of good old Prometheus in mythology and our very divisive Mr wanna-be-Wisdom Pride, aka Solas.

- For her great deed in retrieving Korth’s heart, the ptarmigan is honored by the gods.

- So while we’re at it, why not just compare the little bird to Solas then and assume that, for helping Mythal in her victory over the Titans and obtaining its heart, Solas is somehow honored and elevated to the status of godhood or at least into some sort of exclusive circle of those who the Evanuris trusted the most. (And even rewarded with his own orb, maybe? Might this be what we’re seeing in the mural depicting a Titan’s death?)

- When Korth grows tired of heroes barging into his hall to claim the honors of the gods, the Lady of the Skies lifts Belenas from the earth into her realm, so no one can reach it anymore.

- Now it gets a bit tricky.. If we take this part of the tale as Mythal “lifting” the now dead Titan into her own realm, meaning the sky, maybe it’s nothing more than a metaphor for Mythal mining the Titans’ blood and using the lyrium for her own empire (the creation of bodies for spirits?). Or maybe she literally lifted part of a dead Titan’s body into the sky and used it as a “cornerstone” to build the empire’s capital city Arlathan on top of it.

Which, again, would actually explain why the Black City *cough* Arlathan *cough* is depicted on top of the “mountain” in the 2020 upside down mural. Especially when adding that last part “so no one can reach it”, you know, just like the Black City can’t be reached within the Fade.

- Belenas was eventually destroyed during a battle between Korth and the serpent Nathramar, leaving only a vast crater behind that the Lady of the Skies “filled with her tears” and formed what we now know as Lake Calenhad.

- Again, this part could be interpreted in many different ways. I’ve seen theories spanning from Solas creating the Veil causing the magical floating Arlathan to fall from the sky and destroying the mountain in the process, to the Lady’s “tears” actually being Mythal’s (Great dragon) blood that somehow dripped in the lake when she was murdered, which is why centuries later, the actual Calenhad Theirin would gain special powers when he made a bargain with an old witch (Flemeth?) and drank from said lake.

So yeah, as you can see, there’s a lot to take from all this as far as unhinged tinfoil theories and strange parallels go. lol

And with all of this in mind, I’d like to look at the Black City in the 2020 teaser mural again, as you also might have notice that, in addition to the whole mountain shaped Dread Wolf, when turned upside down, the Black City appears to keep the silhouette of a city, no matter how you look at it?

In fact, a lot of depictions we’ve seen of the Black City share this rather oddly shaped silhouette.

There’s also this stained glass, depicting the city upside down and in both gold and black.

I actually don’t know what to take from all this. It’s just something I’ve noticed while gathering images. lol

But while we’re at it and flipping everything on its head now.. lol While I was looking at all the Trespasser murals again, I also noticed that, when flipped upside down, two of the murals actually form a full circle when put together.

And ohh, would you look at that, there’s the “mountain” (Titan) at the bottom again with the Black City “on top” of it, just like the mural in the 2020 teaser when flipped upside down?? 😂 (Also interesting parallel to note with Solas holding the orb(?) on both the left side of each mural.)

Now, I know I sound super unhinged and I actually don’t think this is supposed to mean anything and it’s probably just a crazy coincidence (..right??), but.... what IF we just go full on tinfoil here now and assume that it IS actually supposed to be looked at this way......

In all the murals we’ve seen thus far, the circle was always assumed to represent the Veil, right? So when looking at it this way, it would put the Titan inside the Fade within the Veil beneath the Black City, right?

So.. Here’s my crazy idea...

Even though we know the Fade is an ever-changing place not bound to any rules of reality or a set geography.. What if the rocky landscapes we see in the “raw Fade” are actually all part of a sleeping/dead Titan(s)?

And while we are looking at these rocks again, am I the only one reminded of the structures seen in the deepest level of the The Descent dlc, a gargantuan cavern located in the so called “Wellspring” within a Titan, which is grouped at the expedition table as a location within “the Uncharted Abyss”.

“The Abyss”, also called the Void in different cultures, myths and historical texts in DA lore, is said to be a place whose location is undefined, but believed to be somewhere within the Fade, “empty places between dreams” (or, according to Solas, the place where spirits are reborn).

So if we go back to the Wellspring again, where we’re looking at what appears to be a literal abyss, a vast sea of clouds.. What we expected to be the deepest and darkest place in the world is revealed to be a bright, seemingly endless “sky” beneath the earth, or rather a Titan.

And with all this in mind, it’s even more intriguing now to go back to the beginning of this post, where we established that, in the Fade, the sky is not set to be “above” or “beneath”. It all depends on the expectation or perspective of the beholder.

(And btw, funnily enough, I actually encountered a bug once at the Wellspring that made it look like the sky was actually “falling down” on me. lol)

And lastly, in relation to all of this, I also want to point out this little quote, said by Flemeth in DA2:

“The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss.”

While we all know our favorite old witch likes to be overly ambiguous and cryptic in her phrasing, maybe we should take this quote more literal than we previously thought? lol Maybe, with the Veil collapsing some way or another and the angry tainted Titans awakened, the world might literally lose its so called “Pillars of the Earth”, plummeting into the endless void we’ve seen in The Descent.....

Well, shit.

Anyway, I’m afraid that’s all I had to say lol, and if you actually made it this far, thank you so much for engaging in this insanity. 😁 (And sorry if this turned out to be a total waste of your time. 😂)

Though I do have to mention, what actually prompted me to write this post in the first place, was seeing how some people are expecting Solas to be at the White Spire now after reading the synopsis of the upcoming comic series “The Missing” (if you want to know why, skip to the end of this post lol). The White Spire being an Antivan mountain with a very particular shape (at least according to this illustrated map of Thedas that came with every copy of Tevinter Nights).

(I can see where this thing got its name from. lol It almost reminds me of a volcano? 😂)

Which just so happens to ALSO kinda resemble the shape of the “upside down mountain” shaped Dread Wolf from the 2020 mural....

So.. take from this information whatever you like, because I don’t know anything anymore... My head hurts from all this spinning. I’m out. 🥴

#tinfoil time #trespasser #solas #mythal #da4 #dragon age 4 #this is probably the most tinfoil I'll ever get lol #but this one is so much fun to think about for some reason 😂 #anyway good night lol

[waitingforthesunrise]

ari just so you know

i don't think i'm all that great at sappy stuff but you 100% deserve it so here goes

how are you so amazing? actually scratch that, why are you so amazing? you just. choose to be like that? how and why are very different questions and if i'm being honest, the why is more interesting. you have the option to be closed off. to not be so nice to everyone. i wouldn't blame you if you were. i don't think you would be rude, but it's rare that i come across a person who, for lack of a better-put way to describe it, just radiates kindness and hope. like you. hope is also an interesting word. do you remember that post? i don't know it word for word but it goes something like "hope has blood on her face and tears in her eyes. hope is a fighter" and that makes me happy. because just like how you choose to be kind and funny and lovely, you've somehow helped me choose to have a lot more hope. i don't know much about who i am but i always thought i was pretty pessimistic and nihilistic. you know what? i think i was just sad. i'm still sad but. i used to think of being optimistic, of having hope and faith, as a bad thing. a weak thing. it's different now because i met you! you're happy and hopeful, and i also know for a fact that you aren't weak or naive. that kind of rewired my brain a bit? if someone as wonderful as you is so hopeful, maybe it isn't bad. maybe if i was more like you i could make someone else feel what i feel when i'm talking to you. i would love that. you're my role model, ari. who i wanna be when i grow up.

just. you're full of light. oh my god your url doesn't do you justice. you ARE the sunrise. and i love you. and when i'm talking to you, just a bit of all my fears and worries and anxieties are lifted off my shoulders. i don't know how you do it. i think if everyone was more like you, we'd all be having a much better time.

hmmmmm. your pfp is exactly your vibe. you told me your favourite colour is the colours the grass is when there's sun shining on it and i think that was the moment i stopped and thought for a second. i'd never thought of describing colours like moments. you make me feel sentimental. i think that reminded me that i'm a mosaic of everyone i have ever loved. i like baking because it reminds me of the time my best friend and i tried to bake cookies but i accidentally put a cup of salt instead of sugar and we only found out when after an hour or so of hard work we tasted the cookies and she spat them out immediately. we laughed SO HARD and she still brings it up. the first real book i ever read was gifted to me by my dad. it was the graveyard book by neil gaiman and not only did it spark my love for reading and my affinity for neil gaiman, every single time i start a new book i remember my eight year old self bragging to my friends about reading 300 whole pages. the first time i went ice skating was on a school field trip when i was ten. i fell and my lovely fourth grade teacher helped me up. i still talk to her sometimes, she was so wonderful. the stranger who complimented my outfit. the old woman who talked to me about books on the train. the bookshop worker who i talked to about good omens for hours. they were so happy to find someone who loved it as much as they did.

i love you!!!! oh and ari? why are you so amazing?

(could u please answer this publicly? thanks love <3)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH *goes on screaming into oblivion because i can't coherantly verbalize how much i love you* *frantically tries to take deep breaths so i can talk* *melts into a puddle on the floor sobbing* okay okay i'm going to try to reply to this like a coherent human being.

HOPE IS A FIGHTER that's literally one of my favorite quotes ever. in a way, i think everything i do is somehow related to hope. it's waiting for the sunrise, yk? it's trusting that something good is coming even if you can't see it, that there's light on the other side of the earth, that love can be invisible but never absent. i truly believe from the bottom of my heart that real love is rebellion and hope is grit and wonder is strength. we live in a world trying to kill our sense of curiousity and joy. OF COURSE we'd be told that it's weak. OF COURSE we'd be told it's useless. and yet. i believe that to see the love everywhere we look...that is true strength.

to try and answer the 'how and why' i rlly couldn't not talk about my faith. and also pain. i'd like to tell this story without the pain, yk? i'd like to tell it clean, but i can't. (as richard siken says: I'd like to tell you this story without having to be in it.)

I identify as Christian. and I know I'm the ' wrong kind of christian' for a lot of people. I'm queer, and I believe in queer marriage. I own crystals, I meditate, and I have an altar (that doesn't have any crucifixes etc etc on it). I could talk a LOT more about this, but that isn't really the story rn. the point is, i look at the BIble and I see this huge overarching story about love and grace and hope getting bogged down by mostly silly questions. there's a verse that says with the measure you use, it will be measured for you, and that really has come to define so much for me. with the measure i use. with the measure i see the world. how am I supposed to look around and point fingers when I have been the person on the other end? how am I supposed to expect love if i do not give it?

and the pain, dammit. I've been the person in pain and i haven't handled it well. who am I to point fingers at the cashier who snapped at me in the grocery store? God knows I still regret the anger I've bled after sleepless nights. who am I to look at someone struggling with mental health, addiction, literally anything, and think myself better, smarter?? i am not better or smarter. i just had lifelines that were given to me by the grace of God.

there's more verses. there is no fear in love, for perfect love drives out fear...Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends....Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love...there's the greatest commandments: "love the lord your god with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. and the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.'

but really, for me, it all comes down to the verse 'we love because he first loved us.' i am shown love. i am showered in love every damn day. i am loved in sunsets and stars and depression showers and fresh breezes and the smile of a stranger on the train. i am loved in pain when I have nothing but curses, I am loved in strength when I had none of my own, I am loved in hope when I had none to give. I can love because I am eternally adored. the only love and peace I can offer is what has already been given to me. and christianity -- to me -- is a religion which in its truest form is about the intersection between love and pain. God looking at his people and saying I love you so much I'm willing to die, I'm willing to bleed, I'm willing to go through every torment to save you from a little pain. I'm willing to die to be near you. how can i walk away from that and NOT be a little kinder??

so no. I couldn't tell this story without the pain. I couldn't be who i am without a long list of mental illnesses and that spicy lil chronic illness. i'm not sure if i could tell my story the same way without it. would i still run out to watch the sunrise if I hadn't felt the burn of the long nights? maybe we love life a little better when we've fought to have it. maybe my joy means more when I fought tooth and nail to take it back.

there's a writer i absolutely adore, anais nin. and she wrote during world war two about the 'rebellion of love' and simply yes. she wrote, "I have a kind of courage which you do not understand. I am far from being blind or indifferent, but I will not indulge in passive, impotent despair. I will not add to the despair of the world. I am working on counterpoisons.' she would go on to say that her 'counterpoisons' are 'a small but loving world, cells of devotion, care, work, to fight the madness of this world.' she would say that the only way to face true love and joy was to go straight through and out the other side -- that it was impossible to fully treasure a sunrise unless you battled a night for it. she said "the secret of joy is the mastery of pain." you cannot have one without the other.

and God. i am SAD. i am sad SO MUCH. joy doesn't mean you've beat the pain. it doesn't mean you've won, it means you're fighting. it means you hold your sadness by the hand and kiss their cheek and say come inside, let's eat some soup. you are not unloved by me.

and yes yes yes yes YES you are so right. we are accumaltions of the things we have loved, the way we have loved. it all comes back to love, for me. what we're given. what we show. i do think the universe is a story about love. i think each of us is a story about love. i think we're poems and songs and paintings in human form, and I have bled to write mine, and who the fuck am I to look at another bleeding person and hate what I see? Bradley Trumpfheller said lord, we owe the world such tenderness and yes. yes. this is a tender and a bloody world. this is a kind and a feral world. but the loves goes out and returns and we are never, ever alone.

I know who i am. I am beloved. and what greater joy than to pass that to another?

#VEE YOU ARE SUCH A WRTER WHAT #also im sorry i got carried away and made this so long #ari writes #original writing #oh look its my whole life philosophy in a post whoops #tw christianity #adventures of lovergirl