#come see me live at my stand up comedy routine where i show everyone this image on my phone and nobody can see it bc im on stage

[little-stinker]

distressed at the current news event and trying not to think about it but hey i just changed the pic for my study playlist and i didnt expect this to be so funny to me but it is and im feeling a little loopy rn i love binky barnes thank god for him

#i am going to look at this in the morning and say why did i post this but i seriously have felt so weighted down all day and just #binky barnes. his expression is the funniest thing to me rn and i really needed this #come see me live at my stand up comedy routine where i show everyone this image on my phone and nobody can see it bc im on stage #comedy for me and me alone. they never invite me back to that venue again #i need to sleep soon #tommy talks

[gukyi]

if i told you | jjk

summary: in order to pay for university, jeon jungkook decides to market his most valuable asset to the wealthy socialites of campus: himself. donning a suit and tie, tousled hair, and glasses (to look smarter), he becomes every rich daughter’s dream: the perfect boyfriend to bring to balls, dinners, and business gatherings. all while you watch from the sidelines, only able to dream of having that much money to buy yourself what you really want: him.

{friends to lovers!au, college!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, angst, we’ve got it all folks word count: 22k warnings: slightly underage alcohol consumption, mention of words that could be spoken on an crime documentary series but nothing graphic, ravioli-stealing, idiots to lovers, as per usual a/n: finally! here is the long awaited jungkook fic that i have literally been slaving over since the beginning of january. was this fic supposed to be 10k? yes. did i somehow end up writing 22k anyway? of course! in any case, please enjoy my absolute baby who i love and cherish!

check out the post-script drabble here!

Jeon Jungkook loses his job at the university call center on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year. 

You know this because on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 2:07PM, seven minutes after he normally starts his job at the university call center. 

He’s lucky that you’re the only one who doesn’t have class in the 2PM hour. 

“Y/N!” He shouts through the thin wooden door, his voice probably echoing down the thin hallway of your apartment complex. 

You open it before the second knock—you only rush to the door to get him to shut the fuck up, and not because you’re excited to see him, you swear—to see him standing on the other side, XXL university hoodie draped over his figure, down to his mid-thigh, baggy hood pulled over his head like a sad college-aged Star Wars character. He looks exactly like a jaded sophomore year college student would. He is beautiful. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the call center right now?” You ask in lieu of a normal “hello” or even a “what the fuck are you doing here, it’s 2PM”. Jungkook does not wait for you to invite him inside your apartment, immediately kicks off his shoes by the entrance and tugs on your apartment slippers that are a size-and-a-half too small for his feet, and marches over to your shared fridge to fish through the tupperware containers with your name written on Post-it notes for a mid-afternoon snack. 

Jungkook waits until he’s got an entire piece of frozen supersized ravioli shoved into his mouth before he responds. “I was fired,” he says over a mouthful of pasta and cheese.

“What?” You ask, eyes widening as Jungkook shuffles through your kitchen drawers for a fork, which means that the first piece of ravioli that he ate he did so with his bare ass hands. Like a heathen. Like a ravioli-craving twenty-year-old heathen. 

“I was fired,” Jungkook repeats. He stares at the microwave resting on your kitchen counter for a good ten seconds before he continues to eat the cold, unheated pasta. Every time he’s in your apartment (which is frequently), he tells you how it’s a fire, water, and explosive hazard to have your microwave on the counter like that. As if there is any other place in your apartment for it to go. Maybe out on the tiny balcony you have that overlooks the busiest street on campus. 

“Care to offer an explanation as to why?” You ask, coming up next to him. Jungkook is nearly finished with your tupperware of ravioli, and normally you’d shout at him for it, but seeing as he was just fired from his only source of income as a money-starved college student, you’ll cut him some slack. Just a little. 

“You remember that old, angry alumnus that told me that asking for donations in order to benefit low-income-slash-first generation students was selfish and rude of me, and that I wouldn’t be in college if it weren’t for what his generation accomplished?” Jungkook asks. 

You remember that vividly. Jungkook spent an approximate two hours and thirty-seven minutes on FaceTime with you ranting about this one “old man bitch” who he had to speak to during his day at work, all while you did your economics problem set to the sweet, mellifluous sound of Jungkook’s shrill shrieks. 

“The one you lost your temper at and shouted at for being ungrateful and elitist?” You ask pointedly. You have a feeling you already know where this conversation is going. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes. He finishes the ravioli (goddamnit, now you’re going to have to find something else to eat for dinner at 11PM tonight) and turns around to place it in the sink. For once, it is not piled high with dishes from up to a week ago, so Jungkook even squirts a bit of Dawn onto a sponge and washes the plastic container for you. “Well, as it turns out, telling an old racist elitist that he’s old, racist, and elitist does not go down well with my boss.”

“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse. Jungkook sighs, walking over to where you’re taking it easy on the couch. “Oh no,” you say, eyes widening as he grins, plotting something. “Do not, Jungkook. Jungkook, do not!”

He jumps, catapulting himself onto the couch and landing on top of you with a thud. You let out a groan as the weight of his body hits you, foreheads nearly knocking into each other. Jungkook is a good foot-and-a-half too long for this dinky leather couch that’s always sort of smelled, feet and ankles hanging off the opposing arm rest just so he can nuzzle his face into the crook of your shoulder like he always does. You hate when he does this. Hate when he jumps onto the couch while you’re casually reclining just so he can collapse on top of you. Hate the feeling of his body resting against yours, soft breathes against the skin of your neck. Hate how it always makes you want more, how it will never be enough. 

“Have you been working out?” You mumble against the fabric of his t-shirt. “You’re more muscle-y than usual.”

“I added weights to my routine,” Jungkook tells you mindlessly. If your roommates walked into your apartment right now and saw the both of you on the couch, you’d never hear the end of it. “Taehyung said it would make me more swole.”

“As if you need to be any more buff,” you say with a roll of your eyes. Jungkook’s the most athletic person you’ve ever met in your entire life. He could probably pick up your dinky couch with you sitting on it without batting an eyelash. Even Superman would tremble at the sight of him. “You’re perfect the way you are.”

“Thanks, Y/N,” Jungkook mutters into your skin. “God, what the fuck am I gonna do now? I need money to pay for everything in my life and my one source of income is now totally invalid because an old guy got what he deserved.”

“Are there any work-study positions still available?” You ask, hand reaching up to stroke at his hair, smoothing it down. Jungkook’s preferred cuddling position is big spoon, but he still demands that he be coddled as though he were the little spoon. 

“No,” Jungkook says with a huff, “they’ve all been snagged by try-hard freshmen who need money like me.”

“I distinctly recall you being a try-hard freshman who also needed money,” you tell him. “That’s why you applied to work at the call center, isn’t it?”

Jungkook sits up, the weight of his figure crushing your legs as he rests on top of them. If you stayed like this forever, you’d probably lose feeling in your lower body, but you’d also get to stay with Jungkook forever, which is a trade-off you would genuinely consider. “Yeah, but the call center hires everybody. You just need to be like… decent at communication. And I’m pretty decent at communication.”

“You never text me back,” you tell him pointedly. 

“That’s because I prefer showing up unannounced at your apartment or other places you frequent,” Jungkook reminds you excitedly. He’ll never let you forget about the time you were wrapping up a small seminar with your history professor and Jungkook burst through the doors with a whole thing of carrots and hummus because you had texted him that you were hungry. You could not look your history professor in the eye for the rest of the semester. “I’d say that’s pretty decent communication.”

“Well, you’re going to have to figure out another way to market your decent communication skills to get another job,” you tell him. “Have you considered the boba place on Oak? You could get me employee discounts.”

Jungkook leans over just to pinch at your cheek, fingers gripping onto your face and pulling like a grandmother. “You just want me for my money.”

“You’re my best friend, Jeon Jungkook,” you tell him. “Of course I do.”

This is what Jeon Jungkook’s obligatory university Facebook group introduction post read:

Hi, I’m Jungkook and I’m thinking of majoring in visual studies or computer science (really different lol I know)! I played soccer in high school but don’t think I’ll be continuing in college because I was pretty bad at it. I’m looking for a roommate and I’d really like to live in New East House, but anything works for me as long as it has a bed. Hit me up if you think we’d made a good match, but I like talking with everyone lol. 

I’m really into music and can play the guitar, drums, and piano. I like listening to all types of music (yes, even country which slaps kinda hard sometimes) but my favorites are The 1975, Frank Ocean, Troye Sivan, and Khalid. Will bop to Justin Bieber on occasion as well. 

I play Ultimate and am really interested in joining the club team here so hit me up and we can practice sometime because my skills are a little rusty. I also do a little skateboarding but I am definitely not a skater. 

Hit me up if you think we can be friends lol I’m excited to meet you all!

It was accompanied by several pictures, a couple of which are selfies at that anime girl angle, one of him with his friends at prom all doing that Frat Boy pose, and a couple of him with his family. To an outsider doing a very quick glance, it pretty much reads the same as a rather extensive dating profile. 

The truth of it all is, as you were scrolling through the hundreds of obligatory university Facebook group introduction posts in search of a freshman year roommate, you stumbled upon Jungkook’s intro post and you thought this: No. Way.

The moment you laid eyes on his first above-the-head angle selfie, you knew that it would be unlikely that you and Jeon Jungkook’s paths would ever cross. He played guitar and did Ultimate Frisbee, and you wanted to audition for your university’s symphony orchestra. He was beautiful but in that sort of college frat boy who can crush you at beer pong kind of way. Craziest of all, he was a computer science major, and you were walking in as an undecided humanities concentration. 

Impossible. There was no way the two of you would ever meet, and you accepted that right off that bat. At a school your size, you would go through these four years not knowing a majority of your class. Jeon Jungkook was just one of the casualties. 

On the very first day of orientation, Jeon Jungkook comes up to you on the sidewalk, wearing a white t-shirt, a backwards baseball cap, and shorts, and asks you if you’re here for orientation as well? He’s lost. 

Jeon Jungkook is the type of guy you imagine getting eaten up by any girl who meets him almost immediately. He’s charming and endearing the same way a baby deer is, but has no problem wearing clothes that remind you of how fit he is. He is, for lack of a better term, extremely good looking. 

“Yeah,” you had said on the sidewalk, squinting to look up at him since the sun was in your eyes. “I’m heading to the auditorium right now. Wanna walk with me?”

“Okay, sure,” Jungkook had replied, smiling with all of his teeth. Even in the sweaty summer heat, he looked even nicer in person. “Thanks, by the way. I’m Jungkook. What’s your name?”

You knew that already. How could you have forgotten? 

You had grinned up at him. The universe has always worked in mysterious ways. “I’m Y/N. Nice to meet you.”

When Jungkook doesn’t know what to do, he stress eats. Most often, you are the single witness to this action, which has literally no effect on his body mass whatsoever since he immediately burns off every calorie (and then some) at his next gym session. 

That is precisely why you are sitting in the second-best dining hall on campus eating a pretty measly salad and french fries, while Jungkook returns from the serve-yourself cafeteria with his sixth plate of food. Next to you is your mutual friend Chaewon, a filthy rich international student from Korea who is probably the nicest person you’ve ever met. 

“I think I’ve called every cafe, bubble tea shop, clothing store, and paid internship within a five-mile radius of this place and nothing,” Jungkook says with a sigh, keeping Chaewon updated with his job-search antics. It’s been several days since he was fired, and while being keenly cognizant of your bank account isn’t necessarily a bad thing, when it means that Jungkook refuses to leave campus because he is in hyper-saving mode, it sort of rustles your jimmies. 

“Have you tried babysitting?” Chaewon supplies helpfully. 

You laugh aloud at the mere thought of Jungkook stuck in some middle-aged parent’s house with their toddler for hours on a night where he could be living it up on campus. Jeon Jungkook? A babysitter?

“Wow, what the heck is wrong with me being a babysitter?” Jungkook questions, offended. 

“First of all, you don’t even let me beat you in Mario Kart on your Switch and I am your best friend. If you ended up gaming with a four-year-old boy, your over-competitiveness would take over you and you’d crush the poor kid and his spirit,” you remind him pointedly. Not to mention the fact that the man cannot cook to save his life, and you can’t even entrust him with microwave dinners because of his irrational fear of modern oven technology. 

Jungkook pouts. He knows you’re right. 

“It’s not like you were going to look into babysitting, anyway,” you say with a shove, nudging his shoulder with your own. 

Jungkook sighs, and despite all of the shit you give him on a daily basis (part of the responsibility of being his best friend), you do genuinely feel bad for him. Even if his job at the call center wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating nor morally rewarding, he didn’t absolutely hate it and he made a pretty decent earning off of it. He unzips his backpack and fumbles for his laptop, opening it up to reveal a Google Chrome window with approximately thirty-seven tabs open of places to work on and around campus. Meanwhile, Chaewon’s phone buzzes on the table, and she heaves out a great, exasperated exhale before picking up and immediately launching off into incredibly speedy Korean. 

“If only the bubble tea place was hiring,” you lament, kissing goodbye all of the free bubble tea you had been dreaming about if Jungkook got hired. 

“I’m glad I don’t work at the bubble tea place,” Jungkook tells you with his eyebrows raised, “otherwise I’d have to see you every day!” 

“You already see me every day!” You should back, but it’s not like Jungkook doesn’t know that already. He’s the one always barging into your apartment or sitting down next to you in the library when you’re trying to study. 

“But maybe you should try drinking less bubble tea, otherwise you’re gonna blow up like a tapioca pearl like that one girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Jungkook warns, pinching your cheek as if to make your face round like a tapioca bubble. 

“I can think of nothing I’d want more than to be a tapioca pearl for the rest of my life,” you state simply. It would be much less stressful than to be a college student. 

“If you were a tapioca pearl, I’d eat you!” Jungkook says, and you, out of the security of both your head and your heart, choose not to think too much into it. 

As Jungkook teases you about your slight obsession with bubble tea, Chaewon finally puts the phone down after what very well was several minutes of angry Korean. She lets out this deep, long sigh, like all of the pent-up rage within her is exiting through her exhale. 

“You good, Chae?” You ask her, a little concerned. Even after knowing her since the beginning of your freshman year, you’ve never once seen her get mad, though she looks pretty close to it now. 

“Yeah,” she says, exasperated. “My mom is having this stupid company ball here and she really, really wants me to attend.” It is obvious that Chaewon does not, in fact, want to attend. You’ve seen Chaewon nearly every day for over a year, and you’ve never even seen her wear a pantsuit. You couldn’t imagine her joy at having to dress up in a ballgown. 

“But fancy free food,” you point out. Even if she does have to be trapped in a penthouse ballroom with her parents’ stuffy business friends, the catering company will probably be god-tier. 

Chaewon pretty much bangs her head on the dining hall table. 

“Wow, I didn’t know someone could hate catered food so much,” you say, a little alarmed. 

“It’s not that,” Chaewon says, rubbing her forehead. The pasta on the plate in front of her has remained untouched for nearly ten minutes now. You wonder if she’s even hungry anymore. “My mom wants me to bring a plus-one.”

Your eyes widen. An excuse to dress nice and eat good food? Hell yeah. 

“And it can’t be you, Y/N, it has to be a date,” Chaewon says. It’s pretty obvious she’s not interested in dating whatsoever, no matter the gender of the object of her affection. You pout. Damn. “My mom said, ‘he can be whoever you want!’ but that means that he has to be an attractive Korean guy who’s got a future job in finance.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jungkook says over a mouthful of broccoli. 

“You will?” Chaewon asks. Jungkook just single-handedly saved Chaewon from a night of unbearable business talk with a boy she doesn’t know and cannot relate to. 

You scoff. “You’re just a regular Korean dude, Jungkook,” you tell him. 

Jungkook pouts, bottom lip turned out. “You don’t think I’m attractive?”

You refuse to answer that question. You’re afraid of what you might say if you open your mouth. 

“Seriously, you’d do that for me?” Chaewon turns to Jungkook with platonic stars in her eyes. 

Jungkook shrugs. “Sure. I’ve got a suit. I’ll ask my friend Jimin for a crash course in finance before the thing. When is it?”

And just like that, you and Jungkook’s weekly Friday Mario Kart night gets a rain check. 

 Jeon Jungkook is the sole best decision of your life. 

And it’s funny and twisted and wonderful, because he is the one thing you had failed to account for in your life. He stands there on the sidewalk in the blazing sun, black baseball cap nestled safely onto his dark brown hair, and in the split second it takes for him to open his mouth and say hello, everything changes. 

But no longer is the image you conjure in your mind when you think of him a picture of him on that very first day of orientation, lost and excited all at once. It is of him barging into your apartment and eating all of your leftover ravioli. It’s him laying on your dinky couch like it belongs to him, surfing through all of the Netflix shows available and eventually just settling on old Gilmore Girls episodes like he always does. It’s him standing in your closet to judge your latest clothing purchases and take back any items that you’ve stolen from him over the years. 

It’s imagining him not as a guest but as a permanent fixture in your home, in the place that makes you feel safest. Because that’s who Jungkook is, now. He is that place. He stands in your apartment rattling off a list of why microwaves are a severely underestimated killer, and it takes every inch of your being not to ask him to stay. To spend night after night cuddling on the couch, or make a home-cooked meal together on a Sunday evening, or get lost underneath the sheets on your bed.

Jungkook stands in your apartment like he belongs there. And only in your wildest dreams could you ever imagine that coming true.

Such is the case of that Friday night, when he’s supposed to accompany Chaewon to her terrible, awful, brain-melting parents’ business gala. You haven’t seen him all day, too busy with your club meetings to make time for him after your classes are finished for the week. College is never-ending in that horrible, unstoppable way. 

It’s nearing two in the morning when you hear the knock on your door. Two of your roommates are at a rush event for their sorority, and the other sleeps through your smoke alarm on a regular basis, so you are tasked with the job of opening the door. 

On the other side is Jungkook, as he frequently is. 

Your heart practically freezes in place, like his eyes have shot right through it. Instead of his usual baggy outfit and a bucket hat, he’s standing outside of your apartment in a crisp navy suit (complete with a pocket square), rings lining his fingers and hair tousled in that effortlessly-styled kind of way. He looks like a goddamn celebrity, like a young, successful CEO. Like the love of your whole fucking life. 

Coughing to distract from the fact that you’re practically drooling, you say, “Wow, you clean up nicely.”

Jungkook looks down at himself, almost as if he had forgotten he’s wearing a full suit entirely. “The pocket square is Jimin’s,” he explains, “but yeah. I didn’t want to let Chaewon down by not dressing up to code.”

He’s got remnants of makeup left on his face, having faded and smudged throughout the night. There’s a bit of black underneath his eyes from the liner, a smoldering effect that makes the dark brown of his irises even deeper. “You look tired,” you comment. “Why are you here, why don’t you go home, Jungkook? Get some sleep.”

Jungkook shrugs, looking over your shoulder to see if his arrival has woken up any of your roommates. “Your place was closer,” he says like it’s nothing. 

Like it doesn’t make your breath catch in your throat, stop in its tracks. He spends an evening dressed up in a stuffy suit and tie surrounded by old businessmen and their preppy daughters with whom he has nothing in common, and when it’s nearly two in the morning and he can finally relax, he drives to your place instead of his own. Like it means nothing. As if it means anything at all. 

Jungkook runs a hand through his perfectly styled hair, and even knotted and messy it still looks flawless. “If I’m bothering you, just let me know. I know it’s late.”

It’s so hard to say no to him. 

“Just come inside already before you wake up the neighbors,” you tell him, sighing to pretend like it’s a minor inconvenience. And even running on barely any sleep with makeup smudged underneath his eyes, Jungkook grins as you let him inside your apartment, caving in, just like you always do. 

The first thing he does when he’s inside is take off his fancy loafers and peel off his suit jacket, resting it against the back of the couch. You fumble around in the kitchen for the kettle, instinctively starting to make two cups of tea. Routine. 

Looking up, you watch as Jungkook loosens his tie and takes it off, unbuttoning the first two buttons of his white dress shirt. By the counter, you turn your back to him so he doesn’t see you mentally combust. It’s impossible that he doesn’t already know what he does to you. 

The kettle finishes boiling the moment Jungkook settles onto your couch. He keeps the television off so he doesn’t wake your roommates, and scrolls on his phone with his knees tucked underneath his chin. Thirty seconds later, you’re joining him, handing him the cup of tea before sitting down next to him, severely underdressed in comparison. 

“Did you at least have fun tonight?” You ask. 

“The food totally slapped,” Jungkook tells you. “Chaewon’s parents really pulled out all the stops.”

“So I’ve heard,” you muse. 

“We spent most of the time lounging by the catering table and distracting each other by making up stories about all of the rich people there.” Jungkook laughs. 

“Please tell me you didn’t embarrass yourself, though,” you say. Perhaps Jungkook could withstand a few blows to his ego, but Chaewon’s future pretty much depends on her impressing her parents and their comrades. 

“No!” Jungkook tells you defensively. “Jimin told me everything I needed to know, but all of Chaewon’s friends and their filthy rich CEO parents thought I was so handsome that I didn’t even need to speak.”

You roll your eyes. Of course Jungkook wouldn’t give up the chance to remind you of his hellishly good looks. 

“You just stood there, looking pretty?” You ask. Not as if he doesn’t do that already. 

“You think I’m pretty?” Jungkook teases, a greasy smile sent your way, like he doesn’t know the answer anyway. 

You huff. “Dressed up like this? Anyone would.”

“Chaewon said I was like her fake trophy husband,��� Jungkook jokes. “She did all of the schmoozing. It’s not like I could have contributed anything anyway. Unless everyone wants to hear about C++.”

“Ooh, I love it when you talk all tech to me,” you tease, nudging him with your arm. “So sexy, keep talking.”

He laughs. “If we keep talking about Python I might get a little too excited.” He wiggles his eyebrows just for good measure and you giggle, holding onto this moment for dear life as you let it etch itself into your brain permanently. Times like these, you know you can’t forget, saving them for a rainy day thirty years down the line when you’re in love with someone that’s not Jungkook. When you look out the window and think about what might have been, if only things back in college had been a little bit different. 

Jungkook’s phone buzzes on the table. He’s got two notifications, one from Instagram of Chaewon tagging him in a post, and another from Venmo. 

“Fuckin’ damnit,” Jungkook swears, letting his phone drop on the couch cushion. 

“What?” You ask, turning to look at him. 

“Chaewon just Venmo’ed me a hundred dollars,” Jungkook says with a sigh. And it’s not one of those times when you see your bank account balance go up and get happy because yay, money!, it’s when your friend pays you anything over what they actually owe you out of the goodness of your heart, and you refuse to accept it. 

“She did?” You ask, eyes widening. A hundred dollars? That’s more than Jungkook would make in three shifts at the call center. 

“‘Thanks for bailing me out tonight. You definitely deserve more than 100 but then you’d be mad at me. But please don’t be mad at me!’” Jungkook reads off his phone. “I just stood there looking like eye candy. I didn’t do a thing to help her, what the heck?”

You pull out your own phone to check Chaewon’s latest post. 

It’s a picture of them together in the skyscraper penthouse the gala was held in, Jungkook looking dapper in his suit with a glass of champagne in his hand, and Chaewon in a dress worth more than a semester’s tuition throwing up a peace sign like the trendy Asian she is. They look like a K-drama couple. Like two celebrities basking in their fame and wealth. 

Shoutout to my one and only Jeon Jungkook for being my fake date tonight! Thanks to your good looks and charming personality for impressing all of my parents’ rich friends and their daughters. Love you 3000 💕

“Wow, whoever took this picture of the both of you knows their shit,” you say, impressed. You had always thought it impossible for Jungkook to look better in pictures than in real life, but this photo is coming rather close. If you were any more shameless, you’d ask Chaewon if she has any more photos of him. Just him, preferably. 

It’s not as if she doesn’t know about your gargantuan crush on him anyway. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever looked that good in a photo in my life,” Jungkook says with a laugh. Impossible. He yawns, placing his empty mug on the little end table next to the couch. 

“You should set it as your profile picture,” you suggest, leaning your head on him and pretending like this is normal. He yawns again, stretching out as he rests his body against yours. “Hey, we should go to sleep. Unless you want to go home?”

Jungkook groans, snuggling in closer. “No, your bed is big enough for the two of us.”

And who are you to resist?

You wake up to the sound of a phone buzzing furiously on your bedside table. You crack open one eye just a sliver to see who the culprit is and immediately eradicate it, when the sun filtering through your Venetian blinds hits your cornea. You groan, shutting your eyes once more as you smack your hand around to get it to shut off. 

The movement, however, causes the bedsheets to shift beside you, and when you turn, you find Jungkook nestled up tightly beneath your duvet, an arm stretched over your side as he hums in his sleep. 

You’re best friends. 

This is normal. 

(The feeling of your heart beating out of its chest has become rather normal, as well.)

He’s wearing a raggedy old t-shirt of yours that has always been too big on you but fits him just perfectly and a pair of joggers that he keeps at your place “just in case”. Just in case he stays the night. Just in case you ever need them. Selfishly, you will yourself to fall back asleep, shutting your eyes tightly and pretending that maybe, if you never wake up, this moment will freeze in time, locking the two of you together for eternity. 

He mumbles to himself in his sleep, a murmur of nothing as he shifts over slightly, hand dragging up your side. 

God. 

Next to you, the phone begins to buzz erratically again, and wide-awake, you look over to realize that it’s Jungkook’s, and that it’s Chaewon on the other end. 

This is at least the second time she’s called, which means that, despite how tempting it is, you probably shouldn’t silence his phone and go back to lying in bed with Jungkook and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

Sighing, you pick up. 

“Jungkook!” Chaewon shouts on the other side. For a brief moment you wonder why on earth she’s so energetic so early, but it’s less that and more the fact that you are overwhelmingly lethargic rather late in the day. “All of my friends said you looked really good in those photos I posted of us. Do you think you’re free next Wednesday night? Seunghee wants you to accompany her to a double date her parents are forcing her to go on!”

“Chaewon—”

“Oh, Y/N! How’s it going?”

“I just woke up,” you mumble quietly as Jungkook stirs beside you. 

“Of course you did,” Chaewon says, and you can see her rolling her eyes on the other side of the line. “Wait, why do you have Jungkook’s phone if you just woke up? Oh my God, don’t tell me—”

“Shh!” You hiss into the phone. Jungkook is slowly beginning to wake up, and you can only pray that he isn’t listening in to the conversation between you and Chaewon. “No, we did not. He got back after your thing and we promptly passed out in my bed, fully clothed,” you whisper loudly. 

“Jungkook went to your place last night? He was so tired, I thought he was going straight back to his. We even got dropped off outside my apartment.”

What? Chaewon and Jungkook live within a three-minute walk of each other. Your apartment is ten minutes away from both of them. 

“You did?” You ask, eyebrows furrowing. 

“Who’s that?” 

You turn around to see Jungkook lying on his back, head resting on a nearly-deflated pillow of yours as he looks up at you, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His hair is mussed, some parts styled and stiff with hair gel, and some parts tangled and unkempt. He looks like he’s been lying in that position for a while, hand resting behind his head as he gazes up at you. 

“It’s Chaewon,” you tell him softly as she laughs on the other end. “She just called your phone. Are you free next Wednesday?”

“Hmm?” Jungkook, still half-asleep. “When?”

“Next Wednesday,” you repeat, a hand on the phone like it’s going to do anything to stop Chaewon from listening to you two. “Chaewon says she has a friend who wants you to accompany her to a double date she’s been set up to go on by her parents.”

“Mmmrph,” Jungkook mumbles. It’s clear he hasn’t even thought about his plans for the rest of the day, let alone next Wednesday. 

“He’s not available right now,” you say into the phone. Chaewon snorts. 

“Fine,” Chaewon says with a sigh. “Can you pass the message on when you guys are done pretending that you aren’t fucking behind my back?”

You suck in a breath. “Chaewon!” You hiss. “We are not—” you quickly turn back to Jungkook, who, by the looks of his hooded eyes and bewildered expression, isn’t listening in, “—fucking!” You whisper. “You know we’re not!”

Chaewon laughs. “Yeah, yeah. Call me later, Y/N, we should grab ice cream or something.” She hangs up. 

“Who was that?” Jungkook asks sleepily, eyes still half-lidded as he sits up in your bed, soft skin, brown hair, pouted lips amongst a sea of white, bundled up in your thick duvet as if sitting on a cloud. 

“Chaewon,” you tell him. 

“Oh, why was she calling?”

“She wanted to ask if you were free next Wednesday.”

“To do what?”

Maybe you were worried about Jungkook listening in to Chaewon grill you about your relationship (or serious lack thereof) for nothing. 

“She has a friend who wants you to go on a parent-mandated double date, trophy boyfriend style,” you explain. Jungkook groans. 

“Pretending to know business is mentally, physically, and morally draining. It feels like I’m selling my soul to capitalism,” he says with a sigh, collapsing back against the mattress. “I just wanna stay here forever. It’s so cozy.”

“Come on, Kook,” you say, tugging the duvet off of him to reveal the rest of his body. He curls into himself at the exposure, refusing to budge. “You’ve encroached on my apartment long enough.”

“Y/N,” Jungkook whines, drawing out your name for good measure. “Noooooooo.” He reaches out to cling onto your wrist, which means that if you want him out of your bed, you’ll have to drag him out.

“Jungkook, you’re swole, you know I can’t tug you out of my bed,” you say with a pout. He knows every trick in the book to use against you, and worst of all, he knows you’re weak to all of them. 

“Good,” Jungkook says with a loopy smile, pulling you back onto the bed like it’s nothing. You yelp as you come crashing on top of him, your body bumping into his as he wraps his arms around you and flops back onto your bed. You laugh and shout at the feeling as Jungkook cuddles up in the warmth of the sheets, pulling you in tightly to his body. “It’s so warm here, let’s stay like this forever.”

“What about food?”

“You keep a stash of Clif bars under your bed, we’ll eat those,” Jungkook suggests. 

You attempt to wriggle out of his grip, hoping to escape before he holds you long enough to get addicted, hooked on the feeling of his arms around you, his body against yours. But Jungkook is nothing if not persistent and clingy, and he wraps his arms tightly around your torso like a koala, warm and soft. “Come on, Jungkook. It’s nearly noon. Let’s be productive today.”

“Gross.”

“Let’s not sit in bed all day.”

“Grosser. Let’s just stay in your bed all day and pretend that we don’t have any real responsibilities.”

“Given that we’re in college, that may be slightly difficult.”

“Fuck that, your GPA doesn’t matter anyway. Unless you have plans on going to grad school?” He asks with an eyebrow raise, turning to look at you. 

“No way, I’m not paying for another four years of this shit,” you immediately declare. Let the capitalist system of higher education extort another two to four years worth of tuition out of you for the same degree? Absolutely not. 

“Then why move?” Jungkook says with a grin. 

“Because,” you say, stumbling for a real answer. 

“Not good enough.” He grins cheekily. “I vote to stay in bed.”

“I vote to do my readings, your CS homework, and get back to Chaewon about Wednesday.”

“God,” Jungkook says with a sigh. “What’s Wednesday?”

“Oh my God, you need to call Chaewon. Right now. Before you ask me what you have on Wednesday one more time after losing all of your brain cells lounging around in my personal bed and refusing to leave,” you say, eyes wide as you worm your way out of his grip, dusting yourself off and heading to your closet. 

“Noooooooo,” Jungkook says, reaching out a desperate hand. “Y/N, come back.”

“Call Chaewon. Call her!” You order, fishing around in your closet for some fresh clothes. You’ve been wearing the same one since Thursday night. You are disgusting. 

Jungkook groans but obeys, picking up his phone and pressing her contact. “Hey Chae, it’s Jungkook. Listen, I’m literally going to Venmo you back what you paid me because you? Literally didn’t need to pay me at all? And I’m actually mad at you for it? Wait, what do you mean am I up to getting paid on Wednesday—”

The phone call presents the perfect opportunity for you to dash out of your bedroom and into the bathroom, where you splash yourself with cold tap water like a model in a face wash commercial (who already has perfect skin, so why does she need this new face wash, seriously?) to clear your head. It’s been a weird twelve hours. Even weirder knowing that across the hall, Jungkook is sitting in your room, on your bed, in your clothes, under your bed sheets. Knowing that maybe, in another universe, on another timeline, you would be in the exact same positions, only everything would be different. 

You wash your face, hoping to wake yourself up. Convince your mind that the past twelve hours have been nothing but a dream, and that when you walk back into your room, Jungkook will have vanished. Or he would have never been there in the first place. 

You leave the bathroom and return to your bedroom to see Jungkook tugging on his suit jacket, wearing the same clothes he had on when he knocked on your door at 2AM last night. He’s still on the phone, wrapping up the conversation with Chaewon. 

“Yeah, yeah, tell her that I’m down. She can just text me, give her my number. I’m happy to do this for you and your friends, Chae. Plus, she’s gonna pay me and I feel less bad about it because it’s a service and she’s not a close friend like you are. Yeah, it’s all good,” he looks up to see you standing at the door, leaning against the frame. “Yeah, Y/N just got back so I’m gonna go. Maybe we can grab dinner or something tonight? Cool. Bye.”

“Dinner without me?” You ask with a pout. 

“Never,” Jungkook says wickedly. “You’re always invited.”

“Have you figured out what’s going on on Wednesday?” You tease him as you walk him to the door. 

“Chaewon has a friend, Soojin, who wants me to accompany her on a parent-mandated double date with a business partner’s daughter,” Jungkook explains. “Apparently all of Chaewon’s friends realized I make a pretty good fake trophy boyfriend.”

You rub his shoulder. He’d make a great real boyfriend too. Not that you think about that all of the time, or anything. “Gonna put that on your resume, big guy?”

“Of course.” Jungkook smiles. “Dinner tonight? We can go to the ramen place you really like.”

“Sure thing, is Chaewon coming?”

“If she wants to. Otherwise, it’ll just be us.”

“Sounds good,” you tell him. “See you then.”

“Hopefully before,” Jungkook says. “Thanks for letting me crash here last night, by the way.”

“Anytime,” you say. Maybe one day, it’ll be true. 

Next Wednesday, there’s a knock on your door at midnight. 

Who else could it be?

It was supposed to be a one-time thing. And then it was supposed to be just a two-time thing. And before you knew it, Jungkook’s number and his services were circling through the ring of wealthy international students, jumping from phone to phone as people crammed to get him to accompany them on their next double date, next business gala, next ballroom dance. 

You had always had a feeling that his charming, charismatic personality would eventually draw everybody towards him, so electric and magnetic that you couldn’t help but want to know him, make friends with him, be close to him. From the moment you saw his Facebook introduction post, you knew it was only a matter of time before everyone on campus knew his name.

[October 17th, 4:12PM] You: do u want to get dinner tonight

Jungkook: would love to but have to go to kim family business dinner with dahyun sorry :(

You: ok next time then!

[October 23rd, 1:03PM]

You: yo what r u doing You: i have so many readings to do rip You: do u wanna come to greene w me and study

Jungkook: heejin is taking me shopping for a fancy suit for her family’s event tomorrow i can’t :/ Jungkook: but i am going to get macaroons for u at the mall so we can see each other later!

You: yummm sure thing!

[October 30th, 9:58AM]

You: hey ik you’re asleep rn but we are still on for tomorrow right? 🎃 You: can’t let our one (1) year long halloween tradition of buying last-minute candy and watching the nightmare before christmas together die

[October 30th, 11:13PM]

Jungkook: omg i just saw this now im so sorry Jungkook: uh yeonjoo wants me to go to her sister’s halloween party tm so idk if i can make it this year

[October 31st, 2:02AM]

You: ok You: thanks for telling me

It’s no fun watching The Nightmare Before Christmas by yourself, you realize this Halloween. All of your roommates are out frequenting one of the hundreds of parties being thrown on campus tonight, and although you’d normally be up for getting drunk and dropping it low, you just aren’t in the Halloween spirit this year. Wonder why. 

Armed with the knowledge that your roommates probably won’t be back until three or four in the morning, you shut your laptop and decide to go to bed early. Early being midnight, but it’s early for you and that’s all that really matters. 

You don’t know why you’re being such a stick in the mud this Halloween. It’s always been one of your favorite holidays, never one to pass up free candy nor the option to dress up, but this one has been particularly lame. You don’t have a costume, your local drugstore is out of mini Skittles packets, and you don’t have someone to spend it with. 

Realistically, you have no reason to be sad that Jungkook isn’t available tonight. It’s not as if spending Halloween together is some ancient tradition from birth that binds the two of you together. You did it for the first time as freshmen, and you were foolishly hoping to do the same thing as sophomores. It’s not a tradition if it only happened once. 

You look in the bathroom mirror, stained with nail polish and dry shampoo and old skincare, and you sigh. Jungkook has every right to prioritize his current and only source of income over a night spent lounging on the couch doing nothing. It’s not as if you haven’t seen your best friend in over a month and this was the only night you both had free. Jungkook drops by after every single event he goes on. Every single one. He stands outside your door dressed in a fancy suit, or a silk button down, leather shoes and expensive jewelry bought for him by the girls he goes out with.

No matter the time, he knocks on your door and says hello, steals a cup of tea and a bit of your heart along with it, before bouncing out of your living room and off to his own apartment. He doesn’t stay the night anymore, doesn’t worm his way underneath your duvet and refuse to move until morning comes. It’s hard to tell if you’re grateful about it or not. 

Sluggishly, you peel off your clothes and wash your face, changing into some old sweatpants from the tenth grade and a t-shirt with an embarrassingly large hole in the armpit. This Halloween, you are dressing up as a lonely college student who is going to bed early on Halloween night because she has nothing better to do!

There’s a knock on your door. 

Your first instinct is to freeze up. When there’s another knock, your second instinct is to grab the closest object to you (which happens to be your water bottle) for self-defense. 

And then, you hear,

“You’re not watching The Nightmare before Christmas without me, are you?”

To spare yourself the shame, you won’t say that you practically leapt out of bed the moment you heard his voice. You calmly removed the covers, and casually walked to the front door. That is what you did. 

When you open it, Jungkook is standing behind it, grinning, wearing the greasiest police officer outfit you’ve ever seen in your entire life. This flew at a marketing company’s heir’s Halloween party? He’s even got what looks to be a fully-loaded water gun in his holster. 

“Don’t tell me this is what you wore to some fancy-shmancy Halloween party,” you say disapprovingly, eyebrows raised as you look him up and down and pretend that you aren’t just ogling his figure. 

“It was fine, Yeonjoo’s sister just graduated college. If anything, she was more okay with it than Yeonjoo was,” Jungkook says with a shrug. You don’t even need to let him in at this point, just watch as he tugs off his shoes and steps inside your apartment like it belongs to him. 

“What was Yeonjoo dressed as?”

“Princess Leia. We made for a very mismatched pair,” Jungkook says, chuckling to himself. “Ooh, did you guys get new tea?”

“You can have some if you want,” you tell him, shutting the door as he eagerly pulls out a box of teabags, turning on the electric kettle on the counter. “I think it’s Wild Berry Hibiscus.”

“Sounds good already,” Jungkook says, and he lets out a sigh that sounds so exhausted, so tired and aching, as he leans back against the countertop, head resting on the cupboards above it. 

“You could have gone home, you know,” you tell him. Even from the couch you can see the droop in his shoulders, the bags under his eyes. He’s been going out several times every week for the past month, and he still has a truckload of CS assignments on top. He spends precious hours schmoozing with wealthy businessmen and women, shaking people’s hands and posing for pictures in the fanciest clothes he owns and then some. The selfish part of you wants him to stay. The part that loves him knows it would be better if he went home. “You still can.”

“No,” Jungkook insists, shaking his head. “We have a tradition to uphold, don’t we?”

Even though The Nightmare Before Christmas is seventy-six minutes long, the night ends long before that. You haven’t even reached “This Is Halloween” before you feel a head hit your shoulder, and crane your neck to find Jungkook having fallen fast asleep beside you, half-full cup of Wild Berry Hibiscus next to the laptop in front of you. He’s still wearing his stupid police officer costume, the navy blue uniform tight against his body. His lips are parted ever so softly, eyelashes fluttering as little non-sounds exit his mouth, hints, whispers of snores. 

He hasn’t slept over since the first time. You’re not sure if you want the trend to continue, or if you just want to be a little bit selfish tonight, greedy, taking and taking and taking. He’s so beautiful like this, so innocent and gentle and soft. It would be such a shame if you had to wake him. 

And so, gingerly, you rest your head against his own, breathe in the quiet little sounds that leave his parted lips, memorize the feeling. It’s not the first time Jungkook’s accidentally fallen asleep on you, but there is something about this moment, sitting on your couch a few minutes past midnight, as the rest of the world celebrates around you, that is so intimate. Like here, in your apartment, you and Jungkook have your own little bubble, tucked away in a corner of the universe far from the noise of the rest of the world. And it’s here that you wish you could stay forever, for once never wanting the feeling to end. Wanting time to freeze in its very steps, the clocks stop and the orbit halts, and it is just you and Jungkook, forever. Like characters in a movie, on pause for eternity.

The moment ends when Jungkook shifts beside you before eventually coming to, slowly opening his eyes as he turns to look at you. You smile at him, dazed and tired, as he sits up properly, staring down at your half-opened laptop and the half-full cup of tea next to it. 

“Thought you’d end up sleeping here again tonight,” you joke, even though it isn’t really a joke. Maybe, somewhere deep down inside you, in the crevices between your bones and the dark corner of your heart, you had hoped that he would stay. 

“Oh, did I fall asleep?” Jungkook asks, blinking away the sleep in his eyes. It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. 

“Just for a bit. I didn’t want to wake you, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to head back to your apartment or anything,” you tell him. 

Jungkook nearly jumps up off the couch at that, like he’s got springs in his shoes. Suddenly he’s wide awake, brown eyes blown open as he scrambles to gather his belongings, taking the cup of tea and quickly dumping it out in your sink. 

“Hey, don’t you want that?” You ask. 

“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll come by some other time and have some, it was really good, I just fell asleep while drinking it,” Jungkook sputters, words moving a mile a minute as he tugs on his heavy black officer boots, scuffed at the tips from wear and tear. It’s as if he’s desperate to leave. Like your apartment has somehow offended him. Or worse, you. 

“If you want to stay, Jungkook, you can,” you tell him, standing up to run to the door before he pulls the damn thing off his hinges with how fast he’s moving. “I don’t mind. My bed is big enough for the both of us.”

“No, I should—I should get going. My… plants need watering. Right now. I totally forgot.”

It’s not a completely bullshit excuse. Jungkook has a fair few pothos amongst his other worldly apartment belongings, hanging from his ceiling or potted in old mugs and janky shoes. But it’s still a pretty bullshit excuse. It’s dark. Jungkook waters his plants every Sunday, and it’s Friday. It’s obvious he wants to get the hell out of your apartment for whatever reason. 

All you can do is hope and pray that it isn’t you who’s driving him away. 

“Oh—okay,” you tell him, opening the door as he furiously laces up his other boot. 

“Thanks for doing this. Next Halloween will be more fun, I swear. I won’t fall asleep on you. Or anything.”

“Okay, see you soon, then?” You ask, searching for a clue, a hint, anything that will tell you that it’s not you, that he hasn’t found you out yet. That you can still be friends, be best friends, because even if you want to kiss him, hold his hand, roll around in bed with him, loving him from afar is good enough. 

“Yes, yes, definitely. Dinner? Uh… sometime this week? I’ll text you. I have to go. Plants. See you!”

He dashes down the hallway. 

And you end your Halloween the same way you started it. Alone. 

Jungkook ran out of your apartment the other day like it was infested with cockroaches. Or the Black Plague. Or your microwave had just beeped. It was as if simply being inside it was going to scar him for life. 

Maybe your apartment is cursed. Jungkook does believe in ghosts. That’s another reason as to why he fears the microwave. Tiny ghosts could be living inside the microwave chamber and you’d never know. But Jungkook knows better. He knows that they’re there. 

“He just… ran out?” Chaewon asks, clearly bewildered. The two of you have been working on the first floor of the library all day, obviously doing everything in your power to not actually complete any of your assignments. 

“Yeah, something about his plants.” You sigh. 

Chaewon narrows her eyes, the same way she does when she’s plotting something. “Interesting.”

“What?” You ask, nudging her to see if you can worm a less mysterious response out of her. 

“Nothing,” Chaewon says with a nonchalant shrug. She clearly has something to say. 

“What?” You repeat forcefully. Chaewon doesn’t get to go all cryptic on you just because Jungkook ran out of your apartment like it had set fire. 

“I know I’ve only known you guys for, like, a year and a bit now, but you two have the strangest relationship I’ve ever seen,” Chaewon comments like it’s nobody’s business when it is, in fact, specifically two people’s business. 

You scowl. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” She pauses, thinking. In the silence, she begins to pack up her belongings, shoving her laptop into her bag and gathering up the small pile of candy wrappers slowly amassing in front of her. “I’ve never seen two best friends have a relationship quite like yours.”

“Thanks?”

“What are you doing for dinner? I’m eating with Yoonji, but you’re welcome to join if you want,” Chaewon offers. Even though you have no idea who Yoonji is, Chaewon would never exclude you from eating with them.

“I’m getting Korean food with Jungkook, but thanks for the offer,” you say, only to be greeted with Chaewon rolling her eyes. He said he’d meet us outside?”

Sure enough, when you head out of the glass doors at the front of the library, Jungkook is waiting dutifully on a bench close by, headphones in as he nods his head and taps his feet to the beat of the music, lost in his own world. He doesn’t even realize that you’ve left the library until you’re two feet in front of him, when he recognizes your beat-up white sneakers and looks up at you in glee, eyes crinkled into crescents. 

“Ready to go?” You ask happily. Your stomach has been rumbling ever since Jungkook suggested you go out to eat this morning. 

“Hell yeah I am,” Jungkook says, putting his earbuds away as he stands up. “You coming, Chae?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m eating with a friend.” There’s nudge against your shoulder, and when you turn to face her, she winks. “But you two enjoy yourselves! Don’t have too much fun without me!”

Before you can publicly berate her for being so goddamn obvious, she’s rotating 180 degrees on her heel and speed-walking in the opposite direction, zooming off so you don’t get the chance. 

“I feel like we haven’t seen each other in ages,” you comment mindlessly. Twenty-four hours away from Jungkook feels like a lifetime and a half. Forty-eight is a light year. 

“I’ve been busy,” Jungkook says vaguely, shrugging his shoulders. 

“Doing what, going out to fancy restaurants and galas?” You half-tease. It’s sad but true—Jungkook spends his nights living a life you could only dream of. And all of these rituals you share, from studying in the library until three in the morning to crashing at his place and taking naps on separate couches, get put on the backburner. 

“Hey, it’s hard work pretending to be rich,” Jungkook pouts. “Besides, the craziest thing about going to those things is that rich Korean people don’t serve Korean food at their fancy gatherings. They serve shit like caviar.”

“Is that why you’re so desperate to get Korean?” You ask pointedly. 

“Yes,” Jungkook emphasizes. “Man, I just want some tteokbokki.”

“Then we’ll go and eat all of the tteokbokki you can dream of,” you promise. You round the street corner and on the edge of the main road and an alleyway sits a tiny Korean restaurant the size of a bedroom, no more than six cramped tables inside. It’s run by a family who passes it down through each generation, dependent on the starving college students nearby to keep it alive. 

It’s Jungkook’s favorite place. The owner gives him a discount every time he sees him. 

(It’s impossible not to fall in love with Jungkook. Impossible to not be drawn to his presence, his personality. Like moths to a flame, you can’t help but come closer.)

“Ah, Jungkook!” The old man behind the counter greets as the bell above the entrance rings. “Sit! Sit!” He points to your favorite table, a round one in the far left corner that’s right next to the biggest window. “Usual?”

“Tteokbokki, too, please!” Jungkook shouts. The man gives you both a thumbs up and heads back into the kitchen. 

“It’s been a while since we came here,” Jungkook notices. You both usually eat lunch on campus and Jungkook has been largely unavailable for dinner. 

“Almost sounds like you missed it,” you poke fun. 

“God, I missed it so much,” Jungkook exclaims, tilting his head back in exasperation. “I didn’t realize that it would be so much work to get dressed up in a suit and look hot.”

“Don’t make it sound like such a drag.” You frown. Jungkook needs to put in literally zero effort to look hot. Sitting across from him in this tiny Korean restaurant as he wears nothing but a massive hoodie and black joggers, he looks hot. When he wakes up in your bed in a raggedy t-shirt, he looks hot. When you catch him at three in the morning in the library after eighteen straight hours of studying, he looks hot. 

Jungkook sits there and radiates light. Radiates warmth and joy and beauty. Laughter and hope. He’s the college version of a Disney prince. Perfectly imperfect and completely out of your reach. 

“I wish I could take you with me, you might enjoy it,” Jungkook sighs. “Plus, I have literally never seen you wear something fancier than business casual. Imagine you in a ballgown!”

“In your dreams, Jeon,” you rebuke. “Free catered food sounds nice but having to mingle with the 1% does not.”

“Touché,” Jungkook concedes. “I don’t know how Chaewon does it.”

“She’s a goddess.”

“Indeed.”

Jungkook pours you a cup of water from the pitcher that the old man dropped off, and then pours one for himself. “Chaewon said that I did well, though.”

Not surprising. Jungkook excels at everything he does. 

“Of course you did, you sexy beast,” you chide. 

“She said I’d make a good boyfriend.”

You choke on your water as the man’s son brings out your food, and you desperately attempt to avoid eye contact as you sputter and cough into a napkin, gaze pointed away from both a surprised waiter and a concerned Jungkook, who awkwardly thanks the man and leans over to pat your back. 

“You good?” He asks, brows furrowed. 

Coughing, you say, “I’m okay, I’m okay. It just—it went down the wrong pipe, that’s all.” Jungkook doesn’t buy it, and the little coughs escaping your throat don’t do much to corroborate your claim. “Seriously, Jungkook. I’m okay. It’s just water.”

“You looked like you were on the verge of death,” Jungkook frowns. 

“That’s just my face,” you fire back. “Just keep talking about what you were saying earlier. What was it?”

“Being a good boyfriend,” Jungkook says, and with no water near your lips to distract you this time, your mind bears the full force of his words, weighing down on your shoulders like a calculus textbook. 

It’s not as if you aren’t already aware that Jungkook would be the best boyfriend in the entire world, bar none. Not as if you don’t sit in bed and dream of a parallel universe, a life other than the one you’re living in right now, where Jungkook is lovely and wonderful and yours. He knocks on your door at a random hour in the afternoon with Chinese takeout from the local restaurant. He remembers your homework assignments when you forget them. He sits in bed with you and judges the Instagrams of the guys on the latest Bachelorette season. It’s as if he was already yours.

“Believe me,” you scoff. “The people know how great of a boyfriend you are.” 

“It’s fake, though,” Jungkook reminds you. “It’s only for a night. An evening, really.”

“Better than nothing,” you sigh. “If only I had enough money to rent myself a fake boyfriend for a night.”

“If only your parents were the CEOs of a multibillion dollar cooperation,” Jungkook adds on. 

“Truth,” you say, and you and Jungkook toast to that. Toast to knowing that some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Toast to knowing that some of those people can get for themselves something you can only imagine in your wildest dreams—a night with Jungkook. More than just a night. A night spent dressed up in your fanciest clothes, arms wrapped tightly around each other. A night spent as a couple, rather than you and Jungkook. 

Toast to knowing that even if you’ll never get to have him like that, you get to have him like this, and you’d rather it be like this than nothing at all. 

“You don’t need to rent a fake boyfriend for a night, Y/N,” Jungkook tells you once you’ve downed the water in your glasses (stay hydrated!). “You shouldn’t feel pressured to spend time with people you don’t want to spend time with.”

You don’t understand, you sigh. I’d give anything to spend time with you. 

Jungkook pays. He says that he’s made more money accompanying wealthy socialites—even ones that don’t go to your school, because word gets around—than he would in a month’s worth of shifts at the call center. He says he’s never looking back. He’s probably not going to give up the gig for a while, either. 

“Just because you have cash now doesn’t mean you get a free pass to pay for everything we do together,” you warn. You’ve always split the price of meals, split the price birthday cakes for your friends. In the beginning of freshman year, Jungkook ate a quarter of a bag of goldfish you had and paid you fifty-three cents to account for his consumption, which you immediately sent back to him. You still fight over it, finding surreptitious ways to incorporate it into the Venmo payments you make to each other. 

“I’m rich, I can do whatever I want with my money,” Jungkook proclaims. “And if that means treating my best friend to a meal, then that means I’m gonna treat her to a meal.”

“That’s very rude of you,” you tell him pointedly. “Zero out of ten, worst best friend in the entire world. Will not accept my Venmo payments.”

Walking down the sidewalk, side by side, Jungkook wraps an arm around you and pulls you in for a side hug as you come to a stop at a traffic light. “You always do so much for me and Chaewon. You deserve to be treated once in a while, Y/N.”

“Why, ‘cause I go out to CVS at ten at night to get you Nyquil after you catch the common cold from some sweaty guy at the gym?” 

“That,” Jungkook nods, conceding, “and also because you’re one of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. The people who know you are lucky to get to say your name.”

If only Jungkook knew that he was the exact same. It’s an honor to know him. It’s a blessing to love him. 

“What fancy clothes do you own?” Chaewon’s lying on your bed, scrolling mindlessly on her phone. 

“I don’t know,” you respond, brows furrowing. You get up from your desk chair to start fishing through your closet,  “I have, like, some business casual stuff.”

“How about a dress?”

You whip around suspiciously, eyeing Chaewon as she lounges around in your room and acts like she isn’t plotting something nefarious. “Don’t you think you could tell me what you’re trying to convince me to do before you ask me if I have the appropriate clothing?” 

Even lying on her back, Chaewon still manages to roll her eyes, sitting up to meet your gaze. “There’s a gala tonight to celebrate some big business deal being closed and I want you to come with me,” she says like it’s a chore, exasperated. 

“Me?” You frown. “Why not Jungkook?”

“He said he had some thing to do for some other girl,” Chaewon says. The topic clearly is not at the forefront of her mind. It’s a little too obvious that it’s at the forefront of yours. “Besides, I was given no date restrictions and you deserve to have a little fun tonight. It’s a Friday!”

“I just want to stay in bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you tell her. 

“You’re already out of bed,” Chaewon points out unhelpfully. 

“Well, then I want to get into bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you rephrase. 

Chaewon pouts. “Noooo, please? It’ll be fun, I swear,” Chaewon pleads.  “It’s a huge party and hundreds of people are going to be there. Everybody gets to bring a plus one. You won’t be the only person who doesn’t know anything about business and has to cling onto their date in order to survive.”

“Gee, thanks. That makes me want to go so much,” you deadpan. 

“Seriously, Y/N. When was the last time you went out on a Friday?”

A while ago. You and Jungkook started having Mario Kart nights on Friday in the middle of your freshman year after you both came to the conclusion that every frat party smells, sounds, and tastes like the same fifty shades of college regret. You haven’t gone out since. 

“Not that long ago,” you lie. It’s been months.

“Yeah, right,” Chaewon scoffs. “Don’t think I don’t see your Bitmoji on the SnapMap sitting in your damn apartment on a Friday at 11PM,” she scolds.

“I’m gonna turn off my location,” you declare. You’ve had enough of Snapchat exposing you and your location. People can live in mystery about your whereabouts from now on. They don’t need to know. Chaewon certainly does not. 

“No excuses, you’re coming with me to the gala! You must have something to wear in that closet of yours, don’t you?” She slides off of your bed with a thud and joins you as you stand in front of your clothes. None of them scream fancy. None of them even whisper it. You stand back as she shuffles through your clothes, hangers squeaking as she shoves them along the rail. Chaewon tears through your clothing faster than you skim through your economics readings. “Aha! What do we have here?”

She whips out a dress from the very back of your closet, right behind the blazer you never wear because you’d rather be caught dead than in business attire. It’s old—you don’t think you’ve worn it since the beginning of your freshman year when you thought you actually had to dress up for parties. Needless to say, you dry-cleaned it the following Monday and never wore it again. You don’t even recall bringing it to college this year. 

“This is perfect!” Chaewon cries. “Really says ‘I can fucking dress myself’, don’t you think?”

“Are you implying that I can’t dress myself?” 

“You should definitely wear this,” Chaewon decides, dodging the question. “Gucci and Louis Vuitton are overrated, anyway.”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I.” Chaewon thrusts the dress towards you.

Chaewon shakes her head. “Of course you don’t.” 

Three hours later finds you one makeup and hair session later, standing in the lobby of a magnificent skyscraper wearing a dress that maybe could have done without the cup of frozen yogurt that you ate before you arrived. Now you remember why you haven’t really worn it since the beginning of last year. Has it shrunk?

“I feel like a loser, Chaewon,” you hiss as she bats her eyelashes and gets directed to the private elevator that will lead you both to the top floor. “A money-less, jobless loser.”

“At least you’re honest, Y/N,” Chaewon whispers back as you step into the elevator. Despite being nearly an hour and a half late (“Fashionably so!” Chaewon exclaims.) you are crowded into the back corner, several other couples stepping inside to join you, all of them wearing clothes that cost more than your tuition for all four years of college, combined. “That’s better than most of the people here.”

Nothing separates the rich from the poor like morality. 

When the elevator doors open, you and Chaewon are the last group to step out, milling about in the corner until the path is free. And when you turn your gaze away from her, you realize just why Jungkook’s so keen on going to events like these, why he never turns down an offer when it lights up his phone screen. 

In movies, rich people flaunt their wealth so extravagantly that it almost looks fake. From gigantic ice sculptures to ten-feet-tall chocolate fountains, entire orchestras and dresses worth thousands of dollars, it makes you wonder if rich people really do see those items as necessities when throwing a party. They rent out entire European castles and the press publicizes every one of their actions. To you, it looks contrived, unrealistic. Even if rich people have enough money to sustain the bottom 99% for hundreds of years, how could they spend their money on nonsense like this?

As it turns out, the ice sculptures and chocolate fountains are only half of the story.

At this gala, the hosts have spared no expense. The entire penthouse is made purely of glass, from the ceiling, to the floor, to the walls in between, giving you an absolutely breathtaking view of the city lights dozens of feet below you, of the stars millions of light years away. It’s as if you’re standing in a bubble, frozen in time, the world sparkling and twinkling and shimmering around you. You didn’t even know a place like this existed on Earth. The price to book it must be astronomical. The view, even more so. 

“Holy fuck,” you murmur, mouth dropping open at the sight. It’s a movie come to life. It’s a picture straight out of a fairytale. 

“Pretty sweet, right?” Chaewon says, clearly proud of herself for convincing you to join her. “The Parks and the Ohs really felt like celebrating.”

“No shit,” you say, dumbfounded. Chaewon wraps her arm around yours and leads you out of the elevator, her poise and grace akin to that of a princess. She’s been to this place before. She could do this in her sleep. 

“Pictures first, then we eat, and then we mingle,” Chaewon instructs, and you nod diligently. She’s the only way you’re going to make it out of this night unscathed. Without her, you don’t know what you’d do. 

On the average day of an average life of an average person, pictures means getting a stranger to take a single pic on your shitty iPhone at your worst angle, which you will begrudgingly post to your Instagram later after extensive editing. 

But this is not your average day, and these are not average lives of not average people. Pictures means professional photographers with entire setups, standing with their cameras held up to their eyes, poised and ready for the next shot. It means couples, one by one, stepping in front of a gorgeous backdrop and posing, over and over, as five photographers at once cram to get their best angle, the cleanest photo. 

You don’t know how to pose for photos. You barely remember what the proper formatting is for your essays, depending on the citation structure. And yet, Chaewon is ushering you over in front of the photographers, immediately striking one of her classic, perfect poses as you flail about, trying to figure out what to do with your hands. 

“Just relax,” Chaewon advises. Even standing beside you, she can see you panicking in her periphery. “And smile. You’re beautiful, so show them that.”

Eventually, as the photographers switch positions to get different angles, you stop worrying about your hands, stop worrying about your bag, your feet, your head tilt, and just grin. You may not have millions of dollars to your name, but it’s a Friday night and you’re living the life of a billionaire with no responsibilities. You deserve to live a little. 

When the next group comes up, Chaewon nudges you out of the way and whispers to one of the photographers, who nods dutifully in response. Wrapping her arm around yours once more, she guides you to the massive catering setup, tables and tables lined with delicacies from every country you could imagine. And of course, a gargantuan chocolate fountain in the middle of it all. 

Your stomach rumbles. Clearly, the frozen yogurt was not enough to hold you off. Or maybe it’s just because you’ve been eating college dining hall food for weeks now, and are probably going to throw up if you have to have dry beef one more time. 

“If you want to, you should try the caviar. It’s delicious. Avoid the eggplant, it tastes like foot, but the brussel sprouts are delicious. Kimchi’s good, too. Classic,” Chaewon instructs as you walk around the tables, placing servings the size of quarters onto your plate just so you can have a taste of everything. Chaewon sticks to some ribs, pan-seared salmon, and a vegetable so expensive you’ve never even heard of it before. 

“Im Chaewon, is that you?”

“Mrs. Kim!”

A strange older woman comes up to the two of you as you’re dishing up, and Chaewon’s face immediately lights up. The woman goes in for a hug, a barely-touching pat of the shoulders and hands. Over her shoulder, you watch as Chaewon rolls her eyes and pulls a face. 

“How are you, dear? You look so grown up,” Mrs. Kim says. You watch as the light slowly fades from Chaewon’s eyes with each second that passes. 

“I’m very well, Mrs. Kim. Did you get your hair done? It makes you look so youthful.” Chaewon’s a master. She glares at you when Mrs. Kim isn’t looking, raising her eyebrows as if to say learn, young padawan. This is how it’s done. They go on for a couple minutes, showering fake compliments on each other as you slowly begin to eat. You scrunch your nose up. Chaewon’s right. The eggplant does taste like foot. 

“And who is this?” Mrs. Kim asks, turning her focus onto you. You look up like a deer in headlights, a brussel sprout puffing your cheek. You were not meant to mingle and eat at the same time. 

“This is one of my closest friends, Y/N,” Chaewon introduces for you. You nod your hello, chewing the brussel sprout in the most nondescript manner possible in an effort to save whatever is left of your dignity. “She’s pre-law.”

You are not pre-law.

“Oh, how wonderful! You must have a lot you want to accomplish in life,” Mrs. Kim says. God, you couldn’t care less about how Mrs. Kim feels about you.

“Yes, definitely,” you say awkwardly. 

“We really must be going, Mrs. Kim. My parents will want me to make sure I do my rounds,” Chaewon says, a hand on your arm as she makes to get you both the fuck out of there. 

“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Kim concedes, sending you and Chaewon one final goodbye before moving on to find her next victim. 

When she leaves, Chaewon seems to let out the biggest exhale of her life. “Holy fucking shit, I thought she’d never leave,” she exclaims, grabbing a flute of champagne and downing it in a single go. “She’s an associate of my father’s, so she’s always trying to kiss my damn ass. Like, sorry that you need to brown-nose your boss and his daughter just so you bribe your idiot son’s way into college.”

“You like mingling, I take?” You joke. 

“Just murder me.”

“Have any tips?”

“Flex as hard as possible without actually flexing. Try to speak to people your age because they are usually more bearable than people older than you. The best conversationalists are anybody under the age of ten,” Chaewon tells you. She picks up another glass of Prosecco. “Want some champagne?” 

“You have it,” you tell her. “I think you need it more than I do.”

Chaewon shrugs. Not as if they’re running out any time soon. She gulps it down and places it on the tray of one of the caterers as they whiz by her. 

The rest of the night passes by in the same way the beginning of it did. Chaewon drags you around the penthouse, talking with her father’s business partners and associates and their sons and daughters and husbands and wives for no more than two minutes each before moving on. She’s got her technique down pat. Greet, compliment, shade, flex, compliment, say goodbye. It’s foolproof, because you immediately notice that everyone else in the room has adopted the same approach. 

Business gatherings like these are just one big game of who can be the most-liked and the least-liked at the same time. And the answer: everybody, all at once. 

Halfway through the evening, Chaewon collapses against the back wall, totally unafraid of the possibility of the glass giving out behind her. She doesn’t care. If it breaks, it breaks. 

“Tired?”

“I just need a break,” Chaewon declares. “Because everyone in here is so fucking fake, and you’re the only one I can talk to without wanting to rip out my eardrums.”

“I’m honored,” you say sarcastically. 

“When I say you’re the only honest one here, I mean it,” Chaewon says. You lean back against the wall next to her, looking out into a sea of people in fancy clothes with fancy food and fancy friends. “Look at all these people, Y/N. All these fucking people, and you’re the only one who’s true.”

And then, you spot him. 

He’s far away, standing in a group of people you don’t recognize, a hand on the small of another girl’s back. He’s wearing a navy blue suit, tight-fitting and tailored, a silver watch sparkling on his wrist as he adjusts his sleeves. One of the other young men in the group says something funny, and he tilts his head back to laugh, chuckling as the girl beside him curls into his arms. 

You suppose it would have been ignorant of you to assume Jungkook was elsewhere on a night like this, at a gathering where everybody who knows anybody is here. 

Jungkook must not know you’re here. He mustn't, otherwise he would have come over to find you. You must have entered at different times, spent the night wandering around different parts of the penthouse. Clinging onto Chaewon’s arms, you must have avoided his gaze, and he, yours. 

Chaewon hasn’t spotted him either. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better, if you’re the only one stuck with the knowledge that he’s here tonight. Chaewon would pity you. Other people would ask you how you knew such a worldly, experienced man like him. And you would spend the night wallowing in sadness, wondering why it’s never you that gets to spend the night next to him. 

From this distance, you can see Jungkook perfectly. The light from the moon shines down on him like a goddamn spotlight, catching the sparkling on his wrist, leaving a silver gleam in his slicked back hair. You watch as he laughs, smiles, talks, grins and beams and socializes. Of course he’s here. Of course. He’s so good at this, so good at being real and genuine and happy. 

Chaewon says the only person in the room who is true is you, but how can that be? How can that be when Jungkook, the most honest, wonderful, real person you know, is standing in front of you? You aren’t honest. You aren’t true and real and whole. You stand on the sidelines, a wallflower in a room of daisies and roses, and pine from afar. Watch as he pretends to date a girl that’s not you, wraps his arm around her waist and kisses her cheek, and you act like everything is alright. 

It sucks, being trapped like this for fear of him seeing you. You know that would be worse—if he saw you standing alone and decided to take matters into his own hands. Seeing him up close in a penthouse like this, a movie set, shimmering and sparkling, it would be worse. Jungkook pulls the girl beside him in close to his side, smiling as he listens to someone else speak. She’s the perfect height in those heels, just tall enough to rest her head in the crook between his neck and his shoulder. You imagine them walking into the room together, hand in hand. Imagine them posing for the pictures like a real couple, a pair of celebrities. 

You suppose you have no reason to be jealous of her, of him, of what they have. Jealousy is when resenting someone for having something that you once had. You never had a life like that with Jungkook. You’ll never have a life like that with him. Never get dressed up to go out, never get to be his date to an event. Never get pictures taken of you as a couple, never feed each other candies and strawberries dipped in chocolate. You can’t be jealous of her. You were never in the running to begin with. 

“Ready to get back out there?” Chaewon asks, placing a firm hand on your shoulder. 

A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes, offering it to the both of you. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Chaewon tells you as she takes a glass for herself. 

You sigh, casting another glance over at Jungkook. He and his date are moving around now, joining another social circle on the opposite side of the penthouse. He looks so at ease, so comfortable. He belongs there, in the middle of it all, talking and laughing and grinning. And you? You belong back at home, underneath your duvet covers playing a game of Mario Kart. Not here. 

You shake your head. You could use a drink or two in this state. “I’d love one, actually. Thank you.”

That night, you stay at Chaewon’s place. 

“You’ve been acting weird.”

“Hello to you, as well,” you say with a scowl as Chaewon sits down across from you at the local ramen place. 

“Listen,” Chaewon begins, “I’ve been thinking. You need to confess to Jungkook.”

You nearly spit out the complimentary water you were served. “Excuse me?”

“You need to. You’ve been acting weird and that’s the only thing that’s going to fix it,” Chaewon declares. 

“What do you mean I’ve been ‘acting weird’? Care to explain?” You ask, offended. You haven’t been acting weird. Well, that weird. Maybe a little weird.

“Jungkook told me you haven’t seen each other for the last eight days,” Chaewon points out. Eight days? It’s more like seven and a half. Not that you’ve been counting, or anything. 

“So? We’re busy people,” you defend. It’s a good enough excuse. You’re sophomores in college. You have classes. Clubs. You have to meal prep. 

“So? You guys are best friends. You make time to see each other at three in the fucking morning if you haven’t seen each other yet that day. And you haven’t seen each other for eight whole days? What’s wrong with you?” Chaewon demands. 

“Nothing! What the heck, I invite you out to a best friend ramen date and you just blaspheme all over me like this?” You accuse. This is not how you imagined today to be going. This isn’t how you imagined this week to be going. “Besides, it’s only been seven and a half days. He’s over-exaggerating.”

“Seven and a—holy fuck, you are literally the worst. Can you just stop resisting? If you tell him, everything will be fine and go back to the way things were,” Chaewon says, blinking, flabbergasted. 

“No, they will not,” you hiss. “Everything will change if I tell him. We’re best friends, Chae. Imagine if I told you that I loved you. What would you do?”

“I’d love you back, that’s what!” Chaewon tells you. “You deserve to be loved back, Y/N. Nothing would change between us. I already love you. You’re one of my most favorite people ever. I would never regret something if it was with you.”

“It’s different with him, though,” you try to explain. You don’t know why—you just know that it is. The way you’re friends with Chaewon and the way you’re friends with Jungkook are entirely separate. You love Chaewon. You’re not in love with Chaewon. 

“Is it? How?” Chaewon says. 

“I don’t know, I just—it’s different with him.” There’s no way to describe it. Jungkook appeared in your life and it was as if everything just clicked into place. There isn’t a single thing in your life that makes more sense to you than Jungkook. “It’s always been different with him. With you, I—I knew that we would become really close friends once we started talking a lot more in the beginning of freshman year. But with him—I don’t know. From the moment I met him, I knew that I would fall in love with him. When he said hello to me, I was fucked. There’s never been any hope for me, Chae. I just have to live like this forever.”

Chaewon rolls her eyes. “No, you don’t. You don’t even see what the fuck is right in front of you.”

“You?”

“God, I’m friends with idiots. Literal idiots. How you guys have made it through nearly a year and a half of college is beyond me,” Chaewon says to nobody in particular. “Seriously, tell me, Y/N. What do you think will happen if you tell him? Just out of curiosity.”

“I don’t know—” you pause. A lot of things. He tells you he just wants to stay friends. He rejects you because he’s not interested that way and you can’t really be friends anymore because it’s weird now. He’s already interested in somebody else. He’s already dating somebody else and you never even knew. He’s not looking for a relationship right now. Things get awkward because you confessed to your best friend that you’re in love with him and he doesn’t feel the same. You end up never speaking to each other. You never see each other. You go through the rest of university seeing each other on the Green by chance and not knowing what to do. You graduate and move on with your lives. And suddenly, he’s just a past friend you used to have. No longer a part of your life. No longer given the chance to. “He rejects me. We never speak again and have to avoid each other at all costs. He lets me down easy and I feel like a total loser for having confessed in the first place. There’s a lot.”

“Jesus, Y/N. Aren’t you forgetting a possibility?” Chaewon says, eyebrows raised high. 

“I’m omitting a lot of them,” you tell her. Including the one where, in the next three years, you end up in a hellish dystopian wasteland and you have to band together to survive but it’s awkward and terrible because you love him still and he doesn’t feel the same, never has and never will, and now you have to fight off zombies and a corrupt autocratic government all while dealing with your own goddamn feelings. That may be the most unbearable one of them all. 

“How about the one where he actually feels the same?”

“Too unrealistic,” you tell Chaewon. It’s the truth. Why else would Jungkook be traipsing around with beautiful, rich, worldly girls on his nights off? He does it for the money, sure, but he likes it. He loves the experience, loves living that sort of life. You’d never be able to provide that for him. “You know that’s never going to happen, Chae. We’re just friends.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, he thinks that we’re just friends. And I’m not gonna fuck everything up by telling him that I’ve been madly in love with him for the past year and a half.” You can think of nothing worse. 

“Have you ever considered the fact that maybe he thinks that the two of you are just friends because you refuse to actually show him how you feel?” Chaewon asks pointedly, eyebrows raised in disapproval. She looks about ready to walk out of the restaurant. “You never do things to give him a reason to think otherwise.”

“Why would I?” 

When your ramen arrives, Chaewon takes a deep breath, downs the rest of her glass of water, and moves on. It’s clear that if she thinks about this any more, her head will explode. 

Nothing’s ever going to change between you and Jungkook. You knew, when you first met him, that it was always going to hurt like this. That loving him was something you had to sacrifice to stay close to him. He lights up every fucking room he walks into, and it’s all you can do not to sit there and bask in his warmth. You would rather catch a single one of his rays than be in the darkness. And if being friends with him means that friends is all you’ll ever be, then so be it. You’re lucky to have him like this. Why take the plunge? 

“Just—” Chaewon says as you begin to pull apart the noodles in your own bowl. “I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now. And you deserve to be happy, Y/N. You deprive yourself of all of these wonderful things, and I just want you to know that you deserve every single one of them. But telling him? That’s something that even I know would make you the happiest. You shouldn’t live like this, Y/N. You have no idea what you’re missing out on if you do.”

The streak of not seeing Jungkook ends the next day, when you come back from an evening grocery store run to find him standing outside your door, hand about to knock on the wood. He’s all dressed up again, button-down and slacks, hair styled and parted, and you watch as he takes a deep breath, almost as if he’s waiting for the best time to knock. 

“Jungkook?”

He practically jumps out of his skin at the sound of your voice, nearly tripping over his own feet as he lays his eyes on you. 

“Oh, Y/N!” He exclaims. “I was just about to see if you were home.”

“You could have just texted, you know,” you say jokingly, joining him at the front door as you fumble for your keys. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” Jungkook admits sheepishly. 

“Well, make it up to me by helping me unpack these,” you demand, kicking the door open as you reach down to grab your reusable canvas bags filled with groceries. Immediately, Jungkook is leaning down to grab all of them for you, hauling them inside like they weigh nothing. You stare as he heads over to your kitchen without breaking a sweat, biceps clenching as he lifts the groceries up onto the counter. 

“What’d you get?” Jungkook asks, slowly beginning to take out the groceries. He’s in your apartment so often that he’s memorized where all of your food goes, from the correct shelf in the fridge for produce to the proper cabinet for cereal. 

“Just like… groceries. I saw a box of peppermint chocolate bars that I thought you might like, they’re in there somewhere,” you say mindlessly, pointing to a random canvas bag. Immediately, Jungkook abandons his putting-away-groceries duty to fish through each of the bags, hunting for the box of goodies. “And I got some cheap Trader Joe’s wine. You know. Just for emergencies.”

“Trader Joe’s wine and peppermint chocolate bars,” Jungkook comments, nodding in approval. He finally finds the box and tears it open sideways. “Sounds like a perfect dessert if I’ve ever heard one.”

“What, did you eat already?” You ask, busting out the wine and a couple of mugs, because you don’t own any wine glasses. Nothing says cultured like drinking seven-dollar wine out of mugs with kitschy sayings like “don’t talk to me until this is empty” or “coffee is my first love” written on them. 

Jungkook shrugs. He grabs the box and heads over to your couch, already kicking back and relaxing. “Yeah, I went to some restaurant for another double date,” Jungkook says. “It was one of those places where everything is so expensive but the portions are the size of my fist. Of your fist.”

“You sound hungry,” you note, filling up the mugs and joining him. “And mad.”

“I’m getting reimbursed for the money I spent tonight, so I suppose I could be angrier. But I’m starving. Let’s finish this entire box of chocolates and do nothing else.”

“Your words, not mine,” you say, although his proposal sounds more than appealing to you. 

You turn the television on for some background noise, switching to a channel showing old reruns of unsolved serial killer cases, because nothing sets the mood better than the words “then, slowly, he took the knife with which he killed her and began to slice away at her body”. Jungkook doesn’t seem to pay the television any attention, though, instead focused entirely on the chocolate in front of him, calling his name. 

He takes an enormous bite out of one before moaning far too sexually for your liking, tossing his head back in bliss. “Oh my God.”

“Good?”

Jungkook moans again in response.

“Please don’t orgasm on this couch. Who knows what other bodily fluids were on here before we bought it,” you ask calmly. 

“I’d say that’s nasty, but you guys did cover this with one of those couch covers, so it’s not like my body is coming into contact with other people’s body stains,” Jungkook reasons. The couch cover is the single best purchase you’ve made this entire year. Possibly your entire life. “But they’re delicious. You made a good purchase.”

“I thought you would like them,” you say. “You’re the only person I know who actually likes the combination of mint and chocolate.”

“People who say that it tastes like toothpaste are brushing their teeth with the wrong kind of toothpaste,” he tells you pointedly. “I don’t understand. This is God’s combination. It’s perfect.”

“As long as you love it, that’s all that matters,” you tell him with a pat on his back, breaking off a square of the chocolate bar for yourself. It is pretty good, even if mint chocolate ice cream does sometimes taste like toothpaste. But you’d never tell Jungkook that, of course. 

Jungkook takes a swig of the wine, picking up the mug and gulping down about half of it, the wine bitter on his tongue. “Goes great with this wine, too,” he jokes. You take a sip yourself. It’s… not very good. Actually, rather sticky. No wonder it was only seven dollars. 

“You don’t have to lie to me, I know it tastes like ass,” you tell him honestly. To be fair, you and Jungkook have both had worse. Compared to the shit served at frat parties, this may as well be beautifully-aged Malbec. 

“It only tastes a little bit like ass,” Jungkook compromises. “But it doesn’t not taste like ass.”

“Let’s finish it now so we don’t have to have any more of it later,” you decide. “You’ve probably had some of the best alcohol in your life this semester.”

Jungkook thinks back, tilting his head to the side as he begins to recall all of the instances in the past few months when he’s had anything to drink. “Soju’s still my favorite. But yeah, I’d say I’ve had wine that probably costs more than my textbooks for this semester if I hadn’t pirated them all.”

“The beauty of being a CS student,” you muse. 

“You know it,” he says, holding his half-empty mug out as a toast to himself. “But seriously, even if this Trader Joe’s wine literally tasted like garbage, it would still be better than all of that other shit.”

You turn to him, skeptical. Even the single night you spent with Chaewon, in a penthouse amongst the stars, drinking champagne and eating strawberries dipped in chocolate, was more than you could ever dream of. You woke up the next day on an air mattress in her bedroom and wanted nothing more than to go back to basking in the luxury, desperate for another taste. It was addicting. How could Jungkook ever prefer what he has right now to what he had last night? 

“Really? Don’t say that just to make me feel better,” you tell him. You can take it. Jungkook has every reason to prefer the fancy meals, the penthouses, the suits and ties to your janky little apartment and old clothes from high school. The two aren’t at all on the same level. They’re not even in the same goddamn game. If you could drop everything to have what Chaewon has, what the other girls and boys who pay for Jungkook’s company have, you would. 

“I’m not,” Jungkook tells you seriously. “I mean it. I would rather sit in your room, hunched over your tiny Switch because you lost the HDMI cord to plug it into the television, playing Mario Kart than out there, pretending to be someone I’m not.”

“But it was fun in the beginning, wasn’t it? Getting to be rich without the moral ambiguity that comes along with being part of the upper class?” You ask. It must have been. Jungkook looked so happy when he first started doing these gigs, coming back to your apartment in a state of bliss, a little tipsy from the expensive champagne and steak. He’d knock on your door and tell you all about the night, from how older businessmen handed him their cards and offered him jobs, to the hundreds of ice cream flavors you could only ever dream of eating. Everything seemed so wonderful to him.

Jungkook shrugs, pouring himself more wine. “Yeah, I guess, but it gets so old after a while. Like, no wonder Chaewon was so desperate for me to go with her that first time. It sucks the damn life out of you. You walk around and mingle and pretend that you’re the greatest person on Earth, talking about yourself and kissing up to the other people for an entire night. Honestly, sometimes it’s worse than my CS homework. And I hate that shit.”

“Chaewon mentioned that the eggplant usually tastes like foot,” you add. Jungkook nods in agreement. 

“Yeah, it does. She warned me about it the first night and I, like a fool, tried it because I usually like eggplant. And it still tasted like foot. Never again,” Jungkook says, shivering at the mere thought of it. It’s funny, actually, because you did the exact same thing. “But the food is like, the one thing I pretty much don’t have the right to complain about. It’s delicious and usually free.”

“But I hope that you’re having fun,” you tell him honestly, because you do. When you’re sitting in your room, eating two different pints of Ben & Jerry’s, you hope that Jungkook, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, is enjoying himself more than you are. Because he deserves it. You never want there to be a time when he’s sad, when he’s unhappy or bored. Jungkook deserves to live the happiest version of life he possibly can. “I want you to enjoy yourself.”

“I do,” Jungkook says. There’s a second half to that sentence. “I do—it’s just that… It's so fake, you know? I feel like such a goddamn actor when I’m there. I get to live this extravagant lifestyle for a few hours but in return I don’t even know who I’m looking at when I look in the mirror.”

Oh?

“Like, I pretend to be this business student, when I’m not. I pretend to have millions of dollars to my name, when I don’t. I hold hands and pose for pictures with people Chaewon is vaguely familiar with and nothing, literally nothing, feels real. I don’t know.” Jungkook takes another swig from the mug. “Even the relationships I have when I’m there are fake.”

“Do you hate it that much, then?” You ask him. If it’s so awful and terrible, then why does he keep doing it? Keep dressing up and going out, holding hands with and wrapping his arm around them?

“No,” Jungkook says, sighing as he leans back into the couch. “I don’t hate it. I just—I wish I had something real afterwards to come back home to.”

Real? Like what? Like you? You aren’t real. You sit next to your best friend and pretend that everything is fine. That nothing hurts. You’ve had the biggest crush on him ever since you laid eyes on him, and you’re doing everything in your power to make sure that he’s the only one that doesn’t know. 

“That’s why I’m always coming back to your apartment afterwards,” Jungkook says. He chuckles, but it isn’t his usual laugh. It sounds forced, contrived and fake. Jaded. He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it almost immediately. Then, he breathes, long and slow. Thinks. The silence is almost unbearable. Waiting to hear what he has to say, even more so. “You’re the most genuine person I know. What we share—it’s real.”

Tonight is the least lonely you’ve felt in a long time. 

Even though Jungkook has something tonight, you aren’t aching to be by his side, desperate to spend more time with him. He told you that he was really looking forward to this one, that it wasn’t going to be some stuffy gala or blind double date. He said something about going to karaoke with the girl and her friends, singing Britney Spears songs and taking shots of soju for hours on end, screaming his voice hoarse. And even if you aren’t there with him, you’re happy because you know that he’s happy, that he’s genuinely enjoying himself. 

So, you aren’t that lonely. 

Content with the state of your life as it is, you take the night off, ready to prepare yourself for a weekend that will almost certainly consist entirely of just work. Chaewon’s voice echoes in your mind (“I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now,” she had told you), but it’s different now. Because you are happy. You are happy, because Jungkook’s happy. The two of you see each other just as frequently as you used to. He texts you about his terrible CS homework and the Shiba Inu he just saw being walked across campus. It’s all gone back to the way it used to be. That’s what you had wanted. 

You were prepared for this. You knew that it would eventually boil down to this, down to whether or not you could take Jungkook not knowing how you feel any longer. But right now, you don’t care. Jungkook not knowing has always been a part of your friendship. The love you hold for him, in the spaces between your bones and deep in the cracks of your heart, that has always been there. You see it, hear it, feel it, whenever you’re with him. Even when you’re not with him, it will remind you, appear in the silence, the emptiness. It will always make itself known, because it’s become a part of you. From the moment you met him, it had settled into your heart.

Staring out of the window by your living room, overlooking the ugliest parking garage on campus, you sigh. You can’t see the stars from here, not even in the dead of night, but that’s alright. There is something so peaceful about the navy blue sky. About how mysterious and unknown it is. It calms you. You put on a movie that you’ve genuinely been wanting to watch for a while, sit down in your bed, amongst your duvet and sheets, pillows and plushies, and enjoy yourself, for once. It’s a good night. 

And then, much like most aspects of your terribly convoluted, over-complicated and confusing life, it all comes crashing down. 

There’s a faint thud from outside, a soft little non-noise that you assume is coming from the street. Not wanting to interrupt your movie—she’s just about to confess, holy shit—you ignore it. It’ll go away eventually. 

Then another thud. You pause, leaning towards your window to see if you can figure out the source. Silence. You’re just about to press play, when you hear it again. And again. It gets louder and louder, making up in volume what it lacks in rhythm and order, until you realize it’s someone knocking on your door. And not just knocking casually. It’s as if someone is shoving their whole body into it, shoulders and chest and feet hitting the wood as they bang on it. 

“Y/N?”

Oh, God.

Pushing off your duvet, you tug on your slippers and wipe away the crust around your eyes as you rush towards the door. You know who’s on the other side. You’re not sure if answering it is the better or worse option. 

You’ve always had an uncanny ability to pick the latter. 

When you open the door, Jungkook, in a fancy sweater pulled over a white button down and black jeans that could almost pass for dressy slacks, is standing on the other side. 

Correction: he’s sort of standing on the other side. He nearly topples over when you pull open the door, having clearly been leaning on it, and you barely have time to reach your arms out to catch him. 

“Oh! Y/N!” Jungkook exclaims, as if he’s surprised to see you inside your own apartment. “I was hoping to see you.”

“I figured,” you tell him, laughing. You guide him inside, and even in his state he remembers to tug off his clean white sneakers, kicking them towards the shoe rack. “It’s so late, Jungkook, you should go home.” 

“No,” Jungkook whines. “I wanted to see you. I missed you.”

“We saw each other this morning, Jungkook. And this afternoon, right before you went out,” you remind him. The words go in one ear and out the other, and he pulls you in close to him, wrapping his arms around you as he presses his body against yours in a sweaty hug. His grip is tight around you as he rests his head on your shoulder, breathing you in as if you’d been gone for years. Slowly, after a few seconds, you pull away from him, a hand on his shoulder to get him to look at you through his too-long bangs, hanging over his eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong? I’m right here, don’t worry. I never left.”

“I had a lot to drink tonight,” Jungkook tells you, blinking rapidly. “Like, a lot. They just kept ordering soju and I just kept drinking it. It was really good. Have you had strawberry soju? It’s delicious.”

“I might have had it once or twice,” you fib, not able to recall having it one way or another. “Come on, sit down,” you point him towards the couch, but he refuses, clinging onto you even as you make your way towards the kitchen. “Jungkook, please, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“But I missed you,” Jungkook repeats. “I missed you a lot. I thought about you the entire time I was there.”

You can’t say you didn’t do the same. 

“Next time we’ll do something together then, hey? Something really fun, like going to an arcade or bowling,” you promise him with a pat on his shoulder. “But you need to drink some water, JK. Can you please sit down?”

“No, I want to be with you,” Jungkook says like it’s nothing. Like the feeling of him wrapped around you like this, holding onto you and telling you that he misses you, that he thinks about you, doesn’t mean anything. You don’t think your heart has beaten since you opened the door to see him standing on the other side. 

(You don’t think it’s beaten since you met him. Since he came up to you on the pavement, asking you for directions. Since you told him your name, and he told you his.)

“Ah, fine, just be careful, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” you concede, because it’s so easy to let him have his way, so easy to say yes to him. You manage to grab an empty water bottle and fill it up with what’s left in your Brita, too lazy to refill it after it’s left bone dry. Slowly, you make your way to your bedroom, out of view of the central living space, where your roommates could burst through the door at any moment and see you taking care of your drunk best friend on the sofa. 

Slowly, you settle on your bed, sitting off of the edge of it as you cajole him into drinking some water, whispering soft nothings to make sure he finishes the whole thing. 

“Does your head hurt or anything?” You ask him, already looking around for the stash of Advil you usually keep on your nightstand.

“No, no, I’m fine, Y/N, seriously,” he promises, even if you can see the glazed-over look in his eyes, the way his sweaty bangs stick to his forehead. “You’re too nice, you know? Always treating me when I show up at your place. Even when you don’t invite me.”

“You know I never mind seeing you,” you tell him. “You can come over whenever you want. I’m always here.”

“No, you’re not,” Jungkook says with a pout, and it makes you furrow your brows. When have you not been? Jungkook’s been going out to events ever since the beginning of the semester, and without fail, you’ve always been waiting for him at home, knowing he’ll turn up one way or another. Except, there was— “That one time a couple of weeks ago, I went to this crazy big gala with Eunha, there were so many people there, and I came back home afterwards and knocked on your door, and your roommates said they hadn’t seen you all day. Where were you that day?”

He had come? You didn’t know if he would. 

(Or maybe, you did. You knew he would show up at your door once he got back from that night, and selfishly, not wanting to see him after the fact, the leftover version of him, the part he leaves behind when he goes out. You knew he would be there and you couldn’t bear the thought of being the second girl he spends the night with. The other option. Maybe, you’ve known all along that you’ll never quite stack up to the girls he goes out with, and that sometimes, when you see him all dressed up while you’re in your hoodie and sweats, it reminds you is nothing more than a casual friendship.)

“I must have been out late with Chaewon that day, I’m sorry,” you apologize, letting him rest his head on your shoulder. “I didn’t know you would come.”

“I always come after my events. You know that.”

“I didn’t know if you’d remember to,” you correct. 

“I’d never forget about you,” Jungkook says, the alcohol erasing his filter. Making him honest. “I really missed you, that day. I had been waiting the entire night to see you.”

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” you promise, and this one is for real. 

“You know, today?” Jungkook says, pulling his head back so he can get a good look at you, your eyes meeting his own. “Today, I was so sad on my way here. It was so terrible, because I was drunk and sad and I missed you.”

“You were sad? What happened?” You ask, leaning in. Jungkook? Sad? Who would do such a thing to him? Who would erase the smile on his face, his crescent eyes, and replace them with tears? 

“This girl and I, she was a lot of fun. We sang a couple duets together and we were pretty good,” he hiccups, “kept winning. It was fun. She and I talked for a long time. I definitely liked her the most out of all of the girls I’ve gone out with. Besides Chaewon, of course.”

“What happened? Did she do something you didn’t want? You know you can tell me, Jungkook,” you ask, a hand on his arm. 

“No.” Jungkook shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was fun and I was drunk. We were on our way back in the Lyft when she leaned over and kissed me. And I kissed her back, and it was kind of nice. I haven’t really kissed someone like that in a while,” Jungkook tells you. And even though you’re hearing these words from him, hearing how he had all of this fun with a girl who isn’t you, how he kissed her in the backseat of a car, you rally, blinking away the tears you can feel forming in your eyes. It’s none of your business, you tell yourself. You and Jungkook aren’t together. You don’t get to feel bad about him kissing someone else. 

“Did you like it?” You ask, each word a pin in your chest. 

“It was pretty nice,” Jungkook admits. “We, uh, we made out a bit in the back of the car until we got to her place. And then we got out of the car and she asked me if I wanted to go back with her, to her room. And—and I almost said yes.” Jungkook looks about ready to combust. At his side, his fists are clenched so hard you’re worried he’ll pop a vein. 

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” you tell him, looking him in the eyes so he knows that you don’t mind, that he can tell you these things without worry. Jungkook may be the love of your life, but he’s your best friend, first. He’s always been, before anything else, your best friend. 

“But there is!” Jungkook cries, standing up in anguish. “There is, Y/N, you don’t understand! I almost had sex with her!”

“You’re allowed to, Jungkook!” You assure him, standing up to reach out to him. 

“No, Y/N, you don’t get it,” he tells you coldly, pulling his hand away. “Why aren’t you mad? Aren’t you angry that I nearly had sex with her?”

“No, what the fuck, Jungkook, why would I be mad?” You shout back at him. “You can do whatever you want with your body, it’s not my job to police it! I’m your friend, not your mom!”

“But don’t you want to be more, Y/N?” He rounds on you. “Don’t you want to be the one kissing me, fucking me? Why aren’t you jealous?”

“Were you trying to make me jealous, Jungkook? Is that what you were trying to do? You wanted to get a reaction out of me because my best friend nearly fucked someone else and then didn’t? What the fuck, Jungkook? What do you want from me?”

“I just want you to tell me you fucking love me back!”

“Jungkook, what—”

Jungkook, eyes dark and furious, pushes you against your closet door as your lips part, feeling the breath get knocked out of your lungs. He’s so close. He’s right there, you can see him, watch as he looms over you, hands clenched in your hoodie as he presses you against the wall. And then, wordlessly, he’s leaning down, crashing your mouths together. 

Suddenly, your heart starts. You gasp into the kiss, the feeling of his mouth on top of yours. It’s fervent, hot and angry and passionate, his body against your own as your hands reach out to press against his head. You seize up at the feeling, almost as if in shock, before melting into his touch, leaning into him, desperate. You can feel his breath mixing in with your own, feel the way his chapped lips meet your overly-moisturized ones, feel how his hands drift from where they’re bunched up in the front of your hoodie to your waist, your hips, your thighs. Jungkook kisses ruthlessly, kisses like he’s trying to prove a point. Holds onto you like he’s afraid to let go. 

When you part, gasping for air, Jungkook runs a hand through his hair, blinking. 

“Jungkook, you’re drunk—” you tell him firmly, refusing to let get your hopes up if what you have in front of you is really just an intoxicated best friend. Your heart is beating miles a minute, about ready to thump right out of you, chest heaving and mouth agape. 

“That doesn’t matter,” Jungkook argues back. “Even when I’m sober I love you. Don’t tell me I’m confused because I’m drunk.”

“You show up at my place at one in the morning, tell me about how you made out with some other girl and almost slept with her just to get me angry, kiss me, and tell me not to tell you you’re confused?” You demand. “Jungkook, I’ve never been more confused in my life than right now, can you please just—”

“I love you, Y/N,” Jungkook says, and even though he’s angry, red in the face and sweaty, when he says it, it’s soft. It’s a whisper, a murmur. He says it not to convince you, but so you know. “I’ve been in love with you for so goddamn long, ever since I fucking met you. And I thought you might like me back but you never did anything about it, and so neither did I.”

“You need to go home, Jungkook,” you tell him, hiccuping. When you blink, you feel the warm tears streaming down your face. You hadn’t even noticed them. “You can’t just come into my apartment and tell me shit like that. How do you think it makes me feel?”

“Do you feel the same, Y/N?” Jungkook asks, looking you in the eyes. He’s angry, that’s for sure, but even underneath, you can see the desperation, see how he’s just waiting for an answer. 

“Go home, Jungkook. Please. Let’s talk about this when you aren’t drunk, okay? I’m confused and I need to clear my head,” you plead, pushing him towards the door. “Please, okay? Be safe, too. I’ll call Chaewon to give you a ride,” you tell him, grabbing your phone. 

Jungkook puts a hand on your wrist. “I’ll be okay, Y/N. I just… Please, tell me. Did that kiss mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it did, but Jungkook, I can’t—”

“It meant something to me, too,” he tells you firmly, lets the words sink into the air around you.  He heads for the door, pulling on his shoes. He looks so sad. “Good night, Y/N.”

You place a hand on the doorknob. “Good night, Jungkook.”

It’s barely nine in the morning the next day when a knock wakes you up. It’s soft at first, one every couple of seconds, before it gets progressively louder. Slowly, you get out of bed, trying to tame your hair as you rub the sleep from your eyes. 

“Y/N’s in her room. Is that for her? That’s so cute. Yeah, she’s probably awake. You can just knock.” It’s your roommate. 

You scramble to make your bed, pouring some water from the water bottle by your nightstand into your hand and splashing your face, wiping it away with an old t-shirt as you run towards the door, pulling it open just in time. 

On the other side is a much more tired, much less drunk Jungkook, one hand raised and about to knock, the other holding a bouquet of daisies. 

“Hey,” he says shyly, mouth breaking into a smile the moment he sees you. 

“Hey,” you say back. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah, head hurts like hell, though,” Jungkook says. “Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, s-sure, of course,” you say, stepping aside to let him into your bedroom. 

“These are for you.” Jungkook holds out the bouquet towards you, wrapped up neatly in cellophane and tied at the stems with a bow. “So you don’t have to keep Febreze-ing your room all of the time.”

“They’re beautiful, Jungkook,” you tell him, grinning as you take them from his hands. Today feels different from yesterday. It feels lighter, fresher. New. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“I—” He pauses, taking a second to think, “I meant what I said, yesterday. Maybe not all of it, but. Most of it, yeah. I meant it.”

“Why did you try to make me jealous, Jungkook?” You ask him. “Why did you think that would work?”

“I don’t know,” Jungkook admits. “I shouldn’t have, and I fucked up. I just got so… so tired of waiting to see if you’d ever come around. I just wanted you to tell me. And then I guess I got so fed up that I told you instead.”

You place the bouquet on your dresser before walking towards him, reaching a hand out. “Yeah, that was a pretty big asshole move of you,” you chide, grinning to yourself. 

“I know, I’m sorry.” He sighs. 

“But I’m happy you’re here,” you tell him. “And happy that you meant what you said. Maybe it could have been said in a less angry way, but hearing it made me happy.”

“I’m happy that you’re happy.” Jungkook grins. “You’re my favorite person, Y/N.”

“When you asked me, yesterday, if that kiss meant anything to me? And I said it did?” You begin, Jungkook nodding in front of you. He’s positively beaming. “It still does. I want to do that every day, Jungkook. Every hour. Every single second for the rest of my goddamn life.”

“You do?” Jungkook asks. 

“I love you, Jeon Jungkook. From day one, it’s always been you.” You smile, and it feels like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. Feels like you’re fucking flying. Like you’re weightless. 

“I love you, too, Y/N. I never want to be away from your side,” he declares, and like a cheesy, rom-com movie, like the shitty novels you used to read in eighth grade, he pulls you in close and presses a kiss against your lips. Wraps his arms around your waist as he holds you tight, kisses you in the middle of your bedroom, in your hoodie and sweatpants, a bouquet of daisies on your dresser. He kisses you because he can, because for every second of every day for the rest of your goddamn life, he can kiss you, over and over and over. 

“We owe Chaewon an apology,” you tell him when you’re parted, sitting on your bed, wrapped up in each other’s arms. 

“Hell yeah we do,” Jungkook agrees. “She’s been on my ass for ages about telling you.”

“Mine too.”

“She’s such a great best friend,” Jungkook comments. “Knew all this time that her two friends were madly in love with each other and didn’t say a damn word to either of us. That’s loyalty.”

“We should do something for her, to make up for it all,” you suggest. 

“You know,” Jungkook says, grinning, “I know this guy who made bank this semester by going on fake dates with a bunch of really rich girls. Maybe he could help.”

“I know him, too,” you joke. “He’s the love of my fucking life.”

Jeon Jungkook quits his job on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year.

You know this because on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 7:18PM, eighteen minutes after he normally heads out on one of his many dates. 

“Y/N!” He shouts, banging wildly on your door. You rush over to open it, letting the pasta water on the stove boil over and sizzle on the heat. He’s barely gotten in a second knock when you turn the doorknob to reveal your smiling boyfriend in his oversized hoodie.

“Don’t tell me you’re blowing someone off for me,” you say, inviting him inside. He places a kiss on your cheek on the way in, taking off his shoes and coat as you rush over to take care of the pasta.

“Me? Blowing someone off? Never,” Jungkook says, mock offended. “I actually quit the dating thing, this afternoon. A girl asked if I was free and I said that I wasn’t, because I have to go home to my girlfriend making me a meal. Don’t you love the sound of that?” He asks, pleased with himself.

“You quit? I thought you liked doing that stuff,” you say, using the spaghetti fork to move around the linguine. “Hope you’re cool with boring old pasta for your meal tonight. You could have had caviar if you hadn’t quit.”

“I don’t care, it smells so good,” Jungkook tells you, wrapping his arms around your waist as he stands behind you, watching you cook from over your shoulder. “Look at you, being all domestic and shit. It’s very cute.”

“Stop rubbing in the fact that you’re the better cook, I get it. Pasta is all I got right now.” You pout, turning down the heat as you move to pour yourselves two cups of tea. Jungkook follows you the entire way to the kettle, grip on your waist never faltering. “You can keep going on those dates, you know. I don’t mind. I get to see you in a suit when you get back, and then I get to take it off of you. It’s a win-win.”

Jungkook pinches your waist in response. “If you have a thing for suits, you can just tell me, you know. I won’t be mad.”

You turn around to whack him with the spaghetti fork. “I do not!”

“Alright, Y/N, guess I won’t wear a suit next time you call me at two in the morning—”

“I never said you couldn’t,” you interrupt, making Jungkook laugh. 

“You’re so cute, Y/N,” Jungkook coos as you begin to dish up the pasta, making sure to add peas because Jungkook loves peas with his spaghetti. “But I quit because I have enough money to sustain me for the rest of the semester. I’ll work over break and get a new job next semester when the new work-study positions open. Don’t worry about me,” he assures you. 

“But didn’t you like going out and everything? Getting dressed up and drinking fancy champagne?” You ask, setting the plates down at your dinky kitchen table, a single scented candle lit in the center. 

Jungkook thinks about it for a split second, and then he shakes his head. “Nah. I like hanging out with my girlfriend more.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” you reason with a grin. 

Jungkook laughs, leaning over the table to plop a kiss on your lips. “I love you, Y/N.”

“Yeah, you pea-eating loser,” you chide, “I love you too.”

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

↳ check out the post-script drabble here!

#jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #jungkook scenario #bts imagine #jungkook imagine #bts au #jungkook au #w: if i told you #god this fic.... i cant believe i wrote this.... how did i do it

[nugnthopkns]

i’ll tell you i was wrong if you dance with me

word count: 3.3k

warnings: explicit fem!reader, slightly unhealthy relationship moment (lack of communication), mention of infidelity, cursing, alcohol consumption, a fair bit of angst

recommended listening: fred astaire | adam brock

a/n: communicate with your partners!!! also yeah this is the song from lady bird. it’s a banger

This seriously isn’t happening. 

You never fight with Travis. Communication comes easy between the two of you, but you also make it a priority to talk about your feelings. It keeps things from boiling over; both of you are known to unleash wicked tempers on occasion and have found being direct stops issues from occuring. Arguments still occasionally happen, but they’re typically over trivial things like what movie to watch or where you’re spending the holidays. Travis apparently forgot about the fact you talk to each other about things. 

He’d been upset when he came home from practice, but you were pretty sure he was fine after he woke up from his pre-game nap. Knowing he’s a superstitious person and has a lot of pressure on him to put up points, you had made the choice not to ask about what was bothering him. Throwing off his routine could have detrimental consequences. Tonight's game is tighter than it should have been, but the Flyers come out on top. Travis spends a bit more time in the penalty box than you would have liked, but everyone was getting chippy by the start of the third period. Claude tries to talk to him on the bench but he gets shut down. Whatever Travis was upset about before is still clearly bothering him, and it’s affecting his game. 

You’re following Travis home from the game, and can tell he’s uptight from the way he’s gripping the steering wheel. As you wind through downtown Philadelphia you try and prepare yourself for any bomb that could drop. Chances are that when you reach your apartment things will explode. Maybe it’s nothing; Travis is fine and just wants to be a responsible driver for once. You pull into the free spot beside his car and see him walking towards the elevator, suit jacket balled up and tucked under his arm. This won’t be good. Trying to buy yourself some time, you take the stairs. Seven flights later you arrive outside your door; he left it unlocked, which gives you a sliver of hope things will be fine. 

“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” you call into the darkness of the apartment. Your sneakers are left at the door and to retreat towards the bedroom, looking for a sign of life. You find one in the bathroom: the light is on. A gentle push on the door reveals your boyfriend is in the shower and ignoring you. 

“Trav?”

“Yeah,” he huffs, words muffled by him tossing his head back to rinse the shampoo of his hair. Apparently the shower isn’t as relaxing as he had hoped. 

You don’t bother to tread lightly, upset that he’s acting like a child. “You’re being an asshole. I get that you had a bad day, but you can’t take it out on me. I just want to help.”

Travis turns the water off suddenly. “Can’t help if you’re the problem,” he scoffs. 

His statement doesn’t make sense. You’ve done nothing out of the ordinary the past couple of days; nothing that would warrant the behaviour you’re receiving. “What do you mean?”

Shouldering passed you to exit the room, Travis doesn’t bother to respond. You’re beyond frustrated: partners in healthy relationships communicate, not show emotions like grade schoolers. “You’re not giving me the fucking silent treatment Travis. You gotta talk to me.” The bedroom is dark when you enter and you flick the overhead light on to see better.

“You really don’t know?”

“Of course I don’t know,” you seethe. “If I did know we wouldn’t be in this predicament because we’d be solving the issue.”

The glare you receive is sharp enough to cut stone. He pulls on a t-shirt, anger clear in the aggression he does it with. “Why did I have to find out from Carter that you’ve been getting coffee with your TA?”

You’re shocked. In no way is it what he thinks it is. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” you sigh, upset that Travis would take someone else’s words at face value and not talk to you about it. 

“I’m dead fucking serious Y/N. You preach communication, but it looks as though you’re the one who hasn’t been doing enough talking.”

The room around you starts to spin. You can’t comprehend what he’s insinuating. “Wait, you think I’m cheating on you?” you ask. There has been a gross miscommunication error somewhere; never in a million years would you think of having an affair.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well what the fuck did you say?”

Travis tugs at the roots of his hair in frustration. He doesn’t answer immediately, pacing the length of the bed a few times. “I just–” he struggles to articulate his words. “I just said that you’re being a bit hypocritical, don’t you think? You’re standing here yelling at me because I didn’t voice my concerns, but you haven’t been talking to me about what’s going on in your life.” Travis’ tone is sharp, and it stings. 

It’s your turn to show how upset you are. Your hands curl into fists at your side, and you squeeze your nails into your palms before releasing them. “I do tell you what goes on in my life Travis,” your breathing ragged as you try to not lose your cool. “I ran into my TA at the coffee shop yesterday, and he paid for my drink because my card wouldn’t work. Didn’t think it was breaking news, sorry I don’t send you every single fucking life update that happens. What’s gotten into you?”

“You could have been cheating!” 

“But I wasn’t!” you scream, no longing caring about keeping up appearances. You can’t believe Travis would think that. It hurts. “And I never would! You know this”

He turns his back to you, like it pains him to look at you, but you don’t understand why. You're not the one suggesting infidelity. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?” he seethes. 

“That’s all there is to say! There’s nothing to explain, no secret to uncover. I’m not in the wrong here.”

“And you think I am?”

You look at Travis like he has three heads. “Are you serious? You’re the one who’s so fucking upset over a situation that could have happened to literally anyone.” Your tone suggests that you’re exhausted with the conversation, and Travis gets the hint. 

He slinks towards the door, still visibly angry. “I’ll take the couch tonight,” he grits out before tightly gripping the doorknob and shutting the door with more force than needed. 

The bed doesn’t look appealing, full of much happier memories, but fighting with Travis has knocked any and all energy out of you. You gingerly pull back the covers and slip underneath. Tears trickle down your cheek as you toss and turn, trying to fall into some sort of slumber. However, your mind has other ideas, replaying the blowout. You can’t begin to understand why Travis is so bothered by the instance, and more importantly why it caused him to disregard a fundamental part of your relationship. There’s little movement from beyond the door, but you can hear the faint noise of a Johnny Cash record playing from the speakers in the living room. After hours of staring at the ceiling your eyes close and a fitful sleep follows. 

You might have gotten nine hours of sleep, but you wake up feeling exhausted. Fighting with anyone drains you, but fighting with Travis is especially terrible because it rarely happens. There doesn’t seem to be any movement from the other side of the door; maybe he’s still asleep. You refrain from heading into the kitchen, unsure of what will happen if you see him. After nearly twenty minutes you can’t wait any longer to start your day and pad into the main living space. It’s empty: no sign that Travis has been there for many hours. Guess you don’t have to immediately deal with the fallout of last night. 

A post-it note is tacked onto the fridge handle and your heart skips a beat. In Travis’ chicken scratch it reads I’ll see you at the gala tonight. We’ve got media all day and I won’t be back in time for us to go together. There’s no mention of the fight, and you can’t judge from a two sentence note whether or not he’s still pissed off. 

“Fuck,” you groan. “The gala.” Tonight’s the annual Flyers Give Back gala, and you’re expected to be in attendance. It’s not even a charity event; the organization is offering a chance for business men to chat up the players in hopes they continue to donate. You find things like these unbearable and tedious, but Travis does his best to make them enjoyable. Not knowing what page you’re on with him is going to be terrible. There’s a pretty good chance he’ll ignore you if he’s still upset. 

As if someone is reading your mind, the better halves group chat starts to explode. Everyone is chattering excitedly about tonight, and under normal circumstances you’d be excited to see them in such a relaxed setting. It’s been a while you’ve all hung out, but you can’t find yourself to contribute to the conversation. You mute the notifications and do your best to move on with your day. The rest of the morning is spent working on your thesis; mind numbing work that almost makes you forget about everything that happened in the past twenty-four hours. Once you’ve hit an acceptable word count for the day you shutdown your computer and make lunch. 

The grilled cheese sandwich you eat while watching a John Mulaney comedy special fulfills your appetite but doesn’t curb your dread. You decide to call your sister, hoping she can be a welcome distraction. Dialling her number you sink further into the couch cushions, wrapping yourself tightly with a blanket so that only your head is poking out. “What’s up?” she asks, and you hear her shuffle in the background, presumably to move somewhere more private. It isn’t normal for you to call her unannounced. 

You hold it together for approximately two seconds. The tears start and they don’t stop. Every emotion you’ve felt since getting home last night comes to the surface, and before you know it you’re sobbing into the receiver. 

“Woah, slow down,” she says. “Y/N, take some deep breaths.” When your breathing returns to a somewhat regular level she continues speaking. “What happened?”

It takes you nearly twenty minutes to tell the whole story because you’re so distraught. No detail is spared, and you go back much farther than is probably needed. You recount what happened after yesterday’s practice, pretty much the entire game, and the fight that followed. “I just don’t know what brought this on,” you sniffle. “We don’t fight, we talk about things. I’m not sure if I’m more upset at what he insinuated or at the fact he broke a cardinal rule.”

Your sister sighs, and you hear her breath fan in slight annoyance. You’re worked up about something kinda stupid, you know, but you can’t let it slide. “It’s probably a bit of both. So, what are you going to do?”

“What can I do? I know that we need to talk about what happened, but a public event is not the best place to do that. I also can’t not show up or ask Trav to ditch in order to figure this out. We have to be there.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it figured out then.”

You really don’t. “What happens if he ignores me the entire night?”

She laughs and tells you to not to anything stupid, and to take your mind off of things tells you a story about your nephew eating dirt. It does the trick; you’re momentarily distracted and forget about Travis. You talk for a while longer before she has to go. “Miles is crying, will you be okay if I let you go?”

It’s your turn to laugh. “I’ll be fine,” you insist. A glance at the clock tells you it’s time to start getting ready. “I’ve gotta shower and start the process. Beauty is time consuming you know.”

Against your better judgement you open your text messages to see if there’s anything from Travis. His text thread is the same as it was yesterday and you’re disappointed. You had hoped that maybe he’d get bored between interviews and check in. With no new notifications you exit out of the application and pull up a playlist you hope will brighten your mood. The steam from the shower relaxes your tense muscles and warms you up. It’s comforting in the way a cocoon is; you practically have to drag yourself out of the bathtub. 

Your bedroom is cold and doesn’t offer the same respite as the bathroom. The music continues to float in from the hallway, and you allow yourself to get lost in it. It’s been a while since you danced around your room; it worked to cure sadness when you were a teenager. Hopefully the magic hasn’t worn off. You flail your arms, not caring how silly you look since no one is here to see you anyways, and scream along at the top of your lungs. After a few songs you feel better and return to the task at hand. The dress code is labelled as ‘black tie’ on the invitation, but that isn’t what you’re worried about. You own a million dresses for situations like this after being with Travis for so long. You don’t know what he packed to wear, and there’s a decent chance you’ll be pushed together for photos. Clashing colours will look terrible.

A quick glance through his side of the closest leaves you no clues, so you decide to be as literal as possible. Black is a flattering colour and works well with every colour combination. There’s a jumpsuit hanging in the back that catches your eye and you think it’s the perfect choice. After pulling it on you move back into the bathroom to do your hair and makeup. Everything is natural and relaxed; once again for the sake of potential photos. The clock strikes on the hour and you realize it’s time to leave. A pair of heels are slipped on and you order an Uber before locking the apartment and heading to the lobby. You had thought about driving yourself, but on the occasion that things don’t end well with Travis you’ll probably have more than a couple of drinks. 

The entire way to the venue your leg bounces up and down. It’s been years since you’ve been this nervous about being around the team. You’ve been with Travis for a few seasons now, and the organization has become a second family to you. No one is going to know about the fight and you worry they’re going to talk about your solo arrival. The outside of the convention centre is sharply decorated, and your driver lets out a low whistle at the extravagance of it all. “Thank you so much,” you gush, and exit the car. Thankfully no photographers are set up outside, and you dart inside without being seen. 

Once in the main event space, you scan for the bar. There’s no sign of Travis, which should make you more relaxed but doesn’t. What if there was an accident on the way to the venue? You have no idea where he was all or who he came with. Overthinking distracts you from your original goal, leaving you standing aimlessly in the middle of the room. 

“You look like you might need one of these,” Ryanne chuckles, handing you a champagne flute. You gladly accept and down it in two gulps. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, eyes scanning to see if your boyfriend has made an appearance. 

She sees right through your facade of calm and wraps you in a tight hug. “What’s going on?”

For a second time today you explain what happened last night. There’s no judgement from Ryanne as there might have been from your sister because she understands. Dating a professional athlete isn’t easy; things like this happen much more frequently than you’d expect. Perhaps it’s all the time spent apart that makes the occasional lapse in communication so apparent. She listens quietly, full attention on you. To your credit you don’t cry this time, slightly more numb to the situation to due more time passing. It still hurts a tremendous amount. 

“He’ll come around,” Ryanne insists. “TK is a little moronic sometimes, but he’d never jeopardize his relationship with you. You’re quite literally the most important thing in his life.”

 “I know. I’m just upset because the whole thing could have been avoided.”

She offers you a sympathetic smile. “I know.” Ryanne links her arm through yours. “Let’s go find something to snack on.”

You spend most of the night with Ryanne, and occasionally Claude when he can get away from the hot-shot businessmen. Travis eventually came in, flanked by Nolan, but was immediately pulled into the politics of the night. The two of you occasionally sneak glances at each other and you tell he’s uncomfortable. You can only hope it isn’t because of your presence. It’s nearing eleven; the party has become a much more relaxed affair, and the DJ is playing sappy love songs in an attempt to get the media team some good photo ops. An intern asks the Giroux’s if they’ll dance for an instagram story and they both look hesitant. “Go on guys, I’ll be fine,” you reassure. It’s the subtle push they need to enjoy a quiet moment together. 

As if he can sense you’re lonely and feel out of place, Travis approaches you. It’s tentative, like he’s petrified you’ll turn him away, but he comes regardless. Drinks are in each of his hands and he extends one to you. When you don’t take it he sets it on the table behind you. “Hi,” he says sheepishly, fiddling with something in his pocket. 

“Hi Travis.” You’re determined not to let his presence crack your resolve; last night illuminated a big issue and it needed to be dealt with. It’s proving to be difficult because he bumps a shoulder against yours and all you can think of is kissing him senseless. 

The song changes to a Bruce Springsteen ballad, and you recognize it instantly. It played at the coffee shop on your first date with Travis all those years ago. One look at him tells you this isn’t an accident, that he had requested it specifically for the two of you. “Dance with me?”

You sigh deeply, looking him in the eyes. “Trav, this isn’t going to magically fix things.”

“I know, baby, I know,” he pleads. “I fucked up so bad last night because I was being an idiot. I wrote down everything I would do differently if I had a time machine, look.” A hand reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a piece of paper filled with his nearly illegible print. “Just one dance, and then we can go home and talk about it like I should have suggested in the first place. Let me know we’re still okay.”

If you hadn’t been in public you’re sure Travis would have been in tears. It’s not necessarily a good look to cry in front of hundreds of sponsors. He has a reputation as the goofy boy who takes no shit to uphold. “You have a lot of talking ahead of you,” you say, and let him drag you onto the dance floor. Swaying in his arms you realize things are going to be just fine. Travis loves you and you love him; there’s nothing the two of you can’t work through. 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

taglist: @jamiedrysdales​ @kiedhara​ @tortito​ if you want to be added shoot me an ask :)

#travis konecny imagine #travis konecny x reader #travis konecny fic #philadelphia flyers imagine #hockey imagine #hockey fic #nhl imagine #nhl fic #cwrites

[tcm]

Interview with Richard Benjamin on Making Comedy Look Easy in MY FAVORITE YEAR (’82) By Donald Leibenson

To hear Richard Benjamin tell it, MY FAVORITE YEAR was a charmed production. For his first film as a director, he had been looking for a comedy (“I’m just kind of bent that way,” he jokes) and the stars aligned to bring him a script that, he says, was everything he knew. He had Mel Brooks as the film’s guardian angel. He had a bona-fide movie star that his wife, Paula Prentiss, recommended after another actor regretfully declined the film’s plum role. And he heeded Carl Reiner, who gave him succinct advice about making a comedy: “Get funny people.”

Which he did. The film is character actor heaven, with Joseph Bologna, Anne de Salvo, Selma Diamond, Adolph Green, Basil Hoffman, Lainie Kazan and Bill Macy.

MY FAVORITE YEAR is set in the mid-1950s when television was live and comedy was king. Mark Linn-Baker stars as Benjy Stone, a young comedy writer on a variety show reminiscent of Your Show of Shows, where he ardently pursues the show’s not-amused production assistant (Jessica Harper). During one life-changing week, he is assigned to chaperone the show’s guest star, his idol, former swashbuckling screen hero, Alan Swann (Peter O’Toole in an Oscar-nominated performance), who has a penchant for drink, womanizing and otherwise behaving badly. 

Benjamin spoke with TCM about casting O’Toole, trying to pin down Mel Brooks and why you should never end a comedy in a graveyard.

To quote Alan Swann’s great line, dying is easy, comedy is hard. With MY FAVORITE YEAR, you make it look so easy. How did the project come to you?

Paula and I were in New York. My agent, David Gersh, sent the script by Norman [Steinberg] and Dennis [Palumbo, credited as co-writer due to the Screen Writers Guild arbitration]. I remember reading it in the hotel room and as I finished, I said, ‘This is everything I know.’ I was in high school when Your Show of Shows was on. I would get on the phone with my friend Shelley Berger, who I am still close to, and we would do all these routines they had done on the show on Saturday night. I grew up loving Errol Flynn and those swashbuckling movies. I had also worked at 30 Rockefeller Plaza [the film’s setting] as an NBC page and guide, and I knew every inch of that place. [The script] was right up my alley, as they say.

Brooksfilms produced the film, and Mel Brooks was a writer on Your Show of Shows. Did he serve as the film’s guardian angel or offer any input?

Guardian angel’s good. He kept saying he would give Norman and I two full days to sit down and go over the script to see if we could make it even funnier. The truth of the matter is that the script didn’t need much of anything, but he promised that. Trying to get Mel to stop moving is a feat. We went to his house, and he invited us in and then said he was going out. He said he had to walk the dog. Then he comes back, and he said he had to go, that there was a crisis at Fox. I said, ‘No there’s not,’ and he said, ‘Well, there could be.’ So, what he ended up giving us was two hours, but it was a great two hours. And the next thing you know, he was gone.

But Norman and I came up with one of the best jokes in the movie while we were standing in his driveway watching him drive away. It’s the one where Swann falls off the roof and plummets past the two elitist guys. And one says, ‘I think Alan Swann’s beneath us,’ and the other guy says, ‘Of course he’s beneath us, he’s an actor.’

I cannot imagine anyone but Peter O’Toole as Alan Swann. Was he the first choice?

Albert Finney had been offered the role, but he had not committed. He was up in Sausalito making SHOOT THE MOON [’82]. They told me I had to go up there and convince him to do the film; otherwise they couldn’t make the movie. The list of people M-G-M would go with was very short, because who are you going to believe with a sword in their hands? So, I’m on this mission, because if he says yes, I’m going to get to make a movie. We arranged to have lunch together. He’s completely charming. I get ready to ask the question – which could change my life, by the way: ‘Will you do it?’ He said, ‘Well…,’ and I could tell it was going to be a no. He thought the script was really good, but he had done two or three movies in a row and he said he wanted to get back to the theater. Then he said to me, ‘Why don’t you get O’Toole?’ He said, ‘We do this all the time. I turn something down, he does it, he turns something down, I do it.’ When I got back home, Paula who had made WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? [’65] with Peter, said, ‘Get Peter. He is perfect for this.’ Finney said it, Paula said it. And I asked [co-producer] Michael Gruskoff if M-G-M would make the film with O’Toole, and Michael said yes.  

What was the meeting with Peter like?

(Laughs) That meeting! That meeting was quite something. First of all, we couldn’t find him. We could tell we had the right person because the behavior was just like the character. He had a farm in Ireland with no phone. You had to call this pub to get a message to him. I called the pub and they said Peter wasn’t there. His agent didn’t know where he was. I called his manager and said, ‘We’re trying to find your client.’ He said, ‘He’s at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. He’s been here for a week.’ 

So, I’m actually talking to Peter O’Toole, and he said he had heard about the project and to send him a script and we would get together the next day. I go over and there he is in a beautiful suite wearing a smoking jacket; he is the character. He said, ‘Here’s the thing…’ and I thought, ‘Here we go again.’ He said he liked it very much, but he hadn’t read the last ten pages and to please indulge him and he would call tomorrow. The next day, on the dot, he called and he said to turn to the last page of the script.

Now, in the original script, there’s a scene which I shot that would have played after what’s in the movie. It took place in a Hollywood cemetery, and Benjy is walking past the gravestones. He says in voiceover that Alan Swann made him promise he would do something on his birthday every year. Alan has passed away, and Benjy comes to his grave, kneels down and pours a bottle of Courvoisier over the tombstone. That’s what’s on the last page. Peter asked me to read the date that was on the tombstone. It was Aug. 2. He said, ‘Aug. 2 is my birthday; did you know that?’ I asked Norman if he knew that, and Norman said no, he had made it up. And Peter says, ‘Therefore, I must do the film.’

What happened to that scene?

I was terribly reluctant to take that out because Peter did the movie because of it. But people at M-G-M said I couldn’t end a comedy in a cemetery. We had two audience screenings, one with that ending and one without it. In the screening with it, the audience enjoyed the picture, but the scene put a pall over things. Then we had the screening without it and the audience was very enthusiastic and very up as they came out.

How did you find Mark Linn-Baker?

Our casting director Ellen Chenoweth said the first person to get was Mark Linn-Baker. Mark came in and read and was terrific. I said, ‘This is my first movie, I can’t cast the first person who walks in here.’ I saw maybe 25 to 35 more—some really good people—but she was right, so after all of that, I said to get him.

Peter and Mark had great chemistry.

They seemed to hit it off right away, but later, back in L.A. after we shot the long scene on the roof, which played like a mini-farce, Peter came up to me and said, ‘I like the lad, you cast him well.’

Was Peter game for the physical stunts?

I couldn’t stop him from doing them! The bathroom scene required him to fall headfirst into the wall. I came to him before we shot and I said, ‘The camera is so close, I can’t pad this wall.’ He said, ‘I was brought up in music hall. I can do this all day. Don’t concern yourself.’

Director Howard Hawks once said that a good movie was three or four good scenes and no bad scenes. I lose count watching MY FAVORITE YEAR of how many great scenes there are in it. Between those driven by comic banter, the TV sketches, the physical comedy scenes, the quieter romantic scenes and even the dramatic confrontations, did you have a favorite type to direct?

I can’t say there was a favorite. It’s all of a piece. I will tell you that one of the scenes I like is in the Stork Club and getting to do something that reminded me of all these kinds of wonderful comic movies I loved growing up. I do remember that one of the first things we shot was the scene in Central Park where Alan Swann mounts the horse. It just seemed to lack energy. And I was thinking, ‘I have to go tell Peter O’Toole that he has to pick up the pace and it has to be lighter.’ I went up to him and said, ‘It’s good, but…’ and before I could finish, he said, ‘You want it faster and funnier.’ I said, ‘You’ve got it,’ and he said, ‘And you shall have it.’ And I thought, ‘This directing thing is not so hard.’ (laughs)

Were there directors you worked with as an actor who particularly inspired you when you became a director? For example, you worked with one of the best, Mike Nichols.

Mike, yes. He directed me in the national company of Barefoot in the Park and [the film] CATCH-22 [’70]. Mike’s thing was he’d come up to you very quietly and say, ‘Just like in real life.’ That was his main thing. It meant that there should be no ‘acting’ here; your character responds to situations as they would in life. It’s like what [critic] Walter Kerr once said about Neil Simon’s jokes: They have the truth in them. This is what funny people know: You can’t try to get a laugh, because you won’t get it.  

At one point, Alan Swann says that doing the TV show was the most fun and the hardest work since the world was young. Was that what making MY FAVORITE YEAR was like for you?

It was the most fun, there’s no question of that. It was a magical experience because of the screenplay and everyone involved. Everyone’s game came up because of Peter. You don’t need many takes with him, that’s for sure. But how all of this came about and got to the point where I would be offered this, and what has to happen in your life to come to that moment – you can’t make it up. And when that moment comes, you’re hopefully ready. I was really fortunate.

#Interview #Richard Benjamin #peter o'toole #Mel Brooks #comedy #old hollywood #new hollywood #cinema #Donald Leibenson

[ilove-cedricdiggory]

You would be okay (Fallen Pt. 2)

Draco x Reader

Request - Yes? kinda? you guys wanted a part 2!

Summary - You tried the unspeakable and were left with this aftermath. Part one here!

Trigger Warning - Mentions of suicide, suicidal thoughts, cursing, it's kinda lengthy. I hope you enjoy!

All that's left is a last embrace.

All that's left is a whisper to say.

Hearts broken,

tears spilled,

frantic moves,

for all that was left was a final exhale.

You expected white, or maybe black even? But all you saw was the yellow of a light. That's a good sign, right?

Go into the light.

But, the light doesn't come with a tight embrace, does it?

For the last of something shouldn't come with another. A last breath shouldn't be met with another inhale, filling your lungs with a type of pain that wasn't physical. A type of pain that filled your head with the doubt of no other.

You failed.

Failed to die, how can someone be that stupid?

"No." You croaked out, feeling the pressure on your body tighten. "No, I'm not alive. No." You opened your eyes, the unshed tears already in the place of your eyelids.

"Honey, clear the room." The soft, warm voice of the mother you dreamed of filled your ears. "Molly, no." You cried, looking up at her. She held your body tightly, her arms circled around you as she held the life of you, afraid to let go.

The tears fell quickly down your cheeks, sobs falling from your mouth. "Sweet girl, it's okay." She whispered, pressing you closer to her. You're unaware of how you long you sobbed, how long she sat there with you, softly pressing her palm down the smoothness of your hair, but your sobs lulled you back to sleep with the hatred of yourself filling your being once more.

One week

You felt like you were a toddler again, for a pair of eyes was always set on you. They didn't look at you with pity, they didn't look at you with disgust, they didn't look at you with doubtfulness. For they looked at you with a love you didn't even understand. A love that had your heart breaking worse than what Draco could ever cause.

You still weren't sure how you survived, how you possibly could have jumped from the astronomy tower and lived to tell the tale, but none of the Weasley's would tell you.

"It doesn't matter dear." Whispered Molly when you woke up the next morning, full of questions.

"What do you think about these?" Fred and George switched up the topic, showing you a prototype that was supposed to shoot multicolored glitter into the room you tossed it into.

"Sorry, y/n, I'm reading." Hermione excused, sticking her nose further into her book, avoiding your eyes with every cost.

Three Weeks

With each day, you ate more. With each second, you smiled brighter. With each look, you felt safer.

You weren't on watch like you had been, everyone seeing the slow progress you were making. You still had unanswered questions, but they sat at the back of your mind, until a bad day.

A day that had you tumbling down the steep stairs of progress, a day that had you quivering in fear of your own self. A day that started with a specific blonde.

You had assumed he was at the Malfoy Manner, you had assumed he thought you were dead. But, when you opened the door to your apartment, Hermione and Ginny standing beside you, he stood from your couch, eyes set on you.

"You're okay." He whispered, his eyes as broken as yours.

"Shit." Ginny looked at the Slytherin and quickly stepped in front of you. "Why the fuck are you here?" Hermione asked, pulling you back behind her.

"Look, I just - I had to make sure she was okay. I haven't left for weeks, I've slept on the couch to make sure I'd see you when you walked in. I - after I saved you, I saw the Weasleys running to you, I was too afraid they'd kill me themselves, so I ran off." He said, stepping closer to you. "Wait - you're the one who saved her?" Ginny asked, looking at the boy. "I uh, I levitated her - like Dumbledore did to Harry at the quidditch game year three. As soon as the owl flew in with a letter in your handwriting to me, after that fight, I knew what you were doing."

Ginny took one more step towards the boy before hugging him, her arms around his neck. "Thank you."

You and Hermione stood in awe. Ginny Weasley, the Ginny Weasley, was hugging Draco. They had all learned to tolerate the man, especially after the two of you got together, but the only person you ever saw try to hug Draco, was Molly.

"But, how did you know where I was? I wrote that at the end of the letter so I could - well, so I could die." You whispered, moving to sit on the couch

Hermione moved to sir next to you, taking the seat Draco might have taken, placing her hand on yours. "Y/n, we don't have to do this. We just came for some clothes." You shook your head, meeting Draco's red eyes.

"I found the letters, about 4 months ago. I had gone into the owl room to feed her the two days you were gone and I saw it with my name. I pulled it out and read it - I didn't know what to do. We had been doing well, you were happy, we had plans with the Weasley's, which I knew for a fact you wouldn't cancel, I just decided to watch you for the next few weeks, make sure you were okay. I knew that you were depressed a while ago, but we had been working on it.

You had been getting out of bed a bit easier, you were baking and singing, I figured you were okay. I know your depression comes and goes, but you were really doing good, so I didn't bring it up." He sat in your love seat, his head in his hands. "I was such an idiot for not bringing it up, I knew better than that. Even if you were doing good, you still wrote them, which meant you were suicidal before then. I'm just a plain dick for saying what I said to you then too. I - I can't believe that I did, you trusted me with your insecurities, with your darkest thoughts, and I used then to crush you." His voice was soft, tears falling from his eyes.

"Hey, Mione, let's go pack up some stuff for Y/n, I think they should talk."

Two months

You were okay.

It was still hard sometimes, but you were okay. You had moved back in to your home, finding a new routine for you. Someone of the Weasley house always popped in on you once a week and Molly set in a Sunday Dinner policy that you could not miss.

You were okay.

You still had dark thoughts, but who didn't? You still had rough days, but who didn't? The only thing you didn't have, was him.

After the day he told you how he saved you, he left. He excused himself when the girls came back, and he left. You were expecting to see him, to hear from him, but nothing. Now, your heart broke a little bit when you woke up and his side was empty, when you woke up and his coffee cup was gone, when you woke up and his designated seat stayed empty.

But, he wasn't going to kill you again.

You washed dishes, you baked cookies (and owled them to the Weasley's), and you went to work.

You were okay.

The day was long, almost as hard as it used to be, but you could do it. People came and went, your mood stayed stable, and your mind stayed blank from all thoughts that could break you.

You were okay.

Right at clock out, you stepped out of the store and - no one.

You walked down the street and - no one.

You stepped into the bakery the two of you got breakfast from that morning and - oh? maybe? the blonde hair, the same height? Nope, bakers son.

A simple hot chocolate, not wanting to be up for hours more, and you were headed home. The muggle tv was set up, courteously done by Harry and Arthur. The hours passed by, your own platter of cookies gone, but, you ate. Comedy movies watched, an episode of How I Met Your Mother finished, but you were then met with a stupid romance movie.

Your eyes watered as you stood, walking to the fridge to find - no ice cream? Really? You bought 4 pints of it the last time you saw it, it was just so hard to find in stores.

You glanced down at your clothes and shrugged, disapparating into the streets outside of the grocery store before walking in and straight to the frozen section. "Stupid freaking ice cream just had to be ate by me. Why can't they make self filling ice cream? I'd pay any damn price for that." You mumbled, the house shoes dragging along as you walked.

"Where is it?" You asked yourself, glancing in each of the doors before bumping into a cart. "Oh, crap, I'm sorry." You spoke, looking up to meet them.

"Narcissa?" You asked, your eyes furrowing. You glanced into her basket to see nothing but ice cream, the very ice cream you were here for. "Uh, that's a lot of ice cream." You said, biting your lip sadly.

"Draco sent me for them, I don't eat ice cream." She laughed, smiling at the girl. "You okay?" She asked softly, meeting your eyes. You had a problem with Lucius, yes, but Narcissa was so lovely - especially after the war. "I'm okay." You spoke, nodding once.

"You know, I said that a lot too, so I get it." You bit your lip, nodding once. "Oh, well, they don't have what I'm here for, so I'll be going." She nodded, you turning around before hurrying out of the store.

You were okay.

You popped back into your home, taking a deep breath. You sat in the room, shutting off the TV before laying back. An hour later, you were met with the pecking of the door, sighing as you grabbed a few knuts for the owl and walked to the door, swinging it open.

"Draco?" You breathed out, looking at the man. "Owl?" you asked, looking down at the owl in his arms.

"I uh, I figured I'd bring you these." He held up the ice cream pints his mother bought, smiling softly. "I was gonna owl them, but I had to see you, I'm sorry." He spoke, and you stepped aside to let the boy in.

After they were all safely placed in the freezer, he turned to you. "Y/n, I'm so so so sorry. I can't just apologise my way back into your life and I know that, but I'd do anything to see you. I was such an absolute idiot and I will do anything I can do to fix it, fix us." He spoke, his eyes meeting yours.

You nodded softly, taking a deep breath.

You were okay.

You were okay.

You were okay.

You weren't okay.

"I've missed you do much." you cried, flopping onto the couch. "And I hate myself for that because you did this, you did it. But you're the only one I could ever trust to really fix me again. But I can't trust you to not break me again." Your sobs filled the air, Draco rushing to hold you once again.

"I'm so sorry, y/n." he whispered, kissing your head softly.

You stayed in his arms until your sobs lulled to an end, looking up at him. "We have to restart." You whispered, looking into his beautiful eyes. "Not just pick up where we left off, restart." He nodded, his eyes bright with hope.

"Well then, y/n, can I take you out on a ice cream date?" He asked softly, pushing your hair back. "I dunno, I've got all the ice cream I can take, this really great guy bought it for me." You spoke, smiling at him.

"Yeah, but you look like a soft serve kinda girl."

You were going to be okay.

~~~

Tag List - @m3ssytrash @drawwithaarya @memorable-fics @gdee703

If you'd like to be on my tag list permanently or for a specific Character, pm me

#draco malfoy #draco malfoy imagines #draco malfoy pictures #draco malfoy story #draco x reader #draco fanfiction #draco x you #malfoy #malfoy imagine #malfoy manor #draco malfoy x reader #malfoy x y/n #malfoy x you #malfoy x reader #draco x y/n #draco x female reader #draco x #harry potter imagine #harry potter imagines #hp imagine #imagines #imagine #slytherin #gryffindor #ravenclaw #hufflepuff #harry potter #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy x Reader #draco malfoy imagine

[ohitshoneybee]

Sleepover

Loki (2021) Self Insert AU

Summary: An odd group of friends has a movie night in one of the Time Theaters, and shenanigans ensue.

Word Count: 1384

Warnings: Tooth rotting fluff, that's it

A/N: You guys. My first ever fic here on tumblr?? I'm so hyped, y'all have no idea! Special thanks to @nebulousfishgills for being my motivation and helping co-create this funky AU and for creating this *incredible* mood board! Enjoy.

The sight of a mountain of blankets, pillows, and other soft items sitting in Time Theater 27, along with a buffet of cookies, chips, and drinks, wasn't unusual. The appearance of the Time Door, precisely at half-past eight wasn't odd either. In fact, it had become a sort of routine for a handful of TVA employees. Ravonna always showed up early to set things up, Casey and Hunter B-15 not far behind. Mobius strolling in at around ten till, with Loki, Olivia, and Sylvie showing up at nine on the dot.

Now, you may have asked yourself, 'What relevance does the time door have? Are we missing someone? And why all the blankets and everything?' Well dear reader, at approximately eight-forty, Oliver walks through the door for the final time that night, the last armful of blankets and tray of brownies in hand.

A cheery "Hey B-15! I made your favorite brownies again!" heard from across the room piques the hunter’s interest, as well as Mobius'.

"Oliver! You made it! I mean of course you made it, what am I even saying? Whatever, come sit down!" Mobius jumps up to accept the platter of brownies, sneaking a couple before anyone else could get to them. Olivia and Loki, arm in arm, saunter over to greet Oliver.

"Hey, you're here! And just in time too, we were about to pick tonight’s genre!” Olivia snatches the tray from Mobius’ hand, setting it on the buffet table. “Yeah? What are the options? And for the love of the Gods, don’t tell me there’s horror on the list, I’m not playing ‘Snakes and Ladders’ in the corner with Miss Minutes again. No offense, but I’d rather hang out with everyone, rather than sit in the corner for almost two hours.” Oliver smiles and elbows Olivia in the arm, dropping their pile of blankets next to the table.

“I am pleased to inform you that we have comedy or adventure as our picks tonight! Votes starting with Ravonna, as always,” B-15 chimes in, cutting Olivia off before she could retort.

“Comedy,” Ravonna starts.

“I think I’d like adventure,” says Casey.

“Ditto, on the adventure,” from Mobius.

“Comedy,” Sylvie and Loki respond, in unison.

“Adventure!” Olivia exclaims, striking a rather piratey pose.

“Adventure for me too, hon,” Miss Minutes nods to the hunter.

“And comedy for me,” B-15 notes.

“Oliver, that leaves you as the tiebreaker. Chose carefully,” Mobius teases.

“Well... I think I’ll pick… adventure?” Oliver answers, earning groans from half of the group and cheers from the other half.

Olivia, quite literally jumping with joy, just about tackles Oliver with a hug. “I knew I could count on you! Unlike those weirdos over there,” Olivia sticks her tongue out at Loki and Sylvie, earning an amused chuckle from Loki.

Mobius waves Ravonna over, talking to her in hushed tones, as to not disrupt the rest of the group. “Ravonna, I still think we should get one of those popcorn machines for these movie night sleepover things.. It isn’t fair to Oliver that they have to run back and forth whenever we want popcorn.”

“Mobius… it’s already hard enough to hide all of these blankets and the table and, well… everything. I just don’t know where we would put the popcorn maker. On top of that, none of us would even know how to use it!”

“Well, it can’t be that hard to figure out, I’ve seen kids on Earth use them and it’s gone fine for them!” Mobius argues.

“I’ll… I’ll think about it, okay? Just.. Don’t get your hopes up,” Ravonna sighs, waving Mobius off.

The projector boots up, and with a flicker of golden hues, the title screen for ‘The Mummy’ appears, earning a cheer from Oliver, who is wrapped up in a white comforter with a plate of various snacks in their lap.

“What? This movie was my bisexual awakening, it holds a special place in my heart because of it,” they defend, albeit through a mouthful of brownie.

“Nobody was judging you, Oliver, we were just a little...surprised,” Sylvie responds, snuggling closer to Olivia.

“You know what else is surprising? The fact that you three haven’t run off to a broom closet yet,” B-15 interrupts.

“Yeah, well, at least Oliver isn’t climbing over me yet,” Mobius teases.

“Wait, has nobody told you? Yeah, when you’re asleep, you end up snuggled with Mobius, no matter where in the room you are,” Olivia adds, rather suggestively.

“W-Well, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation! Uh.. yeah.. an explanation…” Oliver mutters, flustered and embarrassed.

“Hey, nobody said they were bothered. I’m certainly not. There’s no need to stress over it,” Mobius adds, trying his best to be comforting.

B-15 shushes the group as the opening scene starts, the room bathed in golden hues.

Halfway through the movie, Oliver is already asleep, curled up with three or four pillows and a mountain of blankets, as well as a green cactus plushie. Ravonna is the only thing between Loki and Sylvie staking piles of Cheez-Its on their face, and Casey and B-15 are quietly chatting about the movie so far. Olivia is laying on her stomach, the blanket over her slightly askew, and Mobius is up getting more snacks.

“You really are a bottomless pit, aren’t you Moby Dick?” Olivia jokes. The nickname ‘Moby Dick’ caught on when Olivia showed up to the TVA and used it to poke fun at the analyst. After that, it stuck and is just a bit of fun.

“Yeah, well you kinda eat whatever you can when you live off the food here. Ollie’s baking is a real treat, so I’m enjoying it while I can,” Mobius retorts, stacking his plate with chips and the last of the brownies.

“Loki, Sylvie, stop it. Oliver isn’t gonna be happy when they go home and their cat is licking their face when they smell like Cheez-Its,” Ravonna whisper-yells at the pair as she throws a pillow and nails Sylvie in the face.

“Oh, I see how it is, old lady. It’s on!” Sylvie grabs the pillow and climbs over Oliver, running for Ravonna. “Pillow fiiiiiight!”

Oliver sits up and rubs the sleep from their eyes, almost immediately getting hit in the face with a pillow thrown by Mobius. “Oh so suddenly I’m not your favorite, Moby? I’ll just take those brownies back!” They grab their cactus plush and chuck it at the analyst, ducking with a squeal of surprise as another pillow flies past their head.

“Nobody decks Mobius like that except for me!” B-15 shouts, standing over a mountain of pillows.

“Hey, that’s not cool! You can’t hog the pillows!” Casey protests, ducking behind the food table.

“Well neither is teaming up, but us three already have!” Olivia announces, using Loki and Sylvie as shields to avoid getting hit with a pillow from Ravonna.

“Oh come on! That would’ve hit you!”

“Moby! Catch!” as Oliver chucks a couple of pillows in rapid succession. “You’ll never win! Not against me!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, hon,” Miss Minutes pops up next to Oliver and whacks them in the arm with a decorative pillow, a distinct rip heard through the room as stuffing flies.

“Oh. My. Gods. You’re so dead!” Sylvie shouts with a smile, and suddenly, alarms are blaring. Ravonna fishes through the pockets in her pajamas for her TemPad.

With a sigh of relief, she announces to the group, “It’s not an emergency, but I’m going to need to borrow you two for a bit,” she says, nodding to Mobius and B-15.

“Let’s make it a group trip since it isn’t an emergency!” Olivia proposes, earning a groan of disapproval from Ravonna and B-15, almost in unison.

“Olivia, we’ve been over this. Oliver isn’t allowed anywhere else in the TVA, other than here and the bathroom. If anything were to happen to them, I’d be the one to blame, and I’m not taking that risk.”

“Ravonna’s right, it’s a miracle that having Ollie here hasn’t created a Nexus event yet. Who knows what would happen if something went wrong,” Mobius reasons.

With a reluctant sigh, Oliver, Olivia, Loki, Sylvie, and Casey settle back into their respective blanket piles and finish the movie while B-15, Ravonna, and Mobius run off to handle the cause of the alarms.

#mobius #loki 2021 #loki #sylvie #ravonna renslayer #b-15 #loki x oc x sylvie #self insert #queer #lgbtq

[tiramisiyu]

【未定事件簿】Tears of Themis: Lunar New Year - NXX Group Chat

Or as I see it, MC being wholesome while the men act out a comedy.

See under cut!

--

Lu Jinghe: What do you all plan to do after eating Lunar New Year’s Eve dinner?

Xia Yan: Why’d you ask this all of a sudden?

Lu Jinghe: Casually chatting, don’t be on such high alert.

Zuo Ran: Is that so? I feel like your intent doesn’t seem to be very pure.

Mo Yi: Stop beating around the bush.

Mo Yi: Let me ask instead, do you have any other plans later? @MC

MC (Selection 1, Choice 1): A lot of relatives came to my house. I have to chat with them for a while.

Xia Yan: At the end of the chats, they probably won’t leave out the annual routine interrogation…

Xia Yan: If they ask weird questions again, then just use me as a shield.

Mo Yi: Interrogation?

Lu Jinghe: ???

Mo Yi: I’m just somewhat curious about such a situation.

Zuo Ran: A lot of relatives also come to my house every year.

Zuo Ran: Feels just like a trial where you have no way of saying anything in defense, and you’re standing at the defendant’s place.

Lu Jinghe: Thanks, I get it.

Mo Yi: Hearing you all say this, I am indeed able to imagine it.

Zuo Ran: … It’s about time - if there’s nothing going on, you can see the Lunar New Year’s TV special in a while.

MC (Selection 1, Choice 2): Lazing around is boring anyways. I was just planning to search for friends to team up and play games.

Lu Jinghe: No need to search anymore. I’ll play with you!

Mo Yi: It’s rare enough for everyone to all be available, so let’s go together.

Zuo Ran: Mm. Though I don’t usually play games, I can try.

Xia Yan: Looking at our battle lineup right now, I feel like the chances of us messing up are really high…

Mo Yi: Oh?

Zuo Ran: …

Lu Jinghe: Didn’t you say before that you could dominate the entire server? See it as a challenge.

Xia Yan: I’ll leave that blessing to you. I’ll just team up with her.

Lu Jinghe: Hah?

Lu Jinghe: Forget it, then. The headcount won’t be even like this.

Zuo Ran: … It’s about time - if there’s nothing going on, you can see the Lunar New Year’s TV special in a while.

MC (Selection 1, Choice 3): None, I was just preparing to randomly pass the time on my own…

Zuo Ran: On your own? Then I’ll accompany you.

Mo Yi: It just happens to work out – I’m also celebrating the New Year own my own this time.

Mo Yi: If it’s convenient, how about we walk around the Commerce Street together?

Lu Jinghe: Based on convention, what you’re celebrating probably isn’t the New Year…

Xia Yan: I’m also here this year. I’ll find you in a moment.

Lu Jinghe: …

Lu Jinghe: Stop, if we keep going on like this, we’re going to end up agreeing to celebrate the New Year at the base in a moment.

Xia Yan: That’s not necessarily needed.

Mo Yi: I feel the same. Forget it, change the topic.

Zuo Ran: … It’s about time. If there’s nothing going on, you can see the Lunar New Year’s TV special in a while.

 MC (Selection 2, Choice 1): I feel like it’s more interesting to chat with everyone than it is to watch the TV special!

Lu Jinghe: Hehe, then chat a little while longer with me. I’ve got time anyways.

Mo Yi: I heard your professor say that you got a lot of homework for winter break. Have you finished them all?

Zuo Ran: Better to not chat. Since you’re a student, you should focus on your academics.

Lu Jinghe: ???

Lu Jinghe: When celebrating the New Year, my most important homework is having fun.

Zuo Ran: Then if you don’t finish it when time comes, you can bring it into the base.

Mo Yi: What, you all are prepared to help?

Xia Yan: Does helping supervise count? I feel like it would be pretty interesting.

Mo Yi: Mm, it’s auspicious do some things to make people happy when celebrating the new year.

Lu Jinghe: You all really don’t make any sense right now.

Xia Yan: I don’t know why, but I keep feeling like we’re doing a comedic dialogue…

Xia Yan: It would be good if you laughed a little more because of this – then this group chat can be considered to have a purpose. @ MC 

MC (Selection 2, Choice 2): Sure, I feel like it’ll be pretty lively if we commentate while we watch!

Xia Yan: I guess that’s true. Sometimes commentating might be even more interesting than the show itself.

Mo Yi: Based on my experience, if we don’t watch, I estimate that we won’t be able to keep up with online topics for all of the beginning of the year.

Lu Jinghe: Indeed.

Lu Jinghe: Right, Zuo Ran, you probably don’t pay much attention to those topics that get popular online, right?

Lu Jinghe: When we were in the base, I seem to often see you swiping on your phone with a face full of confusion…

Xia Yan: So you saw it too.

Zuo Ran: That wasn’t being confused, I was just thinking.

Mo Yi: Look, the LNY TV special hasn’t even started, yet it’s already sufficiently lively.

Xia Yan: It would be good if you laughed a little more because of this – then this group chat can be considered to have a purpose. @ MC 

MC (Selection 3, Choice 1): I hope that everyone can live every day happily in the coming year!

Xia Yan: Mm! Let’s spend next year together happily!

Zuo Ran: Thank you. I hope you can also stay far away from all troubles and always be happy in the new year.

Mo Yi: Then come visit me often.

Mo Yi: This way, I will definitely spend every day happily.

Zuo Ran: …

Zuo Ran: I remember that a psychology scholar shouldn’t bring up methods that advocate for overdependency.

Xia Yan: …

Lu Jinghe: …

Mo Yi: Seems like the two of you also have something to say?

Xia Yan: Nothing, I just thought of something happy.

Lu Jinghe: I just randomly followed the crowd.

Lu Jinghe: Though that old guy who helps the Board of Directors suddenly sent me a ton of messages, as if he set it up before.

Lu Jinghe: Managed to get jiejie’s rare blessings, but now my good mood has been destroyed with this…

Mo Yi: I suppose that he’s reminding you that you should send some New Year’s red envelopes.

Zuo Ran: Right, leave the New Year’s blessings to the clients to me. You can relax well, and you don’t have to worry too much. @ MC

MC (Selection 3, Choice 2): Good thing that you guys are here. I feel like this year will be a lot happier than past years!

Mo Yi: Thank you. To me, this is the best evaluation.

Mo Yi: As long as you hope for it, regardless of if for next year or the one after, I will continue to stay by your side.

Lu Jinghe: Whoa… it’s rare for your typing speed to be this fast.

Lu Jinghe: I also think this – good thing you’re here.

Lu Jinghe: I’m talking about you, jiejie~

Xia Yan: Seeing that you can be this happy, I’m also gradually liking this kind of New Year’s atmosphere.

Zuo Ran: This year will indeed be livelier than the past.

Zuo Ran: All in all, everyone has worked hard in the past year. Make sure to relax in this rare holiday.

Xia Yan: Seconded. Although, even though it’s a holiday, don’t stay up too late.

Xia Yan: Especially you, you better not get caught by me. @ MC

#tears of themis #tears of themis translations #weiding shijian bu #xia yan #zuo ran #mo yi #lu jinghe #未定事件簿 #tot translation #tot other #im here for the subtle roasts at each other #the four men together have such chaotic energy

[nour386]

Meeting the not Heroic Family

My submission for @pinesconessecrets as the santa of @mothmanfactkin, His prompts included super hero au and awkward dinner. So I combined them together into one massive fic. I hope you enjoy this because I enjoyed writing this. (Also on Ao3!)

"Dipper, I'm not sure about this," Wirt tightened his grip on his boyfriend's hand.

"It'll be fine!" Dipper awkwardly bumped Wirt with his elbow. "They don't need to know that I'm dating the legendary 'Spirit of the Plants'."

"Dipper this is serious." Wirt said. "If your Uncle is half as smart as you say he is, he should be able to figure out my identity in an instant."

"Don't worry about that, we have your cover story remember?" Dipper grinned, "a humble library part timer fresh out of college, looking for work. It'd cover most of our bases."

Wirt didn't look convinced. He bit his lip and looked away. His mind raced with all the ways this evening could go wrong. A villain somehow reconsigning him, and attacking them through the window. A giant monster bursting through the ceiling, crushing everyone and splattering the walls with their blood. Or worst of all, his boyfriend's uncles deciding that he was a bad influence. Cutting his time with Dipper short.

"Hey, look at me." Dipper pinched Wirt's cheek making the lanky man wince.

"What was that for?" Wirt rubbed his cheek.

"You were doing that thing where you panic and over think everything and worry that the end of the world will come about because you dropped a spoon." Dipper rolled his hand as he spoke.

"There was no apocalypse this time." Wirt said in a small voice.

"That's not the point Pilgrim." Dipper sighed. He placed both his hands on Wirt’s shoulders. "I know you're worried, and in truth, I am a little as well; but nothing helpful is going to come from sitting here and stewing in our sweat. Let's go take this thing down together."

Wirt took a deep breath, and let himself be held by Dipper. The weight of his hands on his shoulders helped ground the young man. He looked into his boyfriend’s eyes and gave a small smile. 

“I think. I'll be fine.” Wirt said slowly.

“I’ll be with you every step of the way.” Dipper smiled.

The pair made their way down the long walk up to the mystery shack. Normally Dipper would have insisted on flying the pair over, but decided that letting Wirt get excited over the natural beauty of Gravity Falls might help him calm down enough to face his uncles. That judgement worked out swimmingly in his favour as Wirt awkwardly asked to stop every few minutes to observe some flower or shrub that he didn’t quite recognise. 

“I know you said the town was bustling with the unknown, I didn’t think that would include plants.” Wirt carefully touched the leaf of a shrub. 

“Is a small bush that impressive?” Dipper squated next to Wirt to observe the plant. The stem looked like it was covered in red polka dots. 

“Look! This shrub adapted its stem to look like it's covered in red ants to avoid being eaten!” Wirt said in an excited voice. He gave the leaf at the tip of the stem a small poke and gave a small twitter of delight as the stem curled up perfectly to make the polka dots look even larger. 

“Huh, I never noticed that.” Dipper taped his chin.

“Probably because you spent the better part of your time running for your life.” Wirt tapped a nearby tree. A sturdy branch grew out, just high enough along the trunk to help him stand up without groaning. “Thank you.” He whispered to the tree.

“You know, for a superhero you sure do use your powers haphazardly.” Dipper teased. He stood up, and led the way to the shack.

“You’re just jealous that your yearbook photo this year was captioned ‘plant killer’.” Wirt smirked,   following Dipper along the path.

“I told all of our friends to not get me house plants as gifts. But they never listen.” Dipper threw up his hands in exasperation. “I can hardly take care of myself. You think I can take care of a plant?”

“Thank your lucky stars that I didn’t decide to incarcerate you for crimes against greenery.” Wirt said.

“That’s not a thing and you know it Mr.’Hero’.” Dipper punched Wirt’s arm.

“Well it might be!” Wirt shot back. “And now the charge has changed to battery.”

“Oh no. how could you have stopped my dastardly crimes.” Dipper rolled his eyes.

“Who’s talking about crime?” came a gruff voice.

The pair looked ahead to find an older looking man. Greying hair that lay flat on his head, a red nose and square jaw. He wore a serious expression, his face behind his square glasses was twisted into a serious scowl as he looked at the two young men. 

“I-uh no-one Sir.” Wirt squeaked. 

Dipper on the other hand rolled his eyes. “Why? You want a cut of the goods?” “You’re damn right.” The old man smirked. 

“I wha-” Wirt looked between them.

“Are you sure you’d want to be associated with horrible criminals like us?” Dipper asked. “Wouldn’t want the press to find out and cause another scandal.”

“Those paparazzi cronies will swarm after anything. It’ll blow over in less than a day.” The old man chuckled.

“What?” Wirt tilted his head.

Dipper grinned. “Wirt, this is my Great uncle Stan, retired hero and ever active conman.” 

“Hero?” Wirt stared at the man. His mind raced to put a mask to the face.

“Autographs cost 50 and pictures with me are 100.” Stan gave a showman’s grin. “Keep in mind that those prices are mutually exclusive.”

“And if you want him in costume you’d be footing the tailor’s bill.” Dipper elbowed Wirt.

“Wait, who were you?” Wirt asked.

“Who was I? Who was I?” Stan looked as though he had the wind knocked out of him. “What kind of cave dweller did you bring to my house?”

Dipper rolled his eyes at Stan’s theatrics. He was well used to his uncle’s inflated ego about his hero career. Wirt on the other hand found difficulty picking up on Stan’s very subtle hints at playing a bit. He felt his stomach sink to his feet as the man’s voice grew in volume, his life flashing before his eyes as he tried to figure out which hero this angry looking man could have been. 

“Grunkle Stan, tone it down, you’re going to give him a heart attack.” Came a sweet as sugar voice from inside the shack. A young lady with her hair done in a long braid opened the mesh door and punched Stan in the arm. Aside from rosy cheeks and the lack of a beard, her face was identical to Dipper’s. It didn’t take long for Wirt to recognise his boyfriend’s twin sister, Mabel. 

She turned to Wirt and gave a warming smile. “Sorry about this old grump. He thinks his comedy routine should double as a horror show.” 

“It’s only horror if they’re too sensitive.” Stan rubbed his arm. 

“You promised Dipper you’d play nice while Wirt was visiting.” she crossed her arms.

“I also promised your uncle Shermie that I wouldn’t let you do any hero work while staying over. And look how that turned out.” Stan rolled his eyes.

“Stopping someone from stealing a car isn’t hero work.” Mabel shot back. 

“Sorry about Stan,” Dipper muttered under his breath. “He’s just jealous that his hero career was cut.” 

“Jealous?” Wirt stared at Dipper. “You said you didn’t tell them anything”

“He’s jealous of your youthfulness” Dipper squeezed Wirt’s shoulder. He leaned in close to whisper into his ear. “I haven’t told them a thing, I promise.”

“So he’s not mad?” Wirt clarified. 

“Nope, just a really bad comedian.” Dipper smiled.

Wirt closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He held onto Dipper’s hand to ground himself. It took a couple of moments but he felt his heart rate slow down. 

“Hey, is the kid okay?” Stan called from the porch. Wirt could hear the audible smack of Mabel’s fist against Stan’s meaty arms, followed by a hushed. “Ouch!”

“Ready to go in?” Dipper asked patiently, ignoring his relatives and their antics.

“I think so yes.” Wirt opened his eyes and gave a weak grin. 

***

The pair had wanted to spend the wait for dinner in the living room, enjoying the terrible public access television that Gravity Falls had to offer. However, Stan had other plans. Apparently Dipper’s second Grunkle, Ford as Stan called him, had failed to arrive in time to help like he had agreed. And now the couple were forced into the kitchen to help with dinner preparations. 

“Honestly you don’t need to help too much.” Dipper insisted as he kept an eye on the bubbling stew.

“I don’t mind. It’s nice to see the shack you talk so much about.” Wirt smiled. He carefully peeled an onion before dicing it. Dipper could have sworn the onion grew plumper when he handed it to Wirt.

“So he talks about this place huh?” Stan looked over his shoulder and away from his chopping board. “Better be talking about how great it was.”

“Oh but of course.” Dipper rolled his eyes. “The 5 star accommodations, and food to match? How could I complain?”

“Didn’t you say that the walls were riddled with splinters?” Wirt asked.

“They add character!” Stan insisted. He banged his fist on to the chopping board, launching sliced up carrots into Dipper’s bubbling pot.

“And a surprising amount of fiber.” Dipper said. He placed a lid on the pot. 

“What?” Wirt looked at Dipper. 

“The kid chews just about anything. I’m surprised his power wasn’t something like eating anything.” Stan said, he took the onion slices from Wirt and poured them into a pan with some oil.

“I don’t think that’d be very fitting.” Wirt said. 

“Oh? And why’s that?” Stan snapped his fingers, summoning a small flame at the tip of his finger, which he then used to ignite the stove. He raised an eyebrow as he stared at Wirt. Challenging him to back up his claim.

Wirt could feel his stomach twisting under the gaze of the older man, but a gentle hand on his shoulder helped the practising hero ground himself. He took a deep breath and put on what felt like a confident grin. “Well, for one thing Dipper would need an appetite for such a power to be useful.”

There was a beat, Wirt held his breath, expecting some snide remark about how he didn’t know what he was talking about. Instead, Wirt watched as Stan slapped his knee in laughter. The old man’s wrinkled face lifted with glee as his hoarse laugh filled the shack. He accidentally knocked over the pan he had just put on the stove. 

Acting quickly, Wirt grew a strong vine from the flowers on the window sill, easily catching the pan.

“And here I thought you were all talk about him being a smart alec!” Stan grinned. He clapped a hand on Wirt’s back.

“Thank you?” Wirt looked to Dipper for help.

His boyfriend gave him a small smile and a thumbs up. “Told you he could hold his own.”

“He still looks scrawny as hell.” Stan pulled his pan out of the vine’s grasp. “Pretty good with his powers. You sure he ain’t some mask behind your back?”

“Grunkle Stan, Wirt would never lie to me like that.” Dipper frowned. He looked disgusted at the suggestion.

“Not many regular people are quick enough to catch something that fast. Especially with powers they don’t use regularly.” Stan said.

“I do use my power often.” Wirt said honestly.

“And what does a librarian need chloromancy for?” Stan asked.

“It helps me put away books faster.” Wirt said. “Not to mention I had a very excitable younger brother. If I wasn’t keeping an eye on him, there was no telling how much trouble he’d get in.”

Dipper held his breath as he watched his Uncle’s reaction. The old man eyed Wirt up and down, before shrugging and moving back to his cooking. “Jeez you really are dating a goody two shoes, aren’t you?” 

“You know me. Can’t help but stick to the rules.” Dipper said with an awkward chuckle.

“Only when it suits you.” Stan remarked. “Now toast the bread, I didn't bring you in here to play 20 questions.”

***

‘Ford’ was still nowhere to be seen, but the family had decided to start dinner without him. 

“If he thinks I’m going to wait for him to eat then he’s got another thing coming.” Stan said. 

With the use of his plant powers, Wirt was able to set the table rather quickly. He wondered why Mabel hadn’t been asked to help, but when he saw several burn marks hidden under the table cloth, he realised the risk the ever glitter throwing Mabel could be to the kitchen. It wasn’t long before the table had been set and all food was served. The three Pines and Wirt sat together at the table, enjoying the delicious food. The sound of clinking plates filled the air.

All was peaceful until a loud crash came from the living room, followed by an angry shout.

“Stanley what did you do to my mirror!”

Stan didn't get up from his seat, in fact he  acted as though he didn’t hear what had just transpired. Wirt remembered seeing the old man reach for his ears before they began eating. ‘Perhaps he turned off his hearing aids?’.

Dipper gave Wirt a smile. “We’re in the kitchen Grunkle Ford!”

Wirt turned to the doorway just in time to see a man with a similar face to Stan’s but with a much deeper cleft in his chin and much poofier hair. He wore a trench coat and red sweater over black dress pants. His clothes were scuffed and were burnt in multiple places. To the untrained eye it would have looked like the man had run wildly through the woods from some kind of monster. However Wirt was familiar with markings like those that were all over Ford’s clothing. They were from stray bullets that had nicked his clothing, narrowly avoiding him. 

“Stanley, what was the big idea with putting my mirror behind the couch!” Ford marched right up to his twin, his face red with rage.

Stan lazily looked up at Ford, his mouth full of mashed potatoes. He raised a finger and swallowed his food. “I can’t hear anything you're saying Sixer.” Stan pointed to the kitchen counter, where his hearing aids sat, keeping him deaf to the world around him.

“You knucklehead! I almost got crushed!” Ford reached to punch Stan, but he was stopped by Dipper. The young man had jumped out of his seat and grabbed a hold of Ford’s arm. Dipper also summoned a vine from the window sill to keep his uncle restrained.

“Grunkle Ford, I’m really happy you’re back in one piece. I was hoping to introduce you to my boyfriend, Wirt.” Dipper said. He nonchalantly gestured to Wirt.

“Ah, yes. I had forgotten we had guests.” Ford’s cheeks turned red as he collected himself. “I apologise for my outburst. I’m usually much more composed. However, someone’s pettiness has affected that.”

“Still deaf as a post.” Stan pointed to his large ears. His mouth full of half eaten stew.

Ford rolled his eyes and walked over to Wirt. The old man wiped his hand on his dark pants before offering a six-fingered hand shake. Wirt politely returned the gesture with a firm hand. But as the pair shook hands, a painful realisation dawned upon them both. 

“You…” They both breathed. Their eyes locked into one another. 

Before Wirt could say anything, Stanford ran out of the room, and out of sight. 

Stan, Dipper and Mabel stared at Wirt, all thinking the same question. Wirt could feel their eyes boring into his skull, so he stood up, and excused himself. The young man made his way to the bathroom, closing the door behind himself. He splashed his face with some cold water and breathed deeply. He looked at the mirror above the sink, screamed, and tripped back into the bathtub.

“Calm down!” Dipper whispered. He stepped out of the mirror.

“How did you-”

“I’ve been copying Grunkle Ford’s power for ages.” Dipper said. “Now, would you mind explaining what that was just now?”

“So, remember how I thought I never met your uncles and was worried about a bad first impression?” Wirt asked. His tone sounded jovial despite his rattled nerves. “Well I don't need to worry about that anymore.”

“When did you meet Grunkle Ford?” Dipper asked. He sat on the side of the bathtub.

“I was doing a nightly patrol of our campus. The security guards had asked for some help from the local hero guild. Someone was breaking in and taking the latest data found by the scientific teams. I was already on campus so the hero guild put me to the job.” Wirt said. He kept in his awkwardly sat position in the tub as he spoke. The shower curtain tangled with his long limbs. 

“So as I was walking around, I heard the guards calling for help, turned the corner and saw the tail coat of a man run down the hallway. ‘The light of the moon shone through the windows, guiding me through the dark to his eventual capture’. Is what I thought when I saw him turn down a dead end. But instead there was no one. There was the one way glass of the nearby lab door; but it was securely locked. The guards checked it anyway and found no one.”

“Right.” Dipper nodded along, tapping his chin.

“I walked along the floor, looking for any signs of the intruder; but alas he had slipped my grasp. The only person I found was one of the professors leaving after a late night at work. I had thought he was the intruder at first, since the first thing I saw were the tails of his coat, but it was a lab coat.” Wirt continued.

“But where does Ford fit into this?” Dipper asked.

“That professor dropped a roll of paper he was carrying. I thought it was some of his research, but when I reached down to pick it up. I noticed he had six fingers, which was not mentioned in the staff listings. And when I looked at his ID, it was a crudely faked card.” Wirt said. 

“Ooooh.” Dipper sucked in a breath. “And he realised you were the hero from that night?”

“There’s no way he didn’t.” Wirt said.

“Okay, things are messy, but, there’s nothing to worry about.” Dipper clapped his hands. “He knows that you know, but we don’t know he knows. So we can use this to our advantage.” 

“If he knows that we know, then he won’t try to deal with me to make sure I don’t blab?” wirt asked.

“But he can’t be sure that you know.” Dipper said. “As far as your story goes, you’re only a librarian. Just keep your cool and things should smooth over.”

“Considering how annoyed your Uncle Stan is, I doubt he’d want to cause too much more trouble.” Wirt said.

“Exactly.” Dipper smiled. “Now come on, dinner’s getting cold and trust me when I say you don’t want to fight Mabel for seconds.”

 Wirt watched as Dipper stood up offering his hand. The young man took a deep breath before accepting his boyfriend’s hand.

“That sounds lovely.” he agreed.

#Gravity falls #Pinescone #Pinescone Secret Santa #Over the garden wall #OTGW #GF #Wirt #Dipper #Wirt X Dipper #Hero Au

[danzinora-switch]

Typing the Turtles (ROTTMNT) Part 3 - Leonardo

This started out as an investigation into the turtles’ insecurities, because one thing the show does so well is demonstrate that they are still teenagers. And being a teenager is a confusing experience - there’s angst, drama, exploring one’s identity, a lot of growth, and overall figuring out who you are. That’s a messy process, too! And we see this mess in our turtles: they mess up, they’re learning, they self-doubt, they have fears and insecurities, but they’re also discovering their strengths and how to overcome their inner obstacles.

So after thinking about all this way too long, here’s my psychological breakdown of each turtle (I’ll be referencing MBTI and the Enneagram a ton, but will include links for more general information on those if you don’t know what I’m talking about). 

Parts One and Two found on the links for Raph and Don.

Leo: ESTP, 3w2

The Achiever, the Entrepreneur, the Charmer, the Explorer

I’ve wanted to say this for a long time: Leo is such a 3, he is such a 3 it hurts, oh my goodness. Read this: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-3 and tell me that isn’t Leo to a T.

It took me a little longer to figure out the MBTI for him, but he has a lot of similarities with the ESTP. This does mean we need to step away from the ‘frat bro’ stereotype of ESTPs, though. They are a lot more keen than convention would suggest.

Really, a big thing with Leo is his need to be The Best. What that means, to him, is normally something physically-related. He needs to be the best at sports or performing certain moves, which we see in episodes like The Longest Fight where he bets he can pull off the impossible skateboard move, or Shell in a Cell where he asserts he can out-perform Ghostbear. Additionally, episodes like Air Turtle really showcase the ugly side of his competitiveness. But he also desires physical perfection. He is rather image-conscious, fretting about his body in Stuck on You, and routinely referring to himself as the team’s Faceman. The biggest example of this was his idea for a disguise in Hidden City Job: the Turtle Adonis. An adonis is considered the peak physical ideal, handsome and attractive to boot. If this drive doesn’t scream Enneagram Three I don’t know what does.

Leo at his worst: Leo’s competitive side can certainly get the best of him. We see this in episodes like Air Turtle, where his ‘win at all costs’ attitude starts to alienate him from the group. Raph has also described him as a ‘poor winner’ which refers to his tendency to gloat when he does beat out the competition, or was proven right (Bug Busters, The Gumbus, You Got Served, LAIR GAMES). He’s smug, gloating, and when he does lose tries to wiggle out of it through technicalities. The one time he says something isn’t a competition is after Mikey beats him at Skateball (You Got Served). And when he ‘loses’ the Lair Games, Donnie’s win comes with a catch that Leo built in.

Threes do this for approval and validation, though, and we see that underlying his need to be the team’s Champion in Minotaur Maze and Portal Jacked! “I’m nothing without them!” he cries to Hueso. “What good is a team with just a Faceman?” Threes have a need to distinguish themselves from others, to be admired, to have attention, so that they then feel valuable and worthwhile. Other people, then, are necessary. When Leo wants to get on the Wall of Champions in Minotaur Maze, his brothers factor in to his unmet needs. “...because what good is being a Champion if you can’t rub it in your brothers’ faces?” Leo doesn’t just need to be The Best… he needs others to acknowledge it, as well.

Average Leo: He’s got a practical eye for situations and the quickness to adapt and act as needed. The ESTP is known for being bold as well as perceptive. We see this in fight scenes such as Battle Nexus: New York when he is quick to determine that physical comedy is the key to making the sprite laugh and immediately changing his approach.

He also displays a remarkable amount of common sense when making decisions. In Origami Tsunami, as the guys discuss becoming heroes, he’s the one who shoots down ideas until they reach a more achievable goal: taking on paper thieves. And he’s got a point, can you imagine the turtles taking on a spine-breaker or mangler at that point in time? When everyone else is blinded by ideals concerning fixing the Mutant Menace, he’s the only one who asks “anybody down for staying home during the anti-mutant panic?” Of course, he still goes along with their adventure, because ESTP’s live in The Moment, so why not?

Something else that I want to mention is Leo’s appreciation for the Machiavellian. He has an incredibly intuitive grasp on it, and actively appreciates twists, turns, betrayals and deceptions. His love for magic probably stems from this (The Clothes Don’t Make the Turtle) and he is the only one enjoying the series of betrayals in Warren & Hypno Sitting in a Tree. Hidden City Job also expands on the fact that Leo doesn’t have a problem with betrayal, as he revels about brotherly betrayal happening all the time. He’s cool with being betrayed… just know that he can betray you back. It’s all fair game.

This can have upsides and downsides. On the upside, his understanding of trickery can lead to brilliant plans and solutions such as what we saw in Many Unhappy Returns, where he was able to outsmart Big Mama herself. On the downside, this kind of behavior is not always the best move - his family does not appreciate being left out of the loop of his schemes, or actively being manipulated as part of them (Leo’s plan in Many Unhappy Returns worked, but he still left his brothers alone and exhausted, and did not consider the emotional effect it would have on Splinter being sent back into the arena). At that point it’s no wonder he asks “why does no one trust me?” Because you tend to have an angle, ‘Nardo. Be careful how you use that.

He is also incredibly persuasive. This is partly why I feel he is a 3 wing 2, ‘The Charmer’ because he knows how to communicate to get what he wants. When used for the right reasons, we see him settle discord such as cooling the mobs in You Got Served or apologize when he knows an apology is needed (Todd Scouts, Air Turtle, Hidden City Job). We see it used neutrally (and a bit skeptically) in Many Unhappy Returns when he declares he’ll just go to see Big Mama and “turn up the Leo”. It can also be used deceptively, however. Todd Scouts shows this when Leo is the one who convinces Todd that they’re ready to kick things up a notch by going out alone… when really they just want to get away from him. He’ll also use words to get under people’s skins: dismissing Warren Stone in Stuck on You, but also pointing out Donnie’s beach ball fear in Mind Meld. He knows which words will get the responses he wants, for better or for worse.

Leo at his Best: Leo is the team’s motivator. He’s the one giving the others the pep-talks and encouragement they need to continue (Origami Tsunami, Finale: Rise). Donnie said it best after Leo’s redemption in Air Turtle: “your confidence is giving me confidence!”

Because that’s the healthy thing about Threes: they strive to reach their own full potential, which also inspires others to reach theirs. Leo doesn’t like to fail/lose, but he won’t let anyone else succumb, either. He has the most confidence in each Mad Dog’s ability. “I knew you guys could handle it!” he says in Many Unhappy Returns, and points out with amazing accuracy just what his brothers are capable of. He not only believes in himself, he believes in those around him. And he’s able to inspire them when they’re feeling down about their own abilities or not enthused about the task (see his speech about standing up for the paper men in Origami Tsunami).

This also includes encouragement and compliments in other areas. Regarding the Shell Hogs: “Donnie, these are amazing! And I know everything I say sounds sarcastic, but I’m being completely genuine this time” (Stuck on You). When Mikey isn’t sure Hypno will like him: “What? Of course he will, you’re adorable!” (Newsworthy). To Raph, “Does this place have smoke detectors? Because you’re on fire, Big Daddy!” (The Clothes Don’t Make the Turtle).

He’s also able to step in and take charge when Raph falls because he can see what action needs to be taken (that practical and observant, yet bold ESTP side coming in). When Raph gets separated in the sewers, Leo’s the one who doesn’t treat it casually and gets the others moving to find him (Man vs Sewer). When his older brother is hypnotized by Hypno in Stuck on You, he quickly reacts and tells Mikey and Donnie what the plan is and enacts it. We see this leader potential grow bit by bit, and his awareness of each individual’s role on the team allows him to step back from areas that he knows aren’t his forte: Raph can handle the ‘teamwork’ stuff, Donnie has got the technical know-how, and Mikey takes care of positive outlook for any situation. Leo can keep things fun and inspire confidence. His puns help lighten the mood, his jokes break the ice of tense situations, and he never stops believing in their own abilities, which keeps them all going (Donnie’s Gifts, Many Unhappy Returns).

Leo Relationships:

(While Leo has a competitive episode with each of his brothers: Shell in a Cell, Lair Games, and You Got Served, there is more going on than just that).

Raph: Both Leo and Raph have strong gut feelings that can be blindsided. Leo picks up immediately that Big Mama is not trustworthy while Raph is more than happy to believe her, but Leo is blinded by his fan-love for Jupiter Jim to realize that Marcus Montcrief is a crazy and suspicious adult, which Raph becomes aware of early on (Bug Busters, Jupiter Jim Ahoy!). They both can be a little too head-first when diving into plans, such as checking out the creepy bus in One Man’s Junk or doing their best to help April in Hypno: Part Deux. But they do trust each other to have each other’s backs, and there’s (thankfully!) no Leo vs Angst in this version of their characters. It really allows them to be comfortable with each other (and egg each other on with more than just missions: see the pizza pigeon in Mind Meld).

Donnie: In some ways Leo acts like a foil for Donnie. His own natural confidence counterbalances a lot of his twin’s insecurities. They butt heads over it, sure, with Donnie perhaps taking things too seriously and Leo seemingly not taking them seriously enough, but I like I said in Donnie’s typing: one’s chill and one’s uptight. There’s a ton of back and forth between them: they are the epitome of siblings fighting one minute and getting up to no good together the next (Example from The Mystic Library: Leo grooves out with Donnie’s rap one moment and tries to get him kicked off the team in the next scene). They may antagonize each other in Lair Games, Smart Lair, the beginning of Snow Day and Hidden City Job, and so much more, but also demonstrate brotherly love (and antics) in Operation: Normal, the end of Hidden City Job and Smart Lair, and, of course, Battle Nexus: New York. “For Donnie’s honor!”

Mikey: Leo sticks up for Mikey a fair amount, especially to Raph. He supports Mikey trying to open the portal in Mystic Mayhem, and going out on his first solo mission in Hot Soup: The Game. We actually need more Leo and Mikey episodes; of the two we have one is a competition episode (You Got Served), and The Gumbus has Leo tag along intent on proving Mikey wrong. It seems they like to hang out during the down time a lot, as they play in the arcade and skateboard off-screen in episodes such as Mrs. Cuddles, You Got Served, Mind Games, and Sparring Partner. And of course, we have the gripping image of Leo protecting Mikey’s shell with his own in Battle Nexus: New York. I’d really like to see them get up to more shenanigans, though. (hint, hint @nickelodeon​, @netflix​).

Ultimately, Leo is a confident, competitive turtle striving to reach his full potential. He is normally great at encouraging his brothers to do the same, and devising grand strategies, but tends to forget the emotional effects his actions can have on them, especially if he gets carried away on his quest to be The Best. He’s still learning, and these traits will likely flesh out as he grows into a more leader-like role.

For more information on the ESTP and Enneagram 3 personality types, click here:

https://www.16personalities.com/estp-personality

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-3

https://www.crystalknows.com/enneagram/type-3-wing-2

https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.155775924.2701/flat,800x800,070,f.u5.jpg

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #tmnt 2018 #tmnt 2k18 #rottmnt leo #rottmnt leonardo #long post #essay #personality types #myers briggs #mbti #ESTP #enneagram 3 #enneagram type 3 #3w2 #saverottmnt #i wanted this out for risetober day 3 but in my defense i worked all day saturday #here at last #it's late and i have no idea if my words make sense though

[gingeralepdf]

A Little Love

A/N: here she isss!!! this is the piece that i wrote for the Pick Your Poison Fic Challenge that was set up by the amazing @andwhenshesays @for-fucks-sake-h and @oh-honey-styles (thank you for organizing all of this!! you’re all legends!!)

extra big thank you to lydia @youresogolden-h and brailey @daydreamsofh for being such sweet beta readers <3

this is my first ever attempt at writing fic, so i hope you enjoy it!

****CONTENT WARNING**** alcohol consumption

Harry is your best friend and your coworker, but you see him as more. Maybe you both just want a little love.

word count: ~8K

**April 25, 2020, 11:15am**

It’s a comfortable spring day in San Francisco. The windows are cracked, letting in sweet smelling fresh air and the moderate bustle of people out and about. Despite the perfect weather to be out at the market or taking a walk in the park, you’re currently at your neighbor’s apartment, slouched on the couch in the living room and in the midst of a New Girl marathon. Or rather, you are in the midst of a New Girl marathon, but your friend has not looked up from the guitar he is restringing for the past fifteen minutes.

You’ve been stealing glances at Harry from the other end of the couch. He has the guitar laying across his lap. He’s able to take all of the strings off and put three new ones on without a problem, but something about the fourth string seems to be giving him a lot of trouble. Every time he gets the string wound up on the tuning key, it snaps loose, like it can’t hold the tension. After several attempts with the same result, Harry sets his string winder on the coffee table and lets out a frustrated huff while scratching his forehead.

Although you know it’s probably best to not make a comment while he’s annoyed, you decide to make one anyway.

Just as he grabs the winder from the coffee table and goes in for another attempt at the string, you blurt out, “I thought the whole point of watching Netflix at your house instead of mine was so you could work and watch at the same time.”

Harry rolls his eyes and slowly cranes his head to look in your direction, “I am watching.”

“Right, so tell me what Miranda has been up to,” you challenge.

Harry lowers his head in concentration, making another attempt at winding up the string on the tuning key, “She’s like… going on a date or something.”

“Miranda isn’t even a character in the show!”

The tuning key once again snaps loose. Harry’s nostrils flare and he mutters a quick “Fucks sake.”

A moment passes where the only sound in the room is the TV. You’re trying to gauge whether or not you’ve actually pissed him off a bit. You decide to bite your tongue and see what he is going to say next.

Harry finally shifts his eyes from the guitar to you, “Obviously I can’t work and watch at the same time.”

You give him a pointed look, “You think?”

“I promise I can finish this project pretty quick, and then I’ll watch, like, four episodes, uninterrupted. I just need to go get some parts so… would you mind pausing it?”

Once the show is paused, Harry gets up from his spot on the couch, gently sets the guitar on the floor, and turns to exit the living room. However, he is stopped short since your legs are making a barricade between the couch and the coffee table. With a mischievous grin on his face, he uses his shin to slowly push your legs away from him so that your feet slide off the end of the table and onto the floor. Your jaw drops in exaggerated offense. Giggles erupt from both of you as he narrowly avoids your attempts to trip him while he steps over your legs and then jogs across the room to his workspace.

A huge benefit of living a couple of buildings away from your best friend is that any given day of the week can be spent like this. The both of you can always be found at either one of your apartments watching hours of Netflix, working on projects, or sharing meals.

Just as you were enjoying the moment of silence that fell onto the room, your phone and Harry’s phone buzz on the coffee table. With a quiet groan, you slowly sit up from the couch to see a text from your boss, sent in a group chat with yourself and Harry.

Would either of you be able to work the closing shift tonight? Sarah called in sick and the rest of the shift leads can’t work today.

Although you and Harry were both looking forward to having a Saturday off, you knew the bar was a little short-staffed this weekend, so you both kind of saw this coming.

“Is that who I think it is?” Harry asks.

“Yeah, Adam’s asking one of us to work the closing shift tonight. Sarah called in sick and I guess Charlotte can’t work today.”

Harry groans as he makes his way back to his previous spot on the couch and plops down with a screwdriver and a plastic bag containing what looks to be a new set of tuning keys in hand.

Harry takes a moment to look around his living room, taking in all of the instrument cases stacked around the small apartment, scratching his jaw in thought. “I mean, I would take it, but I’ve got a lot of projects that have to get done this weekend.”

“I guess that just leaves me then,” you say flatly, sinking further into the couch and staring straight ahead out of the window across the room.

“‘M’ sorry,” Harry says with a light chuckle at your dramatics, “I’ll owe you one.” His offer comes out more like a question.

You look back in his direction to see him with a wide, dimpled grin staring back at you. You know he’s just trying to make you feel better, and it works.

After sending a quick text to your boss letting him know you would be there tonight, you sit up straight and grab the remote from the coffee table. “That’s a really tempting offer. I’ve got a lot of sick days saved up, you know?”

“Heyyyy,” Harry draws out in a playfully offended tone.

You chuckle before asking, “Can we just finish this episode so I can go home and get some rest before work?”

“Yeah I think we can do that.” He sets the screwdriver and plastic bag on the coffee table and leans back on the couch, folding his hands together to rest on his stomach.

You press play on the remote and settle into another day with your best friend.

**April 26, 2020. 1:47am**

About ten minutes until the bar closes, and there are still three large, lively groups hanging around. You and your coworkers have done as many pre-closing tasks as you possibly could, aside from taking the drink glasses straight out of the customers’ hands. Now it just seems to be the longest waiting game ever until you’re officially allowed to kick everyone out.

While you’re all busying yourselves with wiping down counters and straightening chairs, the front door swings open.

Just as you’re about to put on your best customer service face that you can muster, you see a familiar blue and white plaid jacket and fluffy brown curls. Harry is strolling in, surveying the crowd of customers as he’s making his way to where you’re standing at the bar. You see that he is donning a form-fitting grey t-shirt with a bright yellow smiley face on it, light brown high-waisted pants, and a delicate looking pearl necklace. He always seems to be able to effortlessly look put together, even when he is making bold choices.

You look at him with raised eyebrows and ask with exaggerated charm, “Come here often?”

“Oh god.” He laughs at your ill attempt at comedy through a pained expression.

“What are you doing here?”

He shrugs, “Same as always.”

Harry has made it a routine to walk home with you when you’re working the closing shift. Even when you insist that there’s no need for him to stay up so late when he’s not working.

He glances around before looking back at you, “Is there anything I can help with right now?”

You shake your head. “Just waiting for them to leave so we can clean everything.”

“Bollocks,” he mutters before puckering his lips.

You decide to go around the corner of the bar to the prep area where the music controls are. Hopefully the customers will take the hint that it’s time to leave once you lower the volume.

After a few minutes, all of the staff are breathing a collective sigh of relief when one group makes their way to the door and the other two groups shortly follow suit.

By the time you follow the crowd out and you lock the door, it’s 2:05 a.m. Considering how busy it was tonight, you’re counting this as a small victory.

Harry and your other coworkers are going around cleaning up glasses and bottles and taking them back to the sink while you make your way to the register to start your shift lead duties.

Once the tips are divided, you take a look around and see that your coworkers are steadily making their way through the cleaning checklist. With Harry’s help, things are moving along pretty quickly. You pull the first bundle of cash out of the drawer and start counting.

After getting the cash drawer sorted out, and counting out a new one for Monday, you hear your coworker saying your name. “I think we’ve done everything on the cleaning checklist. Is there anything else you need help with?”

“Actually, all I have left to do is inventory. I’m not gonna hold you hostage for that, so you guys are free to head out if you want to.”

Your coworkers are saying goodnight and clocking out shortly after. Once they're gone, you’re left with the faint buzzing of the refrigerators and the light music over the speakers. You turn around to face the shelves of bottles and notice a few that are running low and need replacing. You go down the ‘employees only’ hallway to the back stockroom and grab all the bottles you need. Hugging them to your chest, you make your way back down the hallway. You walk about halfway when a figure jumps out of the supply closet to your right, causing you to jump backwards and let out a scream.

Harry’s howling laughter echoes through the hallway as you try to catch your breath and will your heart to stop racing.

You finally regain some composure and turn to fully face Harry. His laughter has reduced to occasional soft chuckles falling past his pursed lips. If your arms weren’t full, you would most likely be smacking him for scaring the shit out of you.

“What the hell were you thinking?” You do your best to give him death glare, but your voice is now shaking with laughter as well. “You’re lucky I didn’t drop any of this stuff, you idiot.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry but you should have seen your face. Holy shit.” He opens his arms and slowly steps toward you to bring you in for a hug.

“Well if you’re so sorry, put these on the shelf for me.” You say as you thrust the bottles into his chest, making him grunt out a laugh.

You walk to the front with Harry trailing behind you. All you have left to do is make a few notes for Adam before finally clocking out. You’ve never been more excited for your head to hit the pillow when you get home.

As you’re making your notes, Harry is pacing about behind you, straightening out all of the bottles on the shelves. He lets out a long observant hum.

“What?”

“Just noticed this guy’s almost empty,” he holds up a bottle of tequila and swirls around what little liquor is left in it. One corner of his mouth turns up before he looks at you, “Enough left for two more shots, probably.”

“Is that so?”

“Y’ wanna find out?”

“I don’t know,” you say as you tilt your head up and tap your chin in thought “I don’t know how I feel about taking shots with people who jump out of supply closets to scare me.”

“Oh c’mon, don’t be like that.” He’s exaggerating and drawing all of his words out as he walks over to you. He wraps his arms around you so that his hands are resting on your left shoulder and he rests the side of his head on the back of yours. “I’m sorry. Please take a shot with me.”

Although it's pointless since he can’t see your face, you roll your eyes in response, “Fine. Pour me one.”

His hand gives your shoulder a light squeeze before he moves away and reaches under the counter then puts two shot glasses onto the bar. He reaches behind him for the nearly empty bottle and pours the perfect amount into each glass. Taking them both in his hands, he extends one to you.

You don’t miss the chuckle that he lets out as you take the glass from him. After giving him a questioning look, you notice a slight blush on his face.

“What’s so funny?”

“Was just thinking. This,” he gestures to the two of you and the glasses you’re both holding “reminds me of the day you got into the art institute.”

Around this time a year ago, you had spent weeks pouring over your application for the San Francisco Art Institute and months after that waiting to hear anything back. When you got the acceptance email toward the end of your shift at work, Harry was the first person that you told. Just over a year ago, you were standing with Harry behind this same bar when you told him the good news. Your chest filled with warmth at his reaction. He wrapped you in a nearly suffocating hug as he loudly declared, “I told you you had a kick ass portfolio! So fuckin proud of you.”

Right after he released you from the hug, he poured each of you a shot. Harry then made the impromptu decision of doing a bar crawl after you both got off, deeming the two shots “not enough celebration”.

After a night full of slightly over the top celebrating, you were practically dragging Harry home. It wasn’t until you got to his apartment building that he realized he had left his keys and wallet at one of the bars. Not wanting to drag him back across town, you ended up bringing him back to your apartment just around the corner.

It took a lot of coaxing, but you were able to get him to drink a big glass of water before helping him brush his teeth with your spare toothbrush.

You have a lot of vague and fuzzy memories from that night, but there are two that remain crystal clear. One is the moment when you were clumsily leading him to your couch and he leaned in to whisper in your ear, “Wish I could kiss you.” And the other is the way your stomach dropped and your heart nearly fluttered out of control at his drunken confession.

The conversations about that night always turned into jokes about you being able to handle your liquor better than he could. His comment was never brought up by either of you. You weren’t sure if he would even remember it, or if either of you really wanted to.

“Yeah,” you chuckled, “we should never be allowed to celebrate anything after that. We were miserable the next day.”

You lock eyes with him and for a split second there’s something in his eyes that you don’t quite recognize. Like a different kind of softness that you hadn’t seen before this moment.

It’s fleeting, however, because he glances down at your hands and clinks your glasses together. You tilt your heads back at the same time, feeling the burn in your throats and letting out sharp exhales once it’s passed.

Harry takes your glass from your hand and silently goes to the prep area. You hear the sink running as you finish up your notes to your boss and you clock out.

“You ready to go?”

“Yeah I just need to get my-” you stop mid-sentence when you turn around to see Harry already holding out your bag that had been hanging up in the prep area. You mutter a ‘never mind’ as you take it from him.

Harry grabs his jacket from the pool table and you stroll to the front door together, turning off lights as you go.

You finally step out into the chilly nighttime air. The only noises are coming from the small scattered groups of people gathering in front of the bars on the block that are just closing.

After locking the doors, you and Harry start trudging along the sidewalk up the steep hill. If you had known that it was going to get so much colder and windier during the night, you would have brought a jacket with you. You fold your arms and grit your teeth as another cold breeze hits you from the front.

You don’t even notice Harry taking off his jacket until he’s holding it in front of your face. You pause your walking for a moment to gently take it from his hand.

“Aren’t you gonna be cold?”

“Well I’m not gonna watch you shiver all the way home.”

You frown a bit as you look at the jacket in your hands. You can still feel the warmth from Harry’s body heat on the hand that’s grasping the inside of it. Having that little bit of warmth already makes you feel better, but you hate to think that he’s going to be the one gritting his teeth against the cold.

He says your name through a chuckle and you look up to meet his eyes. “I’ll be fine. Just put the jacket on and let’s get you home, yeah?”

**April 26th, 2020. 5:30am**

It should be considered a crime to be wide awake at this hour, considering the small amount of sleep you’ve gotten. The only thing you had the energy to do when you got home last night was change out of your work clothes and fall into bed. You remember glancing at your clock and reading 3:15 a.m. before your eyelids grew heavy and closed.

The reminder of Harry’s drunk confession that you thought was water under the bridge is now flooding your mind as you desperately try to fall back to sleep. You try to push down the memory of his giggles as you made the strenuous effort of finding the switch on your living room lamp while having nearly all of his body weight leaned against you for support. You try to push down the memory of his flushed cheeks in the glowing yellow light when you finally got him settled on your couch. You try to push down the memory of running your fingers through his soft curls and giving his hairline a soft kiss before going to bed. You try to think of literally anything else.

It isn’t until the very first hints of daylight enter your room that you decide to give up.

The floor is cold on your feet as you walk to your bathroom, rubbing your tired eyes.

After a quick shower and putting on your favorite t-shirt and jeans, you feel less sluggish. You focus on going through your kitchen pantry to find something for your growling stomach.

Although you wish that you were still sleeping soundly in your bed, you think of how rare it is to get to see this city both at the dead of night and when it’s slowly starting to wake up. To be able to greet the light in your living room as it dances across the pictures on your walls and you mill about with your bowl of cereal.

The pictures lined up on your walls remind you of the project that you started last week that you need new photos for. You go to your closet and get the bag that holds your digital camera. Your mind is buzzing at the thought of taking it to the park before it gets too crowded.

You put on a jacket and shoes, pull your camera bag over your shoulder, and head out into the chilly Sunday morning.

********************

You round the corner of your block and start making your way down the steep hill, admiring the multicolored houses across the street that are glowing softly in the morning light. A smile spreads across your face as you reach into your bag for your camera and your fisheye lens. Once you’ve captured a few shots that you’re happy with, you move on toward the park.

You’re coming up on Harry’s building, and you instinctively glance up at the second story bay window that you know belongs to his apartment. Because this side of his building is still in the shade at this point in the day, you can see that his light is on.

“What’s he doing up?” you think to yourself. He’s always been an early riser, but considering how late you both stayed up, you would hope that he had been able to get some extra sleep.

As soon as the thought crosses your mind, Harry appears in the window. His blinds are wide open, so you can clearly see him stepping up to his record player and delicately placing the needle on the vinyl. A toothbrush hangs out of his mouth.

What your eyes are more drawn to, however, is his choice of clothing, or lack thereof. He’s standing in front of his window in nothing but a black t-shirt and a pair of underwear. You knew the t-shirt too well as the one he found at a thrift store years ago and became obsessed with after reading the ‘Treat People With Kindness’ logo on the front. He steps back from the record player and tilts his head back to brush his teeth. You watch as his jaw flexes and is accentuated by the light scruff of facial hair along it.

It’s becoming alarmingly clear to you that you are alone in the middle of the sidewalk, about thirty feet away from your best friend’s window, ogling him as he’s minding his own business. As much as your palms are sweating and your stomach is doing somersaults at the prospect of being spotted, you cannot bring yourself to continue walking. You wouldn’t mind becoming a permanent part of the sidewalk if it meant having this kind of view.

Harry turns and walks away from the window. You finally snap out of your daze and hurry past his window, thankful for the help of the downhill slope to move you along. Once you get to the corner of the block, you stop and lean your back against the building. Lightly smacking your forehead, you mutter out loud to yourself, “What the hell was that?”

********************

The trip to the park turned out to be a perfect way to spend the morning. You ended up taking a lot of pictures of murals and flowers before the park started to get too busy.

With your favorite album playing through your headphones, your mind is now buzzing with the excitement of having new photos to edit.

Once you cross the street, you’re now standing on the corner of your block. One way would lead you once again past the window to Harry’s apartment. The other way would help you avoid another potentially awkward sighting, but was much longer and usually includes lines for overcrowded restaurants.

Keeping your head down, you continue walking straight ahead in the same direction that you came from.

As you’re hiking up the hill, you suddenly hear a voice that you know is not coming through your headphones. You turn your volume down and listen to your surroundings. Plain as day, someone behind you shouts your name. You rip your headphones out and whip around to see Harry waving at you from his window.

“Hey! You wanna come up for breakfast?”

Your feet are firmly planted to the sidewalk, much like they were about an hour ago when you stood in the same spot and ogled this man.

You opened your mouth, not knowing what to say, and pathetically jabbed your thumb in the general direction of your apartment. “Actually I… I-I was gonna-”

“I’ve got coffee from Trieste,” he says in a sing-song tone.

You internally roll your eyes and curse him for knowing that you can never deny coffee from your favorite place in town. Plus, wracking your brain for a good excuse to be on your way is becoming difficult due to the hunger pains starting up in your stomach. That bowl of cereal is only holding you over for so long.

You look up at his dimpled face and relax your shoulders, “Okay, yeah. Yeah I’ll come up.”

“I’ll unlock the door for you!” is the last thing you hear before he shuts his window and you make your way to the stairs.

You climb up to the second story and turn down his hallway. When you’re standing in front of his door, you can hear music playing.

You open the door and you’re met with the sounds of trumpets. Harry has Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” playing on his record player. He has it just loud enough to where it won’t annoy any of his neighbors, but it still fills every corner of the living room. It’s not the first time you’ve walked into a similar scene here. You know this to be one of his favorite songs to play in the morning.

You close the door behind you and take in the state of the room as you walk through. The instrument cases are a little more organized than they had been yesterday. Smaller ones are stacked up next to his workstation and the larger ones are stacked up in the corner next to his couch. His laptop sits open on the coffee table and a haphazard stack of blank paper repair tags sat next to it.

The camera bag on your shoulder is now starting to feel heavy, so you plop down on the couch. Your ears perk up at the sound of Harry singing along with the record from the kitchen.

“You can have an aeroplane flyin’. If you bring your blue sky back.”

Following the smell of coffee, you walk over to the doorway of the small kitchen. Harry is  standing at the counter. Thankfully he is not wearing the outfit that you saw him in earlier. He’s wearing brown trousers and a cream colored flannel with black and green stripes. He also has on his signature pair of scuffed up black vans.

There is a small table and two chairs in the corner of the kitchen next to the window with a vase of sunflowers and a couple of books sitting on it. You walk over to the table to inspect the books more closely. Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton & John Armstrong and The Course of Love, also by Alain de Botton. Before you get the chance to flip them over and read the descriptions, Harry clears his throat.

“Coffee’s ready.” He sets the kettle down on the counter and dances his way over to the cupboard where he keeps his mugs.

You can’t stop the smile that spreads across your face, admiring his ability to always be so energetic in the mornings.

He takes the filter out of the chemex and chunks it in the trash before pouring the coffee into two mugs. The way he turns with a mug in each hand, extending one to you, is extremely reminiscent of last night. After you take the mug from his hands, he scoots past you into the living room. The volume of the music lowers to a faint background noise before he appears again in the kitchen.

“So,” he pauses to reach into the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs and setting it on the counter, “what are you doing up so early? Figured you’d be in bed till noon. Seemed pretty exhausted last night.” He takes a long sip of coffee, waiting for your response.

Suddenly you’re doing everything to not look in his direction. Your eyes are shifting from the table to the flowers to the mug in your hands.

“Um… yeah I woke up at like 5:30 for some reason and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I just decided to take a walk with my camera.” Your last few words echo from your mug before you take a big sip.

Harry clicks his tongue. “M’ sorry, that sucks. Did you at least see anything interesting?”

You involuntarily gasp at his question, causing the coffee to go directly down the wrong pipe. Several harsh coughs erupt from your chest.

Harry acts quickly, muttering a quick “shit” before taking the cup from your hand and setting it on the table along with his. He steps behind you and you hear a chair scoot out from the table. His hands gently wrap around your upper arms, prompting you to have a seat. You fold over in the chair, gripping the edge of the table for stability. After a few more strong coughs, you’re finally able to catch your breath.

Harry’s fingertips rubbing soothing circles on your back sends electricity up and down your spine.

His hand slides off of your back as he steps away from you, “Alright? Want some water?” He’s already walking over to his cabinet and pulling out a glass before you respond.

Once you clear your throat, you croak out, “Yeah I’m fine, that’s fine.”

He sets the glass on the table in front of you, turns back to the carton of eggs on the counter and starts cracking some into a pan.

After taking some sips of your water, you say, “So I was going to ask you the same question. What are you doing up so early?”

“Well, funny enough, I also had to wake up around 5:30. I’ve got a client coming to pick up her trumpet this morning and I had to get everything sorted and clean up a bit before she got here.”

Nodding your head, you tease, “Oh yeah, it looks really good in there. Was starting to forget what your floor looked like.”

Your heart leaps at the sound of Harry’s belly laugh. “Wow. Wowwwwww. Already giving me a hard time. At this hour. Jesus.”

You laugh at his exaggerated reaction while he simply shakes his head.

There’s a knock at the front door. Harry reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. “Must be her, actually. I’ll be right back.”

“Do you want me to do those?” You stand up from your spot at the table and gesture to the pan.

“Sure, that’d be great, thanks,” he says over his shoulder when he exits the kitchen.

A moment later, you hear the sound of a woman’s voice greeting Harry. It sounds like they’re just standing in his entryway because you can’t really make out what either of them are saying.

Meanwhile, you go about scrambling eggs, making toast, and getting out plates and silverware. By the time Harry is back in the kitchen, you’re already starting to put everything on the table.

You pick up the books from the table and hold them up to Harry, “Where do you want these?”

“Oh uh, I’ll just put those on the coffee table.” When you hand them off to him, he holds up the copy of Art as Therapy. “This one’s for you though, make sure you take it with you today.”

You tilt your head in question.

“Just thought it looked like something you would enjoy. Saw it when I was looking for this other one.” He holds up The Course of Love.

Before you could say anything, he’s disappeared again into the living room.

Once you’re both sitting at the table and digging into your breakfast, Harry asks, “What are you doing tonight?”

You squint your eyes at him. “I mean, I don’t really have anything planned. Why do you ask?”

“Well that client that was just here offered me two free tickets to her jazz band’s show tonight as, like, an extra ‘thank you’.” He shrugs, “Might be fun to go to.”

With a straight face, you reply, “I can’t, I’m booked tonight.”

You stare at each other for a minute in silence trying not to crack a smile, until you both start snorting.

“I know you’re free because the bar is closed and Sarah is still sick.” Harry tosses his fork on his plate and leans back in his chair like he’s just won an argument.

You mirror him by crossing your arms and leaning back in your chair. “What if I have plans with Mitch? Sarah’s boyfriend?”

Harry furrows his brows and looks at you, baffled, “I know who Mitch is, why’d you have to say it like that?”

“Because I knew it would throw you off.”

“Alright, I’ll just take Mitch to the concert then.”

You drop your jaw and lightly kick his leg under the table. “What time is this concert?” You ask, slipping out of your teasing tone.

“It’s at seven.” Harry leans forward and lifts his coffee from the table, holding it up to you.

You grab yours from the table and clink it with his before finishing off the remainder of your coffee.

***********************

Back at your apartment, you’re leaning back in your chair at the desk in your living room, waiting for your pictures from today to upload on your computer. Your hands run over the smooth blue and green cover of Art as Therapy. In the few years that you have known Harry, you’ve swapped countless book recommendations back and forth, and the bookshelves in your apartments are constantly changing due to all of the borrowing you both do. You’ve even gotten each other books for birthdays and other holidays. This is the first book that he has bought for you completely unprompted. You hadn’t even heard of the author until today, so it’s not like he heard you mention in passing wanting to read his books.

You flip the book over and read the description, then flip to the first few pages to see a statement about the authors. “Their proposal is that certain great works of art offer clues on managing the tensions and confusions of everyday life and that, approached in the right way, art can help us answer both the intimate and the everyday questions we all ask ourselves.”

Quickly shaking yourself out of your own thoughts, you check the progress on your photos. Approximately 20 minutes remaining.

You huff, slap the book closed, and toss it on the desk before getting up and walking to your room. There’s an old shoe box on one of your shelves that you like to go through when you’re feeling sad or having a weird day, which feels about right at this moment.

You plop down on your bed and set the box in front of you, opening up the lid. The rush of nostalgia and warmth that comes over you when going through this box is overwhelming sometimes. It’s filled with miscellaneous photos that you’ve taken on your film camera over the past few years. There are some that capture your favorite buildings and murals throughout the city. There are a lot from when you went to the pride celebrations last year. The majority of the pictures in the box capture candid moments of your friends and family. These kinds of pictures are the ones that remind you of why you love photography so much and even after getting high marks on your work for the institute, these are the ones that you end up feeling the most proud of.

You see your friends from out of state standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge from the time they paid you a surprise visit. Another one shows your cousin at his college graduation. There’s one of your friend and coworker, Sarah, and her boyfriend Mitch from the day you and Harry helped them move into their new apartment, proudly holding up the keys, smiling from ear to ear.

And then there’s quite a lot of Harry. Harry playing pool at a bar across town, Harry at the beach tossing a football with Mitch, a kind of blurry one of him going crazy at an Ariana Grande concert. You laugh out loud when you find the one of him proudly wearing your dress during a drunken game of truth or dare, and the one of him making a ‘kissy’ face at you in those obnoxious Gucci sunglasses that he wore for pretty much an entire summer. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve experienced together until you go back and look at these pictures.

You’ve been flipping through them pretty quickly, but you come across one that makes you freeze. It’s from your friend’s birthday party a few months ago. You got someone to take a picture of yourself with Sarah and Mitch, but Harry decided to jump in. In the picture, Mitch is in the middle of you and Sarah, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, and Harry has his arms hugged tight around your middle and his cheek is pressed to yours. It could be seen as a form of affection, if his face wasn’t covered in icing from your friend’s birthday cake. The photo is perfectly timed to capture everyone’s shocked laughter.

Just by looking at this photo again, you can feel his smile against your cheek and his arms holding you close. It’s a feeling you’ve been wanting more of ever since that night. Maybe that’s the ‘intimate question’ you’ve been asking yourself- Do you really want more with Harry?

**April 26th, 2020. 6:58pm**

You’re sure nobody on the street could miss you and Harry. After saying quick ‘thank you’s to the uber driver, you grab hands and start jogging toward the entrance of the SFJAZZ Center- a three story building with windows wrapping all the way around. The show is supposed to start in two minutes. You would have arrived much earlier if Harry hadn’t left the tickets on his kitchen table. You’re both dodging and weaving through people on the sidewalk, you in your favorite floral dress and Harry in a bold green suit jacket.

Once in the lobby, you both reduce your pace to a brisk walk and you readjust the bag on your shoulder. Harry’s hand is still holding yours as you’re both scanning the lobby for the right place to go. You spot a couple of employees closing doors labeled ‘main hall seating’.

“Over here,” you say, pulling Harry along with you.

Luckily, you’re able to catch the ushers in time to show them your tickets and be let in. The expansive auditorium is filled with the sound of chattering people and musicians warming up their instruments.

Thankfully, your seats are in a row toward the back and to the left of the stage, so you don’t have to make too big of a scene when scooting past people. Right when you settle in, the house lights dim, the chatter rapidly dies down, and the band on the stage goes silent.

The lull is soon replaced with applause when a woman walks out and stands center stage. She introduces herself as the director of programming and welcomes the audience. “Thank you all for being here tonight. Your support means so much to this center as we continue to make music and art and do what we love to do.” She pauses to hold up a booklet in her hands. “As you may have seen in your program, tonight’s performance is a special one.”

For the first time, you glance around the room and notice almost everyone but you and Harry has a program in their lap or held in their hands.

The woman on stage continues. “Some of you may know this, and some of you may not, but April is the birth month of American jazz singer, Billie Holiday. So, to honor her legacy, this lovely band sitting behind me has put together arrangements of some of her greatest hits.” Applause fills the room once again.

“Some of the performances tonight will feature vocalists and some will be done with the band only, so I hope everyone will find something they enjoy. Now, without further ado, I present to you A Little Love, with Billie Holiday.”

There is applause for a third time, but your hands are suddenly too heavy in your lap to join in. As the director exits the stage and another woman, presumably the vocalist, takes her place, your mind is reeling at the situation you’re currently in. How have you wound up at a jazz concert dedicated to love, that you decided to attend on a whim, with your best friend that you suddenly have overwhelming feelings for?

All of the subtle signs and notions of feelings you have had over the years have turned into blaring alarms, and they’re all pointing to one person. The man sitting right next to you, who is also sitting stock still in his seat.

There’s a drumroll from the stage followed by a light and smooth saxophone solo that brings you back into the moment. The vocalist begins the captivating first verse of Billie Holiday’s You Go to My Head.

You go to my head

And you linger like a haunting refrain

And I find you spinning round in my brain

Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne

You slowly sink about three inches down into your seat. You wish you had a program now so that you could at least use it to fan your face. You reach your hand up to dab at your forehead.

At the same time Harry takes a deep breath and lightly trills his lips while itching the bridge of his nose.

The vocalist continues to sing the lyrics that are hitting you directly in the gut.

The thrill of the thought

That you might give a thought to my plea

Casts a spell over me

Still I say to myself “Get a hold of yourself”

Can’t you see that it never can be

You glance around the auditorium as much as you can without turning your head in Harry’s direction, wondering if anyone else is feeling the temperature rise or the tension that seems to be wrapped around the both of you.

You go to my head

With a smile that makes my temperature rise

Like a summer with a thousand Julys

You intoxicate my soul with your eyes

Though I’m certain that this heart of mine

Hasn’t the ghost of a chance in this crazy romance

You go to my head

Your mind is reeling yet again at the situation you’re in. This must be some kind of elaborate prank that the universe is pulling on you. You’re half expecting a spotlight to fall on you and Harry that nobody in the room would even question.

The feeling doesn’t lift as the concert goes on. Soulful songs about a lover’s eyes, falling in love, how easy it is to live when you’re in love. Even where there is not a vocalist, you seem to know what the songs are implying.

Something that comes up in your rapid stream of thoughts is the author’s note you read earlier, “approached in the right way, art can help us answer both the intimate and the everyday questions we all ask ourselves.” You ask yourself the question again: Do you want more with Harry?

You think about the pictures of the times you’ve spent together. Crazy shifts at the bar, days in the park, breakfasts, dinners, late nights staying up talking about god knows what. You know the answer. You’ve always known the answer.

It seems like your heart has caught up with your thoughts, because it’s pounding in your chest.

Halfway through the final song of the night, you decide to steal a glance at Harry. Slowly turning your head, you peek through the corner of your eye.

A quick jolt of electricity runs through your entire body when you see that Harry already has his eyes on you. You turn your head back to the stage, but you can still feel his gaze burning a hole in the side of your head.

When thunderous applause breaks out after the final song, Harry turns his head back to the stage as you both limply clap along with the audience.

******************

This is the most quiet car ride of your life. There isn’t even any music being played in the background. The only words that have been exchanged between you and Harry since the concert ended were when he asked you if it was okay for the uber to just drop you both at your building and you answered with a simple ‘sure’.

There are so many feelings swirling around in you that you don’t know what to do with, and you definitely don’t want all of them to spill out in this stranger’s car, so you keep your jaw clenched as you look out of the window.

The car comes to a stop outside of your building and you both mutter ‘thank you’s as you climb out. You both silently make your way through the lobby, up the stairs, and down the hallway to your door.

Just last night you were making the same trip. You were making light jokes about wanting to steal Harry’s jacket and he was joking back, accusing you of wanting him to freeze to death. You had to remind each other not to laugh so loud so you wouldn’t disturb anyone. Now the only sound in the hallway is your shoes on the floor.

Once you reach your door, you open your bag and start digging for your keys. “Thanks, um, thanks for inviting me. It was a really good show.” You find your keys and push them into the lock before turning your eyes to Harry.

He has one hand in his pocket and the other rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah… Yeah it was... it was fun. Glad you could come with me.” He moves his hands from their places and awkwardly moves his arms out for a hug.

You smile and let out a sharp exhale through your nose at the awkwardness of this whole situation, but you gladly reciprocate the hug. Your arms completely wrap around each other, your hands tightly gripping his jacket. You can smell his cologne, like ginger and honey and cedar, and it’s making your head spin. You embrace for a few seconds and then release each other.

Harry sighs, “Alright, I’ll see you later then.”

“Okay, see you later.”

Harry shoves his hands in his pockets and slowly takes a few steps to turn away.

You turn the key in the lock, then turn your head to watch Harry take his first few steps away from you. You don’t want him to get any further.

“Harry?”

He stops and turns around to face you. “Yeah?”

You cannot believe the question that’s coming to your mind, but it’s the only thing that’s been coherent enough to put into words. You gulp and take a deep breath before asking, “Do you… do you still wish you could kiss me?”

You watch about three different emotions pass across Harry’s face. His mouth opens, his head tilts to the side, then his mouth closes and his eyes shift to the floor.

You feel a flood of regret. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember. That was stupid. He doesn’t remember. Just play it off.

You know your face is flushed with embarrassment as you speak softly, “I’m sorry. I just. That night that you were really drunk and I brought you back here, you said that you wish- that you wished y-”

Hearing Harry say your name stops your rambling. “Don’t be sorry. I know what I said.” He’s eyeing you cautiously and taking a couple of steps toward you again. “And… yeah. I still wish I could kiss you. Felt that way for… a while now.”

Tears are brimming your eyes as you look into his, trying to absorb what he’s just said. Then it’s almost like the floor beneath you tilts in his direction, nudging you to move forward until you’re standing directly in front of him. You can smell his cologne again.

With your eyes still locked into his, you slowly raise your hands to place them on the back of his neck, thumbs stroking the corners of his jaw.

After taking a shaky breath, you whisper, “I wish I could kiss you, too.”

Harry gulps and shifts his eyes down to your lips. He takes a deep breath through his nose before you feel his hand lightly grip your waist and his other hand takes a similar position on your neck.

You both stand there for a few breaths, eyes roaming over each other’s faces.

You start to lean in and then stop about half way and close your eyes. You’re both just waiting to see who will close the gap.

After a moment, you feel Harry’s grip on your neck and waist tighten and you feel him leaning in. Then his lips are on yours. They’re on yours again and again. You tilt your heads to deepen the kisses and he takes a step toward you. You follow his lead until your back is pressed against your door.

As much as it pains you to do so, you have to stop so you can catch your breath. You reach one of your hands into his hair and lightly pull him away. Both of you are breathing  in sync.

Once your breathing is evened out, you lock eyes with Harry. Your heart flutters when you exchange shy but knowing smiles and his thumb gently strokes your cheek.

After clearing your throat, you move your hand to your door knob. “Do you want to come in?”

Harry glances at your hand then returns his eyes to yours. He purses his lips and takes a sharp breath in. “I just want to know what you want.”

What just happened a few seconds ago already seems monumental to you. After the emotional roller coaster of this day, you’re not sure whether or not you’re ready for more tonight.

You take your hand from the doorknob and run it along his shoulder to return it to its previous position on his neck. “Honestly, I’m so fucking exhausted from today.” You watch as Harry nods his head in understanding. “I think all I want tonight is to hold you,” you notice the softness in his eyes, the same softness that you noticed for a fleeting second in the bar last night. “And keep kissing you.” This makes a lopsided smirk pop onto his face. “And I want to talk in the morning. About us.”

Harry leans in and presses a sweet peck to your lips. “I think we can do that.”

*******************

If anyone would have told you that your day was going to end with you and Harry in your bed, your head on his chest, and him running his fingers soothingly over your back, you wouldn’t have believed them.

“Harry?” you say softly, just as your eyelids are starting to get heavy.

His fingers stop for a moment, “Yeah?”

Thinking over the sequence of events that led you to where you are now, you start to erupt into sleepy giggles. “Did you know that the performance was gonna be,” you pause, trying to find the right word, “that?”

Harry lets out a deep belly laugh and when you glance up at him, he’s pinching the bridge of his nose. “I couldn’t have planned that if I tried.”

Before you know it, you’re both laughing uncontrollably, recounting the insane timing of the whole situation.

Harry rolls to his side so that he’s facing you and places a lingering kiss on your lips. “I’ll have to tell that client that any repairs she wants are on the house now.”

You throw your head back laughing and he pulls you into his chest, smothering your neck with kisses before resting his chin on top of your head.

If this is all you could have for the rest of your life, just a little love from each other, you would never want anything more.

************************************************************

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[elitparadox]

Life Goes On~ (Pt. 4)

↳ miya osamu x f!reader

↳ fluff, comedy??

↳ 2.6k

↳ status: ongoing

↳ parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

You suddenly appear in haikyuu after watching the show for weeks now, and you’re trying to find a way out. Deciding to make the most of it, you learn from these talented volleyball players, cuz why waste an opportunity? You weren’t meant to fall in love with any of them, but with Osamu’s alluring formosity and talent, you can’t help but rethink your life that has led up to this exact moment.

It’s Sunday afternoon. During the span of two days, you tried to contact someone who could help you, but it was no use, because of course, no one believed your story. On the other hand, you became a little bit more acquainted with Osamu and his too-clean apartment.

Sighing, you turn away from your borrowed laptop as you focus on Osamu’s pencil that was writing unfamiliar calculus signs on his homework paper.

“Wait- what am I going to do?”

“Hm?” Osamu doesn’t turn around as he responds.

“Don’t I have to enroll in your school? Which is the nearest one, I suppose. The hours will pass by too slowly for my liking, and I must receive my education”

Osamu’s gaze lands on you. “You could contact the principal and ask if you could attend for a few weeks with an excuse.. You’re a… 1st year?”

“Yeah.”

Silence fills the room as the two of you brainstorm.

“I guess I could do that; do you know what the principal’s phone number is? And we’ll call as an unknown number. Can you lend me your phone?”

Osamu shrugs as he enters a password, opening the calling app to the principal’s number, and hands over his phone, fingers accidentally brushing yours, making the atmosphere a little awkward.

You press the call button after quickly switching the number identity, and someone on the other end answers.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” quick. make up a name. You fake a cough, changing your voice tone. “I’m Kagai Yinimi, Y/N’s mother. We recently moved to Japan, and I have not yet found a school fit for Y/N, but tomorrow is supposed to be the day she needs to go to school. Is there any way you could clear a spot for her?”

“Excuse me?”

You didn’t realize you just spoke English. Then it hit you. The whisper from your dream. This situation now. You’re a polyglot. (someone who can speak multiple languages fluently) You weren’t one before. So had haikyuu changed anything about you? But most importantly, why can’t you control it?

*ahem* go with the weird-everything-goes-her-way mom tone. “I’M TELLING YOU- Y/N NEEDS HER EDUCATION! COULD YOU PLEASE CREATE A SPOT FOR HER?? SHE CAN CATCH UP, AND, UM, SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE TOO!!”

During this whole time, Osamu was looking at you with a “what the heck are you doing” expression.

You shoot him a “come help me” glance.                                                          

Osamu takes the phone from you, alters his voice tone, and says, “Sorry. My, uh, wife can’t speak Japanese yet. But she’s saying that we just moved here, and Y/N, our daughter” *pauses* “-needs a school. Is there a spot for her?”

Silence first. But after about fifteen seconds, he responds.

“Yes. However, the prefecture needs more information about this, um, transfer student. How old is she?”

“15.”

“Parents name…”

So, after forty minutes, Osamu was finally able to enter you in the school.

You feel too grateful to the point that guilt eats at you for what Osamu’s doing for you, although he did have to tell the principal lies, but only because he doesn’t know you well

As Osamu ends the call, he turns around and asks “so what was all that? You can speak fluent English?” You stare at him quizzically. “Of course I can! Do you think I’m uneducated??”

He laughs, but you notice a hint of relief. “No. But why did you speak English to the principal even though you could’ve talked to him in Japanese?”

“Uh- I- the thing is, well, I’m not sure if this theory is accurate,” you said slowly, “but I think that if I talk too quickly, I speak English and if i speak a little slower like right now, I talk in Japanese” you shrugged. “I don’t really know”

Osamu looks confused for a second. You can hear him mutter “things are really weird right now”

“Mhm. Sorry, but it really wasn’t my fault that i’m in another dimension” like hell it wasn’t

He sighs slightly, then suddenly looks a little less pressured. How did he manage to change his expression so quickly??? uwu

“anyways, the principal says that tomorrow morning you can visit the main office and pick up your schedule. I could take you there-”

You cut him off. “Again, it’s ok; you don’t really have to do that- Uh, also, don’t I need textbooks? Once again, I apologize-”

“No,. it’s fine. Like I said, I’m glad to help- As for the textbooks, the teacher gives them out at the beginning of the school year, but you could ask the office tomorrow”

He smiles- a little weary, but still breathtakingly beautiful.

“Thanks again.” You feel an urge to hug him right then, but you don’t, instead walking back to your room. Because, after all, you need to return to your home and away from everything you’ve seen in these past few days.

Several more hours pass, lapsing into the night, and then morning. 5:30 A.M.

You yawn, stretching your arms and kicking the covers. Another day, another chance.

Wait- why was it nearly 5:30 in the morning? Didn’t Osamu say yesterday that school started at 7:50? It was way ahead of your usual wake time.

You hastily brush your teeth, untangle your hair as quickly as possible, change into your own clothes, and open the door, tiptoeing across the living room toward the other room to ask Osamu why his usual alarm was set so early in the morning.

But he’s already up, making breakfast. He turns around and notices you walking strangely about the living room.

Shoot.

You fake-cough and stand up straight, brushing off imaginary debris from your shirt. “Good morning? Um, also why is your- I mean my alarm set at this time?

“Because we have volleyball practice, remember? And you asked me for help. So it would be rather convenient to watch us practice.”

“Oh yeahhhh- I forgot. Sorry. By the way, do you live by yourself? I mean, without your parents or any siblings?”

Osamu nods, his eyes still focused intently on whatever he’s cooking.

“Okay. Uh, I was also wondering what people would think if you, um, suddenly came to school after a weekend with an, uh, immigrant, or whoever they think I am. You know what I mean?”

“Oh.” He seems thoughtful. “I could say you’re my cousin who’s staying at my apartment for around a year” He shoots a look at you. “Because, you don’t really know when you’ll be returning, right?”

You glance at the clock. It’s exactly 5:39 A.M.

“Yeah. So when does practice start?”

“You do ask a lot of questions, huh?” You can see the hint of a smirk on his cheek, making you blush. “At 6 A.M.”

“So then why are you packing a lot of food?”

“My lunch, remember?” Now he finishes preparing the light breakfast and lunch, turning around. “And yours too.”

You stare at Osamu for a little longer than usual, but quickly catch yourself, averting your eyes from his.

“Thank you again. I really don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t there to help me.”

You chuckle. It was such a lucky turn of events to meet him.

“Well, we only have around ten minutes to finish breakfast and clean up, so let’s hurry.” 

At approximately 6:00, you and Osamu enter a particularly large gym where a group of boys, the volleyball team, is warming up.

Whispers spread among them as they notice you following Osamu.

“Uh, ‘Samu? Who’s she?” A tall blond-haired boy, probably Atsumu, gestures toward you. 

Ah, so he wasn’t the flirting type that your friends like. Better tell them after you get back. If you even get back. If they would even believe you then.

“Oh, Y/N? She’s our cousin. She’s staying at my apartment”

You were pretty sure everyone on the team noticed the glare he shot at Atsumu. And you desperately wanted to climb under a rock and never come out. Nobody would believe that story now.

“Uh, well I’m only here to observe your practice. I just wanted to see everyone’s volleyball techniques and learn from there! Since I really want to advance my volleyball skills-” You cut in.

Your insides were shaking from the looks these tall boys gave you. You personally didn’t like the fact that people would view you as only Osamu’s cousin, but on the other hand, things could get fun.

“Sorry if I’m wasting everyone’s practice time. I- I should go”

“No, it’s fine.” A silver haired boy, whom you noticed was Kita, steps forward. “It’ll be nice to have someone watching and learning from our practice. And so that some people-” he shoots a glance at the twins “-won’t fool around.”

Ah. So he noticed how serious Osamu acted in front of you.

“Thank you.” You look down at your tattered shoes.

Although a few members of the team look at you cautiously, the others smile at you kindly.

As practice continues, you notice that there isn’t a female manager anywhere in the gym. Shaking your head, you focus again on the practice rally raging on. It was amazing how you had never known any sport that would involve so much shouting to cooperate and energy to race after the ball.

You were taking mental notes on volleyball techniques when a ball whizzed past you. You could literally feel the force traveling with the ball near your cheek. But then again, you were used to that stuff.

It bounced off the side wall and miraculously ended up beside your left foot. You picked up the ball carefully, checking for the brand name, and contented, threw it toward the next server. Atsumu. You had watched their routine, and it seemed that someone on the team or on the sidelines would retrieve the ball depending on where it was. So you had no worries of being judged. But all those thoughts vanished as Atsumu frowns at you.

And without even knowing the reason why he did so, you frown right back. It isn’t a big deal, but you decide that you would get over with Osamu’s twin brother right now. But then he smirks, averting his hazel eyes from you.

Out of the corner of your eye, a boy with weird dark hair turns away, clicking away on his phone.

“So what’s the deal with my brother?” Osamu asks as he leads you to the principal’s office at 7:20.

“Oh, nothing, just that he’s kinda rude?? And he doesn’t even know me! So why does he act like I’m his enemy? Wait- sorry I didn’t mean-”

“I agree.”

“HUh?” You looked at him, slightly amazed. “Oh yeah. You fight all the time.” No surprise there. “Welp, let’s see if we have any classes together in my new schedule”

Two minutes later~

“crot this” you mutter under your breath. “What am I supposed if I only have one class with you? If someone bullies me, I won’t make it out alive!!” you complained, voice lowering by the second as students nearby shoot looks at you. You could only imagine what they were thinking that had something to do with the new student, you.

“You’re exaggerating. It’s okay though, you have a class with Kita and two with Atsumu”

“oH okay, so you’re saying I have to put up with him??”

“Ignore him” He shrugs, indifferent about your so-called situation.

“Okay....”

The first part of the day went by fine. Except for some skeptical and often rude looks thrown in your direction, the teachers seemed kind and schoolwork was a breeze.

Holding the lunch Osamu prepared for you in a paper bag, you walk tentatively toward an empty table when you hear a voice behind you.

“Why don’t you come eat with us?”

You don’t need to turn around because Osamu’s already walking next to you.

“Maybe the others won’t feel comfortable? After all, I’m a stranger who randomly appeared in their school gym to watch them just practice?? Sounds suspicious, even to me. By the way, why did you lend me a room in your apartment? I bet others wouldn’t have, out of fear that they’ll be murdered or whatever”

Osamu stays silent for quite a while, and you two are nearing the volleyball team’s lunch table. You’re wondering whether you should apologize, but he says coolly, “That’s a good question. Although this might not make any sense, I invited you to stay because from the moment I saw you, a small voice in my mind said to help you” He shrugs. “It actually happened, believe it or not. How things have gotten weird these days”

Your mind’s racing for the nineteenth time today as you sit on a metal chair between Osamu and the dark-haired boy, Suna.

You don’t realize that you’re staring blankly into space until Osamu snaps his fingers in your face and says “Aren’t you going to eat your lunch?”

You shake your head to clear up your thoughts. “Yeah. Right.”

You pull out a recyclable container from the lunch bag, fumbling with the lid holds.

It was then all hell broke loose. 

And everything from here seemed like a movie on 2x speed.

You accidentally knocked down Osamu’s thermos/bottle, which was still open, and coffee spilled all over his lap and the floor.

You desperately grabbed some napkins and tried to clean up the mess while students from the other tables were bending over backwards to memorize this scene well, because it’s not every day someone spills water over someone’s lap and there’s chaos brewing in a normal high school. 

Suna was capturing the whole thing on camera, and Atsumu- well, Atsumu he actually was trying to help. 

But of course, that went wrong, because he somehow slipped on the floor drenched with water and landed flat on his back. 

Then a bunch of girls ran over one another to help him, and a teacher nearby rushed over to smooth things out. 

You figured that everything would be fine, because after all, it was a small accident, but some idiot decided it would be funny to throw his burger right in your face. See where I’m going with this? People shouldn’t follow this action, except: monkey see, monkey do. And humans are connected to monkeys, apes, whatever. So, just like in a cheesy cliche movie clip, a food fight commenced.

Fast forward a couple more minutes after lunch ends…

You sigh, rubbing your forehead. You’re seated in the principal’s office on a firm wooden chair next to Osamu, half-listening to the principal’s lecture.

“First day of school and...blah blah... due to inappropriate blah blah, you are suspended-”

The moment your brain heard and processed the word “suspended” your defense mode activated and you started to protest about how it wasn’t your fault and people shouldn’t suppose that you’re a troublemaker just because it’s your first day of school here

The principal sighs. “I understand, but since we don’t have a janitor, you and the other kid-” he nods at Osamu “- will kindly clean up the mess.”

You sink in the chair, your hopes deflating by the second. “Okay.” A second later, Osamu nods in acquiesce. It would be a hard day tomorrow.

The principal seems to read your mind because he adds, “Oh- and you two start today.”

reblogs are always appreciated! thank you for reading :)

#haikyuu #hq!! #osamu x reader #miya osamu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu!! #haikyuu fanfiction #miya osamu x reader #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x y/n

[thatbanjobusiness]

One of the reasons I love watching Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys perform (instead of just listening) is because you see how much they enjoy the music and the company they’re in. 

This group of musicians (Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Jake Tullock, Josh Graves, Curly Seckler, and Paul Warren) played with one another for double-digit numbers of years. Even though there was some turnover and coming in-and-out, these guys played with one another tons.

Below Read More cut: pictures labeling who’s who.

Lester Flatt | guitar and lead vocals Played in this band 1948-1969 (21 years*☆)

Lester was the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and emcee for the group. As his name indicates, he’s one half of the Flatt & Scruggs duo. He was always welcoming and homely when he talked to audiences. It’s hard to get some of the humor from him in gifs because lots of his jokes were verbal.

Some reasons I love watching Lester are: 

He usually looks so relaxed and makes me feel relaxed.

When he gives introductions for the other bandmates, it’s usually a bunch of clever insults. For instance, “He represents Knoxville, Tennessee. If you’re not acquainted with the area, he goes to show that you can raise just about whatever they want to down there.”

When the announcer of the show, T. Tommy, introduces Lester, it’s usually some sort of joke or insult, too. The pure delight that pops on Lester’s face at a good joke is beautiful.

He straight out says into the microphone when someone makes a mistake. So much for “musical performance professionalism means pretending you did it right.” XD

Earl Scruggs | banjo (default), lead guitar (often enough), and baritone vocals Played in this band 1948-1969 (21 years☆)

Earl tends to keep a solemn poker face when performing. Hilariously, while he was known for being a very shy man of few words, and while Earl let Lester do ALL the talking in their performances... in these TV Shows, Earl is the number one most likely person to toss comments at bandmates in the middle of a performance.

Some reasons I love watching Earl are:

His comments mid-song are genuinely hilarious. I swear he’s sometimes trying to troll his bandmates to lose their composure in the middle of the song. It’s things like a bandmate singing a line complaining about their romantic interest, and Earl piping up, “Who? Me?” I don’t think he was trying to make it sound gay, but does it sometimes sound gay? Yes.

There’s a quiet charisma in how he plays, straitlaced, staring straight at the camera. He was a very humble guy, but you can feel the indisputable authority of his banjo mastery in his posture and notes.

Every single time they switch up the show (musicians playing alternate instruments, guests coming in), you can tell Earl loves it.

I may or may not have developed a celebrity crush on him. Shut up.

Burkett “Josh” Graves | dobro (usually), bass, rarely guitar, lead vocals (on duets with Jake) Played in this band 1955-1969 (14 years*)

Josh is one of the comedians for the band. When Jake was in the band, the two of them would work together as a duo, both to sing fun novelty songs together, and as a comedian act. Josh would play the straight man to Jake.

Some reasons I love watching Josh are:

He is an open book of emotions. I’d say he’s the easiest to smile and laugh of the group. I saw one song where, the entire performance, he was on the verge of breaking down laughing. Earl was off-screen making stupid jokes after every line Josh sung. Every time Josh started to regain composure, Earl said something new and broke the guy down again.

He is an extremely, extremely talented dobro player with great technical skill. Josh pioneered a new style of playing the instrument that hadn’t been done before. He combined multiple different ideas of musicianship together, including a lot of three-fingered banjo technique.

He’s very handsome, especially when he sings. 

English “Jake” Pierce | bass and high baritone vocals Played in this band 1954-1955, 1958-1969 (12 years*)

For those of you who are like, “What the fuck are high baritone vocals?” this means that Jake is singing the baritone part but up an octave. So, Jake is singing the highest part, higher even than the tenor. Jake’s voice is a distinct, shrill, piercing sound and I love it. Jake is one half of the comedy duo and always plays the rascal. From the stories I’ve heard, Jake and Josh and their shenanigans were not that different offstage.

Some reasons I love watching Jake are:

Usually when he’s not doing a comedy routine or a novelty song, Jake has a serious expression on his face. However, he’s got a specific invested drive to him when he plays the music. And then other times, he’ll decide to be silly, such as the wild running across the screen you see in my last gif.

Jake and Josh have this perfect chemistry to them. They know one another so well and you can feel it in their body language.

Jake has a really good cadence and sense of timing when it comes to his comedy delivery.

It’s always exciting when a bass player gets a solo. That’s just a rule of bluegrass. And Jake has an aggressive sound I find unique.

John “Curly” Seckler | mandolin (usually), guitar, tenor vocals Played in this band 1949-1951, 1952-1958, 1958-1962 (12 years*)

Sorry I didn’t have any gifs with Curly in the forefront this round (though around the time I took this screenshot, Curly stuck his tongue out at Earl, responding to something Earl said). Curly tends to chill in the background a lot for these shows, playing rhythm mandolin and singing harmony. He’s one of the main vocalists for the group, doing duos, trios, and quartets. He’ll also pop in as a featured soloist, which is always a treat.

Some reasons I love watching Curly are:

I already mentioned the featured soloist, but I mean... those are a treat. He has a unique, simultaneously soft and piercing voice. Whether he’s singing harmony or a solo, his voice is something I pay attention to a lot. I remember reading in his biography that at one early point in his career, he was called “Radio’s Gift to Women.” AMAZING.

His mandolin solos are rare, and the group tended to tease Curly off-screen about his mandolin playing. But it’s legitimately fun when the mandolin FINALLYYYYYY gets featured in this band.

Paul Warren | fiddle, guitar (almost never), and bass vocals Played in this band 1954-1969 (15 years*)

Paul is the fiddler that made me want to fiddle. His style of playing is the old-time hoedown style, filled with double-stops and finger flurries.

Some reasons I love watching Paul are:

HE IS SO FREAKING BOINGY!!!! BOINGY BOI!!!! Paul’s a chronic foot tapper. In live performance recordings, you can sometimes hear him thumping away. I heard that during rehearsals, Earl tried to get Paul to stop by standing on Paul’s foot... but that would only result in Paul’s other foot tapping. Eventually Earl had to give up. Paul also throws himself up and down, bouncing energetically in the direction his bow is going.

You can tell how much he likes going fast.

I think Paul is one of the first people to laugh and gawk when another bandmate makes a mistake. Maybe I have selective memory on this, though.

* Anyone with an asterisk (aka everyone except Earl) played in Lester Flatt’s follow-up band, too, Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass.

☆ Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played with one another in the band that came before this. They met as fellow musicians playing for Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. They were in the band together for over two years.

#I tried making captions for the gis #guess we'll see if they stick #thatbanjobusiness #that banjo business #music #hush I know I have a disproportionate number of Jake and Josh gifs in this set #I LIKE them okay #their body chemistry and the way they look at each other and play off one another is just #wholesome #General Banjo Business #Haddock Deep Dives #Dudes Behind The Music #One Of Those Fans #Flatt & Scruggs #hggg my boys #earl scruggs my beloved

[thanatophobia-thoughts]

Last year, due to COVID-19, my usual event of the Renaissance Festival was canceled. For over 10 years, I have gone every year on Labor Day, even when I lived out of state, I returned. I believe not having it for one year was one of the straws that broke the camel’s back last year and led me into therapy.

I’m a creature of routine and control, things which are obviously at odds with the process of dying, which is quite often a gradual, and then an entire, loss of control and routine.

Aging changes what we are capable of, which forces changes to routine.

This event, however, taught me a little about staying still.

Usually, I have more money to spend at these events, and I’m moving through the fair looking for places to spend it. This year, I kept much to my savings for Disney, and could not move with the same enthusiasm to look for goods. Wandering around aimlessly at the Festival was, well, boring.

So, I learned to stay put. Watch shows I never gave much attention to before, and people watch a bit more, too. I left early, not waiting for the final festivities after the last joust, but learned a couple of things.

First, that while I am indeed a creature of habit, I am more a creature of plan. The aimless wonderings were off-putting, but not irreconcilable once I started to figure out show times and develop a plan based around those. Doing new things wasn’t bad, what was bad was not having a plan. It didn’t help that they weren’t giving away programs when we arrived, so I couldn’t have pre-planned a bit earlier in the day.

Second, of course, is that things still happen when you’re staying still. This is true in general with life. I’m not at all suggesting or saying don’t travel, and don’t act, I’ve suggested travel and acting too much for that! What I am saying is that you can miss out on things by moving around, traveling, and such, too.

It’s just a question of what you prefer to miss out on.

This year, I missed out on shopping, and instead took away memories of new shows – the Jolly Rogers, the Dangerous Curves improve comedies, two jousts (not unusual, that), and Fairy and Maypole dancing! I interacted a bit more with the people who were there, and even got swag.

It is true, this year was smaller. The rain on the day, and the pandemic, made sure of that. There were even supply issues at the RenFest – no coffee!

Yet, everyone who was there, was so happy to be there. That was palatable. The rain couldn’t keep anyone down.

So, why am I writing about this here? What is the relevance to you who are seeking help in solving your death anxiety?

The first is the recognition of an event that helped lead to the downward spiral. Plenty had to do with health issues during 2020, but other parts of it were the problems of not having a norm, of traditions being broken. I imagine for many, the lack of traditions and ways to tell time, were also problematic. Holidays not spent with family because of travel restrictions, working away from the office, movie releases going to the wayside, conventions, state fairs, festivals – these were gone, for the most part.

It's okay to consider that the death anxiety was heightened last year, and acknowledge it, because of those changes. It’s okay to consider that it’s still heightened this year because things aren’t completely evened out yet. In fact, it’s good to consider that. That can give you hope that when things even out, this may relax, too. Not for all of us, not all the time, but for some of us, or for some of the time.

The second is more for people who are a bit like me, on the controlling side, and the recognition that just “going with the flow” can be hard, but not impossible, to navigate. Loose plans can work and help mitigate that feeling. I intend to draw up loose plans for my trip to Disney so I won’t end up aimlessly wandering and thus be plagued with a restlessness.

The third is more a reminder that I think gets lost in our ambitious society: that standing still, staying where you are, is still a choice, and not a bad one. Things happen around you. They may not be as exciting as things elsewhere, but they happen.

I’ve never appreciated my dad’s love of sitting on the porch and watching the neighborhood, but I understand it, in a way. He sees things I don’t. He is more invested in the neighborhood and the news here than I am, and I am able to get summaries from him of events. And I like the summaries, the way someone not invested in Marvel films may like to know what’s going on, all the same, to keep up with popular culture.

I’ve always known things happen, no matter where we are. I’ve just always preferred to go seeking it, rather than wait for it to happen around me.

But it can happen around you. And you can also make it happen, too.

But no matter what, somewhere, somehow, you are missing out on things. Once you accept that, it becomes a little easier to consider that one day, you’ll miss out on everything that is to come.

People in the future, have already missed out on so much – and so much of being a part of something, too, is the anticipation. Perhaps they’ll be able to see all the Marvel films, but they’ll never know the anticipation of waiting and theorizing over what is going to happen.

There is something special to living in moments. Just as there is something special to living after moments.

And though one day we will be out of moments, let’s never forget to enjoy and treasure the moments we get, even the ones where you’re just sitting back, and waiting.

#death anxiety talk #death anxiety #thanatophobia #traditions #you're always missing out on something #missing out

[8makes1cheese]

f2l with Song Mingi♡

Pairing: Mingi X Reader

RoommateAU, (and like High SchoolAU in the beginning and kinda CollegeAU?)

Tags: cursing, shitty attempts at comedy, fluff, kinda sorta suggestive?, ig drug use and drinking?(booze and weed)

Words: 2.5k

A/N: Okay so, this is my first bullet scenario thing? and its weird...like this is so weird but I tried XD it ended up this weird mix between bullet scenario and oneshot fic and i-

...............all I can do is practice and try to get better but yeah. SO HERES THIS :D (im srry don hate me T-T)

-Finding Your Best Friend-

this bb would be the best-est friend you would have in this world

probably why you fell for him in the first place, but let's not get to ahead of ourselves

you guys met freshman year of high school

your guys' mutual friend Yunho is really the reason why

you just moved to town, and since said town was small, it was clear to you that everybody knew everybody else

you felt pretty lonely on the first day because of that

second day of freshman year is where is all started to come together

you were looking for a nice spot to sit and have your lunch outside because you didn't want to look like the weird loner person eating by themselves in silence

you found a pretty spot under a big tree near the track field, you put a random cool cake making tutorial on your phone and ate your lunch

the video was at a part where they were placing intricate designs in frosting all over the cake when you hear "Whoa, that is so cool!"

you jump about 3 feet in the air and immediately gather up your phone and get up to spin around to see who interrupted your quiet time

a young man, not sure his grade, with peach colored hair and a worried expression on his face, raises his hands in a surrender pose

'okay but what the hell was he doing, watching my phone behind the tree?'

well reader, we'll never know

"I'm really sorry! I didn't mean to scare you that bad! Really, I am so so so sorry!"

you, still in shock, just nod at him

now you're both just standing in front of each other

not saying anything

....well

this is awkward

"I-I'm Yunho...by the way."

you clear your throat, not sure why, nervous habit

"[Y/N].."

"So, uh... Haven't seen you around here before.."

once you explained you were new, and new to the town in general. There was no escape.

you were now best friends with the giant teddy bear and there was nothing you could do about it

yunho immediately took you under his wing and showed you around the campus. Then the town itself after school was out.

but Ro this seems to be turning into a yunho x reader fic/ bullet scenario

stfu I'm getting there

what did this turn into even

so now you and Yunho are bffs

enter giant teddy bear 2.0

you and yunho are hanging out at lunch, it's become a usual for the past two weeks

and Yunhos other bff is becoming sus about why Yunho hasn't been eating with him at lunch or doesn't seem to have as much time after school for him

that's when giant teddy bear 2.0 (if you don't know that its Mingi then idek-) finds his bestie with some random chick

a really adorable random chick

"So this is where you have been?"

you and Yunho start, not expecting someone to find your guys' spot

Also, deja vu, amiright?

"Oh, hey Mingi!" Yunho greets the tall dirty blonde haired teddy bear

And you're totally not sitting there thinking, 'holy shit, he is...wow.'

and that's how it all started

he stayed and introduced himself and you hit it off just as well as you and yunho did

maybe even better..

he started showing up everyday, at the what was dubbed 'The Cool Kids Spot™️' by you all, with yunho

even tho we all know you guys were NOT the cool kids

then it went to him being at the spot before everyone showed up

so he could see you first

then it turned into him meeting you up after class so you both could grab your food together and meet up Yunho at The Spot™️

before you could even realize it, he became your person

you were the first person he ran up to and hugged after him and Yunhos dance group took home 1st place at a competition

he was the first person you called when you were told that your poem won an award

you were the person he'd come to if he needed any kind of advice

and he was the first person you went to if you needed to get out of your head or your anxiety was getting to you

the high school years went by so fast

a lot changed

but what never changed was Mingi, he may have grown

and damn he grew

but he was your constant (and yes, yunho too, we can't forget yunho bro)

-Knowing They're The One-

high school came and went

Mingi and Yunho were accepted by a prestigious performing arts school

you, however, were going to just a regular college

luckily, both schools weren't terribly far from each other

which is why, instead of suffering in dorms, you and Mingi decided to get a apartment together, not far from both schools

yunhos ass stayed with his parents because they live like right next to the school, lucky hoe

you all still make time for each other

but you and Mingi prefer to stay in, order takeout and watch random stuff on YouTube

whenever you or Mingi went out it was always together (unless it was classes)

Grocery shopping? Together. Doctors appointment? Together. Girls night? Together. Guys night? Together.

"So, you must be suffering right now" his friend Yeosang said to him on a rare guys night that didn't involve you.

Mingi looked at Yeosang perplexed, ignoring whatever Wooyoung was talking to him about

"What are you talking about?"

"You and [Y/N] are literally always together, the fact she isn't here surprises me."

Mingi laughed. "We're not always together."

A cacophony of "LIES" and "BULLSHIT" filled the air as all of Mingi friends called him out on his bullshit

Mingi could feel his face heating up

"W-well, so what if we are! Were best friends AND roommates."

"And lovers~" his friend San whispered in his ear from behind and laughed, dancing away before Mingi could hit him

"We're not together!" Mingi exclaimed, rolling his eyes.

"But you want to be."

Mingi turned to look at the owner of the voice. It was Yunho, leaning against the entrance of the kitchen everyone was gathered in

He was looking at Mingi with a smirk

Mingi knew Yunho knew how he felt about you

and not because he told him

well...he kinda did

FLASHBACK TIME

it was your guys' high school graduation

more specifically, the night of, and you were all partying and yunhos house

celebrating the fact that you all were officially adults now

lol you thought

and what better way to celebrate that than with underage drinking

be safe kids, don't drink irresponsibly

and Mingi. Got. Wasted.

by the end of the night, he was crying (and maybe puked once or twice...) in Yunhos arms about how beautiful you were, and how amazing and talented you were

wouldn't shut up about how soft and perfect you feel in his arms when he hugs you or vice versa

"She is my soulmate." After every other sentence mentioning how perfect you are

but wait, where were you while Mingi was crying and puking you ask?

That night you met Yeonjun, who is now one of your closest friends

  at first, a friend of Wooyoungs, who you all became friends with junior year, along with his best friend San

Yeonjun, who went to a different school across town, was invited along by Woo and San

you and Yeonjun hit it off so well, drinking and laughing, and talking about how much he loves his boyfriend Soobin, and maybe you drunkingly going on about how amazing Mingi is

however, Mingi didn't know Yeonjun

and what he saw that night was you, enjoying your time with someone who wasn’t him, laughing at jokes that weren't his, hanging all over someone who could never know you as well as he did (and that totally wasn't the reason that Mingi drank like 2 bottles of straight vodka, not at all)

and at that moment

he knew

he fucked up

he was in love with you

OKAY END OF FLASHBACK

Mingi wasn't sure what to say

he could deny it sure, but he knew it was useless

not after every person in the room gave him a knowing smirk after Yunhos comment

“She doesn't-”

“Oh, whatever. you guys are literally already a couple. And dont even try to deny that. If she was here right now, she’d probably be on your lap and you two would be sitting in some corner of the house whispering some weird drunk lovey shit to each other.”

well...

Mingi really didn't have a argument for that

that night he came home sober

but you didn't know that until months later when he told you he wasn't actually drunk

anyways when he got home you were sitting in the living room

music playing away on YouTube while you type away on your laptop

you didn't hear him come in, softly singing along to the song under your breath

he stood there for a moment and just..looked at you

your hair was a mess

you had on the same clothes as yesterday

probably haven't done a skincare routine in months

you were the most beautiful person he had ever seen in his life

he felt so much love swell in his chest

hes known it for a while now but at that moment all that was going on in his head was

“That’s my soulmate. I love her. I love her so much.”

“Hey.”

he wasn't sure if he had said it loud enough but apparently he had because you flinched and turned to see who the ‘intruder’ was

“Oh, Mingi! Shit, you scared me...” you laughed. “How was guys night?”

He made his was over to sit on the couch as you told him how your paper was coming along and then waited for him to answer your question

he sat for a good minute not saying anything

“Mingi?”

he looked at you

“you okay hun?” you asked, placing your hand on his cheek

and then he kissed you

it was so quick, you had no time to register that it was happening at all

and he left just as quickly

slamming the door to his bedroom and leaving you flustered and panicked

-So....Lovers?-

the morning after the kiss was the most awkward moment that you and Mingi had ever had

luckily it didn't last long at all

you two were silent, awkwardly making breakfast

then Mingi busted out with “Man, I’m so hungover! I barely remember anything from last night!”

“Do...do you remember anything from when you came home?”

“No, to be honest, I don't even remember coming home...”

-cue forced laughter-

-cue Mingi not trying to be disappointed when you looked relieved-

 he asked you if anything happened and tried not to feel sad about the fact you were going on about how nothing happened and he just came home and went to bed

why wouldn't you mention the kiss? maybe everyone had it wrong, you didn't feel the same. why else would you avoid it?

but everything went back to...normal

you two would cuddle every night on the couch

you showed up to every guys night like usual

(there may or may not have been more knowing smirks thrown Mingis way)

he showed up to the rare girls nights you'd have with your (like 2) girlfriends

(they literally just consisted of everyone chilling in some secluded spot and sparking up a blunt or two and bull-shittng)

but everything wasn't normal

because even though it lasted 0.0002 seconds long

Mingi cannot stop thinking about that kiss

neither can you for that matter

that's when you confided in your bestie Yeonjun

who knew all about your love for your other bestie

you went to Yeonjuns one Saturday afternoon without mingi

its been a month since the kiss and Yeonjun is only disappointed in the fact that you didn't tell him sooner

his solution was simple, just tell him how you feel

its so god damn obvious he feels the same

but who are you to do the simple thing right?

so what do you do?

you go with Soobins idea

and :) you:) go:) on:) a:) blind:) date:) with one of soobin and yeonjuns friends:)))))))

well

at least you were supposed to..

the night comes when you were supposed to meet at a nice cafe with their friend Beomgyu

you. were. lookin. FIRE BABY

slaayyyyy

you were in the kitchen grabbing your keys

and maybe prolonging the fact that your going out with someone who isn't MIngi

when Mingi walked out to heat himself up a noodle cup

and maybe one for you too because he didn't think you were going anywhere and was going to ask if you wanted to chill in his room and play mario kart

his jaw DROPPED when he saw you

he felt like he was just kicked in the gut, all breath left his lungs

and he may or may not have gotten an instant boner but-

he cleared his throat to get your attention

“You look...nice.” wow, Mingi, smooth

“O-oh, thanks, um... ill be back later okay?”

when Mingi asked where you'll be going and you said you had a blind date, he swears to this day he blacked out for a moment

next thing he knew he had you pushed against the counter

“Mingi-”

“No.”

“w-what..”

“You don't have a date.”

“But I do-”

then his lips were pressed against yours

and unlike the first, this one lasted a hell of a lot longer than 0.0002 seconds

it wasn't fireworks or butterflies or a sudden realization of unconditional love

it was rough and messy and filled with so many emotions including relief that your love for each other can finally blossom

you didn't say a word to each other when you parted

you stared at each other for a while, panting with big smiles on your faces

once your breathing returned to normal you gently pushed him back so you weren't pressed against the counter anymore

“I’m going to change in PJ's.”

Mingis smile lit up his whole face. “But I thought you had a date..”

“No, I don't.” you kissed his cheek and left to change.

-YES LOVERS FINALLY-

so you guys never really sat down and were like ‘hey so are we...?’

because you both knew you just....were

after that night you guys started acting like you had been dating for months

it was just like before

because of course, like always, Yunho was right

you guys already acted like you were dating

now kisses and a lot more were added to the mix

which just made everything 1000x better

everyone knew it was just a matter of time

you loved waking up to his arms wrapped around your waist and him softly snoring in your ear

he loved waking up to you peppering kisses all over his collar bones and neck

your loved bloomed♡

A/N pt2: Im sorry if the end seems so rushed as well, I started running out of steam and my mind blanked but I didn't want to prolong this and never post it...like i do with everything...

Thank you for reading!

#song mingi #ateez #ateez scenarios #mingi fluff #mingi scenarios #mingi x reader #ateez x reader #kpop fanfiction #kpop #kpop fluff #ateez fluff #8s place #ateez fanfiction #mingi friends to lovers #mingi f2l #ateez f2l #mingi fanfic #kpop fanfic #ateez au #mingi oneshot #song mingi oneshot #ateez oneshot

[talesfromthesnogbox]

A Little Bit of Love

Summary: Richie surprises Eddie by going on Celebrity Drag Race.

Word Count: 3,075

Notes: Hi this is so stupid but it was bugging me so I had to write it okay bye.

AO3 Link

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Hey Eddie, come down I want to show you something.”

Eddie raced down the stairs to find Richie on the couch, VH1 paused and ready for his surprise appearance.

“Celebrity Drag Race? I’ve spent the last week binging it while you’ve been ‘writing’, why do you want to watch it now?”

He hit Eddie lightly on the chest. “Shut up. I want to watch it with you!”

Richie had yet to tell any of his friends that he was going on Drag Race, and even more surprisingly, he was officially coming out to the world. Most of the Losers already knew he was gay, and he knew that Eddie kind of knew, but he hadn’t formally said anything to him about it.

The two of them sat in silence as the queens talked amongst themselves, wondering who would walk into the workroom first. Finally, Richie was revealed, and the queens went quiet.

Richie’s palms were sweaty, almost as sweaty as when he first stepped out behind that curtain in the loudest rainbow tie-dye button up shirt he could find.

“The Trashmouth has arrived.” He said onscreen, looking around at the pink… everything.

“Richie, what the fuck?” Eddie took the remote from him and paused the television. “When the fuck did you do Drag Race?”

“Surprise?” He chuckled seeing Eddie’s expression turn from angry to downright amused. “Alright, I signed an NDA, I wasn’t allowed to say anything!”

“Hi, I’m Richie, I’m 41 years old, and I’m a stand up comedian.” The scene on TV flashed back and forth from the usual flashy confessional screen and Richie exploring the workroom. He was the first one in, and he ogled the sequin gowns lining the walls, and the makeup on the counters. “I’ll be honest, I hadn’t watched the show until very recently. Last year I went back to my hometown in Derry, Maine for a little reunion with some childhood friends of mine, and went through a pretty traumatic experience. There’s this old abandoned house that all the kids used to tell ghost stories about and be scared of, and we, being the dumbass adults we are, decided to take a look around inside. It uh… it collapsed while we were inside, and my best friend Eddie actually ended up getting really badly hurt.”

 The screen flashes from Richie, tearing up in his confessional, to photos of them as kids, and one they’d taken as a group when they arrived.

“That really fucked me up, I thought… I thought I was gonna lose him, and I never… yeah, it just taught me to really hold your loved ones close. He’s alright, he’s actually living with me now, and he’s the one that got me to watch the show.” Richie’s somber expression changes to one of joy as he talks about Eddie. “I’ve been doing a lot of work writing for my upcoming tour, but Eddie watches Drag Race every chance he gets. When they asked me if I wanted to go on the show, it was an automatic yes, I didn’t even have to think about it. We’d been through so much last year, so I really wanted to surprise Eddie, and I thought it would be a great way to introduce myself formally as a part of the LGBTQ community.” Richie on screen held up a little rainbow flag and waved it around. “Honestly I think the producers were hoping I’d say no. I’ve been kind of a piece of shit… no, I’ve been a huge piece of shit, my work was pretty disgusting, and I want to change that. The first step is coming out, so yes, I was overcompensating with my comedy to hide how far in the closet I was. Hi, I’m gay!”

“Surprise?”

Eddie paused the TV again and turned to look at Richie, tears in his eyes. “Dude, I’m really proud of you.” He brought his friend in close for a hug, feeling hot splashes of tears fall on his neck.

“I’m sorry I never told you.”

“It’s okay, you weren’t ready Trashmouth.”

They dried their tears as they watched Richie interact with the other two celebrity guests as they arrived in the workroom, casually chatting about work and their mutual respect for the show, when finally RuPaul Charles arrived.

“So, was he amazing in person?”

Richie laughed. “Oh my god he’s the most fabulous human being alive, seriously I have so much respect for him.”

Eddie was giddy as he asked Richie questions about Ru, the workroom, the Pit Crew.

“Honestly, the Pit Crew is amazing, if I had a body like that I too would be flaunting it in those tiny briefs.” He laughed. “But it’s so hot in there with all those lights, they’re the luckiest people on this show.”

Finally, the real queens were added into the mix. Eddie watched with rapt attention as Richie and the other two contestants fumbled their way into “quick drag”, giggling at Richie struggling with a tube of lipstick and a horrendous blonde wig. Luckily for Richie, their mini challenge was an improv challenge, and he absolutely nailed it, making Ru and the rest of the queens shed tears of laughter.

“I still can’t believe you’re on the show, and now you’re winning the mini challenge? What the fuck?”

“Yeah! I got to pair up everyone with their queens. I know you really like Nina West so…”

Eddie’s jaw dropped as Richie took his place beside his favourite queen on the show, the lovely Nina West. “Shut up!”

“She’s a real sweetheart.”

Richie had seen parts of the episode already in its early stages and knew when certain… uncomfortable… moments were coming up. He did quite a bit of crying in his confessionals, and even had Nina tearing up a bit too.

Their maxi challenge was a lipsync performance, and Eddie already knew Richie was going to kill it. All the celebrities on the show were (now) out, gay men, and the number was a love-letter to Pride, something Richie had never actually participated in.

The other celebrities were all taken aback as the queens were to hear Richie come out to them in the workroom, but quickly accepted him in with a hug. “Richie you’ll love it, it’s like one big party celebrating who you are, and celebrating acceptance.” At that, Richie on screen started to tear up, knowing he hadn’t experienced that kind of acceptance from strangers before. “Sorry, you’re all so nice, I just… I dunno, expected to be booed off the set or something. I’ve been such an asshole in my sets just to hide it.”

Richie was crying in his confessional as well. “All my life I grew up in this shitty little town where everyone was homophobic, and misogynistic. I had bullies throwing slurs at me left, right and center, and I wasn’t even out, hell I didn’t even think I did anything that would even give anyone the hint that I was gay. I used to joke about fucking my friends’ moms, one in particular, mostly to hide the way I really felt…”

Back in the workroom, the queens and other contestants were still gathered around him. “I know how shitty it felt to be called names, and to feel like your life doesn’t matter, to feel like you’re an abomination because assholes like me told you so. My parents were really loving, and still are, my mom cried and told me she loved me when I came out to her last month, but not everyone gets that kind of love. And I feel like some of my stand up routines just made people feel worse. Man I regret so much of what I’ve said on stage, it’s not me, it was all a front because of how scared I was to admit that I’m gay.”

Nina pulled Richie into a hug as he wiped his eyes. “You’ll always be loved and accepted Richie, it’s never too late to admit you fucked up and make amends.” The rest of the cast joined Nina in their hug, only making Richie cry harder. “I’m so proud to have you as my drag daughter.”

Eddie paused as the show went to commercial and turned to his friend, who was once again, misty eyed.

“Rich…”

“You have no idea how hard it was filming that.” His voice was quiet. “I was such a piece of shit, and they literally just pulled me into a hug and told me they loved me for who I was.”

Eddie laid his head on Richie’s shoulder. “We love you too, you know that right? All the losers. It doesn’t matter to us if you’re gay or if you’re straight, or whatever… we’re here Rich.”

“I know, thank you.”

“Nobody’s going to hate you for being gay.”

Richie scoffed. “Twitter may have something else to say about that. I’m pretty sure I pissed off enough people to be banished from the community.”

“Well they can fuck off. I’ll fight every one of them if I have to.” Eddie snickered and hit play again, skipping forwards through the commercials. His favourite part of the show was always when the makeover finally happened. Richie appeared on screen clean-shaven wearing contacts, a rare sight for Eddie, and ready to be made beautiful.

“Please don’t laugh, Eds.”

“Why would I—”

On screen Richie removed his shirt and replaced it with a heavily padded bra. “So I don’t know how keen you are on this, but I quite like my chest hair.”

Nina shrugged. “That’s okay, for the runway we can put you in something with a high collar so you’re covered up.”

Richie chuckled. “No… I… there’s a Canadian queen I like that is kind of advocating for the destigmatization of female body hair, and she keeps her chest… out in the open, hair and all. If you’re okay with it… I’d kinda like to do that too.”

Nina smiled back at Richie and discarded of the high-necked bodysuit she was holding. “Alright, tits out it is.”

Eddie sat silently beside Richie, his mouth going dry at the sight of Richie’s chest out in the open while Nina worked on his face. He’d been joining Eddie’s physical therapy exercises for support, and kept up with him whenever he was at the gym, so his stomach and chest were a lot more toned than they were in the summer they’d reunited. Eddie had never really noticed, even when Richie walked around shirtless, but now… now he was noticing.

He noticed the way the veins in Richie’s forearms stood out, how the muscles moved beneath his skin as he reached out to grab the makeup Nina pointed to, how they went rigid when he flexed, lifting a case that was clearly heavy.

Richie got up from beside Eddie awkwardly. “I’ll be… I’ll be right back.”

Eddie frowned at the awkward tension coming from Richie before he realized on screen it was time to ‘tuck’. He let out a giggle as he watched Nina lead Richie back behind a screen and try to walk him through the practice.

“Yeah just take it and…”

Richie winced on screen. “I don’t know man, it’s not… is that right?”

“Here, let me…” Nina stepped in, and Eddie was instantly cackling, watching Richie’s face change expressions from annoyance to shock to discomfort.

Confessional Richie winced, a pained smile painting his face as he nodded. “I publicly came out and less than 20 minutes later had a man touch my dick for the first time, and I’ve gotta tell you… was not a great feeling. Let’s hope it’s better the next time when I actually get to… you know… is it weird that I’m talking about people touching my dick on camera?” He asked a producer off-camera.

“We’ve heard worse.” The producer rebutted, making Richie snort a laugh on screen.

Eddie watched Richie walk back into the room and slide beside him on the couch again. “Yeah, I… I wasn’t a fan of that whole…” he waved his hands over his crotch area, “tucking thing.”

“It sounds horrible.” Eddie agreed.

Finally, it was time for them to be introduced on the runway. Richie was the last to walk, and by far, had the biggest transformation. “Our final queen is Rachelle Von Dixx.” Eddie paused before he could step out onto the stage and looked at his friend.

“Of ALL the drag names you could have chosen, you went with Rachelle Von Dixx?”

“What can I say, it spoke to me.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and slumped back in his seat, hitting play once more. He hated to admit it, but Richie was Rachelle. Just as charismatic on the runway as Nina was, making faces at the judges, doing little spins with his arms wide to make his skirt flow around him. He looked totally comfortable up there and…

“You’re surprisingly good at walking in heels.”

Richie shrugged. “I used to wear my sister’s heels around the house for shits and giggles. They aren’t that hard to walk in.”

The challenge was over, it was time for the judges’ critiques, and Eddie was not prepared for them to critique Richie. But… they didn’t actually have anything bad to say about him.

“So I guess a congratulations and welcome to the family is in order for miss Rachelle. It’s hard to come out, and you’re doing it on TV.” Ru said after Richie’s critiques.

“Yeah, yeah thank you! It’s been an incredibly eye-opening experience, and I’m really, really grateful for it. The love and support everyone… oh god I said I wasn’t gonna cry on the main stage.” He laughed, fanning his eyes as the other queens gathered around him. “Whew, I’m okay. It’s just incredible, and I… thank you.”

“That’s beautiful Rachelle.” Ru blew him a kiss.

“So is there a special man in your life then?” Richie froze on stage as the question was hurled from the judges’ panel, but a timid smile crossed his face as warmth spread through his body. “Oh, I think that means there is!”

“No, it’s not… it’s not like that!” Richie insisted on screen, his smile giving him away. “I… I’ve known him forever and I love him, I think he was my first love, but, he doesn’t know any of this, I haven’t even come out to him yet.”

Confessional Richie looked past the camera at the producers. “Those judges man, they can like see into your soul. I’ve only ever really told like three people that I love Eddie, and two of them are my parents. Stan has been sworn to secrecy about it since we were like twelve.” Richie laughed. “Feels good though, finally saying it.” He nodded, deep in thought. “You’re gonna edit this out, right?”

Richie got up from his spot beside Eddie, who was too stunned to say anything. His hands were shaking as he walked into the kitchen, swearing.

“Rich, hey Rich, come back here.” Eddie followed him, catching him by the back of his shirt.

“Fuck man… fuck.” Richie raked his fingers through his hair, eyes darting wildly around the room. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I just… I didn’t think they’d put that in there. I don’t know why I even said it, I… I’m sorry I embarrassed you, I never meant for this—”

“Hey, hey Rich, look at me!”

Richie turned, his eyes misting over with tears for the umpteenth time that night. He could hear his phone going off in the other room, buzzing with the excitement of the confession from his friends and family, the internet inevitably exploding with shock.

“I never meant for you to find out.”

Eddie’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Because Eds… we’ve been friends since we were like six. I don’t want to give up on all those years of friendship just because my heart can’t keep it in its pants.”

Eddie scoffed. “You think you’re the only one who feels this way? Dude, I divorced my wife then moved across the country to live with you.”

Richie shrugged. “Yeah, so? I offered my spare room to you, you had nowhere else to go.”

“Stan, Ben, and Bill all offered me their spare rooms too. Before you did. I turned them all down Rich.”

Richie was silent.

“I never said anything because I wasn’t sure… wasn’t sure where you stood, if you were seeing someone, or if you even liked men, but Rich… this is me saying something.”

Cheers could be heard from TV in the background of Richie winning the competition, and announcing the LGBTQ+ charity he’d be donating to. They tuned it all out as they each came to the realization of what the other meant to them.

Richie’s eyes widened as it finally hit him. “Oh… oh. So… so you… me?” Eddie let out a boisterous laugh. “Yes you, you idiot. I’ve wanted to say it for so long but… I’m saying it now.”

The sound that left Richie’s mouth was one of shock and disbelief. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah dude, holy shit.” Eddie took a step closer to Richie, coming into his personal bubble and staring up at him with doe eyes. “Richie?”

“Y-yeah?”

“I think this is the part where you kiss me.”

 *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 Later that night once the dust had settled, Richie and Eddie decided to stop playing by any rules or standards anyone had made for dating and go at their own pace. Richie hummed contentedly as Eddie snuggled further into his chest in his bed… their bed. He angled Eddie’s face up towards his, and pulled him into a tender kiss. The other man didn’t realize that Richie had pulled out his phone and snapped a photo of the two.

“What are you doing?”

Richie smiled and kissed the tip of Eddie’s nose. “Making it official.”

Dick Tozier @trashmouth

Guess I have to send a big THANK YOU to @NinaWest for being the best drag mother, and an even bigger THANK YOU to @RuPaul and the editing team of @RuPaulsDragRace for not listening to me when I asked if that line about being in love with my best friend could be cut out. I have you to thank for this.

Richie attached the photo he’d just taken and hit “Send Tweet” before turning off his phone. “Sorry about the chaos that’s about to ensue.”

Eddie giggled. “I don’t care, I’m just happy I finally have you.”

#reddie #Richie x Eddie #it chapter 2 fic #reddie fic #my writing

[jenomark]

I also have a another question (last one I promise 😬😂). I’m curious as to what’s your favorite variety show moment of each member (when I say variety it can be a tv show, a vlive, something from their YouTube channel, stuff like that)-🥰

Taeil: I have two for Taeil, and they’re both NCT Life related. The first is when Jaehyun was saying nice things about him, and he cried. Taeil is so loved by everyone, and it shows!!! The second is his Hey Mickey cheer leading dance.  He’s really cute, and honestly, he has the cutest little legs. 

Johnny: Him getting to be back home at his parents house will always be my favorite moment, because it’s the most sentimental. That JCC episode almost made me feel like I was coming back home. Like, the emotions I felt while watching it were very real. Also, it’s made me happy to see that Johnny’s friends are his home away from home.

Taeyong: NCT U: The Story of ‘YESTODAY’. It’s one of his favorite songs to have written for, and it’s a song that’s also really meaningful to me. As an animal lover, the part with him and the birds is my favorite. The fact that he also loves animals makes me feel so warm inside.

Yuta: Before I start, can I just say that his laugh is so sweet. I loved him in the Abnormal Summit program. I only linked a small part of the show, but if you can find the rest, it’s worth a watch just for him. I couldn’t stand the other people on the panel, but Yuta sticking up for people’s rights really tells me how good of a person he is.

Kun: It’s hard just choosing one for him. I love watching everything he’s in because the dynamic always changes. He adapts really well no matter who he’s with, which is the mark of a good leader. I would love just a VLIVE with him and Taeyong alone talking about being leaders, but until then, this is my favorite VLIVE with him in it.  Honorable mentions: Dream Plan, NCT LIFE Seoul Trip.

Doyoung: The VLIVE episode where Doyoung, Jungwoo and Mark are playing the balloon popping game. I’ve mentioned it before, but that sweater he’s wearing kills me. I really love the way Doyoung is around both Jungwoo and Mark, like, their chemistry is amazing. There are so many moments that I love regarding him, but this one stands out because I first saw it when I was falling for Doyoung.

Ten: Literally, every single dance video he has ever done. Watching Ten dance feels like a privilege. My favorite has got to be the ‘Devils’ dance practice. He’s so powerful with the way he moves. Like with the rest of WayV, I think Dream Plan is also worth a watch.

Jaehyun: There is this part in the K-pop Stars React To Try Not To Sing Along Challenge where he loses during a song. Everything about him dancing to that song is so adorable. When he stands up and moves his arms in front of Taeyong and Doyoung, who are trying not to cave, I just get heart eyes for him. 

WinWin: The one NCT Life episode where he’s cooking in the kitchen. He’s wearing a yellow shirt, Jaehyun is wearing an orange shirt, and WinWin tries to say ‘Lemon’ but he pronounces it as ‘Nimon’. It is, without a doubt, the cutest mispronunciation in the whole world. WinWin has come so far with his language skills, like, he tries so hard, and I’m just always so proud of him. 

Jungwoo: The Hit The States episode in Atlanta, with Doyoung at the Aquarium. I’ve watched that video an insane amount of times. At this point, it’s the thing that has given me the most comfort over the last few months. I love seeing them two together. Doyoung hitting his head on the glass, then Jungwoo doing the same a second later is peak comedy. DoWoo both interacting with random children, them singing on the ferris wheel (I had that Boat song stuck in my head for months before I realized what it was from), them revealing their personal bucket lists, all makes me very soft for the boy. Honorable mention: the video where Jungwoo, Taeyong, and Jaehyun went to the elementary school, and the Capilano Suspension bridge video.

Lucas: The yoga VLIVE with Lucas, Jungwoo, Yuta & Doyoung. Lucas is so damn funny in this. I’ve tried following the yoga routine, and I can’t because my stomach hurts from laughing so much. I don’t even think he means to be funny sometimes. Honorable mention: Every Dream Plan episode. He has a really warm personality, and watching him be himself has been such a pleasure.

Mark: It’s Dangerous Outside The Blankets. He laughs with his whole body, and him laughing while that drone was stuck on the ceiling is the sound that greets you when you enter heaven. Also, seeing Mark without make-up (and his lil’ mustache 😤), cooking, playing around and being happy makes me very happy. 

Xiaojun: The behind the scenes video to WayV’s ‘Let Me Love U”. When he smiles, it really feels like everything in my life will turn out good. I really enjoy him playing around with his friends, getting to be a part of something that makes him happy.

Hendery: The SMROOKIES ‘Re-born’ ep.2. It’s special to me because it was my first real introduction to Hendery. I knew he was going to be one of my favorites the first time I watched it. Hendery imitating the sound of a cats belly when it’s purring is the cutest thing!

Renjun: I thought really hard about what I wanted for his. There are a lot of moments that stand out, but the one I’m most proud of is Renjun getting to be a part of his own radio show. I just linked an episode from awhile ago, but honestly, every episode so far has been great. It’s nice to see him getting the recognition he deserves.

Jeno: Jeno’s NCT DREAM challenge video. I think what he did for the challenge was really cool and impressive. This whole video, though it is short, really highlights Jeno’s drive to succeed, and his discipline. He keeps trying and trying until he gets it right, which I find super admirable. Also, see Jaemin’s answer.

Haechan: This may come as a surprise, but he means more to me than any other member. When he was injured last year, I took it kind of hard. Not having him for months made me feel grateful for all of the content we do get. My boy works very hard. I hope one day I’ll get to thank him for all of it. It’s not a video, but a voice VLIVE that I happened to catch live, on Valentine’s Day (in Korea). I was getting ready to shower when it came on, and I just remember laying on my floor with my phone up to my ear trying not to sob.😭

Jaemin: The Best Day with NCT DREAM. This whole documentary-type program really touched me. The reason I put it under Jaemin’s is because I know how he loves to volunteer, and that kind of love he has for other people can really be shown in this program. He’s a special person, and I really hope all of that kindness he dishes it find its way back to him a million times over (Jeno too).

YangYang: In the one Dream Plan episode, Ten did something really sneaky during a game and tricked him. YangYang could have reacted with annoyance-like other members would have- but he reacted with such a genuine innocent naivety, that it actually broke my heart to watch. I think this is the moment when I realized how special YangYang was. He trusted Ten so easily. 

Chenle: His interactions with HRVY in that one NCT Daily. Chenle went out of his way to make their guest comfortable by talking with him in his limited English, trying to include him in group things, and just being so friendly towards him. 😩😭

Jisung: The Dancing High episode where he did the Barcode dance with Jang Yoonjun. You can feel his passion through the screen. I remember seeing that for the first time, and realizing how much he’s grown as a dancer, a performer, and as a young man.

#Anonymous #nct #nct 127 #wayv #nct dream #taeil #johnny #taeyong #yuta #kun #doyoung #asks #ten #jaehyun #winwin #jungwoo #lucas #mark #xiaojun #hendery #renjun #jeno #haechan #jaemin #yangyang #chenle #jisung #🥰 anon