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#as i was telling Wendy i would kill several men in order to have a blu ray version of a/ndor with director commentary

i-stan-nct-and-satan · 4 years

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Not Broken (Jaehyun Mafia au pt5)

Not Broken Masterlist

Jaehyun X Reader

Y/N is a burlesque dancer living in Seoul. Jaehyun is one of the most powerful mafia men in Seoul. How will Y/N survive when Jaehyun suspects that she is involved with a rival gang?

Reasons to read this story: Ten's a cross-dressing madam so..... yeah read it ya freaks.

A/N okay so this is a long chapter like the rest of the story, but I don’t want to put the trigger warnings for one sections as the whole chapter, so whenever there is going to be something worthy of a trigger warning, I will put it before the thing and then I will put something at the end to signify it’s over.

Trigger warnings for whole story that will not have warnings: kidnapping themes, light violence, mentions of murder, being tied up. You know, that kinky shit. JKJK

Gasp!

My breathing was heavier than it had ever been.

I had had nightmares before, but nothing like that.

Although I would normally be relieved that it was over, based on my surroundings, it seemed like the real nightmare was only just beginning.

I was lying on the ground in a strange position. The headache from my dream was still present but I could barely notice it since now my cheekbone felt like I was kicked in the face, which it was. I tried to look around but something was severely limiting my ability to move my neck.

Even though my face was in immense pain, the side that hurt was also the side that was laying on the frozen ground. The cold felt nice on my pained cheek and I allowed myself to enjoy the feeling since I was unable to do anything else at the moment.

"What was that?" A muffled voice came from above.

Remembering the situation that I was in caused me to panic. I couldn't move but I managed to look down at my body. Although I was on the ground, my body was awkwardly tied to chair with a combination of rope and chains as if somebody somehow thought that one or the other would not suffice in binding me.

The chair explained why my body was in such a weird position but I was surprised as to why I hadn't noticed it before. I might have been mostly naked, but the room was so cold that my body felt numb to the old wooden chair that was now digging into my side.

The room was dark, not that I could move enough to look around it but still it was so dark I could barely see past my knees.

The sound of hurried footsteps came from the ceiling.

I must be in a basement.

Motivated by the increasing volume of footsteps, I harshly wriggled around hoping to break free or even loosen my ties, forgetting that chains couldn't be loosened.

Creak!

A door opened and light filled the room.

My eyes bulged then squeezed shut again.

I heard the creaks of stairs as more than one pair of feet walk down them.

"Well, well, well. Looks like the mouse tried to break free from her trap," a deep unfamiliar voice teased.

A chill traveled down my spine but I kept my eyes closed.

"Did you think you could somehow break the chair if you knocked yourself over?"

"Is she still asleep?" a different voice inquired.

My breathing hitched slightly. The new voice triggered memories of the belligerent blonde I had watched hit on countless waitresses.

"Dumbass, How could she still be asleep after falling on her face?"

"Maybe she knocked herself out again?" Mark defended.

"You've been working in this field long enough to know that only back of the head and side temple traumas can knock somebody out cold. This bitch probably just smashed her cheekbone at most," the other man groaned.

Despite closed eyes, I could picture the annoyance felt by the unfamiliar voice.

"Then why are her eyes closed?" Mark whined.

I felt a hand grab a fistful of my hair and causing me to let out an involuntary yelp. My eyes snapped open.

"Because our little mouse is trying to play dead, hoping we'll think she's still asleep so we might leave her alone."

The hand refused to let go, pulling me by my hair back into an upright position before removing itself.

Usually, the pain would have felt unbearable but it lacked in comparison to the rest of the discomfort my body was experiencing. I even felt a smidge of appreciation for having been put in a more comfortable position.

Having regained motion in my neck I turned to face the two men standing in front of me, giving up my hopeless attempt to fake sleep.

Taeyong and Mark. Those were the two men standing in the room with me.

I didn't know what to say so I just stared at them.

Taeyong stepped forward and bent down to meet my gaze.

Despite the situation, I couldn't help but notice how his features looked even more handsome up close. Before I had only seen him from a distance but now his doe eyes looked even bigger.

"You really shouldn't cause so much harm to yourself like this," Taeyong sighed sounding genuinely concerned as if he had not just ripped out a chunk of your hair moments prior.

He continued, "You're going to go through plenty of pain by our hands throughout the next few days. So don't-"

"Few days?" Mark interrupted looking puzzled. "Why a few days? Are we gonna let her go after she tells us everything?"

Taeyong's eyes rolled so far back in his head that he almost looked possessed. His head whipped to look back at Mark as he sighed in frustration.

Mark who was still confused just looked back at Taeyong inquisitively.

"Mark?" Taeyong's voice, which had been intimidatingly deep and rough sounding earlier had now turned into that of a concerned mother.

"Mark, do you really not understand?"

Mark shook his head.

"We're going to kill her, Mark."

My chest tightened and sweat droplets started to form on my forehead.

"Ah! I knew that. Of course! I just... umm," Mark proclaimed.

Taeyong turned to face me again.

"But before that-"

"Wait!" Mark interjected once more.

"What Mark?" Taeyong straightened up, pinching the tip of his nose with his thumb and index finger.

"Uh. Nothing. Carry on." Mark smiled at Taeyong who returned his gaze back to you.

"Well. It's just that-"

"Oh my god. What, Mark?" Taeyong yelled.

Shocked by Taeyong's outburst, Mark stood silently, staring back at the fiery haired man.

"I'm sorry for yelling. What is it?" Taeyong apologized using his gentler voice.

"It's just... Why are we gonna kill one of the burlesque dancers from last night?" Mark asked.

Taeyong looked at Mark with an annoyed look on his face then grabbed his arm bringing him to the corner of the room.

I took the opportunity to look at my surroundings.

Yep, definitely a basement.

In the corner of the room sat a few boiler tanks which were emanating a loud white noise. Random boxes were littered across the room obviously not having recently been touched based on the dead crickets laying on top of them. In another corner of the room was a dusty pool table with a broken leg and a couple of chairs resembling the one I was currently tied to. There was nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed like the average basement filled with things one might want to keep out of the way but not quite want to get rid of just yet. Things like me.

The only exit that I could see was at the top of the wooden staircase that the two men had originally come down.

After taking notice of the room I was being held in against my will, I looked back towards the two men.

"I'm sorry! I didn't know. I was too hungover to come to the meeting this morning, so I didn't hear the reason why we took her!"

"Then why did you tell Doyoung that you would go downstairs with me and I quote, ‘take care of business?’" Taeyong asked using air quotes to further his point.

"I thought you were getting popsicles to refill the fridge upstairs! You know Yuta and I both like the watermelon flavored ones so I wanted first dibs!"

I couldn't help but furrow my brows. I was in imminent danger yet it seemed like I were in a sitcom.

"Just go get Doyoung," Taeyong ordered. "And tell the boss that she's awake!"

After that, it was just Taeyong and I.

You know, in another life, I would be ecstatic to be in a room alone with such a man but right now even a war-zone in Syria sounded more appealing.

He intertwined his fingers together before loudly he cracked them. Then he twisted his own neck gaining an even louder set of cracking noises.

If he was trying to intimidate me, it was working. What made it worse was that he wasn't saying anything. He was just staring at me as if to say that what was coming down those stairs would be even more horrifying than anything he could do to me.

Panic filled my body and I started working against the chains and rope. Taeyong just chuckled as if he were watching a child get tangled in streamers. He seemed genuinely amused by the sight. I start to feel lightheaded and black dots began to take over.

<><><Time warp?IDK><><>

"Oh no you don't."

I looked up to see Taeyong and Doyoung.

"Looks like we got a fainter on our hands," Doyoung exclaimed as he finished putting on rubber gloves.

Doyoung glanced at Taeyong.

"Go grab the smelling salts. I wanna make sure she doesn't get any breaks tonight," Doyoung looked back at me while Taeyong started going up the stairs.

"Can't have you losing consciousness on us, can we?"

I gulped only to notice how dry my throat was.

This is going to be a long night, if it was night.

I had no idea how long I had been here except for Mark having stated that the show was the night prior.

My mind flashed back to last night.

What did they do to the other dancers? Did Madam Ten make it out safely? Fuck! Did Wendy make it at all?

My mind was rushing a million miles per hour. I hadn't even noticed that Taeyong had returned.

"Shall we begin?" Doyoung snapped one of his gloves, causing me to flinch.

"Are the gloves really necessary?" Taeyong chortled.

It seemed like Déjà vu because Doyoung gave Taeyong the same look that Taeyong have given Mark earlier.

"Because Tae, I don't want any of my DNA on her for when we dispose of her body," Doyoung insisted.

"Well that's stupid because: one, we always burn bodies when we dispose of them and two, just wearing gloves aren't going to prevent you from contaminating her with your DNA. Our hair and skin follicles are literally everywhere in this room."

Doyoung turned to face Taeyong, looking like he might end up hitting Taeyong before he got to me.

"Wait!" I cried, surprised at my own outburst.

They both turned expectantly to face me.

"What's going on? Why did you bring me here?"

Doyoung and Taeyong both scoffed.

Taeyong opened his mouth to reply but suddenly a third voice entered the room.

"I believe I can answer that."

<><><>

We all turned towards the voice. Well... they turned, I just kind of looked up.

It was none other than the boss himself standing at the top of the wooden stairs.

I hadn't noticed until now but Taeyong and Doyoung were dressed very casually. Doyoung wore faded blue jeans and a maroon hoodie that said Tokyo on the back with a few Japanese characters underneath. His shoes were typical black and white sneakers from a brand I couldn't recognize and sticking out of his back pocket was a supreme brand wallet with a ribbon lanyard linking it to one of his belt loops.

Taeyong was wearing black skinny jeans with holes near the knees. It didn't look like he bought them that way, it seemed more likely that they resulted from heavy wear. He was also wearing a hoodie but his was white with no design on it except for a few splashes of brown. My jaw clenched when I focused on the splashes, which now seemed less like a part of the design and more like old blood stains. Looking down, I noticed that he was wearing rubber boots one might wear when working with livestock.

They were both dressed warmly, which made sense since the room felt like it was barely above freezing. It didn't help that I was still only wearing pasties and underwear. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure that Mark was wearing a hoodie as well. The image of Mark wearing a yellow hoodie underneath an unbuttoned denim jacket crossed my mind.

What prompted my sudden urge to examine the gang member's wardrobe choices was the fact that Jaehyun was still wearing a suit. In fact, he was wearing the same crushed black velvet Armani suit as last night, suggesting that he hadn't slept at all since then. The bags under his eyes confirmed my suspicion.

Despite the apparent exhaustion in his face, he still looked as sexy as ever. Maybe even sexier. His hair was messy with strands flying out every which way. It looked as if he had spent the whole night running his fingers through it. For a sinful second I imagined what it would be like if I were the one running my fingers through it.

Get a grip Y/N.

The pain radiating throughout my body must have made me drunk. This was not the time to indulge in my hormonal twenty-one-year-old fantasies. Now was the time to panic.

"How long has she been awake?"Jaehyun asked ignoring my presence.

"Only twenty minutes, sir," responded Taeyong.

"And why was I not informed of this twenty minutes ago?" boomed the pink haired man.

Taeyong looked more intimidated than intimidating.

"I'm sorry, sir. I thought that you had finally gone to sleep and I didn't want-"

"Sleep?" Jaehyun scoffed. "How could I have slept when..." Jaehyun finally met my eyes.

I stopped breathing for the fear that the noise would anger him more.

Taking his time down the steps, the man abandoned his previous thoughts and continued to silently examine his prey.

He stopped right in front of me, pointed at a nearby chair and snapped.

Both Doyoung and Taeyong scrambled to retrieve a chair but Taeyong happened to be a little faster, placing a chair behind his boss, allowing him to take a seat. He instinctively crossed his legs.

Jaehyun reached into his jacket's inner pocket and took out the emerald necklace. Uncrossing his legs, he rested his elbows on his lap. He leaned over, never taking his eyes off me. It was like he wanted to test my reactions. He let the necklace drop from his hand, only for the chain to catch on his ring finger just like Lucas did before.

"You want to know why you're here?" He asked obviously not intending to let me answer.

"I'll tell you why you're here," He growled through clenched teeth.

"Lucas."

I stared at the necklace avoiding his eyes. The room suddenly felt hot.

"I want to know who you are and what happened with you and Lucas."

Boiling, the room suddenly felt boiling, like my skin had been lit on fire. The walls seemed like they've gotten closer together and all I wanted to do was scream.

He knows. Oh my fucking god, he knows. He knows about Lucas. He knows that I killed Lucas. Fuck! How could I have been so stupid as to wear the necklace that I stole from a major mob boss and while performing in front of a room full of his men!? Why was I so foolish to think that no one would recognize it?

I close my eyes attempting to think.

Okay Y/N, be calm. Think! Okay. The only way that I even have a chance of getting out of here alive and with minimal bodily harm is if I can somehow convince them that I didn't kill Lucas. I have to stay strong. I can't mess this up. No matter how much they hurt me, I can't let them know what I did. I will get through this alive. I always find a way to survive.

"Would you like to start the interrogation, sir?" Taeyong asked.

"No, actually I would not like to start the interrogation."

Taeyong and Doyoung both cast each other glances of confusion and I let myself relax as much as I could in this type of situation.

"No. Let's save the official interrogation for tomorrow. Tonight, I want to have a little fun."

My body clenched again.

"Fuck yeah!" Doyoung exploded. "Let's teach this fucking bitch a lesson."

"No," began Jaehyun. "Tonight, I want her all to myself. Doesn't that sound fun, Kitten?"

I didn't dare look up at him, instead I turned towards Doyoung who looked more than disappointed about not being able to beat my face into a bloody pulp.

"What's wrong? Is our Kitten shy?"

I was frozen still.

"Tell Winwin to bring down my scotch."

I saw Doyoung nod before he rushed out of my vision.

My head remained turned away from the pink-haired gangster who was now breathing down my neck.

"Normally I would tell you that if you somehow managed to be a good girl that I would go easy on you but I think we both know that's not how things are going to go."

I let out a small whimper and the man responded with a chuckle.

"Awww. Does our little kitten think that if she meows, I'll go easy on her?"

Jaehyun grabbed my face and painfully squeezed it. He moved his closer to mine until his was just centimeters away. His eyes flickered from my eyes down my face and then down my unclothed body.

Okay! It’s time for our trigger warning! *Air horn sounds*

Trigger warning: inferring non-consensual sex, physical assault

"You know...I'm sure Lucas must have had a lot of fun with you. I wonder if my boys would as well."

Spit.

"God!" Jaehyun yelled, wiping my saliva off his face.

The ounce of power I felt in that moment was quickly washed away as a large ring-covered hand came crashing against my already swollen cheek.

End of Triggering Scene

The door opened and although my vision was fuzzy, I was able to see the shape of the person walking down the stairs.

The closer he got to us, the easier it was to make out his appearance.

I hadn't seen him before. He definitely wasn't at the performance last night.

His hair was short and curly. It reminded me of the memes comparing Justin Timberlake's hair to ramen; the only difference being that this man's hair was black. Besides the obvious perm, his hair looked the most natural out of all of the higher-up gang members. His face was small and cute but he looked more irritated than playful. His facial proportions were perfect and symmetrical. If Taeyong was an anime character, this guy was a porcelain doll. Even his body was doll-like, being considerably slimmer than that of his colleagues. He appeared to be the same height as Doyoung based on how he looked standing next to Taeyong.

He shook Taeyong’s hand and handed him the bottle of scotch he had brought into the room with him.

"How was the show?" the man asked, revealing his thick Chinese accent, not even glancing my way.

Korean was already hard for me to understand, but Korean spoken in any dialect other than the Seoul dialect made for pure confusion.

"Don't even ask," Taeyong responded.

"I'm sorry I missed it," the raven-haired man replied.

"Don't be," Jaehyun interjected. "The real show is just about to begin."

Jaehyun grabbed the liquor bottle from Taeyong and set it on a nearby table. He removed his jacket, setting it on his hair.

"Is this the girl?" the man asked. I turned to realize that he was watching me as I watched his boss.

"This is her," Jaehyun grabbed a dusty glass that was resting on the broken pool table and used his button up shirt to wipe it off. Returning the bottle of scotch, he poured himself a generous double.

The newcomer approached me and started examining me, something I should have been used to by now but was understandingly not.

"Huh," he said under his breath, only loud enough for the two of us to hear.

Something was off. He didn't look at me the same way that Doyoung, Taeyong, and Jaehyun had. With them, I could see anger and rage within their eyes. With Mark, all you saw was confusion. With this guy, you didn't see any anger in his eyes just pure curiosity and a tiny resemblance of the confusion Mark held.

"What did you say, WInWin?" Jaehyun asked, glancing towards us.

"Nothing. What do we know about her?"

"Right, you weren't at the meeting either so all you know is that she had the necklace," Taeyong interjected.

Winwin nodded.

"We don't know her name yet or any of the other details involving Lucas or you know who," Taeyong looked towards Jaehyun who was tightly gripping his drink.

"Go ask Taeil or Yuta to catch you up," Jaehyun snarled. "Tae, you stay here."

Winwin nodded and left up the stairs.

"This is going to be a long night," Taeyong sighed.

"Not long enough," Jaehyun said under his breath. He rolled up with sleeves one by one, downed his scotch, then poured another one.

I just sat their bracing myself, unable to do anything else as Jaehyun made his way towards me.

"You helped kill someone very important to me but since I can't have fun with a woman without offering her a drink first..."

Jaehyun brought the still dirty glass to my lips.

"Drink it. It's the only pain killer you'll get," He whispered.

As he tilted the glass, I start swallowing as much as I could until Jaehyun purposely dropped the glass mid pour, letting it fumble off my lap and crash onto the hard floor.

"Ooops."

I stared at the broken shards of glass on the floor. It felt like time slowed down and I started sobbing again.

"Crying already? But we haven't even started yet," he taunted.

"I don't know who Lucas is," I pleaded.

"Don't fucking lie to me."

I didn't want to look up because I knew that the glass falling to the ground meant more than a single fuck you. By letting the glass fall to the ground, Jaehyun was telling me, "Look. This is what I'm gonna do to you. I'm going to break you piece by piece until you're just as shattered as this glass. You won't resemble yourself after I'm done with you." He didn't say it out loud, but I heard it loud and clear.

Trigger warning: The following scene contains: Major violence, like a lot of hitting and abuse, it’s about to get bad, okay? you’ve been warned

Solidifying his point, Jaehyun threw the first punch. I had never been punched by anyone before, other than Lucas. One would think that having the prior experience of being struck by a mob boss would have at least let me know what to expect in this situation but it didn't; this was much worse.

When Lucas had punched me, he had just wanted to knock me down and keep me there. When Jaehyun punched me, it was like he had been holding back his entire life and emptying the anger from every childhood temper tantrum, every high school breakup, every fight with his parents, and every stubbed toe into this one punch. The punch was so hard that images of these scenarios flashed before my eyes but after I looked back up at the man who starred in these images, I realized that he wasn't channeling all of his past pains. He was just angry, which was even scarier. That became obvious to me as he pulled his fist back, preparing for the next punch.

This punch was even worse than the first. Blood splattered from my mouth landing across the room onto Taeyong's face.

He furrowed his brows, showing minor disgust.

"Boss, I understand the situation but you're hitting much harder than usual, and keep in mind that you usually hit much bigger people as well," Taeyong explained trying to get his boss to ease up a bit.

The third punch landed, causing my nose to pour blood. I had no idea how I was still conscious, let alone that I still had all of my teeth.

"Boss!" Taeyong exclaimed.

Jaehyun ignored him.

I could barely open my left eye as it was already swelling.

Another hit, this one weaker than the others, but it was still enough to cause blood to pour out of my other nostril.

"Boss!" I hear Taeyong’s voice.

I felt hands wrapping around my neck, his grip becoming tight enough to block off my air passages that were already struggling to breath due to all the blood gushing around.

OKAY END OF TRIGGERING SCENE

"Tell me who did it! Was it you or him? Tell me! Fucking tell me!" He voice sounded desperate and defeated.

"Jaehyun! Stop! You can't kill her! We still need her to tell us how to find Lucas!"

Find Lucas? What?

I moved my mouth, but no words came out. For a short moment, I remembered my dream. The irony of having my life end in the same way that my dream had ended was the last thing I had thought of before I completely lost consciousness.

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imonlyhereformyclass · 3 years

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Sin City Bombshells

For this post, I am going to be analyzing the following female characters: Nancy, Wendy, Gail, Miho, and Shellie. I am going to be going in depth about Lucille in another post, when I discuss lesbians. I know it’s a lot, but each of these characters represent a different spectrum of female sexuality, and to a certain extent, objectification. Most of the significant female characters are in the sex industry, as prostitutes or strippers, respectively.

First, we have Nancy Callahan, played by Jessica Alba. Her story is brought by Bruce Willis’ character, John Hartigan, saving her when she was a child from a child predator. They part for several years and meet again in the future when Hartigan gets out of jail. He sees her as a 19 year old working as a stripper. She tells him that she never stopped thinking about him and has fallen in love with him. It is implied that they start dating afterwards. I don’t mind an age gap in relationships but this one rubbed me the wrong way. Hartigan met her as an 11 year old and he was grown. Now that she is older, she is viewed as a sexual object. I think that this represents the barely legal fetish that a lot of men carry. Along with this, Nancy is the perfect example of the stereotypical image of a stripper. She is a young woman (college age, fresh out of high school) with a heavy baggage of childhood trauma mixed with potential daddy issues. I think she fell in love with Hartigan because he saved her as her lowest. A savior, of sorts. I expected her to have a bigger role in the story because she is a huge name and is even on the cover. She only appears for a small bit and was only accompanied by Hartigan. She is constantly sexualized by her now stripper job and her kidnapping. I think it would have been a cool idea if Hartigan and her teamed up, like a Batman and Robin situation. Her role as a film noir trope is the “The good-bad girl stands in between the girl-next-door and the femme fatale, which highlights her moral ambiguity” (Barroso). Nancy has an innocent image (as we remember her from the beginning of the movie as a child), however, is now grown and had a darker moral code. Her becoming a sex worker also ruptures her moral ambiguity. Some still believe that being involved in the sex industry is immoral and evil.

Next is Wendy. She is played by Jamie King. Wendy is the twin sister of Goldie, Marv’s prostitute lover. The reason she is given that name is the striking image of her soft golden billowing hair. Goldie was killed, hence Marv (Mickey Rourke) going on the hunt to find her killer. He blames himself for her murder and goes on a revenge spree to avenge her as he couldn’t save her previously. Since the beginning, she is framed in a sexual lens. She is described as an angel sent from heaven. She is naked the second the audience sees her in a passionate lovemaking scene. She is enveloped in light. Dana Leventhal observes, “The men idealize, romanticize, pine for the women by placing them on impossible pedestals (circumscribed by sexuality and desire) as cherished imaginings and visions, and through this possession make it their duty to guard and safekeeping them, especially since the women are jeopardized or victimized by brutal crime and injustice” (Leventhal). He finds out that Goldie has a twin, Wendy. Wendy is hardened and dead set on revenge, as she should be. She is a no nonsense type of woman. Wendy is tough and willing to bring the murderers to justice. She is still sexualized, nonetheless, as Marv always compared her to her sister, and viewed her the same way. Donaldson writes, “The women of classic noir are often alluring, moral ambiguous, and two steps ahead of the men in the story” (Donaldson). Wendy is alluring, as she starkly resembles her prostitute twin sister. She is morally ambiguous as she is dark and calculating, yet she joins Marv (the anti-hero) on avenging the wrongful murder of her sister. Wendy is one of my favorite characters as I liked how merciless she was.

Gail, played by Rosario Dawson, serves as one of two women of color characters. That is a discussion for another day, as I am going to be analyzing her character. She is the femme fatale. Barroso defines the trope as, “The femme fatale...is mysterious and seductive, known for using her charms to ensnare men and get them into dangerous, and most often, deadly situations. Her main characteristic is using her feminine sexual traits as a way to achieve hidden purposes” (Barroso). She is tough and isn’t going down without a fight. She is the epitome of female empowerment in the eyes of men: tough and battle ready, and looks good doing it. From the picture alone, she is scantily clad. She looks great and I like her outfit but I know the reason why she is dressed like this. She is cunning and commanding. She resembles and reminds me of a dominatrix. Sexually dangerous and isn’t afraid to beat down men. She has masculine traits like being the leader of the gang and she is gritty and domineering. She kills men in a severely violent manner and is strong and self sufficient.

I freaking love Miho. She is, by far, my favorite character in the film. The movies that Devon Aoki appears in, her characters always reign supreme. There is a reason Suki from 2 Fast 2 Furious is still so popular and raved about. However, there is something I hated about her character. She didn't say a word. Her character is the epitome of age old Asian stereotypes: the silent ninja. Miho would strike her sword on her opponents in the same “badass” manner as a ninja would. Her character had so much potential and I feel like it was a waste to have her be silent the entire time. Both her and Gail are the tough girls in the film. Leventhal writes, “The women are not helpless, powerless, or weak; rather, they are cunning and battle-ready. Not only do they refrain from asking for help from the male protagonists, but they either resist or fight to save themselves from their enemies” (Leventhal). Miho is presented differently from the other girls of the film. Her, along with Gail, are not the average damsel in distress, which I like. Laura Woodhouse rants, “Miho...initially appears to be the only truly powerful woman in Sin City. She is not possessed by a man, she is not a victim, she is certainly not physically passive as she goes on to kill many more men and can easily win a fight with any man...It is almost as though Miho is a different creature, a member of a race of silent killers that exist only to perform acts of violence. Quite simply, she cannot be presented as a ‘normal’ female because she has superior killing skills to a man and this threatens the patriarchal nature of Sin City. The creators of Sin City rob Miho of a voice in order to justify her power” (”The F Word”).

Last, but not least, there is Shellie. Played by the late Brittany Murphy, she is a prostitute. Her costume in her major story arc is a black underwear set with a white oversized button down shirt. Given that she was in her own home and she is allowed to wear what she wants, but it rectifies the stereotype that women walk around their home scantily clad, sexually available for overnight guests. Along with that, it fits her day job of being eyed on by the voyeuristic audience. Shellie is conceived as the victim character; she needs the help of her boyfriend to save her from her deranged pimp of a boss. Leventhal notes, “the traditional formulations or projections of femininity as sexuality are retained, as are the concomitant age-old misogynistic conceits of male domination/paternalism in the guise of safety and defense of women, i.e., the cliche that women are weak and need rescuing by men from other men” (Leventhal). Shellie mirrors the poor princess locked up in a tower, needing her Prince Charming to come and save her.

Barroso, Malu, et al. “The Representation of Women in Film Noir.” High On Films, 10 Oct. 2019, www.highonfilms.com/women-in-film-noir/.

Donaldson, Kayleigh. “Problematic Faves: Sin City.” SYFY WIRE, SYFY WIRE, 24 Apr. 2020, www.syfy.com/syfywire/problematic-faves-sin-city.

Leventhal, Dana. “Superwomen? The Bad-Ass Babes of Sin City – or Are They?” Bright Lights Film Journal, 28 Apr. 2019, brightlightsfilm.com/superwomen-bad-ass-babes-sin-city/.

Woodhouse, Laura, et al. “Sin City.” Word, 18 June 2005, thefword.org.uk/2005/06/sin_city/.

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twdmusicboxmystery · 5 years

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Acorn Symbolism: Romance, Promises, and Peter Pan!

Morning Everyone! Sorry it’s taken me so long to get this posted. As I keep saying, cray week. So, I said before that I thought they represented romantic love And I stand by that. For one thing, there are both a male and female component in the germination of acorn seeds. Hence, the romantic love symbol.

But let me mention a few other important acorn references as well.

@frangipanilove pointed out Daryl’s line to Carol last season about Ezekiel being “corny.” A play on the word acorn, perhaps? Now, maybe that’s a silly word play, but given the Serious/Sirius references and “Del Arno Foods,” it’s obvious that the TWD writers don’t mind silly word plays.

Now, @frangipanilove is working on a “nut” theory that will probably be much more comprehensive than this one. She has other “corn” references that are specifically around Ezekiel. I’ll leave that to her. But I suppose you could argue that this is a Carzekiel thing, rather than a Bethyl thing.

Or is it?

I would argue that it might simply be…a romantic love thing. After all, people in love tend to wax a little corny, right?

But there’s something else @wdway thought of that kinda proves the acorn reference is tied to Beth. I’d completely forgotten about this acorn reference in the show, so kudos to her for her awesome memory.

Do you remember there being acorns in the show before? Think about it for a minute. I will say it’s pretty subtle.

Okay, so take a stroll down memory lane to 5x11, The Distance. That’s two episodes after Coda and the one directly after 5x10, where the music box woke up. TF brings Aaron into the barn, Rick knocks him out, and they spend the episode trying to figure out whether he’s trustworthy or not, and also driving to Alexandria for the first time.

At one point, Rick sends everyone out of the barn to hide in various places and keep watch in case Aaron is part of a larger group that might be a threat to them. Then Judith starts crying because she’s hungry, and Aaron offers the applesauce in his bag, right?

But just before that, Rick tries to mash up acorns for her to eat. Voila! Acorn reference!

Why is that important? Because this scene has almost every major TD symbol in it, sitting in that barn. We have the flare gun (fire), a bottle of water with "Greendale springs” written on it, the music box itself, bullets, toilet paper, the applesauce, and even a dog reference (Fido) on top of the applesauce jar.

And this is the barn from 5x10, outside of which the music box has just awakened.

So, the acorns are most definitely a Beth reference.

Where do we take it from there? I’m not sure. I do think it’s significant that we saw acorns around Aaron right after the music box woke up, and we’re seeing them again now, right when something is happening with Aaron and the Whisperers. To me, that says Beth is about to appear.

Also, I won’t go into all the details now, but 5x11, The Distance, is another episode you should go back and watch if you can. There are SO many amazing references in that episode that we had no way of identifying the first time through. Eugene makes a “copulating dogs” reference. Rosita says, “we’re halfway there,” which I can’t help but see as S5 being half way to S10, suggesting the “dog” will return in S10. Tons of stuff like that all through it. Go watch! 😝

If you look up acorn symbolism, they can represent strength, much like the oak tree (which I’ll talk about in a minute). But that could also represent Beth’s strength. They can tell the future, so yes, they definitely portend something Daryl’s future, and are kind of the ultimate foreshadowing symbol. They suggest looking deep within ourselves (Daryl feelings for Beth) and that if something is nurtured in the right way, it can become powerful. Again, Beth nurtured Daryl like no one ever has.

@frangipanilove and I researched the phrase Carol uses, “double capper.” It doesn’t seem to be a real thing. I just figured it was slang, but it’s not coming up in online searches as even that. So I don’t think it means anything by itself. It’s just something mean to draw our attention to the acorn and its symbolism.

Also, the “double” part (2) might represent that we’ve hit the second phase. This hearkens back to retellings and the fact that carrots take two seasons to grow into maturity. It’s something I haven’t mentioned for a while, but we always figured there would be, symbolically, two stages or two times around for Beth and Daryl. The first was S4/S5, and they, as characters, hadn’t matured all the way at that point. We always saw it as Beth returning as stronger, more mature in her character and survival skills, etc. But it’s true of Daryl as well, at least emotionally. This is something I have touched on recently, about how he does understand his own feelings now and will be able to communicate them. So again, the “double” part might represent that we’ve entered phase 2, which is just a fancy way of saying we’re in the part where Beth will return.

Oak Trees

Let’s talk about oak trees, which produce acorns. You might even call acorns the offspring of the oak tree.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what kind of trees we’re seeing, because we don’t get close up shots of the leaves. But we think all the trees in Fear, on which we’ve seen ladders painted, and Alicia is now painting Phoenixes, are oak trees. (Ladder Theory, Phoenix Theory).

We also talked about the tree in the opening credits—the one the plate glass windows hang from—and whether it might be an oak or not. We also looked up biblical symbolism because we all know biblical symbols are big in TWD, and they’re a big deal in the bible as well.

There are several cases of the holy men of the bible (including Abraham, Jacob, and Joshua) making sacred vows under oak trees. Sometimes they bury things in token of these oaths. Jacob’s is very significant, especially as it is entangled with the story of Jacob’s ladder, and remember that in FTWD, we’ve seen ladders painted on oak trees.

One story that stood out to me was that of Joshua. Reading it, I became convinced that the tree we see in the opening credits is, indeed, an oak tree. Let me explain.

In the story, Joshua utters the famous line, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” He then asks if the people will do the same. They make a solemn oath to always serve the Lord, and they do it under an oak tree. Joshua puts a rock under the tree (which represents Christ, btw) and says if they break their promise, the rock will testify against them in judgement.

So, the oak tree = a solemn promise. It occurred to me that’s pretty much what Rick did under the tree with the plate glass pictures hanging on it at the end of S8. He made an oath to honor Carl’s last wishes and not kill Negan. (“My mercy overcame my wrath.) And if that was an oak, then the one in the opening credits must be as well. (Bc of the plate glass pictures.)

And the more I think about it, the more significant that becomes. I don’t want to go into all the details of this today (because this post is about acorns), but I’ve said before that I think Negan will lead to Beth in some way (hence all the bats we saw around her). And the only reason Negan is still alive is because of Rick’s “oath” to let him live in order to honor Carl’s last wishes.

Remember the Phoenix near Carl at his death? (Alicia is painting phoenixes on trees in FTWD.) Well, if Carl hadn’t died, I absolutely think Rick would have simply executed him at the end of AOW. And if Negan is as instrumental in Beth’s return as I think he’ll be, then that’s super important. You could argue that but for Carl’s death, Beth wouldn’t have ever returned. Which explains the phoenix we saw just before Carl’s death.

Also, these new opening credits that start and kind of center around the oak tree began in S9, after AOW ended. Which says to me that Rick’s oath (keeping Negan alive, etc) is what’s driving this part of the story, now. So, this really is all beautifully and intricately connected.

And how do we go from the oath under the oak tree to an acorn symbol? How should we interpret that?

Well, this may become more specific as we learn more, but for now, here’s how I think of it. Just as the acorn is the offspring—or offshoot, if you will—of the oak tree, so Beth’s return (and Daryl’s happiness) will be a result or offshoot of Carl’s death and Rick’s oath.

Peter Pan:

All right, I’m going to switch gears and talk about one more possibility for this acorn reference that the lovely @weapon13whitefang.

She said between the acorn in this scene with Carol and Daryl, and the “kiss” reference, she was immediately reminded of Peter Pan. In Peter Pan, there are tokens of kisses exchanged. Like thimbles. Peter didn’t know what a kiss was, so Wendy gave him a thimble, which was a token of a kiss.

In return, Peter actually gives Wendy an acorn button. Now, technically, this is not an actual acorn (though many PP interpretations use actual acorns). Rather this was a term for a button made of wood, which in slang, was known as an “acorn button.” (Source) In symbol of their friendship, Peter and Wendy wore their gifts for one another around their necks on necklaces. Wendy’s acorn button even saved her life when the Lost Boys (on Tinkerbell’s angry lie) shot her out of the sky. The button stopped the arrow from piercing her heart and killing her.

This has SO many promising implications.

But first thing’s first. My first thought was about what this meant for the question of romance. You all know I don’t think this signifies romance between Carol and Daryl—I know it doesn’t—but I need to be able to explain why.

So, Wendy and Peter exchanged tokens, much like Carol giving Daryl an acorn in this past episode. The question is, was there ever romance between Wendy and Peter?

Meh…a little bit. Wendy was definitely crushing on Peter when she first met him, though it was as much the prospect of adventure as anything else. (Which might have also been true of Carol early on, especially as Daryl helped her search for Sophia.)

But think about it in the long term. Things don’t work out romantically between Wendy and Peter. Wendy leaves Neverland, grows up, gets married and has kids, where Peter doesn’t. They always have a deep and abiding friendship—and even love—for one another. They wear their token necklaces for decades after their adventures together. But romance? No, it’s not really part of the story.

In fact, if you want to get REALLY detailed, why did Wendy first become disillusioned with Neverland? Because she came to understand that Peter brought her there, not as a girlfriend or companion, but to be a MOTHER to the Lost Boys. (Daryl and Carol have a mother/son relationship, as confirmed by Norman in S7.)

You could also argue that Carol finally putting the tragedy of Sophia behind her and marrying Ezekiel and finding happiness represents Wendy moving on from Neverland and getting married and having kids. Daryl is still Peter Pan in Neverland who’s never sustained a real relationship before. Of course, we think he will, when Beth returns. But for now, the Peter and Wendy analogy is very apt.

And it opens up a lot of possibilities for me. I’m super intrigued as to what will happen with this acorn. He put it in the pocket of his vest. Will it save his life? Deflect a bullet or something? Or is this less literal than that? If it represents Beth or his relationship with her, maybe it foreshadows that she’ll save his life in some way. (Something we’ve all theorized about for a LONG time.)

I also think it’s interesting that Wendy was flying when she was shot out of the sky and the acorn button saved her. They even called her the Wendy-Bird. Now, granted, in this analogy, Carol, more than Beth is Wendy. But still.

1) We saw a plane crash this past season on FTWD, and we’ve seen several helicopter crashes, including one on the roof of Big Spot in 4x01 (Beth) and one when Merle returned in 3x01 (resurrection of character).

These are representations of birds falling out of the sky. You MIGHT even be able to lump the satellite in with that. I don’t know if satellites are ever referred to as birds, but it did fall out of the sky, after all.

2) How many birds have been used around Beth as symbolism? Blue Heron. Yellow Wagtail. Phoenix. Songbird.

3) And of course there’s a major precedent for the writers using children’s stories as symbolic templates in the show. The Wizard of Oz. Little Red Riding Hood. The Little Prince (FTWD). Why not Peter Pan?

So yeah. I gotta stop now, but let’s just say I’m still loving the acorn symbol and the acorn scene. They portend great things for TD and Bethyl. 🎉

Which acorn interpretation is your favorite and why?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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darkspellmaster · 6 years

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Some Thoughts Regarding the Disney Princesses and why they are all Strong characters that deserve praise.

Recently was reading an article on the Mary Sue about how Kira Knightly doesn’t let her daughter watch certain Disney films, and sure that’s her right as a parent. However, one thing that I noticed with the article is that the write seemed to be taking a lot of talking points that don’t make any sense as to why certain Disney films are less than others regarding their female leads, and I’m kind of tired of it.

Like, fine, if you don’t like a film because you disagree with the message, or the animation, or you don’t like the voice actress or actor of the character, or you hate the music (but why would you because this is some Broadway level music here), that’s totally fine, that’s on you. It’s your feelings towards a work and that’s cool, I’m not out here to tell you that your reason for disliking something regarding a actual flaw in the script or the acting or the animation isn’t valid.

What’s getting to me as a writer and a creator however is this sense that some of the older princesses and films are being dissed for a variety of flawed reasoning, and that’s what I hope to dispel with this post. I’m not going to change your mind if you’re set on believing in certain things, but I want to clear up some talking points that I think people are, by hearing them over and over again, misinterpreting in regard to the actual films and that people aren’t critically thinking when they view the movie.

Every Disney film has a surface level view and several deeper meanings in regard to the story, and that’s kind of what I want to clear up here. There’s been so much put on the characters in the stories through the princess line that many are now missing the key elements in the actual film that should be taken away with the character and their active, in most cases, approach to things.

So let’s Start with Snow White. Why? Because she’s the oldest character, the one that get’s the least notice by most people, and she is one of my favorites.

So what do people say about her regarding how “Bad” she is as a character:

She’s looking for her prince to come and save her.

She’s doing what her stepmother tells her to do.

She’s unable to save herself and is easily tricked.

She’s easily scared and too weak to do much on her own.

She’s a homemaker rather than a fighter.

She’s basically useless in her own story.

So I want to take each of these point by point and counter them with facts.

First let’s start out with those. Snow is 14 years old, and probably, other than princess Eilonwy, is the youngest princess in the group (though I think Alice is younger than her by two years and Wendy is a year younger), and lost her father not that long ago, as the story opening states. We know that her Stepmother is being cruel to her and treating her badly, but we also know that even in these circumstances she’s hopeful. We see her trying to make her work go faster by singing, and that this is an important point in her character. If you watch it and listen to the story, you’ll notice that the “Whistle While you work” song indicates that singing is clearly something she did a lot of to make it easier for her to deal with the burden that her Stepmother is treating her like crap and forcing her to work as a scullery maid for the castle.

Now that is another important factor. The Queen doesn’t give Snow an easy task, in fact she is given one of the WORST jobs in the entire castle.

From Wikipedia:

The scullery maid reported (through the kitchen maid) to the cook or chef. Along with the junior kitchen-maid, the scullery maid did not eat at the communal servants' dining hall table, but in the kitchen in order to keep an eye on the food that was still cooking.[3]

Duties of the scullery maid included the most physical and demanding tasks in the kitchen[1] such as cleaning and scouring the floor, stoves, sinks, pots, and dishes. After scouring the plates in the scullery, she would leave them on racks to dry. The scullery maid also assisted in cleaning vegetables, plucking fowl, and scaling fish.

The scullery maid provided hot water for the scullery, kitchen tasks, and household. In addition to her other tasks, the scullery maid had to keep the scullery clean by clearing away meat and vegetable garbage, scrubbing work tables, and swilling the floors. The water was carried through a drain outside the house.[6] Scullery maids would rarely have handled fine china, stemware, crystal or plate silver; these are cleaned by housemaids and footmen. Before the advent of central heating systems, scullery maids were required to light the fires on the kitchen stove and supply hot water for tea and washing. She performed these tasks in the morning before the cook came down to the kitchens.[7]

In a household with no between maid, the scullery maid may also have waited on staff in the Servants' hall, although this may have been assigned to another maid or a junior footman. In the days before the indoor water closet she may have been required to empty and clean the servants' chamber pots as well.[8]

So basically Snow White was not only doing the most physically demanding jobs in the kitchen, helping cook and clean, start fires in the kitchen, and probably other task, she also more than likely had to clean the Queen’s bath water, and chamber pots. Yeah this was not fun or enjoyable work.

Later we see Snow dealing with the Huntsman, and her reaction to nearly being killed by him. Some may say she’s being foolish in her actions here, but it does show that while she was scared she also can show mercy, understanding and forgiveness. Something that a lot of characters don’t often show as much anymore in regard to showing strength of character. And even when she learns the truth, that her own Stepmother is trying to kill her, her first reaction is shock, showing that even though her Stepmother is treating her horribly, she still loves her enough to believe that the woman cares about her and wouldn’t harm her. It’s a total surprise to her that the woman that probably helped raise her until she was 14 would even contemplate this sort of action.

Even when we’re dealing with the Dwarves we see a strong character in her as, yes one could say she’s being motherly. But as –pretty much – a child who is still fairly young (as is her Prince –who goes by three names depending on who you ask: Ferdinand, Florian, or Fredrick) she’s going to imitate what she saw the cook do to get the other servants to come and eat dinner. Yet there is a confidence there that she has which shows that she can be as commanding as some of the newer Princesses, and she’s not a docile girl as she’s willing to enjoy herself even though she’s just been through hell. She doesn’t let the fear of her Stepmother coming for her weigh her down and keeps going even if she knows there’s a chance she may be in danger. On top of that you have her moment with the witch.

A lot of people think that she’s being an idiot here, but it’s in her nature to not judge people by her looks. Again, she’s been working as a maid in the castle, so she’s probably seen a lot of people who are less than good looking. Snow White, while making a mistake here, also shows you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, giving the woman a chance to prove herself. If this had been any other old woman, the message there would have been clear as a bell that looks shouldn’t equate if someone was good or wicked, and we know that the Queen herself is beautiful also that the Dwarves are not the most good looking of people in the movie, so the message still comes across.

Lastly we have her moment at the end when she wakes up. Who does she look to first, not the Prince but rather her friends, whom she thinks woke her up from a sleep as they did when they first met, and then she sees the Prince and is happy to see him. Her first notion getting up is the men that protected her and became her hope over the prince but she was still happy to see him moments later. Then, given the Prince clearly knows the sort of person she is, goes about allowing her to say goodbye to her friends one by one, lifting them up for her to again show her compassion and grace and courage. She was literally dead, and now, revived she still goes about making sure her friends know she’s okay and makes sure that they know she cares for them by kissing them on their heads showing that she will remember them and probably will see them again.

So back to the points above.

She’s looking for her prince to come and save her.

Nowhere in the movie does she say she is looking for a prince to come save her. Never once in any song does she even remotely indicate that that is what she wants.

Her first song “The wishing well song” talks about how she is wishing for the one she loves to find her today. Now the implication for most people is that she doesn’t know who the Prince is but in the song the lyrics indicate that she may have met him before (possibly when they were young children).

“I’m wishing, for the one I love, to find me, today. I’m hoping and I’m thinking of the nice things, he’ll say.”

This isn’t saying at all that she wants to be saved or taken away. It’s simply saying at this point that she would like to meet with the person she has feelings for to see her again and say kind things to her. As we know, by this point, the woman that is supposed to be treating her right isn’t treating Snow White very nicely or kindly. So of course she would be hoping to meet with the last person that treated her kindly and hoping to hear nice and sweet words as she’s living in a place where all she probably hears is comments by her own Stepmother that are more than likely insults done to bring her down more so that she loses her beauty.

Later in the story when she is running away as per the request of the huntsman, she never once calls out for help, she does all the running herself. She doesn’t even break down until she’s so lost in the forest that she doesn’t know where she’s at, and can anyone blame her for being freaked out by those trees? And when she does find the home of the “children” her first thought isn’t of the prince, it’s of “How can I make it so that they’ll let me stay so that I can hid from the Queen until I can figure out what to do.”

The only time she thinks at all of the prince is when the Dwarves ask her to tell a story. This is the only time we get her talking about the Prince at all since the beginning of the story. She explains, in the song, that Someday, not now or tomorrow, but someday he’ll find her and take her back to his home where she can be safe away from her Stepmother.

This is actually important if you know anything at all about history regarding kingdoms. When a woman was married into a royal family she became part of that family and thus the royal court of that new kingdom was there to protect her. In this case, Snow is hoping that by going with the Prince (who is not king yet) she can plead her case to his family, the same way she did with the Dwarves, and can seek asylum with them so that the Queen can’t hurt her because then that would be a declaration of war against the other Kingdom.

She is not at all being an idiot here. Hell she didn’t even know the apple was going to put her into a sleeping death and had no idea the prince would come and kiss her. She was planning on staying with the Dwarves for however long it took before she could, probably with their help, find a way to seek refuge in another kingdom, or until the Queen died or whatever, and then come back to her castle where she could rule fairly and not live in fear.

She’s doing what her stepmother tells her to do.

Again she is a Scullery Maid, and not by choice. The Queen places her in this post in hopes that all the work and wearing the rags and such would break her spirit and end up causing her to become ugly. Snow is doing what she can to survive this abuse and neglect from the woman who’s supposed to care for her. Of course she does what she’s told.

We’re seen in older story boards that the Prince at one point was to be held captive with a number of skeletons. It’s not that hard to believe that, given what the Queen says to the Huntsman that she would be more than willing to harm her stepdaughter if for a moment she thought she was falling out of line.

Snow is a survivor, someone who finds a way to overcoming this harsh reality, by doing as told to keep herself alive and using songs to keep herself from falling to despair.

She’s unable to save herself and is easily tricked.

And here is yet another made up bit that so many people like to say regarding Snow White. Okay so firstly, she does save herself. She runs away, as per the Huntsman’s request after she’s told the truth. Yes she’s helped by the animals to find the cottage, but again, she’s never been in these woods so she would have no idea where she’s going. Anyone would take the help in this cases, it’s not weak to ask for help.

Then she takes initiative when they get to the cottage and insists on cleaning up all day, cooking a meal for the “children” all in the hopes that by doing so she can win them over and stay there till the threat has passed. She’s saving herself by using the skills she gleaned from working as a maid in the castle and putting them to good use. How many other princesses know how to clean up a mess like she does and use it as a means of a diplomatic intervention in order to stay at a place to keep from being killed?

Then, the whole tricked thing. Again, she has worked in the Kitchen of the castle so more than likely she has seen her share of not nice looking people over the time there. This means, again, that she’s trying to not judge a book by it’s cover. She’s trying to look past the whole thing of a hag that is pretty damn scary offering her an apple. Disney, smartly I may add, had it where she only had the one situation rather than the original three times she was tricked in the original story. Snow has no idea that the apple is poisoned, and again, in normal circumstances, one of the things that we as a society have been trying to teach people is to look beyond the appearance of others, so she was doing just that and trusting what she believed to be a kind woman. She doesn’t know that her stepmom can do magic, she didn’t even know she was a witch. Even when she learns this, the dwarves don’t give her examples, and this is also hearsay in regard to Snow who lived with her and probably never saw any of that. So her being tricked wasn’t a moment of weakness, it was a case of her own morality and being kind to others being used against her, which is something we should loath in the Queen.

She’s easily scared and too weak to do much on her own.

Yeah, I’m not buying this one either. Snow’s only moment of showing actual fear was when she was about to be stabbed, and who wouldn’t be scared in that moment, and freaking out in the forest. If you think about that moment she’s not only dealing with the fact that she’s lost in a place she has never been in, with what seems to be monsters attacking her thanks to her own imagination, and she’s just come down from being not only attacked by a man that she trusted to keep her safe. But also learned that her Stepmother, the woman that let her leave the castle for the first time in years, go have fun, gave her a new dress, and is showing her some kindness for the first time in a long time and possibly to her having a change of heart and may love her again as a daughter, was only faking and wants to have her killed and will stop at nothing to have that done. That is one hell of a thing to process.

So yeah, I would probably be freaking out thinking someone’s gonna come after me too after learning all of this. And no, she’s not too weak to do much on her own. She not only managed to clean a house (with help with animals) but also cook a meal, got seven older men to clean up –something they haven’t done in years, and have a party with them, without anyone helping her do that. She’s a lot smarter than people give her credit for.

She’s a homemaker rather than a fighter.

Not all strong women have to be able to swing a sword. A lot of people seem to think that the only way you can show strength is in wielding a sword, yet one of the strongest members of the Princess line and the one that gets the most praise, defeated the bad guy with a fan and a rocket. Never once having to use the sword she learned to use to stab or cut anyone.

Snow’s strength comes in her diplomatic skills. She uses what she knows (her time as a scullery maid) to give a reason for the Dwarves to allow her to stay. She basically pulled off a trade with them. She’ll use her skills to keep things clean for them, for the fair price of allowing her to stay, and in return they will keep her hiding place quiet and probably listen up for any news of anyone trying to come to harm her. Making deals is a hard thing to do, and Snow has this skill in spades and it’s something more people need to learn to do. Using kindness to get what you want over threats.

She’s basically useless in her own story.

Again, it’s this false narrative that so many people seem to see. Snow White has more agency in her story than some more modern heroines that are lauded by people. She keeps herself safe by doing as requested by her Stepmother, later when confronted by the truth, she chooses to run and hide till she knows she can find a place that can keep her safe. She uses her skills from her time as a maid to get the okay to stay in a safe house, and then the only time that she at all loses her agency is when she is tricked into eating an apple that she wouldn’t know was poisoned, and also she only does so because she believes that you shouldn’t distrust people based on her appearance.

So how do people think this young woman is a bad role model for younger girls? Because she cooks and cleans? Well everyone should know how to do that so that they can survive. You shouldn’t live in a mess just to say “Yo I’m a strong independent person.”

Next up Cinderella....

#snow white #snow white and the seven dwarfs #snow white and the 7 dwarfs #disney's snow white #disney animation #disney animated films #disney princesses #the prince #prince florian #wicked queen #the mary sue article #in defense of the disney princesses

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iamshuvashis · 4 years

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80 Years Of Animated Fairy Tales:

By the early 1930s Walt Disney faced a dilemma: his popular cartoon shorts about Mickey Mouse were starting to lose money. His competitors could afford to produce cartoons at a loss as lead-ins to their live action films; Disney, who did not have a movie studio, could not.

But he had another idea: he could produce a full-length film of his own. Only, instead of making a live action film, he could produce a full-length cartoon feature, running, say, for about 88 minutes. Good length. Sure, it might cost as much as $500,000. (Cue gasps.) He would need 300 artists. It had never been done before. It’s safe to say that very few people thought this was a good idea. And that $500,000 turned out to be a very wrong estimate. It’s also very safe to say that this idea is why we have the entertainment megacorporation of Disney as it exists today.

The process of creating Snow White officially began when Walt Disney acted out the story he had in mind to his main animators. Later, some of them said Disney’s performance had brought them to tears; whether this was true, or just a later Disney legend, is a bit difficult to determine. But the preparation had started long before that. Disney had wanted artists that could be cartoonists, but not just cartoonists, and paid to have his cartoonists take art classes, first at the Chouinard Art Institute, and later at the newly formed Disney Art School. (Somewhat scandalously, some of these art classes involved—gasp—nude models, which apparently had the side effect of encouraging cartoonists to show up.) Cartoonists were also sent to the zoo to study animals.

This was all great, but it left just a few little technical problems: first, the difficulty of creating the illusion of depth from two dimensional drawings, needed to give the film a realistic feel; second, the difficulty of creating four lifelike animated humans; and third, not having enough artists available, even after the art school program. Oh, sure, Disney had artists diligently churning out Mickey Mouse cartoons, but for this, he needed more. Three hundred more.

This might have been impossible except for a fortunate (for Disney) historical fluke: Disney just happened to need those artists during the Great Depression. Which in turn meant quite a few just happened to be available at considerably lower-than-usual rates.

That still left Disney with the two other issues. The solution to the first was a technical milestone: a multiplane camera. First, the art was separated and put on different levels of glass. Then, each piece of glass was separated. This meant that when the camera moved in, the art on top would get “bigger” faster than the art on the bottom—giving the illusion of depth, and allowing the camera to move in and out, the same way it could in a live action film. As an added bonus, this meant that special effects—for instance, rain, which was not always animated, but instead a film of actual water drops—could be filmed on a separate piece of glass.

Next came the issues of trying to animate three adult humans, one girl, and seven dwarfs—and make their actions look realistic. Animated cartoons had included human figures before, of course—but always in exaggerated, unrealistic forms, and the results had looked, well, wrong. For Snow White, animators studied dancers and asked the voice actors for the dwarfs to dance, studying their movements as well, to see how humans actually move. The end result seems commonplace today, but at the time it was an innovation: animated humans with (nearly) natural movement.

It wasn’t perfect—the Huntsman’s movements, for one, are not always entirely convincing; an artistic/production error led to an accidental “shimmer” effect with the Prince, and a few of Snow White’s movements are off as well. But at the time, audiences found it jaw-dropping.

So how does it hold up today?

I’d have to say, mixed.

A significant part of the problem—and one, to be fair, pointed out by the animators at the time—is the film’s pacing. It starts off sharply, moves into a terrorizing forest sequence (a sequence that not all small children survive) then pauses for a long, extended housecleaning scene, pauses for another long sequence focused on the dwarfs, and then another long sequence focused on the dwarfs, and finally jumps back into the action as the queen belatedly realizes that the Huntsman gave her the wrong heart. Which means that we get a very long, often slow cartoon about singing, cleaning, working, and properly washing faces and hands, where very little actually happens (unless you are counting the story of that poor tortoise) bookended with sequences of near horror and terror.

As you might be realizing, this creates a rather jarring tonal problem as well, and for all its ambition to be the first full-length animated film, Snow White isn’t quite there in anything but length: rather, it’s a sometime uneasy mix of the old cartoon shorts with a full-length film. To a very large extent, this was playing up to the audiences of the time, who had certain expectations from their animated cartoons that focused on short, funny gags and characters doing silly things. Walt Disney, almost always good at reading his potential audience, correctly guessed that this audience would be expecting silly dwarf scenes, and provided that—even as his animators complained that the dwarfs’ scenes went on for far too long.

But in a way, they had to: Despite the need to fill 88 minutes of screen time, Walt Disney severely cut the original story, eliminating the original beginning, with its deeply symbolic elements, two of the queen’s attempts to assassinate Snow White, and the gruesome ending in which the evil stepmother is forced to dance in hot iron shoes until she dies. Not that the evil stepmother gets away scot-free—or alive—in the Disney version, either, but the death occurs largely off screen, confirmed mostly by the hungry eyes of the lurking vultures.

(Not that the vultures convinced small me at all. We didn’t see the witch really die, after all, and she was a witch with a magic mirror, so clearly she was totally still alive and was going to come back and kill all of the little birds and rabbits. So, yay Disney for sorta trying to reduce the cartoon violence, but minus several points for leaving a little six-year-old me in quaking terror.)

Cutting those two assassination attempts was almost certainly necessary to keep Snow White from looking too credulous—especially since, to keep the last assassination attempt believable, Disney did keep Snow White almost as young as she was in the Grimm fairy tale. Almost. As noted last week, Snow White, in the original Grimm/Lang versions, is seven when she first becomes “as beautiful as she could be,” and runs off to the woods shortly after that. This Snow White seems to be at least twelve—she’s old enough to work as a scullery maid, and take on a motherly role to the dwarfs. But not much older than that. She’s drawn with a flat chest and the features of a young girl, and voiced with a childish, high pitched voice—in striking contrast to the rich, older tones of her stepmother.

(It’s also in striking contrast to the voices of later Disney princesses, usually voiced with richer, more mature tones; the closest vocally to Snow White are the younger heroines Alice in Alice in Wonderland and Wendy in Peter Pan, who aren’t princesses or love interests. For entertainment, try comparing the voices of Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), Belle (1991) and Elsa and Anna (2014).)

It’s not just her appearance and voice, either, but many of her actions that indicate her youth and inexperience. When Snow White first sees the Prince, she runs. Sure, she later pops out of a tower to sing at him, a probable nod to Rapunzel, and, to be fair, older girls might also flee after being surprised by the head of a stranger popping up over a wall, but that initial reaction suggests a certain immaturity. In the forest, she reacts to her surroundings in sheer terror, running, tripping, falling, and weeping—later calling herself silly for doing so. In part, of course, she is fleeing her stepmother, under the perhaps justified feeling that she can’t possibly escape the woman…even if the evil queen only seems to be employing one other servant and a raven. True, the evil queen also has a magical mirror, which should count for something, but the mirror does not seem to be particularly good at the whole chasing-down-princesses-in-the-wood bit.

But her most childish moment comes later in the film, when she eats the apple offered to her by the old witch. Everything—the warnings from other characters, the reactions from the animals, the sudden appearances of the vultures who, I must say, did not show up for the major housecleaning binge, like, thanks, vultures—should tell her not to do this. She was intelligent enough to make the best of things under her stepmother; intelligent enough to realize that she had been foolish for no reason at all; intelligent enough to bargain her way into a home with the dwarfs. And yet, this.

It feels wrong, and makes sense only if Snow White is enchanted (which she doesn’t seem to be), if Snow White is incredibly stupid (which again, apparently not, based on other bits of the film), if Snow White is too terrified to say no (an explanation that appears in other retellings, but not here), or if she is simply too young to know better. Disney went with the last.

But that reasoning in turn creates another jarring moment, since this young girl, young enough to take an apple from a terrifying old woman despite ample warning, is the same young girl who, just moments earlier, takes on a motherly role with the seven dwarfs—all men older than she is. (Well, at least six of them are. Dopey may be three.) It’s not just that she, with a lot of domestic assistance from the various cute animals, cooks and cleans for them—she also orders them to clean up before dinner, and kisses them all on the head good night.

In part, Snow White can take on this role because—in stark contrast to the Grimm version—when she arrives, the little cottage is an absolute disaster, and the dwarfs, if not exactly interested in cleanliness, are interested in getting a decent meal. The dwarfs in the Grimm tale don’t actually need Snow White as their housekeeper; it’s a fair trade for their protection, as well as part of the ongoing Grimm moral lesson (good girls focus on housework, not vanity). In the Disney version, Snow White earns her way into the cottage with hard work—with, admittedly, the help of a lot of animals, as a nice nod to the idea that it’s almost certainly impossible for one girl to take care of seven very messy men without help.

This also allows the film to linger on its theme of work. It’s not completely new to the story: in their version of “Snow White,” The Grimms had associated housework with positive images of women and girls—basically, girls that do housework, and avoid the temptations of vanity, stay alive and get the prince. The Disney version doesn’t quite follow this: it’s surprisingly, and even hilariously, not all that concerned with issues of vanity and personal appearance—hilariously, given the Disney Princess product line this film would eventually help launch. Yes, Snow White does look at herself in the well once, but the purpose of this is more to set up a song (“I’m wishing!”) and to show off that Disney’s animators had accomplished the hitherto impossible: creating an animated image of something reflected in water, than to say much about her looks. (Thanks, multiplane camera!) And that’s about it for Snow White’s vanity.

But the Disney version does pick up the work focus, only with a twist. It focuses on the sheer joy of having work to do, and the idea that working will bring you joy. In our first glimpse of Snow White, we see her smiling as she scrubs steps. We later see her singing and smiling as she cleans up the house, and a number of adorable woodland animals eagerly help her out—and have fun doing so. We see the dwarfs—whose accents, grammar and failure to bathe regularly stem from then-popular representations of working class people—sing about the sheer joy of working. All this while doing housework and mining, typically classified as tedious, menial jobs.

Doing tedious tasks have often been part of a hero’s journey and assigned tasks feature in many fairy tales, often with the assistance of small animals the hero had helped along the way. But this particular message seems to spring more directly from the Great Depression than from fairy tales, a message that reflected the relief of having any job at all, no matter how menial or tedious. And to a certain extent the original condition of that cottage may also have reflected certain images from the Great Depression: neglected, almost run down, small enough that the seven dwarfs all have to share a single bedroom—though at least they’ve personalized their beds. And although definitely cartoonish, the images of the dwarfs curling up in various odd places also fit familiar images of unemployed people finding jobs wherever they could.

That these scenes are cut between shots of the dwarfs picking up huge gems from the mine suggests that something is seriously wrong with this kingdom’s economy—echoed in the scenes in Snow White’s nearly empty castle. The dwarfs have gems, yes, but no one is buying them. Still. It’s a job, and so, hi ho, hi ho, off to work they go.

Since I’ve brought that up, I must say that I found the songs a bit of a mixed bag on this outing as well. Three, granted, became instant classics and Disney staples—“Heigh-Ho,” “Whistle While You Work,” and “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and it’s entirely possible that hearing the latter in far, far, too many television commercials over the years shaped my instinctive cringing at the sound of it sung in Snow White’s little piping voice. “I’m Wishing,” sung in the same little high pitched voice, which has not been as eagerly embraced by advertisers, did not evoke the same reaction, so that could well be it.

But I can’t say that my reaction to the washing song and the silly song done by the dwarfs had anything to do with advertising: those songs have not become popular staples, for a reason. As the animators complained, they are featured in sequences that last far too long, almost to the point of forgetting that yes, yes, there’s an evil witch out there. The moment she comes back, the dwarfs immediately recede: the Evil Queen doesn’t just have a far more powerful presence, she’s visually more interesting.

Walt Disney, however, insisted on leaving in the lengthy sequences: he wanted the dwarfs to be individuals, characters that the audience could embrace. Even if, in the end, Snow White and her prince couldn’t, or at least didn’t—they head off to a palace, while the dwarfs stay behind, sadly waving their hats, getting ready to head back to work. Housework brought Snow White to her prince; mining work leaves the dwarfs open to having complete strangers, evil witches, and assorted animals just walk into their home at any time, arranging things to suit themselves. But then again, I can hardly say that the dwarfs did anything to save Snow White, other than put her in that coffin: not only do they leave Snow White at the cottage without protection (as in the original fairy tale) but they waste several valuable moments fighting with the animals who are trying to warn them. Well done, dwarfs.

Which is probably why, in the end, my favorite characters end up being the Evil Queen, magnificent in her evil, willing to go to hideous lengths to remain the loveliest woman in the land, only to fall off a cliff because she didn’t have the sense to make her disguise something she could easily drop in order to run faster.

And the little tortoise.

I’d totally forgotten this film even had a little tortoise. It turns out, however, that he’s the most adorable and heartwarming character in the entire film, and yes, I’m including all of the dwarfs and the cute little animals. Possibly because each and every time he finally achieves his slow, hard-fought-for goal, he gets knocked down and has to start all over. With a smile. I’ve been there, tortoise, I’ve been there. Hugs.

And that leads to the other great part of the film: the animal animation, which is spectacularly beautiful, with each and every animal individually animated. Disney would only reach those heights in a few more films: it’s incredible that they started off so well here. They are almost—almost—enough to help little viewers forget that this film also has a very scary witch. VERY SCARY.

Watching the film, it’s remarkable just how many elements of the Disney brand are already in place: the adorable helpful little animals, the first of the Disney princesses, and of course, the memorable songs. As much as Walt Disney liked to say afterwards that it all started with a mouse, it’s equally accurate to say that it all started with a fairy tale. What’s also remarkable is just how many elements of the Disney brand are not there, and would be developed later. We’ll be seeing that as we continue.

#fairy tales

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squisherific · 7 years

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Chapter 545 Thoughts

Wow, it’s been so long since I wrote a chapter review. I can’t believe this is truly the final chapter. It doesn’t feel like it’s actually over, and I guess that’s because the ending doesn’t really feel like an ending? And I think that’s partly what Mashima was going for.

But, I’ll talk about the the general stuff later. First I’m going to focus on the ships, as that was such a main part of the chapter anyway.

First of all, IMO, all the major ships are canon. Nalu is canon. Gruvia is canon. Jerza is canon. And Gajevy is (obviously lmao) canon.

I’m going to be honest, though, I was disappointed to an extent, and that’s largely because we, the fans, didn’t get that 499 was Gray’s answer. So, I’m going to backtrack, and talk about that chapter again first.

Juvia got that Gray’s actions and words in 499 was his answer, that’s why she said his words made her happy at the time. But the fans wanted more. Gray was never a direct person. He shows his feelings with actions, not words. And there was nothing greater he could do, than kill himself, in order to prevent himself from hurting HER any further. Like he said, he wanted to protect Juvia at all costs. And we’ve seen him do just that, again and again over the years.

But 499 was different. We saw Juvia take action first, and knew why she was doing it, and Gray likewise, took the same actions, for the same reasons, and Juvia knew it. And WE knew it. We knew why. We knew then that Gray’s feelings were mutual. But we still thought there would be more. Something more direct. But like I said, and like we knew, Gray isn’t one for words. And because Juvia understands him on a different level, she doesn’t need him to say anything. What he tried to say, and what he did, was enough for her.

We should have got it, because lover’s double suicide is such a huge statement in Japanese fiction and culture.

But we didn’t get it.

And that’s ok.

Because I can look back now, taking away my expectations, and appreciating what we got. because 499 really gave us everything we had wanted, and really did show us Gray’s mutual feelings. 453 showed his mutual feelings. 416 showed his mutual feelings. Gruvia have gone canon about four times so far lmao. But we’re huge fans, and always wanted more. Again, something direct.

And yet, in THIS chapter, Gray was TOO direct lmao. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I was expecting something sweet, something romantic, I was expecting a serious talk. And they kind of had all of that, but in a way that was very in character for Gruvia. It was their classic dynamic, except flipped on it’s head lol.

So, here’s how it came off to me.

Obviously Gray is already stripped when we see him, and Juvia, as usual, reacts to it, by blushing, and being embarrassed, and taking a good look haha. But then she starts taking off her clothes, while Wakaba and Makao perv over her. Then we get more of Juvia wanting to take everything off (and she’s had too much to drink, so she’s also emotional, drunk Juvia at this point lol), and we have Gray, for the first time EVER, reacting to Juvia removing her clothing. This is HUGE for a number of reason:

a) Gray is blushing (blushy Gray, is best Gray).

b) Gray is trying to stop her

c) Gray has turned into Juvia lol!

Because the roles are reversed, aren’t they? Juvia is usually the one blushing, and freaking out over Gray randomly stripping. And it also shows growth and change in their relationship, because Gray has seen Juvia strip before. She did so several times during the Avatar/Alvarez arcs. But Gray never even seemed to notice before, let alone blush, and get upset by it!

Juvia was being ogled by Gildarts, who at first said girls shouldn’t drink, then he wanted Juvia to drink more, because it meant she’d take off more clothes haha. But we see Gray, angry at Juvia for stripping, and dragging her away as she apologizes. Again, their roles are completely flipped lmao. But I love it, because we know that Gray is being protective of her. Something MAJOR has changed in their relationship for Gray to be reacting this way now, in comparison to his non-reactions of the past.

But here’s the best part, the SCARS.

First of all, Juvia’s scar really should be in the middle of her torso, not the side, but I guess Mashima wanted to mirror the placement of Gray’s. It’s not a big deal, but something I definitely noticed lol.

Anyway, I just really love that they both kept those scars, because they are a physical representation of their feelings for each other. But here’s the thing I saw some people complaining about, and I believe it’s because they don’t really understand what Gray is saying.

Gray is upset that Juvia still has her scar. Not because it’s some sexist thing, but because seeing the scar reminds Gray of what he failed to do, and that is, he failed to protect Juvia. That scar is, to him, a representation of his weakness, and the hurt he thinks he caused her. Remember, before the war ended, he said he wanted to apologize to Juvia and thought of 499.

Juvia protected him, and she died for him. And he doesn’t want that scar on her, because it brings back traumatic memories and guilt. We know Gray is someone who has a hard time letting go of things like that. He carried the guilt over Ur for a decade+, and he still probably carries it.

We saw how devastated Gray was when he thought he failed to save Juvia. He never wanted her to die for him. And it wasn’t him. It was Wendy who ultimately saved her. And that scar marred her body. If it wasn’t for his failure, she wouldn’t have it. That’s how he sees it, IMO. So, that’s why he wants her to get rid of it.

Not to mention, when he goes on to say, that men and women’s bodies are different, he is viewing her as something sacred. She’s so special and important to him, and again, in his eyes, he let her get hurt, and even caused some of that hurt. She’s been scarred because he couldn’t prevent it.

Also, as far as I’m concerned, the dialogue doesn’t mean this is Gray’s first time seeing the scar. He stated, “it’s still there, huh.” So, we know he’s seen it before, because he knows it exists. Not to mention, surely, this is not the first time Juvia has stripped in front of Gray since she got it. It’s been a whole year since the war ended. So, no, I’m sure he’s seen the scar plenty of times before. But he doesn’t like to see it, and perhaps he never brought it up before, and Mashima is making him bring it up now for our sakes, so they can have this conversation.

Juvia says she doesn’t mind the scar, and points out Gray’s hypocrisy, since he also kept his scar from when he also tried to kill himself in order to save her life.

I personally love that they both chose to keep their scars. Gray has said before that his scars are important to him. He has his Lyon scar, and his Ultear scar, and his Juvia scar is the biggest of all. Neither have rid their bodies of these scars, even though they could via Wendy, because it represents what they would go through for each other. It’s a mark of their love, and how deep it goes. And I think that’s beautiful.

But Gray gets really agitated and starts arguing that men and women’s bodies are different! He starts talking specifically about Juvia’s body, and this leads Juvia to question, what about her body?

Gray immediately gets so very blushy. His pupils are dilated. he’s looking down at her, with her breasts exposed, and you can tell he’s thinking hard during that major pause he took haha. And then Gray says the most gloriously pervy thing ever, which is that her body (or Juvia herself, depending on the translation) is his!!!

I died hahahaha.

I never, in a million years, would expect Gray to say something so blatantly sexual to Juvia. And that leads to my next point. In my opinion, Gray wouldn’t say something that forward suddenly, if they weren’t already together. I can’t see him starting a relationship with THAT, and certainly not after a whole year of nothing between them at all.

As I said, 499 was the answer. A whole year has passed since the war. I find it immensely hard to believe, that they weren’t in a relationship during this chapter. The way Gray was reacting to Juvia here (the blushing, the anger at her stripping, how protective he was being, and his words) all indicate that they were already together at this time. Whether they were also sexually active, I really don’t know. But depending on the translation, I think it’s very possible they could already be so, considering he said her body is his haha. That’s something a boyfriend would say if he had already had her body, if you know what I mean. ^_~

The stuttering of “ers” and “ums” that preceded and followed the statement, as well as the “maybe” seemed to me like he was embarrassed to be saying it all aloud. I equate it to a guy saying something he realizes might have crossed a line with his girlfriend, and trying to make it ok, but adding a “if that’s ok with you, dear!” And we know for a fact he was embarrassed, because he was blushing so hard the entire time, and even had to look away from her. ^-^

But, again, Juvia knew exactly what he meant by his words, and again, Juvia reacted positively with hearts all over the place. And her classic “Juveeeen!” as a sound effect haha!

Juvia got what he was saying, and she liked it. She was definitely very happy with his words. And like I said, I think at this point, they are already together. Otherwise, I think Juvia’s reaction would have been even more extreme than it was. It just seemed like Gray was admitting something aloud, that he had never admitted before, and she enjoyed that haha.

Plus, it reminded me of when Juvia said in 499 that her life would forever, and always belong to Gray. There were just so many throwbacks to 499, to reemphasize that was the beginning of their relationship. That’s when everything was decided between the two of them. And this comment was just him boldly stating their relationship status haha. The only thing that would have made it better, was if Gray followed “you’re mine,” with “and I’m yours.”

Also, I loved Wendy’s reaction to what Gray said, because it gave it even more weight and context. Wendy reacted even more strongly to Gray’s very sexual words, than she did when Levy mentioned the baby to Gajeel, by adding the gesture of covering her mouth. She knows what Gray just said was a HUGE deal, and something too scandalous for her young ears lol! And it’s great, because I am always in favor of sexy Gruvia traumatizing Wendy hahaha! ^-^

Even Lucy is narrating how she was observing all the different couples/relationships, and Gray and Juvia were ones that “got along,” as she puts it. ^_~

Basically, all signs to me, indicate that Gray and Juvia have been an item for a while, and this is us getting to see them as a couple.

I know a lot of people wanted the timeskip, and the marriage, and the babies so badly. I understand. I wanted it, too. But it was never a priority to me. It was always going to be a bonus to their canon moment. I guess I felt that way, because I didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters I had grown to love so much. Introducing the next generation, meant putting a lot of these characters on the back-burner. Especially for my favorite character, Juvia.

I have no doubt, if Juvia was married to Gray, and became a mom, that’s what she’d do from now on. She’d be mostly a stay-at-home mother, because that’s just the kind of character she is. She is very domestic, and not very interested in battling. She does it, because she has to, to protect the people she loves. Not that we’d go very in depth with a next gen, even if Mashima happened to introduce them. BUT, i like the idea that the story ends while they are still young, and having adventures together. And I think Mashima liked that idea, too, and that’s why he chose to do things this way.

Also, it’s rare to see characters in shounen in actual romantic relationships, without skipping ahead into marriage and kids. Like i said, I think it’s incredibly likely Gray and Juvia are already together at the time of this chapter, and this is us getting to see their dynamic as a couple. And that’s pretty exciting to me. And as we saw, Gray and Juvia as a couple, gave us blushy, tsun, jealous, Gray declaring Juvia as his, and wanting her body. I wholly approve of this kind of dynamic ohoho! ^_~ I didn’t think we’d ever see blushy Gray again, and I’m so glad he’s back. *-*

Plus, I love Gray being protective of Juvia, because her body isn’t just her concern, but his, too, because they are together,. That’s how I ultimately see his comment. It was a very intimate thing to say, and that’s pretty awesome. ^-^

Also, i have to talk about Gruvia on the cover of the magazine. How freaking cute were they? I now have a problem, because, first that autumn of romantic love postcard was the cutest Gruvia picture in existence. Then it was the kitty ears Gruvia picture. Then it was that recent blushy Gruvia sketch with their heads up against each other. And now this! SO MUCH CUTE!!!!

So, as far as the gruvia goes, was it what i wanted? No.Would I have liked more? Always haha. I didn’t get my gruvia kiss, that I so very badly needed. Honestly, if I could improve this at all, it would be to see some undeniably romantic physical contact between them. So, that makes me sad to know we’ll never get it now (unless mashima surprises us one day with extra content, which I’m all for lol).

BUT, I am happy that Gruvia is finally canon. And sad, that they’ve basically been canon for a while, and I couldn’t appreciate it for what it was at the time lmao.

Now, after that book I just wrote lmao, I’ll touch on the rest of the chapter.

Like i said, Nalu is canon. The slight tease at the beginning, with Gajeel accusing Natsu of having a crush on Anna because she smells like Lucy, and him calmly agreeing was too funny! Gajeel was even shocked and blushy, and Lucy was certainly blushy, too, which says it all lol!

But I really loved that whole scene with Lucy waking up back at her house, and realizing she made Natsu do all kinds of things (carry her home, change her clothes, and sleep with her). It was both cute and hilarious! “I can never be a bride!!!” ;_; LMAO

And it was sweet seeing all her memories, and realizing how far she came because of Natsu being there beside her. And that HUG!!! And Natsu being Natsu, and not doing what Lucy was clearly hoping he would do (give her a kiss!!!) was pretty in character, so i can’t fault it, even though I wish it had happened. Besides, the words Natsu spoke afterwards said it all, IMO. They will be together forever. That’s totally lovers/proposal talk if you ask me. And Lucy knew that, too.

Jerza got screwed. I mean, there’s no other way to say it, honestly. They deserved so much more. I remember when I thought they’d be the first to go explicitly canon. i remember when I thought they be the ones to either get a wedding, or implied sex at the end of the series. Because they’ve been mutually in love the longest.

That being said, I do get what Mashima was doing with their scenes.

Jellal and the rest of Crime Sorciery were pardoned and free, and that’s good. That’s what needed to happen. But to deny them scenes so often throughout the series, and for so long? And then not have them interact, and decidedly together at the end? No. That’s not cool. Yes, Mashima was basically implying/teasing that they might already be together/seeing each other (that “Erza brushing her hair every day” comment), but they should have had more than that. It wasn’t nice to their fans, or the characters IMO.

However, that being said, I’ve thought Jerza were canon since the Oracion Seis arc, or if we’re being picky, then certainly since that (almost?) kiss. I don’t like when people say “oh, couples need to obviously be in relationships (marriage and kids!) in order to be canon. Mutual feelings = canon to me. And always has.

Gajevy basically got what we already knew they were supposed to get, which was those twins from the light novel being absolutely confirmed on the way, and also showing that they were definitely in a relationship. Again, like with Gruvia, Wendy’s reaction said it all lol.

I thought the bit of Elfever was cute. I don’t really care much about Kinana and Cobra, but it’s nice, I guess?

Now, the things I didn’t like.

I’m happy that Lucy is a successful author, BUT I felt like the party should have been at the guild, rather than an award ceremony for Lucy. I would have loved to see everyone getting drunk and rowdy in celebration in the guild one last time, just like the old days.

I also wish there hadn’t been a one year timeskip. FT never does timeskips well. I hate them all haha. If it had to be a timeskip, I wish we had a massive one with the marriage and kids thing (even if I didn’t need it), OR the timeskip was really short (like a month).

Because Natsu taking so long to tell Lucy what he wanted to do after the war (even if he was waiting on permission), and the dynamics of some of the couples a whole year later, was questionable after so much time had already passed.

Also, I shipped Miraxus, so while I appreciated that tease, I didn’t like that they made Laxus some kind of playboy, like Mashima couldn’t decide, and just chose to throw a bone to most of the Laxus pairings he knew about lmao.

I did not like that Makarov didn’t give Laxus the guildmaster position. I thought it should have happened. i wanted it to happen. It feels like Laxus’ story was left partly unresolved in a way. And, well, Makarov should be dead. So, it sucks that he’s still there. Die, Makarov. Die.

The thing I’m most angry with, though, was the Zeref and Mavis scene. It was so unneeded. They had such a great ending. They got so much material in such a short amount of time in the series (more than most of the major couples in the series). Them dying together, and being together in the afterlife, after having lived so long, was fitting. So, I thought bringing them back, and devoting so many pages (FIVE!) on them with this weird reincarnation scene, was really off-putting.

Not to mention, poor August! They never knew he was their child. Mavis didn’t even know he existed. I thought we were going to get a scene with them meeting him in the after life, and finally being a happy family together. And instead, we get this. WHY? I’m sorry to anyone who liked this, but I felt it took away from how their story ended, and took away time from characters who needed it more in this final chapter.

As for the 100 year quest, that’s not something I dislike. As other have said, it’s just a quest that’s so difficult, it hasn’t been completed in a 100 years. That’s what Natsu wanted to do after the war. I’m sure, with the incredibly over-powered team they have, they will get the job done in no time. For example, I’m not worried about characters like Juvia, who were left behind. If anything, Juvia could always go to Gray if he needs her (or she needs him lol). They have “communication Lacryma” now, so he could always call her. And, they can always come back whenever they want. It’s not like they are going to disappear.

And it was fitting to end the series on the original “strongest team.”

It’s not the ending I thought we’d get. I’m not 100% happy with it by any means. There are tons of things I would have done differently. BUT, it was very Fairy Tail, Everyone did get their happy endings for the most part. And, now we get to imagine what happened during that one year after the war, and how do they continue on from here? That’s a lot of room to play with in fandom content, which is great.

And going back to Gruvia, THEY ARE CANON. And that’s just really nice to say. ^_~

#gruvia #fairy tail #gray fullbuster #Juvia lockser #Chapter 545

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supersonicstarblazerthisbighush · 4 years

Text

The only woman in the French Foreign Legion

A British tennis-playing socialite became the only woman in the French Foreign Legion, leading a daring, wartime, desert escape. She would have been 100 this week and her story remains inspirational, writes biographer and friend Wendy Holden.

When I first met Susan Travers in a Paris nursing home in 1999, she was a papery-skinned 90-year-old who spoke with a cut-glass English accent. Unable to walk, she insisted that before we began I wheel her to a local restaurant for lunch.

There can have been few in the suburban restaurant who gave this frail old lady a second glance as she ate her omelette and drank a glass of champagne. Unless, that is, they noticed the small coloured ribbons pinned to the lapel of her tweed suit.

One defined her as a recipient of the Legion d'Honneur, a French honour established by Napoleon, others were for the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre. But the last red and blue ribbon was unique - it identified Travers as the only woman in the French Foreign Legion.

Born in southern England as the daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, but raised as a young tennis-playing socialite in the south of France, Travers was among thousands of women who joined the French Red Cross at the outbreak of the Second World War.

Trained as a nurse, she spurned that as being "far too messy" for the more exciting role of ambulance driver, joining the French expeditionary force to Finland to help in the Winter War against the Russians.

When France fell to the Nazis she made her way to London and signed up with General De Gaulle's Free French and was attached to the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Legion Etrangere, which sailed for Africa. Volunteering as a driver to the brigade's senior officers, she exhibited such nerves of steel in negotiating minefields and enemy attacks that she earned the affectionate nickname "La Miss" from her thousand male comrades.

After an affair with a White Russian prince who was later killed, she was assigned as the driver to Colonel Marie-Pierre Koenig, and the greatest love affair of her life began.

Attached to the 8th Army and despatched to hold the desolate desert fort of Bir Hakeim in Libya in 1942, Koenig's forces were almost pounded to dust by Rommel's Afrika Korps in what became one of the greatest sieges in the history of the Western Desert campaign.

With Stuka planes, Panzer tanks and heavy artillery at their disposal, the Germans expected to take the fort in 15 minutes. In what became a symbol of resistance across the world, the Free French held it for 15 days.

Refusing to leave her lover's side when all female personnel were ordered to escape, Susan stayed on in Bir Hakeim, the only woman among more than 3,500 men. Her fellow soldiers dug her into a coffin-sized hole in the desert floor, where she lay in temperatures of 51C for more than 15 days, listening to the cries of the dying and wounded.

When all water, food and ammunition had run out, Koenig decided to lead a breakout through the minefields and three concentric rings of German tanks.

As his driver, Travers was ordered to take the wheel of his Ford and lead the midnight flight across the desert. The convoy of vehicles and men was only discovered when a mine exploded beneath one of their trucks. Under heavy fire, she was told by Koenig: "If we go, the rest will follow." She floored the accelerator and bumped her vehicle across the barren landscape.

"It is a delightful feeling, going as fast as you can in the dark," she said later. "My main concern was that the engine would stall."

Under heavy machine gun fire, she finally burst through enemy lines, creating a path for the rest to follow. Only stopping when she reached Allied lines several hours later, she noted 11 bullet holes and severe shrapnel damage to the vehicle.

Almost 2,500 troops had escaped with her. Koenig was promoted to the rank of general by de Gaulle. Hardly even saying goodbye, he left Travers to return to his wife and a life of high office.

Travers stayed on with the Legion seeing action in Italy, Germany and France driving a self-propelled anti-tank gun. She was wounded after driving over a mine.

After the war, she wanted no other life and applied formally to the Legion to become an official member, omitting her gender on the application form.

The man who rubber-stamped her admission had known her in Bir Hakeim. After creating her own uniform, Travers became the first and only woman ever to serve with the Legion, and was posted to Vietnam during the First Indo-China War.

It was there that she met and married a fellow legionnaire, Nicholas Schlegelmilch, who had also been at Bir Hakeim. They had two sons and lived a quiet life on the outskirts of Paris until their deaths.

When I met her in the last years of her life, she was finally ready to tell her story only because "everyone was gone and I was left alone with my medals". What she wanted, she said, was for her grandchildren to know how "wicked" she had been.

The book was named Tomorrow to be Brave, after a line from a poem Koenig once read to her which went: "Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight. 'Tis not too late tomorrow to be brave." She died three years later.

She had witnessed several more wars and watched women routinely join the armed forces and go off to the front lines, surprised that it still raised eyebrows in some quarters.

Her greatest regret, she said, was not to have been born a boy, although she admitted that as such she would never have done half the things she'd done or enjoyed the life she led subsequently.

Susan only ever showed emotion once, when she spoke of her proudest moment. It was in 1956, 11 years after the war. The Legion invited her to Paris to receive the Medaille Militaire for her role at Bir Hakeim.

On a bitterly cold day at Les Invalides, with her husband and two young sons watching, Susan took her place in the middle of the square along with dozens of other Legionnaires, as hundreds looked on.

Standing to attention, she felt her heart lurch as she saw a lone general in full military uniform walking towards her. It was Pierre Koenig, the lover she hadn't seen since the days immediately after Bir Hakeim.

Her hands clenched into fists, she watched as he pinned her medal to the lapel of her coat. Their eyes locked, each one struggling with their emotions, he told her: "I hope this will remind you of many things. Well done, La Miss."

Stepping back, he gave her a brisk salute before marching away. It was the last time she ever saw him. Koenig died in 1970 and Travers waited almost 30 years until her own husband died, to tell their story of love and heroism.

"Wherever you will go, I will go too," she had once told Koenig at Bir Hakeim. It was a promise she kept.

source: bbc

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lil-loucifer · 6 years

Note

1-100

Boi

Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?

Spotify

is your room messy or clean?

It’s been messy since 2012

what color are your eyes?

Brown

do you like your name? why?

I guess it’s alright? I can’t imagine going by anything else, so...

what is your relationship status?

Single

describe your personality in 3 words or less

There is none

what color hair do you have?

Black naturally, normally dyed blue

what kind of car do you drive? color?

Hey guys guess who’s a loser who can’t drive

where do you shop?

Anywhere there’s books or video games

how would you describe your style?

The minimum amount of fucks given

favorite social media account

Probably this shitshow

what size bed do you have?

Average?

any siblings?

One sister

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?

I’m not sure tbh??

favorite snapchat filter?

I don’t use snapchat, actually

favorite makeup brand(s)

I don’t know shit about makeup ;-;

how many times a week do you shower?

Five, normally

favorite tv show?

I haven’t watched much TV lately

shoe size?

Like, somewhere between 9-11 in mens

how tall are you?

5′10′’ I think?

sandals or sneakers?

Can I go with boots?

do you go to the gym?

Nope we’re all sedentary here

describe your dream date

I like staying home admittedly

Feel uncomfortable anywhere else

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

Less than twenty, I can tell you that

what color socks are you wearing?

White and gray

how many pillows do you sleep with?

Two

do you have a job? what do you do?

Hey guys guess who’s a useless sack of shit

how many friends do you have?

Not many

A very precious few

whats the worst thing you have ever done?

Don’t really want to say

whats your favorite candle scent?

I don’t really pay attention to candle scents??

3 favorite boy names

Ehhhh I don’t really care

3 favorite girl names

favorite actor?

Sebastian Stan??

favorite actress?

Uhhhhhhhh

who is your celebrity crush?

I don’t really have one

favorite movie?

Patch Adams!

do you read a lot? whats your favorite book?

I read a fuckton, but I don’t really have a favorite book. I might go with the Shadowhunter series, but more for the unique lore than the romantic shitshow

money or brains?

Money? Guess who’s shallow

do you have a nickname? what is it?

I got plenty! My favorite one is “Blue”

how many times have you been to the hospital?

Never had to go in for myself.

top 10 favorite songs

In no particular order:

-Bad Moon Rising (Mourning Ritual)

-Breed (Nirvana)

-Raise Hell (Dorothy)

-Don’t Mess With Me (Brody Dalle)

-Bullet With Butterfly Wings (The Smashing Pumpkins)

-Intro (The xx)

-Back in the USA (Green Day)

-Killing in the Name Of (Rage Against the Machine)

-Gay Bar (Electric Six)

-Glitter & Gold (Barns Courtney)

do you take any medications daily?

Nope

what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)

Pretty heckin dry

what is your biggest fear?

The irrational fear that everyone I know and love only ever tolerates me and/or hates me or forgets about me as soon as I leave their life

how many kids do you want?

Not many :c Or not at all, I’m shit with kids

whats your go to hair style?

Undercut, but I can never seem to get it right

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)

Average, I think

who is your role model?

I have never had a positive role model in my life

what was the last compliment you received?

Something along the lines of “No you dumb shit you’re handsome”

what was the last text you sent?

“thank you”

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?

I always kinda thought Santa Claus was bullshit growing up, but age eight was around when I actually told my parents

what is your dream car?

I don’t know shit about cars, fam

opinion on smoking?

As long as you can avoid causing harm to yourself or anyone else, I won’t give you shit

do you go to college?

Yeah! Poorly, but yeah

what is your dream job?

Have purpose, make money

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs?

Suburbs, I guess.

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?

No, not really

do you have freckles?

Not to my knowledge!

do you smile for pictures?

Depends on who’s taking the picture, and what for

how many pictures do you have on your phone?

Several years’ worth

have you ever peed in the woods?

Nope. Never spent enough time in nature to lose my willpower.

do you still watch cartoons?

Hell yeah!

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?

Wendy’s sells chicken nuggets?

Favorite dipping sauce?

Ketchup, I guess

what do you wear to bed?

Depends on how unsettled I feel, I guess

have you ever won a spelling bee?

Nope!

what are your hobbies?

Video games and writing.

can you draw?

Poorly, but yeah

do you play an instrument?

Nope!

what was the last concert you saw?

Haven’t really seen a concert before :c

tea or coffee?

Coffee

Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

Starbucks I guess

do you want to get married?

I dunno, honestly.

what is your crush’s first and last initial?

H.E.

are you going to change your last name when you get married?

I don’t even know if I’ll get married, fam

what color looks best on you?

Black, I guess? It’s all I’ve been wearing lately lmao

do you miss anyone right now?

Yeah, you.

do you sleep with your door open or closed?

Closed, often “locked”

do you believe in ghosts?

It’s kinda hard to say tbh

what is your biggest pet peeve?

I don’t really have any?

last person you called`

My mom, needed her to answer some stuff to fill out a forum

favorite ice cream flavor?

Cookies & Cream or Chocolate Chip COokie dough

regular oreos or golden oreos?

Regular

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles?

Either!

what shirt are you wearing?

That’s shitty Punisher shirt

what is your phone background?

A lil pic of a cat one of my favorite artists posted a while ago

are you outgoing or shy?

I am shy as shit, fam

do you like it when people play with your hair?

Yeah! If I tell them it’s okay.

do you like your neighbors?

Yeah, I guess. They haven’t done anything bad to me, but for most of my upbringing, I never really spoke to them.

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

Noo I have such shitty personal hygiene

have you ever been high?

have you ever been drunk?

last thing you ate?

A s’more flavored Pop Tart

favorite lyrics right now

“What did I ever do to you,

That you should treat me this way?

Is it really such a crime for an angel to speak his mind?

In time I’ll try to shed some light.

If I, were a big boy

I wouldn’t cry

But since I’m not a big boy,

I’ll have to cry...”

summer or winter?

Winter

day or night?

Night, I guess

dark, milk, or white chocolate?

Milk!

favorite month?

December?

what is your zodiac sign

Cancer

who was the last person you cried in front of?

I haven’t cried in front of someone since elementary school

#asks and shit #punk-rock-pixie

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goldenponcho · 7 years

Text

Battle for Neverland: Chapter 1

Next chapter

So this is a Fox’s Peter Pan and the Pirates fic I’ve been writing and rewriting for literally ten years. I know there’s hardly a fandom for the series anymore, but I think Peter Pan and especially Captain Hook fans of any iteration might enjoy it. I will warn for prominent OCs, so if you’re not into that, that’s cool. I’ll probably post a chapter a day until I’m caught up to where I am now.

The Captain was tired. Strong limbs felt as if they were moving against a current, slave to the rough waters of the very hurricane that had doomed him to this island. Why did he feel so weak? So… Old. His head throbbed when he heard the crow. That insufferable crow… Never had anything grated his nerves like that horrendous sound. “You aren’t even putting up a fight today, old man!” Except for the urchin that horrendous sound came from. Captain Hook strained to shake the fog in his mind, “You’ll not be wanting for a fight when I’m done with you, brat!” Despite the clear anger, he could hear the fatigue in his own voice, and he hated it. Peter Pan cackled, kicking over a bucket of soap water set out on the deck before flying several circles around the Captain, dodging the blows of his sword with ease and swooped back across the deck. Hook snarled, dragging himself toward the gloating boy. He caught his reflection from the corner of his eye, and his stomach dropped. His skin sagged from startlingly gaunt features. Dark bags drooped beneath his tired eyes, and extra skin hung from a thin neck. How long had he been like this? “Feeling a little inadequate, Captain?!” The boy was directly behind him, “Understandable when you have to compete with me!” His frustration redirected at Peter, he hacked wildly, muscles straining to lift his heavy sword. This couldn’t be happening. Had senescence crept upon him so suddenly? To further drive home his helplessness, Peter hovered well within a sword’s reach of the Captain, easily evading his pitiful attacks. Peter made a show of yawning loudly, “I’m bored, Codfish…I think this game is over.” Hook was barley able to get his bearings before Peter had kicked him in the back of the head, sending him toppling off the plank that he had somehow suddenly been standing on. Absolute terror overtook him as he careened head first toward an open set of jaws, and he heard Pan’s crow before the tearing of flesh and bone. Captain Hook’s heart pounded as he jolted awake. It took him a moment to realize he had been dreaming. His breath heaved as he tried to calm himself, at the same time noticing that he and his sheets were covered in a layer of sweat. Heart still hammering, he reached up to feel that his face was not the frail, thin one he had seen in his dream. He held his remaining hand in front of his face, relieved that it as well was still healthy and strong. Relief didn’t last long as another crow rang from outside his cabin. Captain Hook groaned, “Peter Pan…” he spat, disgusted by the taste the boy’s name left in his mouth. He sprang from the silken sheets of his bed and put on his many layers of clothing at an impossible speed, hastily splashing water onto his face from the washbowl on the mahogany table set across from the foot of his bed. He stormed out of his cabin, gripping his sword so tightly his knuckles turned white beneath his glove. “Ready Long Tom, you dogs!!! And blast that accursed boy to kingdom come!!” The crew of the Jolly Roger bounded across the deck, not daring to hesitate at their Captain’s orders. “I’m not exactly sure where kingdom come is,” Peter Pan laughed, hovering just a touch out of Hook’s reach, “but it’ll take more than the likes of you to blast me there, Captain Kipper!” “Gall and brimstone!” Hook clawed at him angrily, “Your day will come soon, Pan! By Queen Anne’s Revenge, I swear it will!!” Peter Pan chuckled playfully, taking a reclining position in the air, “You shouldn’t swear to promises you can’t keep, Admiral Anchovy. Not very gentlemanly of you!” “Perhaps you’d like a pirate rather than a gentleman, you puerile little urchin! FIRE!!” Billy Jukes smirked, lighting Long Tom’s fuse and the cannon fired, just barely missing Pan’s head as he ducked at the last second. “Reload, Mr. Jukes, and SHOOT ME THAT WRETCHED WHELP!!” “There ‘e goes, Jukes!” Mason bellowed, pushing Long Tom around with little effort. He grabbed the torch from the young gunner before he could protest and lit the fuse. “NO, Alf Mason!” Jukes cried, “It’s aimed right at—” Splinters of wood darted over the ship as the mast crashed to the deck, crushing several barrels as it landed. “Have fun cleaning that up, Codfish!!” Peter laughed as he flew toward shore and out of sight. Hook snarled, burying his sword furiously in the fallen mainmast then glancing over to his crew, who were staring dumbfounded at Peter’s shrinking form, “Stop yer gaping, you miserable mullie-morts!! Fix that mast before I plunge this into your gizzards!!” he flashed his hook toward them, and his men scattered, knowing better than to upset the captain when he was in such a foul mood. “Aye, Pan,” Hook hissed, plucking his sword from the mast as if it were nothing more than a flower petal, “it matters not how many times you escape me. It will make it all the sweeter when I finally rend ye in two.” ~*~*~*~ “Ha ha haa! Did you see the look on their faces, Tink?” Peter Pan darted in and out of the narrow spaces between the trees of the thick Neverforest, “I thought Hook was gonna explode! His face turned three shades of purple when that mast fell!” “Sure, Peter,” Tinkerbell yawned, lagging behind him a bit, “I just want to get back home and go to bed.” “Go to bed?!! But, Tink, we’re just getting started! I’ve got so many more pranks to pull on ol’ Codfish today, and I need you for all of them!” “Tin tops and copper bottoms, Peter! First, we almost get gobbled up by O'Look, then we almost get trampled by Never-Beasts… We’ve been up all night! Don’t you think knocking down the mast is enough for one day?!” Peter laughed as if what Tink had just said was the most absurd thing he had ever heard, “Of course not, Tink!! You know we can’t let Codfish go the whole rest of the day without a few more inconveniences!” Peter sped up, quickly disappearing into the trees, “Now let’s go! We don’t have much time!” “Peter!” Tink sighed, “…oh! That boy will be my undoing!” ~*~*~*~ By noon, the Jolly Roger’s mast was almost completely repaired, mostly due to Hook’s threat of sixty lashes to anyone caught lollygagging. Hook now patrolled the deck, a predatory glint in his forget-me-not eyes. His rage at the boy reignited the frustration at the dream-Pan from that morning, and in turn stoked the anger at the real Pan even further. The boy would never see the day that Hook was too run down to put up a proper fight. One of them would die first. “Robert Mullins!” he called up to the newly erected crow’s nest, “Any sign of those air-born blighters?” “None yet, Cap'n!” Mullins answered, “That island’s been as dead as the River Styx! Suspicious, I’d say!” “Let the brat plot his plots…” the Captain growled with a glower, “One of them is bound to land him belly-side down on my hook.” ~*~*~*~ "Peter, this is ridiculous!” Tink complained through a yawn, “I do not want to do this!” “Oh, come on, Tink! It’ll be easy!” Peter handed her a tiny blue sack only about the size of a ping-pong ball, “All you have to do is drop these into Hook’s supper! Just a few of these will make even the most appetizing food taste like pond scum.” “That isn’t nice, Peter Pan!” Peter turned with a frown toward Wendy, who now stood at the entrance to the chute that led outside, “Not nice at all!!” “Oh come on, Wendy,” Peter replied cheerfully, “since when was I ever nice to Hook?” “Those could make Captain Hook sick!” she said, hands on her hips, “Then he wouldn’t feel like fighting with you anymore.” “Oh, they won’t make him sick! At least, not for any longer than a few hours…” Peter chuckled, “Besides, a little stomach ache never hurt anybody that bad.” “Well you had best be careful. You could never forgive yourself if something happened to Tink… or to Hook, for that matter.” “Hook?!” Peter chuckled, “Why should I care what happens to Hook?!!” “Oh, admit it, Peter. You don’t really want anything that bad to happen to him. Then who would you fight?” “That’s true,” he said thoughtfully, “If I’m going to kill Hook, there are much more fun ways to do it than by poisoning him.” Wendy sighed, rolling her eyes, but she decided against pressing the matter further. “Besides,” Peter explained plucking one of the tiny green balls from Tink’s pouch, “these aren’t poisonous; it’s only filled with Neverswamp water.” Tink sighed, “If I do this, can I please go to bed?” “Of course, Tink,” Peter said apathetically. “Fine, then. I’m going,” Tink said quickly as she tied the bag shut and flew hastily from the Underground House. ~*~*~*~ Tinkerbell peeked from over the side of the Jolly Roger to the scattering of pirates on board. Mullins and Mason were reclined in coils of rope, Billy Jukes lied fast asleep on his stomach atop Long Tom, and Starkey sat at the other end of the ship, lazily picking at his fingernails with the tip of his rapier. “Alright,” she yawned, “now to get this over with so I can get some sleep.” She took one last glance across the deck, then darted through the rigging and down to the hatch that led below, peeking through a crack between the planks of wood. Cookson’s voice echoed through the hall beneath her as Tink spotted him carrying a large bowl of scraps up the stairs from the galley. She quickly darted behind a barrel just as the old Greek sea chef hobbled out the door singing something badly at the top of his lungs, Tink couldn’t tell exactly what. As soon as she was sure he was far enough away, she fluttered below decks and into the galley. She began rummaging through the numerous pots and pans strewn across the counter, first coming to a large pot filled to the brim with something viscous and green. The thick film that had formed on the top made it look very much like the scales of the Croc. Tink took a great whiff of the substance and retched. “Ugh!! That’s definitely the crew’s food. How anyone can stomach this filth every day is beyond me!” Tink quickly placed the lid back over the offending contents and continued exploring the other pots and pans, coming across several other undesirable dishes, until she came upon another pot of soup. This soup was a creamy, almost white color, and its smell was relatively tolerable compared to the other dishes. “This has to be Hook’s supper; it at least bears a resemblance to food.” But before Tink could finish the job, she heard the creaking of heavy footsteps coming down the stairs and Cookson’s off-key singing. She yelped and ducked into a large, empty cabinet that sat on the floor next to the counter, “I’ll never get out of here now!” She sat for a moment, her head resting in the palms of her hands, “Great… how will I—OH!” she sat up with a start and plunged her hand into the bag she carried at her side, a puff of glittery powder floating from the brim, and retrieved a handful of the shimmering particles, “I almost forgot about the special dust I got at Small Monday Island yesterday!” She tossed the purple and blue dust in front of her, and it sparkled in the dark cabinet, then glistened white and grew into a small, round opening in thin air just big enough for her to fit into. Daylight shone in from the other side. “Peter will have to come up with some other prank,” Tink mumbled, “I’m going home and getting some rest.”

#peter pan and the pirates #Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates #captain hook #peter pan #captain james hook #bfn

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gplusbfics · 7 years

Text

“The Wire” - Synopsis

The following synopsis is from Deep Space Nine magazine Vol. 9 (1994). “The Wire” was written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe. Synopsis is by John Sayers. I will be posting the photos from this again separately. I will also be sharing the one for “Crossover,” which appeared in the same issue. -Wendy

On the Promenade of Station DS9, Dr. Julian Bashir and his enigmatic acquaintance, Garak -- the "plain and simple" Cardassian tailor -- walk towards the Replimat for their weekly lunch. As they discuss Cardassian literature -- for which the Starfleet Lieutenant has yet to develop a taste -- Garak experiences several spasms of headache-like pain, which piques the Doctor's medical curiosity.

But when Bashir suggests a trip to the Infirmary, the Cardassian's usual charming demeanor turns sour. "There's nothing wrong with me that a little peace and privacy wouldn't cure," Garak barks, and storms off -- leaving Bashir looking after him in curiosity and concern.

Afterwards, Bashir discusses the incident with Jadzia Dax while attempting to diagnose an ailing house plant. He can use the station's medical database to treat the foreign flora, but his records are woefully inadequate when it comes to Cardassians. Bashir's professional pride is also wounded when Garak won't come to him for medical help.

The Cardassian tailor turns not to his occasional luncheon companion, but to Quark for aid. Bashir only catches the end of their conversation, but it's obvious that the Ferengi will be making some sort of illicit transaction on Garak's behalf.

Later, during a conversation with Chief O'Brien, Bashir is summoned to Quark's Bar, where Garak is on his third bottle of Ferengi booze. "Anyone who talks about the numbing effects of liquor," Garak says, in considerable pain, "is severely overstating the case."

Bashir tries to coax the Cardassian to his office, but Garak will have none of it -- until he collapses to the floor in agony. The Doctor beams them both to the Infirmary -- where scans show a small, artificial implant embedded deep within Garak's brain. Constable Odo can offer no insight into the device's purpose, but agrees with Bashir that Quark may know more. "Quark has sent several coded messages to Cardassia Prime in the past few days," Odo says.

The pair monitor the Ferengi's latest transmission -- to a Cardassian military operative named Boheeka, an old friend from the Occupation. Quark offers to pay him handsomely in return for some Cardassian bio-technology. But when Boheeka enters the requisition code for the item, he freezes in horror. "Quark, you idiot!" he cries. "It's for classified bio-technology -- even the cursed number is classified!" The request will be traced back to him by the Obsidian Order.

At the mention of the name, Quark abruptly ends the transmission. Odo explains the mysterious Order to a curious Bashir. "They're the ever-vigilant eyes and ears of the Cardassian Empire," he notes, even surpassing the ruthless, information-gathering efficiency of the Romulan Tal Shiar. If Garak's implant is some sort of Order-related punishment, then why is he trying to obtain another one?

The questions will go unanswered for now. When Dr. Bashir returns to the lnfirmary, Garak is gone. Bashir finds his patient in his quarters, in the process of injecting enough anesthetic to knock out ten men. "Not nearly enough, I'm afraid," comments the agonized Garak.

Bashir reports that Quark couldn't get the item he requested. "Really? That's most distressing," Garak replies, his charming facade finally crumbling under the pain and hopelessness. When he goes to inject himself with a fatal overdose of the pain-killer, Bashir intervenes, revealing his knowledge of the implant. When he suggests that it's some sort of punishment device, Garak can only choke out an ironic laugh.

"On Cardassia, I was entrusted with certain information," Garak reveals, "that needed to be kept safe, regardless of the situation. My implant was given to me by Enabran Tain himself, the head of the Obsidian Order. If I was ever tortured, it was designed to stimulate the pleasure centers of my brain to trigger the production of vast amounts of natural endorphins."

The device malfunctioned, he notes, because it was never meant for continuous use. "Living on this station is torture for me, Doctor. The temperature is always too cold, the lights, always too bright. Every Bajoran looks at me with loathing and contempt. So, one day, I decided I couldn't live with it anymore. And I took the pain away."

Garak activated the implant, first for only a few minutes each day, then for longer and longer periods. "Finally, I just turned it on and never shut it off." That was two years ago. Now, the implant is breaking down, and Garak's body has become dependent on the higher endorphin levels generated by the unit.

But Bashir won't let Garak give up to whomever has exiled him on D59. "Has it ever occurred to you," the Cardassian asks him, "that I might be getting exactly what I deserve?"

"No one deserves this," Bashir says.

"Oh please, Doctor!" Garak sarcastically exclaims. "I'm suffering enough without having to listen to your smug Federation sympathy! And you think that because we have lunch together once a week, you know me? You couldn't even begin to fathom what I am capable of!"

"I'm a doctor," Bashir says evenly. "You're my patient. That's all I need to know."

Garak tells Bashir the story of his days as a Gul in the Cardassian Mechanized Infantry, when Bajorans under his custody escaped to a Cardassian shuttle bound for Terok Nor. Garak's aide, Elim, boarded the shuttle to stop it, but the captain wouldn't comply. "So I had the shuttle destroyed, killing the escapees, Elim, and 97 Cardassian civilians" -- plus the daughter of a prominent Cardassian. He was stripped of his rank and exiled.

But Bashir is uninterested in his patient's past. His duty is to heal. He finally persuades Garak to let him shut off the implant. Bashir sets up his medical equipment in Garak's quarters and begins a long vigil, waiting for his unconscious patient to recover. Bashir even denies Odo's request that Garak be awakened to be interrogated about past unsolved murders.

Hours later, Bashir is roused from a half-sleep to find Garak silting up on his bed, sobbing. His depression turns quickly to rage as his body reels from the withdrawal of the pleasure-creating endorphins. "There was a time, Doctor," Garak rails, "when I was a power. The protege of Enabran Tain himself. Do you have any idea what that means? Tain was the Obsidian Order. Not even the Central Command dared challenge him. And I was his right hand -- my future was limitless. Until I threw it away."

Garak didn't shoot down the shuttle, as he had told Bashir before. On the eve of Cardassian withdrawal, he and Elim were interrogating five Bajoran children, when "suddenly, the whole exercise seemed utterly meaningless. All I wanted was a hot bath and a good meal. So, I let them go."

He failed his duty and destroyed everything he had worked for, causing his exile. "And left me to live out my days with nothing to look forward to but having lunch with you." As Bashir tries to calm him down, Garak's rage erupts, and the two wrestle about the quarters until the Cardassian collapses.

Bashir and the emergency med team stabilize him, but the doctor remains puzzled. "I shut down the implant. It can't be affecting his blood chemistry, yet toxins are accumulating in his lymphatic nodes," he notes. After studying Garak's readouts, Bashir finally finds the problem -- the molecular structure of Garak's leukocyte cells has been altered, causing the blood toxins.

The only way to correct the problem would be to synthesize new cells. But with no reliable Cardassian medical data, the process could take weeks -- and Garak has only days. Reactivating the implant could keep the Cardassian alive for a few weeks longer, but a groggy Garak rises from his sickbed, his rage spent, to forbid it.

"You've done enough, Doctor, more than I deserve," he says. "There's something you have to know ... the truth."

"I've about given up on learning the truth from you, Garak," Bashir smiles.

"Elim wasn't my aide," the Cardassian reveals. "He was my friend. We grew up together, we were closer than brothers. For some reason, Enabran Tain took a liking to us. Before long, we were both powerful men in the Obsidian Order. They called us the Sons of Tain -- even the Guls feared us." But then, scandal. Some member of the Order was accused of letting some Bajoran prisoners escape. Tain could do nothing to protect Garak, as he had retired to the Arawath Colony.

"So, I panicked. I did everything in my power to make sure that Elim was accused instead of me. I altered records, planted evidence -- only to discover that he'd beaten me to it." Elim had betrayed him first. Garak was sent into exile. "And the irony is, I deserved it. Not for the reasons they claimed, but because of what I had tried to do to Elim, my best friend."

"Why are you telling me this, Garak?" Bashir asks.

"So that you can forgive me, why else?" Garak tells him, sincerely. "I need to know that someone forgives me."

"I forgive you, for whatever it is you did."

"Thank you, Doctor. That's most kind."

As Bashir complies, the Cardassian falls again into unconsciousness. The Doctor decides to head for the Arawath Colony -- "to find the man responsible for this."

After a journey in a runabout, Bashir arrives at the home of Enabran Tain, former head of the Obsidian Order, who addresses him by name and knows all about his journey -- even Bashir's taste in tea. The cheerful, grandfatherly figure has even made sure Bashir's entry into Cardassian space was met by a less hostile reception than he might have expected. Although retired, "I try to keep informed on current events," Tain chuckles.

When Bashir tells Tain that Garak is dying -- and he's trying to save him, the wily Cardassian can only shake his head. "Strange. I thought you were his friend."

"I suppose I am."

"Then you should let him die," Tain says. "After all, for Garak, a life in exile is no life at all."

Nevertheless, Bashir contends that his job is to save lives. He asks Tain for information on Cardassian biochemistry that would let him synthesize replacements for Garak's damaged blood cells. "Besides, you're the one who ordered him to put that implant in his head, aren't you?"

"I never had to order Garak to do anything," Tain notes. "That's what made him special." Oddly, Tain agrees to Bashir's request -- but not for kindly reasons. "He doesn't deserve a quick death," the old man spits. "On the contrary, I want him to live a long, miserable life. I want him to grow old on that station, surrounded by people who hate him, knowing that he'll never come home again."

Whatever the motivation, Bashir is grateful to be able to help his friend. But he has one question before he beams out, regarding Garak's friend Elim. At the mention of the name, Enabran Tain only laughs. "That man has a rare gift for obfuscation. Doctor, Elim is Garak's first name."

Days later, Dr. Bashir pokes glumly at his lunch in the Replimat when he's unexpectedly joined by a fully recovered, amiable Garak, who asks about lunch as if the events of the past few weeks had never happened. "I, for one, Doctor, am perfectly satisfied with the way things turned out. And I see no need to dwell on what was doubtlessly a difficult time for both of us." He also notes that he has informed Constable Odo that he was completely mistaken about his impression that Garak was ever a member of the Obsidian Order.

As a kind of thanks, Garak gives Bashir more Cardassian literature to peruse. But Bashir won't let go of the pursuit of truth. "Out of all the stories you told me," he asks a smiling Garak, "which ones were true and which ones weren't?"

"My dear Doctor," the Cardassian replies, "they're all true."

"Even the lies?"

"Especially the lies."

The End

#the wire #elim garak #julian bashir #ds9 #star trek ds9 #deep space nine #star trek #andrew robinson #alexander siddig

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writesaboutbangtan17 · 7 years

Text

customer satisfaction

woozi x reader smut

20,480 words

a/n: my first woozi fic, my first seventeen fic, my first kpop fic. this was supposed to be something really simple and silly, but my dumb ass had to go and add a bunch of sadness and backstory to it, as always. as you can see, it got dramatically out of hand. i’m so sorry, i hope someone likes it

~ in which you haven’t gotten off in like six months, and lee jihoon is the pleasure specialist, himself. (he’s also a little bit more than that.)

“I promise you, you won’t regret this,” Wendy reassured you, but they were words she always said right before she convinced you to do something that you definitely would regret. She’d used them very often over the past year, during which she’d somehow persuaded you into going on roughly thirty blind dates that she’d set up in her desperate attempts to get you “back out there.” You knew her heart was in the right place, but every single date had been a disaster.

The problem was that if she knew a guy who wasn’t already taken, there was a reason for it. The first set-up been with a guy named Jinho who still lived with his ex-girlfriend (in a one bedroom apartment) and adamantly refused to wear deodorant; one guy, Jinwoo, told you he had recently quit his job and moved back in with his parents because he hadn’t had enough time to play League; you’d tried so hard to will yourself to forget the second to last guy, but how could you forget the name (Daehyun) of someone who sat down across from you and proceeded to ignore you for the whole two hours it took him to eat a salad, baked potato, and two steaks before “suddenly realizing” he forgot his wallet, telling you he didn’t think you were his type, and leaving you to foot the bill.

The most recent potential suitor had been named Chanhee, and he’d actually seemed really great. He insisted on buying you popcorn and a drink at the movies, made you laugh with jokes about how bad the movie unsurprisingly ended up being, and suggested getting pizza instead of going to the fancy restaurant where Wendy had taken it upon herself to make a reservation for the two of you. When he walked you to your door at the end of the night, he didn’t even try to kiss you, which was a relief. Most of the guys you’d been set up with were mainly interested in getting you out of your clothes and into your bed all before they’d even learned your last name. So you made up your mind that you’d ask Chanhee if you could meet up again, to which he eagerly answered that he’d love to, and then asked him if Monday night for drinks was good?, insisting you’d rather see him sooner than later.

But of course, whatever higher powers that be were obviously working against you, and perfect Chanhee stuttered through an apology about not having a fake ID and how he had a big calculus test on Tuesday morning that he had to study for (“or my mom will kill me.”) You’d never bailed on a date so fast before, not even the guy who showed up to meet you at a club wearing Crocs. The poor kid spent over an hour pounding on your front door and begging you to come talk to him, before seemingly giving up. “Probably because he had to get home before curfew,” Wendy had laughed, trying to make light of the situation when you showed up at her place offering death threats the next morning.

You didn’t find the joke funny.

(She’d also said, “It’s just a minor setback,” through giggles, “we’ll find you a really good adult man soon,” at which point you stomped out of her house, slamming her door behind you, and got to work ignoring all her attempts at contacting you for several weeks. It took an offer you absolutely couldn’t refuse to stop giving her the cold shoulder; one desperate text promising she’d come over and wash your dishes every other day for a month if you’d just start answering her damn calls. You had immediately messaged her back telling her that your sink was full and she needed to come over right away.)

After The Chanhee Incident, you decided that romantic companionship was simply not in the cards for you. You’d sworn off Wendy’s blind dates and men entirely, which you were mostly fine with. They’d never done much besides break your heart or otherwise emotionally damage you, anyways.

The small part of you that wasn’t as happy about this decision was no piece of your brain or your heart, it was a part of you that was…a little further south. It had been over a year since you’d last had sex, since your first and last serious boyfriend had cut you off long before the relationship itself had ended (courtesy of the other women he was sleeping with instead). It hadn’t seemed like much of a loss at the time, since he’d never been great in bed to begin with, and you’d always had a way with your hands. Rub here, pinch there, then a little prodding—and you were off to O-Town.

You’d never anticipated that your own body would turn on you like this and suddenly stop responding to your tried and true methods. At first, it had just taken you longer; where you were once seeing stars in ten minutes, tops, it was now taking twenty minutes, then half an hour. Instead of being able to hop in bed and get off whenever you felt like it without any interruption to your usual schedule, you had to plan ahead of time when you were going to masturbate. That only made it worse, since jotting down “masturbate” in your planner at 11 o’clock, once you’d gotten home from work and eaten something, but needing to get it over with soon enough that you’d get a decent night’s sleep really killed the mood. It had gone on like this until one day, it seemed your body just shut itself off. Sure, you could get a good buzz going, but climax never came.

Wendy had suggested having a good old one-night-stand, and while you weren’t one to judge those who took part in them, they really weren’t for you. If you were having sex with someone, you’d prefer to at least know them at a base level and think they were a decent person. If Wendy’s blind dates were any indication, you just weren’t going to meet somebody like that.

The one time you’d thrown caution to the wind and decided fuck it, I don’t care how awful this guy is, I just wanna get laid, had been a nightmare. His name was Hyunsik and Wendy had arranged for you to meet at a coffee shop, where he spent the first thirty minutes of your date describing the traffic on his way there in excruciating detail, before ruminating on how concerned he was over his cat’s most recent bowel movements for a good hour. Two hours after first meeting, when your date had moved to a dinky little restaurant down the road, Hyunsik was talking about how his mother called him last night and talked him through making kimchi fried rice. He was telling you every step, very slowly, exactly as she’d told him. You found him boring and obnoxious, but at that point it had been nearing six months since your last orgasm and you were feeling particularly despondent. As Hyunsik mimicked a violent stirring motion, you decided he had nice hands. And upon further inspection, you decided he had pretty nice hair, too. And you decided that you’d go home with him.

What a horrible mistake that had been. As soon as you stepped through his front door, he started screaming because his cat had pooped on his couch. You had to clean it up for him. He offered to pour you a glass of wine, but he took a sip of his own as he was carrying yours over and promptly spat it out all over you because it had gone bad. After trying (and failing) to appropriately clean yourself up in the bathroom, you came back out into the living room and he was nowhere to be found. He’d put on music, and apparently his idea of mood music was early 2000’s pop because “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy was the background noise to you getting fed up after waiting twenty minutes for him, and discovering him half-dressed cuddling with his cat in his bed. Potential orgasm be damned, you refused to sleep with that man.

As you walked home from Hyunsik’s in the cold that night, calling Wendy a thousand times and putting curses on her in your head every time she didn’t answer, you wondered if you’d ever have a decent orgasm again. It was starting to seem like the answer to that question was a resounding fuck no, which was frankly putting a damper on your entire life. This constant need to get off had you on edge at work; in classes; when you had the rare chance to see friends; when you sucked it up and visited your parents. Everyone noticed that you were tense and unhappy, and the only person you could turn to for advice was Wendy.

Which brought you to this moment in time, sitting in your car with your phone pressed to your ear, Wendy promising that “you won’t regret this.” You jumped at the sound of another car passing by, taking note of exactly what make and model it was, running that information through your brain to determine if the people in that car could possibly be anyone who would recognize you.

“Do we know anybody who drives a silver Honda Civic?” You interrupted her, eyes manically looking one way down the road, then the other, back and forth and back and forth. Wendy heaved a sigh before repeating for the dozenth time or so time in this one conversation, “Y/N, you’re not going to see anybody you know. That’s just not gonna happen, that’s not real life.” Her words did not comfort or convince you even a little bit.

Of course, she had gone to the trouble of finding a shop for you outside of town, dramatically decreasing your chances of being recognized in your great journey to…buy a vibrator. At 21-years-of-age, you had never even considered buying a sex toy, but that was much less about being against sex toys and much more about how you’d get one. The idea of parking outside of an adult store and having to walk up to it in front of however many people in cars passing by made you want to shrivel up and die, and the idea of ordering one online and having it sit outside your door one day while you were at work for all your neighbors to see had the same effect.

But as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures, and you were thoroughly desperate. Maybe if you’d never known what it was like to have an orgasm, you could have gone on in this life without one...but that was simply not an option. You had never been more determined to do anything in your life than to get yourself off again.

“Ok, Wendy, I…I’m gonna go inside,” you finally said, after fifteen minutes of hiding in your car. You could just see her huge smile of relief in your head as she replied, “Good! I’m so proud of you! Remember to buy something that plugs in, not battery-powered!” With a groan, you hung up on her and shoved your phone into your purse, then pulled up the hood of your jacket and stepped out onto the sidewalk. According to the directions you’d been given, the shop was just down this road, in a little alleyway to the left. You figured it would take less than five minutes to get there, and tried to pump yourself up as you slowly made your way. You’re an adult, you reminded yourself, this is a perfectly normal adult thing that adults do. There’s no reason to be embarrassed.

You supposed the place seemed inconspicuous enough—it was sandwiched between a drug store on the corner and an exotic cheese shop, with windows tinted dark enough that nobody could see the goings on beyond them, and a sign over the door that read Bits & Pieces Boutique in a neat red script. There were no neon triple X’s like similar shops displayed, for which you were thankful. All of these things combined still didn’t make you feel much better about going inside, but you mustered up what little courage you could, grabbed the handle, and forced yourself to take that first step across its threshold.

A quick eye-level scan of the shop revealed a lot to you; you weren’t sure what you were expecting, but there was nothing particularly extraordinary about the place. It looked like any other store would, with rows of shelves, display tables, products hung on the walls, the check-out counter in the back, and bad fluorescent lighting. Ariana Grande sang through out and you just didn’t know how to feel—this was all so…normal. Too normal. You pulled your coat tighter around you, resolving not to let your guard down.

To your left was a wrinkly old man perusing the large selection of flavored condoms and lube, holding hands with a woman who was clearly less than half his age. As you hurried past them, you couldn’t help but notice the ball gag, furry handcuffs, and box of libido enhancers in the basket hanging at the crook of her elbow. You stopped in one aisle with butt plugs and nipple enlargers down one side and DVDs down the other. Through sheer power of will, you ignored the movie titled “Mrs. Dashing and the Dick of Her Dreams”, with a lady on the cover who looked a lot like an old high school science teacher of yours circa 1972.

From behind, you could hear the young woman asking her partner which cock ring he wanted, and he chose one called the Ball Banger. His tone of voice gave away the smile on his face as he did so. Despite your morbid curiosity, you refused to look back and see how the supposed “ball banging” took place.

Instead you pushed on, next finding yourself standing in front of a table filled with aromatherapy products, lotions, creams, and candles; then the one next to it displaying oral sex kits, clit pumps, and testicle binders. You had never imagined that things like this existed, especially not in so many varieties. It was overwhelming, to say the least. One aisle you passed through, which you could only determine to be the novelty aisle, featured among many sex card games and not-safe-for-work birthdays cards: a blow-up punching bag with a place to put a picture of an ex. If you hadn’t been on a very direct mission, you might have considered buying it.

It was just as you were losing hope that this store even had vibrators (although you had assumed they were a sex toy staple), that you saw it: the wall beside the check-out counter with the words above it in neon lights that read Vibration Station. You swallowed down your deep desire to run away, hop in your car and drive home and pretend this never happened, as you approached it. The first thing you took note of was the range of colors, wondering why anyone would ever want to put anything neon yellow or baby-poop-green inside of their bodies.

The second thing you noticed was the 15-inch flesh-colored dildo proudly stretched out underneath the sign, that just the sight of made you hurt inside.

You were disarmed by the amount of vibrators to choose from, realizing how stupid you had been to not do any research beforehand. What are the qualities of a good vibrator? How much is too much to spend on one? Is this something I was ever supposed to learn? Why didn’t they ever teach me this stuff in Sex Ed? All you could assume was that something really cheap would probably be weak or break easily, and you remembered Wendy had said to get something that you could charge instead of something you had to put batteries in. But what materials should it be made out of? How intense should the vibrations be? And for God’s sake what is a neutral, normal color to get one in?

Just as you had grabbed one to read the details on the box, you heard the bell over the door chime, and saw your life flash before your eyes. All the times you’d smiled, frowned, scowled, laughed, cried, and yelled…everything you’d ever experienced would mean nothing if the person who had just walked through that door was say, your boss. Or your mother, or an old classmate, or the old lady who sold ice cream on your street corner, or your cat, or the guy you saw walking by you as you left work the other day, or the priest from that time your parents made you go to church for a couple weeks as a child.

Without looking up to see who exactly it was that had come through or possibly gone out the door, you bolted to the counter in a blind panic, needing to leave as quickly as possible. It was only as you were about to throw the vibrator down by the cash register that you even saw what it was called—the Big Boss Thruster. A plus-sized, bright pink vibe that made thrusting motions. You would have grabbed it and put it back immediately, if the person behind the counter hadn’t already taken it out of your hands. You slowly looked up with a bright scarlet flame licking up your cheeks, bracing for the embarrassment that was sure to hit you in a monsoon-sized wave.

God has it out for me, you thought to yourself, now I know for sure. You thought you’d steeled yourself for any possibility, whether the worker be an old lady who would tease you good-naturedly, or a hot dude to remind you of everything you were missing out on, or whoever in between. Nothing could have prepared you, however, for looking up into the always judgmental eyes of your next door neighbor. You noticed them widen just a fraction as he realized exactly who’d handed the Big Boss Thruster over to him, and his mouth drop open as if he meant to gasp, but was holding it back in an effort to remain professional.

Of course, for you, professionalism was not a concern.

“Jihoon?!” you screeched, wishing the earth would open up beneath your feet and suck you in right then and there. He dropped the Big Boss Thruster back onto the counter and flailed his arms in some vain attempt at hushing you. “Are you fucking kidding me?! This is a joke, right? Wendy put you up to this? Please, Jihoon, please fucking tell me that this isn’t real, you are not actually standing there actually about to sell this to me. Am I having a nightmare? I’m right on the verge of a breakdown, Jihoon, say somethi—”

“Stop calling me that,” he hissed, slapping his palms down on the counter. Of all things, you had not expected him to say that, and it at least confused you enough to get you to stop rambling. Between taking deep breaths to calm yourself down, you raised a questioning eyebrow at him. “Call me…Woozi,” he continued, “don’t look at me like that. We get some weird customers, so we use fake names, sometimes.”

You almost laughed, but the other thoughts and emotions that were paralyzing you kept you from finding it very humorous. You were quite sure, at this point, that the moment you’d walked into the Bits & Pieces Boutique you had stepped into an alternate reality. There was no way that, in your actual life during which you had always tried to be a good and decent person, any deity could put you through so much torture. One half of your brain was concocting a devious plan to get back at the gods, planning all the sins you were going to commit because you’d be damned if you were going to get dealt a hand this bad without milking it for all it was worth. The other half of your brain was visualizing the shop behind you, calculating what would be your fastest escape route.

Down the aisle with all the fuzzy handcuffs, take a right to pass the fifty copies of “Mrs. Dashing and the Dick of Her Dreams” and go around the cart with all the flavored lubes and condoms. That would take you directly to the door, at which point you’d rush home and try to forget this ever happened. In the morning you’d strategize on how to avoid Jihoon (Woozi?) at all costs until you could end your lease and move across the country. Solid plan, you straight lied to yourself. You’d taken one backwards step, seconds away from making a run for it, when Jihoon (…Woozi) let out a deep breath and asked,

“Did any of our Pleasure Specialists help you find what you needed today?” You blanched at the words Pleasure Specialist, and belatedly realized that was what was stitched across the chest of the sweatshirt he was wearing, with a name tag reading “Woozi” on his left side. Instead of pointing out that he was the only employee you had seen in the rather small shop, you meekly shook your head. With a forced smile, Jihoon-Woozi set the vibrator back down and asked, “Well are you sure this is what you want? The Big Boss is a decent vibe, but in my opinion the price is just for the gimmick. Let me show you some other products.” Then, to your abject horror, he rounded the counter and started walking back towards the wall of vibrators you’d just moments ago been standing in front of.

Oh, no, no no no no no, you chanted in your head, he’s completely out of his mind if he thinks I’m gonna have him suggesting vibrators for me to use right next door to him. The thought both terrified and excited you, but you smothered the latter feeling to the best of your ability. I’m going home, you decided, to die of embarrassment in peace.

And yet, you were taking one step after him—then another, and another, and another and another and another until your pattern of footsteps could reasonably be considered walking. Your own two feet were following behind him as if they had a mind of their own. “If you’re into realistic stuff, we have plenty of better options. The Big Boss is fine but the real thing isn’t bright pink, you know?” Jihoon-Woozi was saying, as if he was telling you, but he was mostly talking to fill up the dead silent, empty space. To top it off, under his breath, he mumbled, “Do you know?” You chose to ignore that, stopping a good three feet away from him, asking yourself why you hadn’t left when you had the chance.

The answer was as simple as this: you couldn’t take back walking in this store and you couldn’t control the fact that Jihoon of all people had to be working here, fifty plus miles from home. And if you stuck it out just a little bit longer, you’d be leaving this hell with the one thing that could possibly end your months of stress and suffering. If you couldn’t turn back time and keep yourself from coming in, then another ten minutes in this store of having a vibrator selected just to fit your tastes couldn’t make things any worse than they already were.

“Hello, Y/N? Are you listening to me?” Jihoon-Woozi was waving not just a hand in front of your face, but a box decorated with stars, stripes and red block letters calling the large flesh-colored vibrator depicted on it the All American Whopper. You hadn’t been listening to him at all, too busy drowning in your own thoughts of how you couldn’t fall any further than rock bottom, but you wished you had been as you swatted it away. Jihoon-Woozi snickered and held up the All American Whopper and another box, purple with pink loops that came together to make the words Power Stud Vibe.

“If you want a realistic vibrator, I suggest one of these bad boys. The Whopper is made of skin-safe rubber and the Stud is made of silicone; both have seven vibration modes, are an inch and a half wide, and can be angled to rub the G-spot. But the Whopper has a suction cup for hands-free fun, and the wide base on the Stud vibrates for added clit stimulation. What do you think?” You were pretty sure you had never been more wrong in your life—just when you thought things were as bad as they could possibly get, they took a sharp nosedive for the worst. The yet undiscovered tenth circle of hell had opened up right around you, and Jihoon-Woozi was smirking at your discomfort like he was the devil himself. Of course he’d take satisfaction in your agony, that was so like him.

“I’m not…I’m not really into realistic stuff. I just want something…good. And pretty?” Jihoon-Woozi turned on his heel, putting both of his suggestions back in their place. With his back turned, you tried to pat away the burn on your cheeks but you were sure it had little effect. You watched Jihoon-Woozi running his fingertips over several boxes, head turning this way and that, thinking hard. He was humming to himself, and you tuned in just enough to decipher the main melody of an old SHINee song. Not that humming was hard to do, but it at least seemed to you that he had perfect pitch.

“Good and pretty, I can do that,” Jihoon-Woozi said, as if to assure you, and you closed your eyes as if not looking could make you believe it wasn’t him, “but are you more interested in clit stimulation or vaginal insertion?” I’m more interested in evaporating into nothing, you thought, but out loud you said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Um…both. I think.” You opened your eyes again just in time to see Jihoon-Woozi bite his lip in deep focus. Your stomach definitely did not churn at the sight.

“Ah, here it is,” Woozi finally said, and got on his tip toes to slide a simple black box off of a higher shelf. When he looked back to you and handed it over, his face was blank. He didn’t rattle off the details this time, and you took a moment to read them for yourself: over a plastic see-through top, gold letters read L’Amourose Prism VII, and beyond them was the vibrator itself, delicately curved and pastel pink, with a wide round tip and a short arm at its halfway point. The handle had diamond-shaped embellishments, and Woozi had definitely nailed the “pretty” part of your request. You could put this up in your living room and no one would guess that it was a sex toy and not some miniature abstract sculpture. The back of the box told you that it was made out of 100% silicone, had four insertable inches, and featured nine vibrating speeds with five different modes.

Without much knowledge on vibrators, you decided that all sounded good enough to you. You’d only had to look at it for half a second before you knew it was the one; it already had you squeezing your thighs together in anticipation.

“What do you think?” Woozi asked. You’d almost forgotten he was there. When you looked up at him and saw that he had his bottom lip caught between his teeth again, a wave of arousal rolled over you. You had to get home right now. You answered him with a hard swallow and frantic nodding, sure he’d know what you meant.

“Don’t you...want to know more details?” He tried, to you violently shaking your head “no.” One corner of his lip quirked up in another semi-smirk, and this time you didn’t even want to smack it off of him, it just made you squirm.

“Well I wouldn’t be a very good Pleasure Specialist if I didn’t let you know what you were in for,” he said, and in your haze of need it sounded more like a purr. Woozi took a step closer to you, reaching out and touching the underside of your hand with his own. If you hadn’t been too worried about dropping this precious gift he’d given you, you would have jerked away. That simple touch electrified you.

I’m disgusting, you thought, desperate and disgusting. I’d fuck him right here and now. Of course, on Woozi’s end the touch was not sensual, he was simply guiding you to turn the box back over.

“It’s 100% silicone, it feels like a soft velvet,” he told you, pulling off the lid. You lifted your other hand to take the vibrator out of it’s mold, but Woozi beat you to it. It was impossible to hide your wide eyes zeroed in on it in his hands—he was holding something you’d have in you for hours later tonight, while he was right across the hall. He can’t stand you, Y/N, you reminded yourself, he’s just acting like this to embarrass you.

But you really didn’t care anymore. You knew this image of him watching you with that roguish half smirk on his face, with his delicate and slim fingers wrapped around your vibrator would be imprinted on the inside of your eyelids whenever you fucked yourself with it.

“A USB charger plugs in here,” he slid a small plastic piece off the base to show you exactly where “here” was, “an hour of charge gives you three hours of use, if you can last that long.” Remembering this moment would help you last twice as long.

“There are four inches to fill yourself up with,” he took another step closer, “and once you’re stuffed with it, this little arm will be pressed snug against your clit.” You squeezed your thighs together again, noticing a distinct squish between them. If you hadn’t been so fucking delirious with want, you’d have thought that Woozi definitely wasn’t supposed to be speaking to customers this way.

“It has nine vibrating speeds, so you can start slow, and keep turning it up to push yourself closer and closer to the edge,” it had gotten so, so much warmer in this shop since you’d stepped over here, you felt a light sheen of sweat settling over your brow, “but once you’re almost there, you’ll turn it back down, slide off the ledge before you can throw yourself over. Because you’re such a little tease you can’t help but tease even yourself, right?” You couldn’t think straight, could barely comprehend the words he was saying, but you nodded. The smirk that was making your knees weak dropped off of his face, replaced with his lips pulled into a tight line and his dark eyes glaring hard into yours.

“Here, feel it,” Woozi said, his voice soft but demanding, and for a second you really thought he might rip your jeans off and shove it in between your legs in the middle of his shift, in the middle of this store, in front of the old man and young woman who were still looking at condoms and lube.

Still looking at condoms and lube? It felt like painfully, deliciously long hours had passed as the sexual tension smothered you back here, and it surprised you to realize Woozi had turned you on so much in such a short time by doing so little. You’d always had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him, no matter how rude and unpleasant he was, but you never could have imagined he’d have this kind of effect on you.

You didn’t notice Woozi’s hand raising, didn’t notice the soft snort he gave as he realized how spaced out you were, but you were shocked back into the moment by the feeling of soft vibrations on the tip of your nose. You gasped, going cross eyed to see the bulbous tip of the vibrator pressed there.

“The clitoris and the tip of your nose have similar sensitivity levels,” you couldn’t believe Woozi could still sound so sexy saying something so ridiculous, “Well? Would that feel good on your clit?” Fuck, yes, it would. He didn’t have to wait for an affirmative cue from you, he could tell by the look in your eyes and the way your neck moved. You were gulping, trying to wet your dry throat.

“I know it would,” he said, “just like I know you’ll be a good girl and try not to wake me with your screaming tonight, right? I work early tomorrow, I know you don’t wanna keep me up?” He waited for your nod, so sure you’d be obedient and agree with him.

“I can’t make any promises,” you whispered. What you didn’t say was that even though earlier you’d been ready to get as far away from as you could as quickly as possible, now you wanted him to be achingly aware of you getting off every night with the toy he had so graciously suggested to you. Woozi didn’t say anything back, and his face didn’t reveal much to you, just his narrowed eyes that seemed to imply he wasn’t exactly pleased with you. He never is, your pesky meddling brain reminded you, this is the only way he ever looks at me.

And just like that, the suffocating sexual tension of the past five minutes came to an abrupt end. It had been easy for awhile there to just focus on how good-looking Jihoon-Woozi was, and on the nasty inappropriate words coming out of his mouth, but there was nothing like remembering how much he’d always disliked you to kill the mood. You took a wide side step, letting the vibrator hang in thin air where it had once been pressed against your nose, and coughed to clear your throat.

“Well, I’ll take it,” you announced, refusing to look over at him. You held the box out and felt the slight weight difference of the vibrator being gently placed back into it, then slid the top back on and held the box tight to your chest. Beneath it, you could just barely feel your rapid heartbeat.

Your walk back to the counter was more like a sprint, like the further away from the Vibration Station you were, the less you’d have to endure this sudden empty feeling. It was a physical emptiness, of course, as you felt the ooze coating the inside of your underwear. But there was a distinctly emotional emptiness as well, that you successfully, immediately ignored after detecting it. Yeah, I’m definitely gonna pass on that today. Now was not the time or the place to try and unpack repressed emotional baggage that you’d been carrying for possible years.

“Did any of our Pleasure Specialists help you find what you needed today?” It was a different voice this time, and you found that the person at the cash register now was a middle-aged woman, just beginning to sprout gray hairs, smiling warmly at you. You were too fucked up to give her a real answer, so you shook your head and hoped she hadn’t seen you talking to Jihoon-Woozi a mere two yards away from her. Luckily, even if she had, she wasn’t in a position to point out your obvious lie. She just gave a nod and proceeded with ringing up the vibrator.

“Alright, that’ll be one hundred twenty seven dollars and twenty cents.” Your hand that had been instinctively handing over your card already dropped. The lady behind the counter, who you now noticed was fake-named Scarlet according to her name tag, seemed unfazed by your gaping at her. It was obvious that you were surprised by the price, and she must have been wondering what kind of idiot you were to not have looked at it beforehand, but she kept those thoughts off of her face, only watching you expectantly.

Maybe he gets some bonus for selling their most expensive products, you thought bitterly. That would definitely explain why he’d randomly turned on Sexy Woozi for you—he was just trying to squeeze as much cash out of you as he could. The idea that he’d play you like that hurt, but you had to remind yourself that you weren’t special to him. In his eyes, you might as well have been any other customer on any other day, minus the sparse-and-somewhat-complicated history you two had.

Against your better judgment, you looked back to where you’d last left Jihoon-Woozi, wanting to give him a good glare, but he wasn’t standing there anymore. Where the shelves of vibrators ended, you saw a door with a handwritten “Employees Only” sign and figured he must have disappeared through it.

“Ma’am? I don’t want to rush you, but there are other customers waiting,” this so-called “Scarlet” spoke up. If common sense and knowing they were the only other people in the store wasn’t enough of an indication that it was the old man and young woman, the murmurs of her asking if he wanted to use the fuzzy handcuffs tonight were. Overwhelmed by anger, some hurt, a light disgust, and mostly a roaring from your vagina insisting that an orgasm is worth $127!, you pressed your card into “Scarlet”’s hand with a huff. You reasoned that you’d make Wendy buy you a decent dinner once a week for the next month to make up for the bullshit you’d been through over the past few weeks because of her, and that combined with the dish washing might begin to make up for all of it, financially and otherwise.

“Scarlet” rang up your purchase and placed the L’Amourose into a nondescript plain black plastic bag. It was so undistinguished that it was almost even more obvious what was inside of it, at least that’s what your anxious mind had you convinced of. You took the bag and your card into your hands and turned away, in the opposite direction of where the odd couple was standing so you wouldn’t have to see whatever touching and cooing at each other they were doing. You didn’t even tell “Scarlet” to have a nice day, and you didn’t feel guilty about it as you walked away, either. Of course, from behind you, she shouted in a cheery voice, “Please come again!”

You didn’t miss the emphasis on the word come and promised in your head that you’d never drive down this road again, you’d never come within five miles of this place again, you’d never even step foot on this side of town again, if you could help it.

Moving at the fastest pace you could manage without running, you exited the shop and took what felt like your first breath in hours as soon as you had traveled halfway down the alley. The exotic cheese store seemed like it was mocking you, want to come inside? Too bad you’re carrying a fake vibrating dick in that bag and have just been completely traumatized by your satanic neighbor. But you’d been completely traumatized and completely turned on, to the point of feeling like anyone who happened to pass you on your way to your car would be able to hear the squelch of the arousal pooled between your legs.

At the end of the alley, you looked both ways to see if there were any other people strolling down the sidewalk. You were relieved that there weren’t, since you definitely didn’t want to hide behind the dumpster against the opposite wall (but you would have if you had to). Then made a break for your car.

“Dear Wendy,” you read out loud as you typed out a text, comfortably hidden back behind the wheel with your bag of dick tucked securely into the seat beside you, “I’m probably gonna kill you the next time I see you. But I got it, so please do me a favor and stay away from my apartment for the next 24 hours.” Sent.

It had been two years since you moved into your apartment. At the time, you’d still been with your ex, Seungri. Nowadays you knew it wasn’t really okay for a 23-year-old to date an 18-year-old, fresh out of high school and living on their own for the first time, still impressionable and easily manipulated. But back then, you’ just liked the attention from an older guy.

On that fateful day, you were age 19 and had been with him for a little over a year. That seemed like a good amount of time to warrant him helping you move out of your dorm and into this place, but he told you he’d made plans already and couldn’t get out of them. Wendy would have helped, but she was visiting her parents, and you weren’t close enough with anybody else to ask them to suffer through this for you.

So you were alone when you walked up to your door for the first time to find an unaddressed envelope taped below your peephole. Inside you found a less-than-friendly note, “To 203A.” The plate above your peephole displayed that 203A was, indeed, you. A few messily scrawled lines explained that should you fail to keep your music down, or should so much as a yip from a dog be heard, or should you leave any mess outside of your front door, etc. you’d be immediately reported to your landlord.

It was signed off, “Thanks, 203B.” This was your first (informal) introduction to the man you would later come to know as Lee Jihoon.

It was only days later that you got home from class one afternoon to find exactly twenty four shoes piled up on his welcome mat, and a chorus of male voices inside loudly singing along to Girl’s Generation. You hurried into your apartment, throwing your bag down on your kitchen counter and digging through it until you found exactly what you needed. Five minutes later, a bright pink sticky note was stuck over his peephole, with your insistence that he was not only rude but a hypocrite scratched onto it in glittery purple pen. Love, 203A. All the shoes and noise were gone within a couple of hours, but the note stayed on his door taunting you for a week until you ripped it off and threw it away yourself.

A month or so passed before you finally met the ever elusive 203B face-to-face. It was 2 A.M. and Seungri was laughing as you stumbled down your hall, completely wasted. He would grab you if you were going to fall flat on your face, but otherwise let you slip on the stairs and run into walls simply for his entertainment. When you finally found yourself at your door, you squatted down in front of it and start to rummage through your bag for your keys.

“What’s taking so long?” Seungri whined. He wasn’t really drunk, just had a buzz going. If you hadn’t been so far gone, you would have known that he still shouldn’t have been driving like that. But you had failed an exam in one of your classes, and when you called him crying about it, Seungri’s best idea was to fill you up with drinks so you could just forget. Many beers, a few mixed drinks, and two or three shots later, here you were, unable to find your key.

“Can I…jusssst stay overatyerplace tonight?” A good boyfriend wouldn’t have needed any convincing, but you shot him your best puppy dog eyes, for good measure. In the morning, you could have Wendy bring over the spare key you’d given her in case of emergencies to let you in, but you did need somewhere to sleep. Seungri scrunched his nose, kicked his feet. Clearly the idea of you staying over was not very appealing to him.

“Does that mean I’ll get lucky?” He asked. Even Drunk You had enough wits about her to be unimpressed.

“Nooo, I’m not…I’m not gonna sex with you right now,” you slurred at him, putting on an angry face, eyebrows knitted together and all. Seungri laughed, leaning down and pushing the wrinkles out of your forehead. “Well I can’t bring you over to my place, Daesung has some girls over,” he told you, like that meant shit in this situation. What you didn’t know at the time was that Seungri had every intention of hooking up with at least one of them since he wasn’t getting any out of you. He rose back up to his feet and took a cautious step backwards.

“You can call Wendy and have her come pick you up, right?” Tomorrow you’d be making up excuses for why he couldn’t just take you over to Wendy’s himself, but at the time, you just nodded dumbly. He gave you two thumbs-up, and threw a “love you, bye,” over his shoulder before he hopped back down the stairs.

You tried calling Wendy a dozen times, but of course she was asleep in the dead of the night. Then you were knocking on your door, asking your cat to open it. “Twinkie? Twinkieee, canyouhearme? It’s easy, just…jusss’ reach up and turn the knob with…with yer paws?” Twinkie, a fat cream colored beast, did meow at you through the crack under the door, but obviously couldn’t do much else.

It took about an hour and a half for you to start crying. You had called Seungri to essentially beg him to come pick you up and take you somewhere instead of having you sleep on your welcome mat, but he didn’t answer. And the crying didn’t go on for long before you heard a long whine of a creak from behind you. You flipped over as quickly as your body would allow you to, and your hand slipped, so you fell backwards and hit your head on the tiled floor of the hallway.

“Shit, what are you doing?” It was a voice you’d never heard before. You’d thought the creak could only be either of the nice old lady a few doors down coming out to your rescue, or a ghost. Since it definitely wasn’t an old lady’s voice, you determined it had to be the latter. It was just as you felt someone grabbing your shoulders and trying to hoist you up that you started screaming.

“Don’t touch me! I’m alive, you can’t…you can’t take m’ body! Don’t possesh me, pleeasssse…..” And a hand was slapping itself down over your mouth. You managed to get your eyes open enough to see that cold brown gaze for the first time, and you looked this person up and down to see a short, slight body wrapped up in a worn out old pink sweater, grey sweatpants, and socks with holes in the toes.

“Wow, I knew I was avoiding you for a good reason,” that voice said again, and obviously it was his, and he obviously wasn’t a ghost. You immediately felt more relaxed. Underneath his hand, he must have felt your lips shift into a dopey smile, so he let go of your face. Instead both of his hands moved around your shoulders again, and then he was moving you towards the door across the hall.

“203B! You’re 203B!” You squealed, and he shot you a dark look that you immediately understood, giggling as you made an exaggerated hush motion with your finger over your lips. “But you are…you’re 203B. I was…I was wondering if…if I’devermeetyouuu…” you trailed off. He opened the door and led you into his living room.

You could just barely make out that the layout was a mirror image of yours. “I have to pee so bad!” You announced, and tried to rush towards what you knew to be the bathroom door, but stumbled and banged your knee into the coffee table. “Fuck, that hurrrrt!” You spun on your heel and pointed an accusing finger at 203B, although it was actually pointing a little above him, to the left. “Why’d you do that?!” You demanded to know, and got a snort as an answer.

“Sit,” he said, and he sounded like an Angry Dad, so you did as told. There was a raggedy brown couch beside you that you flopped down onto, and you sunk into the cushions happily. The couple of hours you’d spent lying down in the hallway had been really uncomfortable, and your back was sore. You kicked off your heels one by one, not paying any attention to where they went. One of them safely rolled away, while the other flew into the air and was about to land in a fish bowl on the table behind you, but 203B caught it just in time. He threw it down next to the other one before stomping into his bedroom.

You didn’t think much of where he’d gone, you didn’t think much of anything, really. He could have been a violent, sex-crazed deviant but you weren’t in the right state of mind to care. You were just drunk, sad, and really, really tired.

The next thing you knew, you were woken up by the smell of coffee. You peeked an eye open, wondering where you’d ended up last night, panicking. You saw your shoes on the floor and smoothed a hand down your torso to make sure you were fully clothed, relieved to find that your dress and tights were still on.

Ok, now, where the fuck am I? Music theory textbooks were scattered across the coffee table (you definitely didn’t know anybody in the School of Music), an acoustic guitar was propped up in a chair opposite you (you definitely didn’t know anybody who played guitar), and there were many pictures of the same large group of dudes framed on the wall (who the fuck are those people?) The easiest conclusion you could come to was that some stranger had abducted you and you were going to die.

“Thirsty?” On same wild instinct, you shot up and threw the blanket that had been laid over you in the direction the voice had come from. You looked and it was draped over a figure that could barely be your height, standing stock still.

“Uh? Who are you?” Why did I do that? There was no vocal answer from the other person, they just stuck an arm out and pulled the blanket off of themselves, tossing it over the back of the couch. And when you saw their face, it all came rushing back to you. Seungri leaving you on your doorstep, nobody answering your calls, begging your cat to let you inside, and 203B, himself, coming to your rescue.

He stared at you blankly, and you opened and closed your mouth a few times, struggling with what to say. You didn’t know if you should apologize or thank him first, and there was another part of you that wanted to tell him off for daring to leave that note on your door about being too loud when he had weekly karaoke parties, seemingly with every single person he knew.

“I’m Jihoon,” he said, before you could decide which of the things on your mind was the first priority, “203B,” he clarified, “I made coffee. You can have some and then you can leave.” With nothing more to say, he marched back into his kitchen. You stood up to follow him, and the change in altitude made your mouth water with a desperate need to empty out the contents of your stomach. You rushed into the bathroom and heaved into the toilet for a good ten minutes, making a (false) promise to yourself that you’d never drink tequila again.

When you emerged, a plain white mug with steam rising from the top was sitting on the table, and Jihoon was sitting in the chair with the guitar in his lap, leaned over and scribbling some notes in on a piece of sheet music. You cleared your throat to get his attention, and when he didn’t give any indication that he’d heard, you did it again, louder. This time, when he didn’t look at you or say anything, you knew he was purposely ignoring you.

“Thank you for letting me sleep here,” you started, “and sorry for…everything? Probably waking you up, and throwing the blanket at you, and throwing up in your bathroom.” The clock on the wall read 1 o’clock, and the sun was high in the sky, sending streams of light through the blinds. You saw your phone plugged in on the other side of the couch and picked it up, sure that Seungri would have finally called or texted you back to see if you’d made it to Wendy’s safely. But he hadn’t, you just had thirty missed calls from her and many texts demanding you answer her immediately to let her know you were alive. You swallowed the disappointment down. He must be busy, you thought, something you’d told yourself a thousand times.

You sat down and read through each text from Wendy, the last being that she was coming over with the key and you’d better be there when she arrived. You replied that you were fine, and that you were at your neighbors. She sent back many question marks and exclamation points, but you let those go unanswered.

“So you’re a songwriter?” 203B—Jihoon—nodded tersely. You picked up the mug of coffee and took a sip, just to instantly let it dribble back out of your mouth because it tasted like tar.

“Wow, I never would’ve guessed that a college girl only likes pumpkin spice lattes or some shit,” Jihoon mocked you, earning a frown. But you didn’t say anything back because he’d been nice enough to give you a place to stay overnight, so he was allowed a few jabs.

You put the mug back down and asked, “Do you have any creamer?” He didn’t reward you with a response, just another snort. Your phone pinged with a new text, 203B? The guy who left you the note? Wait so he isn’t an asshole? And you hastily answered, No, he is, just not enough of an asshole to leave a drunk girl outside to fend for herself.

“I know you probably think I’m some saint now for letting you in, but,” you looked up at Jihoon, “do you think you could go? Is someone coming with your key?” You nodded, brushing off his attitude. You’d probably be rude to someone who woke you up at 3:30 A.M. with their blubbering and indirectly forced you to let them sleep over, too. After pulling your shoes back on and unplugging your phone, you walked over to the door. You waited to see if Jihoon would say goodbye, say anything, even a “fuck off” would suffice, but he didn’t so much as spare you another glance.

“I’ll have to make this up to you, somehow,” you said, trying to sound lighthearted. Jihoon finally looked over at you again, his stare deadly, before asserting, “No, you don’t. We don’t have to talk again.”

That stung, not knowing what you’d done to upset him so much, but you knew as much as you wanted to it wasn’t your place to snap back at him. You just bowed your head before disappearing out the door. Wendy arrived ten minutes later and let you into your apartment, where you found your key on your kitchen counter.

“Why didn’t you go home with Seungri?” She wanted to know, but you just shrugged. “Well how was your neighbor?” Another shrug. You didn’t feel like venting to her like you’d planned on doing anymore, you were just tired again. Speaking with someone as cold as Jihoon was exhausting.

You never did divulge the details of that first meeting with Jihoon, not to Wendy and definitely not to Seungri. He did ask what you ended up doing that night, and you told him that your neighbor had let you stay over, and he just got pissed at you for staying in another man’s apartment. It didn’t matter that you’d had nowhere else to go or that you’d slept on the couch, it didn’t matter that if he hadn’t gotten you wasted because he didn’t know how else to deal with you when you were sad than it wouldn’t have happened, and it didn’t matter that he should have taken you back home with him. Logic and sense never did matter much to Seungri.

Your relationship with him was in full meltdown mode by time you had your next encounter with Jihoon, months later. Wendy asked you to go to a party with her; a guy she liked was one of the hosts. With no reason not to go, you agreed. Seungri was “out of town,” which by now you were sure meant he was with another girl, so he couldn’t stop you.

The house was packed, and a wide circle cleared in the middle of the living room for two guys to have a dance battle didn’t help with the space issue. You still stopped to watch, and you were rooting for the one with noodley dark blonde hair who was spinning on his shoulders. People were chanting for him as he went, “Ming-hao! Ming-hao! Ming-hao!”

“Y/N! Come with me to meet Seungcheol!” Wendy insisted, dragging you into the kitchen where some guy with broad shoulders and a thousand watt smile immediately passed you both a red plastic cup full of whatever toxic waste the hosts had to offer for the night. “I call it the DKoncoction,” he told you while Wendy looked over the crowd of people stuffed in there to see if any of them were this mystery man of hers, “no, see, it’s really clever, it’s spelled with my nickname, DK,” he continued, pointing to where he had written the name of the drink on the cup. You gave him a small smile, “It is clever,” you agreed.

“There he is!” And then you were being dragged away again, this time out onto the back porch. There were less people out here, most of them passing a joint around. One of them took a long drag and then started sputtering, tears coming to his eyes, and the others slapped him on the back, laughing. “This is why we can’t let the baby come to the college parties,” a long-haired guy said, “c’mon, Chan, I’m taking you home. Your parents would kill me if they found out I brought you here and let you get high, fuck.”

Finally, there were a few of them sitting on the steps leading down into the backyard, facing away from you. The one in the middle had inky black hair, the one on his left had his hair bleached blonde, and the last of them had a shock of pink on his head. “No, dude, it looks fine, go inside and get your own drink! No one’s gonna say anything to you!” The blonde was trying to reassure the pink-haired one as you and Wendy approached them.

“Uh, Cheolie?” All three heads whipped around when Wendy spoke up, and you took them in one-by-one, left to right. The blonde smiled so wide his eyes practically disappeared from his face, cheekbones pushing them into tiny slits. The black-haired one looked up at Wendy with wide doe eyes, his very pink lips in an “o” as he took in her dress and the nice way she’d done her hair, just for him. Obviously, he was Seungcheol, and you had to admit Wendy hadn’t been lying when she spent hours waxing poetic to you about how cute he was.

Then you turned to the pink-haired one and had to resist the urge to throw your drink in his face. Jihoon rolled his eyes when he noticed it was you, too. “You should lay off the alcohol,” he chided you, “wouldn’t want you getting hammered and not being able to make it back into your own apartment again. I won’t be so generous with my couch this time.”

“But if I get drunk enough, I won’t have to remember how someone threw up cotton candy all over your head,” you sneered back at him, lip curled and all. The other three stared wide-eyed at the two of you, and Seungcheol violently elbowed Jihoon in the side. “What the fuck,” Jihoon snapped at him, and Seungcheol smacked him upside the head. “Don’t be rude to my guests, or you’ll have to go,” he snarled.

“Y/N, you know him? Oh, my god, wait—that’s 203B?” Wendy put two-and-two together, then sent her own glare at Jihoon. In the months since that night, the appreciation for him letting you in had worn off, and resentment for how much of an asshole he’d been had settled in. Wendy shared your feelings. You’d almost baked him a cake or something to “repay him” out of spite, and then realized how stupid it’d be to waste your money on it.

Instead you started leaving more passive aggressive notes, and he responded in kind. You’d stick a note on his door thanking him for the smell of garlic that drifted from his apartment to yours and wouldn’t leave for days, he’d stick a note on your door about how much he loved hearing your cat meow for an hour after you left every day; he’d find a rant about how you never thought you’d love being kept up until 4 a.m. by the sound of his acoustic guitar so much, you’d find his thoughts on how refreshing it was to have to park at the other end of the lot because you had someone over and they parked in “his spot”; then you walked all the way over to his car to tuck a note under his windshield wiper complimenting his cleverness in changing the name of his WiFi to “Faster, Seungri, HARDER” after a night in with your boyfriend, and he slipped one under your door to applaud you on your choice in holiday decor, a pumpkin on the floor that started singing when he walked past it at 5 A.M. and made him spill his coffee all over himself.

“Good point, I’ll need a drink of my own so I can forget the fucked up way you painted your face,” Jihoon pressed on, despite Seungcheol’s threats. He stood up and started making his way back into the house, but stopped as he passed you to add, “That shade of red looks particularly slutty on you,” before he disappeared back into the kitchen. The blonde jumped to his feet and rushed to your side, looking at you with devastatingly sincere eyes, before he said, “I am so sorry, I’ve never seen him act like that towards a stranger?” You laughed and reached up to pat his hair, which seemed a little fried.

“We’re not strangers, and he’s always like that. Don’t worry.” He grinned and finally introduced himself (“My name is Soonyoung, but you can call me Soon,”), and then he took his seat beside Seungcheol again and they both scooted over to make room for you and Wendy.

The lovebirds were cuddled up to each other in no time, whispering and giggling, and you and Soonyoung had to lean forward to talk around them. You told him you lived next door to Jihoon, and he apologized again, this time for an incident in which Jihoon had asked his friends to bring over all their shoes and dirty socks and pile them up in front of your door. He insisted he never would have gotten involved if he knew the neighbor was just “an innocent young lady,” which got him a scoff. That had been in retaliation to the time your bag of garbage ripped open at his doorstep while you were taking it out and you just…kind of…left it there. So the shoes and socks stunt had been more than earned, you had to admit.

“203B didn’t tell you why you were doing that to me?” You double checked, and Soonyoung shook his head no before explaining that he’d never told them why they did any of the shit they did to you, which included: late night musical choruses in the hall, drawing graffiti in the dust on your car, having all twelve of them knock on your door when they passed by, and so, so much more. “If he asked you guys to jump off a bridge, would you?” You mocked him with the cliche line, and Soonyoung shrugged, “Maybe?”

Most of your night was spent with you trading stories of all the ways you’d set out to annoy Jihoon for behind-the-scenes information on all of his actions against you. Soonyoung told you that he had been particularly irritated that night he could hear you and Seungri going at it, which certainly piqued your interest, and then said he figured it was because Jihoon wasn’t getting any. “You’d think he would with his job,” Soonyoung had mumbled to himself, but he moved on to another topic too fast for you to ask what he meant by that.

Wendy and Seungcheol wandered back into the house around 1:30, and she easily talked you into being okay with her bailing on you to stay with him instead of taking you home. “I found someone to give you a ride,” she’d promised, and you trusted her enough to not send you away with an ax murderer. What you weren’t expecting was to walk outside and see Jihoon leaning against the porch railing, straightening up when he saw you and jerking his head towards the cars lining the street as if you should follow him to one of them.

“Wait, what? Are you serious? Wendy was this desperate?” You whined, and Jihoon stopped in his trot down the steps to ask you, “Who else would be taking you back? We live in the same building, should someone go out of their way to get you there?” He had a point, and you didn’t really have the money to be blowing on a cab, so you sucked it up and found yourself crawling into the beat-up old sedan you��d frowned and stuck your tongue out at many times before.

Seungcheol’s place was on the other side of town from your apartment, a good half hour drive, and you felt your soul leave your body at the idea of having to be in such close proximity with Jihoon for so long. Should I say something to him? Small talk? How about this weather and all that shit? You’d opened your mouth to say just about anything to disturb the awkward silence between you, and it was at that exact moment that he leaned forward and turned his radio on. Your ride home was spent listening to Super Junior at max volume, having your seat vibrate along with the bass line in “Sorry Sorry” and every other song on that album. Jihoon softly sang along to every word.

It was just as “Shining Star” was fading out that Jihoon pulled his car into a spot, and you were clambering to get out of it as quickly as possible. In the spot beside his was another car that you’d recognize anywhere—it was Seungri’s. You dug through your purse for your phone just to see that it was completely dead and feel a wave of dread pass through you.

For the last several weeks, any time you were with Seungri, all you’d done was fight. You were so sure that he was seeing other girls, but if you dared to confront him about it, he’d just insist you were being crazy and overbearing. Of course, if he knew you’d gone to a party without his knowledge and then came home with Jihoon, he’d have pitched a fit.

“What are you mumbling about over there?” Jihoon asked, lazily scooting out of the driver’s seat. You hadn’t even realized you’d been anxiously ranting to yourself as you desperately tried to get your phone to turn back on, no matter how dead the screen kept flashing to try to tell you it was.

“You can just…just go in without me, okay?” You tossed at him, admitting defeat and stuffing your phone back into your bag. What am I gonna tell him? You thought, I don’t wanna start another stupid fight. You leaned back against Jihoon’s car and felt exhaustion settle into your bones. It had been a long day, yes, but it was more of an emotional exhaustion. You were so tired of fighting with Seungri, not trusting him, feeling insecure because of him; any smart girl would have broken up with him a long time ago, but he was your first serious boyfriend and there was a small but very stubborn part of you that didn’t want to give up on him.

“Isn’t that your boyfriend’s car?” Jihoon piped up from beside you, sending you flying a few feet away from him and stumbling against the curb. “What the hell! I thought you went inside!” You reached over to shove his shoulder in frustration. He shrugged your hand off and said, “I thought you were gonna start having a panic attack over here, I didn’t want that hanging over my head.”

A hand over your heart confirmed that it was indeed beating quite fast, and you had been breathing heavily as anxiety wormed it’s way into your mind. You looked down at your feet, no intentions of telling Jihoon about your problems.

“Yes, that’s his car,” you answered his earlier question, “and I’m fine, I just. I just wanted a minute to myself.” Despite that, Jihoon didn’t walk away, but leaned against the car beside you instead. He kept watching you and it was making you thoroughly uncomfortable.

“Well I’d rather make sure you get into your apartment alright, like I said, I don’t need anything happening to you and having it weigh on my conscience. Also Wendy would kill me,” he laughed. That much was true, the guilty conscience thing you weren’t so sure about. He did hate you, after all.

You sighed and looked up at your window, seeing the light shining from inside your bedroom, regretting giving Seungri his own key. It was something you’d done in recent months, a gesture of good will, trying to express to him that you wanted to make your relationship work. If you hadn’t given him that damn key, he probably wouldn’t be here right now. Jihoon followed your line of sight and huffed.

“Why are you making your boyfriend wait? Trouble in paradise?” You figured if Jihoon had heard you guys having sex, he had to have heard all of Seungri’s screaming and your crying that had been happening lately, so you ignored that question. He was just rubbing salt in your wounds. You pouted and pointedly looked away, not wanting him to see the hurt on your face.

Unfortunately the only other thing you could really look at was Seungri’s car, and that only reminded you of the fight you’d had inside of it just a few days ago. He didn’t think you were spending enough time with him, but you had classes and a job you needed to go to, and your grades were suffering since you’d often skip studying to see him. That wasn’t enough for him, but nothing ever was.

“Y/N, come on, it’s cold,” Jihoon grouched. You’d almost forgotten he was there. He was right, though, it was too chilly to keep standing in the parking lot in your tiny shorts with no jacket. Better bite the bullet and get this over with, you conceded to yourself. Jihoon was already halfway to the stairwell door, and you jogged over to catch up with him. He held the door open and let you through first, and stayed behind you no matter how slowly you trudged up the stairs.

“Seriously, why aren’t you more excited to see your boyfriend?” Jihoon asked again, the same question with different words. You had to remind yourself that under no circumstances could you disclose personal details about your life to Jihoon. He’d find some way to use them against you next time you did something that aggravated him.

“Why do you keep saying it like that, ‘your boyfriend’? Like they’re dirty words?” You asked, instead of telling him the truth. You figured he’d say something rude and nasty, like he just had a hard time understanding how any guy could want to date you or something like that. But he was silent. You were surprised he wouldn’t jump at the chance to insult you for the thousandth time. You stopped at the landing that exited to your hall and turned to look at him a few steps below you—saw him gnawing at his bottom lip, wringing his hands together, eyes cast to the side. You were about to ask him what was wrong, when he spoke up quietly,

“I’m just wondering what kind of guy he has to be to be dating you.” You could have pulled out a snappy comeback, but you weren’t really up to it. It relieved you that he didn’t have anything more serious to say. You had enough on your plate right now, you didn’t need Jihoon fucking up the rival dynamic that you two had going on; it was probably the most consistent relationship you had in your life at the moment. You just nodded down at him, then pushed the door open that continued the path to your doom.

It was almost 2 A.M. On any other night, your hall should have been empty. But there stood Seungri, leaned against your door and tapping violently at his phone screen. His head shot up when the door slammed closed behind you and Jihoon, and his hard gaze settled on the pair of you watching him. Your eyes were wide and you weren’t proud of your hands shaking a little bit; you weren’t scared of Seungri. He’d never given you any reason to be. You just knew how this must have looked to him, and you’d never convince him that it was anything other than his first assumption.

“Y/N, move,” Jihoon groaned, stuck between your back and the door, and put a hand on your arm to nudge you out of the way. You allowed yourself to be pushed to the side some, but didn’t take any steps forward. If looks could kill, you and Jihoon would be long gone.

“What the hell is going on?” Seungri spat as Jihoon approached him, and from where you were with the soles of your shoes stuck to the floor, you only saw Jihoon shake his head. He’d probably rolled his eyes at Seungri, which would just piss him off more. But your boyfriend was more interested in what you were doing and what you had to say, so he stormed towards you, shoulder checking Jihoon as they passed each other and he finally got to his door.

“I called you like fifty times! I sent you a hundred texts! Where have you been?!” Seungri demanded to know, coming up close to you and wrapping his hand tight around your elbow. You just gulped and kept staring up at him. I’m not scared of him, you tried to convince yourself. Seungri had never hit you, and he never would, but he could be an intimidating presence. Just his hand on your elbow was imposing, dominating, making you feel small beneath him.

“I went to a party with Wendy,” you said meekly, hoping to avoid a real blowout, but Seungri just barked out a laugh.

“Right, you went to a party with her but ended up coming home with another guy? That makes a lot of sense, Y/N,” he growled. You thought you knew your boyfriend pretty well, but you’d really never figured out how to diffuse these situations and calm him down. No methods that you’d use on any other person ever seemed to work with him; begging him to believe you, trying to convince him with the truth, trying to convince him with lies when that didn’t work. All you could ever really do was let him go off on you until he wore himself out. You were about to let him drag you into your apartment to do just that when you suddenly heard,

“I’m her neighbor. I was just taking her home.” You really thought Jihoon had disappeared into his place already, but he was just standing there with his key hanging out of the door, watching the scene unfold in front of him. He was too far away for you to see the expression on his face, but you were sure he was judging you for letting Seungri walk all over you. You didn’t need his pity, really didn’t want to have him trying to stand up for you, but if it worked you’d be grateful. You looked away from Jihoon to see if it did, and you weren’t surprised to see Seungri only looked angrier.

“Are you kidding me? I fucking knew it, I know you’ve wanted to fuck him ever since you moved in here, haven’t you? Always playing your stupid games with him?” Seungri dropped your arm and turned away, setting his sights back on Jihoon, “And you can’t stay away from another man’s girlfriend, fucking prick.”

“Trust me, I try to stay away from her as much as possible,” Jihoon corrected him, and your temper flared at the audacity he had to say something like that right now, “She’s pretty annoying to have next door, but the worst part is having a guy like you around.” The hall went dead silent, there wasn’t so much as a breath to be heard. It had been tense already, but now it felt like you and Jihoon had pressed as much as you could, and the wire that was Seungri’s patience was about to snap.

“What did you just fucking say?” Jihoon moved to face Seungri fully, shoulders back and jaw locked. Your boyfriend’s slow steps in his direction almost seemed like he was stalking prey, but someone who had themselves opened up to a fight could not be hunted.

Jihoon didn’t seem worried, despite the good four inches and several pounds the other guy had on him. You didn’t know if he could hold his own in a fight, but you weren’t interested in waiting to find out. You’d seen Seungri knock a couple of guys out at a club before and didn’t want to see that happen to your neighbor, no matter how many irritating things he’d done to you.

“Seungri, let’s just go inside and talk, please,” you tried, “Jihoon didn’t do anything wrong, he was just giving me a ride!” Seungri laughed, and the sound made your skin crawl. It was so different from when you’d first met, when you’d tell a dumb joke and he’d laugh and it was like music to your ears. He wasn’t the same person you’d fallen for, he hadn’t been for a long time…or maybe that had never been the real him to begin with.

“Baby, of course we can go inside and talk,” Seungri said, and you felt a split second of relief, “right after I finish beating this piece of shit bloody.” He stopped within a foot of Jihoon, looking down at him over his nose, challenging him to make the first move. It shocked you to see how comfortable Seungri was playing such an antagonistic role, immediately resorting to violence.

Why am I with him? You didn’t have any answers left to that question. Jihoon hummed out a, “Well?” That was the only cue Seungri needed.

One second you saw him rearing back, fist ready and swinging right towards Jihoon’s face; the next you were grabbing Seungri’s arm and spinning him in your direction, ducking to miss his punch before straightening to give him one of your own. He instantly fell to his knees, cradling his jaw. Holy shit, what did I just do—you hadn’t even realized you’d rushed down the hall to stop him until it had already happened. Seungri was still holding his face as if you’d done any real damage; you were sure it didn’t feel too good, but you weren’t that strong. If his wide eyes and complete silence were any indication, his reaction was out of shock more than anything else. It had the same effect on Jihoon, who didn’t move or say a word.

You could have felt any number of emotions at that moment, between fear and anger and confusion and uncertainty, but instead you just felt…you just felt better. After almost two years together, you’d finally found the one way to make him shut up. It felt like the weight of Seungri and this entire toxic relationship had been shed from your shoulders. There was only one thing left for you to do.

You shook out your fist deliberately; it didn’t really hurt, but it was worth it for show. Jihoon pressed himself back against the door to let you saunter up to where Seungri remained kneeling on the ground. You bent down to his level and cocked your head to the side, examining him, reaching out to gently move his hand away from his face. There would definitely be a touch of a bruise there, and you couldn’t bury the swell of pride in your chest or hide the way your lips tilted into a satisfied grin.

“What the fuck, Y/N, why’d you do that?” He finally spoke, shuffling backwards and out of your reach. You wouldn’t be rewarding him with an answer, just moved closer to him again and shoved your hand into the pocket of his hoodie before he could stop you. It only took a second to feel the metal, and then you were pulling out the key you’d given him not that long ago.

“I’ll be taking this back,” you affirmed, “and you can leave now. Don’t come back, please.” You hopped back onto your feet and reached out to your door, smiling to hear Twinkie meow from the other side of it. Glancing at Jihoon, you only got the sight of his back as he pushed his door open, ready to get away from this drama. You couldn’t blame him, but wished he’d thank you for stopping his face from being beaten in.

Seungri scrambled to his feet and hurried to your side, but he continued to have nothing worthwhile to say, only able to stutter out halfhearted apologies in between sudden manic rants about how Jihoon had it coming, how could you do this to him, who did you think you were, blah blah blah. None of it could touch you. You were high off of this freedom from him.

“Will you fucking stop and just listen to me for once!” Seungri snapped as you were opening your door, and he grabbed the side of it to keep it from opening just that little bit further it had to go before you could slip inside. You felt the brush of your cat’s tail as she ran out the door and into the hall, but you were focused on Seungri. This is my only chance to speak my peace.

“Listen to you for once? Listen to you for once?! I’m done listening to you Seungri, all I ever fucking do is listen to you! Listen to you tell me how paranoid I am, listen to you tell me you’re just busy with work, listen to you tell me you love me before you go fuck some other girl. I can smell someone else’s perfume on you right now, asshole! I’ve known for a long time, I’m just someone you like to keep around, someone who’d always be there if you couldn’t find anyone else to hook up with, right? Well I’m fucking done being that, I’m done with you, you can go fuck yourself.” You’d never seen your boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—run away from a fight so fast before. He was already slamming the door to the stairwell shut behind him before you had even caught your breath from that tirade. Maybe that’s why he’d always shut you down when you tried to be honest or reason with him—he just couldn’t handle the truth.

You relaxed against your door frame, eyes shut and letting out the deep breath you’d been holding since you first pulled into the parking lot and saw Seungri’s car. God, it was creeping on 3 a.m. now, and there was a heavy blanket of fatigue draped over you. Just as you were about to roll into your entryway and shut your door on this long night, you heard a cough from across the hall. Jihoon was still standing there in his doorway, but now had an armful of cat rubbing underneath his chin and leaving gifts of fur stuck to his jacket.

“It tried to run in here,” he informed you, and you could only say, “Her name is Twinkie.” He shrugged as he came forward and moved her into your arms, handling her more lightly than you’d have thought he would. Instead of immediately retreating into his apartment like you expected, Jihoon stood there in your space for a beat longer, looking you straight in the eye. Then he took one small step back before he asked, “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” You honestly didn’t know what he meant—why did you break up with a guy who he knew was a piece of shit? There were a million reasons why you’d done that.

Jihoon groaned and looked away from you before he said, “You should have let him hit me. I could have taken him.” To say you were surprised would be an understatement; you couldn’t believe that Jihoon could slip so easily into this testosterone-fueled neanderthal act after everything that had just happened. He’d been witness to you being a total badass, and all he cared about was that he hadn’t gotten a punch in himself.

“Is that a joke? Sorry, how dare I stand up for myself instead of letting the big strong men duke it out for me,” you mocked him, “Wow, Jihoon, is your masculinity really that fragile?” He bristled at that, puffing out his chest and trying to make himself seem larger than he was. You gave him a dismissive laugh.

“Why are you acting like I’m an asshole for wanting to defend you,” he tried, and you shifted Twinkie in your arms to get a better hold on her before facing Jihoon to say, “You weren’t defending me, that was all about you, how could you call that defending me when you couldn’t even do it without getting an insult in? ‘She’s pretty annoying to have next door’? It’s not the worst thing you’ve said, but it definitely wasn’t you defending me.” Jihoon sputtered, arms flailing, trying to wrap his head around what you were saying. It was so typical man of him to try and reframe his own shit as him trying to “defend your honor.”

“Thank you for the ride home, and you’re welcome for not letting him punch a hole through your head,” you said, tone final, “I’m going to sleep. Don’t worry, as always, I know this doesn’t make us friends now or anything. Good night, Jihoon.” You stepped inside and promptly shut your door in your neighbor’s face. If he had anything else to say, you didn’t care to hear it.

You were shocked you made it to your room with how tired you were, and you immediately flicked off the light that Seungri had left on before collapsing onto your bed. Trying to process everything that had happened that night was impossible—your head was swarmed by a thousand different thoughts. You wondered how you’d start removing all evidence of your ex from your life in the morning, and you wondered if Wendy finally hooked up with Seungcheol, and you wondered if Seungri even cared that you’d broken up with him, and you wondered what the hell was in that DKoncoction, and you wondered why Seungri had even been waiting at your apartment in the first place, and you wondered if Minghao had won that dance battle.

But the last thought you had before you fell asleep was that you were done with this silly battle you had going on with 203B. You were 20 years old, had just ended your first serious relationship of almost two years, had a horrible job and schoolwork that you needed to focus on. You figured it was time you did some growing up, and not hanging a banner over his door that read “LOSER” like you’d been planning to do for a few days was how you were going to start. You didn’t need that relationship with Jihoon any more than you needed your relationship with Seungri—you only needed yourself.

So much for only needing myself, you thought as you turned the L’Amourose over and over in your hands. You’d been home for a couple of hours, the sun was setting, your pants had been flung over to the other side of the room, but you’d yet to turn the vibrator on and get to business. Your body was still buzzing with an inexplicable need, but you couldn’t get Jihoon’s face out of your head.

The long drive home had given you time to rethink his behavior at the shop, but you were still convinced he’d just been playing you for his own gain, so you decided you’d rather not get off to thoughts of all the dirty nasty hot…hot hot hot stuff he’d said. Too bad you didn’t have any other material stocked in your brain to tap into and get yourself going.

With a huff, you placed the L’Amourose upright on your bedstand and wandered out of your room, to your kitchen where you’d deposited your purse on the counter. Twinkie was laying beside it, and you gracelessly shoved her onto the floor before grabbing your bag and moving over to your couch. She rejoined you there, curling up beside you as you found your phone inside it and checked your texts. Wendy had replied to you telling her to stay away with a simple ;) that you’d have to give her a good smack for whenever you next saw her.

That was the only new message you had, which didn’t surprise you. A lot of your friendships had ended with the end of your relationship. You hadn’t realized until most of the people you socialized with stopped talking to you that you’d centered your whole life around Seungri.

Your life now had less people in it, but you knew you were better off. You had Wendy, and by extension you had Seungcheol, and a few of his friends from that dumb party way back when that you talked to every now and again. Sure, it was a little awkward when they were all at Jihoon’s place for their usual get-togethers and you had to pretend all but one of your friends was not a mere thirty seconds away from you, but you were used to it now. If you just so happened to be coming out or going into your apartment as they were leaving his, you knew not to acknowledge them until he had his door shut. He knew you were friends with them, but ignoring it made the nature of your relationship with him that much easier to swallow.

And your relationship with him was—well, it was nonexistent. You’d kept your vow to yourself to stop your rivalry, lining your door so that he wouldn’t hear Twinkie meowing and making sure none of your visitors parked in his spot, and the one other time your trash had busted open in front of his door, you gagged through the cleanup instead of leaving it there for him to deal with. For his part, there were no smells coming from his place to yours and he was rarely up playing guitar at 4 a.m. anymore, usually he’d stop around 1, at least. His friends still knocked on your door when they passed, but that was usually because they wanted to say hi and get some Twinkie pets in, or they just felt like annoying you for their own amusement.

You and Jihoon very, very rarely spoke. If you ran into each other in the parking lot or the staircase or the hall, some nods and brief hello’s were all that passed between you both. At times like those it was like your war with him, the night you stayed over, and that night with Seungri had never happened. Of course, you still thought about it all sometimes, on your lonelier, more pensive nights. Maybe if you had never left that note about him being a hypocrite on his door, you two would be friends and you’d never have to go more than a few steps across the hall to find someone to keep you company. It was too bad you’d fucked it up like that.

You found yourself scrolling through Twitter, shamelessly checking up on fansites of the groups you liked, hoping you’d find a good picture to shape a fantasy around so you could finally start masturbating. Usually you could think up an elaborate scene with one of the guys from BTS or Got7 or EXO, but every time you blinked, all you saw was Jihoon with his lip tucked between his teeth, watching you with those eyes like he’d already imagined getting you naked and panting for him a dozen times over. Thinking of all the times he must have given that look to other women to wring as much money out of them as possible made you cringe, but you also found yourself imagining him flushed, panting, squeezing his eyes shut together from above you as he came…

“Fuck it,” you blurted out at nobody, at yourself, at Twinkie, maybe. Back in your room, you slipped your underwear off and crawled under the covers. You swiped a fingertip between your folds, pleased that you were still soaking down there, then grabbed the L’Amourose and placed the tip of it against your clit.

Ok, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening, you teased it up and down your slit, then held it so it’s entire length was pressed against you, rolling to get a thorough coating of your juices on it. When you were finally satisfied with that, you pushed the tip against your opening, and poised one finger over the button to start the vibrations.

Because you’re such a little tease you can’t help but tease even yourself, right? His words echoed in your mind. Those dirty nasty hot, hot hot hot words.

You pressed the button.

And nothing happened. No soft buzz filled the air, no tingles erupted across every inch of your cunt, your hand wrapped around the toy didn’t vibrate along with it. You were frozen, all of the tightly wound anticipation suddenly unraveling, leaving you grasping at straws, unsure of what to do. This can’t be happening, you thought, I need to have an orgasm, I’m actually going to die if I don’t have an orgasm tonight. You pressed the button again and again and again, each time letting your hopes up for just a second only for them to come down crashing and burning over and over. Eventually you kicked your comforter off and brought the L’Amourose up to your face to inspect it more closely, and with it at eye level kept pressing the button, desperate for the toy to come to life. It just sat quietly in your hands, completely dead.

You didn’t know exactly what your plan was when you hopped out of bed and frantically pulled on a loose pair of sweatpants that had been laying on the floor, when you found yourself jogging into your living room and to your front door, when you were suddenly pounding your knuckles on the door marked with the characters 2-0-3-B. You were so desperate. It was only when the door was swinging open that you realized you still had your left hand wrapped tight around the sticky L’Amourose.

Jihoon looked tired, but as each second passed and he continued to process the scene before him, the exhaustion on his face was replaced by sheer panic and bewilderment. He opened his mouth to say god knows what, but before he could get any words out you were pressing your empty palm to his chest to push him back into his entryway, following close to him and kicking his door shut behind you.

You hadn’t been in this apartment in almost two years, and a quick glance around proved that little had changed. The fish bowl was gone and there weren’t any textbooks on the coffee table, but there were more pictures hung up on the wall and now a row of guitars hanging up opposite of them. You shook yourself out of that line of thought, none of that mattered right now—right now all that mattered was getting off.

“Ok, Woozi,” you sneered, “I bought this fucking hundred dollar dick because of you, but it’s not fucking working and I’m a little bit pissed off and worked up over it, if you can’t tell.” There was no way he couldn’t tell, with your panting and burning cheeks and all. You slapped the L’Amourose down onto the coffee table.

“Well? You can either make it work or we have to figure something else out right now,” you hissed, not even thinking about the implication of your words. Jihoon took a cautious step forward, and you watched his mouth open and close and open and close and open and close like there weren’t any words left in his head for speaking, no matter how much he wanted to. He reached a hand out to pick the toy up, but stopped halfway and let it fall back to his side.

“It’s…It’s…” He started, and he was biting his fucking lip again, and you felt yourself ache at how red and swollen they looked. “Were you already using it?” He asked instead of continuing whatever he’d begun saying before, and the question confused you for a moment before you followed his laser focused gaze back down to the toy, and took in just how wet and gleaming it looked, coated with your arousal.

Your jaw dropped open, and you…you should have been embarrassed. I should be grabbing that thing and running away, you agreed with yourself. But instead, the sight of Jihoon looking down at the vibrator that you’d been rubbing up and down your pussy lips, that was literally shining from your wetness, made a fire roar to life in the pit of your stomach.

“Jihoon,” you sighed, and felt your fingers tremble with a need to touch him—to get wrapped up in his hair, to trace his sharp jawline, to drift down his abdomen and into his pants so they could curl around his…you shook your head to dislodge those thoughts from your brain. You’d only come here so that he could get this toy working again, then you’d be back in bed with it in no time, definitely not thinking about him. He was still staring down at it when you grabbed the vibrator and hurried to his kitchen, ripping a dozen paper towels off the roll on his counter and beginning to wipe it down.

“It won’t turn on, and I don’t know why, I mean, it was working at the shop? I haven’t done anything to it since then, I had just taken it out of the box and was ready to use it, and no matter how many times I pressed the button nothing fucking happened, so I decided to—” You were abruptly stopped by the feeling of a hand grabbing your shoulder from behind, and you froze.

Jihoon hadn’t touched you since that night you were drunk and he had to get you into his place. You felt a chip of the wall you’d built up around your heart ages ago slowly, gently drift away as a long and jagged crack emerged.

“Shh, Y/N,” he cooed, “don’t be so nervous, it’s just me. Relax,” and then he had his hands cupping both your shoulders, deliberately pressing the heel of them into your tightly wound muscles. You couldn’t help the groan that escaped your lips and echoed through his living space.

“You want to get off so badly, don’t you,” Jihoon said, his voice soft while his touch was anything but, “you know, these are thin walls. I can hear everything—I hear you singing off-key in the shower, I hear you screaming at scary movies, I hear you laughing when someone tells a stupid joke, I hear you talking to your cat when you’re lonely…and I used to hear those pretty sighs and moans when you’d come. I’ve really missed that sound. I was looking forward to hearing it again tonight, I was kind of relieved when I realized that was you at work.”

Somehow, even though you’d always complained about hearing things from Jihoon’s apartment, the implications of him hearing everything from yours had never really crossed your mind. Though you couldn’t say you were surprised, maybe you’d have felt more humiliated about it if Jihoon’s massage didn’t feel so good, didn’t have you almost on your knees in pleasure.

“I don’t think the vibrator is gonna work,” he said off-handedly, a throwaway comment, “it has an 18-month warranty, don’t worry about that, but…if you still want to get off…obviously the real thing would get the job done better, don’t you think?” You were too far gone to protest, to think of all the hundreds of ways this could go wrong, to care that all the hard work you’d been doing avoiding him and keeping your guard up for the past couple of years was for naught.

Jihoon’s touch slipped from your shoulders, his fingers grazing your spine through your thin t-shirt and making your back arch, before each hand took a firm hold of either side of your hips and was spinning you around to face him. The vibrator fell to the tiled floor with a dull thud, but as you finally felt those plush, swollen lips of Jihoon’s press urgently against yours, that was the furthest thing from your mind.

You grabbed the collar of his sweater and tried to pull him closer, longing to feel every inch of him against you. He had the same idea, shifting to wrap his arms tight around your waist. It was unclear where your body ended and his began, and you wouldn’t have had it any other way. Jihoon pulled his face away from yours for just a moment before he was diving back in to latch his teeth onto your bottom lip, and you opened your eyes wide to see him watching you intently, gaze dark and hooded. You gasped at the intensity of his stare, giving him the perfect opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth.

Your eyelids gently drifted shut again at the sensation of his tongue brushing against yours, and you lightly pressed back before he retreated to tilt his head a different way, then dive back in. This time your tongue reached in first, slowly and gently pressing against his, and when you withdrew you felt his lips chase after yours. You let a soft giggle pass between you, and felt him shiver as your breath fanned out across his face.

“Let me take you to my room,” Jihoon purred, his fingers rubbing small circles into your sides, his eyes never once leaving yours as you peered up at from beneath your lashes, “please, let me make you feel good.”

How could you say no to him? All it took was the slightest incline of your head before Jihoon was unwrapping himself from around you, grabbing your wrist and dragging you out of the kitchen, past the living room, through his wide open bedroom door and into what was new territory for you. You didn’t have the time or interest to look around and inspect the interior, as Jihoon was already leading you on to his bed and pressing you back against his dark sheets.

When he crawled over you, he had already discarded his sweater. Of course, Jihoon was on the shorter side, but you could see now that his body was sturdy and firm despite that. You reached up to press your palms against his chest, and then let the fingertips of one of your hands drift gently downward, across his abdominal muscles that twitched beneath them.

“What do you think?” He asked, and if the crooked smirk on his face was any indicator, he already knew the answer to that question. Still, you told him, “I like what I see.” Inflating his ego was worth it to see the proud light flash in his eyes.

Your hand stopped at his waistline, and Jihoon took the next step, dipping back in to press more kisses to your jaw and neck as his own hands fiddled with the hem of your t-shirt. It was just as his tongue dipped in to taste the skin stretched across your collar bone that his fingers finally danced up underneath your clothes, teasing touches on your stomach until one of his hands cupped a breast at last. You thanked god that you never wore a bra at home.

“Let’s get this off,” Jihoon hummed against your skin before he sat back on his heels, giving you space to tear your shirt up over your head and fling it onto his floor. He didn’t waste a second, diving in and wrapping his lips around one of your nipples as he pinched the other between his fingers. You were breathless—it had been so fucking long since a man touched you like this, you’d almost forgotten how good it felt to let someone else get their hands and mouth on you.

As Jihoon gave your nipple a hard suck, you pressed both of your fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp with your nails in gratitude. He immediately rutted against your thigh, letting you feel his erection for the first time. The hard heat of it through his jeans made your mouth water. You could have laid there for hours with his tongue and fingers worshiping your chest, but you were overwhelmed by the need to get your eyes and hands on his cock. When he parted from your chest with a dramatic, wet pop! you grabbed his shoulders to push him away, only far enough so you could move onto your knees.

“What is it, baby?” Jihoon asked carefully, noticing the frantic look in your eye, instantly worrying that he’d done something wrong, pushed you too far. The idea of making you uncomfortable and upsetting you physically hurt him.

But you quelled his concerns with your hands on his waist, undoing his belt and slipping the leather from it’s loops so you could toss it aside and get to his button and zipper. Jihoon laughed as your hands fumbled with them, shaking hard with desire and rust since it’d been so long since they’d done this, and even some stifled nerves. You’d be an idiot to not be nervous right now—you’d just discovered that Jihoon was some sort of hot sex god and didn’t want to leave him disappointed in what you could do.

Jihoon did his best to ease your apprehension by reaching down and undoing the button and zipper himself with his steady hands over your own, keeping his eyes locked with yours. There was something so intimate about it, more intimate than making out and him slobbering all over your boobs, more intimate than everything you were getting ready to do. This is what made you blush, and your blush is what made Jihoon’s heart lurch in his chest.

“Are you sure you want to do this with me, Y/N?” He asked you. He wanted the answer to be “yes” so badly, but if it was no, he’d have to let you leave, and he’d have to be enough of a gentleman to leave you alone after that, for good this time. You deserved that much from him. But you couldn’t imagine saying anything but “yes.” God, you’d wanted this for so long.

You’d wanted him for so long.

“I wouldn’t leave this bed and stop doing this with you even if this building caught on fire right now,” you offered, before giving his jeans and briefs a sharp tug down to his knees. You’d never felt so empty between your legs as you did when you first laid your eyes on Jihoon’s cock; for such a compact man, that part of him was anything but. The length was decent, but it was the girth that made a whine bubble up from your throat. You wrapped your middle finger and thumb around him, and as he bucked into your hand, you considered the inch that kept them from touching each other.

“Please, please fucking move your hand,” Jihoon gasped, and you realized you’d been been just staring at him for several moments now. You didn’t need to be told twice, letting the rest of your fingers take hold and giving his cock a single dry jerk. You noticed him wince, and removed yourself from him so that you could grab his hands that were pressed tightly to his thighs.

“Jihoonie,” you sighed, “take my pants off, will you?” He did as asked, slipping your sweatpants off and then watching in awe as your spread yourself out for him. You could have sworn you saw a little drool dribbling out from his dropped jaw.

“Silly Jihoonie,” you purred, and slid one of your hands up your thigh before settling it against your folds, scooping up a generous amount of your juices, “later we’ll have to put your mouth to better use than that.” He slowly shut it, a touch embarrassed, but that was washed away the moment you wrapped your hand back around his cock, stroking it up and back down again to coat it with your wetness. A moan ripped out of him and made the heat at your core flare.

You gave him a few more jerks, then rolled your palm across his tip. He immediately fell forward, bracing himself with his hands on either side of your waist, mouth wide open in a silent gasp. Your other handed drifted down without him noticing and he whimpered when you suddenly grabbed his balls, squeezing them gently.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, Y/N, fuck,” he chanted, and you were sure you could feel yourself leaking onto his sheets. His cock felt so smooth and heavy in your hands, and as much as that was a feeling you had missed, there was a different feeling you’d been craving so, so much more. You tugged once with both of your hands, and he reached down to stop you right before you could stop yourself.

“Wait, wait, I want to fuck you, I need to cum with my cock buried inside of you,” he hummed the magic words. You let go of him and watched with bated breath as he scooted forward on his knees, letting yourself be manhandled so he could place the back of your thighs over the top of his, then wrapped your legs around him, heels pressing against his back, pressing him closer.

Jihoon leaned over to grab a tiny foil packet from his nightstand, and god, you were going to fucking melt all over his bed if he didn’t get inside of you already. When he finally had the condom on, Jihoon wrapped his own hand around the base of his cock and tentatively swiped it through your slit; just the brush of his tip on your clit made your whole body twitch, made you mewl.

“Mmm, that’s what I like to hear,” he whispered, and did it again, but this time deliberately pressed the head of his cock hard against your clit.

“Oh, god, Jihoon! Just put it in me, please, please please please, fill me up, I need to come, baby, I need you to make me come,” you begged him, eyes screwed shut, fingers clenching and unclenching against thin air. He snickered, and you thought he’d do as you asked when you felt him move again, but then he was slapping his length against your clit like a fucking tease. God, you could have cum right then and there, from that alone. It would have been the most unsatisfying orgasm of your life, and you were so, so fucking close to it, tears were already forming at the corners of your eyes.

“You really want it, Y/N? You want my cock that bad?” Jihoon growled, and just as you were screaming out a ‘yes!’ he took mercy on you and shoved himself balls deep into your pussy. Only half of the word got out before your breath was sucked out of your body, and you choked on thin air. Your eyes felt like they’d fall right of your head with how wide they opened, and you took in the beautiful sight of Jihoon on top of you.

Your imagination could never come up with something half as good as the real thing—a flush had spread from his face, down his neck, across his shoulders and chest; a layer of sweat had built up on his brow, and he had his eyelids screwed tight together from all his effort not to instantly cum.

You had been soaking for hours, but it had been so long since anything was inside of you and Jihoon was so wide that the light sting was inevitable. You hissed as he slowly drug his cock out of you, then slammed it back in. Your breasts shook with the force of it, and he took it upon himself to grab and squeeze one of them as he started a slow, steady rhythm of thrusts. You put your hands on his shoulders to brace yourself.

“I’ve been hard ever since I saw that was you at the shop,” Jihoon spoke up through gritted teeth, “I’d been ignoring how bad I’ve wanted you for years, and there you were, looking so naive and innocent trying to buy a fucking sex toy,” his statement came with a particularly hard thrust that made you cry out and clench tightly around him, “it was my every wet fucking dream come true.”

Jihoon opened his eyes to stare down at you, and you felt like you might dissolve from the pressure of the raw want they poured into yours. You’d never been able to read him very well, but now he was completely open to you, and you could see through his cold exterior to the simple, untainted affection he must have been harboring for you for awhile now. You felt a whole chunk of that wall around your heart ripped away.

You felt Jihoon’s touch on the outside of one of your knees, and then his hand was skimming up your thigh and around your hip until it dipped down to press a thumb to your clit. You ground down against it, inadvertently pressing more of his cock into you, and his tip scraped lightly against your g-spot. “Oh, fuck,” you wailed, and when he thrust back into you, you did it again, and this time he slanted his hips just so to stab at it again, but he didn’t pull out.

Now he stilled to let you rotate your hips, lips trembling around broken gasps as his cock brushed against your g-spot over and over and his thumb smoothed measured circles into your clit. You felt the pressure in the pit of your stomach bubbling up, past your belly button, dancing through your ribs, until it pressed desperately against your lungs. Just before you could burst, you wrapped your hands around the back of Jihoon’s neck and pulled him down with all the force you could muster—you slotted your lips over his and screamed into his mouth as you came. Jihoon started moving his hips again, and your orgasm faded only some before roaring back to life when his pace became frantic, his thrusts wicked and brutish, making his balls smack against your ass.

“C-Come for me, come for…come for me, Jihoonie,” you sighed against him, barely able to keep your eyes open, stars dancing behind their lids and beckoning you to drift into the most perfect of post-orgasmic naps, but you couldn’t do so until Jihoon had gotten his own release. You focused enough to suck that sinful bottom lip between yours, and clenched around him once, twice, a hard third time before Jihoon’s body went rigid on top of you. An animalistic groan erupted from him and bounced off the walls, the last thing you heard before you slipped into unconsciousness.

“’Cause tonight I’m making deals with the devil, and I know it’s gonna get me in trouble, just as long as you know you got me,” and Ariana Grande was the first thing you heard when you came back to the land of the living. Well, not exactly Ariana Grande, but Jihoon softly singing the song of hers that had been playing when you first set foot in Bits & Pieces Boutique. That felt like years ago after everything you’d just been through.

A soft touch on your thigh shocked you, but you controlled your body and didn’t jump away from what you could immediately tell was Jihoon’s hand rubbing up and down. You peeked an eye open and, god help you, you’d never seen anything more beautiful than Jihoon sat up against his headboard, scrolling through whatever on his phone with one hand while keeping the other protectively on you, the late evening sun spilling through his window and casting the most beautiful light against his soft, pale skin. His hair was going in a thousand different directions, his lips bruised, and he couldn’t have looked any better if he tried.

“I’ve been there all night, I’ve been there all day, and boy, got me walkin’ side to side,” he continued. You didn’t want him to stop, so you laid there silently, afraid to breathe lest he be alerted that you were awake, until he finished the song. And when he did he locked his phone and looked right down at you before he said, “You must have liked my singing, then.”

You gave him a girlish giggle, not physically capable of hiding the silly smile that stretched across your face. You went to sit up, but your arms were wobbly beneath your weight and you couldn’t manage it. Jihoon shook his head at you, turning and pressing your shoulders so you’d lay back back down, then petting your hair as you rested against one of his pillows. You noticed he’d put his briefs back on and you were a little disappointed.

“Just rest, that took a lot out of you,” Jihoon bragged, with a comically cocky grin, but instead of irritating you, it filled you with fondness. “I have to clean myself up,” you insisted, but Jihoon reached down and grabbed a wet washcloth off the floor before he reassured you, “I took care of you.”

He chose his words carefully, and you knew they were deliberate. You gulped down the rush of emotions that threatened to spill over. I took care of you. You’d never allowed yourself to think about it before, but he’d taken care of you so many times already.

“Thank you,” you whispered, and you meant it for everything. For putting that letter up on your door before you’d even met, for letting you into his apartment that night you were drunk, for plotting all those stupid ways to get back at you for all the stupid ways you were always getting back at him, for being at that party and taking you home and standing up for you against Seungri, for backing off and leaving you alone when he knew you needed it. For suggesting that stupid, beautiful vibrator that didn’t even work and brought you right to him. You didn’t say that it was for all of those things, but Jihoon knew, you were sure of it.

He shifted to lay beside you, and you rolled over to rest your head against his bicep and throw your arm across his chest. “You’re welcome,” he finally replied, “and thank you, too.” You didn’t ask for what—you knew what he meant, as well. The pair of you laid in silence for a few minutes, and Jihoon lifted the arm you weren’t laying on to reach his hand out to yours.

As you stared at your fingers and the way they fit so comfortably in between his, you suddenly remembered something that Seungri had said the night that you broke up with him: he believed you had wanted to fuck Jihoon all along. And maybe that was true, he was a good looking guy, after all…but ever since that first letter, you’d always wanted just a little more from him. At first, it was some respect. Then it was friendship, and a little over an hour ago, it had been sex.

You could feel the wall around your heart imploding and Jihoon was forcing his way inside, by way of squeezing your hand to break you out of your reverie and sending you a shy smile when you looked up at him. Yes, this was the man you’d wanted for a long time.

And as the dust settled, you hoped that maybe now, you could finally have him.

#woozi smut #jihoon smut #seventeen smut #kpop smut #woozi #seventeen #uhhh #seventeen scenarios #woozi scenarios #?????#i wrote this #hahahahahahha someone pls #read this n validate me #it took me like a month and a half to write this #and i probably nvr would have finished it if it weren't for #my angel of a bff breathing down my neck over it for weeks #i just want someone to like it :(

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