#and it is this exact love that has Lee asking for her to either kill or leave him and that makes Clem fulfill his wish without fail | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nctrsn20 · 3 years

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[just a heads up but trigger warning for the Dreamies + Shorato&Sungchan]

――

N-DREAM + THE ROOKIES

MARK LEE

POSITION ― Leader-Boss of DREAM, All Rounder

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― Strictly Unavailable [colleagues to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― PARIS ⤍ KOREA

I swear Mark is exactly like Peter Parker

now introducing the boss and leader of DREAM, Mark Lee

a young, handsome and polite man which all girls kind of having a thing for him (both in the mafia organization and in school)

but when it comes to work, he is a mixture of Kun and Taeyong

he is nice like Kun but he doesn't take bullshits just like Taeyong (and he gets pretty scary when his love ones especially his bestfriend are involved in his businesses - expect Mark not to be nice and probably knowing he is going to kill you by the end of the night)

very hard-working individual

he jumps from helping 127 and to be Dream's leader, basically helping the young ones and lead them - he HAS A LOT of plate to handle but he is lucky that he has Haechan to relate to

but there is someone he would easily get everything and anything out of his chest and that would be Mark's best friend and crush

she knows everything about Mark - vice versa and how did they know each other? well, they kind of met thanks to Lee Taeyong (you see, Mark's bestfriend is Taeyong's sister)

they met in Taeyong's company building where all 23 members work at and tbh it was iconic because she came in barging into the level where the 23 members located - that area is strictly prohibited to outsiders and ONLY a few staff could enter (and Mark plus some of the 127 members were there at that point of time and strangely they just asked Mark to lead her when he doesn't even know her, but it looks like the older members knew her because they kind of greeted her nicely and cutely which is rare to see the older ones do that)

and ofc gentleman+awkward Mark lead her to where Taeyong is and from there, Mark finds out that she is Taeyong's sister (Mark feels dumb but it's okay bcs she actually doesn't introduce herself as Taeyong's sister for safety reasons - it was weird for Mark, he kept on bumping onto her even when she visited Taeyong for both business purposes and for siblings time)

he also finds out that she went to to same college as him (as well as the other Dream members' partners, it was all a coincidence that Mark's crush is friends with the other Dream members' partners)

and because she is Taeyong's sister, she would always be invited to parties that are made by Taeyong or the other members. (in result all of them became friends and consider a family, she is even friends' with all 23 members' partners - she is a social butterfly)

whenever they are talking in the corner of the room, the older members would look at her and Mark - observing Mark from far and they kind of guessed that Mark somehow likes her, just seeing the way his body language shows

they are right, Mark indeed likes her ever since she kind of confronted Taeyong on giving Mark missions back to back (Mark finds out that it lead into a huge argument between her and Taeyong - actually everyone finds out they were screaming in Taeyong's office till Taeyong's girl and a few of the 127 members had to step in)

and let's just say Mark is a HUGE mess ever since he sees her as his crush (Haechan would always push him to confess to her but the leader would always stutter - like how can you easily shoot someone on the head but can't even say 3 simple words?)

HUANG RENJUN / HWANG INJOON

POSITION ― Sniper, [Main] Weapon Expertise

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― In A Relationship [high school friends to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

the weapon expertise and a skilled shooter that was acknowledged by Johnny

our Renjun has a tiny wincy incy bit of temper but is tolerable (usually Mark would easily calm him down but we ALL know who is the one who could just calm down his emotions with just showing herself up)

honestly, Renjun is mostly calm with the 23 members but when it's only the Dream members or they are in a meeting, in the end of the day he would either argue with Haechan or Mark about a mission or business

but when it involves physical fight (not with the Dream members though, they always have a soft spot no matter how things get tough), no one could stop Renjun other than his best friend

both of them are friends ever since high school and she was literally his ride or die friend which turned into his crush best friend (Renjun was known to be a tsundere in school and she was well, we will get to her story in her own part, a girl version of Lucas but she is more tone down and she dates the popular ones back in high school)

fast forward to college where all the Dream members attended (and so as their partners), she and Renjun as usual are close as ever not until she dated a guy that was lowkey rivals with Renjun - basically the Huangs'

it was obvious he dated her to get NCTs' information but here is the thing, she doesn't hang out in NCT's residence that much (due to her work and school stuff, she was somehow naïve)

fast forward Renjun and the rest of the members find out that the guy cheated on Renjun's best friend and things went down yall (Renjun got into a fist fight with him and ofc the Dreamies had to call her and that's when things literally went downhill)

she and Renjun got into a huge argument, it's just messy until Renjun couldn't take it anymore and literally shouted those 3 words which is 'I love you' and our homegirl is shook (and Renjun started avoiding her and she just went to NCT's residence crying after Mark and Haechan spill everything to her - Dream members couldn't take it anymore after seeing Renjun basically crying and just wasn't himself for a few weeks)

according to Mark and Haechan, Renjun told them that he has always like her every since high school and till now, his feelings never change - he likes how confident she is, how protective and caring she is (and to Renjun, the way she flirts with him was different from how she flirts with other guys) although she had did things that break his heart (dating others, basically seeing her in campus)

he really loves her that he would kill someone if they wants her head

and let's just say at the end of that day, our homeboy Renjun got a kiss that he always wanted, which was on the lips - and from there, both of them worked things out and now we have a bad-ass couple

LEE JENO

POSITION ― [High-Rank] Soldier, Hitman [hand to hand combat expertise]

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― In A Relationship [best friend to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

now let's welcome the hitman of the group, Lee Jeno

to be honest, he is considered an all-rounder BUT Taeyong acknowledges him to be a hitman after seeing him basically attacking and ending up killing one of Taeyong's enemies with just his bare-hands

mind-blowing because Jeno is the quietest and somehow calm and to know he could just kill someone with a pair of hands? damn

it was insane to see his duality that the 127 members could only look at Jeno with open mouth (they were shookth) and of course everyone knows not to make Jeno angry or being in his red list

one day, somehow rumors got into the kids in the mafia school that Jeno murdered someone and out of a sudden kids started to gang up on him

though mostly the Dream members as well as their partners back up Jeno (since Dream members know the exact story) and most of them were willing to get hurt just to protect their friend, but Jeno would tell them to stay out of it

but of course one wouldn't listen to him and let's welcome our savior of Jeno's life, his best friend aka his crush ever since they were in middle school

his crush is a sweet individual and most people were quite weirded out to see him getting along with her, both of their personalities kind of the opposite (they didn't know that the reason why they are able to be friends, much more than friends - best friends)

will explain more about his crush istg i love Jeno's girl Jeno secretly loves her bad-ass/aggressive side which was the day when sadly, his crush gets nearly expelled - so what had happened was Jeno got into a fist fight with a group of boys and there was a commotion obviously which lead Jeno's crush and her friends (which were Dream's partners) to the area

basically Jeno was being ganged up and beaten - her friends were shook that she decided to get involved which was rare and seeing how aggressive she got when she shove one of Jeno's attacker and started throwing out strong punches to the point when the boy screamed bloodily (and her friends had to hold her back, it was so sudden and frightening to see the look she gave)

and all of them was basically sent to the principal's office and let's just say Kun was being called too (he is the dean of the college they are attending) - and everyone receives punishment equally but the group of boys who gang up on Jeno were given much more heavier punishment

the next thing happen that made all of the Dream members step aside was hearing harsh words coming from Jeno as a result the two of them were shouting at each other in frustration until one of them accidentally said 'i love you'

but those words weren't coming form Jeno - it was from her (it was all a sudden but she meant it)

let's just say at the end of that argument, both of them shed more tears in each other arms and getting a kiss on the lips - and a full-time committed relationship

now knowing that jeno thought he knows her best friend-lover too well until he somehow figured out a secret that she has been keeping from him and everyone around her for too long

LEE DONGHYUCK / HAECHAN

POSITION ― [High-Rank] Soldier, All-Rounder

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― In A Relationship [acquaintances to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

the troublemaker and an all-round (just like Mark)

he and Mark runs from 127 to Dream back and forth and he is positioned to do all kinds of roles (sniper, assassin, hitman, decoy) according to Mark and Taeyong's instructions

very loud individual and you can hear him screaming or just talking in full-caps somewhere in NCT's residence (Taeyong, together with Kun and Mark actually made their own residence - combining three huge houses together as their home, a place for the ones who doesn't a place to live or when there are missions back to back so 127, WAYV and DREAM has their own houses but the fun part is that their houses is just the opposite of each other)

and interestingly all of sudden he became strangely quiet whenever a very familiar looking girl walks into NCT's residence together with the other older members along with their partner's

you see, Haechan has a huge crush on Jungwoo's and Jaemin's partner's sister and although they were in the same circle of friends, she and Haechan didn't talk much and that's because she is a busy girl while Haechan is too shy to make the first move

but all that shyness has to be put down when Taeyong gave Haechan work to do which was to become the bodyguard to her (apparently her sisters were in danger which lead to Haechan's crush being involve too)

basically they started talking and both were becoming more comfortable with each other that Haechan would always hangs out with her in school and be clingy to her and as usual being his usual loud self (and she is the only one who can keep up with Haechan's clinginess which the other members would call her if they couldn't handle him)

when Haechan started to realize he is in love or already fell for her is when he was summoned into the meeting room with 127 (and for the first time, Jungwoo wasn't there and that's because he was in another country, on a hide out with his girl), telling Haechan that a group of syndicate is trying to kill his crush's bloodline (apparently her family has a lot of hatred just because they have the most gold-basically-rich which is ridiculous)

so she was forced to stay in NCT's residence (together with her younger sister whom were just a few months younger which would be introduce as Jaemin's partner) and by then Haechan already confirmed his feelings for her after they kind of cuddled together as well as having the deep talk regarding her life and it's just different

and when Haechan thinks the situation was eased down and thinking that he could make his move, turns out it was the opposite of what he thinks - and to summarize, his crush end up being the hostage making ALL of NCT members' to move their feet after seeing Haechan basically turn into rage

Haechan was a mess alright, he was mad, frustrated, kind of pissed with himself and also scared (at the end of the day, he was the savior of the night - he was the one who personally took her out of the basement of where the syndicate lives)

the rest was history with interestingly her being the first one to confess to him and Haechan making the first move on kissing her right in front of the members (iconic)

NA JAEMIN

POSITION ― [High-Rank] Soldier, Hitman

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― Complicated [high school friends to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

the deadly cute hitman of the group (well Chenle, Jisung and Shotaro are cute but they are different type of cute)

while Jeno is more to a hand-to-hand hitman, Jaemin uses Renjun's newly made weapons on his targets (and again, Jeno and Jaemin are somehow soulmates - they work together, hangout together)

although Jeno is always with him, school somehow separated them since they were taking different subjects (this is in high-school) and that's how he gets to meet his crush, which is also a sister to Jungwoo's and Jeno's partner in a not-so-good situation

Jaemin is known to be that cute introvert individual who does his own thing and sadly, boys who had jealousy of Jaemin's good looks would find ways to tease him or just made fun of him (Jaemin would usually shrug them off and Jeno would always be the one to back him up)

until one day when Jaemin steps out of the school building and he was randomly pushed down and all he remember was huge throbbing on his head from being kicked and punched then hearing groans and yells from the boys before passing out

and when he woke-up kind-of, he saw blurry image of Taeyong, Jeno and a girl in a corner, he couldn't see her face clearly but all he could remember was she had a blonde hair and she was wearing a leather jacket (and he passed out again poor Jaemin he wasn't in a good condition)

Jaemin would return to school a few days later and strangely, there were new rumors regarding a girl, that was also mentioned with Jungwoo's and Jeno's partner's names, coming back and of course as a NCT member he put two and two together (she was the one who save him and she is the sister to both of Jungwoo's and Jeno's partner and they are known to be well-known in their own ways, especially the youngest one. it would be explain in her own profile/moodboard)

honestly during lunchtime, they would make a few eye-contact from far. Jaemin as usual with Jeno and the Dream members while she was in her own clique (this is before she joined Elinovas Angel, she had her own clique in high school)

the reason why Dream members didn't approach her nor her clique or herself is because both groups are kind of rivals secretly (but all of them are chill though and THAT IS BECAUSE of her saving one of the Dream members so it's a win-win situation)

the first time Jaemin approach her was when she was just minding her own business in the cafeteria, sitting alone, reading a paper while munching an apple (apparently the way Jaemin approach kind of her made her choke slightly, causing her to almost fell from her back and that's when Jaemin perfectly caught her, IN his arms all of a sudden it's like a k-drama or something) let's just say they were lost in each others eyes with her basically yeeting out of his arms with a flushed face

THAT was the moment when they kind of were attracted of each other

the rest of high school days were actually pretty memorable because he actually made friends with her BUT in secret , thanks to Taeyong and the older member's parties, Jaemin had his chance to make her trust him as they had this cute bond with each other since she attended the events as a sister to Jungwoo's and Jeno's partners (Jaemin already consider her as his best friend maybe more than that, he is still confused with his own feelings)

but things started to get out of hand nearly graduation when all of a sudden Jaemin and Dream members were being approached by her clique, needing Jaemin's help that one of their members which was Jaemin's best friend/crush was being held hostage (and everyone was shocked to see how Jaemin's face turned from normal to rage - he literally ran out of the school compound)

within an hour with Jaemin rushing to Taeyong and getting the information he needs, Jaemin founds her and he was horrified after seeing her body literally laying on the basement and she looked like she was beaten (Jaemin was crying when he was driving his way to NCT's residence - everyone was shook to see him cry because in every missions they did, he had never show his vulnerable side, this was the first and it isn't even a mission tbh)

he would stay by her side - he even neglected his own daily needs. he wouldn't leave her side even when the Dream members or the older members would softly ask him to eat or take a rest. that was the moment when everyone figured out that Jaemin loves her (it was obvious with the way Jaemin looked at her sleeping face - and deep down, Jaemin even knows he care for her, adored her and love her)

ZHONG CHENLE

POSITION ― [High-Rank] Tech Specialist

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― Complicated [high school friends to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ― Felix Lee (Stray Kids)

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

the cute and sassy tech specialist

if Jeno and Jaemin are a pair, Chenle is with Jisung (the two youngest were assigned to be the tech specialist, at the same time the main guards of NCT's residence so they are always in front of multiple PCs' and they are the ones who would accept outsiders in - that's how much Taeyong trust the youngests)

Chenle loves his job tbh that's because he get to plan out booby-traps for unwelcome visitors and most of them would be killed instantly by Chenle and Jisung's booby-traps (the older members were shookth to see a few dead bodies in front of their main door - and they found out Chenle and Jisung had used Yangyang's poison air-gas and somehow put them in balloons)

being tech specialist, he rarely comes out to do missions since Taeyong doesn't allow him and Jisung too - but when Taeyong or Mark really needs a last minute back-up, that would be Chenle (the young one has his own back-up team)

until one day, a unfamiliar girl and obviously unwelcomed ran into NCT's residence - there are multiple CCTV's in their residence (they could even see what's going on WAYV and 127 residence) and it was weird to Chenle because he couldn't recognize her since he knows everyone who is somehow friends and are associates to the 23 members

so instead of as usual activating the booby-traps, Chenle's guts tell him to go out there personally armed with a gun and asking Jisung to keep a watch out and in the end his guts were right (it was Winwin's younger sister whom Winwin himself didn't talk much since she is always abroad and she looked pretty terrified)

now the thing about Chenle is he isn't too friendly with people he doesn't know EVEN though they are friend with the other members (except for the Elinovas Angels, Chenle really really treats them like his own guardian/older sisters) but strangely, he didn't know why he has this feeling of wanting to protect her - seeing how fragile she look at that exact moment (dude Chenle was concern, she looked like she was crying on the way here and he actually guided her to WAYV's residence since she barged into DREAM's)

and after that night, Chenle strangely kept thinking of her and in result of him asking Winwin what is going on and he was shook to find out his biological sister was about to be in a arranged married with a psychopath and an abuser (and without thinking Chenle started to give out plans and he didn't realise Winwin was shook to hear how concern he is because Chenle IS NEVER to be the one to get in others business)

Winwin being the good older brother actually listens to Chenle and one was to ask her to stay in NCT's residence and to ask her to enroll into where Dream members are currently studying in which was Kun's college (eventually she enrolled and all of the Dream's partners' are sweet enough to greet her, making her comfortable as she joins the group and eventually Elinovas Angels)

everyday, Chenle sticks to her and both of them are already comfortable with each other, not knowing what was about to come in the future

and one frightening day, Chenle receives a hand-written letter from her and he came running almost crying to Winwin about what was written - he was shocked and hurt that she decided to surrender after receiving threats regarding to attack NCT's residence and Taeyong's company building (what he didn't tell Winwin is that she actually wrote a separate letter for Chenle, confessing that she actually fell for him - he was nice, patient and just his own self unlike other mafia man she knows. she also revealed that if she stayed longer, she would fall completely for Chenle)

that part actually made Chenle hurt the most, he could just cry on the spot but his mind was much faster to run to Winwin to save her from doing something stupid (which was marrying that bastard)

for the first time, out of all missions, he decided to personally rescue her along with WAYV members

iconic and everyone sees Chenle's protective and loving side, he is lowkey to his own members but for the first time, everyone could see his vulnerable side openly (and expect to see Chenle calming the almost raging Winwin and his sister who almost gonna cry and that made Chenle kind of more protective)

PARK JISUNG

POSITION ― [High-Rank] Tech Specialist

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― Strictly Unavailable [childhood friends to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

another cute tech specialist but Jisung is somewhat an angel while Chenle is the devil ajaja

an introvert so Taeyong decided to put him as the tech specialist, together with Chenle (and Taeyong sees Jisung as someone who is still a minor and although this organization is ruthless, Taeyong still cares for the young ones and wants them to be ready when they know they are ready themselves)

everyone babies him tbh and they are protective of him

even his own childhood best friend whom is a younger sister to Lucas, is protective of Jisung

this two are always together - yes, even when they are babies that's because both of their family are friends, close friends

and both Jisung's and his childhood friend's families are known for their own reputation (Jisung's would be having scary parents and hers would be having rich parents)

until one day during middle school, she approached Jisung with tears running down her cheeks - telling him that she had to go, which was to move out since something went wrong within her family business

you see middle school Jisung is different than the now!Jisung, he was happy back then, kind of cheerful although no one wants to befriend him and that's because of his childhood bff (she was always there for him, she went to his soccer tournament, she even attended all of his birthday parties)

Jisung didn't have the time to be shock nor surprised because it was that day itself where his best friend has to go (so throughout the day of his best friend's last day of school, he was being extra clingy with her, accompanying her everywhere)

he decided to follow her all the way to the airport, not surprised when his family was there too to bid their goodbyes' (kind of felt betrayed that they didn't tell him but ofc he didn't care for now since his main focus is his bff)

and everyone is shookth to see Jisung crying while hugging his bff and ofc she had to be the positive one, patting the boy's back - saying she would be back (but both of them know that isn't the case)

fast forward to 4 years later, Jisung meets her at the high school he attended along with some of the Dream members but surprisingly, she was with Lucas (he was again shook because he didn't know at that time that they were siblings and again, he felt betrayed but again that didn't matter)

Jisung didn't approach her though, that's because he didn't know what to feel (during that 4 years without being with each other, Jisung somehow went through the phase of being alone and at some point and as a result, he learn to be independent - and that's how he joined NCT)

until 2 days later where NCT and their partners' were invited for Taeyong's annual party and all of the members' siblings were invited - and from the corner, Jisung saw her along with Lucas (of course some of the Dream members have to call Jisung since the boy wasn't too attentive and Jisung swore that she looked like she didn't want to be there)

and he was right, Jisung followed her quietly - seeing her going to the swimming pool, sitting down on the edge while soaking her feet (the members encourage him to go to her though, and Jisung didn't waste any time to approach her)

the moment he said his first words and locking his eyes with hers, he was stunned on how beautiful she looks - the dim lights in the corners of the pool reflect through the water and to her (let's just say Jisung found out what had happened to her during the 4 years and he didn't know she suffered too - and they ended that conversation with an apology towards each other and hugs of comfort)

since then and fast forward to college, they were as close as ever and at some point, Jisung learnt that his best friend changed slightly (at one time, a group of boys somehow decided to tease him and she decided to step forwards and again Jisung is stunned to see that his best friend know how to fight)

and at one point of time, Jisung realizes that he is falling for his best friend when a boy in school approaches her to get her number but in the end he didn't get one (that's because she likes Jisung too hehe)

THE EXCELLENT ROOKIES

OSAKI SHOTARO

POSITION ― Rookie Tech Specialist

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― Unavailable but In Love, Deeply [best friends to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

1/2 of the A star rookies that was voted by the leaders of all 3 groups

he looks like an angel but he is more than that

he is actually good at hacking and so Taeyong decided to put him under Chenle and Jisung's care (although he is older than them, but Chenle and Jisung are more experienced)

we would wonder how Shotaro joined NCT? it was actually through his parents (unfortunately through a saddened incident of a syndicate barging into Osakis' residence, they were almost slaughtered but it was actually thanks to Yuta that they were saved - the NCT member was close with Shotaro so they keep tabs with each other)

his parents entrusted NCT on taking care of Shotaro (and since then Shotaro lives with the Dream members. he learns how to be independent with the help of the NCT members)

and with that he is immediately enrolled to schools that Kun owns (he had attended high school which when he met his now best friend)

he is a shy bub and at that time, he was already somehow a member of NCT (all rookies in NCT will definitely end up as a NCT member, and as usual all NCT members will gain huge attention in schools)

everyone was gossiping about a cute guy that looked like an otter joining the school and stuff and so Shotaro was being seen in the hallways (all girls adore him tbh, he is the only member who looks endearing - even when he doesn't smile)

Shotaro was so committed to school that he joined a club which was the basketball club ! (honestly the basketball club was shook and excited that they have a NCT member and all of them were nice and supportive guys which were rare to find)

and the cheerleaders room and basketball room is just 2 doors away from each other - guess who met one of the well-known cheerleader, yes our otter cheerleader

so what had happened was Shotaro and the boys were leaving to grab drinks and coincidentally, the door of the cheerleaders' room opens abruptly with one of the members exiting the room with her phone on her hand (and guess WHO accidentally bumped into her, yes Shotaro)

followed by hearing deep gasps and the sound of a phone crashing down on the floor, silence decided to cover the area and the first one to move is Shotaro to gather the broken phone while apologizing to her numerously (and what made Shotaro widen his eyes was hearing her answer which was "it's okay, well, at least i get to avoid my annoying older brother. don't worry the damage will be on me though")

and with that, she left quickly and the boys started started to ask Shotaro if he was okay or did she just threaten him and ofc Shotaro was confused on who they were talking about (then Shotaro was being told that she was actually NCT Johnny's adopted younger sister and they kind of had a fall out and stuff - there were rumors about her that she was being adopted and it was sad she had to find out by the rumors itself)

her face and her impression kind of stuck onto his mind that Shotaro couldn't help but steal glances towards her whenever he saw her in the hallway or during lunch (basically a tsundere to him)

according to Shotaro's point of view, she would always be seen with her own clique, in the middle of the girls who were gossiping while she was on the phone looking unbothered at the same time answering her friends (and somehow they both caught each other's eyes that Shotaro froze and as for her, she slight smiled at him before looking away *cue Shotaro panicking and feeling butterflies on his stomach*)

the next moment they met was at Taeil's party and as usual everyone was invited, which includes Shotaro - and when he arrived, guess who saw the girl looking grumpy as she followed her tall older brother? Shotaro of course (she doesn't look impressed at all as she follows her older brother as he was talking to his own friends - and at one time she slips off as she wander around)

and while Shotaro wanders to find the Dream members and her walking off making small talks with Dream members' partners, they again bumped into each other but this time she was about to fall by her back and Shotaro who has fast reflex caught her by her sides (that's when they had a FACE TO FACE eye contact and not wanting the situation to be an awkward one, she started the conversation first which lead them to exchange numbers)

which just an exchange of phone numbers, both of them became close which means they kind of know each others' habits and because she trusted Shotaro, she even told him her secrets - well not a secret since everyone found out from a rumor (Shotaro remembered that she called him in the middle of the night, as she was crying and being the gentleman he is, he came to her and they just sat on the stairs right outside of Dream's residence)

their friendship kind of grew from there till they graduate and attending the same college as the other Dream members (and of course they are accepted in the Dream clique since they know each other through the other members)

and Shotaro is slowly falling for her and everyone knows that especially the members - with how he looks at her and how he just communicates with her, he thinks he knows everything about her but there is just one secret he didn't know about her which will one day save Shotaro's life (will be revealed in her own profile)

JUNG SUNGCHAN

POSITION ― Rookie Sniper

RELATIONSHIP STATUS ― Complicated [childhood friends to lovers]

IMPORTANT SIBLING(S)/RELATIVE(S) ―

IMPORTANT FRIEND ―

CURRENT LOCATION & DESTINATION ― KOREA

another A star rookie that picked by the 3 leaders

kind of opposite with Shotaro tbh

he doesn't look like an angel and he isn't an angel due to his tragic past

though he was chosen because of his skills and abilities which is a sniper, Taeyong actually found him walking mindlessly on the street

was it a coincidence? well kind of. Taeyong was actually on his way to personally kill his parents for what they did to innocent people and seeing their son walking mindlessly with blood stains on his clothes, kind of coincidence isn't it?

so Taeyong kind of took him and that's when the mafia leader knew the kid somehow just found out the truth on what his parents did and he was ashamed tbh (ofc who wouldn't be ashamed finding out your parents kidnapped children, trained them to become weapons and somehow tortured them in the middle)

and that was like 5 years ago and a year passed, Sungchan lives in NCT Dream's residence at the same time attending high school along with the other Dream members

and one fine day, his class was introduced to a new classmate and Sungchan's eyes widened as soon as he recognized that stone-cold face and his classmates were definitely a positive kind of bunch as they excitedly say their 'hi's and hello's with excitement (Sungchan was the only one who didn't say his 'hi's and 'hello's, he was froze on his seat realizing that girl is his long-time childhood friend)

one thing that Sungchan loves about his childhood which he would always hold onto that whenever someone ask him regarding his childhood was actually play-dates with his childhood friend (whom is a younger sister to Taeil's wife and to Got7's leader, Lim Jaebeom)

his parents were somehow friends with hers and that's how the play-dates started, hence they attended the same middle school (both of them were the innocent ones when it comes to their parents' works but she was smart to find out things since her parents' were assassins)

and with Sungchan escaping from his house after sneaking and hearing their conversation, and he got caught by his parents' men in result of Sungchan getting physical by stabbing them, hence he out of nowhere cut off contact with his childhood friend

Sungchan knew she still recognize him after seeing her face grew more cold, after making a 2 second eye contact as she turned away to find her seat and through-out the day, she didn't even approach him instead she just walked passed him - and that went on for a month

until he decided to approach and let's just say it didn't go well in the middle - with him grabbing her arm since she just ignore him and them basically yelling at each other but what made Sungchan stop on the 'yelling competition' is seeing her tears finally falling and in result of Sungchan crying too after hearing her confessing what she felt for the passed few years without him

and so 2 childhood friends were reunited and one fine day as they were enjoying lunch in school, all hell break loose after hearing non-stop gunshots then seeing a notorious faces of syndicates that Sungchan knew (and strangely before Sungchan decided to make his move, his childhood friend was fast enough to hold onto his hand as they make a run for it)

they were smart to realize that those men were actually after Sungchan and Sungchan couldn't even process everything that day as he only remembered arriving to NCT's residence with all of the members basically running around (basically 127 and WAYV trying to calm down the panicked Kun at the same time worrying for Sungchan and Dream members worrying for Sungchan and his friend)

a few days later, Sungchan was acting weird towards her - avoiding her at the same time not replying to her texts which made her super annoyed, that one fine Saturday night, there was a loud knocks on Dream's residence door and poor Shotaro opens the door to see her raging and wanting to talk to Sungchan who was busy playing FIFA with Jisung and Chenle on the 2nd level

sweet Shotaro guided her and the atmosphere grew tense after Jisung see Sungchan's friend standing with cold glares towards Sungchan and ofc Jisung had to nudge on Chenle and he had to nudge onto Sungchan (honestly it's comedy peak) and ofc ChenJi had to escape from that suffocating atmosphere

Sungchan knew at that moment he was going to have another 'yelling competition' but instead she just sat beside Sungchan quietly and said "please don't do that, I already lost a few people that I love. you are the last person that I don't want to lose."

and they cried in each other's' arms again after finding out the truth about what happened to her family and Sungchan found out that she knew what had happened to him back then (and so much more that Sungchan wanted her to join NCT but she can't because of Taeyong agreeing with Jaebeom on business related stuff and weirdly about her too)

so from that moment onwards till college, there were no secrets between her and Sungchan and they continue to become that type of bestfriends with Sungchan asking her to come to parties or events that the members could invite someone and she would constantly had to remind him that his older sister is married to the oldest member in NCT and of course she has to come

but there was something that Sungchan couldn't tell her face to face and he had no choice to make it as a secret - and that would be confessing to her about his feelings (which was liking her ever since they were in middle school and falling in love with her in the present time)

[ MASTERLIST ]

[ N-DREAM'S SOULMATES ]

[ N-127 MOODBOARDS ] - [ 127'S SOULMATES ]

[ N-WAYV MOODBOARDS ] - [ N-WAYV's SOULMATES ]

#nct dream mafia au #nct shotaro mafia au #nct sungchan mafia au #nct dream scenarios #nct dream imagines #nct shotaro scenarios #nct sungchan scenarios #nct shotaro imagines #nct sungchan imagines

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recklessmark · 3 years

Text

chapter three: i love him forever, is it better than you yet?

—from DISCRETION series

Summary: you incidentally met a notorious CEO and your gut told you that you must claim this man. and even the fact that he’s engaged to someone else didn’t stop you from achieving what you want.

Pairing: CEO! Mark x Designer! Reader

Words: 1620

Warnings: none

—previous: chapter two-encounter

Ever since the day you met Kim Yeri, you haven’t even contacted Alicia. You’re busy designing the wedding dress for your rival. It sounds hilarious, you know though. You tiredly stretch out your shoulders, finding a contact in your phone.

“Hello?”, a low voice answers.

“Mark, it’s me. The wedding dress is done, do you want to have a look?”

“I’m having a meeting. Alright, you bring the dress to her house, just let her decide.”

You smirk, “You’re bold huh? Let your lovely fiancé meet her rival at her own house. You’re always provoking me!”. Hanging up the phone, you sigh. Your fingertips trace up the white fabric, mumbling something.

Following the address Mark sent, you quickly pull up to Yeri’s house. With your arms crossing on your chest, you walk into the villa, followed by a man who is carrying a suitcase.

“Sorry, who do you want to see?”, a woman politely asks.

“Designer, bringing Ms Kim her wedding dress. Can I come in?”

The woman instantly nods, smiling widely she leads you inside. You smirk, seems like this wedding is really important. What could you expect, that’s Mark Lee. Stopping in front of the door, you asked the man to give you the suitcase and walk inside alone. The first sight that you see is a woman sitting next to the balcony, the wind blowing up her hair slightly.

She’s an artist, you remind yourself.

The specific lavender fragrance of you draws Yeri’s attention, she immediately recognizes it. “How could you come here?”

“I don’t like talking, just try this dress on.” You open the suitcase, revealing the wedding dress.

Noticing the doubt in her eyes, you casually sit on the couch. “Don’t worry, I have my own rules. I won’t kill you while you’re trying the dress on, there’s nothing suspicious inside the dress either. Losing my reputation just because of a girl like you is embarrassing.”

Yeri tightens her fists, she doesn’t move a little.

You raise a brow, “What? You don’t like it huh? Mark took his time begging me to bring it here for you and you don’t want it? Haiz alright, I’ll tell him later.”

Seeing you have the intention to leave, Yeri frantically stands up. “Wait! I didn’t mean it. Please wait a minute.”

You happily sit down again, wondering how naive this girl is, to the point it’s ridiculous to you. Mark Lee, there would be a gun to his head and he still never begs anyone for anything. She thinks she’s all that matter huh?

Trying the dress on inside the bathroom, Yeri has to admit your talent although she doesn’t like you. The gown fluffy with layers of velvet fabric, on top is a layer of lace, the white color vibrant as cloud. Some little diamonds are attached to the top of the dress, sparkles like stars. You even bring her a pair of high heels, a pair of velvet gloves and a crystal necklace that goes with the dress. Yeri can’t help but surprised, you’re truly professional and delicate.

“Miss, did you sleep in there?”, your impatience kicking in you, you hate waiting.

Yeri quickly opens the door and steps outside. You stand up, giving the woman an overall look from top to toes.

“No need to look at me with that cautious eyes.”, you mutter out, your hands touch the waist of the dress. “Hmm, your waist is quite small than I estimated. Take it off, I have to fix it.”

Hearing you, she ironically touching her waist. “Really? I think it fits well...”

“Clothes were born to dignify human, at least to me. Furthermore this is your wedding dress, just take it off.” You turn back to sit on the sofa, waiting for Yeri to change.

When she walks out, carrying the white dress with both arms, she hesitantly asks. “When Mark comes he can’t see me wearing it, can him?”

You smirk mockingly, so she wants to dress up prettily for her lover. You don’t mean to look down on her but she’s way more mediocre than you think. “If you want to wear something that doesn’t fit you for that man to see, just keep the dress yourself.”

Yeri heard that, realizes she’s too shallow. On the other hand, your personality seems to match with Mark’s unironically, both of you always seek for perfection.

“You’re definitely the best designer. Mark did found a lot of designers but none of them works delicately like you.”, Yeri hands you the dress, smiling softly.

You put the dress back inside the suitcase, locking it. “Miss girl, I hope that you don’t think that I’m a nice a person. I don’t like you so don’t act like we’re a friends!”, you give her a cold glance. The smile on Yeri’s face faded away slightly. She flattered herself too much, these small reconciliations are like ridiculous kid games to you.

“You really think that Mark will come?”, you naturally flop yourself on the bed.

“What do you mean?”, the girl frowns.

You chuckle, tracing the rings on your fingers. “A soon-married man, despite how busy he is, he will take time to see his future wife in the wedding dress. People always say a woman is prettiest when she wears a wedding dress. So what do you think? Being an artist still requires a grey matter right?”

Yeri’s body shakes lightly, how could she not know. You mean that she’s nothing matter to Mark!

A memory of three years ago playing in her head. When Mark came to her exhibition, she immediately fell for this man. Then Mark occasionally offered Yeri to do some paintings for him, for unknown reasons. The relationship grew up gradually. She has always being so arrogant about her boyfriend, although many women have a dream to be with him but they all gave up without you interfering. She always thought that Mark told them he already had a girlfriend. And now, with your appearance, she realizes she was flattering herself. If she actually thinks about it, why would Mark choose her, a normal artist. She definitely can not compete with you, both appearance and wealthiness.

You smile, “What did you think for so long Ms Kim, Mark texted me to say you sorry cause he can’t come, he’s too busy.”

Yeri frantically snatches your phone, which was being hold in your hand. You smirk, Mark sent it when Yeri was trying the dress on but you want to make the game better. Certainly the woman can see it herself, ‘delivered 30 minutes ago’. She tries to ease her anger, squeezing your phone in her fist. “Why would you do this?”

“Why? Because I like Mark!”

Your words make her mad even more, “Like? You don’t even have the right to say it! I love him, 3 years! Who the hell you think you are? To steal Mark from me?”

Her reaction makes you satisfied. All that naivety, tenderness is a cover for her true being. She’s tearing off her mask now, by herself, in front of you.

“Oh really? So I also love Mark! I love him forever! Is it better than you yet?”

Yeri throws your phone on the floor, “Y/N L/N!”, she screams.

You pick up your shattered phone, shoving it inside your jacket. “Only by saying, ten mouths of yours still can not compete with mine. Look at yourself, I’m cruel, how about you?”

—

You’ve been working your ass off since that day at Yeri’s house, you don’t even have time to see Mark. The dress is done, stored in a suitcase that is probably somewhere in your office, you don’t remember. Your desk is full of white fabric, you tiredly lay your back against the chair, closing your eyes.

Knock! Knock!

“Come in!”, your voice sounds raspy.

You aren’t even bothered to open your eyes but you know for sure who that is by breathing the air. “I don’t want to eat.”

“You wanna die huh?”

“Go out!”

“No!”

You grit your teeth, open your eyes which is displaying some red blood veins due to overworking. “Alicia! What do you want?!”

Alicia almost dropped the tray of sandwich and a glass of milk on her hands. Staring at your eye bags, with the vein showing in your eye balls clearly, she knows that you didn’t sleep for days. “You only drink milk to keep yourself alive, didn’t have a good sleep huh?”

“Yeah the exact moment I’m taking a nap, you come in and disturb me!”

She furiously looks at you, putting the tray of food on your table. “You should eat first. The tickets are booked, the flight is on this Sunday.”

“What’s the day of today?”, you ask, take a bite on the sandwich.

“Miss Y/N, today is Saturday, we’re flying tomorrow!”

You instantly put the halfway-eaten sandwich back on the plate, “Go out, I have a lot of work to do!”, you take a sip of milk.

“Hey but why I can’t call you?”. You glare at the phone on the floor, “Dead”, you sigh.

Alicia picks your phone up and then brings the tray out. You’re having a fashion show in France, but you totally forgot about it, because you were playing too much. Alicia is your manager, she organizes all your works, however she doesn’t know much about the “wedding dress” thing. But you said it’s really important, this “Flechazo” collection of you can not have a single mistake.

Alicia sighs, glancing at the closed door of your office. All of a sudden, the front door is opened.

“I come to see Y/N.”, it’s a familiar voice.

—next: chapter four-you’re my first kiss

taglist: @nuoyii @jjikyuu @generantionct @keemburley @skrtbeepbeep @sunshinedhyuck

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angrylizardjacket · 3 years

Text

it's in the blood // this is tradition

Summary: Children inherit all sorts of traits from their parents. Not all these traits are good.

"My reputation preceded me before I was born."

[ charlotte & lola au ]

A/N: 2292 words. Halsey's new album killed me on the spot. i talk a lot about the next gen being mirrors of their parents, but i'd like to go into detail about that not necessarily being a positive. @misscharlottelee this made me feel things. i love these kids.

Warnings: overdose mention, addiction discussion, mentions of drug abuse.

Penelope Dingley-Lee

Tommy can count the amount of times he'd seen Razzle truly angry on one hand, and here and now he can see it again, written all over his neice's face. He'd thought she would look like Charlie when she's angry, and occasionally she does, the way her lip curls derisively, dismissively, that's very reminiscent of his cousin, but here and now, her blue eyes are hazy, cloudy, and her lips twist with an irate arrogance that is worryingly familiar.

Angry and high and wearing clothes that don't quite match, in this moment she's exactly her father's daughter.

She's been in the papers again. Her tits have been in magazines again. Tommy bites down on his instinctual desire to repremand her; she'd call him a hypocrite, call him an old man, tell him to keep his opinions to himself while she could still buy his sex tape out of a shady car boot down the street.

Charlie was like that too, on occasion, wit too quick for him to keep up with. When she got into a mood like this, Tommy didn't have to worry so much; usually Razzle would egg her on, but knew when to pull her back.

"It's my god given, motherfucking right to go feral -" he'd heard Charlie back in the eighties holler at three in the morning, high on amphetamines and waving a gossip rag above her head. Razzle would be on the sofa, equally fucked up, but gazing at her like she hung the stars in the sky.

"Lola gets photographed at least once a month stark naked along the strip like it's a sport, why is my Playboy shoot a national crisis?! My tits are fantastic!"

"They are, my love," Razzle nods seriously, and Tommy pulls his pillow from beneath his head, trying to either block out their voices through the thin walls, or maybe smother himself. The girl beside him, the groupie whose name he doesn't know, asks blearily why there's so much yelling. Tommy doesn't answer.

A week later, Tommy is the one to bail out Charlie and Razzle for public indecency, and they're both beaming from ear to ear.

Here in the present, Penny is draped out on the sofa, laughing low and pleased as she watches TV.

"TMZ blurred out my tits," she snorts, "cowards."

"Penny..." he can't help the faintly disappointed notes in his voice when he says her name.

"Thomas, I've read The Dirt," Penny fires back venemously. Hypocrite he hears in her tone, you have no power over me.

There's something hollow in her eyes in the photos he sees of her in the papers. She wears her father's inflluence and her heart on her crushed velvet sleeve, on the arm of a shallow, pretty, band boy who plays badly and loudly. But she laughs louder, though tthe sound is low and unconvincing if anyone bothered to listen hard enough, and Tommy wonders if he has enough dark hair dye left for when that boy breaks her heart.

Jupiter Lee

Tommy is proud to watch Jupiter on stage, but he is afraid.

Their anger is something he remembers from Lola, the way they cling to the past with vitriol echoes their mother, but on stage, they drink up the attention, get high off the love the audience gives, and he sees himself in those moments.

A child of addicts, Jupiter had drawn lines in the sand for themselves that they refused to cross; no alcohol, no drugs, and they'd stayed loyal to that. But highs come in all forms; they simply picked a different kind of poison without realising.

On stage, halfway between the gutter and a god complex, Tommy knows the smile they wear all too well.

Rebellion from Jupiter didn't shock the world like it did when it was Penny's name in the papers. Jupiter's trajectory was spot on in the eyes of the public, but rebellion wouldn't be the thing that broke them.

Once, so long ago that it's a miracle the memory survived, Tommy remembers asking Lola what she would be doing if she wasn't with the band. Lola gave him an easy, bleary smile, laughing sweetly when she told him that one way or another, she'd be here. In the moment it overwhelms him with love. In hindsight it breaks his heart.

"Come on, I think this is inevitable," Jupiter smiles on television as an interviewer asks them the same question; if they weren't making music what they'd be doing, "as if I'd do anything other than this."

'Don't you know where I come from?' is left unspoken, but Tommy still hears it.

He tries to picture himself in a life without the world at his feet the way he has now. No image comes to mind. Nothing else makes sense. Even if he wanted to do something else, wanted to grow up to be something else, he couldn't even begin to picture it for himself, tragedy and all.

They play their parts. They let history repeat itself. Jupiter makes mistakes Tommy and Lola had already learned from. Penny plays Jupiter's conciousness until the role grates on her nerves, diving head first into chaos, taking Jupiter with her with little convincing.

Tommy remembers this too.

When the world looks at Penny and Jupiter, they like to remember how Lola was seen as a bad influence on Charlotte, but forget that Tommy would have followed Charlotte in to Hell without hesitation.

Leo "Seo" Sixx

Lola has google alerts set up for her son, Seo, because he disappears for months without warning. Tommy asks how he is, and Lola looks to her phone with a tight smile, telling him that he's competeing in a skateboarding competition in Prague. She learned that from Twitter.

Seo comes and goes without warning, and talks to his siblings more than his parents. He loves them, but he hasn't allowed himself to stop for years. He doesn't know how. Then again, neither did Lola or Nikki.

"Jupiter thinks a lot about legacy, don't they?" He's in Tommy's kitchen, eating a poptart, when Tommy returns home one friday evening. He's waiting for Penny and Jupiter to finish getting ready, the three of them going out.

"Do your parents know you're in town?" Tommy asks with faint amusement, though there's a twinge of guilt in his gut when Leo considers that he should probably let them know. Says he forgot. Tommy's not sure if he believes him; like his parents before him, he tends to leave a lot unsaid. It's part of his charm, the world seems to think, but Tommy knows all to well how deliberate of an act it can be.

"Jup's got all this stuff in their head about legacy and who they should be," he continues his earlier thought, "which I guess makes sense, they tie a lot of themselves up in their identity," he shrugs, then, "I don't know Leo."

Tommy's not sure if he's talking about the grandfather he's named after, or himself.

"You've given this a lot of thought," Tommy says quietly, humouring him.

"I think a lot," Seo responds, "I've been thinking about going back on my meds, its weird being off of them." Of course this concerns Tommy, who knows objectively that Seo isn't his kid, but he's close enough that Tommy feels like he's allowed to be concerned. "I'm worried a doctor's note isn't going to be enough to let me compete at the Olympics on speed," falls too casually from Seo's lips, alarming Tommy in an instant. Though it must clearly show on his face, as Seo breaks out into an apologetic grin, "dextroamphetamine, for my ADHD. I've been trying to wean off it for the Olympics, it's been hard -" but his next words, said so blithe, so casual, have Tommy's heart stopping in his chest as he's thrown back thirty years, "I've been on them since I was like eleven years old; it was great, I could think, like the right amount, but now I... I think everything. I feel everything. Its a lot." He shrugs, like he didn't just become an echo of his father.

Seo's parents both died twice from overdoses, and now their son feels like he can't function without amphetamines.

Objectively Tommy knows that they work for Seo, that he's not abusing them he simply uses them to help him function, but the irony is not lost on him. It's a lot to unpack. He doesn't think to ask about the Olympics; it slips his mind until he sees Seo and a silver medal on his Twitter feed.

Lola calls Tommy in tears. She's proud, but she wishes she'd known, wishes she'd been able to watch it live, or go over and support him in person.

No-one in Seo's life seems to fully know or understand his intentions or actions, no-one can predict his next move. He puts up a bright facade, but like his parents before him, he does not trust the world to know him.

They don't know where he goes in the few months after the Olympics, all they know is that he doesn't come home.

Cerie "CerieThree" Sixx

Since she'd turned sixteen, Tommy has never seen Cerie Sixx without a smile. That is a very deliberate choice that she's made.

She's made a choice to rise above the percieved grime of her origins. She's halfway across the country, smiling for a camera she can control, editing her image before she lets it out into the world. Cerie Three - even the name the world knows reflects this; she's picked apart the context she was born into, disecting it, deciding which was useful to show the world, disposing of the rest.

She speaks warmly to her family, from what Tommy can gather, but the people on the peripheries of their life seem more like associates in the coldest sense of the world. Her smile doesn't reach her eyes half the time when she sees Tommy, and she shakes his hand when her brothers will hug him. The internet is closer to her than he is.

Cerie looks the most like her mother of all her siblings; she's 21, the exact same age Lola was when she met Tommy, but half the time he can barely see the resemblence. Lola had let the world see a villain at that age; Cerie had learned from that, had rejected that, rejected the cold, hard humanity of her mother's fronting. Cerie wanted to be perfect. Cerie had to be perfect, hyper aware of her own image, like her siblings seem to be, but the way she'd so effectively shaped her public identity was kind of terrifying.

Perhaps this was what it was like for people who didn't know Lola, only allowed to know the image she put out into the world, or people who only knew Nikki for his stage presence.

But the more Tommy thinks about it, the more he remembers just how effectively Lola had wrapped the band around her little finger when she set her mind to it, how she talked her way around exectives despite being dressed like she'd woken up in the gutter and fucked up on any number of drugs. Lola understood people, and it seemed Cerie did too.

Cerie Sixx, twenty one, doesn't stop creating content, doesn't stop studying, and doesn't stop smiling. Two of those three things are inhereted traits, inhereted determination, and the third is a choice.

Cyrus Sixx

Though Cyrus had inhereted much of his parent's musical talent, the same way Jupiter had, Cyrus had also inhereted a love of the high life. Even so, he's so full of love, kissing his mother on both cheeks before he goes out to get shitfaced in the bars she was decades before he was even born.

He works hard, at his job, on his music, but his partying matches it just as well. He knows exactly how far he has to fall before he meets the depths his parents' had sunk to, and though he doesn't voice this, his arrogance comes across in his actions.

There'd always be someone to pull him away from swan diving to rock bottom. He takes that for granted, and keeps getting closer and closer.

The only one of Nikki and Lola's children who still lives at home, he's the only one like them in the way they'd feared.

"He's going to have more success than he will ever be able to comprehend," Nikki had told Tommy, the day after Cyrus had been admitted to hospital after staying up for four days while high and obsessing over a song he had been working on. Nikki had found him having a fit after having fallen from his desk chair. Now, sitting on Tommy's patio in the sunset, he looks tired, he looks afraid, "if he doesn't end up killing himself first."

A month ago, the fire department and the police had to pull him, kicking and screaming and bareass naked from a tree in the middle of town. His parents had bailed him out, had felt a familiar sting of guilt as they find themselves reminded of their own youthful exploits. They repremand him, of course, but they both know the only reason they stopped climbing trees was because there had been no-one to pick them up after.

Nikki sees himself in his sons mistakes, but he'd had to learn concequences the hard way.

Tommy loves his family and all it's strange branches, as well as their raucous youth, but his closest friends were some of the most volatile people he'd known, and somehow he'd forgotten that as time as taken people and memories from him.

But these children were made in their image.

#nikki sixx #tommy lee #razzle dingley #nikki sixx x oc #tommy lee x oc #razzle dingley x oc #the dirt #motley crue #the dirt imagine #motley crue imagine #charlotte&lola #lola & charlotte #the angry lizard writes #the pack

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shinidamachu · 3 years

Note

Do you have thoughts on the Aang/Ozai showdown at the end?

Zuko: please. The real hero is a random rock the Avatar.

The final battle was amazing, from an animation poin of view. The colors, the fighting sequence, the symbolism, Aang finally mastering all elements. Just very exciting and satisfying to watch, because it was something that the audience was hoping for since episode one. And they delivered it.

From a writing point of view, though? It was less of a showdown and more of a cop-out. See, I'm not saying, by any means, that Aang should have killed Ozai. Quite the opposite. Not only because it was a children's show. Not only because Aang was a traumatized, non violent, 12 years old. But also because it made sense for the character and for the core themes of the show.

Don't get me wrong, Ozai one hundred per cent deserved to die. Aang himself stated that the world would be a better place without Ozai in it. I just don't think he should be the one to do it. At the same time, is on his hands that Ozai's fate lays and no one else can make that decision for him.

So if killing Ozai off could turn him into a Fire Nation martyr anyway and Aang refuses to do so because of his pacifist principles, what's the other option to defeat the guy and end the war? The authors went with energy bending and, honestly, I thought it was brilliant for a series of reasons.

First, ending Ozai's life seems like the obvious choice, an easy way out. I love the concept of Aang refusing to do what's expected of him and choosing instead to finish the war on his own terms, without compromising who he is, because in theory, that would mean he would have to go out of his way to find a different solution, in a perfect shout out to Bumi's words in The King Of Omashu: "you must master the four elements and confront the Fire Lord. And when you do, I hope you will think like a mad genius."

Second, in a show where bending is intimately related to one's very being, the questions begs to be raised: how much taking someone's bending away is better, more ethical or less cruel than actively killing them? Because it's a fundamental part of who they are, of their soul. Ty Lee had the abiliity to block chis, temporarily making people unable to bend. And it was a terrifying thing for the people she used the technique on.

Lastly, it ends the "killing Ozai would turn him into a Fire Nation martyr" for good, because (ATLA COMICS SPOILER ALERT) Aang let him leave without his bending and a significant amount of people still worshipped the guy to the point of planning coups on the down low and sending Zuko death threats left and right, so we basically got the same result, but Ozai remained an ever present threat to the peace Aang fought to achieve.

The problem, as people smarter and more eloquent than I have pointed out countless times, wasn't the energy bending solution, it was the way it was introduced and then executed.

Aang: hey! Look at these weird Lion Turtle things.

Looking back now, this scene from The Library was obviously foreshadowing the finale, so the Lion Turtle reveal wasn't pulled out of thin air. It had a purpose. Considering that this episode, from Book Two, mentioned the Lion Turtle, who would later teach Aang how to energy bend and that The Guru, also from Book Two, introduced the arc of Aang having to let go of his attachment to Katara in order to master the Avatar State, I can only assume that the original intentions of the writers were very clear:

Aang doesn't want to kill Ozai but he also doesn't want to let go of Katara. That's the catch! To "energy bend" his way out of murder, he has to master the Avatar State. His conflict here, is much greater than before because now Katara is a factor in the equation as well. He either kills Ozai, keeps his attachment and gives up the Avatar State or he masters it, defeats Ozai by removing his bending but has to let go of Katara in the process. It's awesome because it's the hardest possible choice a character like Aang could be forced to make. And we knew he would ultimately do the right thing, but regardless of what he decides, he still loses something important to him, he still has to make a huge sacrifice.

Of course, none of that happens. This was the first and only time the Lion Turtle was brought up. The “letting Katara go” arc was unceremoniously killed alongside Aang the second Azula shot that lightning in Ba Sing Se, but differently from the Avatar, whom Katara ressurrected, it was never brought back. And it’s a shame. Because The Library was the perfect episode to expand on the Lion Turtle and energy bending mystery.

And the finale? It was the perfect episode for Aang to do what he failed to do in Ba Sing Se: to let Katara go and achieve the Avatar State by his own merits, sacrificing something he wanted for the greater good. The way he hid into a cocoon of rocks? It would have been a great call out to the little crystal tent he made in his fight with Azula when he decided to give the Guru’s advices a try. And it would also symbolize rebirth in the same way Katara breaking him out of the iceberg did. Because now he had finally reached the other side of the river and he is no longer the same person he once was.

But the narrative decided, instead, to rob Aang from any growth, from any substancial change, from any interesting arc. They went with the “love is the most important thing” approach to justify him honlding on to Katara. And I could have bought it if they hadn’t been so dishonest about it.

First: if you love someone, you let them go. Attachment and love are two very different things. No one ever told Aang to stop loving Katara. He was told to let her go. And it makes sense because he was attached to her in a way that wasn’t healthy for either of them, and was keeping him from achieving his full spiritual potential, something he should care a little more about, given his upbring.

Second, in the person of Iroh, arguably the wisest character in the show, Aang is told that he is right for choosing love over power. But this is a false equivalence because it’s not what Aang is doing. The scene makes it look like he is seeking power for the sake of power. That’s not the case. The Avatar State is an inherent power, meaning Aang already has it. It’s part of who he is. He just needs to unblock it and learn how to control it. And he has to do that not for personal gain, but to put an end in the war.

A war that took almost everything from Katara, the person he loves. Aside from Aang himself, she is the person who would benefit the most from him learning to control the Avatar State, since she is the one who has to calm him down every time he accidentaly triggers it and winning the war is a very personal goal of her. Now, this is just conjecture but I firmly believe that even if Katara was secretly in love with Aang (which I don’t buy), she would be the first to tell his it’s okay to let her go. But alas, she wasn’t even aware of this conflict. A conflict she played a key part in.

That being said, I do think that the Ozai dillema was introduced too late. It should have been explored before the Day of Black Sun, giving Aang plenty of time to search for a different solution. It also never made sense to me why killing Ozai wasn’t a problem then. Apparently the explanation that I was supposed to stick with is that Aang was naive. He didn’t know people expected him to kill the Fire Lord until Zuko asked him what he would do when he faced Ozai, since violence wasn’t the answer. But I honestly struggle to accept this because, yes, Aang was naive.

But not that naive. Not at that point. After episodes like The Siege of the North and The Avatar State, I just don’t buy he didn’t know what people wanted him to do. Plus, Aang has an evasive fighting style, based on always being one step ahead of his opponent. To do that, he has to plan beforehand. What was his plan to confront Ozai in the Day of Black Sun, after everything he went through? Talk to him? Arrest the guy? If that’s the case, shouldn’t it at least be discussed with the gang? It’s never addressed.

Then comes the finale. Aang’s moment of truth. The event we’ve all been hoping for. The one that will turn him into a legend. And Aang is losing. He can’t win without killing Ozai or controling the Avatar State to take his bending away. What will he sacrifice to become a hero? His morals or his attachment? Answer: neither! Because the writers decided he should have everything without give up nothing. So they miraculously make a convenently sharped rock hit the exact right spot in the perfect time unblock his chakra, allowing him to enter the Avatar State.

I’m not even gonna talk about how this is most definitely not how chakras work, because it’s not really my place. But I am gonna talk about the tragic (not to say hilarious) fact that, by trying to make Aang have his cake and eat it too, the writers ultimately made a fucking rock the responsible for Aang’s success. Not his cleverness, not his hard work, not his altruism: a rock. If that rock wasn’t there, in the right place, at the right time, then what? Would Aang finally have done what he had to do, or would he be killed, allowing the war to continue?

That’s my issue with it. That, and the fact that they had no trouble addressing delicate topics, but didn’t have enough courage to let the 12 years old protagonist end up alone. Because, of course, children can’t understand the hero not getting the girl. Right?

RIGHT?

Aang managed to defeat Ozai and get the girl even though there was a whole season dedicated to build up an arc in which he would have to let her go to succed. Even though their last one on one interaction before their last kiss was Aang screaming at her and storming off, while Katara reprimended him for walking away from the issue. Even if he had been acting more and more possessive and entitled when it came to her affection. Even if Katara had shown no real interest in him that way before she suddenly does. But what do I know? Maybe she was hit by a magic rock too.

Aang and Katara happened at the cost of Aang’s character development. Fandom might think the rival ship was harmed the most by it, but that’s not true. Aang was. And it’s really sad. He is an amazing character and he deserved to be the hero of his own story, to have his beliefs tested and to come out of his journey irrevocably changed, not locked inside a plot armor.

#ATLA #Sidmailing #Avatar The Last Airbender

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mindmeltonabun-blog · 3 years

Text

Tale of the Nine Tailed: Analysis and Theories of Ep 8

Welcome to another edition of Mind Melt On A Bun’s analysis and theories of TOTNT. I hope you all will enjoy this post, but fair warning it’s once again another VERY LONG POST! So if you want to turn on your thinking cap and face the risk of your brain blowing up into a million pieces then feel free to keep reading!

Snail Bride and Her Husband

Ureongi gaksi (우렁이 각시) or Snail Bride is a Korean legend which tells about a poor farmer who breaks a taboo and marries a woman who is actually a snail. One day while working in the rice paddy field, the farmer says to himself, “Who will I eat this rice with?”. To which a voice replied, “With me.”. Having heard this voice, the man turned around to see who it was, but only saw a snail. After having heard that, the man found that each day after returning home from work, a meal was always prepared for him.

The farmer was curious of who had been preparing his meal. So one day he pretended to go to work in order to catch a sight of whoever it was that had been preparing his meal. To his surprise, he had seen a beautiful woman emerging from the snail shell. Having been blown away by her beauty, he immediately asked her to live with him instead of returning to the snail shell. However, the woman told him it was not time yet and to be patient. Being the persistent man that he was, he eventually got the Snail to marry him.

The farmer became plagued with the fear that his beautiful Snail Bride might one day be taken away from him so he instructed her to never leave the house. The Snail Bride listened to her husband and did as she was told until one day when her mother-in-law told the Snail Bride to go and deliver lunch to the farmer. And so, the Snail bride did as she was told. However, along the way, the Magistrate who was enamoured by her beauty decided to kidnap her and make her his bride. Despite the farmer’s many efforts, he never found his Snail Bride and ended up dying of a broken heart and being reborn as a blue bird. Tragic I know !!!

Anyways, when applying this story to TOTNT, you will find that Ji Ah’s boss had shared many similar characteristics to the farmer from the Snail Bride myth such as persistency. Other clues that supports the ideal that Ji Ah’s boss is the farmer can be seen in the conversation between Green Juice Lady. The first clue is his fear of flying. This could be seen as a side effect of him being reborn in a previous life as a blue bird. I bet if Ji Ah used those Eyebrows of a Tiger Glasses, she would see him as a bird blue.

The second clue was in what the Green Juice Lady said, “ What are you doing here?”. I interpreted this as her knowing him in the past as well as her not expecting to see the farmer’s reincarnated self in the same vicinity as the Snail Bride.

Green Juice Lady Origin

In Korean mythology, there is a creature by the name of “Dueoksini/Dokeoksini” (두억시니는 ) that kills you by crushing your head (figuratively or literally). In Korean mythology, this creature is seen as an in between of a dokkaebi/goblin and a yokai. Because Dueoksinis have been mostly been forgotten throughout Korean literature, they are usually refer to as being a type of Korean Yokai.

Or the way I like to view the Green Juice Lady is that she's basically Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, and the Boggart rolled into one. After all its like Frank Hebert once wrote in Dune: “Fear is the mind killer”.

Taluipa

In TOTNT, the character Taluipa is seen as being the goddess of birth and fate, Sansin Halmoni. Besides having the ability of controlling birth and fate, Taluipa also can also foresee the future as well as grant immortality (i.e her husband). Given all of this, it is likely that her child, Bok Gil, would’ve had some pretty powerful abilities because he came from such a superior mother.

Now not much is known about Taluipa’s son other than he had committed suicide. Furthermore, the act of suicide was seen as a such a bad taboo that ensured he could never be reborn/reincarnated. In the context of TOTNT, it is inferred that even if you sacrifice yourself for the one you love, it is still considered suicide.

Lee Yeon’s Original Plan For the Imoogi

I think originally Lee Yeon had planned to take the Imoogi into himself and subsequently kill himself. However, when faced with the possibility that this would mean Lee Yeon could not be reincarnated, Ah Eum decided it was better that Lee Yeon killed her because at least she could be reincarnated.

Now you may think that well if Ah Eum sacrificed herself for the one she loves, isn’t that contradictory to what I said earlier about how sacrificing yourself for the one you love is still considered suicide and thus meant you couldn’t be reborn? It really doesn’t and here’s why. Remember that at this time, Ah Eum already had the Imoogi inside of her so her death by Lee Yeon’s hands were not seen as a sacrificial suicide. Rather, it was seen as him killing a greater evil and preventing the deaths of hundreds. Thus, this meant that Ah Eum could be reincarnated. Had Ah Eum ran into Lee Yeon’s knife or stabbed herself in the temporary moment she gain back control of her body, then that would’ve been seen as sacrificial suicide.

If both Lee Yeon and Ah Eum were able to find a loop hole at the very last minute that ensured Ah Eum’s reincarnation, I am sure that this time around Lee Yeon will be able to find a better loop hole given that he has had more time to than previously as well as learning from his past mistakes as it pertains to the Imoogi. I largely believe that this loop hole will have something to do with the favor Lee Yeon had asked of Taluipa’s husband. Maybe the favor Lee Yeon is asking Taluipa’s husband for is the elixir of life that is located in the Underworld (Hint: read my posts about Princess Bari). I think that Lee Yeon will want it just in case either him or Ji Ah dies in their battle against the Imoogi. Such an elixir could revive them!

Taluipa’s Son/Bok Gil = The Imoogi

As previously mentioned, I had theorized that Taluipa’s son, Bok Gil, must have been one hell of a powerful being given that his mom was a powerful Goddess herself. As to what those abilities could have been, it is still a mystery. However, I feel like his powers would’ve been connected the ones Taluipa had (i.e birth, fate, and ability to see what others cannot see). Again, not much was mentioned about him other than he committed suicide and that his name was Bok Gil.

Now let’s look at the Imoogi, we know that he has the power of life (bringing the bird back to life), death (sucking the life out of his nannies), and rebirth (being reborn as that boy).

By the way, I think it’s interesting that the cycle of life, death, and rebirth is represented as an “Ouroboros” or a snake eating its tail. Coincidence? I think not.

Anyways back to what else we know about the Imoogi. We know that he was born in a leap year as well as being born in a place between the living and dead (btw Lee Yeon was born in 420AD also a leap year..possible connection somehow?). The Imoogi could also see what others don’t see such as your soul and your deepest emotions.

If you think about it, when Bok Gil committed suicide, his soul/body was neither in the land of the living nor the dead. He was in between those two realms or in limbo. Connecting this to the fact that the Imoogi said he was born in a place between the living and dead, there is a significant possibility that Bok Gil is indeed the Imoogi. Furthermore, if you look at the kinds of power the Imoogi has and the powers that Taluipa has, you will find that they are strangely similar or related. If that doesn’t convince you enough then just compare the voice of Bok Gil to that of the Imoogi!

Imoogi and Lee Yeon

Initially, I had thought the Imoogi had wanted Lee Yeon for his fox bead (a kind of Yeouiju) so that it could become a dragon, but now I am beginning to think there’s more to the story than just Lee Yeon’s bead. If indeed Bok Gil is the Imoogi then I am left to wonder what kind of relationship did Lee Yeon have with Bok Gil before he died. Furthermore, could Lee Yeon have been part of the reason why Bok Gil committed suicide in the first place? If Lee Yeon had been part of the reason why Bok Gil committed suicide, then I can totally understand why Bok Gil/Imoogi would want to try to exact his revenge and/or anger on Lee Yeon. Maybe Bok Gil was jealous of Lee Yeon for getting more attention from his own parents than he was or maybe Lee Yeon got the girl he was interested in or maybe Lee Yeon was really mean and had bullied him or maybe the person who Bok Gil had died for (aka a loved) was somehow connected to Lee Yeon. I don’t know, I’m just purely theorizing and for all we know all the Imoogi wants is just Lee Yeon’s fox bead so that it can become a dragon.

Black and White Imagery

Other things I found interesting is the usage of black and white in Ep 8. For example, the shirts Lee Rang and Lee Yeon wears, the colors of the stones of the “Go Game”, and the cars in the background of the parking lot Lee Yeon was in.

Typically, the color combination of black and white represents Yin/Yang, Good/Evil, and Life/Death. In either cases, the concept is the same. Both represent the concept of dualism or the ideal that everything is interdependent, interconnected, and interrelated. Meaning you can’t have Yin without Yang, Good without Evil, and Life without Death. Or in the case of Lee Yeon standing in between the two cars and the two doors, both Lee Rang and Ah Eum/Ji Ah’s lives and fate were interdependent, interconnected, and interrelated to that of Lee Yeon’s.

Episode 9 Predictions

Lee Yeon will get Lee Rang out of the Forest of the Preta and Lee Rang will realize that his brother never really abandoned him in the first place. Additionally, their time in the Forest of the Preta is like a blessing in disguise because it helped both brothers to resolve the misunderstanding that occurred 600 years ago.

Now with Ji Ah, I think she will overcome her fear of the car accident. However I think she will be faced with another fear of hers which is seeing Lee Yeon die. I think she will overcome this too, but the Green Juice Lady will pull out one last trick out of the bag. Instead of making Ji Ah relieve some of her worst nightmares, she will make Ji Ah live in a world where all her dreams have come true such as having her parents back and Lee Yeon by her side. The Green Juice Lady will do this as a way to make sure that Ji Ah would never want to leave. After all, why leave a world where all your dreams come true right? Plus, Ji Ah’s mentality will become weaker because she will start to believe that the dream world she is living in is a reality. Therefore, in order to win against the Green Juice Lady, one must have a strong mind that is not killed by fear nor weaken by fantastical delusions.

This kind of reminds of the creature, “Black Mercy”, from Super Girl. Briefly, “Black Mercy” is alien parasite that makes its host dream their perfect fantasy world while it feeds off of them. The only way for the host to get the “Black Mercy” to detach itself is for the host to realize that the fantasy world they are living in is not real. So for Ji Ah, maybe she would have to do the same on her own or it would take Lee Yeon coming into her dreamworld in order for her to realize this.

Last Remarks

For all of those who are still left confused as to why Lee Yeon chose to save Lee Rang first, you can check it out here:

https://mindmeltonabun-blog.tumblr.com/post/633271037441818624/tale-of-the-nine-tailed-ep-7-thoughts-and

And if you’re too lazy to click/read all of that post, I’ll put it simply here:

In the past, Lee Yeon chose to go after Ah Eum first instead of saving Lee Rang from the villagers burning down the mountain. So this time around Lee Yeon did not want to make the same mistake twice and also Lee Yeon wanted to atone for his past mistakes. Plus, Lee Yeon knew that between Lee Rang and Ji Ah, Lee Rang had the weaker mentality so he would need more saving than Ji Ah would.

Happy Readings! I need a drink now after writing all of this !

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babydotcom · 3 years

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hiiii tay i hope you’re having a fabulous day 💕 how about ty lee for the character ask game??

beck u3u thank u for the ask!! cutting this in half bc it's so long, the rest is under the cut :)

First impression: okay we love a girl gang! this one is kind of annoying though i wonder what she brings to the table that azula wants her so bad. her aesthetic isn't my cup of tea either but good for her!!

Impression now: i want her so bad. she is so COOL??? i'm in love with her but also fucking terrified of her. i love how she's always scheming i love how smart and perceptive and powerful she is and how even though her bubblegum exterior certainly helps her maintain her innocent plaything image it also seems to be in line with her personality!! we love a feminine master manipulator. she's a femme fatale in the sneakiest way and i love it so fucking much oh my GOD. she <3

Favorite moment: is this even a question? the betrayal at boiling rock. or her fight with suki (because i'm gay)

Idea for a story: I've had my mailee "betty" wip sitting dormant for months but i'd also like to maybe get into ty lee's relationship with femininity and how she uses it to her advantage. being so manipulative and emotionally in tune as she is is actually really hard to deal with mentally, and i think once she has true friends among the kyoshi warriors, people that she doesn't have to trick or pretend around, she might start to kind of reckon with her talents and start to wonder how much of her is real and how much of her is an act. it could be fun to explore her relationship to gender and her relationship to herself and how that impacts her interpersonal relationships. give me ty lee interacting with a butch on kyoshi give me ty lee cutting her hair give me ty lee trying to break away from her femininity as a means of soothing her liar's guilt only to find she actually does like pink and frilly dresses and she doesn't have to not express herself that way just because other people underestimate her for it.

Unpopular opinion: the potential sokka&ty lee dynamic is so underrated?? they're a total dream team- they're both strategic geniuses, with ty lee covering emotional manipulation and mind games and engineering prodigy sokka coming in with battle plans and creative maneuvers out of tough situations. they could have tag-teamed to kill ozai and it woulda been over in 5 seconds flat, but they also beat azula so bad at pai sho that she has to be committed again (her psychiatrist is very upset). also you have got to stop reducing her to Barbie Doll she's so much more than that lol

Favorite relationship: in canon my favorite platonic relationship is her and azula. there's just so much to think about when it comes to their power dynamic and a lot of ty lee's complexity is shown through this one relationship. it shows how ty lee is a snake in the grass posing as a flower in azula's garden, and azula has complete faith in her and her intellect to the last. so much fun!! as for romantic we obviously gotta go with mailee, but for almost the exact opposite reasons. ty lee is 100% genuine 100% of the time with exactly one person, and that's mai. she can be mean to mai and tease her and let down her guard and mai does the same!! it's just all very sweet to me. outside of canon i love sokka&ty lee and aang&ty lee :) and i think katara being afraid of ty lee is beautiful and i want to see more of them interacting.

Favorite headcanon: AIR NOMAD TY LEE. AIR NOMAD TY LEE!!!!!! this is the obvious answer but that's for a reason!! i love love love the idea that ty lee is an airbender and she started developing her talent for lying as a means of protecting herself from suspicion as a fire nation noble. i don't know the mechanics of how her family could have risen through the ranks-- perhaps an ally took in her nomad ancestors and they married up??-- but her character design could not have been an accident. maybe she joined the circus because it was also easier to hide as an airbender! i could go on abt this for years and years but other people have said it better lol. also modern au ty lee tops and she is insanely popular on OF.

game here!

#ask games #ty lee #atla #mine

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moondustaeil · 4 years

Text

anaphora ⧜ nakamoto yuta

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ✧☾.·:·. a n a p h o r a

⠀ ⠀⠀ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ

⁖ genre : royalty au - fluff , angst , very light suggestive content

⁖ pairing : yuta x reader (both royals)

⁖ word count : 15k

⁖ warning : badmouthing , light suggestive content , attempted thievery , family drama , mentions of a forbidden relationship , broken kingdoms , character deaths , poisoning , toxic plants , based on oneus’ performance of “be mine” in road to kingdom

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀

⠀ ⠀⠀ ꜱʏɴᴏᴘꜱɪꜱ

⁖ Rather than living without your love, Yuta would prefer to die out of hatred. Once at a banquet the man you were willing to devote yourself to but due the split of the kingdoms, you can no longer promise forever to him like you did that night under the moonlight in the conservatory.

〚 I ; ūnus 〛

"This might be the death of fashion diplomacy, look at that attire," A woman of somewhere at the end of her forties interrupts Yuta's path. It isn't physically that she interrupts him, but his footsteps halt as soon as he hears the words. The two silver chains that circle from his left shoulder to the right side of his waist soundlessly move along as he turns his body back.

He looks straight into her eyes, his head cocking to the side as he wants to confront her in the sweetest way possible. Revenge is on the tip of his tongue but the guard could be quick to snatch the symbolic entrance ticket from between his fingers if he caused a stir.

"Are you talking about me?" He decides to ask her, letting go of his lower lip to flash her a smile. His smile nearly shines as bright as the glittering silver parallel-running lines upon his black blazer. But his smile doesn't catch as much attention as his outfit does, and yet, he doesn't feel ashamed about his attire.

"If you feel addressed then it must be about you, right?" She asks in return, her lips curling until she's able to imitate his smile. While he looks for revenge, she just tries to overpower him with the sugary sweet and yet snarky comments. Yuta can't help but hum in approval "I guess that's accurate, you have a point there."

He isn't afraid to show how she has a point because after all, he feels like he won even though the minuscule passage of words wasn't part of a contest. "Now, I would like to talk about having an excellent sense of fashion all night but seems like I should not waste time on people who don't have such things from the start," he shrugs his shoulders to hide the prideful words that slip from his lips. After giving her attire one last shameless glance, he turns on his heel and walks away from her.

Somewhere in the distance people are either way spreading their half-opinionated gossip or looking at him like he just killed an evil authority. Whether it's a good or bad thing isn't something that bothers Yuta, his footsteps don't get any heavier as he steps between the crowd on his own.

The potion has been stirred but not enough for his entrance ticket to be snatched away, yet enough for his father to walk up to him with disappointed eyes.

"What was that about?" His father asks in a quiet shout, pulling Yuta by the tight cupp of his puffed blazer. Merely by the button as the fabric is tightly resting around his wrist, too tight for his father to hook his fingers on the inside of it. "Nothing, she was just inquiring about my outfit," Yuta answers simply.

It's not hard to pull from the barely-existing grip, the undamaged button rests against the cupp again. "You know these sorts of people, you are supposed to nod your head and agree to all they want you to agree on, understood?" His father starts the real lecture in the middle of the crowd-filled room. Watched or not watched, Yuta has no care for it, and apparently, his father doesn't mind giving free lectures.

"Said no one, father. Jaehyun, Mark, or any of the others don't want to be treated like this either and they are in a way higher position than that twat," He tells his father but is aware of the answer that he will receive to his words, of course, he will get the response that he's not supposed to involve his stupid friends in serious matters like this. "Do I need to remind you that Jaehyun, or Yoonoh as you should say, nearly lost his position when he shared the sheets with a lady he had never seen before?"

Yuta clenches his thumb between his balled fist, creating the cracking sound as he only grows more assertive when hearing the words. "Oh father, please stop believing human newspapers, they're no good ass wipers," he mentions lightly but the consequences aren't as smooth as his words are.

He's willing to get scolded for protecting one of his friends: yes Jeong Jaehyun nearly lost his position when he shared the sheets with a woman. But added to the false story should be the truth, that Jaehyun had been sharing a secret life with the woman for more than half a year. The scandal was only a scandal because the woman was just an inhabitant who didn't occupy herself with kingdoms, authorities or wealthy cowards.

"This is the first and last thing I am hearing from you today, Yuta, if I hear one more thing, you can forget coming to events like this."

Yuta just carelessly nods his head before he walks away from his father, not caring whether the words would come true or not. He doesn't see why he would need to attend banquets, balls or any other formalities: it only cost him time and money as his outfits weren't exactly bought on a weekly market, neither were his exact body sizes measured by a randomly generated number.

"As if I care," he mumbles as soon as he is far enough from his father, he wouldn't have minded if his father heard the words but still protected the last bit of image that he had left. His footsteps were slow but not slow enough to match the still ones of everyone around him: curious ladies that were staring at him with either distrust or lust, men that tried to keep their wives from starting a vicious circle of rumours. Yuta pushes his body through the empty space that everyone left for him until he is standing near one of the large windows.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Yuta grasps his cake fork between his thumb and index finger as soon as a plate with a large piece of cake is presented to him. He's about to dig in and scoop the point of the cake onto his fork but the voice of the person next to him momentarily stops him from doing so.

"Did any of you hear something about marriage already?" Mark Lee asks out loud to everyone who is sitting on the same part of the table as him, obviously, he only finds himself around people of the same age with a few years minus or plus that is. Yuta expects Jaehyun to let out a quiet huff but realises his friend isn't there to complain about the matter of a wedding. Yet, enough people around him are willing to take over.

"My parents are trying to find me a partner, it almost seems like one of those contests of who the most beautiful person is but only if they're rich enough," Mark answers his own question before anyone else can, clearly he just needs someone to listen to him even though no one can fix his situation.

Opposite of Yuta is the eldest of the group, Moon Taeil. As relaxed as Taeil is, there is also a part of him that values tradition and rules over anything else. Perhaps he doesn't follow them as much as Doyoung does, but as he's the eldest, people are more likely to listen to him than to Doyoung. "It's the way it is, we all have to get married someday soon."

"Well it's you who should go first then, you're the oldest here," Yuta says in a teasing way to rub the fact in a little more, he knows it wouldn't affect Taeil because Taeil follows his tradition and has been preparing himself for the important moment to come. "I will," Taeil answers simply, it's simple but seemingly a hidden message hides behind the words.

Yuta glances at Mark who started the talk about marriage but didn't find relief as no one really picked up on his words with a sense of empathy. He doesn't really feel bad for his friend, with the simple reason that he has to undergo the same, and probably even earlier than Mark does.

"What about you y/n?" Taeil asks you as he drifts away from his group of friends for a little moment, not that you're not a part of his friend group, you simply never informally met Yuta or Mark which was why he decided to try and involve you in their conversation right now. You were listening anyway so it might be a good moment to bring you into his group of friends.

"My parents truly organised this for me to possibly find a fiance but instead of allowing me to talk to possible candidates, they claim me," you explained to Taeil with a soft sigh leaving your lips. You had no idea whether you sighed because you were forced to find a future husband or because your parents had claimed you until the moment you were seated at the table.

Taeil nods in response as he is actively listening to what you're saying, yet, Yuta can't help but let out a soft snort as he is amused by your story. Not because you're the starring role in the confusing wishes of your parents, but because parents will always be parents. "That's what all parents do. If you didn't see earlier, my father still tries to grab me by the sleeve like I'm a little boy who is about to cross a busy street," he tells you and the rest of the group.

The words make everyone want to change the subject to what happened earlier, a little moment everyone had seen: Taeil had seen it even if he only made his entrance at that moment, Mark had been able to see it whilst conversing with some wealthy people and you had seen it from your position as your parents lectured you about who was going to be present at the banquet.

"Yeah that was a wild scenario, man," Mark says as he can't help but think back, it's nothing unfamiliar as he had seen Yuta with his father before. Yuta was just too free-spirited to always listen and obey to everything that others tell him and he's not afraid to make a scene out of it.

"All because some lady made fun of my attire. She called it the death of fashion or something," Yuta says as he once again snorts at the short memory of the gossip he heard barely a couple of minutes after making his entrance. He would admit he was salty about it but didn't think about it longer than five seconds as it wasn't important.

You can't help but look at Yuta as he's saying the words: first you start at the features of his face but the moment he mentions his attire, you can't help but stare at his upper body. The black blazer has puffed sleeves that tighten around his wrist and is decorated with parallel silver glittering lines, then there is a chain that splits in two as it goes from his shoulder to his waist, to finish the outfit there are some silver bands that coat his left upper arm and shoulder. It's more than a handful and you're sure that there is more that you're not seeing.

"It looks very unique," you say about his outfit and smile slightly at your own words, you're being genuine as his outfit looks like something you never saw before. Even though he got bashed for the attire he's wearing, it makes him look more expensive than anyone else in the big room. The lace on the long dresses, the fake fur on the men's clothing, they don't compare to glittering lines on Yuta's blazer.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

"Get home well"

You wave your hand to Taeil as he leaves the location, you're aware that he can't see what you're doing because it's too dark outside, but you still feel like saying goodbye to him in some way. Next to you is Yuta who made the excuse that he needed some fresh air just so that he could say goodbye to his friends and stay around you for a little bit longer. It didn't look like his father was leaving anytime soon which is why he took the chance to escape for as long as he could.

"So have you found your future husband?" Yuta inquires curiously as he stands next to you, waving his hand at Taeil just like you did despite also realising it wouldn't be shown in the dark. Soon his eyes go to you as he sees you shaking your head from the corner of his eye "I don't think I did. I'm not planning on marrying Taeil, I've known him for so long," you say honestly.

"What about Mark?" Yuta asks, giving you the option to admit if you found someone to your liking. Even though you said you didn't but Yuta just wants to know for sure before he continues to talk to you and perhaps flirt with you a little bit more than he did already.

"Nice but not as my brother, he seems like a little brother."

Yuta can't help but laugh out loud to your words because he felt the exact way. He wasn't ever going to marry Mark but did see Mark as his little brother more than anything else: there was just something about him that made him the perfect little brother compared to real little siblings.

"Sounds like I'm the last candidate then," he says in a joking tone as the two of you start taking awfully slow steps in no particular direction. It's automatically that your feet take steps without your mind wondering where your feet are wandering off to.

You softly laugh along to his words for a few seconds, letting your laugh fade out when your mind tries to see an image of you getting married to Nakamoto Yuta. He's attractive and perhaps he's from a family that your family would appreciate, but the man himself is something people would be against.

"Sounds like it," you respond finally as you stare ahead and notice the conservatory coming into view. It's not an unfamiliar place but it's not like you find yourself there on a daily basis. Still, right now it seems like a fitting space to walk to together with Yuta.

Yuta can't help but smile at your words even if he doesn't see himself getting married anytime soon, perhaps in a few years when he feels ready to settle down, especially knowing marriage must also mean starting a family. "Did you expect to find a future husband tonight?" he asks curiously as he sees where you're going and mindlessly allows his footsteps to imitate yours.

"Far from yes," you answer his question as honest as you can, still staring ahead of you towards the conservatory. It's not a long walk but you're anticipating the moment you can open the door and explore the greenery in the darkness together with Yuta. Both of you seem to need some minutes away from the heavily decorated banquet, and now that dessert had been eaten, there were plenty of chances to sneak away. "How about you? Your parents must be looking to find you a spouse too?"

Yuta hums in approval, signalling that you're absolutely right when you assume that. "They don't force me but obviously try to stimulate me into finding someone to marry but how will I ever love someone that only meets up to their requirements but not mine?"

"You don't. We don't marry out of love, my parents were kind enough to at least tell me the truth about that"

Your words open a new dimension for Yuta, just like the door to the greenhouse is opened before the two of you walk inside. It's pure darkness and yet your eyes can easily recognise the different shades of green and the forms of leaves and other plants.

"Your parents might be right about that," Yuta admits as he walks behind you, giving the greenery a brief look before he tries to follow your figure with his eyes. He is very interested in nature and would love to go on endless walks and hikes in unexplored green masterpieces, but right now, his attention shifts to you.

Minding your steps to not accidentally step on a plant, you make your path through the greenhouse to the place where you usually take a seat to be away from everyone and everything. But being in the darkness, the path doesn't seem clear enough to walk on without accidentally hurting a fallen leaf.

The sound your feet make when they come in contact with greenery is the only thing that keeps the silence from comfortably walking between the two of you, there's distance enough for it to sneak in and almost third-wheel unnoticed.

Your steps align once you see the carved marble bench right in front of you, empty like each time you come to this place, though this time both spots on it will be occupied. On the seat of the bench is a carved satyr but you can't make out the little details since only darkness flows through the glass roofing.

"Let's sit for a bit," you suggest as you sit on the side that you automatically always take, leaving the other spot free for your companion, Yuta. Yuta does as you suggest and immediately plants himself on the cold bench next to you, his eyes staring at the window that can only show him the darkness of the outside world.

"Is this where you take party victims?" He playfully asks you as he turns his gaze to you instead, watching as your eyes are on the same spot that he was looking at seconds ago, not that there is much to see as the night seems close to an unrecognisable shade of black. Before you laugh, he observes how your mouth lightly parts before the sound escapes.

"If I can be a victim as well then you could say I take party victims here," you tell him after your soft laugh dies down against the air. Yuta's own laugh of slight amusement dies soon after yours even if it threatens to stay for a bit longer because of your confession.

It's not funny but without laughter, the oxygen-filled air would feel as heavy as it was in reality and right now both of you prefer to keep it light in the greenery-filled glasshouse.

"I'll be one of your victims, you should invite me more."

〚 II ; duo 〛

Yuta's boot-clad feet skillfully avoid the fallen leaves on the ground as he walks into the greenhouse, even though it's his third or even fourth time, he's not accustomed to the path he has to follow just yet. Luckily the ground already drew out the path by decarmating the stones that led him towards the bench.

The bench is still empty when he arrives and he takes that as an opportunity to explore a little further in the maze of greenery. Even though he follows the laid out ground, he doesn't exactly follow any path, his eyes are fixated on his surroundings as he walks.

Even though the endless windows lock him up in the glasshouse, he feels like he is taking a stroll in nature. A place that is yet to be discovered by some, a place where he doesn't have to remind himself of his manners towards the wealthy and treasured of the country.

The greenery greets him without words which is quite something else compared to the endless badmouthing that ordinarily happens when he walks into the ballroom of an overly decorated event. The plants don't have critical feedback on his attire, his manners, his slightly longer hair, his personality or his wealth. Yet, the plants are alive and growing, just like most humans.

Some more living examples of people that do not badmouth are you and his small group of close friends. His friends for starters don't act as wealthy as they truly are and he's grateful that they don't act like that, they are just normal like any human that walks through the streets. Then there is you, who never judges him and listens to the many things he wants to tell while also trying to have a good time at the same time. Does that mean he appreciates you more than just an acquaintance?

The answer to the question he speechlessly asks himself is probably yes, you would use the words 'far from no' to answer the question because you seem to like giving that response more than just a yes or no. Perhaps he sees you as more than an acquaintance, even more than friends: his feelings for you are in bloom just like some of the flowers in this greenhouse.

Having those feelings means that he no longer wants you to find a spouse, neither does he want his parents to find one for him. Independency led to this moment, where he can make his own choices in his lifeline and end up with the one he might just truly love. Yet, what holds him back is that he has never been in love before, doesn't have any knowledge as he never saw the genuine love between two people, and he simply has no faint idea of what he wants to achieve in the future.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long, my parents suddenly decided it was a good idea if they educated me on trading materials."

Your voice makes Yuta look up from the point that he was staring at, he doesn't have a clue what point he's exactly staring at and before he's about to find out, his body is already spun towards you.

"Hello," He greets you with a smile, ignoring your previous words because he simply did not hear them while being one with his thoughts. His eyes greet you as well: without judging going from your facial features to the outfit that you're wearing to cover your skin. The colour of your attire compliments you: midnight blue might just become his new preferred colour if you continue to look as magical in it.

"You didn't get lost whilst waiting for me right?" you ask with a smile on your lips as you let your eyes move in the same circle that a clock makes, just to get familiar with the greenery around both of you, perhaps it could explain what Yuta was staring at for as long as you had been watching him from a not-so-far distance.

Yuta shakes his head in response and slowly walks up to you "no, of course not. I stopped by the bench not long ago but seeing you were not there yet, I decided to explore a little," he explains even though there is no need for him to do so. You don't seem enraged by his exploration so you probably don't mind it when he lets his eyes wander and his feet explore.

"We can walk around here some more if you would like, there is much more greenery than you see now. Perhaps we could even water some of the plants together, even if it's unexciting," you suggest and smile at your own idea. It reminds you of a date even though it's not much different from sitting on the bench: after all, it's the same location and there hasn't been a confirmation that this was a date. "I would really like that," Yuta answers.

Before you are able to take off on your own, Yuta takes initiative to link your arms together as you walk. You're surprised by the sudden display of affection as you are aware that only those who are lovers are known to hold one another like that. It's a large step in the outing of affection but neither of you try to separate your arms from one another.

"So I assume you enjoy nature," You say to Yuta, not using a questioning tone despite your will to find out if he actually enjoys nature as much as he seems to, after all, who would agree to meet up in a greenhouse time after time without complaining about the green-coloured surroundings or scent of blooming flowers. Yuta briefly nods in response to your words, a smile coating his lips but you're too busy staring ahead of you to notice. "I love nature, nature compares to freedom for me. No one judges but everyone listens."

His explanation is what makes you look at him, there is no questioning look in your eyes as you seem to understand without further explanation. "Because nature is alive too," you say as you partially agree to his words. There aren't many opportunities for you to discover nature unless it's in the greenhouse, but you can imagine the feeling of walking on an undiscovered land, only filled with grass and large trees of which leaves slowly dwindle to the ground.

"precisely."

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

The quiet whispers of the wind easily dwindle down the glass walls that kept you from truly experiencing freedom. Despite not being able to feel an unlimited amount of freedom: the wind wasn't present to disturb the small stream of water that collapsed on the tightly-patted loam.

"Do you ever receive flower bouquets?"

It is a question that should not make you flabbergasted because the never-ending supply of flower bouquets that you're given are no longer gifts that take you by surprise. Yet, rather than to be given a bouquet, Yuta is thoughtful enough to ask whether you ever receive them before he sets up his plan.

"I do," you answer his question simply. You don't say it to brag or for his plans to fall in the pond, but for the reason that you do get a lot of them. Every person that visits the gigantic place you call home takes at least one flower along, handing it over to you whilst pride reflects from their eyes onto yours. But your eyes don't resemble a mirror: they shine with a dull glow as you thank them for the friendly gesture but internally scold them.

"And?" Yuta asks as he looks over at you whilst you water the following plant, his grip tightening around the gardening tool that you pushed into his hand before starting to do a task that wasn't yours. "And that is it. Why would I need a bouquet of flowers that will wither merely a week after its been given?" You reason.

"As well as how this conservatory consisting mostly of flowers and other sorts of greenery? Because they don't wither as rapidly as the ones you receive?"

The questioning undertone in Yuta's voice momentarily makes you suspect if you are obligated to answer with yes or no to either of the times he used it. Momentarily truly lasts momentarily, the moment you find out he has been looking at you, you realise he was only trying to complete the answer to your question before you had to do the effort.

"Precisely."

You smile once the word leaves your lips, even if you contemplated him just a few seconds ago, you can't help but think of yourself as an idiot who nearly misinterpreted the words. Luckily you watered the symbolic flower before its petals started to dwindle down from the disk.

"But you still enjoy flowers?" Yuta asks curiously as he watches how you finish off watering every plant that comes in your reach. The endless refills of water make it possible for the flowers to bloom or for Yuta to stay by your side a little longer.

You nod your head in confirmation before giving him a brief but suitable statement. "I do, I just dislike like receiving them as a gift. Specifically when they are just an excuse to not come empty-handed."

Yuta senses how honest you are when you say the words, it's not only that as he understands what you mean from experience. It was impolite to request someone's company and not have anything in return, to the most when it was about a possible romantic encounter.

"Now I know that I should not bring flowers with me next time," he eventually answers but the smile is evident in his voice, but even more on his lips. They're curved upwards from nerves as he awaits your response.

"I won't accept any gifts from you, Yuta. I have warned you and I expect you to remember for as long as you're able to," you order Yuta in a rather playful manner. You meant the words, they were genuine despite the playful hue in them but you weren't able to give him a scolding for something that didn't occur yet.

"What if I accidentally forget?" He asks you in the same playful way, wanting to continue the conversation so that he could see your reaction. He didn't know what reaction to expect, there was a wide variety of emotions you could display in response. Soon it was proven to be his lucky day when a smile made its way onto your lips at his words. You shook your head in disbelief "perhaps it is time for me to find a new love interest in that case, and my mother will have a lovely flower bouquet to make my father jealous with."

"Love interest?"

Yuta's lips can't take control, allow him to slip out the words that laid on the tip of his tongue. By the way his eyes are widened, you can see that he is astonished. "Love interest," he repeats again: this time not to question you but to test how the words sound when he's saying them out loud.

You love the way the mixture of letters leaves his lips, you love the two words that you have been able to use for personal preference for the first time in your life. The way Yuta says them only makes them sound better, when he says them, it almost makes you believe he feels the same way about you without officially confessing.

"In that case, I shall not forget, you will not be receiving any flower bouquets from me," Yuta finally answers even though it should have been you who completed the cycle of feedback. Your first – and genuine – reaction is a smile that graces your lips from one minute into the other. From his words, you could dissect that he would have a fancy for being your love interest, or so you thought that was what he meant.

Briefly, you glance at Yuta before looking towards the large windows that lock you up in the glasshouse. Yuta is quick to follow your gaze towards the outside world: his eyes following the direction of the tree twigs that get swayed along with the wind. "Is there something else you could offer me, you know, to compensate for the flowers?"

Your words make Yuta laugh soft, his breath almost simultaneously blowing like the wind does outside the window. "What would you fancy?" He asks you even though he knows you are kidding. It became clear before that you don't waste words on people who bring you gifts in return for a bit of your attention.

"Anything you are willing to offer," you begin as you bend down to put down the watering can, leaving it on the ground before you stand up to face Yuta again. The smile that you carry on your lips the moment you look at Yuta gets reflected to his. "What do you think about love?" He asks you as the smile minimizes a little bit when his lips move to speak but that doesn't make it less impactful.

You freeze momentarily when you hear the suggestion, along with your body, your mind also takes a halt for a couple of seconds. Your ears correctly heard the question, as did your mind process the words before going in short lockdown. "I would enjoy that," you murmur whilst slowly dragging yourself back into reality.

A soft embrace around your hand instantly pulls you back into the real world, the hand closes around yours and keeps a gentle grip on it. "I will be looking forward to it," Yuta says as he gives your hand a little squeeze, immediately gaining your nod-filled reaction.

"Me too, Yuta."

〚 III ; trēs 〛

Hundreds of questions collect on your tongue as tastebuds: when one disappears, it simply gets replaced by a new one. Their flavours are dissimilar: some taste bitter, others taste free, and on the tip are many fear-tasting buds.

"How do you know they will walk by without seeing us?"

Yuta can only let out a soft laugh at the sixth question that slips from your tastebuds onto your moving lips. It's an adorable and wholesome sight to see so you worried, he misses the realisation how either of you two must be aware of the risks this takes along.

"It is very early, y/n. Most people out on this hour are on their way for duties and the children won't be able to catch who we are," Yuta tries to ease your uneasiness. The fine line between freedom and getting caught is what your feet seem to be walking on rather than the neatly stoned ground.

In response to his words, you nod, but the anxiety only grows with every step taken towards the civil world. "People on their way might still see us," you say in a complaining tone even though you only try to make Yuta see it in the way you see it. He has done this countless times whilst you rarely came here, and if you did, then it was not supposed to be a casual stroll with your love interest. "They are always rushing, they don't have time to look for people like us before they have to do their daily tasks."

You believe his words as this time, the little bundle of nerves in your stomach disappears but another knot is waiting in queue to get untied. "That must be true," you admit silently before staring at the barely-filled street in front of you. People like you and Yuta aren't as customised to a regular life, hence the reason why you still fear running into people at 7 am. But Yuta seems to know the case well and you can only make up from that, that he does these things more often than you know.

"How often do you come here?" You ask him upon realising how he also seems to know which way he has to take. It's obviously something people habituated here should know but you are still unfamiliar with the little alleys between buildings, unlike Yuta who took your hand and pulled you along, reaching the destination in a shorter amount of time than you estimated. "Maybe weekly, usually I come here at night to take a stroll. People sometimes get drunk so there will not be evidence if they catch me walking," he reasons.

Before a soft response in the shape of a sigh escapes your lips, you purse them together and opt to consider your words. The way Yuta mentions people and getting caught brings a high wave of anxiety to your stomach: the wild sea almost reaching to your heart. "So you did get caught?" your question stays unanswered for the first few seconds and once you look over at Yuta, you notice that he seems to be heavily considering his next move. "Someone saw me but as there has been so much gossip and the man was drunk, no one really believed his story."

This time you opt to not respond at all, you don't even have to purse your lips in order to stay quiet. You try to understand the prequel of the situation you find yourself in: allowing your love to bloom in another place than the greenhouse but the unwritten sequel might not be filled with blooming or freedom. You have to do things differently in the present in order to change the future but you don't take that opportunity. You only hold Yuta's hand tighter as your feet are aligned with his with each step you take further into the homeworld of humanity.

"It is a good thing to escape from the greenhouse for a bit. It doesn't give you the freedom you need even if you think it does," Yuta says. He notices you've gone completely mute by now, purposely not speaking because you are distrustful towards him or the surroundings. You nod your head as you're aware: you act like the greenhouse gives you an immeasurable amount of freedom but still, you find yourself between four walls that keep you secured in place.

"I am aware," you tell Yuta. Subjectively, it sounds like a way to make him stop talking because you're only getting more stressed but from the objective perspective, you're only answering to his previous words. Just like roses naturally grow thorns, you naturally grew the thought that you will never experience true freedom because even in this situation, you feel far from free.

"Shall we continue our walk? It looks beautiful so far."

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning. It can be observed by anyone who is able to keep an eye on you despite Yuta making it clear that you were safe from the eye of the public. Your urge to explore and investigate could easily be called: curiosity. It's not something you can be blamed for because even Yuta is still curious about the real outside world after coming here on a weekly basis. You are not only curious about what the eye meets but also things you cannot observe: like the inhabitants that must lead their lives in this area or how it must feel to be able to lead a life in this context. Houses aren't overly large and there seems to be a lack of space due to the buildings not having gaps between one another.

Every couple of minutes you have been able to quietly observe as people passed by. You stared at them and wondered what it was like to randomly walk over the street and not tease a future drama about it. Luckily for you, you don't think people saw you staring at them which hopefully also meant that they didn't see you at all.

"Are you hungry? You must be, we left so early you probably didn't get breakfast served yet. Am I right?" Yuta asks you as soon as the street once again is empty enough for his regular voice to come through. Normally he could not care less about it but knowing you are a bit uneasy with the entire situation, he pours some water into the wine to make it taste less bitter.

Your eyes scan around before you choose to reply to his words with a small hum. You are quite hopeful to think that the end of your adventure is near but that story seems to unfold itself differently. "We should get some bread by the bakery," he carelessly suggests. With those words being said, you're left more than speechless. Do you want to decline? Yes, you do, but you dismiss the words and your heap of thoughts. Perhaps if you don't respond, you won't get food and Yuta will take the hint.

"How about that, y/n?"

Internally you use foul language to express your feelings but those words don't come to an official outing because it would be highly impolite. "How about what?" you ask him even though you know what he is asking you about, and acting like you didn't hear what he said might just give you an extra few seconds to decide whether that's a good idea or not. "How about getting bread at the bakery?" he repeats his words from before in a slightly different hue but they still mean the same.

"We can't do that, Yuta," you tell him before you're able to stop your mouth from opening. The sigh that leaves your lips once the words had escaped was one you had been keeping in for a couple of minutes too long: it's a long one that draws out the feelings you've been silently experiencing.

"Why not?" Yuta asks as he tries to discreetly point towards one of the buildings that you already passed by, a bakery where you could smell fresh bread and other related pastries but had passed by without giving it a glance as the owner stood outside of his shop to promote mouth-to-mouth. "The bakery is right there, we can just get some bread and eat it before I bring you home again."

"For starters, we did not bring any money to hand the man and I would still like to keep it quiet that we are here," you tell Yuta just in case he forgot the obvious. There are some extra excuses you could come up with but that would make things only less believable when the truth already escaped from your parted lips. "How did you want to get bread?" You ask as you await to hear his plan. With that, you only confuse yourself more: first, you decline his idea before you ask how he was planning on doing it. Were you just tolerable because Yuta and you shared a little more than just hand-holding?

"Either of us can distract him," Yuta simply stated, his fabric-covered shoulders moving up and down in a matter of seconds as he shrugged. The plan was clear in his head but the words made you only more confused. He noticed the look on your face and leaned closer to your face, his face tilting as he moved forward a bit more to speak to you. "And the other one can just take the bread."

Two reactions occur at the same time: either way you widen your eyes and at the same time, you shake your head rapidly. The ridiculous idea leaves you to have a moment of distrust in Yuta.

"Absolutely not, we're not going to steal. You can eat along with us tonight," you say instantly before you are able to process that it is not close to dinnertime. Though they would still serve you food if you asked for it. "Where did you even get that idea?" you ask as you stop your feet abruptly and turn your body towards Yuta.

Even though the regret kicks in, he doesn't back away and turns his body towards yours. A scolding is what he expects, perhaps because his parents would even be capable of killing him if they knew he suggested stealing from a baker.

He sighs and brings his left hand up to rub over his face, his fingertips harshly pressing against his skin and cheekbones. "Sorry," he apologises to you, wrapping his mind around the reality of the situation. He never stole anything before and suddenly he suggests stealing some fresh bread, something he did with a blank mind despite the setup he made a few seconds prior to telling you.

"It should be time to head back," you change the subject in order to once more buy more time for yourself. You try not to be judgemental because you know Yuta well enough by now: he's not the average wealthy man that you meet at a banquet. He's the rebellious young man that intrigues you and pulls you into his world. There don't seem to be risks in his life and if there are then he simply ignores the possible consequences: it doesn't give a great first impression but is like the sweetest song, sung by angels and it only pulls you in more.

The way back is filled with silence even though the surroundings seem extra loud, it's just the silence that makes the rest increase in volume. There's only one commonly shared word now that you're on the way back: it's Yuta who has his one-end conversation of saying "sorry." but you opt to give a soft breath and silence as a response.

Instead of Yuta dragging you along like earlier in the morning, it's you who marches towards your home. Yuta follows behind you, his fingers twitching now that he's unable to hold onto your hand. His eyes meet with the ground many times as he fears to see you going up the steps and inside without saying your goodbye to him.

Upon the ground and through the grass, his feet walk on the exact same spots that you walk but in relay. One little glance up and he notices that your property is already under his feet but you're not marching towards the home, instead, you're leading him towards the greenhouse. It makes him want to smile but he's unable to, his lips form in a thin line as he perplexes himself with the many different emotions.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

"Why did you suggest stealing the bread?"

The question doesn't catch Yuta off guard as he expected it sooner or later but at the same time, he's at a loss for words and doesn't know which excuse would be accepted. No excuse should be accepted and he's aware of that: which is why he stays silent and considers his words for a decent amount of time. You're not impatient, even kind enough to give him time to reflect on himself. In the meantime, you keep yourself busy organising some of the gardening tools: that way the workers don't have to put effort into it and you have some wasted time that goes by just a little faster than when you're not doing anything.

"I don't know, I really don't know. But I regret even thinking about it or imagining it," Yuta tells you as an answer, you could tell he genuinely thought but ended up concluding nothing because it perhaps was something that happened without him realising. His fingertips trace over the carved Satyr on the bench, it feels empty enough without you sitting next to him.

He eyes you as you are busy organising different tools, it's no use but you still do so. "I hope you are being truthful," you mumble as you drop the pair of gardening gloves next to the other materials before looking at him. Still, you don't look with judging eyes but you try to look through the facade to see whether he is truthful. You ask yourself whether you doubt him or not: you didn't doubt his truthfulness but his intention of stealing the bread. A selfish thought in your head tells you he wanted to steal it so that you could be fed, and it's a good assumption but you try not to fall for your misleading mind.

"I mean it y/n, I truly don't know"

There's no such thing as a correct answer in this given context but you're willing to take the answer because you trust Yuta and he sounds genuine when he says that he doesn't know. You wish you could hear a proper set of words but you could also wish that the situation hadn't occurred at all: that would be a much better wish to make. But there was no genie to grant your wishes, especially not when the situation already passed by.

"I'm sorry," Yuta says when he thinks you're not going to grant him forgiveness. You are so quiet that Yuta can't help but drown in guilt whilst you are watching from afar.

The seconds continue to tick by, they seem to get lengthier as you don't immediately respond to the apology. Eventually, you have no other option than to give him an honest response. "It's not me that deserves an apology."

Yuta nods as a signal he understands what you mean, he should be apologising to the baker for the things that almost happened. "I know," he murmurs in an almost inaudible tone, his eyes on the bench on which his fingertips endlessly trace over the carved figures.

After letting out a sigh that withheld mixed emotions, you sat down on the bench next to Yuta. In the end, you decide to forgive him because you can't blame him for things that didn't happen yet. "We should indeed buy some bread there next time, the scent was heavenly," you say with a small smile on your lips as you rest your hand upon Yuta's shoulder. Slowly, you let that hand creep up to his hair to gently comb through the locks.

"It did and I knew we were both hungry," he starts his reply, relaxation slowly dawns on him as he feels your gentle touch through his hair. It nearly makes him miss the moral of your words, nearly. "Did you say next time? Do you want to go there again?"

You smile once his realisation comes, or perhaps because you think back about the good time you had despite the anxious feeling and Yuta's dumb mistake. "I do, I enjoyed it. Not weekly but perhaps every once in a while," you say honestly.

The freedom you felt outside seemed unreal: there had been moments where anxiety filled your body to the brim but at the same time, looking at the world whilst walking around in it was positively different from looking at it through large windows.

Your hand slips from Yuta's brown locks when he turns his head towards you. "I think I am in love," he whispers a second after you look back at him, your head tilted to see his healing smile from a different point of view.

"With me?" You question hopefully as you feel bumblebees buzzing in your stomach, the sweet honey nearly edible on the tip of your tongue. A laugh falls from Yuta's lips but he rapidly reacts by nodding his head "of course with you, there has been one person that makes my heart swell. And that person is you," he explains, his eyes widening slightly as he confesses his romantic attachment to you.

There is a quiet second, interrupted by a sound of surprise aligned with Yuta's laughter. By your reaction, Yuta senses that you feel the same and is quick to make his next move. He inches himself closer to you before placing an unexpected and soft peck against your lips. Before you have the opportunity to return the kiss, your lips are distanced and smiles are unconsciously appearing.

"I might just be in love with you too."

〚 IV ; quattuor 〛

"Were you aware that the moonlight changes every day?"

Your head that has been tilted upwards towards the glass roofing slowly lowers itself for you to properly look at Yuta as he speaks. In response, you shake your head and twitch your fingers subconsciously as a sign for him to explain his random particle of information.

"The intensity of moonlight varies greatly, as stated, it depends on the lunar phase," Yuta explains to you as he notices your light motion and the interest on your face. You continue to look at him as he speaks, together with nodding, those two things make it obvious that you are listening actively to every word he says.

"Does it not depend on our eyes as well?" You ask as you silently wondered about it when he was speaking. You think your eyes are not always prepared to see the same amounts of light: especially not very bright hues. Yuta shows the same interest that you showed him not long ago and nods his head when you finish your question "hm, I think it does."

After that, a moment of silence settles down. Both of you occupied by the subject of moonlight and its daily-changing intensity. To speak honestly, there is no need to ponder about it for much longer, and yet, you two seem silently captivated by the subject. Perhaps because the moonlight is currently bringing a hint of its brightness into the nightfall.

You are the first one to break the silence because you feel how your head automatically moves upwards to look at the source of light and the acquaintance of darkness in the sky. "The moon is so beautiful," is what you tell Yuta who can't help but hum in agreement. His mind is only partially on the moon, as are his eyes because other things steal his attention.

"It is, sometimes I watch the moon from my room but watching it here makes it so much more pleasant," he answers as he not-so-gently throws his head back to look through the glass roof. The moon might be pulchritudinous but the true beauty comes from you. Yet, his words aren't complete nonsense. He watches the moon when he is alone in his room but while doing so, he thinks about you which makes him stare without being able to see much.

You smile at the words, your fingertips running over the back of his hand in a relaxed manner. "Me too," you say simply, your lower lip painlessly tucked between your teeth before you decide on confessing the other half of the story. "When I do, I think about you. That you must be in your room: asleep or watching the moon too."

It's awfully cliché but that is a side effect of lovers who have not been sharing a romance for longer than six months. Yuta doesn't show a negative reaction, he thinks it's wholesome that you feel that way, he feels the same way but does not admit it yet because he loves imagining that you think about him at night.

"Is that why we are here together tonight? For you to secretly stare at me instead of the moon?" Yuta playfully asks you as he inches closer to you, it's a playful moment even if he's guilty to the things he is teasing you with. "That was the plan, but I got caught," you answer with a smile as your own body moves closer.

"You know what happens to those who sin," Yuta mentions with a small smirk, his hands moving away from yours to instead embrace your waist. It's an easy way to pull you closer and have some physical contact at the same time, and he takes advantage of the moment do to both of those. His fingertips press against your covered skin as he runs slow and steady circles in an attempt to explore more of you.

You hum soft, an act that you do not care about the consequences of those who sin. In reality, you do care because the consequences are far from pleasant. Being in the contextual element, you know this is not about the harsh punishments people receive upon committing a true sin. Both of you are young enough to modernise the meaning of sin.

"Tell me what happens to those who sin?" You ask as your head wants to lower once more, but Yuta's lips press against the side of your neck, requiring you to keep your head upwards for a little longer.

Yuta's teeth gently nip at your skin when he hears your question, soothing the gnaw with the tip of his tongue. "Why should I explain, it seems like you're about to find out for yourself," he says before he clicks his tongue in a cocky way. Confidence and pride fight for the lead in his heart but lust takes the crown mercilessly.

The first sigh of pleasure leaves your lips after a soft hiss does, but the slight pain of his teeth brings you towards an unexpected amount of pleasure.

"Be mine," Yuta mumbles, the words not far from inaudible because his lips are hastily pressing kisses against your neck while he speaks. "I will be the one who loves you," he continues as now, between every word, the kisses seem to increase their lustful intentions.

You want to respond to the words, tell him you're his and his only but the forming drive to pleasure prevents you from wasting time on explanations. As if his kisses are not satisfying enough, his fingertips go underneath the attire that covers your bare skin. Due to the warmth of your clothing and the coldness of his fingertips, you shiver when his fingertips patch over your thighs.

"Yuta," the way you breathe out his name signals that you're asking for his attention. Your body is fighting against it and wants to beg for more but those words do not articulate on your lips, something holds you back from asking for more intimacy. "This is not right, imagine what would happen if they found out," you reason despite your body urging you to get closer so that his fingertips trail to more sensitive spots. The consequences wouldn't be mild if anyone found out, it's not Yuta who makes the situation problematic, but the authorities and religion that decides that the closest form of intimacy should not occur until marriage.

"Hence why I said I would make you mine, y/n, and trust me…," Yuta starts as his lips trace upwards, leaving the trail of hot kisses to go from the side of your neck towards your ear. His breathing is deep, driven by lust as even your scent is enough to make him want more. "…I will make you mine," he whispers.

The decisive whisper is answered by a solemn nod from you: you trust Yuta but it's mostly your own senses that tell you to stop protesting against it. Yuta's eyes let you undergo an examination, just to check whether you were okay with this. "I'm yours," you whisper as you connect your lips with his for a heated kiss.

The words "I'm yours," seem to split in two as both of you take the words in a different way, and you are yet to find out Yuta's true meaning behind the words. In your eyes, you had been his the second you went from acquaintances to love interests and it still was now that you officially were hidden lovers.

“Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Dawn. The first appearance of light in the sky before sunrise.

Dawn. The beginning of a phenomenon or period of time, especially one considered favourable.

Three minutes before there were only ten minutes left until the clock pointed its smallest hand at five. That was dawn. The way you silently laid against Yuta's side on a marble bench, your head resting against the area where you could listen to his heartbeat. That was dawn.

Moonlight chased away the shadows of the night and replaced it with the first light of a new day.

Your eyes are closed but that doesn't mean that you're asleep, for a few hours you have been dozing in and out of catnaps. None of the short amounts of time long enough for a dream, but you feel like you're living in one, so it's not needed to live in a visual world with your eyes closed.

Yuta seems asleep, you can hear by the way he breathes and you can feel by the slow beat of his heart. Sixty-one beats per minute is what you observed on a moment that you were sure he was in dreamland, but keeping track of the number of heartbeats and seconds was a difficult combination. Thus, it could have been a little bit more or some less.

After letting out a soft sound of tiredness, you open your eyes and greet the greenery with a small smile. Though it's mostly the memories that make you smile: memories of the nightfall and its nocturnal ventures. Your mind still holds on to the momentum: the patches of Yuta's fingertips on your skin, the whispers of naughty and nice, the swelling of your heart out of love and the ecstasy that mixed itself due to the heart and sex combining.

A red-pink-coloured flower greets you in its full bloom, it stands out next to the few pastel purple flowers. You can imagine the scent, or you think you can, but you realise you are lying between nothing but greenery and flowers that bloom.

The peaceful moment gets interrupted by deafening noises outside the glasshouse, they aren't extremely loud but the many different audible triggers are blaring. Yet, you're too far away from the window to properly look through it and the bloomed red roses are in front of the nearest window. It's not unusual for these noises to be heard, the time is what makes it strange. But you don't pay attention to it, not more than needed, or so you like to think.

"What are those noises?"

Your eyes shift from the red roses that cover the window towards your lover, it means that you have to turn your body slightly so that you can comfortably look at him. Once you're in a comfortable position, you smile at the sight.

Yuta looks tired and well-rested at the same time, his smile is small but the corners of his lips are twitched upwards the moment he sees your face. "I think someone just left or arrived, usually it is when they are looking for something or about transport," you answer his question so that you have more time to look at him without having to interrupt the moment.

His tired lips press a soft kiss on the corner of your mouth before he draws your body closer to his. "Good morning, by the way," he whispers as he distances his lips from yours properly. "Good morning."

Momentarily, you see Yuta disappearing from the real world and towards his own forest of thoughts. The thought about the shared intimacy come back to life there together with each minuscule aspect that he was able to observe with his five basic senses.

"I meant it yesterday."

You look at him while confusion is written on your face, rather than it's written on your features, there's a ceramic stamp all over your face. "You meant what," you ask and once more turn yourself more towards him so that it's easier to communicate. Before he speaks up, you try to recall everything that has been said yesterday but only two kinds of words come to mind: the sinful words and the outings of genuine love.

"I will make you mine," Yuta answers, quoting them as he said them yesterday. Yesterday or today, the words were still confusing. You already considered yourself as his, but he seemed to wander on a different part there.

Due to the sweetness of the words, you display a small smile but it doesn't fully replace the confusion that primarily outed itself. "I'm yours, Yuta," you tell him in case he suspects you might think otherwise. Perhaps he only saw you as a love interest until now, or perhaps he thinks you see him as nothing but a love interest.

"I mean, truly make you mine. I will love you, worry about you, and be responsible for you," he starts explaining before he stops talking, something rests on the tip of his tongue and he's not going to withhold himself from saying it. The set of critical words are more grand and they leave his mouth once his lips part.

"I want to marry you."

〚 V ; quīnque 〛

Yuta's fingertips are circled up against the palm of his hand, clenched in an angry fist. His footsteps are quick as he makes his way through the formation - that just like him is on the move - , harshly speaking he seems like a soldier marching towards the enemy with a loaded gun between his fingers. He doesn't get distracted by the walking of the people that try to hold him back without using the direct signals that they are trying to stop him.

Perhaps if his wardrobe would have allowed it, he would have been able to fit in with the crowd without getting caught in the act. But his clothes were surprisingly different from their attire: his black coat draped over his shoulders and the gold-coloured details on each visible border are shaped as non-existent flowers.

In his brain, he can clearly recall when you said a situation like this was not completely unusual. Still, the situation was unexplainable to him. It seemed like they were after him: not to chase him and get him off the property but almost leading him inside your home. The place where he had only been once to attend the banquet. Fairly speaking, he did not want to go inside because he would probably see your parents but if he wanted to find you, he would have to go inside

"Would you let my son in without those bastards circling him like he is a prey."

Yuta slowly looks up when he hears the familiar voice saying the words that only make his suspicion turn into facts. His eyes fall on his own father standing next to yours: while your father looks overly satisfied with his arrival, his own father looks slightly disappointed and his pokerface shows a lot more emotion than it should.

"What is going on?" Yuta asks as he glances between the two men for an answer, he knows he's being led by an army of people around him but he wants a clear answer of the things that are going on. When your father only motions for him to follow inside, he roughly marches forward, perhaps a little bit too unrestrained as people are no longer forcing him in direction of the door. "You may come in, Yuta."

Doing as he's asked, Yuta starts to walk up the steps towards the door before following his and your father further inside the place. With each step, he feels a heavy weight being added onto his shoulder and it is almost as if he left his courage at the lowest step of the stairs. Despite already feeling anxious, he makes it worse by starting to look around: not to claim furniture that your father would gift when feeling generous but to check if he could see any traces of you.

Whilst observing he can almost say that he doesn't know whether this family has children, there are no traces of you or something that reminds him of you. It's not even the lack of cohort portraits, it is the lack of personality that this place holds.

"Why don't you sit here with us?" Your father suggests as he walks into the room where he had been with Yuta's father minutes earlier, discussing merely one subject with a filled liquor glass in their hands. The seat where his father sat was still pulled out, signalling it had not been time to bid each other farewell yet. Once his own father takes a seat and your father does too, he sits on the leftover seat.

"I would like to ask why you came here? Or why you have been here almost every day for the past time…" Your father asks but the words suggest for Yuta to speak up so that they don't have to pull the words out of his lips. He doesn't feel like they just caught him in the act but manages to feel the astonishment.

Yuta clears his throat, swallowing the saliva-filled nerves before he speaks up. "I come here for y/n, we enjoy spending time together," the word he tells don't lie but he keeps all of the details behind for as long as he can. Not because he's ashamed or doesn't want to admit to your relationship, but because he feels the urge to protect you.

"And you lure y/n with you into town?"

That is the moment where he feels like he got caught, simply because of you, who had been so scared to get caught whilst walking on the most regular streets in town. He wonders how they found out he took you to town but also considered inhabitants possibly recognising him or you.

"For a simple walk, I had no intention of luring her to town with bad consequences," Yuta explains. But by the expression on your father's face, he can recognise that his explanation didn't add much positivity to the story.

"That is what they all claim, young man. But I hope you realise that y/n will not be at hand to marry you," your father says and before he can comment, saying that that will happen even if your father says no, his father takes the wheel. "If you do not allow my son to marry y/n, I demand us to nullify our exchanges."

The protection from his father gives him courage, he had never expected his father to give protection in this context but misses the clue that his father is only trying to protect future exchanges and deals. Perhaps he misses the clue because they say love makes people blind and he is deeply in love with you. Without suspecting the next step, he waits for your father to give his comment.

"Consider them nullified."

Yuta's father raises from his chair soon after the words are spoken out loud. "I suggest we return homewards, Yuta," he says to his son as he clears his throat uncomfortably. Yuta is unable to perform anything, staring at your father but he is left speechless and frozen in his spot. "Yuta," his father calls out for him again, this time successfully receiving Yuta's attention.

"I will not leave, not until you give me a fair chance to marry y/n. We have a lot in common and both of us want to take the following step," Yuta claims, his voice getting louder as he feels misunderstood. He wasn't just a young man who lured you into town for his own pleasure, he was a young man who wanted to spend the rest of his life together with you. "y/n and I are in love."

Your father is the second one to raise from his chair, marching the short distance between his and Yuta's chair. "Listen to me, Nakamoto Yuta," he starts before he presses his hand against Yuta's shoulder blade. It's not a light touch but Yuta is too stubborn to show his usual strong reactions. "We do not marry out of love, we marry for money and profit. But I require my son in law to have manners, and that is something your parents never taught you."

"I love y/n, and you cannot stop me from doing so," Yuta says as he pushes away your father's hand from his shoulder, he stands up from his chair and turns towards your father. Due to the height difference, it seems like Yuta is in charge but that's only an illusion.

"You are right, I can't stop you from loving y/n," your father admits. Once again Yuta fails to see a detail, this time blinded by his pride when he hears the words. It's a calm moment before the storm, and the storm is only a few seconds away. "Too bad I can stop you from getting married to y/n, and I will do anything. Even if it costs you your life."

Minutes later, the three of them are walking the large hallway in order to get Yuta and his father out of the building. Yuta's fists are clenched as he only states in front of him while walking: angry with the world, disappointed in himself.

An employé opens the large front door for Yuta and his father to for the last time leave this place without ever returning. Exchanges and money-related deals are officially unchained the moment his father walks out of the door. "I suggest you leave now," your father says as he motions his hand towards the outside world, an impolite gesture in Yuta's eyes.

"Allow me to do one more thing before I leave," Yuta says as his feet step closer to the wall, plucking the only decoration from its designated location. The flag's fabric is rich in texture and feels soft under his rough fingerprints, but the feeling in Yuta's hands is too bitter to botire the softness. "As a last gift to you."

A smirk displays on his lips as he glances between his own father and your father. He knows he will get scolded by his own father for playing a dirty trick like this, but he cannot care less about that. His pride and love are on the line and he will not allow anyone to touch either of the two.

"You see this flag right?" Yuta asks as his hand smoothes over the details of the flag before he grips the flag at two of the corners with his hands. The flag is fully stretched between his hands: showing the coat of arms to who he now considered as the enemy. One harsh movement and the flag showed its first rip: the start of something grander than separation. "I would be careful with your words, my life could be spared but yours not," he says to your father before he ceremonially rips the flag in two separate pieces.

The two pieces sadly dwindle onto the ground but Yuta is the only one looking at them with a proud smile on his lips. He momentarily doesn't think of the consequences this has for you: pride takes over his senses. He steps over the piece that holds the coat of arms of your family while he steps out of the door.

"Farewell for now."

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Unlike Yuta is told, he doesn't exactly leave the property. Told his father that he was going to walk home because he was in need of time alone to reflect on himself. Walked towards the greenhouse in order to meet you.

Seeing you in the greenhouse had been his intention from the moment he arrived but without a chance had lost his non-physical fight against the people that worked for your father. Now he probably was over an hour late to see you, perhaps you even left because you thought he tricked you.

There is a lump in his throat as he walks into the greenhouse and immediately closes the glass door behind him. The greenery doesn't tell him whether you are still here waiting for him but he doesn't ask about it either. His footsteps are quick and headed towards the bench where the two of you usually sit. More than just sitting had happened on the bench but lustful thoughts are not priority.

"y/n?" He calls out your name through the greenhouse but in the meanwhile doesn't stop his footsteps towards the familiar bench. His eyes are busy, wandering around the available space with the hope of you still being here. Soon enough his eyes meet with the red roses that cover the glass window, a sign that he is close to the bench. His body turns, almost dramatically as he knows he will, either way, see you or the empty bench now.

Despite the situation, a smile appears on his lips as he sees you sitting on the bench. "I missed you," he says as he walks towards you and plops himself down on the other side of the bench.

His words are left unanswered and after glancing at you, Yuta realises you look far from happy. "Is something wrong?" He asks you, his hand moving to your thigh, softly stroking over the fabric-covered skin. Deep inside, he knows why you stay quiet but he tries to convince himself that his thoughts are incorrect. "I bet you already know," you whisper.

Your whisper allows Yuta to let out a breath, his nostrils moving as the air is blown out. Momentarily, he doesn't know what to say because what he's supposed to say conflicts with what he wants to say. He needs to say that he is not allowed to marry you but he wants to tell you to run away with him and marry in secret.

"I am not allowed to wed you," you say softly. The heartbreak when you say those words intensifies: first it seemed mere cracks but now that you say the words, your heart is ripped in two pieces. Yuta nods his head, silencing himself by tugging his lip between his teeth. Yet, he can't help but speak "flee. We can do it together and marry without anyone finding out who we are and where we are."

The tempting words are like poison: appealing to you but there is no way back once you took a sip. "What will happen to us? We have nowhere to go, we won't have anyone but each other," you clarify as you once again are afraid to get caught like the time in town. At first, it seemed like no one found out, until today when your father stated the facts.

"Having each other is plenty. I will make up a plan and then we can run together," Yuta says as he takes both of your hands in his. The moment is intense because you're expected to say yes or no: you would say no because of your families and not having anything when you flee, but yes because you promised forever to Yuta and you don't want anything more than having that forever.

Without waiting for your answer, Yuta stands up and pulls you up on your feet gently. "Five days, we leave in exactly five days. Midnight and I will pick you up here, on the bench, in the glasshouse," he clearly states the words so that you'll remember them. You rest your hand against his chest, gripping the expensive fabric of his blazer before your grip loosens.

"I will be waiting for you,"

〚 VI ; sex 〛

Five days consisting of one hundred twenty hours.

One hundred twenty hours consisting of seven thousand two hundred minutes.

Seven thousand two hundred minutes consisting of four hundred thirty-two thousand seconds.

For you, time delays more than normal. Over recent days, you had a speed course on levelling up your provisional skills: lying to your father that you ground yourself in your room because you're heartbroken while you're plotting freedom with the love of your life. It's not an easy task but your father allows it, as long as he can lodge a complaint about Yuta and his family during dinner. You don't talk back to your father because you don't want him to suspect a thing: you simply listen and fraud your tears once or twice.

Yuta journals time in a different way. The hours tick by without difficulty even though he mainly stays in his bedchamber as well: he quietly coats his walls with removable ink that he's been given and draws shapes of patches of land or writes possible destinations as well as a list of things that need to be purchased in advance. Each dinner he will show up for a short amount of time, aside from the day that he stays in the common room until his father goes to bed, that night he lets his hand wander to a treasure of capital and hastily hides it in his blazer's pocket. Stolen money that he wordlessly promises to return one day, but the day would never come.

Whenever the nightfall takes place, both you and Yuta look out of the window: greeting the darkness as you wordlessly wish for one another: thoughts of the night where forever has been a given and received promise tend to come back. It's a coincidence that your desire of Yuta doing the same comes true, but he's simply so in love with you and can't stop himself from thinking about you.

With a little less than four hours to go, Yuta permanently leaves his room. His clothes are deftly hanging in his wardrobe and there's no doubt that dust will coat the exorbitant fabrics. The walls that had been scribbled full are now empty, not a trace of the plans revealed upon the wall. Just like they creatively appeared, they disappeared when Yuta washed them off. Something he takes along with him, is, money and the outfit that is wrapped around his body right now: primarily he is only in need of you and the rest belongs to an unnecessary subordinate.

Once his bedroom has been left, the rest follows minutes after. His father is left the moment Yuta soundlessly passes by his office. His entire home is left behind the moment he steps outside and pulls the door shut. Naturally, those things happen and he doesn't feel any remorse for doing so, he is willing to do anything for the person he loves.

From his property, his first destination is the town. If there is something that might make the flight more serene, it's food to keep both of you alive in the first days of survival. He goes to the bakery that he almost stole from once: a memory he can't help but relive because, despite its negative undertone, the memory consists of you.

The queue at the bakery is not overly long, a handful of people seem willing to buy the fresh-smelling bread. Just as willing as he is, perhaps they need it for survival purposes as well. Two women are in front of him and either of them is accompanied by a child that doesn't look older than five: it's not their turn yet hence why they spent their time being a human newspaper. "Did you hear? Apparently, y/n has been found dead," the words flow from her mouth.

For the first time, Yuta heard what they are talking about. Normally he isn't interested in news brought by human newspapers: what they tell us usually something sugar-coated or filled with a spoonful of sea salt. Your name is the trigger for him to listen, but what follows after, completely triggers him.

"When?" The other woman asks to keep the conversation running and Yuta can't help but allow all of his senses to work together. His ears have to listen as he tries to use his eyes for their body language, on the tip of his tongue is a bitter taste and he can feel tears forming in his eyes. "Last night they say, she was caught and murdered by someone that works for their family."

The words leave Yuta frozen in his spot, the coins that were resting in the palm of his hand are clenched between his fingertips as they form into a tight but sad fist. "Excuse me," he quickly mutters after his body is turned towards the exit, pushing through the few people that are lined up behind him.

Without bread, he leaves the bakery. His footsteps don't match up with the pace he wants to reach: sloppily walking as his mind is as mushy as porridge even though in his mind, he is running as fast as he can towards you.

"I need to get there," he ends up muttering to himself. Realisation of his hindered pace comes after he realises that the past ten steps didn't take him further than to the corner of the street. In that critical moment, his feet finally set off to a faster running pace.

Even if the past five days had gone by rapidly, time now went slower than it ever did before. His footsteps didn't change the pace of time, because no matter how fast he went, it seemed like he didn't reach much further. Tirelessly, his feet continued to run until the first changes in scenery were noticeable.

The streets from town slowly started to disappear, replaced by an uncountable amount of greenery. The only real street was in the form of a path that led him only further into the greenery.

Due to the fast running, his feet tend to oversee the details of the greenery underneath. The first time he stumbles it's over his own clumsy feet. The second time he stumbles and falls it's due to the roots of the tree that cross his path. His black-clothed pants are dirt covered when he sits up on his knees before standing up on his feet again.

"I will take responsibility for you till the end"

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

The rose as red as blood is the only visible factor as he glances through the window of the greenhouse. His hands are pressed on the glass for a direct look upon the bench that's inside: but the red flower prevents him from seeing anything. Now that he thinks about it, he remembers how the roses shielded anyone from seeing the pureness of your bodies as you made love underneath the light of the moon.

Silence drapes a symbolic flag over the property. It's eerily quiet for a long time but Yuta is too busy to notice the silence until finally, a sound drags him out of his observation process. In surprise due to the sound, his hand flatly places against the glass before his body wildly spins around. The large doors are opened and less than a dozen men walk out: dressed formally as they carry outside a variety of objects that Yuta can't make out in of the near distance.

He can recognise the colours printed on the flag, by the things he's been taught, he concludes that this will be the raised flag for the upcoming time. A time of mourning hence the monochrome colour of the flag. He thickly swallows before letting out a cough when the saliva collects at the back of his throat.

Unable to withhold himself from performing sentiments, he screams out of wretchedness. Knees colliding with the ground for the fifth time that day, but the pain is zilch compared to the heartache that burns through his shirt. When he thought his heart would no longer beat, the pace quickened due to one of the men signalling another by pointing near the source of sound. On his knees, Yuta crawled to the large door, letting himself in after he reached up to pull the handle.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

"J'aime tes pleurs. C'est la rosée qui sied aux fleurs"

Rather than the passionate red roses, blue colourized roses are plucked by Yuta's fingertips. Like you once tutored him: red roses symbolise passionate love and blue roses symbolise unrequited and unreachable love. His promise of never giving you flowers is disintegrated.

In front of Yuta's blurry vision are continuous drips. One drop, two drops and still going. His teardrops landing on top of the sadly fallen flower petals, withering together as a sign of grief.

Memories fall like rain at dawn with each blue rose that Yuta plucks: one for the banquet where you two met for the first time, one for your first shared kiss, one for the endless talks in this greenhouse, one for the intimacy under the moonlight, and the last one for forever that will never come but always be yours.

Five roses are clenched between his fingertips, strongly held as the thorns press into the thin skin. The spring shower of memories stops the moment he spins his body towards he bench, a loud sob wrecking his vocal cords.

"y/n," he calls out to you as he walks up to the bench, his knees willingly giving out right in front of the bench. The place where your body was laid to rest until further notice: the place where you would be at peace, the place where love bloomed much like flowers. Your parted lips almost indicate you want to call out to him too, but your body is still and so are your non-existing words.

"I brought you these flowers," Yuta says softly as he places the five bundled flowers between your folded hands, the coldness of your fingers lingering against his skin until he backs away. "I know you explicitly told me to not gift you flowers but these will not wither, they will bloom," he whispers as his twitching fingertips ache to touch you, but out of fear, he can only let them caress over the rose petals.

His head comes to rest against the edge of the bench. "I hope you like them," he whispers as he can only look at the ground in sadness, shame, heartbreak. His blurry vision detects coral beads on the floor next to something that looks like a brown bean.

Abrus precatorius.

From another memory together with you he remembers the flowering plan out of the bean family. The plant is best known for its seeds, or better said beads that are toxic due to the presence of abrin. Ingestion of a single seed can be fatal to both adults and children.

An old symbol of love in China, which they call "相思豆" or "mutual love bean". A deadly love bean is what humans would tend to call it within the town, simply because they had no idea of official wordings or the dangers of the plant.

Yuta swallows thickly, almost like one of the seeds is on the tip of his tongue and he needs to swallow it. But the bitter feeling on his tongue is due to the realisation of what truly happened.

"I understand y/n. Even if fate separates us, all your tear-drenched memories will die in my embrace," He whispers. The fingertips of his right hand move towards your cheek, stroking over the skin daintily. The tender touch is cold but the warmth of love fills his blind heart. Beneath the bench, his left hand clutches a handful of coral beads.

The decorational plant beads rest in his hand as he brings them up to his mouth. A mutual love bean: cause of death for the love of his life, and soon to be his own as well.

Well-chewed, he swallows the seeds all at once. A breath escapes from his lips as he soon allows his head to lay against your shoulder, your stiff and cold body, pillowed by a thin layer of white lace that covers your skin.

His brown eyes eternally stare towards the love of his life. His broken heart swallows the tears for the deep pierced scars to get healed by the droplets, as a consequence, death starts blooming from the cracks of his heart. Before nightfall spreads over the glasshouse, his solitary serenade is heard.

"Rather than living without your love, I'll die with hatred. When we meet again, I hope we bloom as flowers."

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cosmic-hearts · 4 years

Text

castles in the air | lee donghyuck | one

lee donghyuck x female reader

genre; enemies-to-lovers, friendship, romance, fluff, angst

warnings; none

foreword; in which even though you might be a real-life princess with a prince promised to you right from the start, you won’t be getting your happy ever after.

next chapter >>

“Which dress would you like to wear tonight, miss?”

Not a pink dress. Donghyuck hates pink.

You resent yourself for it, but it’s the first thought that pops into your mind when the nice boutique lady presents your options to you: a peachy pink Alex Perry gown that reminds you of what you used to like when you were ten, a bold red Lia Stubella one that screamed movie star (except you clearly aren’t one), and a glamorous Elie Saab champagne silk dress that was honestly beautiful but had a plunging neckline that was a little too low for your comfort.

You eye the pink dress warily, remembering the first time you met Lee Donghyuck. Back when you had even less of a say in the clothes you wore, your mother had forced you into a stiff candy pink dress with ribbons all around the waist. You felt like a walking stick of cotton candy, but your mum insisted that you looked adorable. Donghyuck gave you the stink eye all throughout dinner, and when you privately asked him why, he mumbled something about having a raging hatred for pink.

It would be a hilarious anecdote if you could look back on it fondly with Donghyuck, safe in the knowledge that you two were best friends now, but reality is quite the opposite. You’re not best friends, neither are you two even friends.

No. Definitely not pink, you think to yourself, mentally crossing it out even though a part of you wanted to wear it just to see the look on his face, to elicit some sort of reaction from him; it didn’t matter if it was one of disgust. It would be better than nothing.

Because resentment was the only form of emotion he could ever seem to spare you.

—

Lee Donghyuck watches Sohui as she slings the tie around his neck and does a perfect knot, her deft fingers occasionally grazing his chest. She’s clad in a simple, off-shoulder white dress and wears minimal makeup, her inky black hair a glossy cascade down her back.

She looks like an angel.

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to go?” Her gentle voice lures Donghyuck from his thoughts and he smiles at her, placing an arm around her waist and drawing her close to him.

“You’re my girlfriend. Of course it’s okay.”

Her gaze is downcast, lips pouted in worry. “But your parents don’t know about me. And what about her—,”

“That’s why you need to come with me tonight. So they can know about you,” Donghyuck tries to keep his tone light to mask his worry; deep down, he too knows that tonight is going to be precarious and defining, and it could either make or break his relationship with Sohui.

When they reach the hotel, Donghyuck laces his fingers through hers, and he’s not sure if it’s to comfort Sohui or himself. He doesn’t miss the way her eyes widen at the intricate glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the artful statues of greek Goddesses posing in all their prehistoric glory, and of course, the people parading all around in their finest evening wear like nobility. It is moments like these when he’s painfully reminded of the sheer gulf between the worlds they come from; his reality exists only in her wildest dreams.

“Donghyuck-ah!”

He whirls round at the sound of his mother screeching his name, bracing himself for the whirlwind of interrogation that is sure to consume him. He tightens his grip on her hand, wondering if he and Sohui will make it out alive.

Mr Lee hurries towards him, the click-clack of her heels against the marble tiles like a mocking countdown towards his impending doom. As expected, she stops short when she sees Sohui, hand interlinked with her son’s, her gaze hardening into one of icy judgement. Mr Lee raises a questioning eyebrow but remains silent.

And so it begins.

“Who is this, Donghyuck?” Mrs Lee asks in a tone of apparent civility but she doesn’t bother masking her cold appraisal of Sohui as she assesses her simple dress, lack of jewelry and unimpressive hairdo, in stark contrast to her own immaculate styling and head-to-toe designer wear.

“Mother, Father, this is Kim Sohui,” Donghyuck says, wrapping an arm around Sohui’s shoulders, “and she’s my girlfriend.”

If looks could kill, Sohui would be writhing on the floor right now.

“I see. It’s nice to meet you, Sohui. How long have you been dating my son?”

The poor girl stares down at the floor, fidgeting. “Four months?”

“And you know that my son’s engaged? And he has been for a period of time way longer than four months.”

The color dissipates from Sohui’s cheeks and she pales instantly. “Yes, Mrs Lee.”

“We can deal with this later, mother—,”

“Mr and Mrs Lee!”

The Lee family meeting is cut short with the arrival of another family; your own.

Donghyuck’s eyes are immediately drawn to you; he clenches his jaw as a film descends over his eyes, that familiar feeling of mutiny washing over him.

He takes in your silk champagne dress, no doubt flown in from the most expensive Parisian or Lebanese designer. He takes in your flawless half-updo that’s been styled to perfection, not a curl of hair out of place. He takes in your polished, elegant strides, six-inch heels notwithstanding. Everything about you is immaculate and impeccable; you appear entirely self-possessed and composed, the very portrait of style and sophistication, grace and glamour.

He doesn’t take his eyes off you as you greet his parents, a cordial smile playing on your lips when his parents gush over how beautiful you look tonight.

“And who might this young lady be?” Donghyuck flinches when your mother asks, her sharp eyes pinned on Sohui like a predator does prey.

“Oh, she’s just a friend of Donghyuck’s,” Mrs Lee says, at the exact moment Donghyuck blurts out “my girlfriend”.

While everyone falls into stunned silence, anger radiating off his parents in potently palpable waves, Donghyuck’s eyes flit over to you immediately to gauge your reaction. Would this news be enough to shock you, to cause you distress, to cause your perfect facade to crumble for once? Because for once in your life, things weren’t going according to your perfect plan, and they were now out of your control? The very thought causes a sense of triumph to swell through his chest.

But you don’t even bat an eyelid.

Without missing a beat, you break out into a warm smile, extending your hand to Sohui’s. “Hi, my name is Y/N. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“I’m so sorry about my son,” Mrs Lee says, absolutely flabbergasted, “we had absolutely no idea about any of this.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” you say, and though Donghyuck tries his hardest to read your expression, you do a perfect job at keeping it inscrutable; he’s unable to figure you out. “We might be engaged, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t date other people, right?”

Your parents look aghast at your flippant reaction, and it nearly causes you to giggle.

“Your daughter is so understanding, as always,” Mrs Lee gushes, “Hyuck really doesn’t deserve her.”

Donghyuck’s head hangs low as he clenches his fists, his mother’s final verdict like a dagger aimed straight for his heart.

He can never win against you.

—

After Mrs Lee banishes Sohui from tonight’s function, Donghyuck vanishes. You set off in search of him, feeling a sort of responsibility for what just happened even though you’re not exactly sure what you should be held accountable for.

You traverse through the crowded expanse of the ballroom, stopping every couple of minutes for people to gush over how lovely your dress is, how exquisite you look tonight (you were indeed the daughter of the largest fashion conglomerate in Seoul; there was no way anyone would tell you your fashion sense was hideous). You smile and either demur or thank them politely, depending on how sycophantic they choose to be. You’re good at playing the game; you’ve been raised your whole life learning the ropes of how to be a people pleaser, how to be charismatic and alluring, how to draw people to you and your cause.

And it’s always worked with just about everyone in your life. Except, of course, for Lee Donghyuck.

The one person you need to charm the most simply refuses to fall under your spell.

It’s frustrating, but more than that, it’s terribly unsettling; is he able to see through your veneer of poise and confidence to the weak, less-than-worthy girl you’re so afraid to acknowledge? You’ve always believed that vulnerability wouldn’t look good on you, and that’s why you try so hard, in every aspect of your life, to maintain that flawless guise, that charade of effortless excellence. Yet, with a single withering sneer or chilly glare, Lee Donghyuck manages to strike down that meticulously manipulated illusion you’d gone to great lengths to construct.

You don’t like it.

You shake off all unpleasant thoughts and slip on your game face as you step out onto the balcony where a familiar lone figure stands deep in thought, a forlorn silhouette in the darkness of the night. The wind whips through your hair as you move to stand next to him; you produce your shawl from your purse and wrap it around your bare arms.

“Hi.”

You don’t look at Donghyuck; a part of you is afraid to see that ever-simmering resentment on his face. But he makes no reply, gazing out at the cityscape beneath you two. You pluck up the courage to continue.

“I’m sorry about Sohui. She seems really nice.”

You hear him exhale, a heavy sound that dissolves into the breeze. Yet he remains silent.

“If you’d like, I can talk to Mrs Lee—,”

“Shut up.”

The words on the tip of your tongue grind to an abrupt halt and die. Donghyuck finally turns towards you, his dark eyes piercing through to your very core.

“Why did you do that?”

Steeling yourself, you match his stare. “I really do think it’s perfectly fine for us to be dating other people. I know you don’t like me, and I won’t force you to. But I just want to remind you that what needs to be done has to be done, when the time comes.”

Donghyuck smirks. “You think I’ll marry you?”

Onward with the diplomatic route you continue. “I hate to put it this way, but you have no choice. We were betrothed to each other since we were kids and we’re bound by a formal contract—,”

At this, Donghyuck grabs your wrist roughly and you lurch forward, torso mere centimetres away from his. He inches his face closer to yours; you can count the beauty spots splayed across the expanse of his honey-gold skin, and the musky scent of his cologne makes your head spin.

You almost gulp in his face. Almost.

“Do you want to marry me?” He asks, all sardonic bitterness gone from his voice. It almost sounds like a genuine question, like he really wants to know your opinion on the matter.

You take a few seconds to clear your head, to formulate a prudent and politically correct reply that your parents would approve of.

But Donghyuck seems to be able to read your mind. “I don’t want a model answer, Y/N. I’m asking you what you really want.”

You chew your lower lip in unease, avoiding his probing gaze. What do you really want? All your life, all you thought you really wanted was to fulfil all the plans your parents had laid out for you even before you were born. To be a good daughter to your parents, a good student to your teachers, a good heiress to the family company. And eventually, a good wife to Donghyuck. Because all these were the means to an eventual end—wealth, material success, approval from your parents, and with those, you’d assumed, would automatically come some form of happiness (a nebulous concept you never truly understood or appreciated). Why should you question your parents, when they’d told you time and again that they only had your best interests at heart?

But now, being faced with Donghyuck’s resolute gaze, the defiant tilt of his chin, with his fingers burning into your skin, you’re not so sure anymore.

What do you want?

“I-I don’t know,” you mutter softly, so softly that it almost gets carried away by the wind into the night. But Donghyuck catches it, and he doesn’t miss the quiver in your voice that tells him it isn’t very often you’re unsure of something and you admit it. His grip on your wrist loosens and he remarks, “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“What?”

“You not knowing something.”

Your cheeks almost colour with embarrassment. You snatch your hand out of his grip, take a step back and straighten up, ashamed of having let your mask of seamless composure slip, even if it was only for an instant. Looking him directly in the eye, you say in a sharp tone, “Don’t ever touch me again without my permission.”

With that, you turn around, your shawl flapping violently behind you in the breeze and hitting Donghyuck in the cheek.

He watches you return to the ballroom and disappear into the ceaseless sea of designer gowns and overpriced tuxedos, right where you belong. But he can’t forget the flash of vulnerability he’d seen in your eyes, the shadow of doubt that made him think maybe you weren’t the infallible robot he always believed you were.

Maybe you too, like him, want to break free from the confines of this cursed matrimonial match.

—

You sit at your desk, working on a history essay that you normally would have completed hours ago but it’s 7pm and you’re not even halfway through yet. You glance outside your bedroom window, or your ivory tower as you like to call it; your house was basically a castle set amid carefully cultivated gardens, and nights of rushing essays made you feel like Rapunzel stuck in an endless cycle of work.

Anyone would say you were practically a princess. Born with the privilege of not a silver but golden spoon in your mouth, you virtually had the world at your fingertips. Your every whim and fancy came true; all you had to do was ask and you would receive.

But no one understood that this just made it even more difficult to prove that you are worthy.

Do you even deserve everything you have? This was a nagging, disturbing question that you would likely never have the answer to.

Before you can delve too deeply into your existential issues, your phone pings with a text.

Lee Donghyuck

Hi.

You almost drop your phone. You had Donghyuck’s contact saved because your parents forced you two to text each other obligatory birthday wishes and congratulations whenever either of you did well in something. The last text was Donghyuck congratulating you on winning the debate nationals half a year ago. His texts always had this note of forced civility, like he’d rather be skinning a cat than sending you a text. But you hadn’t won anything recently, nor was it your birthday, so why did he deign to contact you?

Lee Donghyuck

Can we meet? I need to discuss something with you.

You can’t forget the way he’d momentarily disarmed you, or the way you’d callously left him on the balcony that night. Why would he want anything to do with you after that horribly awkward encounter?

You

When?

Lee Donghyuck

Right now, if you’re free.

It’s funny how your first thought is, what the hell am I going to wear? Then again, it’s not like you have regular midnight escapades with the boy who regards you as the bane of his existence; how would you know the dress code for such an occasion? You end up slipping into your baby pink Adidas tracksuit, the one you usually wear for your night runs—Donghyuck’s strange loathing for pink be damned. You have no intention to endear yourself to him, at least not tonight.

You slip out through the back gate and into the rose garden, where Donghyuck is waiting in the pavilion. His hands are in his pockets and he looks deep in thought, like he’s ruminating on contemporary problems of the 21st century when in reality, you’re sure he’s probably just dreaming about that girlfriend of his. He doesn’t even seem to mind your all-pink ensemble.

“Hey Donghyuck,” you say coolly, determinedly looking ahead of you and refusing to look at him, “let’s make this quick, please. I have an essay to write.” You almost immediately regret how petty that sounds, nothing like the businesslike tone you were striving for.

“Fine.” Did you imagine the mild disdain in his voice? “I just have a proposal for you that I think you might be interested in; I was wondering if you’d want to form an alliance.”

Now that's businesslike. You turn towards him, curiosity aroused. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to marry you; you know that clearly enough. But I’m sure you wouldn’t want to marry me either.”

You remain silent, unsure where he’s heading with this.

“The thing is, we never really tried to get close to each other; maybe that’s why our parents are so insistent that we’d be a good match. My parents don't listen to me when I tell them I don’t want to marry you; they say that I’ll get over it, which is bullshit, because I know what I want and it’s not you,” he says, looking over at you, “no offence.”

You smirk. “None taken. Please go on.”

“So if we show them that we’re making the effort to get to know each other better, but it doesn’t work out in the end, maybe they’ll let us off. I mean, mine won’t, but you can tell your parents that you don’t want to marry me; they’ll surely listen to you because you’re literally their darling princess. My parents will have no say then.” The sneer in his tone definitely isn’t imaginary this time.

You consider this for a moment, trying to find loopholes in his plan. “What exactly does ‘getting to know each other better’ entail?”

At this, Donghyuck takes a deep breath. “I need you to keep an open mind about this because it’s for the greater good, Y/N. It’s going to be painful, but I think we should pretend to date each other.”

You keep your expression stoic when really, you feel your heartbeat picking up speed and a surge of heat diffuses across your cheekbones.

Lee Donghyuck never fails to surprise you.

“And your girlfriend is okay with this?”

“Yes, I’ve told her about it; she gave me her full support. After all, it’s all fake anyway. And this way we can break off our engagement faster, which is what we both want.”

You know you should say no but you can’t deny that this was indeed a rather expedient plan. And you would never admit it, but you can’t seem to suppress that clandestine urge that had been bubbling inside of you ever since that encounter with Donghyuck—the urge to, for once in your life, take control of your own decisions. To snatch the reins of your fate away from your parents, to do something for yourself instead of for the people around you. This would be your one and only act of rebellion, the lone stain of sin upon your spotless record of dutiful daughter. The thought fills you with a dark thrill of exhilaration and sends electricity charging through your veins, a feeling foreign to your body. Almost immediately you feel years younger, like an errant child about to undertake a secret mission in the forbidden forest.

“Deal,” you say, extending your hand to Donghyuck’s and finally meeting his gaze with your own. “I look forward to working with you, Lee Donghyuck.”

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rainbowwing251 · 3 years

Text

You know what? Fuck it, I’m making some tickle headcanons for Young Cricket. I can’t control myself anymore.

So, Young Cricket… he’s a lee-leaning switch, though most people wouldn’t expect this from him. He’s usually a serious person, so people don’t think twice when it comes to him and tickling. However, he has been seen tickling his friends, and because of this, people assume that he is a ler. This is only partially true, since he actually prefers to be on the receiving end of tickling, but he does enjoy tickling others on rare occasions.

His worst spots are his neck, knees, and stomach, but his stomach is slightly more ticklish that the first two spots. Why is this the case? No one knows for sure, but one thing is for certain: his tummy’s too ticklish for him to successfully complete Master Mantis’s training sessions when Mantis decides to add tickling into the mix.

His laugh is both quiet and sweet-sounding when you start tickling him, but it will gradually get louder and louder as you keep going. If you don’t want to wait for his laugh to reach its maximum volume, however, you can always go straight for his stomach. If you do this, he’ll sputter a bit before he falls into a fit of cackling laughter.

He’s also prone to squeaking and squealing while he’s being tickled. He’ll often squeak when you pinch his sides or gently blow on his neck or ears, and he often squeals when you blow a raspberry onto his neck or stomach. These are the easiest ways to get a squeak or squeal out of him, but you don’t have to do either of these things if you don’t want to. You could always sneak up on him and tickle him. He’ll never see that coming (Though he really should. Even Master Mantis says so, but apparently, this lesson hasn’t stuck with Young Cricket).

Oh, and he’s SUPER squirmy while he’s being tickled, so you’ll want to have a good grip on his wrists or pin his legs down. If you don’t do either of these things, he could break free from your grasp, and he might turn the tables on you if he’s in the mood for payback.

Want to know the best way to tease him? Tell him how cute he is while you tickle him. This is especially effective if he’s gigging in response to you lightly tickling him or gently poking his belly.

Speaking of pokes, that’s a good way to make him jump six feet in the air. Seriously, sneak up on him and poke his sides or his stomach, and he’ll go flying. It is by far the most hilarious thing you’ll ever see in your life (though this may result in Young Cricket getting a concussion if you do this while he’s in a building. Kat and Ana can confirm, this has happened at least once).

You want to know one of Young Cricket’s biggest weaknesses? It’s raspberries, especially if you blow them on his stomach. If you blow enough of them on there or his neck, he might end up shedding a few tears of mirth.

To try and remedy his weakness towards tickling, Master Mantis has done many training sessions with Cricket in an attempt to teach him how to resist tickling. To some extent, his training worked; Cricket won’t immediately die of laughter the second someone touches him in any spot that isn’t his stomach, but every time Mantis touched his stomach, he fell apart. To this day, he still hasn’t mastered the art of resistance, and that’s all because his stomach is too damn ticklish for him to complete his training, as I mentioned towards the beginning of these headcanons.

You know what the best part of all of this is? Well, aside from the occasional concussion, Young Cricket doesn’t mind being tickled at all. If anything, he loves it! Hell, he’ll go as far as to ask his master to repeat the tickle resistance training just so he can get some tickles (he doesn’t want to ask for them directly, since he thinks that his master will disapprove of him willingly giving in to his weakness).

While Master Mantis didn’t think much of this at first, he soon realized that something was going on when he saw Young Cricket blushing as he asked him if he could repeat his tickle resistance training. He initially brushed it off, until Cricket asked him again the next day. The blush appeared again, and at this point, Mantis knew that Cricket was hiding something from him.

It took several training sessions (and a shit load of tummy tickles) for Master Mantis to get a confession out of his apprentice, but once he got it, he willingly chose to continue Cricket’s tickle resistance training, though at this point, it wasn’t so much “training” and it was a tickle session between Mantis and Cricket. This, along with Cricket’s confession, is a well-kept secret between the two of them.

To anyone who may be questioning it, no, Cricket is not over-exaggerating his ticklishness or his reactions. He genuinely is that ticklish, and because of that, his reactions look over the top, but they are as real as real can get.

Cricket doesn’t have that many lers, since he tries to keep his ticklishness a secret from everyone that isn’t Master Mantis, but he does have Kat, Ana, Mona, and 5-Volt. On some occasions, Penny will tickle him too, mainly as a way for her to study tickling. And of course, Master Mantis will tickle him too.

If 5-Volt is tickling him, 9-Volt might help her and tickle him, too.

Kat and Ana are the only two people other than Master Mantis who are aware of Cricket’s love for tickling (he was comfortable enough with those two to confess to them, though he’s thinking of confessing to 5-Volt as well).

As a ler, Cricket is surprisingly playful! Again, people wouldn’t expect this, since he acts so serious all the time, but every now and then, he’ll get the urge to wreck someone himself!

He began to develop his tickling skills as he and Master Mantis continued to work on his resistance towards tickling. He couldn’t help but think about the techniques Mantis would use to try and break him, and he wanted to learn them himself. Every time he asked Mantis if he could teach him the techniques he uses in their tickle resistance training, he claimed that he wants to learn them so he could find a way to resist them. Mantis didn’t think he had a completely different motive to learn these techniques until he saw Cricket straight up destroy Ana with raspberries to the back of her ears, a technique that he had taught Cricket out of the belief that he would use it to build up his resistance towards tickling.

Did Cricket get punished for lying to Mantis about his motives? Yes, he sent Kat and Ana on him and told them to use the exact same technique he used on them to tickle him until he learned his lesson. Did it work? Nope, he’s still learning new techniques from his Master and still uses them to wreck his friends with tickles. And every single time he gets caught, he would face the same type of punishment from Mantis. The cycle continues to this day, and neither Cricket nor Mantis mind it.

Cricket often catches his lees by using his “Precious Prancing Pounce” technique to jump onto their backs and pin them down. Since he knows that this move can cause injures, he’ll always make sure that his lee wasn’t hurt by him jumping onto them before he unleashes an devastating tickle attack on them.

He tends to laugh along with his lee, but in between giggles and laughs, he can dish out some seriously evil teasing. He’ll use all sorts of methods to tease his lees, but his favorite method is to lean down to his lee’s ear and whisper his teases to them. What really makes this the most evil method of teasing he can use is that he’ll let his voice go lower than he normally allows it to go. If he does this to you, you will shudder in fear.

If you are uncomfortable with this specific method, he’ll find a method that you are the most comfortable with. As much as he wants to tease his lees and make them laugh, he doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries and make them uncomfortable, so he’s more than happy to comply with their requests.

If this specific method isn’t effective on you, and you don’t really care what method he uses to tease you, you better hope that he doesn’t find the method that you are the weakest to. If he does, you should prepare for hell, because he can be a merciless teaser when he wants to be.

Now that I’ve mentioned his favorite method of teasing, I should mention his favorite method of tickling. That method is to poke around and try to find a weak spot. If he finds one, then he’ll go all in. If he doesn’t, then he’ll keep poking around until he finds one. This is a method that Master Mantis used when he first starting training Cricket to resist the urge to laugh when he’s being tickled, and even though Mantis rarely uses it against him anymore, he likes to use that method himself to test the waters before he goes in for the kill.

He can also use this method to build up anticipation in his lee, which he knows is an effective way to get a lee to laugh before the tickling even begins (trust me, he knows. He can’t handle anticipation himself when he’s the lee, so he can use that knowledge to his advantage when he’s the ler).

I mentioned before that on rare occasions, Cricket gets the urge to tickle others. Sometimes, he doesn’t have a reason to tickle other people, he just wants to hear someone laugh. However, he could have one of the following two reasons to tickle someone:

He’s actually in a lee mood, but doesn’t want to ask for tickles, so he’ll tickle someone else, hoping that they will get their revenge.

He’s in the mood for a tickle fight.

Usually, out of these two reasons, the first one is the more common reason. That doesn’t mean that the second reason is rare, however. Cricket really likes tickle fights, and there are two reasons for this. Reason #1: Tickle fights teach him how to break out of a person’s pin and fight back. Reason #2: Tickle fights enable him to satisfy both his lee mood and his ler mood at the same time. Be careful if you want start a tickle fight with him, however, because he is rather competitive, and he’ll do his best to tickle you into submission.

He has even fewer lees than he does lers, but he does have his master, Kat, and Ana. If he’s in the mood for a tickle fight, he’ll go and tickle 5-Volt, since he knows that she is the perfect opponent to have in a tickle fight. He’ll go for 9-Volt, too, but only if he joins in on a tickle fight between him and 5-Volt.

Now for one more headcanon: Young Cricket and everyone else at WarioWare Inc. who’s ticklish in some capacity have to make sure that Wario doesn’t find out their secret. If he finds out that any one member of the company is ticklish, he might force them to make a tickle-related microgame featuring themselves. Either that, or he could set something up where people can pay him a specific amount of money so they can tickle a specific member of the company in a specific spot. While that might not be something that he would do to everyone, he could do this to Young Cricket, since realistically, he could make a crap ton of money off of his extreme ticklishness. Knowing that this is a possibility, Young Cricket is more secretive about his ticklishness than anyone else in the company.

Speaking of tickle-related microgames, here’s the real final headcanon: One of the microgames Young Cricket and Master Mantis made was inspired by the tickle sessions the two of them have with one another. It is unknown whether or not Cricket was the one who created it.

And that’s it, that’s all I have for Young Cricket at the moment! He’s officially joined Shulk in the “I love this character so much and I want to wreck their shit so badly” category of characters that I like, so don’t be surprised if I make more posts about him in the future.

#tickling #tickleware #from here on out that’s the warioware tag #Lee!Young Cricket #Ler!Young Cricket #I can’t believe it #I actually made headcanons for a character that isn’t a Smash fighter or a character from Xenoblade #what a time to be alive!#in all seriousness I’m really liking warioware as a franchise #and even though I don’t own any of the games in the series #I’ve seen some footage of the games #more specifically warioware: gold #and I really like what I see #I don’t why I grew to like young cricket the most out of all of the characters #but it happened #and I think I like him just as much as I like Shulk now

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thatdamnokie · 4 years

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so, as everybody knows, our man, the lovely mark strong, turned 57 this past august 5th

since the kingsman films have had a huge influence on several aspects of my day-to-day life (gee, wonder what group of people i could be referring to...), i decided to sit down and do something i’ve been thinking about since getting my medical card earlier this year: getting high as a kite and watching them back-to-back.

to celebrate mark’s birthday, i decided to do another running commentary post like the one i did for rocknrolla ages ago, under the cut. it’s a pretty similar style, which is to say not necessarily super coherent and might be hard to understand if you’ve never seen the movies. D:

there are some mentions of the roanoke society, but not many.

if even just one person finds this mildly entertaining for four seconds, then i’ll have done my job. there is a lot of cursing and this is NOT spoiler-free.

enjoy~

edited 9.1.20 to correct typos and such, please remember that i was Not Sober while i wrote this lmao

how many times have i watched these movies at this point? i don’t even know.

i always liked the nifty like—retro arcade marv opening animation

and the thing with the tapes! we love book-ending devices!

kingsman: badass motherfuckers worldwide incorporated

like why was merlin even with them? i understand why lee and james would be there, but merlin, was he not acting quartermaster then?

i have SO MANY FEELINGS about lee unwin

i think it haunts harry and merlin more than anyone thinks, but these are fun spy movies so we just don’t talk about trauma and shit, don’tcha know

don’t look at how merlin tears up and tell me he doesn’t drink about it *HEAVILY* later

it’s such a stark contrast to see the 1990s interior vs. what it’s like when eggsy’s grown :(

michelle baby i’m so sorry. you deserved better than this.

and BABY EGGSY

omg. like this scene is both heartbreaking but is also adorable.

colin firth has gd anime legs, that dude had to straight up unfold himself as he stood up lmao

aaannnnd swooping logo, whooooo, goin’ over some mountains~

and mark hamill, ladies and gentlemen!

this whole thing with james deciding to kinda go rogue makes me wish that we knew more about his backstory as well. like, is this james being james, or was this a weird one-off situation and he was just unlucky?

YES unlucky. nobody could plan for the hurricane of sleek destruction that is gazelle

who has one of my favorite aesthetic designs as a villain (although i guess i’d put her more on maybe henchman level? but idk, it seems like valentine looked at her more as a partner, less like an assistant? and they had a very interesting chemistry together too, like i would’ve added more valentine x gazelle scenes)

i would LOVE to be this chill about just—draping blankies over bodies

blankies over bodies sounds like a cool band name

DIBS you guys can’t have it

i am SO GLAD samuel l. jackson gave valentine a lisp!

valentine, to me, does fit a lot of the usual spy movie villain tropes

but since this movie doesn’t take itself super serious, it’s more fun than annoying

and we never hear about any of the other knights?? like

half of this is just gonna be me whining for additional footage that there just wouldn’t have been room for realistically lmao

michael caine, you are lovely

MARK STRONG, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN

WITH LEGS THAT DON’T QUIT AND AN ACCENT THAT I’D DIE FOR

i’m an embarrassment

like let’s all stop and thank god that mark didn’t have time to learn the welsh accent

not that i would’ve been disappointed, because all accents are good accents on this blog

but at this point i can’t imagine merlin as—not scottish

“try picking a more suitable candidate this time”

arthur you DICK

like were you this cold-blooded when lee died, you fuckin’ reptilian-ass son of a bitch

no wonder you were charlie’s pledge person thing

and enter the fabulous taron egerton, stage left!

DEAN you are DISGUSTING

god, michelle, you need better friends, if you were my bro this entire relationship would’ve never happened

;-; and eggsy’s so sweet with his sister! i know there probably wasn’t “room” for it but i AM glad that there are scenes showing that family is one of eggsy’s kinda “core values”or whatever you want to call it

dude is a hufflepuff through and through imo

can you imagine eggsy as a villain? we would be so fucked. he’s sly, he’s smart, he could’ve made life v e r y difficult for lots of people if he really wanted to

but look at him with the squad!

eggsy’s just like the british version of a good ol’ boy

this car scene is some dukes of hazzard bullshit (ramp-jumping and fun car horn aside)

if butterflies are harry’s main symbolic critter, would foxes be eggsy’s? or would it be a pug instead? i guess that’s like asking if harry would be either a butterfly or a cairn terrier, like mr. pickle. let’s say both.

this fandom is pretty on top of character associations like that

you get symbolic associations! YOU get symbolic associations! EVERYONE gets symbolic associations whether they’re actually in the canon or not! don’t have any? don’t worry, we’ll assign you at least one!

the guy playing the interviewing officer is ALSO the patriarch in the witch which i didn’t realize until—like, a while after

and it was while @circlesofbone was visiting, and we were just “oh, okay, guess we can’t escape this cast at all, this is fine”

“your father saved my life.”

harry you’re such a fucking peacock, waiting all posted up and posing so you’ll look cool

you big doofus

i’d kill to be inside his head during this first conversation with eggsy though

like is eggsy like lee? is harry seeing lee the entire time he’s talking to his son, in his mannerisms, how he carries himself, how he speaks?

or is eggsy the opposite? which—i don’t know if that would somehow be sadder?

there’s just a lot going on in the background of this bit that’s left up to interpretation

“although i’m sure it’s well-founded—“

harry’s just so casual about this entire thing, nobody’s that casual without practice

harry you rabble-rouser, what kind of life have you led

“manners. maketh. man.”

our timeless motto, my flowers

kingsman STILL to this DAY has some of the most well-choreographed fight scenes i’ve ever seen??

like yeah the church scene but even just this initial bar fight

harry could’ve been a dancer

in a way i guess he already is

like he moves so fluidly and gracefully, it is BONKERS

colin you did so good! i’m so proud!

the way eggsy’s just O.O

whether or not you ship hartwin, like, you gotta admit, that was hot

and his BODY LANGUAGE, he’s sitting like RAMROD straight, this poor dude lmao

nobody prepares you for a situation like that in public school is all i’m saying

harry, exiting stage left like a suave, smooth motherfucker

remember when iggy azalea was relevant

ugghhhh i hate this part

“I WASN’T WITH NO ONE”

can you imagine being harry hart listening to your dead friend’s son getting the shit beat out of him

like, surely he heard the cleaver, he knows dean was going to fucking gut eggsy right?

listen to how cold and icy his voice gets, oof

yeah, he’s pissed, and dean is lucky

PARKOUR

ugh, i want to go to london ;-; i want to walk in front of the shop and visit harry’s house and kiss cute english boys

i’d like to think harry’s super excited to show eggsy everything but he’s gotta keep it dialed back because “decorum”

the way eggsy pauses though

“come on.”

and he says it so softly.

if i was eggsy, i’d be nervous, too.

but i didn’t realize how quickly harry tries to give off signals like “hey there’s no reason to be scared.”

“like my fair lady?” “well, you’re full of surprises.” <3 one of my favorite sceneeesss.

harry’s voice is so soothing but eggsy is so freaked out by the elevator that he’s just—there’s no room for anything else beyond processing the elevator lmao

“how deep does this fucking thing go?” asking the real questions

aannnddd KINGSMAN BULLET TRAIN

i’d like to think they have like soft jazz or something playing in there

and then they get to the hangar and there are obviously a buuuuunch of people out on the tarmac that we just—never hear about? i just assume they’re all like technical officers or maybe other agents

“your father had the same look on his face. … as did i.”

harry is already rooting for him.

“late again, sir.”

that. brogue.

fuck, i could listen to him talk for hours, scottish accents are my favorite thing

#squadgoals

not a very diverse cast :/

the body bag speeeeech

and of course nobody was in any actual danger, but merlin doesn’t want them to know that so he becomes mr. hard as steel, i am emotionally stoic at all times, do not test me you bunch of rugrats

“classic army technique.”

ROXY

ROXY I WANT TO JUST HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS TT.TT

aannnnddd charlie, also

who we might’ve found sympathy for if we knew aaannyytthiinnggg else about his backstory

like, could he just be Like That, yeah

but most people i know who are assholes like that are that way because their parents were first /shrug/

can hardly fault the dude for turning out like that when poison was all he was given to drink

anyone else a hundred percent positive they would’ve drowned in the first trial

i would absolutely have panicked and bit it

but then again, i’m not kingsman material, i’m roanoke

and if this is the exact same test that merlin and harry went through, does that mean there might be some weird drowning trauma hidden back in there that’s just ANOTHER thing we’re not gonna talk about?

(yes the correct answer is yes)

god that’s such an american response to the problem though

glass can’t cause problems if it’s in a million pieces!

“yeah you can wipe those smirks off your faces…”

i wonder if there was ever a situation where a trainee actually drowned

and i don’t mean like amelia, i mean some poor kid who just failed the test

merlin knows how to put the fear of god in people though!

and mark strong, very handsome, yes, very scary, also yes

he and colin both look like they’re 80 percent leg in every single scene

harry literally had brain matter smatter ALL OVER HIS FACE and still somehow had the mental facilities to be aware of those dudes, leave a bomb and dive out of a window (and then escape said dudes)

billy badass, y’all

“just get it done.” okay, i took back what i said earlier, maybe he does see her as more of an assistant, less than a partner. their relationship is weird.

the puppy scene!

“it’s a bulldog innit?”

YASSSS the golden trio

because of what happened with our other canon charlie has become a weird character for me to watch, like, yeah, i “watch” charlie be himself in tss but the charlie i “see” is like—”our” charlie.

“bollocks!” and then he just runs with jb in his vest, makes me smile

aannddd we see valentine’s super cool factory

harry your hair gets so long <3

“water!” wow, who wants to bet that the fact he was instantly screaming means that maybe he’s gonna have some stuff to talk about in therapy later

roxy baby i’m sorry they made you hold the balloon and have to trust these dumbasses to not shoot you on accident

i would trust roxy to not shoot me

i love, love love valentine’s house

it’s gorgeous

set design is always such a cool way for filmmakers to include details about a character using pure aesthetics and i’m such a slut for it

tilde!

see also: one of the characters done the WORST by these movies imo!

the fact that she not only says no, she says no with enthusiasm and gets blatantly pissed, is one of the best insights we get into tilde’s character and then it just—gets wasted

like it takes three steps and then gets mowed down in the hallway like her guards

i would never be given the opportunity to be asked if i wanted an implant but i draw the line at having stuff put into my neck

awwww harry’s so proud!

that finger point “yeah, see, be more like your uncle”

merlin is SO TALL

“a bit much innit?”

he’s just—tapping a normal clipboard

… nobody wanna talk about how that’s a normal clipboard

anyway

i also love how they show him in professor sweaters for the beginning acts of the movie

definitely a softer aesthetic than one would guess for a dude who apparently did field missions sometime within the past decade or so, but i also have a theory that lee’s death directly contributed to merlin maybe being the man behind the screen as opposed to afield

because trauma is a thing but this is a FUN movie so we’re NOT gonna talk about it

“you’re gonna be all right. you’re top of the class!” this was the scene that made my mom a reggsy shipper

regardless of how you feel about them as a couple, their friendship is one of the best things about this movie, along with their dynamic with charlie, asjdnaskdjna WHY could we not have had a trio movie instead

eggsy you show-off “lemme just throw my arms up and dip outta this plane like it’s not a big deal”

roxy you can do it!

ugh, there goes my baby, off to have a near-death experience under merlin’s immediate supervision lmao

“good girl, rox, glad you made it!”

guys, they’re just kids.

i love this big group scene because it reminds us that these are just young folks, still

“my, my, you’re all very cheerful...”

“rufus, come on!” dude eggsy—and not even just eggsy, charlie and rox too--at least made an attempt at teamwork. you get points for that bro

but man, for all they know, they’re about to beef it in a very permanent way, i’d be freaking out too

merlin getting caught up in the drama

because again, he’s supposed to know that eggsy has a parachute

i think he wasn’t prepared for these two to get that close to not making it and that’s why we see him break face and drop his mug

*WHAM*

i HATE the sound of them landing

it’s not like you can hear bones breaking but it hurts me, guys

and then there were three

plus one daddy long legs quartermaster

“if you have a complaint you come here and you whisper it in my ear.”

yes SIR

“you need to take that chip off your shoulder.”

merlin coming’ in with the tough love portion of the kingsman core squad

there’s no reason for me to think harry’s persona was inspired by cruella de ville somehow but i do anyway

she reveals the mcdonald’s and valentine is just :D

idk if he was expecting a specific reaction or was just excited to see a reaction period

valentine is definitely a fun villain, which, given the tone of the movie, makes sense, it’s all supposed to be fun

one of the reasons i love kingsman is that it’s like, this golden ray of goofy cinematic fuckery in a world of grim!dark remakes and other superhero/spy films who are presented as more serious stories

“and thank you for such a—happy, meal.”

harry got a puppy smile

but see, then, here at his house he’s a lot more relaxed with gazelle! like, patting her butt, etc.

maybe what we see of their relationship is dependent on setting, because valentine himself has it compartmentalized?

perrrrrrhaps

“and i am never, EVER GOING TO AGREE!”

tilde, you deserved better, and i think all the weird hate you get from our ohana is unfair

you don’t twist a runner’s ankle before the race starts and then get mad when they don’t win

your story was mishandled from the beginning

asmr: hanging out with the golden trio watching worrying news in the kingsman trainee bunker room

the way he says “biblical sense” lmao

i have never been able to figure out if the way he says that line is supposed to infer spiritual respect, or lack of it, but i might be looking too into it

“it’s an acquired taste, mate.”

what—what would you even do if you were at a club and three people as hot as taron, ed and sophie all came up and start talking to you at the same time

like i know the target got up and left pretty quick because of the training exercise

but i’d be doing it because i’m ugly and if three hot people are all talking me up at a bar something is Bad and Wrong

which—the CAHONES on both eggsy and roxy

they both literally said “yeah i’m willing to die for this organization that hasn’t even given me a permanent place yet, what of it”

look at harry’s dimples in this scene, he is fighting a huge grin, he’s SO PROUD

i know that charlie’s response is supposed to be just more fodder into the “charlie hesketh is a tool” fire

but given that i’m not unconvinced that his home life wasn’t super shitty, like—

idk, this makes this scene a lot less fun to me. it makes it sad.

like, maybe charlie didn’t even want to be there deep down, maybe this was all for like, arthur, or his dad, or some other person he looked up to

and the way merlin looks when he tells charlie to go home, the way that he’s kinda grimacing? i’m wondering if he’s along the same kind of feeling. he’d know more about charlie’s history

have i also mentioned how much i love harry’s war room?

“YES harry!”

an evil plan is being born!

“true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

eggsy is still in his club clothes, so like—has he slept? y’all let those kids sleep after fucking drugging them, right? … guys?

“—when one is popping ones cherry.”

and eggsy is just CHEESING he is SO EXCITED

am i the only one who wants to learn more about the store clerk guy though?

he’s like the one person around who’s legit just there to run the shop

has no idea about any of the spy stuff happening

his name is donald, he’s married with three children and has two spaniels he loves

“THAT is sick.”

i would KILL for this room.

i don’t need anything in here for any reason but still

foreshadowing, foreshadowing, foreshadowing, more foreshadowing—

harry is such a NERD

“put it back, eggsy.”

the amount of self-control it would take to not have a sudden change in expression in that moment, omg

i wonder how THAT gets trained up in kingsman

“i guarantee it.” ha, get it, it’s a reference to that one commercial

“y’all—talk so funny.”

and this all means that they had a contact at that hat shop and got all that info to them before valentine got there, and somehow made sure he did end up buying a hat that they could also successfully put a bug on, how deep does this goooooo

“jack bauer?”

it says a lot about eggsy that out of all the jb’s it could’ve been, it was jack

uggghhhhhh of course they HAD to do this scene with eggsy with arthur

obviously harry couldn’t do it

i just think most of us would NOT be fans of arthur at this point in the movie, we’re all rooting for eggsy, like, he needs this moment with this other character because we gotta drive home that he’s an asshole

also—would have absolutely failed that test

and i’m not sorry at all

“welcome to kingsman--lancelot.”

i was really happy that it was a female agent who ended up getting the handle

aannddd more echoes of past scenes, man, nobody can say that this crew wasn’t intentional with their cinematography

when eggsy rolls the window down you can see his chest moving up and down, like, he is MAD

dean you asshole

so no wonder he gets so pissed that the car suddenly decides “nope, no, we’re not doing this, c’mon”

this entire conversation at harry’s house is—tense

and you don’t pick up on it the first time, i don’t think, but uh

i’m seeing it now

harry’s not just mad, he’s hurt, and eggsy’s furious but he’s also maybe regretting his actions.

it’s these two men who are rapidly trying to figure out their headspaces and trying to figure out how to navigate this situation with each other

and the way eggsy tries to apologize ;-;

kentucky is a beautiful state, actually

ohhhhhh y’alllll

we’re at the churrrccchhhh

we’re gettin’ closer to the coolest part of the movieeeee

it’s telling that gazelle was trying to make sure that they’d be safe

“… so hail satan, and have a lovely afternoon madame.”

the most metal lines colin firth has ever uttered on camera

the siren noise after it’s switched on bothers me in a way i can’t quite articulate

it might be because i have silent hill-colored trauma, who knows

FREEEEEE

BIIIRRRDDDDDDD

THE GREATEST ACTION TRACKING SHOT IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA

but then eggsy and merlin are reacting aaaanndddd it’s—a lot less fun

because you realize that they’re watching their bro mercilessly slaughter innocent people and not stopping

and still not stopping

but plot twist, i’m really glad they kept the track going, because if they’d suddenly picked *this* part of the scene to get serious, that would’ve brought the mood down so low that i don’t think there would’ve been any bouncing back

i just

how do people exist who aren’t attracted to harry hart

that man is a machine

and colin worked so hard to be able to do the scene himself, and that work SHOWS, that man cuts a FIGURE

i don’t know how they managed to somber it up just the right amount, either? maybe because they waited for the “fun action sequence” to be over so there wouldn’t need to be noise that had to be masked by a fun rock track?

“… what did you do to me.”

i cannot imagine what harry was feeling in that moment.

the way he spoke it was like he didn’t even have time to be afraid to die

“that tends to happen when you shoot somebody in the head. feels good, right?”

“no, it does not feel good!”

i love that exchange because we normally hear the opposite.

also—whiplash.

mark has this way of expressing grief without showing any—blatant signs.

like merlin’s not especially tearful, or crying, but his eyes look MASSIVE. and SAD. and he has just the tiiiiiniest tremor in his voice.

and eggsy, dude, like, we’ve all had it come on us really quick and suddenly it’s like your chest is pumping like a piston and when did it get so hard to breathe?

ARTHUR you REPULSE me

like look at how egssy’s shoulders sag when he realizes that arthur isn’t on his team

and in a way, this is eggsy’s final test as a kingsman trainee, imo

do you realize how quickly he had to assess what was happening and figure out what to do, all without arthur noticing?

“you are all alone. it is all up to you. remember all you have learned. good luck.”

it’s a very—almost horror-esque situation from that pov

and he passed with flying colors to go on his first true mission, because after he puts on the suit, that’s his visual cue of graduating, if that makes sense

that’s the knight putting on his armor.

“i’d rather be with harry. thanks.”

“so be it.”

*click*

me: *laughing at arthur’s big dumb stupid head*

… man i’d love a replica of that decanter and glasses set though

not to mention that eggsy recognized the flaws in arthur’s character and weaponized them, which is a whole other level of shit that isn’t necessarily easy; he knew that arthur carried the kind of pride that would leave him open

god, he looks so exhausted though when rox has him at gunpoint.

i think he was being pretty serious, about harry

sick helipaaaaaaad

that thing looks vaguely like a rock-‘em sock-‘em robot but in pieces though

more grandpa sweaters <3

man. you can see roxy swallow, you know she’s scared, but then she just sets her jaw and—

roxy baby you are the best i love you

i like the vintage vibe of the mountain lair

i think that’s another visual poke at the aesthetic themes of some of the older, og spy flicks out there

merlin looks SO LANKY walking back to the plane for some reason??

he stays until the last second for roxy. that’s love right there.

“a bespoke suit always fits.”

which can be good spiritual life advice too but that’s a separate conversation

“what the fuck is WRONG with you people?”

and his fuckin’ disco ball

uuggggghhhhh his speech reminds me of so many… “public figures” that i dislike

even though it’s obviously a bad thing that the chips are everywhere, i appreciate that phones and such are being shown in a positive manner (like, michelle talking to someone in the park, people at a ball game taking selfies, people at the beach, etc.) because i get so sick of that anti-tech boomer humor tbh

and the big reveal of eggsy in his suitttt

A KNIGHT IS BORN

“how’s the view?”

“hideous.”

you’re allowed to be crabby baby, you just let it out.

“lookin’ good, eggsy.”

“feelin’ good, merlin.”

merlin is so calm heading into the fortress and i don’t know if it’s because he’s very, very good at compartmentalizing and that’s genuinely how he is at the moment or if he’s that way through extreme self-control and effort

he can rock a pilot’s uniform though

just like eggsy can rock a suit

they’re both so handsome, help

i also wonder how eggsy’s feeling right then

like, i’d imagine that the pressure of having to perform a role to literally save the world would be enough to distract him from the bite of grief

that’s—probably enough to distract everyone, tbh

i a hundred percent believe there are breakdowns we don’t see

i wonder if eggsy told tilde he’d spoken to lindstrum(sp?) after everything was said and done

like, that’d be some kind of weird foreshadowing in hindsight

this scene is anxiety-inducing in a big way so to distract myself i imagine roxy as a mech pilot

dude i’d totally watch sophie in a role like that, like, let her be in a movie like pacific rim, she’d kick ass

and now we have The Chaos

otherwise known as that point when Everything Is Happening All At Once All The Time

also a thing that doesn’t exist in spy movies: hearing damage

because like his voice is right in eggsy’s ear and without it he’d have a LOT harder time surviving

imagine being an agent, merlin trying to talk to you, but something either hits your ear or goes off right next to it and suddenly it’s just silent

SYSTEM FAILURE

YAAASSSSS

WE WIN

GGOOOAAAAALLLLLL

THE AUDIENCE IS DOING THE WAVE

except JUST KIDDING

The Chaos 2 Electric Boogaloo!

merlin with a huge gun: hot, also, very scary

eggsy is just 10000% done

“this is mine. i’ll show you yours.”

i wonder who e man was supposed to be that valentine called.

like is that a reference to a real person that i just did’t catch?

… elon musk? maybe? idk

eggsy slides like a gd anime character

when he uses the rainmaker, it’s just like harry’s protecting him from somewhere else

(oh—wait, technically kentucky, i guess)

“merlin, i’m fucked.” you can hear the anger there. not only did he fail, but he—and everyone else—is about to die

but this? this is the pinnacle of eggsy showing himself as a kingman agent

he was staring death straight in the mouth and STILL

SOMEHOW

REMEMBERED THE IMPLANTS

so i guess if i say that the moment when he puts on the suit is when he becomes a true agent, then maybe this is the moment when he becomes galahad.

*bobs head to pomp & circumstance*

i remember getting a huge kick out of how colorful they made this

because in real life you know a bunch of people literally blowing up would be like—DISGUSTING

viscera everywhere

no fun rainbow mushroom clouds

“i’ve always wanted to kiss a princess.”

ANOTHER knight reference, very clever matthew

mmmmm Do Not Like that noise

aaaannndddd *that* line

which—maybe that’s mr. vaughn’s sense of humor, or what he thinks the sense of humor his core demographic has, idk

but it always kinda rubbed me the wrong way

the mass brawl scenes are edited so like--jarringly compared to the other fight scenes in the movie

that’s probably for a reason

also, a showdown to the tune of something disco: kind of another trope homage

this shot of gazelle is so sick, i love everything about it, she is so cool

this entire fight with eggsy is awesome tbh

we got a little bit of what gazelle can look like in combat earlier with tilde’s guards, but now we get this epic showdown seeing her at her full potential against someone who’s actually a challenge

and the way valentine is shouting for her to kick his ass from upstairs and yelling encouragement lmao that’s how real friends act when there’s a fight

daisy ;-; ugh, that’s the visual gutpunch that makes it juuuuuust serious enough by reminding us of the stakes

which is why it’s fitting that then we see the Slo-Mo K.O.

and that smile with the fun little chimes in the back, lmao

and eggsy, quick on his feet again byyyy being quick on gazelle’s feet—foot—whatever

man, impalement deaths are always fun.

coulda done without the vomiting but that’s also one of valentine’s quirks that makes him different from a cookie cutter villain

aaannddd have a heavy sigh from merlin

that dude needs a full-body massage and a drink

“is this where you say some really bad pun?”

reminder: i love that this movie is self-aware! i could not picture a super serious kingsman movie! i just picture something depressing!

there had to have been a better option besides—this, for this eggsy/tilde ending scene

i’m not saying i’m mad it ended with them fucking, i’m mad that the extent of the joke was anal and that was it.

also the idea of my boss possibly seeing me having sex would have me a little more concerned about the hardware on my face, but okay??

aannddd the tapes.

gah, we love visual throwbacks!

we love being able to see that despite all this growth and change, family remains very important to eggsy—he hasn’t changed into a different person, he has grown more into himself than ever before! THIS! THIS is eggsy unwin!

… GET READY FOR IT

time for tgc! (and to get into my roanoke feels, maybe, this is the nexus where our canons connect)

the BAGPIPES

okay

i did not stop to consider how unpleasant this was going to be to watch stoned but we’re gonna power through it and get through it together

if i cry i cry

the way the music swells into the main theme <3

and the perfect reveal for our boy eggsy!

reflected in gold, looking sharper than broken glass

and SUDDENLY CHARLIE

the pacing in tgc leads me to believe that matthew had huge plans for this movie, and a lot of cool stuff probably ended up on the cutting room floor for time

i also love that they brought charlie back

i love his voice box and his cool robot arm

and i’m not just saying that because it made it super easy to blend him into our canon, either, this is like—charlie’s evil twin in terms of his new aesthetic, the contrast is really cool

YYAASSSS THIS SCENE

WITH PRINCE PLAYING??

*CHEF’S KISS*

like we are IMMEDIATELY thrown back into the gold parts of it all, like how physics is a little broken so we can do cool shit like have a knockdown drag-out fight all within the space of a small cab

i wonder what would’ve hurt charlie worse—being thrown onto his organic side, or having all his weight land on his metal arm if it hadn’t disattached

but then he’s up and standing so i guess we’re fine?

MERLIN! <3

otherwise known as the character entrance that literally changed my life

i try not to think about it too much or i get weirded out

ANYWAY

(and to think i almost never even saw the movie)

Sick Car Chase, Bro

and as an american, like, everything’s on the opposite side to me, it’s stressful to watch a little bit

“i seem to remember in your training you were rather good at holding your breath.”

man, that’s uh—kind of a macabre thing to say, merlin

just a little bit

i’m not even gonna attempt to hold my breath to see if i’d survive this scene just assume i’m dead in that universe

we all live in a kingsman subarmine, a kingsman submarine, a kingsman submarine~~

“not boasting, but i trained him well enough that even he wouldn't mess that up.”

merlin are you okay??

gah, i love that chest-deep laugh though.

is it real love if they won’t crawl through the sewer to get to your house in time

i love that harry’s house looks basically the same

i know they talk about eggsy not wanting to change anything in the novelization but i haven’t read it yet so I’m not a hundred percent sure what all is in there

and we still get to see him hanging with his friends, and his girlfriend, like, this dude is still all about the family

“wwwwOOOOO!”

i love this group so much omg

for as much as he’s galahad, he’s still eggsy

the transition in the weed bag looks super cool

… oh, i guess watching this while high makes the main storyline hit a bit different

welp

i love that poppy is an aesthetic slut and really doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s opinion about how she makes her space

like, “i want a big 50s-style diner with a gourmet kitchen that i can cook people in, soooooo i’m getting one”

it’s also refreshing to see julianne moore in a bad guy role!

not that i’m super familiar with her filmography but i feel like i’ve mostly seen her cast as like a good guy?

i could be wrong

awwwww jet and bennie!

there’s so much to love about this set

cannibalism and the fact that she bulldozed jungle to build all this aside (suspend that belief!)

the breakfast sceeeeeene

it’s so bittersweet, for obvious reasons

and it’s more evidence that he’s not super ready to move on into new territory yet, like making new memories with tilde that ring close to home

“i wish i could have met him.”

and the way he has to turn away, ugh.

eggsy. i’m sorry.

tilde, i’m sorry, too. you had good intentions, but they lost against his pain.

michael gambdon! the new arthur we didn’t know we wanted until we got him.

charlie had a moral glo-down, it’s fine, happens to everybody

FFFFFF his imitation of merlin lmfao

man, poor charlie, like

you wake up, you can’t make a sound, your arm has been blown off and your family’s dead

like his reaction to that entire scenario isn’t entirely unrealistic, i’m just saying

also LOOK AT ROX

omg everyone in this movie can wear the FUCK out of suit, y’all

man, i’ve gotten a few tattoos that were exquisitely painful—i can’t imagine how much it would suck to do it with literal molten metal

dude this means clara laid on her stomach and probably screamed at the floor as she got hers D:

this kinda—riffs off of hannibal, a teeny-tiny bit

like we’re so overloaded with the aesthetics and behavior of a certain character so it’s like, we forget about the much darker parts untillllll there’s a mood change and we’re looking at that dude’s legs, to the burger this other dude puts in his mouth, and thinking “oh, oh dear, ew”

i love eggsy in the orange jacket <3 snaps for the wardrobe crew across this series.

tilde’s face, omg, she was heart-eyeing so bad. and like, that little proud nod at her dad (who was of course being Like That on purpose)

and roxy, coming in in the clutch, you are tonight’s MVP

uggghhhhh i hate this part

because again, it’s just--a bunch of bad shit colliding outside of anyone’s control

(it was also really jarring seeing the war room with blank walls the first time i watched this)

like—granted, you should maybe not touch stuff that’s not yours, but…

like we *just* saw eggsy and brandon in a very casual, intimate scene with each other, how can anyone get angry with brandon?

this is all stress-inducing

i remember being in the theater watching this and feeling like i was watching some awful slow motion car wreck and i couldn’t look away

idk what other story i would’ve wanted to see but i was NOT a fan of Sudden Death For Christmas, especially concerning roxy!

and poppy is such a *bright* villain, not just because of taste but because of her personality, which is another weird thing to have next to the cannibalism

gaaahhhh charlieeee your arm is so cooooool

this shot is gorgeous and incredibly depressing.

what do you do?

gah, and the way merlin comes out of the dark, like

i probably would’ve drawn a gun on him too

“you think *i* would?”

this scene shows 1. how much he trusts eggsy to not shoot him, and/or 2. how good merlin is at compartmentalizing, because this is an even bigger blow than harry’s death, and he’s following the protocol like it’s an art form

i hope that we see some reference to this safe in the next movie, that’d be a cool way to tie the narratives all together

“i suppose that must be upper class humor. … i don’t get it.”

reminder, merlin is working class.

if you’re a ho for this fandom and went and bought this whiskey specifically because of this movie clap your hands *clap clap*

and they proceed to just get HAMMERED

“country rooaaddsss… take me hoooooome…”

another reminder: kentucky is a beautiful state!

i would love to tour a whiskey distillery, that’d be super cool

“shame it’s not scotch”

again, with his weird night vale clipboard.

who would win: two highly-trained kingsman agents vs. one (1) cowboy

channing tatum, ladies and gentlemen!

“y’all look damn sharp!”

i am forever gonna be mad we didn’t get more of tequila in this movie, and not just because of roanoke either, but like, “that dog don’t hunt,” whatever he has in his mouth sealed a leak in a barrel, and it took him all of two minutes to incapacitate both eggsy AND merlin? hello??

i’m glad we’ll get to see more of him in the another movie.

“you know why the measurement of alcohol is called proof?”

just dumping it on their laps, so disrespectful

“—and you can go fuck yourself.”

eggsy fucking just giggling.

these two doofuses

also it’s hot to see merlin be sassy ngl

“HARRY!”

these guys have been fast thinkers in stressful situations but as it turns out, people being unexpectedly not dead can kinda fuck with your day

aaannddd halle berry, everybody! i love ginger ale omg

(and so does merlin, he is instantly enchanted)

;-; this reunion scene

i don’t know how colin manages to be two completely different people at once

like there’s a huge difference between former agent galahad and harry hart the lepidopterist and i can’t explain it

i really, really hope we see at least one little hint at kinsman’s relationship with statesman in the new movie, i just think it’d be really cool

in roanoke canon, there’s an office rumor that the nanobot tech used by statesman was influenced directly by the same technology developed by dr. wernicke in the outlast games. i still think it’s one of my better crossover ideas.

also

god bless whoever decided to get elton john involved with all this?? because i was DELIGHTED

i love poppy’s wardrobe as much as i love her weird 50s-land in the jungle

i also really love the main statesman theme? it reminds me of all those fun epic westerns

jeff bridges! :D

champ vaguely reminds me of my dad

“can you imagine us in the tailor business?”

and he’s super quick with the questions. my headcanons for champ are all over the place but one that i really like is that he was maybe a sheriff or in law enforcement before being recruited by statesman.

aaanndddd pedro pascal, everybody!

otherwise known as *another* character that this movie did dirty, that’ll probably come up in this later

imagine being harry hart, not remember all of yourself, and suddenly your entire room just—fills with water

that had to have been so terrifying, and it was just as hard for merlin to watch (and possibly remember something unpleasant)

and like

that sounds like SUCH bullshit, too, like “yeah we thought if you came close to drowning it would help”

which, is that what merlin meant, no, but is that what harry heard, probably

enter jb the second ;-; <3 sweet baby

tilde’s trying so hard. i see you!

aha, penis jokes.

and all of the unnecessary weird festival stuff, uuggghh

there are so many different things they could have done, like, all of this is just weird from the get-go

first of all, whiskey striking out? hello?? saying no to a man like mr. pascal???

not realistic

the way whiskey takes a shot as he walks away lmao, relatable

and poor clara, like, it’s not like she was asking for any of this D:

hmmmmmmm don’t know how i feel being a stoner watching other stoners get this blue rash thing when i know it kills some of themmmmmmm

i love charlie in his newsboys cap!

poppy has a little bit of a point. like, booze is way more dangerous than pot, as is tobacco. like i would never advocate anyone try meth or heroin, but i think weed and some hallucinogenics get bad wraps.

seeing a dude get torn in half in the reflection of elton john’s sunglasses is the surprising bit of gore we need to remember that oh, yeah, the villain isn’t fun, she’s a murderer

uuggghhhh the TENT SCENE

and, look, i’ll defend tilde forever, but i did NOT like the weird marriage ultimatum. i still think it’s a dick move, like, in that situation either decide to trust your boyfriend or break up with him

the tent interior is super cool-looking

and like, man, he tried, he tried to bounce D:

/sigh/ work hazards, i guess

mmmmmm we don’t need any of what’s happening on screen right now so i’ll just sit patiently and wait for it to be over

and like, there’s nothing funny about merlin and ginger being able to hear everything that’s going on, it’s so grosssss, poor ginger has to have heard some shit before to be so nonchalant about it

everything about this sucks

and then he tries going to the one person who he needs the most and having to deal with him still existing in some state between alive and dead

his body is here

but harry is not

“maggots turn into flies, perhaps you mean larvae!” :D he is SO CUTE

but this entire conversation, with harry still not remembering and eggsy trying so hard to reach him through the fog, is so depressing

like, i’d need a drink too

*and* a joint

i’m seeing my coping mechanisms on screen here folks

the way he comes up with the idea is kinda ingenious though

like, he’s looking at stuff to make himself bummed on purpose, but therein he finds the thing he needs to fix the issue

harry’s smile when eggsy hands him the puppy TT.TT

and then eggsy just becomes a stone cold motherfucker with no emotions

“no one’s sick enough to shoot a puppy!”

hi, flashback!harry

and as SOON as he remembers himself, it’s like his eyes are different, something about him looks like it did before kentucky

“… eggsy.”

one of my favorite movie hugs

and eggsy has to stand on his tiptoes because harry’s so tall

like yeah merlin and harry’s reunion isn’t as overtly emotional, but there’s definitely a sense of joy and relief there.

harry my baby ;-; much better with the sunglasses (and merlin was so close to telling him he looked spectacular)

“now is that any way to welcome a visit from outta town, moonshine?”

he! tried! to! defend! harry!

i hate that jack got a villain story line!

we could’ve had something so much better and infinitely more compelling!

“hurrrr durrrr morgan you just like redemption arcs because you don’t want anybody being a villain permanently” i also like them because sometimes that’s better writing, y’all sit down

“that is NOT what i call a kentucky welcome.”

i love so many things happening in this scene, like

we get to see whiskey kick ass, like yassss gimme those sweet action sequences and give us some character development by showcasing his fighting style

and also NOBODY shits on harry for not being able to handle the situation. both eggsy and merlin were like “dude we’re still celebrating the fact that you’re alive tbh it’s fine if you’re not back up to speed right this second”

you can really tell that this was penned by british people writing american slang because having grown up in the southern half of the u.s. i have never ONCE heard ANYONE say shit like “i feel like a tornado in a trailer park” lmao

and poppy’s fun little death threat infomercial, so great

“what have you done to me you FUCKING BITCH” oof, that’s a mood

!!!!! gonna be honest i kinda forgot that bruce greenwood plays the president

okay but save lives, legalize isn’t an entirely bad idea tbh

hnnnnnnng the scenes about people not being able to get into the hospital hits different in the year of our lord 2020 huh

… y’all i’m being weirded out by all this hospital scenes, this is unpleasant

i, too, wish i could pull a tequila and just be slipped into a chilly coma until shit wasn’t so fucked up

“the fact is, this presidency has won the war on drugs!”

THIS SCENE!

look, y’all can come into my inbox and call me a pothead, or a lazy stoner, or some third insult, but this dude’s VP is bringing up some very, VERY important points when it comes to any kind of discussion about drug use in the u.s.

am i drug-friendly, sure, but i’m more friendly to the notion that we stop demonizing addicts/users

harry looks fucking SCANDALIZED when he sees champ spit into his spittoon thing

i don’t think whiskey even brought up harry not being ready to return to the field in an insulting manner, he literally just saw him get his ass beat in a bar, but eggsy’s faith and loyalty are up there in the category of unstoppable force/immovable object, so here we are

am i the only one curious about the whole charlie x clara thing? because he’s definitely grown up a bit by tgc, and i wanna know how much of that might be because of clara

and he MISSES, e for effort harry

“so sorry about this—“ WHAM

and now that guy can say colin firth busted his face with a fire extinguisher, which is very cool

“*you’re* wu ting feng?” “… yes?”

“you motherFUCKER” ohhhhhh charlie maaaaaad

ginger and merlin though, #couplegoals

the only person more pissed off about the hallucinations than everyone else is harry

imagine remembering that you’re one of the top people in your field and you just keep seeing imaginary butterflies everywhere

like, yeah, i’d be pissed at not being able to do what i knew i was capable of, too

if it wasn’t careening towards a random retirement center, getting stuck in a wildly rotating gondola thing could be fun

nice tuesday afternoon activity

i would loved to have seen more galahad/whiskey field stuff

“you’ve got to be fucking kidding me—“

meanwhile, in the continuing adventures of eggsy and jack: shit goes from bad to worse like a formal spiral only going downward

their expressions as their both just SCREAMING always make me laugh

”that’s the first decent shit i’ve had in three weeks.” <- as does that line, that old dude’s just telling it like it is

eggsy’s comment about the antidote just reminds me of when boromir looks a the ring and says something like “all this for such a tiny thing”

dun dun DUN what are THOSE? hints that whiskey may not be who we think he is??

great. so excited about that. i say, rolling my eyes into the sun

“i’ll fix their wagons.” no one says that matthew!

i. love. this. scene. because now we get cool gun tricks AND the second most metal thing that happens with a lasso in this movie (we’re coming up on the most metal thing)

like please please PLEASE show us more lasso tricks in the statesman movie

“well thank fuckin’ christ i didn’t need any backup.” i wonder if whiskey’s acting angrier than he actually is to throw off the fact that he might’ve caught harry’s glance at him betraying suspicion

RIP jack

imagine the timeline where whiskey was never a bad guy and harry hart just blew a dude away for NO REASON

now THAT would be an interesting movie

because harry and eggsy, for all they went through in the first film, never had a conflict where it was harry in the position of mangling the ropes up

but of course eggsy would never, never tell merlin what happened because he’s still ultimately on harry’s team

damn, charlie, literally blowing up your girlfriend seems kinda extreme

“THIS is vital!”

and here we get to see the biggest difference between merlin and ginger

now, i know there’s extra stuff in the novelization about their relationship and i can’t talk about it because i have no idea what’s in the book

but!

i DO still headcanon as merlin quitting fieldwork after lee’s death

his comment is either what he genuinely believes, or maybe what he fashioned his beliefs into after stepping down from his field role, and ginger is just as sincere in her desire to break into that aspect of working for statesman

it’s like seeing the same character but in two points in time, and it’s really cool

that balance would’ve also been a fun aspect of their romantic relationship to explore but alas! ’twas not to be

colin and mark could both play slenderman

look at those limbs.

gracious.

also this facetime scene with eggsy and tilde T.T

that has to be so terrifying to watch when you know the steps of death and what they look like as they get closer

but it also puts a fire under eggsy though

“i’m leaving with, or without you.”

and of course they’re both gonna go because that’s NOT characteristic eggsy behavior based off of how we know he views family/squad

that’s how they know he’s being for cereal

uugggggGGHHHH and THAT FORESHADOING

stacey pruitt, attorney at lawwwww

hmmmmmmmmm

what does this conversation between poppy and the president remind me of

gonna just sigh into the void

and now we have harry and eggsy on the jet along with the BIGGEST LIE harry hart has ever told in his LIFE

kingsman and statesman aesthetics at least tend to be the same color schemes. lotta golds, yellows. browns.

eggsy, yeah, it’s a bummer your gf dumped you, but this relationship wasn’t very well-developed or written so i’m not as bummed as i could be

“… and in that moment, all i felt was loneliness and regret.”

harry shut the FUCK UP

you felt NOTHING??

you weren’t thinking of, gee, i dunno, EGGSY? or MERLIN?? your MOM???

like these lines from him just seem to come out of left field and i can’t even halfway suspend my belief long enough to come close to believing him

like mr. hart you just gonna be like that in front of jesus and everybody????

so, yeah, of course he’s on board with saving tilde! because he recognizes (apparently just right that second) that “having something to lose is what makes life worth living”

and i don’t know if they felt like there need to be some weird, deeply contrasting reason for harry to swing around to being in support? or something?

i’m forever pissed about this characterization and i don’t even know if i’m expressing my anger in a way that makes it easy to understand lmao this is fine, i’m fine, literally not a single person in this fandom ever believed those lines anyway, it’s fine

moving on

... and even if they WERE true then honestly that just makes me more excited about butterfly knife, because that means that harry acknowledged both the bad side of the coin, and also the side with rae on it (which would mean seeing her for who she was and also recognizing his feelings for what THEY were) and drew the ultimately correct conclucision that love! is! always! worth! it! let that shit in like a welcome guest in the home of your heart, and they will stay as long as you let them!

as SOON as he wakes up ginger looks a thousand percent done lmao

and the “process” that they use to wake people up or whatever is—interesting

because all it is, is trauma turned into a tool which is kind of a weird concept to see in a “fun spy movie” imo

and this is one of what i feel were like only what, two? glimpses we get into whiskey’s Tragic Backstory

and the other scene isn’t a glimpse it’s just straight up exposition in his dialogue :/

jack, i’m sorry, you deserved better than this as a character

i’m sure the name “silver pony” is a reference to something but i don’t know what

“lookin’ GOOD merlin!” “feelin’ good, eggsy.”

ladies and gentlemen when i tell you that i lost my pool-noodle mind seeing him put on that suit watching this in a theater, i--

ANYWAY

because now that i have the horrible burden of having seen these movies a million times

i know it’s more symbolic

he stays in sweaters so long, as an agent of the background, because he walked a man to his death

so it figures when he puts the armor back on for the first time in ages

he walks to his own

uuuggghhhh the minesweeper

i hate this

i hate it

i hate everything about the feelings i’m having while this is happening

*beep-beep*

“you move, we die.”

i HATE IT

but like, i don’t know, how preferable is this to the end scene we almost got, which was merlin dragging his newly-legless corpse through a doggy door?

because it’s been literally multiple years and i still have no fucking idea

they’re both horrible in their own terrible, awful ways

damn, matthew, it’s not often someone manages to come up with multiple versions of a thing and have every version be so gut-wrenchingly horrific, i’m truly impressed and completely disgusted

“do as your told!”

god

everyone just going through twenty shades of Bad Feelings in the space of fifteen seconds here in the jungle

and colin and taron do this thing where it’s like—their eyes go dead? like, there was a light here, it’s gone now

it SUCKS

oh no

ALMOST HEAVEN

WEST VIRGINIA

… fuck

LIFE IS OLD THERE

OLDER THAN THE TREES

“… singing?”

this sucks.

this sucks this sucks this sucks

MOUNTAIN MAMAAAAA

TAKE ME HOOOOME

COUNTRY ROOOADDSSSSS

*THUNK*

and he even took off his glasses before he hit him, he had his end coming towards him and he was still a gentleman

TAKE ME HOOOME

COUNTRY RROOOOAAAADDDSSSSS

his EYES AT THE END

FUCK

… okay i had to get up and go for a lil’ walk

anyway

(and again, roanoke canon, fucking fixing’ shit left and right, because we’re the goat)

harry and eggsy look MURDEREROUS

MERLIN SAID KNOCK YOU OUT

it DID make the grand ending fun action scene a lot more satisfying

because like, without merlin there, that means harry and eggsy get to go full feral

poppy you big idiot you just robbed them of all their motivation to show any kind of restraint and now everybody’s gonna get blown up

except for those dudes who get kicked by elton john

which would be an HONOR first of all

(the part where eggsy’s using his gun and shield vaguely reminds me of the specialist, @bloodofthepen)

and harry and eggsy just—they’re drift compatible! that’s it! the teamwork! the grace! the flow! my god!

eggsy vs. charlie: round like 4 if you count the first movie

it was also satisfying to see charlie’s new arm in action

we love fun robotics and gadgetry in this house

colin firth is really just not afraid to throw himself full force down a bowling lane huh

ugh, seeing charlie slam eggsy over and over again makes my chest hurt

the sound mixing on all these films is top notch which isn’t always a good thing T.T

ROCKETMAN~~~

that shit will never NOT be funny

a wild elton john appeared!

eggsy is indestructible, he can walk off anything

but charlie, charlie i feel really sorry for, imagine being attacked by a superior version of your own limb, i.e. something that you can’t exactly quickly remove from yourself, that would be TERRIFYING

harry + elton = dream teaaaammmm

“darling if you save the world, you can have a backstage pass.”

i love you elton john :(

i would have been the most OBNOXIOUS hype man in the background of the entire kingsman vs. poppy land face-off

“let’s make this fair.” eggsy you’re fuckin’ cheeky

and poor harry, all that lank just getting tossed like noodles

i thought the robot puppers were very cool

“for the record charlie i’m more of a gentleman than you’ll ever be.”

mmmmmm do NOT like this death for charlie

SUPER glad we fixed it

and another scene where i can’t stand the sound mixing T.T it makes me cringe every time

“i don’t consider genocide especially lady-like.”

and are we gonna talk about how merlin knew how to make heroin?

… no?

nobody wanna talk about that?

ugh that houndstooth dress is so PRETTY though

high!poppy is weirdly comedic for all of two seconds and then it stops being funny real fast

whiskey D:<

this is so dumb

this is all so, so dumb

“our agencies were founded to uphold peace, to protect the innocent—“

there’s that nobility again

is what happened to whiskey fucked up, yes

i’m not saying we have to completely remove that from his story

i just

literally anything but this would have been preferable

and then HOT DOG it’s one of my favorite shots in the movie with the whip where harry’s just chucking it away from his face like a bamf, YES

how great is this cover, let’s be honest

like, i’d be lying if i said i didn’t enjoy this scene visually

plus

HARRY GETTING PEGGED RIGHT IN THE FACE WITH A FRYING PAN

gracious

it’s one fluid tracking shot, so kinda in alignmentment with what we’re used to

some people get annoyed with repeated junk but when you can do it THIS WELL you can get away with anything

but then jack

you did NOT desert that

yes, you were in dire need of an attitude adjustment but jesus

“this is for you, merlin.”

/ugly sobbing/

and tilde is all betterrrrrr ;-;

you guys did itttttt

COUNTRY ROOOAAADDSS

TAKE ME HOOOOOOMMEEEE

TO THE PLAAAAAACCCEEEEE

I BELOOOOONNGGGG

and the scene with jamal and liam T.T #wholesomecontent

poor tequila, after i knew that you would have a bigger role in another movie, i was less annoyed by the fact that they iced you so quick into the story

#FOX2020

“… now we’re brothers, working side by side.”

spoiler alert i actually love champ’s toast

“y’all shittin’ in high cotton now” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???

and ginger becomes the new whiskey like she always wanted T.T

merlin is proud from heaven (or london, depending on which canon)

iiiiiii have mixed feelings about the whole wedding scene, which is probably because i take HUGE issue with the weird proposal ultimatum thing that happened earlier

but the way eggsy says “not a doubt in my mind,” he says it so seriously and i remember that tilde almost died

there was such good intention packed into this couple that was so badly written that i just

augh

“but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

there’s ***merlin! lmao i see you dude, they did you dirty

look

i was pissed off about a lot of things that happened in this thing but i was honestly hype seeing tequila at the very end walking into the tailor shop

like, yeah, i’ll stick around to see what happens in this universe but i’m gonna complain the whole time

GO JACK RABBIT

RUNNING THROUGH THE WOODS

and again, i almost didn’t see this movie.

… i think about that morgan sometimes.

hope she’s doin’ okay.

…

she’s probably not. D:

44 notes · View notes

mae-gi-writes · 4 years

Text

Deobi Playlist (EP 2) | The Boyz Imagine

The Boyz x Hospital Playlist inspired drabble series.

Episode 2: in which Hyunjae is a drama queen.

Genre: fluff, friendship, slice of life

EP 1 | EP 2 | EP 3 | EP 4 | EP 5 | EP 6 | EP 7 | EP 8 | EP 9 | EP 10 | EP 11

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

Hyunjae is in the middle of playing a battle game when the sound of someone busting the door open causes him to yelp, fingers slipping over the keyboard as he watches his character die in front of his very eyes.

He swivels around in his seat, glowering with anger, “KEVIN!”

“Oops,” the said man slides in, totally unfazed by the glare that would’ve killed anyone else off, before looking around at the empty office that is stacked with piles of paperwork, most of them probably belonging to Hyunjae since he had always been messy.

“Where’s everyone?” Kevin frowns while checking his watch, “I thought we were having dinner tonight.”

“Too slow, romeo,” a voice chimes from behind. The pair turn around to see Mae holding up three takeaway bags. Kevin squeals in delight, rushing over to throw his arms around her in a hug.

“You are the best,” Kevin singsongs before grabbing one of the bags. Mae tuts at him, “woah wait a minute Kev, that’s not--”

Too late, for Kevin’s hands have already opened up the box. He stares at the multitudes of shrimp on a bed of fried noodles, and a grimace falls over his face, “ew no, that’s not mine--”

Mae proceeds to snatch it away, “that’s why I told you to wait,” she huffs, handing him his rightful dish; fried pork and vegetables with rice.

“Wouldn’t mind having him choke on some shrimp,” Hyunjae mutters gloomily, still sulking in his desk chair like a five year old child being denied cookies. Mae’s brow quirks up in curious amusement, before they flicker towards Kevin.

The latter, already stuffing his face in like he hasn’t eaten for days, mumbles out through a mouthful of rice and meat, “he’s mad ‘cause I distracted him and his character died. The usual.”

“You always lose, anyway Hyunjae. It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Mae opens up her own takeaway, a Chinese Korean dish named Jajangmyeon. She motions him over, “come on.”

But Hyunjae’s pout only deepens. He slides into his seat, unwavering.

“You sure you don’t want it?” she taunts him, “I ordered it specially for you.”

Still, the caramel-haired man twists his head away adamantly. Mae huffs, turning back to roll her eyes at Kevin, “fine then, suit yourself. I’ll just--”

Hyunjae’s out of his seat in mere milliseconds, grab his dish, and sits down onto the shared couch with crossed legs and face looking as though he’s going to murder anyone who even tries to get within touching distance.

“By the way, you remember the patient I was telling you guys about?” Kevin says, chewing on a mouthful of food, “the one that had a weird extra bone in her foot?”

“The one who kept asking you to marry her?” Mae confirms.

“She mustn't have high standards,” comes Hyunjae’s mumble, causing Kevin to cluck his tongue at him in disapproval before answering, “yeah, we had to shave it off cause she’s a rising ballet star. Her mother was livid when she heard that she wouldn’t be able to dance for a good six months.”

“Sunji, was it?” Mae asks.

“She came to see me today,” Kevin beamed, warmth practically alighting over his face, “gave me flowers and a box of chocolate.”

“Did she give you a ring too?” Hyunjae adds mockingly.

“At least she likes me,” Kevin retorts while sticking out his tongue.

“Please! It’s not like she had a choice. You’re the only doctor she sees.”

"Just a game, Hyunjae," Kevin reminds him, gesturing towards the computer with a roll of his eyes since he knows exactly why the older man is being salty at this particular moment.

“Do you know how much time and effort I took into staying alive all that time?!” Hyunjae shoots back, leaning forward in his seat, “It was my fifteenth time!”

“It. Is. Just. A. Game,” Kevin’s words punch through like staccato notes.

“I care about that game, like it or not!” Hyunjae moans, “now my life is over!”

“Shakespeare needs to see this,” Mae mumbles behind her bowl of noodles, “he would’ve loved to write a story about you.”

“I think that’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever given me,” Hyunjae smirks.

“It’s...not a compliment.”

“I hate you. I hate you both,” Hyunjae sniffs before pouting and looking away, once again the very picture of a spoiled brat. The pair meet each other’s eyes before Kevin throws Mae a shrug.

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t raise him.”

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

The week, it seems, keeps getting worse for the titled drama queen, who proclaims that the heavens must be against him this week and that his astrological must be definitely off balance. Hyunjae’s shifts seem longer, tougher to handle this week, while the line of patients have suddenly multiplied by a tenfold the moment he thought that he could use a bit of a break. A few nurses have taken some time off for some last-minute vacation, meaning that he’s had to scramble around for help with no assistant by his side to jot down his every day needs.

Most of all, he still hasn’t been able to finish that damn game, and he has no one else to blame but dear Kevin for that.

“You look like shit,” is the first thing that pops out of Juyeon’s mouth the moment he stumbles into their shared office. He’s looking particularly dapper, with his freshly cut bangs and his usually hooded eyes alight with a sparkle that can only mean one thing:

“Did you guys kiss or something?”

Colour blossoms across Juyeon’s cheeks, hooded eyes widening in alarm, “What?”

Seemingly undisturbed by lack of sensitivity, Hyunjae proceeds to shrug off his beige coat as he opens his locker, “you look like freshly snogged material."

“I--That’s--That’s not--” Hyunjae can’t help but smirk at the flustered expression on the younger man’s usually bland face. One of his favourite pastimes is to make fun of Juyeon, mainly because he seems so much younger than what he appears to be, for they are only a few months apart in age. Not to forget the fact that he's so innocent, despite his mature, bedroom eyes and the lazy, sensual smile he gives to women. It's, as Hyunjae had once stated, incredibly misleading.

"Want to shadow my surgery?" Hyunjae asks, picking up his clipboard to scan the patient's profile. The younger man stretches out in his seat and yawned, "what kind?"

"Brain tumor I believe."

"Hm, I might shadow noona--"

"Oh right, loverboy's got a girlfriend now," Hyunjae rolls his eyes and lets out a soft sigh, "ah well, I'll just get one of the newbies on board. I love teasing them."

"They're all scared of you, you know," Juyeon can't help but point out.

"Oh really?" Hyunjae flashes a wicked grin.

Juyeon proceeds to roll his eyes, "that is not a compliment."

"You know, Mae said the exact same thing."

"No surprise there."

A few hours and a long trail of patients later, Hyunjae lets out a loud, noisy sigh when he finally allows his body to flop in his office chair, his feet aching from constantly running back and forth between wards. Mondays are always especially tiring, but he's quite satisfied that most of his patients seem on the track to recovery.

His hand quickly darts towards his mouse, when his phone suddenly rings.

Pressing the device to his ear, he murmurs out a quiet, "hello?"

"Son," his mother's terse soprano echoes through the receiver, "how are you?"

"Are you stressed, Ma?" Is the first thing that pops into his mind. There's only two reasons why his mother would call; either 1) she wants to give him food or 2) she has fought with his father yet again.

It is no secret that Mr. And Mrs. Lee have been living apart for more than seven years now. The scar that Hyunjae still bears is now covered by nonchalance, and the fact that his two parents have kept an amiable relationship has helped balance out his upbringing. He has to admit that for a child with divorced parents, they handled him pretty well.

"Can't I call to ask about my son?!" Mrs.Lee retorts back.

"Ma."

"Alright alright," she huffs, "I might have made some extra Kimchi stew and--"

"Ma, I told you not to cook so much," Hyunjae groans, one of his hands going up to ruffle his hair, "can't you just freeze it?"

"Freeze Kimchi Stew? Are you insane? I would never! Anyway, I already let the leftovers with--"

Knock knock!

Hyunjae glances back just in time to spot Mae standing in the doorway, holding out a cooler towards him.

"Ah," Hyunjae gestures for her to come in, "you met Mae?"

"Right right! Such a wonderful girl that one! Are you sure you've never had anything for her?"

"Ma--"

"No no, if you're going to tell me that you're just friends, I don't want to hear it."

"Listen Ma, she's--"

"I can't believe you didn't even try it out with her--"

"Hey Ma, I got a surgery soon," Hyunjae hurriedly says while watching Mae stuff the cooler inside the fridge he shares with Juyeon and two other doctors. He holds out a finger for her to wait, "I'll talk to you soon okay? Okay. Bye."

Cutting off the call right before she's about to keep on insisting how amazing Mae would be as a wife, Hyunjae lets out another trepid sigh before shaking his head at the said woman, who's gazing at him with raised eyebrows.

"My mother really wants me to go out with you," Hyunjae rubs a hand over his face, clipboard in hand, before following her out into the corridor.

"Yeah I know, she told me the exact same thing when I bumped into her in the lobby," Mae shoves her hands in her pockets, smiling slightly.

"I mean, if you weren't so much into Kevin, maybe--"

He doesn't get to say anything more because of Mae's hand slamming down atop his mouth. He groans in part pain and part protest, "that hurts!"

"I should've sewn your lips shut when I still had the chance," Mae hissed under her breath, careful to drop her hand and smile as they pass by a group of older doctors.

"You guys are like turtles. By the time you ask him out, you'll both be dead," Hyunjae mutters loud enough for Mae to hear.

She scowls back, "last I checked, I was the only one who decided what I could and could not do with my love life."

"You're doing a terrible job of it."

"I am not!"

"Okay, then where are the four children you said you wanted!? That's all you could talk about in college!"

"I was young and stupid, as were you."

"Ah, to be young and in love again--"

"Hyunjae?"

The pair turn instinctively towards the sound only to fall upon a familiar face, a face that Hyunjae remembers almost instantly as one of the girls who had pined after him for years' on end. He briefly recalls breaking her heart once and for all when she'd decided to give him a box of chocolates during their second year Valentines.

"Oh," Mae seems to be thinking the same thing as he does, for she doesn't waste time to smile up at him, clap him on the back and say, "see you then!"

And she's off, running down the hallway and leaving him to deal with the awkward aftermath of a rejected confession.

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

I honestly just love Hyunjae because he's so loud and annoying and straight up transparent. Surprisingly, I wasn't attracted to his physique as much as I was to his natural genuine personality.

Hope you enjoyed this one! Next Ep will be out on Monday!

Episode 3: in which Juyeon has a complicated relationship with food.

51 notes · View notes

kutemouse · 4 years

Text

Caught (Part One)

Disclaimers: All “Save Me” webtoon and BTS MV/highlight reel/film references and plots belong to BTS and BigHit. All pictures of Kim Taehyung belong to BTS and BigHit, I just edited them for my header. The picture of BTS came from Vogue Japan, I just edited it for my header.

A Note from Kutemouse: I know, I know, this has been a long time coming, and I’m so sorry it took so long for me to post this!! I’ve actually had it written for a while, but today was the first day I was able to get up and do some stuff. Pregnancy is rough! Oh, that’s right, if you haven’t seen it yet, I made a Big Announcement earlier today that explains why I’ve been so inactive lately, and also explains my plans for the future.

Age Recommendation: 21+ (this is NOT one for youngsters, kuties, and is MOST DEFINITELY NSFW)

Genre: Mafia!AU w/ BTS, Jailbird!AU w/ Taehyung, Yandere!BTS

Warnings: Not many warnings for this part, kuties. Swears, I guess. Unsupportive SO? Kidnapping. Use of chloroform.

Word Count: About 3k

Summary: Kim Taehyung was the absolute love of your life… until he became a murderer. With him serving a life sentence in prison, you were finally free to live out the rest of your life however you wanted. Just when you thought you were at the top of your game, ready to take on the world, Taehyung reappears like a monster not even your worst nightmares could dream up. He gives you a year to fall in love with him, but now the question is, can monsters even be loved?

Master List

Tag List: @chocolatewolfuniversitytrash @btssmutheaven @taemaknae @rebeccawoodrow @sassysaxsolo @iconicgguk

If you want to be added, just lmk!

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

Caught (Taehyung Series, Yandere, Smut, Angst) Part One

We were skipping class in the school greenhouse, enjoying the humid warmth and the earthy smell wafting from the plants. We were talking, I forget about what. What I remember most is fiddling with his large, rough hands, intertwining my fingers between his over and over again. I remember his deep laugh that seemed to rumble through the recesses of my soul. I remember glee blooming in my chest whenever he grinned at me.

His tone was teasing, mine was indignant yet flirtatious. Again, I forget what we said to each other, but I clearly remember those two words. “Kiss me.”

I gaped at him. “What?”

“Kiss me,” he repeated.

I hesitated. “Here? Now?”

Taehyung leaned down, tilting his head, until his lips hovered over mine. I felt each of his exhales on my skin, practically heard my heartbeat speed up.

“Kiss. Me.” It was barely a whisper, yet it resonated through my body, down my spine and throughout my limbs.

Without another word, I pressed my lips to his, melding them to fit his, a thrill running through me at his appreciative groan.

He pulled back, his inky eyes somehow growing darker. “I love you, baby girl.”

I sat up, gasping. Blood rushed to my head, making me see stars. With a groan, I covered my face with my hands.

“Sweetie?”

My fiancé, Lee Chanwook, rolled over and peered at me. “You okay?” he asked, his voice husky from lack of use.

“Yeah. Fine. Just had a dream, go back to sleep.”

“You sure?”

I nodded. He rolled over, his breath growing deep and even as he fell back into the reaches of slumber. If I could be so lucky. I hadn’t thought about Kim Taehyung in… well, it had to be almost a year now. Or two. I wasn’t sure.

Either way, my life moved on without him after shit completely hit the fan. My aunt and I agreed I shouldn’t transfer schools, since I only had a month or so left til graduation. I graduated alongside Chaeyoung, who seemed to be my only friend after Taehyung got arrested. She held my hand tightly the entire ceremony, only letting go when I was called to accept my diploma.

As soon as I graduated, Aunt Sunhee and I moved into her place in Busan. It was a tidal wave of change. Compared to my mom’s cramped, two-bedroom apartment, my aunt’s large house was a mansion. She recently obtained a position as COO of a large company and applied for custody of me immediately after.

Before we moved, I found my aunt’s letters my mom had hidden from me. My aunt had tried to call me multiple times but was never able to reach me. She even flew out to see me a couple of times, but all it took was my mother calling me at school and telling me I needed to stay at a friend’s house for me to stay away. I guess my mom was scared she would lose me.

Yet that’s exactly what happened in the end. My aunt paid for my mom to go to a rehabilitation center, but after only a few weeks, the center called my aunt letting her know my mother had disappeared. Aunt Sunhee called the police and even hired a private investigator, but my mom was nowhere to be found. I succumbed to the realization that she was probably dead. I didn’t get out of bed for weeks afterward.

A year and a massive amount of therapy sessions later, I decided I wanted to do something with my life. I was already attending university to obtain a business degree, but I hungered for more. My aunt got me an internship within her company, and I learned a lot just by working under her. Four years later, with a bachelor’s degree in hand, my aunt hired me as her executive assistant, and I took a year off before going to graduate school to both work and plan my wedding.

I was introduced to Chanwook at a company get-together. He was the son of one of my aunt’s business associates, and he caught my eye almost immediately. Mostly it was the way he was the exact opposite of the boy I hadn’t been able to get my mind off of. He was a stickler for the rules, had a great relationship with his parents, and never, ever did anything that would cross the line or damage his flawless reputation. He was kind and funny, but there was no wild or daring side to him. At the time, he was exactly what I needed.

He helped me forget about Taehyung. In the years before then, whenever I had a spare moment for my mind to drift, Taehyung’s wide, boxy grin and deep voice would float into my thoughts. I spent days wondering what went wrong. When had he become a murderer? At what point did he crack? Why hadn’t I noticed sooner?

Chaeyoung and I kept in touch, and I heard some details of Taehyung’s trial from her. I heard he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, due to the one count of murder against him. It would have been two, but Taehyung’s dad’s body was never found. No one was even sure he was dead.

I spent many nights staring at the ceiling, thinking back to the night when Namjoon got that frantic phone call from Taehyung. When Jungkook wouldn’t let me see him. When he completely disappeared for that entire week.

I had no doubt he killed his father. I don’t think he did it maliciously or intentionally. I think he found the strength inside of himself to fight back, and it ended in a death. It didn’t make the murderous act any less horrifying, but it did make me wonder just how deep the darkness inside Taehyung ran. Was he really the monster the media made him out to be?

Aunt Sunhee caught me one night poring over article after article covering Taehyung’s trial. “Y/n, you can’t keep doing this,” she said, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You need to move on with your life.”

It took a long time, but eventually, I stopped surfing the internet for mentions of Taehyung’s story. My conversations with Chaeyoung grew few and far between until they stopped completely. Memories of Tae’s smile, his voice, his laugh, his lips, faded away. I even changed my last name to “Park” both so I’d be recognized as my aunt’s relative, and so no one from my past could find me. Four long years later, I was finally free of Kim Taehyung.

Or so I thought.

Apparently, my damn subconscious didn’t want to let him go. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to wipe away the image of his smiling face. I never imagined that, years later, he would still be haunting me.

I got out of bed, wrapping a robe around my body before stepping out onto our apartment’s deck. The cool, four-in-the-morning air roused my senses even further awake. I stayed like that until the sun began to peek over the edge of the horizon, thinking of Kim Taehyung and our shared past.

“Hey,” Chanwook said, coming up from behind to wrap his arms around me. “Have you been out here all night?”

“Not all night,” I replied. “Just since I woke up from that dream.”

“Mmmm,” he hummed sleepily in response. “Was it a good dream?”

I bit my lip, mulling his question over. “No,” I finally said. “It was more like a nightmare.”

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

That afternoon, I yawned as I re-read the same sentence for the umpteenth time, willing my brain to focus. “You look like you need a cup of coffee,” my coworker, Lisa, said.

“That would be nice,” I murmured in response, still trying to focus.

She stood and grabbed her purse. “I’ll get yours with an extra shot of espresso,” she said.

“Just so you know, I absolutely adore you.”

She blew me a kiss accompanied by a cheeky wink. “I know. Be back in fifteen.”

With the promise of caffeine on the way, I sat back in my chair and rubbed my temples, telling myself I’d get back to that report later. My cell phone began to buzz, and I picked it up, frowning at the unknown number.

“Hello?”

“Miss Park?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Hello, my name is Choi Yeonjun. I’m a representative of the company Bangtan Enterprises.”

“Never heard of it.”

A chuckle came through from the other end. “That’s because we’re a small start-up just breaking into Seoul’s business world.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

“Miss Park, we’ve been made aware of your extraordinary skills and experience. Your aunt is COO of her company, correct? And you’ve been working under her for how long?”

“Well, if you’re including my internship, about five years now.”

“Excellent.”

“Mr. Choi, what is this about?” I asked as politely as I could.

“As a start-up company, we’re in need of experienced people to help run it,” he explained. “We’re prepared to offer you the COO position here at Bangtan, which comes with your own office, and we’ll double your salary.”

My mouth dropped open. “Double?”

“Double.”

I shook my head in an attempt to pull myself together. This opportunity was huge. I’d been accused of exploiting nepotism in order to get where I was today, but this could be my chance to prove all my naysayers wrong. I could show them I was entirely capable of forging my own path.

Still, I wasn’t going to just jump at this. I pulled my keyboard towards me and searched Bangtan Enterprises. Only a few results came up, but they confirmed my hopes into reality. Bangtan Enterprises was indeed a start-up, but it was based on a very profitable idea and, from the looks of it, had already lined up some high-end clients.

“And you said you’re based in Seoul?” I asked.

“That’s correct.”

So I’d either have to move there or split my time between Busan and there. I chewed my lip, wondering what Chanwook would think. “Your offer is very generous, Mr. Choi. May I have some time to think about it?”

He chuckled once more. “Unfortunately for you, you are not our only candidate. You’re our first choice, but there are others who are willing to start as soon as tomorrow.”

I clenched my phone. “No! I mean, that’s fine. I’ll take it.”

I knew I might regret it later, but this was a hell of an opportunity. Besides, it wasn’t like I signed a contract. I still had time to back out.

“Excellent. We’ll send you an official offer via email. When is the earliest you can start?”

“Don’t tease me, Mr. Choi,” I said playfully. “I thought you said my competition could start tomorrow.”

“That may be true, but—”

“Well, anything they can do, I can do better. I’ll send you my plane’s arrival time.”

“We’ll have a car waiting.”

I swiped off the call, anticipation flooding through me, causing a burst of excited energy to run through my veins.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

“You what?” Chanwook gaped at me.

“I said yes,” I replied nervously. I just told my fiancé about the new job, and he seemed to think it was great up until I said I accepted.

“Sweetie,” he groaned, placing his hands on my shoulders. “Are you serious?”

I frowned. “Yes, of course I am. I wouldn’t joke about something like this, Chan.”

“Well, you’ll just have to tell them you can’t take it anymore.”

I scoffed. “And why not?”

“Because we have a great life here. You make plenty, I make more than plenty. Why do you need another job?”

“Maybe I don’t need it,” I retorted. “Maybe I want it.”

“Want to move away from here? Miles away from your friends, your family?”

I scowled at him in response.

He sighed. “Y/n… answer me honestly. Is this about your mom?”

I snorted in disgust. “Seriously, Chan?!”

“It’s a valid question! Are you sure you don’t only want to go to Seoul to see if you could find her?”

“No, that’s not the reason I want to go to Seoul!”

“Then why?”

“Because! This is something that I earned, that I did on my fucking own. In fact, this will be the first and only thing that’s mine alone.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? My job? Came from my aunt. My business degree? My aunt’s money. This apartment?” I said, gesturing around the room. “Your money.”

“So what?”

“So I want something for myself. We don’t have to move to Seoul, you know. I know your job is here, and I’d be willing to make the commute. You know, stay four days there, three days here, or something.”

Chanwook scoffed. “Do you even hear yourself?!” he shouted. “We are getting married! Planning on starting a life, here, in Busan! If you want a job based on your own merit and not because your aunt took pity on you, then find one here.”

I was rendered entirely speechless for a good few moments before I was able to gather myself back together. “I cannot believe how unsupportive you’re being,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m taking that job. It’s your choice whether you’ll let that affect our relationship or not.”

“Fine!”

“Fine.”

I turned and grabbed my suitcase before stomping out the door, intent on going straight to my aunt’s. If Chanwook was going to be a total ass, I didn’t want to be around him. Thankfully, Aunt Sunhee wasn’t there to ask prying questions when I entered the house with my spare key. I walked up to my old room and hopped on my computer to search for flights from Busan to Seoul. This was my dream. And nothing, nothing at all, was going to stop me from achieving it.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

I walked briskly toward my destination, my heels clicking on the airport floor. As promised, a car was waiting for me, along with another passenger in the backseat. “Miss Park,” he said, extending his hand towards me as soon as I buckled up.

His voice sounded familiar. “Mr. Choi?”

“You can call me Yeonjun,” he said, his blonde hair falling over his left eye.

“And you can continue calling me Miss Park.”

He tossed me a smirk. “So, the boss would like to speak with you,” he said easily. “Nothing to be nervous for, he just wants to get to know you. However, he has an important meeting to attend over on the other side of town for which he’s requested your presence.”

“So this car is going straight there?”

“No, you’ll switch to his car once we get to the office. That way, you’ll have time to get reacquainted.”

I frowned. “Reacquainted?”

Yeonjun chuckled. “I meant acquainted. Slip of the tongue.”

“If you say so.”

We spent the rest of the ride in silence, something I was surprised over. I thought he would want to go over my contract or something, but I supposed that would all come later. The driver pulled the car into a parking structure, causing the interior to instantly darken.

“There it is,” Yeonjun said, pointing. A sleek, black SUV sat in the middle of the road, effectively blocking our way. “Go on. Mr. Kim is waiting for you.”

A shiver ran down my spine at the mention of my new boss’s name. Thoughts of Taehyung rushed through my mind, but I shoved them away. Kim was a common enough last name. I stepped out of the car, pulling my suitcase from the trunk before walking towards the SUV. Yeonjun did not follow. After stowing my luggage in the trunk, I opened the side door and hopped in.

A figure sat on the bench across from me, his face covered in shadow. “Mr. Kim? Hi, I’m Park Y/n,” I said, extending my hand. He did not take it.

“I know who you are,” he said, his voice an eerily familiar deep tone.

“Oh, of course you do. Yeonjun said you wanted to get to know me… What would you like to know?”

“I know everything about you already, baby girl.”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to see through the darkness that covered his face. “S-Sorry?”

“I said,” he replied, leaning forward. The light caught onto his inky eyes, causing me to gasp. “I know everything about you already, Y/n.”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Kim Taehyung was leaning towards me, a smirk dancing around the corners of his mouth. Sure, he looked slightly different. Older. More mature. He had definitely filled out, and his hair was now a complimentary jet-black falling attractively into his dark eyes.

“Hey baby girl,” he said, his smirk widening. “You lost?”

My body suddenly jumped into full-blown panic, and I grabbed at the car door’s handle, shrieking once I realized it wouldn’t open. Taehyung forcefully wrapped his arms around me, pinning me hard to his chest, clamping a hand tightly over my mouth. “None of that now,” he hissed.

I bit him, causing him to yelp, and continued trying to escape, fumbling at the lock that stood between him and my freedom. Taehyung pulled a handkerchief and a bottle from his jacket pocket, putting a dab of whatever liquid was inside on the cloth before clamping it over my mouth. His chuckle came out as more of a wheeze as he held me to his chest. “Damn, baby girl,” he said. “I hoped I wouldn’t have to resort to this, but here we are.”

With each one of his words, my field of vision grew smaller and smaller until my eyes rolled into the back of my head, and I felt myself falling into a state of unconsciousness not even the fear of death itself could fight off.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

Part Two is Here! 😉

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