#even the proportions are off to the same degree they would have been back then hahaha help me

[bigbrainkatrina]

In All the Gin Joints in All the World, He Asks For Coco Moo

"Ah, I'm fuming, Sheila," Drew explains as if that is a very normal hobby. "You remember my arch-foe, James Possible?"

She snorts. Arch-foe. Dumb. "Yes," she chuckles.

"This is his daughter," he growls and then says in an annoyingly shrill voice, "She can do anything!"

"Uh huh," she laughs. "Bitter much?"

i. try the coco moo. it's soothing.

You meet the most interesting characters working late nights in Go City. Weekdays especially. That's what draws out the real sad sacks.

She almost laughs at this Poindexter the second he saunters into her bar. Body so thin and springy, he wobbles like a penguin with each kick of the squeaky shoe. His glasses are unflattering at best, crooked and likely snatched from an old man just trying to read his paper in the park. And God — that suit! Navy blue sport coat with a clip-on bowtie from a party supply store.

Poindexter looks so oblivious looking over the seedy tavern with beady eyes, so it surprises her when his voice scratches like a dog bark and he slouches into the bar and spits, "Appletini. More on the apple, less on the tini and in separate glasses please."

She groans and leans towards him. "Uh huh. Well you know what they pay me for, right?"

He shakes his oblong head. "I'm unfamiliar. A genius like me spends most of their time at coffee shops and libraries, not riff-raff like this, but my dear, it has been a day."

Ah, his braggadocio brings out the nasally underpinnings to his deep voice.

"Uh huh," she drawls. "Cool backstory. Anyways, I'm paid to put a lot of apple and a little bit o' tini into a metal shaker and shakey-shake 'em. Then I give it to you. If you're gonna be a fussy cuss, you can just buy the full bottles and I'll give you your own glass and shaker."

The man scratches his chin — wow, his fingers are like a baby's. So tiny she's surprised they can even bend. "Mm, I would — but then Mother would call me and ask why I spent so much on a bottle of tini."

"Your mother?!"

"Mm yes — well — it's my account — she just — erm — has access to it…" he grumbles and his cheeks glow like mulberries.

"It's not actually called tini by the way but alright," she smirks and slides three glasses over to him. Apple, tini, and whatever Poindexter whatever proportions Poindexter wants it to become. "Closed or open tab?"

"Depends — do you have Coco Moo?"

"What?"

"Nyrgh. Closed tab."

He hands her his debit card and while she doesn't do this for everyone — she sneaks a peekaboo at the name because he's just so much. She needs a name to her pain. "Andrew Lipsky?"

"Yes," his eyes nervously scroll elsewhere. "But if you want to see my work, you can internet my pseudonym: Doctor Drakken!"

Internet my name — what the flip is this guy talking about? She almost asks but spots some regulars somehow managing to jam their entire party of four through the same door frame at once. Ugh. She hands the card back to Poindexter and winds up getting slammed with a rush.

Poindexter gets aggravated early into the rush (it's very noisy) and slaps his notebook shut, leaving behind a very specific clump of cash as a tip. When she has time for it, she counts it off and finds that it's a perfect 15%.

Huh.

ii. to prove that i'm brillianter than the lot of them

If you asked her why exactly he likes her joint so much, she could not even fake a response. But Poindexter struts in every night, at least every night she works. She's a part-timer after all. Monday through Thursday, eight to two thirty AM with one half hour break at eleven. All her other weekday time is devoted to studying — she's a sophomore at Go City U — paying through the nose to get herself a teaching degree so she doesn't need a side hustle anymore.

Well — her weekend life isn't really a side hustle. Her dumb lummox of a brother calls it that — she calls it a charity case. She's actually not that into it — crime fighting that is — but she does have superpowers and regrettably loves violence — so it'd be weird if she wasn't out there saving the world.

It's just part time anywho.

Her big brother though? He wants her to quit the bartending gig and drop out of college because duh um Shego! the city needs you blagh gurmp I'm really stupid. So not happening. Unlike her brothers who never questioned their reality, she has direction. She studies hard and works for those tips because one day — she's blowing this joint. No more superhero antics for her.

God, she's a freakin' superhero. That'll never roll right off the tongue. But yep, she's got the key to the city and everything. You already know who she is. The moody green one from Team Go. And she's the only one with her head on straight. Mego, Wego, Hego — God, she can't believe she let them call her Shego.

To be fair, her pitches — Fuckgo, Shitgo, Pissgo — though brilliant names, were a little juvenile and she should have known better.

iii. the traditional captive - captor relationship

Poindexter ends up being such a character. Beyond that pocket protectin' exterior — he is committed to being a regular at this bar, though he still hasn't decided on his drink yet. But he always ventures to see if the bar has introduced Coco Moo yet, the answer always being no.

So every night is a new concoction. Even an apple with only a bit o' tini is too much for the guy to stomach. She doesn't get what the appeal is for him but he always shows up, and he always sits in the same seat and takes up three other stools with his backpack and binders.

When she has time, she hears him out. He loves the sound of his own voice and over time, his rants become an anthology of all the times that people laughed him out of something. Like the time the kids laughed him off the four square court. Or the time he got laughed off stage in a high school performance of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Or the time James Possible laughed him out of college.

Yes, yes. James Possible. She has no idea who that schlub is but he comes up a lot. James Possible this and James Possible that, ugh. She starts to hate James Possible too, if only for making a neat bookends to Poindexter's pathetic life of rejection.

It's about a month into him coming to her bar that he officially becomes a regular. He struts in as always and her coworker elbows her in the ribs. "God, I hate that guy," the coworker growls. "He never fucking tips."

Huh. Weird.

She doesn't know what to say because whenever she serves him, Drew tips a solid 25%.

iv. fo'sheezy it's off the heezy

It's not every night you come out from the kitchen and find that your favorite customer has turned blue, and yet here we are.

He doesn't even seem stressed out about it. No, he's just leafing through the drink menu as always, trying to find something (that regrettably isn't Coco Moo) that could possibly give him some semblance of happiness.

She almost wonders if he's even noticed his new look but she knows she should give him more credit, so she hangs in the back kitchen for a little bit until she can think of a joke. Because something about him being blue is making her anxious, she is so not coming out until she can properly defuse the whole thing.

After ten minutes, she decides to go with the first joke she came up with, even though that now feels stale and disingenuine. But she sells it as an off-the-cuff gag when she leans in and snarks, "Wow. Violet Beauregarde over here, huh?"

Drew looks over his glasses and slides them back up. "Ha ha. And that's not a funny ha ha...but, — mhrm, it is a funny story. You see — it was a Tuesday…"

She rolls her eyes. "Eh, I'm good on storytime." Drew's smile falters and for a moment he actually seems disappointed. But no — he loves it when she kicks his teeth in like that. It's probably because his mom was too nice to him.

There's a quick flush of lime across her own cheeks but she tosses it off. "By the way, I have a surprise for you."

"A surprise?" he licks his lips.

She holds up two fingers and retreats back to the kitchen, already biting her lip. She really doesn't want to go through with this but it's too late now. There's a simmering pot of homemade hot chocolate waiting for her — or rather, him.

She's embarrassed to say but she actually came in early to prepare this: two cups of whole milk, a quarter cup of sugar, two tablespoons of cocoa powder, a cup of chocolate chips, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a cinnamon stick. Simmering for hours with the occasional stir. She used the extra time to power through her homework much to the chagrin of the kitchen staff but no one dared give her any lip — she was scary as Hell after all.

She pops out of the kitchen with two steaming mugs in hand and slides one in front of Drew. His gasp of joy ("COCO MOO?!") is so endearingly shrill she can't help but stare as he slurps the drink all over his face. His eyes shine as his lips purse inward, a chocolate mustache spread across his apelike maw. He leans in and raises an eyebrow to her and very cooly says three words that shake her to the core. "You do care."

She fails to fight off an authentic smile and sits across him. They clink mugs and bottoms up.

v. i'm going to open up a can of freak on all of you

Aviarius is always up to some nonsense. Bird Boy says he's taking over the world but she can never quite make the connection as to how his actions will tangibly lead to absolute, infallible power. Hego says that's because she has no imagination, but really it's because their arch-foe is dumber than a sack of bricks. But Hego won't hear it. Dude's positively convinced that Aviarius is Public Enemy #1.

But will her brother kill the dastardly foe? No, of course not. Moral high ground and all that. Hego has all the power in the world and uses it for — what exactly? Sure, big man likes to pin the baddie to the ground and lecture him on the differences between right and wrong — but...big picture?

That's nothing.

Aviarius is deluded to think that he'll actually conquer the world. There's a few months where she's pretty sure he's in on the joke — but no he's dead serious. He's as career about this as Hego.

So every Sunday morning Aviarius pops up and robs a bank acting like this is it — his big break. And Hego takes it so seriously, and of course Team Go downs the bird once again and locks him up in the pokey. Yet somehow the cops are dumber than the villains and Aviarius flies again.

And Hego is scandalized! Aviarius boasts and brags as if a prison escape actually means something nowadays — though it's the equivalent of climbing out of the baby crib.

God, is there anyone in this city with two brain cells to rub together?

So she does something a little — ah — morally iffy? She — erm — she sabotages a classic Aviarius caper. Yes, she lets him get away. Because fuck it, why not. Possible change in the routine, and an opportunity for Hego to understand how fruitless this rivalry is.

"My Gods," Hego is shaken to the core as he watches Aviarius' silhouette dissolve in the sunlight. "We — we failed the planet. Team Go. We must not rest until we stop Aviarius. It could be this very moment that the mad man takes over the world."

She rolls her eyes and grabs her brother's burly shoulder. "Hey."

"Oh don't give me that look Shego!" Hego growls. "You'll see! You'll be talking about him in your political science class tomorrow! The ramifications of what it's like to live under a totalitarian mastermind!"

"Hego!" her voice catches in her throat. Are they really doing this right now? "Aviarius is an idiot who ran off with a big bag of money but guess what? Everyone knows his ugly mug! You think he can go around spending any of that? No! Chill. Out."

Hego makes to say something but instead sniffles. His bulking frame folds in on itself and he storms off.

Guess not. Today's not the day it implodes. She feels the metaphorical blood dripping from her mouth and wishes there was more of a smackdown in her town….

She feels bad — watching the Big Kahuna drag a thick arm across his nosey-wosey to wipe away the tears and snot. This is actually her fault after all. She sabotaged the mission and now she's starting to wonder what possibly motivated her to allow that.

It's just — petty. She's petty and has some work to do.

vi. ah, my teenage foe

It's been a month since Aviarius' hollow victory and surprise surprise — nothing of any significance happens. Except Coco Moo is officially added to the menu at the bar. While the drink is obviously cheaper than anything else on the menu, Poindexter tips tremendous percentages that mirror the money she used to get off him when he was weaning into over-priced self-destruction.

But this night — the game changes a little. Poindexter doesn't have much to talk about and in fact, he hasn't even brought his notebooks; his backpack is still strapped tight to his blazer.

This is the first night he asks for the Wi-Fi password and it take her a few minutes to actually find it somewhere in the employee handbook. He spends hours pouring over his laptop, tossing headphones on when the late night riff raff storms in to make a ruckus. She tries to make small talk with him but he merely grumbles indecipherable words like "Uhrm...nyrgh…" so she gives it a rest until her lunch break.

Ever since she started working here, she used her lunch breaks to go out for a smoke break and fit in some reading for school — and even though finals are coming up — she uses the half hour to slide onto the stool besides Drew. But he's too focused to even notice her, so she peers over his shoulder.

Kim Possible: She Can Do Anything!

She raises an eyebrow and looks over the site. It's some twelve year old cheerleader who is apparently saving the world with this dumb looking kid and his naked mole rat. Also available for babysitting gigs?

Weird.

The name too. Kim Possible. Why does that sound familiar?

"Yo, Doctor D!" she finally says.

Drew yelps and turns to face her, his blush is purple now because of the perma-blue skin. Super weird but she's also used to it. "Um...hello Sheila."

"You're not using our Wi-Fi to look at porn are you?"

"Huh? No! Wh—what is porn actually? Perhaps I am using it for that…"

She stares at him for so long and he doesn't even flinch, so she is forced to put a pin on that and steam ahead. "Don't worry about it. But um...seriously, what are you doing?"

"Ah, I'm fuming, Sheila," Drew explains as if that is a very normal hobby. "You remember my arch-foe, James Possible?"

She snorts. Arch-foe. Dumb. "Yes," she chuckles.

"This is his daughter," he growls and then says in an annoyingly shrill voice, "She can do anything!"

"Uh huh," she laughs. "Bitter much?"

Drew's face drops and he blushes. "Well my hubbub with James was a formative experience for me and to see his daughter do so well — out of sheer luck at that — "

He grumbles some other things but she stays hung up on the sheer luck part because that's a weird thing to say. So she asks him about it.

"Mm," Drew pauses and purses his lips. "I have a theory — see — this site is called kimpossible.com yes? Well — there's also impossible.com — for Team Impossible — you've heard of them I trust?"

Is it weird for a bartender to have heard of Team Impossible? Maybe? But of course she knows them and fuck it, she actually likes Drew so she tells the truth and nods. Strange she has to mull that over for so long, usually she's more knee-jerk in conversations, but something about Drew makes her want to be careful. Because this friendship might actually mean something one day.

Drew goes on to explain his theory that Kim Possible's first contact was actually trying to reach out to Team Impossible but made a typo...fascinating stuff really. Makes sense too, it's just one letter off.

But she can't stop thinking about Team Impossible…see, it was a week ago that she met them; it was for an interview. She likes their style, this whole capitalist heroism angle. Charging people for their services. Makes sense. The lack of a paycheck is why she can't stomach taking time for Team Go anymore. Freakin' bartending at minimum wage pays the bills. Not superhero antics. Those don't do her any favors. Hego refuses to accept any payment. Because of morals.

What freakin' ever.

Team Impossible turn her down though. They give her some corporate schlock about how their team isn't a good fit for her but she sees right through them; the boys' club just doesn't want to split the cut with her. Well. Okay. They will rue the day they — ugh. She's starting to internally rant like Doctor D.

By the end of the conversation, she's actually proud of Little Kimmie for knocking Team Impossible down a peg. But on the flippity, she hates this brat because once again, a hero who doesn't accept payment is storming the scene and that makes it harder for gals like her….

Gals who just want to put a roof over their head.

vii. has society gone completely to seed

She hates ceremonies — like, she already accomplished the thing, why does she have to show off? It's done. She's not a student anymore, she's alumni. Summa cum laude baby.

And see — now she's annoyed. She wouldn't have been annoyed if she didn't have to doll up for this dumb thing but guess what? She paid for extra tickets and guess who decided not to come anyways? Ah-yup-yup. There's an empty metal chair with a reserved sign over it. She's not stupid; she can tell that the Wegos duplicated themselves to fill out their row.

God fucking damn you Hego.

Among the black storm of everyone throwing tasseled caps in the air she peaces out. Enough is enough. "Where is he?" she growls at Mego.

Mego throws his hands up. "Listen, I don't want a fight right now — how about we just take you out and celebrate?"

"No. Where. Is. He?"

Mego looks aside and grumbles something. Sounds like Aviarius. Unfuckingbelievable. She snarls and spits. "Fuck him," she says coldly. "Seriously. Fuck him."

"I know, he's being a bit of a bonehead — " Mego starts to say.

" — a bit?"

"Okay, a lot of bonehead, I dunno," Mego shrugs. "Fuck, don't take it out on me. Listen if you want to fight let's just do it and get it over with, okay? You can yell and scream all you want right now, but when we're done we're going out — and we're not gonna talk about this — and we're gonna get fucked up. It'll be fun."

There's a long pause. "Should we go home?" the Wegos ask together.

"Yes," she and Mego say together.

After the twins depart, Mego looks her right in the eye. "Hego wants you to exchange your college hours for Team Go hours — "

" — no. I've already committed that time to the bar."

"To the bar?" Mego doesn't mean to sound judgmental but oho — he's really going through the motions of it. "I thought you wanted to be a teacher."

"Yes — what?! It's my job you ass — just because you decided to freeload in Go Tower and not worry about actually trying — you know what? Fuck it. I don't care."

It's not the first time a conversation between them has gone like this, and it's not the last, so Mego doesn't bother. They part ways and she feels kind of gross. He does too, because she's right. She's always been right, but it's easier to call her a crazy bitch and be done with it. But when the chips are down? No duh — Team Go is squandering on borrowed time.

She's shaking for some reason. It's weird. She's quit Team Go like seventeen times — oddly enough she's never thrown in the towel when Hego's around. Only with Mego, whom she actually kind of likes. And she always comes back. Be it a day or a few weeks, she comes back, ready to brawl.

This time though, it takes three months for her to return.

viii. do you think that I'm evil

"Nyrgh…"

"What are you grumbling about tonight? You're kinda pissing me off."

Drew looks up, looking worse than ever. He used to have such good posture — now he's a hunched over lunatic with darting eyes. "Demenz," he says simply.

"Oh God, what is it this time?" she shakes her head. "Did he call you Violet Beauregarde? Because you can tell him I came up with that joke three years ago."

"No, he hasn't quite found his nickname for me yet fortunately — " Drew ponders but shrugs it off. "Demenz invented the weather disruptor machine I've been working on."

"So? He invented it." Drew doesn't even bat an eye so she has to continue her lecture. "He obviously came up with it before you did, if that's what you're implying."

"Ah!" Drew waves a finger in the air. "I did not steal from him! No! I — I invented it too! You see, I came up with the concept independently!"

"Mhm," she smiles wryly.

"He can just build faster because he has an army of henchmen. It's not fair!" he pouts.

Yep. There it is. Another red flag. Drew's been throwing up a lot of them lately; she already knows he's a mad scientist aspiring to be a wacked out supervillain, but he's way too much of a softy for that field. She almost wants to sit Drew down and tell him the honest-to-god truth: that she is a superhero. Then she can give him some real talk pointers on how to get his act together.

Because this Kim Possible kid now? She's huge. She like saved the world six times or something last week. Like she's already graduated from fighting off goons like Aviarius. If Drew — Drakken — wants to compete — then he needs to let go of this stupid James Possible grudge and actually do the work.

"You know Doctor D," she says while wiping off a dusty glass. "You should just steal the weather gizmo from him if you want it that bad."

"Hm?"

"Steal it! You know — spooky evil stuff."

"Aaaaaah…evil..." Drew mulls it over and pulls back his stupid pompadour into a ragged ponytail. "Stealing, huh? Well — I prefer to call that outsourcing and either way, I don't have the manpower to do that, I'm a one-man band."

And that's the end of that for some time.

ix. you think you're all that

Drew gets banned from the bar one night. She's not even there to see it. Apparently Drew comes in with Demenz for drinks on a night she wasn't working and they got into a bit of a spat. Something about Dementor calling him the Genie from Aladdin, and Drew calling Dementor Winnie the Pooh.

Yeah. Dumb. Drew could have cooked up something better. He really needs to spend more time journaling so he can be faster on the uptake.

But there's a spat and that spat becomes a brawl. Everyone starts smashing things and at the center of it is her snivelling Poindexter. It's nights like these that she wishes she helped him out with the whole evil thing because Jesus Christ — someone beats the tar out of him. Yeah. A glass shatters across Drew's face and those splintered shards dig deep. He's got this gnarly scar running down his cheek, leading from the corner of his eye.

Honestly, he got off easy. With the mouth on him it's a wonder he didn't get into more trouble...but yeah, someone got the drop on him and now — that villainy career? It's probably over now. Poindexter doesn't have the moxie. How can he not see that by now?

She feels sad for him. Not enough to go visit him at the hospital but — there was — potential? He had this spark and it could have been fun but now...

...now she's catching herself brewing Drew's Coco Moo. She stops when she realizes he's not coming. She considers drinking it alone but pours it out into the sink.

x. but you're not

By day, she's a superhero. By night, she's a bartender. And every moment in between she's hungry.

She's addicted to job applications. At first she is very selective on what she applies for but there aren't any biters. When she does get lucky enough to score an interview, she hits the employers with everything she's got and somehow never gets a call back. Not even an email. So after some desperate months of that, she just applies everywhere.

She remodels her resume and draws up cover letters as if she's a full time writer. She can sell a book out of her stupid please hire me diatribes. But nothing seems to land and after six months of ten applications a day with no interviews — she gives up.

Because fuck it. It's not her that's the problem, it's the world that doesn't get when they're seeing gold and she's not going to wait up anymore.

So she becomes full time at the bar for some reason. She doesn't know why. Everyone she started with four years ago has moved on to bigger and better things — probably — she just kind of assumes those people are happier than her. The only thing that's consistent are the regulars — aside from Doctor D.

She thinks about him more often than she'd like to admit. She gazes at the door when she punches in, wondering if they'll push open to reveal that ungodly strut he always marched in with. Months pass by as if they're nothing and he never returns.

xi. i do think of us as kind of an evil family

The only reason they're at the chemical labs that night is because Aviarius and Mathter are teaming up to do — something. Who cares anymore. She just shows up because it's an opportunity for her to beat the crap out of someone.

But while she's sneaking around, she sees a man crouched over a safe. He's grumbling very loudly and is apparently deaf because he doesn't hear her footsteps pattering across the metal girder.

Gross, dry black hair, rattail, awful posture, tiny digits, and Violet Beauregarde skin peeping past the high-collar of his coat — oh God.

She squats down and watches him fuck up the safe combination again. He pulls out a notebook and reads off the numbers out loud. "Thirty six...twenty one...four. What — what am I doing wrong?"

She can't hold it anymore; it's like watching your teenager try to march out the door in that outfit. Like — honey no.

"Seriously?" she laughs.

You can hear a pin drop. For a second. And then you can't. Because Doctor Drakken shrieks and scrabbles away, but she grabs him by the boot and he trips into the safe. He looks at her and scrunches into a fetal position almost. Then he blinks and remembers her. "You're — you're — whatsername — the girl from the bar!"

She rolls her eyes but forgives him. Doctor D's not good with names. At least for people he actually likes.

"You're — " he stutters. "A superhero!"

She just grins and lets him process it all on his own.

"You're — you're Shego! Oh that makes sense — your name is Sheila Go, isn't it? I don't know how I didn't get that."

"Eh, most people don't somehow. Everyone in this city's an idiot so…."

"Mm, well I'm no idiot, I'm a genius!" Drakken declares. "I just seem to have copied the safe combination down wrong.

She rolls her eyes. "Are you kidding me with that? Dude, Doctor D, you never use the combination. Those change all the time — you want to bring the equipment — here. Move over."

Her fist lights up into a brilliant emerald and Drakken needs no reminding that he better back up. Her hand closes in on the safe and the metal immediately lights up at the intensity. It's hard to hold a flare this long — but for him? For him it's kinda worth it. So she drags her hand through the safe until she burns a little hole out and pow — the metal gap ker-thunks to the floor.

"So — you're helping me then?" he asks.

Her eyes widen a little. "I guess I am, huh?"

There's such an uncomfortably long silence that it almost makes more sense to kiss him than do what she is about to do.

"I don't want to do Team Go anymore, it's dumb," she shrugs, trying to play it cool. It's not like these thoughts have been tormenting her for years or anything.

"Ah, and I do need an assistant," Drakken grins something surprisingly charming. It's not like he's been a loser with no friends except the bartender ever since James Possible got him kicked out of college.

"I'm def not your assistant, but I'll do with partners."

"Sidekick?"

"Partners."

"Henchwoman?"

"No. Partners."

Drakken eyes her as if any second the cameras are about to swarm him from all over and broadcast his naivete and gullibility all across America. But no one comes.

"We'll stop you Aviarius!" Hego proclaims from waaaay across the lab, saying it with the relish of an actor who can deliver a line one hundred times and somehow always keep it fresh. "Even if it's the last thing I do."

She snaps and grabs his tiny hands, making the decision for him, rocking his arm up and down. "We'll talk logistics and titles later — let's steal the cash before my brother trounces that idiot. Drakken's your monicker right?" She wants it to sound like she didn't already know that — but she's no phony. Not like Hego. And Drakken sees right through the I-don't-give-a-fuck-facade.

He nods along anywho. Because he likes the banter.

She grins. "Good. Doctor Drakken and Shego. I like it. Kinda like Frankenstein and Igor — "

Drakken raises a finger to make the exact same point that just came to her mind.

"So not a lab assistant," she shuts that down fast and laughs as he droops like a rapidly wilting flower. "But we're going to make a big time villain out of you, Doctor."

He smiles and finally grips her hand back.

"Partners," they say together.

#drakken x shego #drakgo #kim possible #kim possible fanfic

[college-girl199328]

The confidence-and-supply agreement between the Liberals and NDP is over a year old. The primary takeaway from the experience to date might be that such a thing is possible — that two competing parties can find agreement on a set of ideas and work together to implement those policies.

For the parties involved, they might be the value of communication and building personal relationships. "When I contrast this minority government with the last minority government, there's just way more communication. And that, I think, is what helps keep us out of the ditch," said an NDP source, speaking on the condition they not be identified by name.

"Now that I've been through this for a possibility to end up in a confidence crisis that nobody meant to engineer. Just because nobody's communicating."

When opposing sides are left to interpret each other's actions and guess at motivations, suspicions are heightened conflict can follow. So while the Liberal-NDP deal demands progress on the 27 policy items it covers really requires dialogue.

"Having set those structures in the agreement so we don't leave communication to chance, but there are structured meetings where it has to happen — that's been really helpful, both in times when things are going smoothly, but also helpful when things aren't going smoothly," the source said.

"And I think it's also helped to build relationships levels between staff and ministers, between MPs, between the leaders, that [are] also helpful in steering the ship."

A senior government source, also speaking on the condition they not be named, agreed. "By working with folks closely, you learn how to talk to folks helps you in good and bad. And there's relationships and capital and goodwill to call on and bad," the government source said. "It's a relationship need to be building it."

The value of communication is every guide to marriage. But if the notion of relationship-building seems novel in Canadian politics, it's because public communication between parties consists almost entirely of accusations, boasts and taunts.

Judged only by the question barely stand to be in the same room together and are only capable of speaking with partisan talking points.

At least some of that conflict is necessary — it creates accountability and differing views within a pluralistic society. But minority Parliaments cannot function without at least some amount of compromise and cooperation, at least not for long.

And Parliaments are now more likely to be the rule than the exception going to need to work on their communication skills (or Canadian voters have to get used to having elections every two years).

In most European countries — where proportional representation essentially guarantees that no single party will win a majority of seats in the legislature — parties working together is the norm. Even within the United States Congress (no one's idea of an ideal legislature) a rich history of members working across party lines. In such systems, some amount of cooperation is considered a requirement.

Not that such things were off in Parliament before now. But a confidence-and-supply agreement requires a much greater degree of coordination. Liberal ministers can't simply call their NDP counterparts with a head's-up the night before a new program or bill is announced. For part, conversations earlier in the policy-making ministers and back and forth over ideas and policy design.

Things have not always gone smoothly. Outside the 27-point agreement, there have been notable points of conflict — first over proposed amendments to new firearms legislation, then over whether Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford, would be called to testify about foreign interference at a parliamentary committee. The parties still regularly disagree and air those disagreements in forums like question period.

But the deal has held. The government figures it has completed 16 of the 27 items (not including the plan for dental care that was laid out in last month's budget) now been in session for more than 500 days. If it survives until the Liberal-NDP deal in 2025, it will be the longest-lasting minority Parliament of the last 60 years (888 days).

Whether the Liberal-NDP agreement will serve as a model for the future will depend to some degree on math. There have been 10 minority Parliaments since the NDP first contested an election in 1962. In only five of those Parliaments did the Liberals and NDP combine to occupy a clear majority of seats in the House of Commons, as they do now. In all other cases, they would have had to work with a third party to be sure they could pass legislation.

In cases such as 2004 or 2008, that third party could have been the Bloc Quebecois. But it's not clear how willing any party will be in the future to make a formal deal with a separatist party. In 2008, when the Liberals and NDP attempted to form a coalition government with the Bloc's support, the Conservatives effectively weaponized the involvement of separatists to denounce the deal.

The Conservatives themselves could have a hard time finding a dance partner. During the two minority Parliaments that ran from 2006 to 2011, Stephen Harper's Conservatives were able to govern by either winning support for legislation on a case-by-case basis or by simply daring the other parties to vote against them and trigger an election (the Liberals of the day made a habit of standing down).

But federal politics may have changed in significant ways since then — particularly as it relates to climate change. Would the Liberals or NDP be willing to work with, or even just avoid toppling, a Conservative government that was set on rolling back or outright repealing policies designed to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Would either the Liberals or NDP allow a government led by Pierre Poilievre to follow through on his promises to scrap the federal carbon tax and clean fuel regulations?

While the Liberals and NDP may have had a relatively easy time finding points of agreement, it should be possible for nearly any two parties to find some amount of common ground. But could two parties have a chasm as the current left-right split on climate change?

For now, the Liberals might be keen to point out that they're working with another party and to contrast that with what they call the Conservative Party's opposition and obstruction. And Conservatives might be happy to portray themselves as standing resolute against the progressive tide.

But the future might require that all parties learn the value of communication, relationships and everything else necessary to ensure Parliament can function for four years at a time.

[philadelphia-hq]

"When I was a fire, I turned into ice, melting off my last feverish highs, and I leapt through the sunshine and into the night, singing songs of my healthiest fears."

JOHN ‘JACK’ BROOKS

Age: 43 Gender and pronouns: Male, He/Him Occupation: OB/GYN, Neonatal Surgeon at UPenn Hospital Neighborhood: Chestnut Hill

BIOGRAPHY

tw: parental death

When Dr. Lachlan Brooks married his surgical nurse, polite society had been abuzz. He was a man in his sixties, having already been married for decades and with two grown sons. Those that ran in the same circles as the Brooks' could not help but be consumed by the salacious gossip that Lachlan had negotiated a divorce in order to marry a woman decades his junior. Gossips were event more alight once it became clear that this woman was pregnant.

All of this outrage was lost upon the golden tresses of baby Jack, the product of this love affair. He was raised in a home that teemed with love, roughhoused with the children of his older half brothers, and was a general rebel rouser. And while society would not adapt enough to welcome his mother into their fold, Jack was a handsome and charming young man, and so seemingly he could do no wrong. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for undergrad like his father and brothers had, not quite taking his studies seriously as he should of. Perhaps due to his father's advanced age, no one had ever suggested or demanded that Jack grow serious about life. Instead, upon graduating (without honors or accolades), Jack chose to travel. With a limitless pool of financial resources, Jack became a globetrotter of epic proportions, finding friends in every country and on every continent, and a few romances as well.

His years abroad were not completely laissez-faire, as Jack spent plenty of time volunteering where he could. It was then that his mind began to change, a more serious intellectual curiosity was born. He became interested, more keenly, in the plight of neonatal HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. This charity work sparked many conversations with his father, particularly about what he could do if he had more formal training, instead of as a simple layman. Jack was reluctant to take up the mantle that his father and brothers had, and certainly other Brooks men before them. And it was on that last phone call to his father that Lachlan Brooks suggested his youngest son finally get serious with his life, instead of wasting his potential. It was a tough love chat, but certainly one that he needed. 

He only wished his father had lived long enough to see him be accepted into medical school.

Jack arrived back in Philadelphia a very different person, shaped by his experiences and prepared to lead a more 'conventional' life, like his father might have wanted. He was older than his classmates at the Perelman School of Medicine, but he didn't pay much mind to the gap. Jack's nose was to his books, and constantly bouncing questions off of his siblings. At least, he was studious until he met Haley Norris. 

They dated throughout medical school, and even some time after. He was mad about her, even if he needed the direction of her parents to consider the prospect of marriage. It wasn't that the idea didn't sound grand, in theory, but Jack had always flown by the seat of his pants, until med school, and subsequently, Haley. In trying to be careful and deliberate about their life together, he'd forgotten the next logical step. And perhaps, somewhere in those years he'd lost her confidence, as initial conversations about tying the knot hadn't gone over well.

In the end, the pair went their separate ways, Jack's pride wounded, and almost fatally once he heard that Haley had eloped with a man she hardly knew. He then concluded that if marriage wasn't the next step in his life, that he'd finally use his degree for good — and moved to Lesotho for a year of charity work combatting the HIV/AIDs epidemic. 

Back in Philadelphia, Jack accepted a position at UPenn Hospital, working on his specialty in neonatal surgery, and doing his best to keep to himself.

JOHN ‘JACK’ BROOKS has the face claim of SCOTT SPEEDMAN and is played by LIZA.

#chestnut hill #b #scott speedman

[4lorne2]

We got together in person and since that day the relationship was never the same.

I thought it went fine. I was tired and stressed from driving. I think that I talked too much and listened too little. I didn’t reveal any of the carefully guarded secrets about myself I had imagined doing. I didn’t ask the questions about her that I wish I had. But it was fine.

Since then, though, it’s as if whatever was driving the relationship mutually came to an end. It’s not like she was in any way lesser than what I had hoped she would be. I wonder if she thinks that I was somehow disappointed with her or didn’t like her. That’s how I imagine she felt about me.

Probably the whole process just made the friendship feel more significant than anything it actually was. Getting together felt “normal,” even “mundane.” Was that a let down for her? For me?

My pattern is to get too attached, to get swept up in my fantasies and longings, likely at the expense of any connection with others. I feel so frustrated with my propensity to fall in love so quickly. Maybe it makes others appreciate me to some degree. I’m so giving and appreciative right off the bat; it must make other people feel validated. It probably also comes off as a bit desperate. Even more than that though, I think it keeps me from actually connecting with anyone. The stakes become so artificially high that I can’t risk my feelings getting out into the open.

It just feels impossible. I feel everything in that early period too acutely. Small joys become large and minor absences and disconnects gnaw at me. Love is a heightened state, but the way I experience it is maddeningly isolating. The feelings are just such a burden. They’re so disproportionate to anything that would be reasonable to feel. They become a source of embarrassment and pain. And it just feels like as long as my social life is so scant, this will never change. My feelings will always be out of proportion to the actual relationships it’s possible for me to have. My desires will always overshadow the reality and make me at odds with it.

And so, after feeling too much, after being in pain and resenting my own predisposition to put myself in this state I pull back. I stop giving the little, guarded parts of myself and the excessive whole that comes with them. I retreat and I heal. I need it. I come back to myself. Only, now I’m alone again. Now there’s an even bigger gap than the one I’d been maintaining in our interactions in the past. It all comes to an abrupt end. I feel ok again, but I’m left wishing more fervently that this wasn’t the path I was forced to take.

Look. The truth is that she was never very giving towards me. I mirrored some aspects of her aloofness, but I do feel she never wanted to give that much to me. I wanted to much, but she also gave too little.

It wasn’t a good fit. Even if she’s exactly a person I’d like to try to love, there needs to be a shared commitment to building something common? How much further could I have gone? What could I have revealed? What could I have asked for?

I keep it all in reserve. Better to be nothing than, a brief detour in an otherwise full life, than to be an obstacle, to insist on my presence and make demands like a troll under a bridge who set foot on the piece of land that is me. Better to hurt myself than to hurt someone else. I can carry the pain and longing and sadness. I can be the one who allows others to walk all over me. Like the giving tree, I can give up my existence so that others might live in my place.

Why shouldn’t I live? I don’t want to hurt others. I don’t want to make life, which is already bad, worse. I’m not worthy of love. That’s the cliche, right. Only by letting myself be weak can others live lives free of my foolishness and imbecility.

Why am I unworthy? Because I don’t want to be worthy. I don’t want to try to live up to any standards. So I’m just nothing.

Of course, I do want to live up to standards. I just don’t want to try. I just don’t want to fail anymore. I just can’t do it. I just can’t keep torturing myself. I’m just waiting for my life to end. Whether that’s tomorrow or in 50 years.

Small things do give me joy. I do dream about making something I can be proud of. I can’t let go of the wish to be in love. But I’m just too ashamed of myself. And it’s because I’m ashamed of myself that I’m not worthy.

I’d like to stop being ashamed. To be able to boast loudly about being stupid, and ugly, and weak. It’s not too late but I won’t do it. There’s no one who’d be worth doing it for in my life. Especially not me.

[nataliesnews]

religious families and buses, a man is about to die in administrative detenion     30.8.2022

I suggest for those of you who ask why every day the  IDF if busy on the West Bank in so many towns, etc. that you read this article which Susan sent me from America.

  Palestinian toll mounts as Israel steps up West Bank raids

https://apnews.com/article/ac683a6fbb4f2893ecdf1b1bbe1362ef

  Impossible to move!!  40 degrees. Even the evenings too hot to walk. I come in and my shirt is soaked.  I woke up this morning to a city in a complete haze. It is very depressing to  hear the weather forecast and the prediction that things will only get worse where the heat is concerned. I said to someone that even a sauna would be embarrassed to be so hot.

  Speaking of  religion and I know I will sound very "anti"….the town is full of visitors, a large proportion of whom are religious families…… travelling is very difficult for me as people are rushing around and not looking where they are going and the buses and even the light train are so full. Normally I do not have a problem as people get up for me or people help me. But what I noticed was that amongst the ultra-orthodox they may know the commandment " honour thy father and thy mother"  but I doubt that they know to honour the aged or the handicapped.. The front seat of buses is supposed to be for the latter. Often there are young people or even those who have no problem sitting there but normally as I get on, they see my age and the sticks and they vacate the seat for me with no words and of course I thank them. But this week I had three unpleasant scenes.  All those whom I write about were ultra orthodox. Maybe I am generalizing but I have noticed it over and over again especially in this month.

 Let me explain that often travelling by bus is not always a pleasant experience. The drivers do not stop at the pavement in many cases…..many do when asked……and before you can sit down, they start off with a swing and one has to hang until you can sit. Also, when I get off and if I sit at the back, they also do not always wait until I have completely descended and twice I have nearly had the doors close on me and drag me.

 In the first  one there was a young man in his twenties sitting in the front seat and the other two were occupied by elderly people. I said politely that I would like to sit and he looked me up and down…..just like that…looked to the back and said ,"There are plenty of seats for you at the back." By the way in many of the buses which serve the untras the women are sent to the back. I pointed out the sign above him which states who the seats are meant for and told him he should be ashamed of himself. And with a bad grace he got up.

 Later in the week the  two seats at the side were occupied by a couple who by right should have got up but I looked at the girl in her late teens sitting in the single seat and at them and then said to her that I would like to sit. When she got up, I said to her ,'I should not have to ask" and her father said that she had not seen me. I said that seeing she had looked me in the eye she must have been blind.

 The third time …and there is no point in my complaining to the bus company. Twice in the last year I have sent them complaints citing the exact stops and times on which I got on to the bus and off and the number of the bus and received a reply that they cannot trace the driver! I got on the two seats on the one side had a couple sitting in it and the other a little boy playing with his phone. I asked him to get up ….both he and his father with kippot on their heads…..and sat down. The driver shouted at me saying I could have gone to the back and had no reason to make the child get up. It  turned out that it was  his son whom he was taking along for a joy ride. He went on screaming at me. But when I got off the bus, I told him that as he was so sure he was in the right, I hoped that one day he would be in my position. No, I was not cursing him. After all, as he felt that he was so much in the right, he will understand one day if he gets treated the same way.

 In the meantime as I said in my last letter things are heating up. Today at the pool a woman came in who evidently remembered me from Balfour and was very upset. She said when are we going back to Balfour .Netanyahu is closer and closer to the fascist element and it seems as if the stars are all in position for him. People again say no point in demonstration. To some extent I agree with them. The reality of what is to come is too nebulous and will remain so until it is too late. Even at Nofim someone asked if we could not demonstrate here again. People are out on the bridges on Saturdays. They have often been attacked. Ellen found someone with whom I could go down to Abu Gosh on Saturdays where they are well organized. Here in Jerusalem we only have one bridge and no  one has organized anything there. But in the rest of the country there are demonstrations but not large and the demonstrators are often attacked.

 I wrote before about administrative detention and having just seen the pictures on facebook ……I prefer not to send you the pictures of what this man now looks like. It is true. He now looks like the worst pictures of  concentration camp survivors which I prefer not to put on as they are so terrible. I have shared them on facebook. I am not sure that he will live until the protest vigil even. Yesterday people tried to bring a mattress which is easier on the body …or what remains of the body…and they were not allowed to give it to him. I do not want to write how I feel about the unreasoning inhumanity of the secret service. If this man were a Jew, I can imagine how protests would come in from all sides. This is administrative detention at its worst.

  "While the State of Israel climbed a tall tree until it could not find a ladder high enough to climb down from, the life of a father of 4 daughters, 40 years old - Khalil Awauda - is running out. His hourglass is on its last grains.

Khalil is an administrative detainee, which means that he was never brought to trial, no evidence was presented, and the punishment for a crime that was not committed was not meted out, subject to the discretion of the military prosecutor's office.

He chose to fight for freedom, even at the cost of sacrificing his life. And he has been on hunger strike for six months.

Somewhere on the 111th day of his strike, an agreement was reached in which he would be released at the end of the current period of detention in exchange for the end of the strike. He stopped but then his detention was extended.

He is ready to die and not live the life of a prisoner without justice. That's how he lies like a survivor of an concentration camp, separated from his mother, his wife, his daughters.

Tomorrow, Sunday, from five o'clock, there will be a protest vigil near Assaf Harofeh Hospital, calling for the State of Israel to come down from the tree."

#religious families in buses #administrative detention 30.8.2022

[missmentelle]

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem. 

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati 

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial 

COVID-19 denial 

5G panic 

QAnon 

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch. 

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns. 

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food. 

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined. 

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage -  the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there. 

Our brains love proportionality. 

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event. 

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause. 

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger. 

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon. 

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying. 

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices. 

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it. 

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world. 

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable. 

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan. 

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side. 

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story. 

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult). 

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life. 

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world. 

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true. 

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew. 

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity. 

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity. 

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.  

There is a strong community aspect to these theories. 

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas. 

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed. 

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #conspiracy theories #cults #psychology #science #neuroscience

[beskarberry]

Blue Orchid

Flowers for Ishtar, Chapter 1

(Nonhuman!Mando x f!Reader) [+18!]

You’d had to bite down on the corner of your blanket when you thought of him pinning you to the wall or bending you over the dashboard, stuffing you full of his length while he groaned his praises in your ears until you were soaked.

This was not at all what you had imagined.

Next->

Summary: You discover your hunting partner isn't human, which in a galaxy far, far away isn't that strange until his alien needs become too much for him to hide.

Rating: Explicit as FUCK

Word count: 9.2k

Content warnings: Major kinks: breeding and pregnancy, eggs and oviposition, mpreg/fpreg, alien genitalia. Minor kinks: praise, eating and weight gain. Kink sprinkles: threw some things in like just a tad of sex pollen, hair pulling, spanking, a very brief daddy kink, the idea of a/b/o. There's a few more but if you're familiar with my writing you know what's up. Negatives: body horror, dysphoria.

A/N: Yeah... um... hm... So this is some weird shit but if you enjoyed Garden of Ishtar this will be right up your alley. If that was weird and creepy for you then this is not for you! You have been warned!!!

There’s something strange going on with your partner.

Mando, as he insisted on being called, even though that was clearly not his real name, had been acting differently recently. Though he was an odd one from the get-go, the burly, short-tempered, efficient hunter took some getting used to, but now something about him was off.

It was a strange partnership you’d gotten yourself into, ever since that day you had been sitting in the same cantina booth as him on Nevarro, arguing with Karga over the last available bounty puck.

“Karga, I’m not splitting a puck with this guy.” You’d barked, crossing your arms and leaning back with a huff. Next to you, the armored stranger grunted in agitated agreement, his plated shoulders catching the light as they stiffened. You didn’t know each other, and as far as you could tell the only thing you both had in common was that you both worked for the Guild.

“Well that’s too bad!” The old agent stated, shaking his head. “This is the last one I’ve got until next month, so unless one of you wants to wait until then, this is all I have left. You're going to have to work together as a team.”

“Unless I kill her first.” The iron giant said coldly, not even looking your way.

“I’d like to see you try.” A knife flew from your belt to the table as you buried the tip of it in the faux wood counter, glaring daggers with your eyes at his shiny metal head.

“Easy now, we’re all friends here! Can’t have my two best hunters fighting, or killing each other…”

“Bullshit, I’m the best hunter here, Kargsy, and you know it.” Fury seethed from your words, but it was seemingly lost on the other man. “Tinman here can go fuck himself.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“No, but I fuck yours with it!”

Greef slammed a fist down on the table, making the trio of spotchka glasses bounce and spill. “That’s enough, either you two figure out how to play nice or neither of you will be getting this puck, or any other pucks for that matter! And that’s final!”

That was six months ago.

Despite your differences, the pair of you made for a terrifying duo, between his heavily armored body and your quick, nimble blades, it was like hell itself had released its most deadly demons. The bounty was found, hunted, and captured so quickly and easily that the minute the Razor Crest touched back down on Nevarro you were both excitedly harassing Karga for more.

Your newfound companion didn’t talk much, but what he didn’t say with his words he made up for with his actions. He gave you a little backstory, filling you in on his Mandalorian heritage and what that meant regarding his helmet and armor, and you were fine with the condition that he would never show his face around you. What he did show you was how lethal he could be, a whirlwind of blasters and beskar, an immovable object that coupled neatly with your unstoppable force.

It was poetry in motion.

Bounties fell at your feet like wheat before the scythe, wracking up credits like Kessel-running smugglers which you both blew on firearms and vibroblades as if the galaxy was ending tomorrow. What didn’t go towards guns and ammo went towards food and fuel, the Crest blasting off of Nevarro again and again and again.

As time went on, you slowly started to warm up to each other. You couldn’t really say you were friends, just work partners that happened to be flawlessly efficient at what they did. It was a fine arrangement, but over time small, but significant changes between you started to catch your attention.

You’d pinned a bounty, a large, malodorous Twi’lek that nearly squirmed out from your grasp, only to earn themselves a vicious cold-clocking to the back of their tentacled skull. Breath heavy and eyes burning with aggression, you’d slogged the captive into the carbonite freezer like you were taking out the trash, your wanton strength not going unnoticed by your companion.

“Good job.” Mando had said with a tilt of his helmet, watching your chest heave with adrenaline. “Such a strong verd’ika, can’t wait to see what you do to the next guy.” He’d never complimented you up to that point, if he spoke to you at all. It’d caught you off guard, but in a good way, and you knew right then you wanted to hear him say it again.

So you kept doing a good job.

And you did it on purpose.

The next bounty you held in place while Mando punched their lights out, holding steadfast against the living sledgehammer that was your partner, wincing every time you felt his fists explode against the Aqualish’s exoskeleton. When they’d keeled over, you let them fall to the floor, jumping slightly when Mando patted your shoulder, impressed with your ability to hold your own.

He seemed kind, when he wasn’t retaliating against your snide remarks or beating the living shit out of a bounty. Often when it was just the two of you he was almost soft spoken, asking you if you got enough to eat or if your wounds needed tending to, but not once did he ever make a pass at you.

That was somewhat of a surprise, but you didn’t even know what species he was, so there was a good chance you weren’t even on his sexual radar. He looked human, he obviously wasn’t a Togruta or a Twi’ with that helmet, and he was too tall to be a Rodian or Ugnaught. Too broad to be Gungan.

He was humanly proportioned to a sinful degree, his wide armored shoulders and cinched waist giving you wicked thoughts in the late hours. Even his fucking voice did something to you, the deep, gravelly husk of it almost reverberated in your chest when he spoke, and more than once you wished it would vibrate for you somewhere else.

But you were just two hunters making a living, nothing more.

Recently, however, something had started to change; and it wasn’t something that you liked. You weren’t buddy-buddy, but in the recent weeks his demeanor had started to wane. Mando was always private, taking his meals alone and keeping the fresher door locked when in use, but even when he wasn’t dealing with the necessary inconveniences of being alive he was starting to avoid you more and more.

At first you let him have his space, it was none of your business what was bothering him if he wasn’t going to speak up about it. But as the weeks seemed to drag on his temper began to flare more often, his sentences getting even shorter than they already were, his words sharp and vindictive.

You let it slide until he was rude to a merchant in a Bespin market, demanding more food rations than what he was being offered. Mando had left the market with so much dried meat and canned vegetables that it was falling out of his satchel, leaving a breadcrumb trail of bantha-in-a-can as he stormed back to the ship.

He was eating more often, too, squirreling himself away from your campfires or tucking himself up in either his sleeping cubby or the cockpit; whichever was further away from you at the time. You had your own space in the upstairs part of the Crest where he’d strung a ramshackle hammock for you, but it was so close to her reactors that you frequently woke up sweaty whenever you were in hyperspace.

On one such occasion you decided to sneak over to the ladder hatch when he thought you were sleeping, carefully peeking into the hold below. You could see him in his alcove, but just barely, only his back visible to you from your vantage point. He was eating, a lot. You watched his back and shoulders heave with each desperate bite of food, gorging himself as if he’d been lost in the desert for weeks.

The next cycle he kept his back to you almost constantly, like he was trying to hide something from view, but there were very little private spaces in the ship, especially while the stars streaked by overhead. Try as he might, he couldn’t hide his secret from your prying eyes, though you weren’t surprised with what you saw after watching him eat like there was no tomorrow.

He was gaining weight.

It was just a little at first, maybe just an illusion brought on by some extra layers of clothing; hyperspace was chilly, after all. However it soon became obvious as his extra warmth began to pudge over his belt and upset his armor that it wasn’t all fluff. You checked the larder after he went up to the cockpit to work on the navigation, and you were alarmed to find that almost half of your rations were already used up after having left Bespin only three cycles ago.

Something was definitely up with your partner.

You were watching him now from where you sat on one of the supply crates, toying with a vibroblade while he rigorously cleaned a plate of his armor, his back turned to you. His beskar was spotless, nary a drop of blood or spec of dust remained. He was just trying to distract himself from his newfound curves, but you were starting to get frustrated.

It was time to get to the bottom of this.

“Hey, are you feeling alright? You’ve been acting-”

“I’m fine.” he barked, the aggression behind his words making you jump. You weren’t afraid of him, or he of you. Your partnership was mutually beneficial and respected, and it wasn’t like him to be so short with you in close quarters. You weren’t having any of it.

“That’s crap and you know it, something's up with you, I can tell. You wanna talk about it?” Though he wasn’t looking your way, you cast your eyes at his pudge muffin, hoping he would catch your implications without you having to put it into words.

He said nothing, instead he rose from his seat and hurried up the ladder to the flight deck, sealing the airlock behind him.

You didn’t see him again until the ship dropped from hyperspace.

It was a quiet couple of days, and fucking boring too. Mando didn’t even come down to use the fresher or grab food, which made you nervous after seeing him stress eating like he had been. The Crest touched down on Jedha not far from an enormous crater that the Empire had put there in its heyday, but even when the engines went quiet, the blast door remained sealed.

“Mando? You still alive in there?” You asked tentatively with your ear pressed to the door, rapping your knuckles against the durasteel.

“Fine.”

“Are you coming out?”

There was a long pause, then: “...No.”

You grumbled and donked your head against the door. “Are you gonna make me go get this bounty myself?” He didn’t answer, which unfortunately meant the answer to your question was ‘yes’. You sighed heavily like you’d heard him do innumerable times. “You suck. Do you need anything before I head out?”

“No, thank you verd’ika.”

He was still alive, and talking, so those were both good signs, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with him during your entire hunt. The bail jumper you were after came quietly, which on a regular day would make you angry that you had even wasted fuel for such a lame chase, but you were anxious to get back to your partner.

You marched the delinquent up the ramp and goaded them into the freezer, filling the little cabin with carbonite fog. Though you were making a hell of a racket, you still hollered up the ladder before climbing it, only to find the cockpit empty. Nervously you searched the upper floor, checking everywhere from your hammock to the fuselage, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Jumping down the ladder, you quickly scanned the hold, only to realize that you’d run right past him. The door to his cubby was closed, like it always was even when he wasn’t in it, but outside on the floor near the entrance were piles of empty food tins. Horrified, you checked the larder, your eyes going all the way to the bottom of the crate. He ate everything!

“Mando! I’m back! Open up!” You yelled, pounding your fist on the door, not giving a flying fuck if he was asleep. Something was very, very wrong.

“You’re back already?” He called, his voice weak and hoarse behind the door, making your blood run cold. Oh Maker no, don’t tell me he’s sick.

“Yeah, and I’m worried about you! Open this damn door before I rip it off its rails.”

“You need to leave. You can’t be here.”

“‘Scuse me? Fucker I live here! I’m not-”

“Please, you’re not safe.” He pleaded, his voice sounded broken and desperate, like he was trying to choke something back.

“Not safe? Mando you’re not making any sense, I already took care of the bounty, they-”

“You’re not safe from me!”

A weird mix of emotions flooded through you, first the worry for the health of your partner, the confusion at his panic, and suddenly the rage that burned behind your eyes at the mere notion of him thinking you couldn’t peel him apart like a can of sardines.

You’d had enough.

“Fuck you, chum bucket, this ends right now! Hope you’ve got pants on because I’m coming in!”

“No! Don’t, please!”

“HERE I COME!” You bellowed as you slammed your fist into the glowing button panel on the wall, deaf to his fretful protests. The metal grate rattled as it rolled upwards, and briefly your eyes caught the back of his head right before his helmet sank down over the dark curls that he kept secret. The fact that he even had hair was the least startling thing of all.

What hit you first was the smell.

Inside the sleeping cubby where the Mandalorian was hurriedly scuttling into the deepest reaches, the pungent scent of...something hurtled through your synapses. It didn’t stink, quite the opposite, it smelled delicious. Warm and rich, like honey on fruit sitting out on a beautiful summer day, the alien aroma making your mouth water.

“What the fuck is that smell?” you roared at the man huddled as far away from you as he could get, his body lost to the shadows behind the scattering of armor he had discarded. You didn’t like that one bit, feeling something akin to pity at his doubled-over, armorless frame. You sniffed the air again, taking deep, greedy inhalations and trying to decipher what the fuck was going on. “Are you eating starfruit?! You fuckhole! You’re snacking without me!”

“Please leave me alone.” He grumbled, wedging himself even harder against the back wall. “I’m fine, really, I just want to be alone.”

“Well that’s just too fuckin’ bad, you’re sick, and the least you could do is tell me what’s wrong. I have a right to know if my partner is gonna up and die on me.” He pleaded again, his voice sounding whiny even through his vocorder, but you were having none of it. “I’m coming in.”

“Dammit all, why won't you leave me alone?!” He was yelling now, but in his anger he turned enough towards you that you could see his front, making you gasp.

Big.

“Holy fucking shit, Mando, are you… are you pregnant?!” Hidden by his broad backside no longer, his protruding belly caught the light, jiggling a bit when he wrapped his arms around it.

“No! I mean… sorta…”

“The fuck do you mean sorta?!” you were screaming now, blown away by his swollen guts and the fact that he was very much not pregnant only a few days ago. “What the hell is that then?!”

He was caught now, you’d seen his shame and there was no going back. “They’re… they’re my eggs.”

You stood a moment, staring at him while your mouth flopped uselessly like a dying fish. Welp, there’s your answer, he is not human. There were lots of sentient species in this great big galaxy you called home, many of which produced offspring via eggs, so you weren’t as surprised by that as you were by the suddenness of it. Of... him.

Mando rubbed at his belly, curling in on himself as if doing so would shrink him down into nothingness where he could disappear into oblivion. “Please, it’ll pass, I’ve just… I’ve never had anyone around me while I...grmph... deal with it.”

His groan of pain broke your stare, pumping determination into your legs along with the burn of adrenaline. “Do… do you need help? Is there anything I can do for you?” You leaned forward into the alcove, reaching for him. “Are you in pain?”

“...I-I’m f-fine.” He shirked away from you, avoiding your touch. “Happens every couple of years, just...hmmph… it’s not usually… so much.”

Now you were just plain fascinated, climbing up slowly on your hands and knees, trying to be delicate. “Mando, I’m your partner, I’m not just gonna stand around while you suffer. Tell me what I can do to help.” The warrior flinched hard when your fingers found his shoulder, reflexively protecting his belly. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Cyar’ika, please, I don’t want to...hmmph… do anything that I-I’ll regret.”

“You already ate all our fucking food, what more could you do to piss me off?” You said with a laugh, trying to break the tension. Carefully you brushed your hand along his clothed shoulder, a thin smile dancing over your lips when you felt him shudder.

“You shouldn’t touch me, I’m dangerous.”

“You ain’t shit, and I’ve seen how you’ve stiched my wounds closed, you won’t hurt me. I know you.”

“No you don’t!” He screamed, flipping around all the way to try and shoo you out of the cubby, but his hefty gut kept him rooted in place. You couldn’t help but stare at his rounded middle, his flack coat straining to keep zipped shut as the weight of him wobbled delightfully. It made you laugh.

“Mando! You’re gonna be a m... da... parent! You’re gonna be a parent! Why didn’t you tell me?! I would have baked you a cake.”

“It’s.. it’s never been this bad.” he stuttered, consigning himself to the fact that he was stuck with you. “I grow a clutch every year or so, but it’s usually just a handful of... them.” he hissed with an air of disgust, shame creeping into his voice. “They pass without much issue, but it’s never been this much.”

“What do the other Mandalorians do when this happens?”

He shook his head, guarding his middle. “Mandalorian isn’t a race, it’s a creed. The Mandalorians rescued me after an army of droids killed my parents and everyone else in my village. I… I don’t know what species I am, and neither does my clan. There’s no record of my village, or where they found me, and I can’t find anything on the holonet about… this.” His visor tilted down to his tummy. “I might be the last of my kind.”

“Mando, that's terrible, but I’m sure there’s more of you somewhere. There’s gotta be! Maybe if you took off your helmet I could see-”

“No, helmet stays on. I don’t need to add the indignity of a broken creed to this mess. Now please, mesh’la I’m begging you, lock me in here and let me ride this out alone. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I hurt you.”

You scuttled closer on your knees until you were right up against him, cautiously reaching out towards his swell. His visor snapped at you, his body flinching harder into the corner, but he was trapped. “Why do you think you’ll hurt me?” You whispered as your palm met the straining fabric cradling his shameful secret.

He grabbed your wrist so hard you felt your bones grind from the strength of his grip. “Because…” he growled, the timbre of it so low you felt a shiver run down your spine. “Because I don’t know what I am, but I know I need to put these eggs somewhere, and I want...I need to put them… inside…” He trailed off when a painful contraction shook his body, making him let go of you to hold himself together. “Get out now! It’s starting… please I can handle this alone but if you’re near me… I don’t know what I’ll do!”

“Shut’cher gob and tell me what to do, and don’t tell me to leave because I won’t!” You didn’t know jack shit about human births, let alone alien gestation, but you’d been through some fucked up situations, what’s one more for good measure? “I’m guessing you need to get your pants off.” His breathing was heavy, his helmet tilting with each laboured heave, but he nodded and started to fumble with the zipper of his trousers.

Your heart leapt to your throat. In the darkness of your hammock you’d imagined what it would be like to undress him, taking each of his beskar plates off and trailing your fingers down his tight clothes, revealing the man underneath like unwrapping a gift. With your fingers lost between your legs you’d pictured his muscular shoulders and broad chest, maybe even a trail of dark hair that led you all the way down his beefy abdomen to his thick, heavy cock. You’d had to bite down on the corner of your blanket when you thought of him pinning you to the wall or bending you over the dashboard, stuffing you full of his length while he groaned his praises in your ears until you were soaked.

This was not at all what you had imagined.

His gloves and his girth were giving him a hard time, so diligently you stepped in to help him undress. Your nimble fingers found the button and zipper with ease, the heat of his groin making your cheeks flush rosy pink, and then red when you pulled the zipper across the bulge in his pants and flooded the tiny nook with the perfume of his sex.

The hair surprised you, you didn’t think that an egg-bearing creature would even have curls, but there they were. Dark brown and soft against your fingertips, growing from lovely, sun-bronze skin, but that was the last of his human traits from there on. Ultimately, you were expecting a cock, horrified by the implications of what that meant in this situation, but as the zipper’s teeth continued to split, your eyes were greeted with something that made your guts flip.

It was fucking blue.

The thing sitting heavily between his legs was the prettiest ocean blue you had ever seen, with coils of deep indigo veins running up it’s length between bands of bioluminesce. Long, thick, and glowing, Mando’s half-hard trouser meat sprang out of his open pants, a relieved sigh wheezing through his modulator. It was shaped like a wang dangler all the way up to the head, but there it was something else.

At his tip a circle of petal-shaped protrusions cinched together like the blossom of a flower right before it bloomed. The knobbed end of his thingy wept with clear juices, beading deliciously from between each little bud. Your eyes were locked to a particularly fat drop of precum as it slicked down his length to his base where you found another feast for your eyes.

A hole.

He didn’t have balls, you guessed they were somewhere inside him, instead he had a fat, juicy cunt, his quivering cock growing from where a clit would be on a human. It was just as alien as his length, a dark cobalt that lightened to vibrant teal around sharp teeth that lined his widely spread folds. Those rightfully made you nervous, and fucking confused. What the hell are those supposed to latch on to? Me?!

“I’m disgusting, I know.” He whispered, turning away from you to study the wall while you studied his excitables.

“What? No you’re not, you’re… you’re beautiful.” He snapped back towards you, his visor searching your star-struck eyes for the hint of a lie, but there wasn’t one. He was looking at you, but you weren't looking at him, you were looking at him, straight through his groin into his vulnerable soul. There was just so much, and you wanted to touch all of it. Reflexively you licked your lips, wondering if he tasted as good as he smelled. Your fingers crept forward, hovering inches from his cerulean length. “Can I?”

A sharp inhale echoed in the cubby, followed by a stark nod. “Be gentle… it’s... argh… sensitive!”

“Shhh, Mando, I’ve got you. I’m gonna take good care of you.” Your fingertips met his heated flesh, making him shudder and groan. His strange length twitched from your touch, making another pearl of precum shimmer from the tip. You wrapped your hand around him, stroking the velvety length that weighed heavily against your palm. His helmet hit the wall with a deep, guttural moan, sending molten waves of heat to your own growing need.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck mesh’la...your hands are amazing.” The man purred, letting his arms fall from his belly to his sides where his fists tangled in the threadbare sheet. His hips thrust upwards into your slow tugs, rutting into your palm. In the tight quarters the mouthwatering scent of honeyed fruit grew stronger until you were sucking down your own spit to keep it from flooding your mouth.

“Hehe, yeah? You like this?” You flicked your wrist in languid spirals, running your thumb over the weeping blossom to drag warm slick down his length and towards your second goal. His toothy slit parted for you as you got closer, the pearly white fangs curling away from you safely. With one hand still on his beef, you rubbed your fingertips around his flushed hole, sinking a digit down to the knuckle.

“Yes.” he moaned breathlessly, his womb jiggling when he convulsed from your touch. You sank another finger inside, scissoring him open while you fisted his cock. “K-keep doing that and... and…” His heels scooted on the mattress when he clenched around you, his swelling length pulsating in your hand. A needy whine busted out of his modulator, and between your sunken digits you felt something grow.

“Go ahead, Mando, come on my hand, or in my hand, I don’t care. That’s a good boy.” He bucked into your steady thrusts, lost in the combination of filling and being filled. His walls fluttered around your fingers, and you felt something press against you when he bore down, but instead of something popping out of his cunt, something went up his length.

*Pop!*

From the tip of his spear, a bright orange ball sprang from him, surprising you so much you let go of his throbbing shaft and pulled your fingers from his slit. Excitedly you plucked the egg from where the halo of petals parted, presenting the orb to you like a priceless gem. “You did it! Look, Mando, it’s a… ball! Congratulations.” You were beaming, so proud of yourself for midwifing him through the process, but he was shaking his head.

“There’s more… and… and I’m starting to get desperate. You got me started, I can take it from here. Thank you for your help.”

“I’m not leaving til you’re done, but let me go find a bucket or something to… oh no!” In your hand the soft shelled egg started to dissolve and wither in the dry air, turning into goo that dribbled down your arm. “Oh shit! Oh shit Mando I’m so sorry! I-I don’t know w-what happened!”

“No no… It's alright.” He shook his head, bringing a hand up to caress his swell. “They never make it. It’s ok though, it's not like they’re fertilized. Please leave me now, your hands aren’t going to tide me over for long, and I don’t want to do something I’ll regret.”

“You keep saying that! I don’t understand, why do you think that you’ll-”

“Because I want to breed you.” The singular black eye of his visor snapped viciously towards you, making you pale. “I’m sorry, but it’s all I can think about. It’s been getting worse the closer I’ve gotten to my heat, but I don’t want to do that to you, I respect you too much. Please… forgive me.” He looked away from you shamefully, but his luminous length was still pulsing with the rapid beating of his heart. “I think being around you is why I’m so full, you’re just so damn beautiful… a-and I want you.”

Maybe it was the sickenly-sweet spice that he was putting off, or the cum soaking your hands, or even the vulgar fantasies that you imagined to yourself in the night, but you were intrigued. “You wanna do what now?”

“Breed you.” He growled, his voice so dark and sinful everything inside you clenched around nothing. “Fucking stars ever since you stabbed the cantina table I’ve wanted to be inside you. Feel your pretty little pussy squeezing me, hear those sweet moans you make when you’re alone at night… yes I can hear you. You’re louder than you think you are. But I want to be the one making you scream.” His growls turned to forced laughter. “I wish I’d gotten to before...this.”

“I don’t mind this…” You hummed, dragging your fingers along his velvety length, but he caught your wrist again, shaking his head.

“Stop, before I can’t hold back anymore.”

“Maybe I don’t want you to hold back.” You batted your lashes at him and bit your lip, leaning seductively towards his hunkered body. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t know what I’d do to you, what my… ugh… eggs… would do to your body.”

“Maybe we should… find out?”

“You don’t know what you're asking.”

“Neither do you.” With that you rolled forward to kiss at his big blue eel, making him curse out your name and grab a fistful of your hair.

“Mesh’la…”

You hummed and lapped at his crown, his nectar tasting even better than it smelled. Sweet and succulent, driving you crazy with need. Your venomous tongue could be so kind when it wanted to be, swirling around his knobbled head and flicking at his frenulum. Beneath you he was a mess, writhing and bucking with desperation. Lips slick with spit, you sank your mouth as far down as you could take him without gagging, fisting the rest with one hand and teasing his cunt with the other.

Fingers digging into your scalp, Mando fought the urge to fuck your throat raw, your obscene sucking threatening to toss him right over the edge. You hollowed your cheeks and spun your tongue, lapping around each sensitive bean and plunging into his slit to drink him down.

His muscles swelled and clenched with another pass, and you barely were able to pull your mouth away when a new sphere spat out his tip, rolling away from you to melt elsewhere. “Mando, they’re going to waste, what are we going to do about that?”

“Take your fucking clothes off so I can fuck them into you, pretty girl.” He was gone, the husk of his voice making the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. “Let me breed you properly, make you mine. Show you what it means to be mated by a Mandalorian.”

You obeyed, rocking back on your haunches to peel your shirt away, releasing your breasts into the hot, steamy space. The black swath of void where his eyes should be drank in the sight of you as if you were the last glass of water on Tatooine, his hand coming up to pinch at your pert nipple. “These are beautiful. I’ve dreamed about these for so long, but they’re so much better in person.”

“They taste better, too.” You crawled over top of him, your knees in between his, waving the heavy dewdrops in front of his armored face. “You wanna?”

“My creed…”

“Party pooper. Fine, then you better help me open up, you’re packin’ more than I think I can fit.” You’d taken lovers before, once you’d even taken a Wookie on a drunken dare, and if it wasn’t for the persistent wet dog smell it might have been the best sex you’d ever had. But Mando was thick, and even thicker when his cock swelled to push out an egg.

“Are you really ok with this? You’re not just saying…”

“Mando~” You purred, pressing your softness against his pulsating length, shivering when you felt his fangs scrape your thighs. “Breed me. They’ll just melt back out anyway, what’s a little...fun?”

He reached a hand up tentatively to your face, his helmet shaking slightly from side to side while he hunted in your eyes for any resistance, any clue that you were just saying that to make him feel better, but he found none.

“How did I get so lucky…”

“You’re about to get even more lucky.” You teased, taking his hand from your cheek to pry the black and yellow glove off, chucking it somewhere behind you. The flesh of his hand matched the flesh of his groin, a soft golden tone that looked like it was kissed by the sun, but not once had you ever seen him bare an inch. It was also very human, looking much like your own, save for the length and thickness of his fingers and the dark hair that grew from his knuckles. They were very much the hands of a man.

Yay!

Your pants fell away next, disappearing out of the cubby and onto the floor with the collection of empty ration tins and discarded armor. Naked as the day you were born, you clambered over him and flopped against his side, letting your legs fall open. “Touch me, Mando, get me nice and ready to be bred.” He growled against you, rolling on his side and cradling you to his chest so he could easily sink his fingers into your fluttering heat.

“Fucking stars, you’re soaked. This all for me?” You nodded and whined, your eyes rolling back when he dove one finger inside, then a second, curling them upwards to find that hidden patch of nerves you could never really reach on your own. “Gonna get you nice and open, make you cum so you can take my clutch. Would you like that, mesh’la, want me to fill you up? Swell your belly full?”

You mewled at the debauchery of it all, blissed out of your mind as he finger fucked you relentlessly. His fingers sank into you all the way to the knuckle, his thumb drawing tight, diligent circles on your clit. Mando snaked his free arm under your neck, pulling you in close to his muscular body and leaning his helmet against your brow. The cold metal burned against your sweating forehead, the steam of his breath coiling out from under the sharp iron edge with every ragged breath.

“That’s it, come for me, beautiful. Almost there.” Your nails dug into his clothed shoulders and made you realize he was way more dressed than you were. Need to fix that. With shaking knees you squirmed and writhed on his slick hand until he brought you over the edge, your walls trying to break his fingers as you came, drenching the thin sheets. “Good girl, such a perfect little cunt. Give me one more, cyar’ika.” All his gentleness evaporated as he thrust into you, his thumb pressed to your sensitive button and making you fall apart all over again.

“Fuck me, Mando, please! I want you in me, you’re not the only one with wet dreams, y’know.” He rumbled a laugh and pulled his arm out from under your neck and his fingers from your sopping mess, dragging the wet of it across your bare thigh. Hauling himself up, he moved until he was between your legs, pulling his remaining glove off and working to undo his flack.

With bated breath you watched him hurriedly undress, wondering what other fun alien treats he was keeping from you. As the dark fabric fell away, your eyes were gifted with the sight of his body, though besides the wandering blue tiger stripes and his obvious non-human bits, he was remarkably close to a man.

Except for the parts of him that were glowing.

Strings of faint teal lights followed the flow of his body, mixed intermittently with yellow stars. It wasn’t enough to illuminate the little alcove, but it was a beautiful sight nonetheless, a constellation of stars you could call your very own.

His chest was wide and muscular, a trail of dark brown hair dusting down his sternum and over the swell of his middle. His arms and shoulders looked like tree trunks, ribbons of countless scars marring his flesh with shimmering whites and pinks. Pushing his pants all the way off gave you an even better view, though he had considerably more glow streaks further down his legs, spanning from the sapphire spire around his hips.

He was fucking gorgeous.

What does his face look like, then?

“You’ll tell me if I hurt you, right?” He asked sweetly, grabbing his beast and dragging the leaking head against your thirsty little cunt. You bucked your hips up to him, trying to notch him in your entrance, but he pressed his tip into your clit to make you writhe. “Tell me, I need to hear it.”

“Yes, Mando, now please please fuck...me!!” He snapped forward and thrust his appendage into you, bottoming right out even though his full tummy was in the way. He held himself still, his body shivering with delight as your excited walls rippled around him. Deep inside you felt the little buds at his tip teasing at the tight ring of muscle that protected your innermost sanctum, politely asking for entry.

“Fuck-ing Maker, I knew you would feel good, but...ah… so much better than I ever imagined.” You giggled at him, reaching out and rubbing the taut flesh of his abdomen where it sat heavily against your own, rocking your hips side to side. His fingers dug into the skin of your knees with a broken curse, trying to hold you still. “Keep doing that and I’m gonna…”

“What? This?” You arched your hips into his, trying to coax him into gear. “I didn’t know you were such a tease, tinman.” His helmet vibrated with a growl before he was sliding himself out, making sure you felt every inch of his length drag along your walls. The head of it almost managed to drop out, sitting tantalizingly at your gates before thrusting into you with reckless abandon.

You shrieked, impaled on his otherworldly spire again and again, the noise of it wetly echoing in the cubby. Above you he grunted with the strain, hooking his elbows under your knees and going to town. You were helpless, head rolling back, eyes fluttered shut as he filled you over and over again, moaning out his name.

Though he was lost in the heat of the moment, he wished the name on your lips was his real name, the one he had sequestered away when he took his oaths. Din. He fantasized about it in the night, the short syllable tumbling from your full lips, wet from sucking him dry. Din! He wanted to snuff out the sound of it with his own mouth, capturing your tongue and tasting you fully, plundering the hot wet hole that would so beautifully sing his song.

“Din!”

But Mando would have to do.

For now.

Both of you could feel he was getting close to something, his thrusts quickening with his breath. You felt your heartbeat gallop in your chest, thundering against the walls of its cage with excitement. He was gasping, struggling to pull oxygen in through the iron that protected his face. Hips snapped against yours, the slap of skin sounding obscene in the little space. You arched your back and bore down on him, your coiled muscles milking out his release.

And then you fucking felt it.

The clever little buds on his tip stuffed themselves into the cradle of your body, teasing your cervix open and leaving something behind. Inside you felt the soft little ball swell your womb sweetly, giving you a feeling of fullness you’d never experienced before. You keened from the sensation, bringing your hands up to your belly, searching for your treasure.

“Are you alright? Am I hurting you?” Mando asked urgently between broken breaths, a weathered palm coming up to caress your face. You tittered and nodded, his relieved sigh felt through your legs and stomach.

“Got any more for me, big boy?” You purred, dragging your nails through the soft hair on his bulging abdomen where he obviously did.

“You’re going to ruin me, cyar’ika.” The pulsating length stuffed inside you slid out slowly, stringing a line of precum from your slick heat to his flushed blue tip. “Get on your knees and I’ll show you how much more there is.”

Scrambling out from under him, you flipped yourself over like a slutty little pancake, presenting your ass in front of him to feast on with his eyes. The rough pads of his fingers dug viciously into your fleshy globes, making both of you groan. “Gonna give you all of me, beautiful. Tell me you want that?” He was trying to be dirty, but the sincerity in his voice made your heart flood with honeyglow.

“I want it, tinman, I wanna be full!”

A dark, lecherous laugh rumbled behind you while he lined himself up, rubbing himself over your slit before plunging in. Stars flashed behind your eyes when he hit your deepest reaches again, making you drop to your elbows. He circled the bones of your hips with his hands, squeezing and rubbing at your waist while you adjusted to the new angle. Impatiently you clenched around him, earning yourself a stinging swat on your backside that made you squeal.

“Bad girl, you have to wait.” He growled behind you, making you whine and earning yourself another spanking that was followed by a soothing palm. “You gonna be a good girl while I breed you?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“-snrt!-” You were having too much fun now, begging underneath him for friction with a roll of your hips, giggling through the cock-dumb grin on your face. “I’ll be good~”

“I know you will.” He slid forward, the angle hitting something destructive inside you, and you could tell he felt it. Memorizing your insides, he rocked forward again and again, building you up higher and higher to make you squirm. Fisting the sheets you cried when the lightning cracked up your spine, your cunt squeezing the life out of him and soaking him through. Your orgasm sucked another egg from his cock, the gentle weight sitting pretty next to the first.

“More…” you mumbled into the mattress, curving your ass up and brushing the underside of his swell. “Please…”

“You’re fucking perfect, mesh’la, so perfect for me.” His voice behind you sounded wildly different, lacking the gravelly modulation you’d grown used to, replaced with a rich baritone that tied your guts up in knots. Curiosity almost got the better of you, but before you could turn around to look at his bare face he covered your eyes, his broad palm spanning the entire width of your face. “No peeking. Be a good girl or you won’t get any more.”

He set his empty helmet down by your head, giving you something to look at if you could keep your eyes open, but his filthy cadence made your eyeballs roll back til they were gawking at your brain. Mando plowed you like his life depended on it, his fuckstick swelling inside your walls with each pass of his spend.

Reaching back, you rubbed your steadily-filling middle, the weight of his brood already making you show. Your devious digits kept going, fingertips teasing around where he melded into you, your lips stretched tightly around him. He jumped when you stuffed your hand back even further, careful not to catch on his goddamn crotchteeth to finger his cunt.

“Mesh’la!” He cried, bucking into you and pushing at least three more eggs into your womb with a single thrust. Above you he curled against your spine, his belly flattening while yours continued to swell. His arms left your hips to snake up your body, crossing between your breasts like a seatbelt and hauling you up off your elbows to his chest. Buckle up, buttercup! His sweaty pecs stuck to your spine while he kissed at the side of your neck.

You wanted so badly to look.

Instead you closed your eyes and let yourself get lost in the passionate kisses he pressed to your skin, his teeth grazing the tender flesh under your jaw. The fact that he even had lips crossed a few dozen species off of your list of possibilities, and even more when you felt the tickle of facial hair. Mando’s heated kisses tracked up your throat to nibble at your ear, his thrusting getting messy behind you.

“Can you cum for me again, beautiful? I wanna feel it.” The hand between your breasts slid up to your throat, pressing ever so gently while the second found your clit and spun devious little circles. His scruffy beard scraped your shoulder as you writhed on him, tears springing to your eyes with your crashing orgasm. “Mmph, that’s my good girl. So fucking perfect!”

His hips stuttered, slapping against your ass with a final burst, the fill of him swelling your middle to capacity, bouncing with fullness. Heavy, desperate breaths puffed against your skin as he came down from his high, caressing you with his hands and the sharp point of his chin; mumbling praises in your ear. “I didn’t think you could get any more beautiful, look at you…”

At his purring you flickered an eye open, looking down past your breasts at where you were swollen with his clutch as if you were swollen with child. His broad palms danced along the taut flesh, sliding from your precious tummy to the drops of your breasts, his hums of contentment rumbling between you. His chest and abdomen were flush with your spine, his body returned to its natural shape while yours had changed so drastically.

Between your legs his spent cock throbbed, making your combined arousal drip down onto the destroyed mattress when it softened and released. You whined from the loss, whining louder when he sneaked his fingers inside, feeling your stretched walls and musing about how wonderful you felt.

You reached forward for his helmet, handing it back to him and trying not to look at the warped reflection of his face in its sloping surfaces. He took it from you gently, letting it sink over his face so you could get off of your knees. You flopped heavily over on your butt, sitting upright and petting your full womb with a blissed out look on your face.

He laid next to you, holding you close to his body as if you were his cute little wife expecting your first baby together, and not a pair of interspecies hunters giving in to your primordial needs. You leaned against him, sighing contently and watching his serpent retreat into his body, the rows of teeth biting together and showing you why he didn’t wear codpiece with his armor.

“That’s fuckin’ weird, dude.” You laughed, brushing a fingertip along the glistening enamel.

He winced behind you. “I know, I’m sorr-”

“No, I like it.” you crooned, nuzzling your face into the crook of his neck. “That was fun. How often did you say this happens?”

“About once a year, but… uh… I can still get hard, without a clutch, if that’s what you’re asking?” You nodded with a laugh, curling up against his side so your full womb rested on his hip. He sighed contentedly, drawing circles on your belly with his fingers. “How does this feel? Does it hurt?”

“No, not at all, actually feels good. Feels full. I like it, I’m almost sad that it’s not gonna last.”

“Me too, you look so good like this. I could get used to it.” You hummed in agreement, shifting your legs apart so that when the eggs withered and turned to goo they could easily make their way out.

Should be any second now.

The two of you waited, laying together in post-coital bliss, just enjoying the feel of each other’s bodies, tracing scars and stars, exploring the wonders you’d kept secret from each other.

You waited.

And waited.

The minutes ticked by, at first it was a blessing, giving you time to bask in the afterglow together, but as the minutes turned to quarter hours, then halfs, you started to get worried. “Mando? I can still feel them, they’re not breaking down.”

“I’m sure they will, they always do.”

“Ok…”

They didn’t.

Hours went by, and even after waddling to the fresher shower and trying to squat them out, the eggs remained. You got washed up, half morbidly, half exuberantly watching the way the fresher water dripped from your belly while you cleaned up.

Outside the shower you toweled yourself off, taking extra steps to dry under the swell of your womb, but you struggled to reach all the way around. Mando knocked on the door politely before letting himself in, dressed only in his helmet and pants. Dutifully he took the towel from you and got to the places you couldn't reach while you were carrying his potential young.

It was surprisingly intimate, maybe even more so than being stuffed full of his length. He started on your legs, between your thighs and up to their apex, then softly wiped at your tummy and hips. His deft hands dragged the towel under each breast, then your shoulders and arms, then lastly your neck; draping the wet fabric around you like a cloak when he saw your bunching brows. You looked nervous.

“We’ll figure it out, mesh’la, I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” He stated with determination, brushing his thumb down the curve of your cheek and turning your eyes to meet his visor. Your hair was still wet, and now so were your eyes, the first twinges of fear creeping into their corners. He didn’t like what he saw. “Close your eyes, lovely girl.”

You did, squeezing back the mist that was starting to form. He let go of you, and you heard the sound of something heavy and metallic being set down on the sink. The towel around your shoulders was lifted over your head, draping it over your face. You were about to give him hell, mad that he would want to hide your face when you were clearly getting emotional, but instead you felt the wet fabric being lifted as he joined you underneath.

Then he kissed you.

Warm, petal-soft lips pressed against your cold wet ones, suddenly surprising you before you melted into him. His kiss was as gentle as his hands that were making their way up to your jaw, holding you steady while he slotted his mouth to yours. He felt human, the edges of his teeth dull like yours, thankfully not sharp like the ones between his legs. Tasted human, too.

You kissed him back, darting your tongue out with an experimental flick, licking his plush lower lip. He inhaled sharply, caught off guard by your forwardness. His fingers coiled around the back of your head, tangling in your wet hair as his kisses grew in intensity. The smooth muscle of his mouth danced with your own, letting you both taste each other for the first time.

“Ner cyar’ika, I’ve waited so long for this.” he purred against your lips, his words heavy with adoration. He kissed you again, pulling you into himself hungrily and tickling your nose with his mustache. Your own hands came up, slowly dragging over the expanse of his chest to the sinewy length of his neck, and finally to the edge of his jaw.

“Can I touch your face, Mando? I won’t look with my eyes.” He nodded against your lips, his nose bumping the side of yours. Cautiously you wandered your fingertips along the edge of his jaw, the stiff bristles catching under your nails. He shivered with need when you scratched him, carding through his scruff like you were taming a massif.

His sharp jawline led you up his cheeks, their softness dusted with erratic bristles. You ran your thumbs under his eyes, exploring his cheekbones and the creases that bordered his large eyes. Pressing your forehead to his and pulling your lips away, you circled your thumbs down the sides of his well-defined nose to the line of hair above his lips. The creases that your hands found told you he wasn’t a young man, but he probably wasn’t too far beyond your age either.

And you imagined him to be very handsome.

It wasn’t until your hands found his ears that you remembered he wasn’t the same species as you. They were pointed, and sensitive if his little moans of pleasure were anything to go by.

“I don’t ever want you to see those, they’re ug- oh!” You cut off his self depreciation to tilt his head between your hands, pressing a kiss to each of his ears with a seductive puff of steam. “St-stop, you’re giving me goosebumps.”

“Stop being so mean to yourself, buckethead, only I can be the judge of that, and I bet they're cute!” He laughed, the sound warm and brassy, but not enough to distract you from your current predicament. “What… what are we going to do about… this.” You took each of his hands in yours and set them on your full belly, letting him caress his handiwork.

He sighed, pressing a kiss to your forehead in the dark of the towel, his lashes brushing your skin when he dropped his brow to yours. You heard his lips part with a smile, imagining the way the wrinkles around his eyes would bunch, wistfully hoping that one day you could see them for yourself.

“Mesh’la I-… I have no idea."

Next->

If you liked this fic, check out Garden of Ishtar! It's chapter 9 in a series but can be read stand-alone. Enjoy~

TAG LIST:

@mrsparknuts @cookiejuicedesu @kaermorons @ironbabey @theflightytemptressadventure @emesispo @what-iwish-youknew @misscamptl @t3a-bag @poppunkdee @misscamptl @pandastasia @simpingmess @lilychristine01 @inaturenymph @buttercup--bee @blackd0gdesignuk @tanzthompson @transientblueseraph @jasmincita @sunnnygiiirl123 @beskarboobs @doin-stuff @marvelranger

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #self insert #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #din djarin x f!reader #smut

[min-youngis]

Rubies and Roses - k.th

Kim Taehyung x Reader

Fluff, Humour, Angst; NC-17; 40k words

Strangers to Lovers, Fake Dating AU, Non-Idol AU

Swearing, Alcohol, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Emotional Constipation, Makeout Mentions, Implied Sexytimes

Being a fake girlfriend slash fiancée slash wife for hire is a very lucrative business, one which you’ve come to depend on to pay your rent and your student loans. It’s easy; all you have to do is smile, simper and flash a ring at a client’s nagging relatives or interfering friends. However, none of your previous clients have needed your services for three months. None of your previous clients have been Kim Taehyung, who wants access to his trust fund and thinks he can convince his parents that he can be responsible with it by proving that he can hold down a mature, completely normal and not-at-all fake relationship. And you? You’re a professional. A party where you dupe his friends, you can do. A brunch to convince his parents is easy. But this isn’t any job, and the boundaries between customer and something more are about to get increasingly blurry.

Spoiler Alert: The degree of fake-ness is inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend together. Also, there was only one bed.

A/N: i've licherallee never been to a lakehouse. you can pry the bff jungkook and hyejin agenda from my cold dead hands. there are like seven tropes in this.

i'd love to hear feedback, spread the love!

masterlist in my description.

              When Jane Austen wrote what she did about the universally acknowledged truth, she probably hadn’t envisioned it being proven so fully in a scenario like this.

              Jackson bends his head down, lips close to your ear, body slightly tilted towards yours. To anybody watching, and there are a lot of people who fall in that category, the two of you would look like the perfect couple.

              “You did a good job,” he whispers, even as his hand respectfully moves to hover over the small of your back from their previous position wound tight around your waist – just possessive enough to seem loved up, but not so much that it feels uncomfortable.

              You’re about to reply – something along the lines of ‘I always do,’ but before you can say anything, his arm is wrapped around you again, and you’re gently but insistently tugged back against his firm chest. You know what that means. You’ve been doing the same dance the entire night – hell, the entire year. Taking a delicate sip of champagne from the flute in your hand, you plaster on a smile, summoning all emotion that’s possible when your feet feel like they’re about to fall off, and follow Jackson’s lead.

              The next victim of your joint scandalous subterfuge is an old couple, distant work acquaintances of Jackson’s father. You’d feel bad, but you’ve been around the elite long enough to know that nobody can be pitied; or worse, underestimated.

              The two of you go about the routine, tried and tested. He introduces you as his fiancée, you giggle at something he says and look at him like he hung the damn stars, and he finishes up with some variation of ‘She's made me a better man. I’m ready to settle down now.’

              They seem convinced, giving the two of you smiles and congratulations that you accept with minimal guilt, and then they’re gone as well, just another set of dupes in this elaborate plan.

              To his credit, Jackson isn’t the worst customer you’ve had. He’s charming and handsome, and you don’t even have to fake the laughter after his jokes, which is more than can be said of your usual clients.

              He steers you smoothly towards one of the various open doors lining the side of the room that lead to a balcony, his palm solid on your back in case anybody is watching, which is a more than reasonable assumption. You can feel eyes on the two of you, and for a second, it grips you, the vice-like fear that you’ll get caught and consequently won’t get paid for this job. But Jackson, smooth, suave Jackson, stops right before the doors, turning more fully towards you and bending slightly so he can whisper, “Sorry about this. My mom’s looking.”

              You’re not sure what ‘this’ refers to until he straightens up, his hand moving from your back to the side of your head so he can delicately tuck a strand of your hair from the elaborate do behind your ear. Somebody should give him an award.

              The soft smile you bear is more impressed than particularly touched. But whatever convinces his parents to stop asking him to settle down, you suppose.

              “Did it work?” you ask softly, your manicured nails unconsciously tapping out a staccato rhythm against the glass of your champagne flute as your other hand rests on your side, fingers occasionally running along the expensive, smooth, silk material.

              Jackson looks up, gaze flashing quickly back to you, and you can see a satisfied grin tugging at the side of his mouth. He really is quite handsome.

              Maybe if you had met him under different circumstances.

              His hand trails away from where it was gently rested on your neck, the calluses on his fingers, combined with the wind from the open balcony door next to you, leaving goose bumps in their wake. “Hook, line and sinker,” he mutters, before leading you out to your initial destination.

              He lets go the moment you’re both out of eyeshot of the guests inside the ballroom, moving towards the railings, his body visibly relaxing once it’s out of the spotlight. You follow suit, winding down slightly even as you know that the show isn’t over. The watch on your wrist tells you that there’s still an hour left on the agreement.

              “Thanks for doing this. I haven’t had such a peaceful dinner party in months. Only two questions about my future.”

              You chuckle, mimicking him and resting your forearms on the railing, the cool wind a welcome reprieve from the stuffiness inside. The balcony overlooks what’s been introduced to you as the family estate, and you can see small groups mingling in the gardens.

              “Is it usually this crowded?”

              “Not always. My mother’s been increasing the length of the guest list for the last two years or so. Partly to show off the fake hedges, but mostly in the hopes that I find a girlfriend.”

              It’s the same story in most of these families, you’ve come to realise in your long, illustrious career as a partner-for-hire. You don’t normally take an interest in your customer's lives beyond what pertains to the job at hand, but over the course of the last two hours, you’ve come to indulge in a cautious liking to Jackson.

              “There must be upwards of five hundred people here. You’re telling me that in the last two years, you haven’t found a single girl you’ve wanted to get to know?”

              He doesn’t reply immediately, his hand disappearing into the inside of his suit and re-emerging with a small bottle of vodka. Maybe he sees your eyebrow lifting up in subdued interest, maybe he doesn’t; but with a polite ‘May I?’, and on receiving your acquiescence, he primly plucks the nearly empty champagne flute out of your grip and places it on the ledge jutting out of the wall.

              Still, he doesn’t answer immediately, opening the bottle and taking a swig straight, going through the motions of disgust and relief from the sip before silently handing it to you. As you do the same, he replies, “I have, of course. I’ve had my share of fun. But I know what my parents will expect of me if I tell them that I found somebody permanent. And I’m not ready to take over the company until I explore my options.”

              “What about me?” you ask, passing the bottle back to him. Your throat burns in a continuously delayed reaction to the alcohol, and it tastes awful, but it still serves to warm you. “Won’t they expect you to do all that now, since you’ve introduced me as your fiancée?”

              “Nah. I’ll give it a few weeks and tell them we broke up. I hired you mostly to make them stop nagging.”

              “If you want me present for a staged break up, it’s an additional ten percent.”

              His shoulders shake as he laughs, his lips shiny from the vodka in the dim, yellow, ornately covered bulb on the balcony ceiling. He has a nice laugh, you think. Rich and pleasant to hear.

              “I’m good, thank you. That’ll be a pretty messy conversation, I probably shouldn’t put you through it.”

              You pass the nearly empty bottle back to him, watching as he finishes the last sip with a hiss. The buzz has taken up residence just below the surface of your skin, and you think that maybe, you might be able to make it through the next hour without wanting to stab somebody in the eye with your heel.

              But after tucking the empty bottle safely back into his jacket, he turns towards you and says, “Come on, I’ll drop you home.”

              “But your time isn’t up yet. You paid for three hours.”

              He raises an eyebrow in question, his face thrown into sharp definition as his strong profile is lit up by the bright lights spilling out from the ballroom. “Do you want to stay?”

              “Well, no, not particularly. But the payment is non-refundable and –"

              “Y/N, I'm not sure if you noticed, but the payment doesn’t mean shit to me. If you want to stay and be fake-engaged for another hour, then by all means, let’s go back inside and find some other relatives to fool. But we’ve already convinced the ones that matter.”

              You hum in thought, looking up at him curiously. “Are you sure? I think there was an aunt who seemed a bit sceptical.”

              “Trust me, we still have to make it through the farewells, and you won’t want to stick around once those are over.”

              He drops you off at your doorstep (his BMW looks obscenely out of place outside your student apartment), takes back the expensive fake-engagement ring with a polite ‘Thanks for helping out,’ and ends with a polite request for you to keep the fancy shoes and dress he had paid for.

              “Dude, this is Versace.”

              “I am aware, yes. Are we out of cereal?”

              Hyejin looks up from last night’s dress that’s spread out on the small dining table as you continue to open cupboards in your shared apartment kitchen. “There should be a bit left in the shelf near the sink. Is he going to book you again? Can he book you again? Can you book him?”

              You snort as you pour milk into your bowl, getting a spoon and slowly taking a seat opposite Hyejin, careful not to rumple the dress as you place your cereal down a safe distance from the fabric on the table. “Yes, that’s exactly how it works.”

              She gives one last, long, sad look at the garment before folding it neatly and placing it on the table, and pushes her chair out and makes to get up. Even just after waking up, this early on a Saturday morning, her long hair falls sleek and shiny behind her as she makes herself a cup of coffee in between yawns.

              “What’s your plan for today? Any new clients?”

              Swallowing a mouthful of hyper-sweetened sugar cereal, you reply, “Nope. Need to catch up on homework. I have three submissions by tonight and I’m yet to begin two of them.”

              “And the one you’ve started?”

              “Twelve errors, last I checked. Bitch of a day. What about you?”

              She comes back, nursing her cup in her hands as she reoccupies her seat. “Once I’m done with this week's grading, I’ll probably head to the library with Jungkook. Want to join?”

              The grin you crack is more rueful than amused. “And have multiple breakdowns in public? I don’t think so.”

              “Suit yourself.”

              You’ve just submitted your final assignment when you get the email, right before you’re about to close up shop and fall asleep. The clock shows 11:43 PM, and you thank Hyejin's miraculous TA manifestation powers for letting you get through another week without having to beg for an extension.

              Hello, the email reads.

              I hope this email finds you well. Or at least with an opening in your schedule over the next few weeks, because I require a fake-girlfriend. Is that rude? Would you rather I referred to you in a different way? I promise I’m not a creep. My parents just won’t let me get to the trust fund until I convince them that I can hold a relationship for more than a month because I need to be responsible or whatever. Again, I promise I’m not a creep. Just a drunk dude looking for a girlfriend. A fake one.

              Let me know when you’re free, and we can set up a meeting. My number is 765-785-5566.

              Hopefully eventually yours (again, fake),

              Kim Taehyung

              You have to read it thrice to comprehend the content, the words ‘trust fund’ catching your eye each time. Suffice to say, it’s easily the most weirdly worded request you’ve received in your career. And the shadiest. But also, possibly the most profitable, if it’s legitimate. But there’s an easy check. Your personal client verification system should be able to help.

              Are you awake?

              The clock reads 1:07 AM, but if there’s one thing you know about Jungkook, it’s that his peak starts at midnight. You’re hardly surprised when he replies in less than a minute.

              JK: ofc, what’s up?

              You know a dude called Kim Taehyung?

              JK: yeah, he graduated from here two years ago. he was my calculus TA a couple of semesters back.

              Oh. So not super old, then?

              JK: no, i don’t think so. just two or three years older than us. why?

              Without text, you send him a picture of your screen, incriminating email still open, and wait for his reply.

              JK: oh nice

              Yes, ‘nice’. Should I go for it? Is he a creep?

              JK: i think he made it very clear that he isn’t a creep.

              A creep wouldn’t call themself a creep.

              JK: a bad creep would

              Can you stop typing the word creep?

              JK: creep

              I will not hesitate to block you.

              JK: he isn’t a c***p. quite nice, actually. he does freelance photography, mostly to piss off his parents who want him to get a business degree.

              Oh wow. So he’s rich rich.

              JK: very much so. go for it.

              After receiving blessings so encouraging, in a matter of minutes, you’ve messaged the number in the email with a request to meet the next Thursday evening.

              You can’t believe you’re going to have to fake date a rich hipster.

              That’s all you can think about as you hover outside the café, wondering if it’s too late to cancel. You’ve passed this place before, when you’ve had to walk across to the other side of the campus town. Always with the luxury cars parked outside and kids with fancy laptops sitting facing the window. You suppose it’s nice of your potential new client to suggest a meeting location that’s convenient for you, but you sincerely hope he doesn’t expect you to eat anything. Twice already you had to rethink this; once, the morning after you had received the email, when you remembered how unprofessional his request was, and the second, when he had proposed this specific venue for the meeting. But the words ‘trust fund’ served as a powerful deterrent from cancelling each time.

              You tug the strap of your bag up your shoulder and take one last deep breath before pushing the door open.

              You already know what he looks like. He had sent a picture of himself for easy reference, and Jungkook had very graciously allowed you to go through his Instagram so you could have some background, but even without all the preparation, there’s no way you can miss him. Not with the vividness of his hair, the blue sticking out like a fluffy, sore thumb against the backdrop of the muted brown walls and neutral toned décor in the café.

              He’s picked a table in the corner, engrossed in his phone as he occasionally takes sips from the cup in front of him. You’re the last person to get distracted on the job, but the careless elegance with which he sits, the hint of an attractive smile on his face as he sees his phone and the obvious effort that he’s put into his outfit makes you hope, just a little bit, that this deal manifests.

              But of course, at the end of the day, it’s about the money. There’ll be no compromises just because he happens to appeal to some of your more superficial sensibilities.

              He doesn’t notice you approaching at first, not until you’re about a foot away from the table and you clear your throat. Straightening up, he places his phone face down on the table and gestures at the empty seat next to you.

              “Y/N? Lovely to meet you. I’m Kim Taehyung.” His palm feels a little rough in yours as he gives you a polite handshake, his large fingers fully engulfing your own. His voice is the same colour as the smooth mahogany wall behind him.

              You reply with a small smile and a short ‘Likewise’, already pleased with what you’ve seen.

              “Would you like something to drink?”

              “I’m good, thank you.”

              Nodding, he leans back in his seat. “How long have you been doing this…service?”

              “Nearly a year now.” You search for any judgement in his manner, but you only find curiosity as he acknowledges your response. And then, with a jolt, you realise that the only thing you really have to care about is how much money he’s willing to pay, and it really shouldn’t matter what he thinks about your side-job.

              Taking a slow sip of his drink, he continues, “And you enjoy it?”

              You shrug. “It pays more than the on-campus jobs.”

              It’s nice that he’s trying to make conversation without jumping straight to the point of the meeting, but it hangs over the two of you, thick like a fog, and you see no point in delaying it any further.

              “It’d be helpful if I had some background about your situation, and why you needed to contact me.”

              “It’s like I said in the email. My parents don’t let go of the fund until I either turn 27 or prove to them that I can handle it.”

              Humming, you ask, “And what makes them think you can’t handle it?”

              “Beats me. I’ve been living away from home since I graduated two years ago on the money I make as a photographer, but if I want to actually create a brand, I need funding. And I can’t wait another three years for that.”

              “And you think a relationship would help convince them?”

              “It’s worth a shot,” he shrugs. “But it can’t be super short.”

              “What’s the timeline we’re looking at, roughly?” You have to keep the frown off your face. You can’t handle more than one client at a time, and the longer you spend with this one, the less opportunities you get for being paid by other potential customers.

              He winces slightly as he says, “Three months.”

              “Three?”

              “At least.”

              You’re about to call it off then and there, ready to tell him to forget it, that it’s completely ridiculous and not at all feasible for you to be stuck to a single customer for that long, but in an instant, he’s talking again, and what he says makes you slow down, if just for a bit.

              “Money isn’t an issue. Just because I don’t have the fund doesn’t mean I can’t pay you well. I’ll even give you an advance. Or we could do instalments, every three weeks or so.”

              Dubious, you slowly lean back in your seat, not taking your eyes off him. You recognise that he’s desperate, that you’ve got the upper hand now. Calmly, you ask, “What are you prepared to offer?”

              He pulls a pen out of his pocket and smooths out a tissue in front of him. As he’s scratching out zeros, your eyes hone in on the expensive watch on his wrist. It had better be one hell of a sum he’s writing.

              “Is this okay?”

              The number on the paper makes your eyes goggle, but you know you can get more. If he’s willing to pay, you’re more than willing to take. The barrel of the gun loaded with your student loans stares you down as you pick up the pen he’s placed on the table, and make a modification. Sliding the tissue back towards him, you say, “Half in advance. And this is only final if we can agree on the conditions.”

              To his credit, he doesn’t seem too fazed by the figure. Easily, he nods, pocketing the pen and folding up the tissue neatly before placing it in between the both of you on the table. The symbolism is unmistakeable. No power to either party. He’s got terms too.

              You can recognise good business when you see it, and graciously, pulling out the Notes app on your phone, you gesture at him to start talking.

              He leans forward on the table, all seriousness now as his body loses some of the carelessness. His fingers interlock in front of him, nails trim and obviously manicured. “It isn’t just my parents we’ll have to convince. My friends too.”

              Your eyebrow cocks up, thumbs pausing in their typing. “You’re going to lie to your friends?”

              “Their parents know my parents. We can’t take chances.”

              Nodding, you let him continue. It’s none of your business whom he trusts and whom he doesn’t. If you have to convince his friends that you’re hopelessly, head-over-heels in love with him, then that’s what you’ll do.

              “Every other Sunday I have brunch with my parents. You’ll have to come for at least two per month. Deal?”

              “Deal, provided I get to choose which weeks.”

              “That’s fair. There’s bound to be a gala sometime in the next three months, and they’ll expect us to be present together. Can you handle extended family and friends scrutinising our every move, trying to catch us out?” He asks it like it’s a challenge, and you have to resist the urge to sound too cocky when you reply, remembering your previous assignment and how well it seemed to go.

              “It’s my job. I can handle it,” you nod surely.

              “Good.” You ignore the little trill that runs down your spine at his impressed tone, subtly shaking it off. “You’ll have to come to hang out with my friends too, occasionally. Not too often,” he continues, hands up and palms out to appease you as you open your mouth to argue that you’re still a full-time college student. “Maybe just once in three weeks or so.”

              Standing down, you hum in slow agreement. “Alright. Anything else?”

              “That’s about it, really. Just show up and play pretend, and we should be good.” He leans back on his seat, little less intense now.

              “Not so fast. I’ve got conditions too.”

              “Go ahead.”

              The folded tissue paper stares at you from the table as you begin your customary list that you give all your clients.

              “College comes first. If I have an assignment due and I can’t make it to something, or if it’s finals week and I can’t show up for your gala, you can’t pull out of the deal.”

              You aren’t sure why you were expecting it to be harder, but with an easy shrug, he replies, “Of course. Besides, I can tell them that you’re a college student anyway. Not an issue.”

              “If this is going to work, we have to pretend to know each other. I’ll need a list of details about your education, job, family. Basic relationship information.”

              “Likewise. We should meet again before Sunday.”

              “Sunday?”

              “The first brunch.”

              Eyebrows furrowing, you utter, “That’s just three days away”

              “The sooner this starts, the sooner it ends,” he says in a sing-song voice.

              The wisdom in his words is obvious, but meeting again is impossible. “Fine, but let’s just do it over a call or something. I have classes and submissions this week.”

              “Alright,” he agrees simply. “What else?”

              “Physical limits. Hugging is okay, holding hands is fine. You try anything more, deal’s off and you don’t get any money back.”

              His reply is a little slow in coming, and it makes you wary. It had been going so well, too.

              “Absolutely…but won’t it be weird if I’m the only one who’s initiating things?”

              “How do you mean?” you ask, frowning.

              “If we have to pretend that we’re happy together, we have to pretend we’re happy together. It can’t just be me trying to hug you or kiss you while you stand there and take it. That won’t be natural. My friends, at the very least, will know that something’s up.”

              Stunned, you sit there as you re-evaluate all your previous clients. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to you either; you knew that you were just being hired to stand there and look pretty and dole out simpering looks and fake giggles. But none of them had brought this up.

              “Yeah,” you reply cautiously, still reeling from this revelation, all too aware of his concerned gaze on your wide-eyed expression. Shaking it off, you repeat, more surely this time, “Yeah, of course. What are your limits?”

              He doesn’t press you on your weird reaction, for which you’re eternally grateful. You can’t have him knowing that you’ve been a sucker this entire time. “Same as yours, I suppose.”

              You nod, back to professionalism as you continue making a note on your phone. “And finally, if you expect me to wear different clothes, or shoes, or any changes as such, you will handle the expenses.”

              The confused expression he sports in response is more than a little endearing, to your annoyance. “I don’t mind paying, but why would I want you to wear different clothes? Your clothes seem fine. Of course, unless you decide to wear leopard print to a fundraiser, then we’ll definitely need an intervention.”

              It takes you a minute to realise he’s messing around, and in spite of yourself, you can’t stop the small smile from appearing in your face. And you’ll take the compliment that your clothes are fine.

              His delightfully boxy grin is playful as he continues, “Of course I’m not going to tell you what to wear. But if you do need fancy clothes for the galas, I’ll definitely pay for them.”

              You think about all the expensive fabric you’ve got stashed away in your closet from your previous assignments, and reply, “No need, I can handle that myself.”

               He nods, setting down his cup from which he’s been taking sips periodically for the duration of the conversation. “Anything else?”

              The list on your phone says you’re done, and you respond to his question by silently closing the device and pulling the tissue paper towards yourself. You stick your palm out to him, and return his satisfied smile as he shakes it.

              “I look forward to our business together, Y/N. I have a feeling we’ll get along splendidly.”

              “Or at the very least, convince everybody else into thinking we’re getting along splendidly,” you reply, ever the optimist.

              “That’s the spirit.”

              It’s widely accepted that a library is a place to be quiet. Turns out, Jungkook never got the memo.

              “Y/N!”

              You ignore his hiss, pretending to have not heard him as you continue scrolling through the study material on your laptop and making notes. Next to you, Hyejin’s long decided to do the sensible thing and put in her headphones in an effort to tune out the man sitting on the opposite side of the table. He didn’t get the memo about how to whisper properly either, it seems.

              “If you keep ignoring me, I’ll…do something.”

              This time, you peek over the top of your screen at him, countering his claim with a single, unimpressed eyebrow lift, before dropping your head back down. You could say something snarky, like how terrified you are, or how you can hardly wait to see the ‘something’ he has planned, but that would mean you were engaging him. And you certainly aren’t about to do that.

              “Okay, fine, I won’t do anything. But can you just listen to me, please? I promise I’ll just plead my case one more time, then I’ll shut up and you can go back to your permanent hissy fit.”

              “I am not in a permanent hissy fit.”

              “Finally, she speaks!”

              At this point, you’re resigned to your fate. Exasperated, you nudge your laptop half-shut, let out a deep sigh so he knows how much this is costing you, and then fix your gaze on him, uttering in no uncertain terms, “I will not come to your weird sex club party tonight.”

              His eyes light up as he prepares to convince you. Where he gets the enthusiasm and optimism from, you’ll never know.

              “Ah, but that’s the thing. It isn’t a sex club party. It’s just a normal party, where the seniors and alumni can meet and talk shop. The fact that everybody gets drunk and hooks up with each other is inconsequential.”

              “I’ll go.”

              You turn your head towards Hyejin so fast, you nearly get whiplash. Betrayed, you harshly whisper, “Dude, what the fuck?”

              She shrugs, unfazed. “Could be fun. And it’d be nice to meet some people in the industry, make some connections for the future.”

              You can feel yourself slip. Crossing your arms on your chest, admittedly a little petulantly, you argue, “They’re only a maximum of three years older than us. How in the industry could they possibly be?” The air quotes are implied in your tone.

              You know how these annual parties go, how most of the ‘connections’ made are of the non-biblical nature, and how the chances of actually meeting somebody who can help you once you graduate are slim to none. A massive waste of time if there ever was one. But there are some alumni in your field who’ve made it, and who could potentially guide you. If they don’t get shit-faced first.

              You’ve made your decision, but you aren’t happy about it.

              “Fine. But when people start passing out, we leave. We find who we want to talk to, have a drink so it isn’t a complete waste, and then we’re out, okay?”

              Jungkook’s loud whoop gets dirty looks from the others trying to study on the table, but he remains unbothered, shooting them an unrepentant ‘Sorry,’ before he turns back to you and Hyejin.

              “You’re a menace,” Hyejin remarks, grinning in spite of herself. “What’s the sluttiness quotient of this party anyway? Is it super formal?”

              Jungkook looks horrified at the prospect. “Oh god no. Just think of it as a normal, college party.”

              Sourly, you grouse, “This is starting to sound less like a networking event and more like an excuse to get drunk.”

              “Now you get it!” Jungkook’s smile is delighted, cheerful in the face of your annoyed expression. “Lovely chatting with you ladies. I’ll send the details and we can meet outside at 7. Cool?”

              Hyejin answers for the both of you, as you’re only left to groan lowly in regret and foreboding. “Cool.”

              “This is going to be terrible, isn’t it?” you ask as you watch Jungkook hop up and scurry out of the room to escape the librarian who’s begun to angrily descend on the table to reprimand him for being loud and disturbing. You can sympathise with her.

              “It’s a party. They aren’t historically known for being bad.”

              “It’s an excuse.”

              “It’s a break, Y/N. I could use one, and you look like you could too.”

              You sigh in half-irritation, half-sheepishness. She’s right. You’re being a bitch on purpose. Permanent hissy fit, you hear in Jungkook’s sing-song voice in your head. “Yeah, okay. But I’m really not staying any longer than we have to.”

              She pats your arm soothingly as she placates with only a hint of patronising in her voice, “We’ll see.”

              Whoever owns this house deserves a medal of bravery for letting in gaggles of unruly college students get sloshed in it. As you, Hyejin and Jungkook stand outside the large gates, people walk in around you. You can easily pick out the students and the alumni, the latter appearing more at ease and confident (and with fewer eye bags), but everybody looks laughably out of place in their short dresses and hoodies at the entrance of what looks more like an estate than anything. There’s a round water fountain and a drive way and everything.

              “Are you sure this is the right address?” But even as you pose the question, there’s no doubt in your mind about the veracity of Jungkook’s information. You’ve seen some of these people on campus before and the outfits indicate that everybody here knows how the night is going to end, regardless of how posh the venue is and how professional the get-together is advertised as.

              “Oh, this is definitely it. It’s always the loaded ones that host it.”

              Hyejin straightens the strap of her purse as she takes a deep breath in. As the three of you survey a group of students tugging in four large kegs, she absently hums, “I hope they aren’t too attached to whatever fancy upholstery they’ve got.”

              “In and out,” you mumble, more to reassure yourself than anything. You join the others and move towards the open gate.

              You know that you’re slightly late. 7 PM had become 7:15, which then became 7:30 because Jungkook couldn’t get his hair to stand straight, but even so, the size of the crowd surprises you a bit. It seems a lot of people had the same idea. A break. Not to mention the fact that the house (mansion, more like, you amend) has interiors that are more suited to the galas that you attend as a part of your side-job and less like a venue for the rager that this party is definitely going to end up being. The lighting is dim, and the music is those god-awful pulsing tracks on loop that you can only truly appreciate when you’ve got some alcohol in your system.

              The three of you make a beeline to the table with the beer bottles, each grabbing one before Hyejin leads the way to the staircases to get to the first landing, so you’ll be overlooking the rest of the crowd. Easy to survey and find the seniors you want to talk to. But the more people you encounter on the way, the less certain you become that any talking is going to happen at all. Already, in the corners, you can see bodies wound tight together. The music thrums and almost everybody dancing seems a little unsteady, already tipsy. All around you, there’s noise and chatter and the sound of glasses clinking, and very little of the conversations you manage to overhear seems to have anything to do with job opportunities.

              The three of you finally shove your way up to the landing, Hyejin’s hand in one of yours and Jungkook’s palm warm in the other so you don’t lose each other in the crowd. On finally reaching, you lean against the banister, taking in just how raucous it is down.

              “It really is just a party.” Jungkook seems a little awed for whatever reason, like he really expected something productive to come out of this weird final year ritual.

              You huff as you wince after a sip of shitty beer. “I fucking told you so, didn’t I?”

              Amused, Hyejin points at a table being carried in that has shot glasses lined up. “And it’s only about to get worse.”

              “There’s absolutely no way we’re going to find anybody we know in this mess, leave alone a specific person we actually want to talk to. We should leave.”

              “At the very least,” Jungkook begins, resting his elbows on the railing as he takes another sip, “we can talk shit about the décor, have a few drinks and then go.”

              Hyejin nods in agreement, settling as well against the banister. “We’ve come this far. Would be a pity if we only stayed for five minutes.”

              Sighing, you concede defeat. “The fact that they have two chandeliers in the foyer really is so pretentious.”

              “I think I saw gargoyles outside too, on the walls.”

              The three of you giggle as you think about how excessive and gaudy it all is, especially with the nature of the party playing out below.

              “I’d love to have some of that floral wallpaper, as a souvenir.”

              Before you can reply to Hyejin’s comment (with an emphatic yes, and a suggestion to use it in your own apartment as a joke), a voice comes from behind the three of you, making you whip your heads around.

              Kim Taehyung’s tone is unreadable as he asks, “Awful, isn’t it?”

              He’s got a half-full glass of something dark brown held in his hand, looking much more casual than he had two days prior at the café. The washed denim jeans he’s wearing with the plain, spotless white t-shirt on top are a far cry from his previous poised, chic outfit. But you pick out the details; the black nail polish, the neat ruffle of his bright blue hair, the many rings adorning his fingers that glint along with the metal of his watch, the Gucci belt. Effort. Suddenly, the well-fitted t-shirt looks very expensive. He looks expensive.

              “It is quite terrible, yes,” you smoothly agree, keeping your voice as neutral as he is, not letting any surprise show on your face.

              “It belongs to my parents.”

              You nearly choke on air, letting out a soft ‘Oh no.’ Next to you, Hyejin’s trying hard not to laugh, even now, in the face of extreme embarrassment.

              Jungkook attempts to salvage the situation with a grimace. Hurriedly, he says, “They’ve chosen some lovely colours for the curtains, and these marble staircases are very…shiny.”

              You could punch him, you really could. You know that they know each other, but only in the we met once and haven’t spoken since sense. This is going splendidly. Distantly, you curse yourself for not realising the possibility of Taehyung’s presence here. You had been so focused on the fact that this was going to be a shit-show, not to mention occupied with the thought of the brunch with the man standing opposite you and his parents tomorrow, that the chance didn’t even cross your mind.

              You ignore Hyejin nearly snorting on your other side and rush into action. You can’t be sure but there might be a small smile playing on Taehyung’s lips when you start talking. It’s gone as soon as it arrives. He continues to stand there, all long limbs and sharp angles, chin up in a carelessly arrogant manner that makes him seem a lot more imposing than you had thought he was. Silently waiting for an explanation, an apology, a defiant stare-down; you can’t be sure. You settle for an introduction.

              “Hyejin, Jungkook – this is Kim Taehyung. The…client I was telling you about.”

              “We’ve met!” Jungkook excitedly says, previous gaff forgotten.

              It’s like a switch has been flicked, and immediately, Taehyung is all smiles. His broad shoulders settle into a less threatening stance as he pulls a delighted Jungkook into a one-armed hug. “I remember you. How have you been?”

              As they continue exchanging platitudes, your eyes narrow in suspicion. Could that have been some sort of test? To check how well you do under pressure, under scrutiny? This new Taehyung, the happy, friendly one definitely seems more natural than the stern façade that was there earlier. Maybe it was an act, to see how you would handle it.

              You’re pulled out of your thoughts by the man himself. “How come you guys aren’t down there?”

              Before anybody else can reply, you stick your chin up to look him in the eye. You’re still smarting from his little challenge. “How come you aren’t down there?”

              “Can’t handle the wallpaper,” he replies easily. The twinkle in his eye serves to both annoy and soften you. “If I had known you would be here, I could have introduced you to my friends tonight.”

              And then Hyejin, who hasn’t said a word the entire conversation decides to open her mouth. “What’s stopping you?”

              It’s all you can do to not elbow her on the side.

              Taehyung has a curious look on his face, an expression of planning – nay, scheming is more accurate. Slowly, he asks, “Yeah, what’s stopping us, Y/N?”

              You have a hundred, no a thousand reasons, but you stick to the four most obvious ones. “This isn’t planned. First meeting was supposed to be with your parents tomorrow. I don’t want to go down there. It’ll be weird if I just show up with no warning.”

              Immediately, Taehyung begins to counter, checking off on his fingers as he undoes all your hard work. “It’ll be fun. It’s actually better if you meet my friends first, especially when most of them are too tipsy to notice anything suspicious. We aren’t going down there. I have given them a warning, I told them I’m dating somebody yesterday. And we can solidify the whole college thing by saying that you finished an assignment before you expected to, so you showed up last minute.”

              Jungkook lets out a low whistle next to you as Hyejin wordlessly has a satisfied sip of her drink. But you aren’t convinced. Eyes narrowed, you ask, “What do you mean, we aren’t going down there? Where are we going?”

              He hooks a thumb above his shoulder pointing towards the next flight of stairs. “Second floor. Exclusive for friends, less people, better alcohol.” After a beat, he continues, smirk playing on his lips, “Nicer wallpaper and no chandeliers.”

              You purse your mouth, trying to keep your laughter from bubbling out. If the look on his face is any indication, he definitely knows.

              The Hyejin-shaped devil on your shoulder hums and says, “You did come all the way here. Wouldn’t want it to be a waste of time, would you?”

              Internally, you grumble at her betrayal. Outside, you play your last card. “But what about these guys? I can’t just leave them alone.”

              “Oh, we’ll be just fine, Y/N. We’re old enough to take care of ourselves. Go. Have fun with your boyfriend.”

              “Client,” you grit out at Jungkook, who holds his palms out, placating. “Kim Taehyung is my client, who enjoys giving me absolutely no time to prepare.”

              Taehyung seems nonchalant about your obvious annoyance, his only comment being an easy, “When you do meet my friends, you really should just call me Tae. Slightly odd to be referring to your boyfriend with his full name.”

              You send a prayer up, along with a wish for the traitors by your side to be shat on by pigeons, before wincing through a preparatory swig of beer and squaring your shoulders, shifting into job mode.

              “Alright then, Tae. Let’s go dupe your friends.”

              “Oh. You’re real. Guys, Tae’s girlfriend exists!”

              The weight of his arm around your shoulder is comforting, loathe as you are to admit it. But it’s the deep chuckle you hear near the top of your head, and the smell of his rose-scented perfume that really puts you at ease. You’re loathe to admit that too.

              “This is Park Jimin. Clearly, like all best friends and roommates, he has the utmost faith in me.”

              Your hand that isn’t tight around the beer bottle is gently lifted up as your new acquaintance swoops down to place a small peck on the knuckle. “Charmed,” he smiles, flirtatious grin and tone unmissable. You suspect it never leaves. Soon enough, he’s joined by another man, taller, who easily slings an arm around his shoulder.

              They’re all awfully touchy, you notice. If this is going to work, you’re going to have to be more obvious. Shifting your near-empty drink, you loop your free arm around Tae’s waist. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it; just takes another sip of his drink. The grin is seemingly permanent on his face as the new entrant begins to talk.

              “Kim Namjoon. Also surprised to find out you exist.”

              You shrug half-heartedly, in a sorry to disappoint manner. You know they’re joking, that it’s all in good fun, but just how averse to relationships is Taehyung, for you to be greeted with a reception like this one?

              “Truly, I’m hurt. Did nobody believe me?”

              This seems to be the cue for the next person to arrive. “We believed that you believed that you had a girlfriend. I’m Lisa.”

              “Y/N,” you reply with a smile, amused at the banter.

              The energy in the room can’t be more different from the one in the party you just left. There are probably around twenty people here, all lounging around in cosy sofas in small groups. The sound of easy chatter interspersed with laughter fills your ears, and the lighting is much better too. Instrumental music plays soft in the background, and there’s a shelf full of liquor bottles against the wall. Most of the party-goers have glasses like Tae, probably with whiskey or rum, if you’re reading the labels right. There are a few couples strewn around, sitting in laps, holding hands, and you catch sight of a group in the corner downing shots. It’s…easy. Warm.

              Kim Taehyung throws good private parties.

              You both fall into step behind Jimin, Namjoon and Lisa to a table in the corner, already occupied by two other men. On the way, he pulls you a little closer, angling his head so he’s speaking into your ear. His low timber makes a shiver run down your spine when he whispers, “You look like you’re taking inventory. It’s a party, at least pretend you’re having fun.”

              You bristle at his comment. Putting on your sweetest smile, you lift your neck as he obediently turns his face to the side to hear you better. “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

              That grin reappears, the challenging one, and you aren’t sure if that’s a good thing. If he enjoys riling you up, you’re going to have a hard job of pretending to be his girlfriend. Maybe it was another test, to see how you would react. Either way, it irks you that you can’t figure him out. All your previous clients had been easy. Smile, giggle, get paid. This is uncharted territory.

              You don’t realise that you’ve both stopped walking, still trying to figure the other out until an amused voice breaks you out of your reverie.

              “If you’re done ogling each other, you can have a seat.”

              You and Taehyung are the only ones left standing in front of the table, the other three having sat down. You didn’t even realise that you had reached until Jimin had teasingly commented.

              You clear your throat, breaking away from the man whose grin has somehow grown, taking a seat at the corner of the couch closest to you. Half of it is already occupied, and it isn’t very large, and when Taehyung sits down next to you, his thigh presses against yours. You resist the urge to shuffle away.

              You let Jimin take the mostly empty beer bottle from your hand and replace it with a glass of whiskey. Already, you’ve staked out the people that you’ll have to be careful about. Taehyung’s best friend slash roommate has an easy-going nature about him, all sunny smiles and coquettish winks, but there’s a gravitas there; he’s much more than meets the eye. Namjoon seems harmless enough, but that might just be because he looks like he’s nearly about to pass out. Lisa is friendly, and your biggest problem about her seems to be accidentally getting too comfortable and revealing something yourself. That leaves the other two men whom you haven’t been introduced to yet.

              “This is Jin and Yoongi.”

              You’re the picture of polite composure. You play the part of nervous, new girlfriend being introduced to the friend group perfectly, but internally, you’re sizing everybody up.

              “We’re glad you could make it, Y/N. We didn’t think we’d be able to meet you till game night next week.”

              Jimin helpfully supplements Jin’s comment by saying, “But then again, we didn’t think we’d be able to meet you at all.”

              There’s an easy way about his voice as Taehyung refills his glass from the bottle on the table and replies, “I told you, she was supposed to be busy. Weren’t you, babe?”

              The pet-name throws you off, and it’s decidedly more about him being a little shit and less about the two of you playing relationship, but you don’t let it affect you. Your mask is firmly on now, and you’re on comfortable territory as you go about your job. “I was supposed to be busy, but my assignment got over early, so I could make it.”

              “Any regrets?” Jin asks. The implication is clear in his teasing tone. Any regrets about dating him?

              You don’t know where the courage comes from, when you decided that this assignment deserved more from you, but the next thing you know, you’re cheerfully saying, “None at all,” and swooping up to drop a quick kiss on Tae’s cheek.

              His eyes light up, recognising that you’ve taken him up on this game. In that moment, you swear something shifts. It’s still a deal, but it’s a challenge too. A competition to see how far you can push the limits before the façade begins to develop visible cracks. You aren’t a daring person when it comes to your job, preferring to do the sensible thing and just be in and out; but something about Kim Taehyung makes you want to win.

              His arm rises, slinging over your shoulder, tucking you in the crook of his body. He hovers for a second, letting you take the lead and tell him if he’s overstepping, but you don’t move away and just take a satisfied sip of your drink instead.

              The little display doesn’t go unnoticed.

              “If you guys are going to start making out, we’re kicking you out of here,” Yoongi absently observes in a bored drawl. But he’s entertained, you can tell. They all are. Good, you think. Let them think we’re one of those couples. As long as they think we’re some type of couple at all.

              Taehyung feigns hurt as he gripes, “You can’t kick me out. This is my party.”

              “We’ll manage. Y/N can stay.”

              It’s a joke, all in good fun, you understand that. But it warms you, this ready acceptance.

             Fake.

              The attention shifts to you now. You can feel eyes and burning curiosity, and patiently wait for the first question as you bask in the warmth of Tae’s body heat. He might be annoyingly competitive, but he’s one hell of a cuddler, you can already tell.

              “How did you guys meet?” Namjoon finally asks. It’s an easy one, predictable and planned.

              “Remember when I had to drop off some stuff for the college donation fund?” Taehyung starts. “I went to the café after. It was Y/N’s shift and she kept finding ways to come to my table.”

              That wasn’t in the story.

              Improvising, you quickly interrupt with a wide, hopefully fond, grin. “Because he sat there for so long even after he had finished his drink, and we were running out of tables to seat people.”

              You catch an impressed raise of his eyebrow, disappearing in a flash as he continues with a rich laugh. “And she wasn’t very subtle about it either. I left soon, but the next time I came, she was on shift again.”

              “Why did you go a second time?” Lisa asks curiously. You’re in the same boat as the others, waiting for his next sentence. The story went off the rails the moment he started it, and now you’re running headfirst into this blind.

              You’ve seen his polite smile, his cocky smirk, his cheerful grin; but this cheeky quirk of his lips, boyish twinkle in his teasing eyes is something delightfully new. He replies as he squeezes your shoulder gently, visibly, “Had to get her number.”

              You tell yourself that it’s natural, that when cute boys smile like that, all charm and teasing and flirt, it’s only normal for your ears to redden, your cheeks to heat up and for your heart to do a bit of a somersault. Objectively.

              Regardless of the cause, the consequence is the real clincher. As you hide your blush behind a sip of your drink, you hear coos around you, and isn’t that reaction what you were going for?

              Taehyung ducks his head, this time whispering much closer to your ear. “Impressively done.”

              You’ll let him believe it.  You’ll let yourself believe it.

              When that’s done with, it’s easy to move on to other topics. You know that it’s far from over, that the next time you meet them, you’ll have more questions to answer and harder questions to answer; but for tonight, they’ve had their fill.

              When you finally make to leave, pleading pending assignments and early mornings, Taehyung offers to walk you out. You wave at the others, nearly surprised at yourself for having a good time. The two of you make your way through the crowd in the ground floor, out the front door and across the lawn to the open gate, outside which Jungkook and Hyejin said they would be waiting.

              There’s no physical contact between the two of you now, no hands on shoulders, no palm in warm palm. He walks next to you, head craned up towards the starless sky, as you watch him out of the corner of your eye.

              “I’m sorry about the stuff I said about your wallpaper.”

              You don’t know where it comes from, but it does, and the next thing you know, he’s giving you that teasing grin again.

              “And the chandeliers?”

              “I’m sorry about the things I said about your chandeliers too,” you dutifully reply, now a little more at ease after finding out that you haven’t seriously offended him.

              “The gargoyles are terribly hurt as well.”

              Giggling, you turn around, walking backwards for the few seconds it takes for you to find the grotesque statues near the front doors and utter a heartfelt apology.

              “They really are extremely ugly,” he admits after a beat, making you look up at him. “I could never stand that wallpaper, and even I have to admit that the double chandelier is a bit excessive.”

              Curious, you pull your purse higher on your shoulder as you ask, “You don’t live here anymore?”

              He sounds genuinely horrified when he replies. “Oh, god no. Neither do my parents. It’s just in the family and we use it for events now. Nobody’s lived here in years.”

              The gate is just a few steps away, and you spot your friends standing in the distance, waiting for you. Jungkook waves and you wave back, letting him know that you’ve spotted them.

              “Your friends seem nice.”

              The smile you’re graced with this time is another new one; shark-like and a little terrifying. “Wait till you’re racing against them during game night next Friday. Can you make it?”

              “Too soon to say. I’ll let you know,” you tell him.

              “Alright,” he nods. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning. 11.”

              “11,” you agree. You stick your hand out, waiting for him to shake it. It’s a job after all.

              Client.

              “Nice doing business with you,” he grins.

              Primly, you reply, “And you,” before you give up the game for the night and turn around with one last smile.

              Kim Taehyung (Client): good job today

              I don’t get paid for nothing.

              You too.

              Kim Taehyung (Client): i should warn you, brunch with mr. and mrs. kim isn’t exactly as fun.                                                                           if it gets too much tomorrow, we can leave

              I can handle it.

              Kim Taehyung (Client): we’ll see.

              Another challenge. One might almost think that you’re enjoying this deception.

              Kim Taehyung (Client): just keeping things from getting too boring

              Or safe.

              Kim Taehyung (Client): touché. you don’t seem to be complaining though

              I’m complaining right now.

              Kim Taehyung (Client): would you like me to stop?

              …no

              Kim Taehyung (Client): just make some bird noises tomorrow if you want to leave before the main course arrives.

              “Put this on.”

              His focus is on the road in front of him, sleeves of his formal shirt rolled up to the elbows as his long fingers absentmindedly tap a silent pattern on the steering wheel. Your focus has to shift from his profile to accept the tiny jewellery box that he’s handed to you without looking. The box is unlabelled; no brand, no maker’s logo. Again, the thought enters your brain: rich rich. Inside, there’s a silver necklace with a tiny square pendant set with numerous glinting stones that wink in the sunlight. Diamonds.

              As you gingerly lift it out of the satin padding of the box and lay it on your palm, he answers your unasked question. “They’ll be expecting it. The Kims like to stake their claim.”

              “How will they know that you gave it to me?”

              “They’ll find a way to bring it up, don’t worry.”

              Nervously, you push your hair to one side of your neck as you wrap the chain around, centring the pendant at the base of your throat, right at the clavicle before clasping it at the back. “Your exes must have been very lucky.”

              You revel in the easy quirk of his lips as you right your hair again, hands moving down to your lap to smooth out your dress. It had been another ‘gift’ from an old client for a lunch with his boss; a soft, pastel blue frock with a little satin clinch around the waist and a hem ending just at your knees. You suspect that once he got the guarantee for a raise after pleading family expenses, he had simply forgotten to take the dress back. You aren’t complaining.

              “It looks good on you,” Taehyung observes, darting a quick glance at you out of the corner of his eye, gaze focussing on your neck before moving back to the road.

              “Money often does,” you smile. “Now what do I need to know about your parents so I don’t fuck up?”

              Distantly, you know that the assignment isn’t for them to like you. It’s for them to believe you’re his girlfriend. But still, a good impression can’t hurt.

              He turns the wheel, pulling into a street of large mansions, not unlike the one you had gone to last night. Less gaudy and decidedly more modern, but no less imposing. “Ask them about the company. Compliment the food. Don’t mention money. If they ask about your classes, be as brief as possible – we don’t want them to get too curious. My father will want to talk about his gardening, so indulge him. And don’t mention my photography until they’ve had at least a glass of wine each. We have to stick around long enough for them to at least give us a chance to prove this is real.”

              You jot down everything he’s saying in your mind, ensuring that you’ve registered all of it. The car moves down towards the end of the road, stopping at the third last house on the right. The guards take one look at the sleek black sedan before they push the gates open, letting it in. There’s a driveway with a well-maintained lawn, tiny mushroom lights on the sides and colourful flowers bordering each patch of grass. Taehyung pulls into a spot a couple of feet away from the entrance, and before you know it, you’re both standing in front of the main door, wine bottle in his hand as the other wraps loosely around your fingers.

              There’s nothing in his physical manner that indicates nervousness, but you notice a slight tension in his shoulders and his usually easy smile is tight around the edges.

              Not so casual after all.

              You give his hand a gentle squeeze as you offer an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, I’m a professional,” you shrug, eliciting a chuckle from him, his shoulders loosening up a bit.

              “This is it,” he mumbles.

              Unprompted, you take a deep breath in together before he presses the doorbell.

              “Tae! We’ve been waiting, what took you so long?”

              Mrs. Kim is an imposing woman. Her thinning hair is in a sensible bun at the top of her head, demeanour brusque as she sweeps her son into a quick hug. Her eyes are sharp, the wrinkles around them conveying more experience than age. The nervousness in your smile is only half-fake when you lift a hand up in a shy wave as Taehyung introduces you.

              “Traffic,” he shrugs, once he’s handed over the bottle of wine. “This is Y/N, the girl I was telling you about.”

              Her handshake is firm, but her expression is kind as she smiles. “We’ve heard quite a bit about you. Come to the backyard, we’ve set up there. Such lovely weather today, we just had to go outside.”

              You had planned a whole ‘Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Kim’ and ‘What a beautiful house you have, Mrs. Kim’ routine, but without a breath to let you get anything in edgewise, she’s turned around, leading you through the house. You feel a squeeze on your fingers and look up to see Taehyung’s trademark smirk that you’re quickly getting tired of.

              A challenge. His mother is the test.

              It’d be so easy to just let it go. To say nothing, to only speak when you’re spoken to and be silent when you aren’t, but you can’t let this go. As you take in the high ceiling and the paintings on the walls, the wooden upholstery and the sheer curtains, you truthfully say to the back of her head, “This is a lovely home, Mrs. Kim.”

              “Oh, thank you, Y/N. It is quite nice, but just a little big for two people. If only we had a son who didn’t move out, this would have been much cosier.”

              Oh.

              Undeterred, you press on, ignoring Taehyung’s sharp look as you begin to lie through your teeth. “Would you believe me if I told you how excited he was on the way over? Wouldn’t stop talking about how much he misses this house. And rightfully so.”

              “There’s an easy fix for that.” But you detect appeasement in her tone, directly contrasting her pointed words.

              Satisfied, you grin at the man next to you as he gives you an impressed look. This is a win in your books.

              Both of you step outside to the patio behind your hostess, making your way to the table set up in the middle of the neatly trimmed grass lawn that’s filled with food. There’s a running cascade against the compound wall on the side, water splashing softly into the pond below, and with the sun shining just so, it’s all incredibly ideal. Except for the stern looking man standing next to the table.

              Test number two? Something about the subtle tightening of Taehyung’s grip tells you that he doesn’t joke around when his father is concerned.

              “Tae,” the man says shortly, nodding in greeting. “Didn’t think you’d show up today.”

              The transformation is eerie. The easy manner is gone, ready smile replaced by a blank expression as Taehyung replies, “I wonder why.”

              You suspect this is normal, if Mrs. Kim’s relaxed manner is anything to go by; but the tension in the air is palpable. You almost regret whatever white knight streak you have that makes you jump head first into situations like this, but you don’t like it when your fake-boyfriend looks like a storm cloud about to burst.

              “Hello, Mr. Kim. I’m Y/N, Taehyung’s girlfriend.”

              He grunts as he grips your palm, making an effort to smile and be polite. At least he doesn’t seem to have a problem with me, you think. Yet.

              The four of you take your seats in silence, parents sitting opposite the two of you. You’ve got an eye on the entrance back to the house. You hope you won’t need it, but you always appreciate knowing the escape routes.

              The atmosphere is stifling as all three of the Kims sit mute. Praying that they don’t see it as a rude overstep, you lift the wine bottle you had bought, opening it as you cheerfully say, “The bougainvillea at the front seem to be growing well this season, Mr. Kim. Do you use a special fertiliser?”

              You can feel Taehyung’s hard stare at the side of your head as you pour out portions of dark purple liquid into everybody’s glasses, but you ignore it. This isn’t about him. This is about the job.

              Client.

              “Just a regular, water-balanced formula once a week.”

              It’s a short reply, but a reply nonetheless.

              You plod on. “I’ve heard that they’re demanding plants. You must be very experienced to be able to grow them so healthy.”

              He grunts again, but there’s a smile growing on his lips that he hides behind his glass. Inside, you crow at the small victory. Just like that, Mrs. Kim begins to talk, asking you about what you do. Flattery will get you everywhere; it’s a lesson you had learnt early in your career.

              You easily carry on the conversation, steering away from the topics you had been warned about in the car. Taehyung sits mostly quiet next to you, but he does speak once in a while, to help you veer away from sticky topics that might lead to an argument. You’ve never played mediator more successfully, making sure to offer Mr. Kim more bread when he gets that bullish look on his face like he’s about to start a confrontation, and enthusiastically gushing over the necklace you’re wearing when Mrs. Kim seems like she’s about to say something sneaky.

              The problem arises just when you’re about to let out a sigh of relief, thinking the worst of it is over. You do have a cinnamon roll in your hand. That should mean you’re nearly done, right?

              “How’s your job going, Tae?”

              An innocent enough question, but there’s an underlying sinister tone in Mr. Kim’s voice. The air slowly begins to crackle, like a distant thunderstorm.

              To his credit, Taehyung doesn’t engage immediately. Perfectly civil, almost too properly, he replies, “Good. I have an exhibition coming up next weekend.”

              “For people to pay you for clicking a button?”

              His jaw tightens. “The photographs aren’t for sale.”

              “Great, you aren’t even getting paid.”

              There’s danger in Taehyung’s gritted teeth, and it’s echoed in the clench of his fist that you wrap your hand around under the table, resting on his thigh. You don’t know how effective bread will be in getting Mr. Kim to back off, with his exasperation and annoyance writ large on his face, and you don’t bother trying. His mother seems to notice nothing out of the normal, and maybe this is how it is every weekend. They certainly have the dramatic prolonged silences down, along with the less-than-subtle barbs.

              You let your palm rest over Taehyung’s knuckle, just there for moral support. Even your insofar stellar intercessions can’t salvage this now, but you don’t like seeing him like this. Troubled, angry.

              You watch as he takes a deep breath in, and in one swift motion, he’s put a mask back on; painfully polite and pointedly calm, like a tornado trapped in an unbreakable glass bottle. “I think we’ve done a great job of welcoming Y/N today. Hopefully you haven’t scared her away. Can’t wait for our next brunch.”

              And just like that, he’s flipped his palm open so they’re enclosing your surprised hand and is tugging you none too gently out of your seat. All you can do is offer a half-hearted smile in sudden farewell to his parents before you’re being led rapidly to the house. He doesn’t stop or wait for a reply from the not-too-surprised couple on the table (not that there seems to be one forthcoming), and he doesn’t slow down. You have to nearly jog to keep up with his wide gait, long limbs allowing him to take one step to match two of your own.

              He doesn’t stop until you’re seated in the car, doors closed as you both sit in silence; his stormy, and yours tentative. His eyebrows are furrowed, jaw clenched, hands balled up in a frustration you think he’s almost used to by now.

              You crumple the fabric of your dress in a slow fist as you intone, “I think they believed us.”

              That’s all it takes for his shoulders to droop, sound that almost sounds like a laugh leaving his mouth in a whoosh. His head falls back against the headrest with a silent thunk in resignation, neck arched as his eyes tiredly close. You somehow don’t think a lot of people see him this way, and it feels like some sort of privilege.

              “You fared better than I thought you would,” he mumbles, still not looking at you.

              “I told you, I’m good at my job.”

              “You most definitely are. And I usually storm out before we reach desert. It lasted longer today.”

              You accept the compliment with a tiny bloom of pride, watching silently as Taehyung lets out a long, deep sigh and sits up, tucking his seat belt in and preparing to start the car.

              “They didn’t seem too suspicious about us.” The rest of your sentence hangs in between the two of you, lingering in the silence of the car, only getting louder when he turns on the ignition. They were too busy criticising you.

              In a way, it had been a blessing. They didn’t look too closely, didn’t notice the way you had fumbled over your words when you narrated the story of how you met or the flash of panic in his eyes when they had asked you about when he gifted the necklace, needing you to come up with a story on the stop. But the goal is the trust fund, and you both seem to be as close to that as you are to the sun.

              You know you’ll get paid, regardless of whether Taehyung gets that money at the end of the three months or not, but somewhere along the way, somehow, you had gotten invested in this. And you aren’t about to sit and analyse the cause and effect of this development.

              Fake.

              “We’ll go in stronger next time. Maybe more expensive wine?” you ask, only half-joking.

              You watch his eyes dart to you in astonishment as he asks, “Next time? You’re seriously up for a next time?”

              “I don’t like leaving jobs incomplete. If the point is to get your trust fund, we’re going to get your trust fund. We just need a different angle now.”

              “Fascinating,” he observes, now with a little more of his customary cheer in his voice. “Do elaborate.”

              Thinking hard, you slowly begin to explain. “They know you have a girlfriend now. What we need to do is make them think you’re in it for the long haul, that you’re mature enough to handle an adult relationship.”              

              “How do you propose we do that?”

              It hits you like a thunder bolt. “Invite them to the exhibition.”

              Confusion and reluctance are clearly at war in his eyes as he asks you to elucidate. “What on earth does that have to do with anything?”

              The wheels are in motion now, and you nearly trip over your words in your haste to get them out. “They haven’t seen any of your photos, have they?”

              “No, they’ve never really been interested,” he says, voice darkening momentarily.

              “Then they’ll see them there. You get offers for commissions at these exhibitions, right?”

              “Yeah, I do, but how is that related to – “

              “Good offers?” you press.

              “How do you think I afford my flawless fashion sense?”

              You spare him an unimpressed look, but continue with the plan. “Then they’ll see that you get paid well for your job. And if I’m there, they’ll see that you’re holding down a steady relationship too. Then all you have to do is plant some friends in the crowd to talk up your many good qualities. Super mature, easy win. Maybe you won’t get the money immediately, but it’s bound to make some sort of impact.”

              The look of grudging respect you get is almost worth the disaster meal you’ve just sat through. “I knew it was a good idea to hire you. I’ll send them the invite and see if they accept. Just one problem though.”

              You nod, signalling him to continue.

              “They know all my friends. All the families are close. If I plant them, they’ll figure something’s up.”

              You hum thoughtfully as Taehyung pulls into the street with the student apartments, thinking of a workaround. And as you slow down next to the curb, Taehyung silently waiting for your answer, you staring at the door of your apartment building, you get it.

              “But they haven’t had the absolute pleasure of meeting Ahn Hyejin and Jeon Jungkook.”

               Caw caw

               Kim Taehyung (Client): what

               Bird noises. To escape.

               Kim Taehyung (Client): your timing is impeccable

              “Am I your favourite person in the world?”

              “No.”

              You give up on Hyejin, turning to Jungkook on your other side as your library chair slightly creaks under you. “Am I your favourite person in the world?”

              “Absolutely not. That honour is reserved for myself, and myself only.”

              “Am I one of your favourite people?”

              Hyejin huffs at your constant chatter, looking up from her laptop to fix you with a steely gaze. Before Jungkook can answer your question (with a definitive ‘yes’, you hope), she brusquely asks, “What do you want, Y/N?”

              Without preamble, you say, “I need you both to dress up fancy and schmooze some parents.”

              “No problem, your parents already love me,” Jungkook gloats, putting his arms up and tucking his palms behind his head, elbow narrowly missing your ear as he perches there, satisfied.

              “Not my parents.”

              “Other parents like me too. Also, teachers. Just adults in general.”

              “The librarian doesn’t seem to like you too much right now.”

              At Hyejin’s remark, Jungkook immediately pulls his arms back down, setting his chair straight again so he isn’t teetering on the two back legs. Sure enough, the adult in question is walking towards your table with purpose. She stops next to your chairs, hisses at you to shut up, and with one last glower, turns around to walk back.

              You wait till she’s a little way away before you continue. “It’s Tae’s parents.”

              “Tae?” Hyejin asks suspiciously. “Your client, Kim Taehyung?”

              You nod, not fully meeting her eyes. “The very same. You need to hype him up and tell his parents about how responsible he is, and how he’s so good at his job, and other assorted nice things about him.”

              Even before Jungkook begins to speak, you know he’s going to say something that will make you want to face palm. “Listen, Y/N, I know he and I are tight and all that – “

              There it is.

              “– but I have to confess, I hardly know the man.”

              Huffing, you reply, “You don’t have to say things that are true. Just things that will make his parents think he’s mature enough for the trust fund.”

              “I think I should hype myself up to his parents so they’ll give me the trust fund.”

              You and Hyejin ignore his fatuous comment. She’s looking at you with a hawk-like stare that’s more than a little unsettling.

              “Why are you doing this?” she shrewdly asks. “You get paid regardless of whether he gets the money or not. Hell, you’ve already gotten the advance. Why do you care so much to go to such lengths?”

              Again, you’re forced to look away, at anything but her eyes. You fix your gaze at a spot somewhere near the right side of her forehead as you shrug and reply, feigning an easy nonchalance you don’t feel. “Just don’t like leaving it unfinished. That’s the point of the job, isn’t it? The trust fund?”

              Your evasiveness isn’t lost on her. “Isn’t the point of every job your payment?”

              “Yeah, uh, that too. But that’s already guaranteed. This is the…er…secondary point of the job. This job. The point of me faking this relationship.”

              Jungkook pipes up, “You’re getting a little too comfortable with the whole lying thing. It’s one thing to pretend to be dating somebody for a single night to get their parents off their back, or to get their friends to stop nagging, but for three whole months? And to his parents for him to get money that has nothing to do with you?”

              Immediately, you withdraw, shrinking into yourself. There’s an obvious wisdom in his words, an undisputable argument. When will the lies stop? What if you get so comfortable with looking at a relationship clinically, valuating it by how close you are to your cover being blown, that you forget what the real thing is like? And why have you decided to push those limits now, for this client in particular?

              You force those thoughts away, preferring to focus on tangible things, things you can quantify and uncomplicate. Things like Kim Taehyung’s exhibition on Sunday evening, four days from now.

              “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to – “

              “We didn’t say that.”

              You turn to Hyejin in barely concealed shock, immediately toning it down when you take in her wary expression.

              “We didn’t say we won’t do it,” she repeats, voice patient. “We’ll help, of course we will. But we just want you to be careful. Don’t get so attached. At the end of the day, he’s still just a client, Y/N, and he’s making use of your services as a fake girlfriend. And these families bring their kids up to be charming. It won’t hurt to remind yourself of where Taehyung’s from once in a while.”

              “I know that. I just…don’t want to leave a job done halfway,” you finish lamely, voice failing you towards the end of your sentence.

              Hyejin is right. As much as you want to refute it, you know that all the men you’ve been employed by from families like Taehyung’s – coffers filled with old money and trust funds set up for them with companies waiting to be taken over – have been groomed to act the same way. Charming, smooth, devilishly handsome and making every person they talk to feel like they’re the most important thing in the world. It’s how business deals close, and that’s what they grow up learning. As much as you want to claim that your current customer is different, you do realise that you hardly know him, that you’ve only met him a couple of times, and that all the information you really have on him is stored in a Word document under headings like ‘Childhood Pets’ and ‘Favourite Vacation Spot’. Hardly organic. It’ll do you good to be cautious with your runaway feelings and keep your eyes on the prize.

              Fake.

              Client.

­ 

              Kim Taehyung (CLIENT): how good are you at car games

              Good enough to beat you, I’m sure.

              You huff and delete the message before he can read it, Hyejin’s voice ringing clear and true in your head, before drafting a new, more impersonal one.

              Why?

              Kim Taehyung (CLIENT): we’re doing need for speed this friday at game night.

                                                            can you make it?

              What time does it start?

              Kim Taehyung (CLIENT): 7. everybody comes directly from work, usually wraps up by 10ish

              I can be there, but I might be a little late. 8 maybe.

              Kim Taehyung (CLIENT): sure. just be prepared to lose.

              There he goes again, giving you such a lovely opening to goad him, to continue the banter. It takes everything to not do just that, and stop that particular thread of the conversation right there before moving to more important information, relevant doubts.

              Who all are going to be there? Any surprises?

              No more games.

              Kim Taehyung (CLIENT): wouldn’t you like to know

              Yes. That’s why I’m asking.

              Hyejin would be proud of you.

              Kim Taehyung (CLIENT): just the people from the party

                                                           oh and irene, she wasn’t able to make it that night so she hasn’t had the pleasure of being fooled by us yet

              I’m sure she can hardly wait.

              Kim Taehyung (CLIENT): me and her both

              Hyejin’s sensible voice in your head is at direct odds with the other, less smart and more irrational one that’s controlled by your emotions as you stand outside the front door. You check the address on your phone screen and look up at the number plaque to double check if you’re in the right place. Of course, if this was a real relationship, you would have been here before; but it isn’t and now you stand outside Kim Taehyung and Park Jimin’s house for the first time after allegedly dating the former for a month, wondering why this feels like such a big deal.

              It isn’t a particularly impressive building. Nothing like the extravagance that you’ve started associating with him and his friends and their kind of money. The lobby is a little fancy, sure, and there’s plenty of glass in the construction, but it only looks a little above average. Nowhere close to your price range, but not very close to what you had thought was theirs either.

              You weren’t sure if it was customary to bring something, and you hadn’t wanted to ask for fear of seeming too eager (to him, to yourself, to your wise advisor, Hyejin), so you had settled for coming empty handed. You regret it now, your hands begging for something to hold as you knock on the door, the smart rap sounding far more confident than you feel.

              “Y/N! Right on time, your boyfriend’s being a sore loser.” Jimin greets you with a wide grin that weirdly puts you at ease as he holds the door open, gesturing to where you can leave your shoes. This is fine. It’s just a group of friends hanging out who have no suspicion. Absolutely no problem.

              “How can I be a sore loser if I didn’t lose?” comes the indignant cry from inside the house.

              You giggle as Jimin hooks his thumb behind him in the direction of the living room with an exaggerated scoff and a ‘Can you believe this man?’ look on his face. He guides you out of the foyer and into the house as it opens up into the hall filled with the people from the party lounging around and looking at you, except Yoongi and a woman you haven’t seen before, probably Irene, who’ve got their eyes glued to the screen in front of them, controllers in their hands as they guide their cars.

              You raise your hand in a shy wave, smile easy as they call out various greetings, but really, you’ve only got your eye on one man. You’ve seen him in different outfits; formal shirts, ripped jeans, the chic trench coat from that first meeting at the café, but this? Nothing could have prepared you for this Taehyung.

              Hair mussed, missing the usual artful messiness, like he couldn’t be bothered to style it. Loose grey sweatpants rolled up at the ankles along with a plain, black, nearly faded t-shirt. It’s hard to look away from him at the best of times. You know, objectively, that he’s handsome, and it’s only been a bit of a problem so far, but he looks so comfortable right now, sat there on the couch with one leg languidly crossed over the other knee, leaning back against the cushion as he smiles at you.

              Like a boyfriend.

              Fake.

              As if on cue, like she’s just waiting on standby for a situation like this, the Hyejin in your head tells you to stop being a ninny and to focus on the job. The others go back to watching the screen as you make your way to Taehyung’s side of the couch, his eyes not leaving you as you walk towards him.

              When you feel his hands coming up to tangle with your uselessly dangling fingers as you stop next to him, you argue that that’s just what couples do when they meet.

              “Hey, babe,” he grins, looking up at your face, gently tugging your arm until you’re bent enough for him to press a kiss to your heated cheek.

              Enough of these entirely unnecessary and increasingly annoying bodily reactions. You have a job to do. You smile in gratitude as Jin shuffles a bit on the couch, offering you enough space next to Taehyung for you to slip in in between the two men. You let your body naturally curve into his frame, but make no mention of it, appearing as instinctive as you can. You can still feel eyes on you – Jimin’s gaze darting to the two of you from his spot on the loveseat, the teasing look Lisa and Yoongi share in your direction as there’s a break in the game. Time to give them a show.

              “So what’s your excuse for losing?” you playfully demand, looking up at Taehyung, revelling in his tiny frown, just a step away from being described as petulant.

              “I didn’t lose. Lisa pushed me.”

              The woman in question is quick to come to her defence, laughing as she denies, “I most certainly did not. I didn’t even touch you, liar. You’re just mad you lost to me twice.”

              “Twice?” you goad, feigning amused surprise. Eyebrow cocked, you comment with a grin, “I had no idea you were so bad at this game.”

              Hoots of laughter erupt around you as you tease him, pleased to see his lips quirk up. A gleam enters his eyes, one of challenge, but not the kind you’re accustomed to now. This is personal and has absolutely nothing to do with the arrangement.

              “Maybe I was saving up my energy to beat you.”

              “Maybe you’re just a lousy player.”

              His expression gets sharper. Unconsciously, you’ve moved into his side even more, neck tilted up to maintain eye contact, reciprocated by the slight curve of his spine as he bends slightly to do the same. You’re close enough to make out the single blue strand of hair that’s escaped from the rest of the messy bunch in an effort to rest on his forehead, ending right at his eyebrow. You itch to move it out of the way, and it’s only the loud sound of the game’s theme song playing, signalling that Yoongi’s won the round, that stops you. Just in the nick of time.

              You pull away blinking, trying not to be too jerky with your movements, as he dips his head in the direction of the consoles waiting on the floor in front of the large screen television, abandoned by the previous players as they engage in a healthy bout of crowing and denial. His expression hasn’t changed, still a little testy at your taunting, and it sends a shiver down your spine.

              “Y/N, if you don’t beat him, I’ll be very disappointed.”

              You take your seat next to Taehyung on the floor, lifting a controller as you grin in Jimin’s direction. “We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

              Your fake boyfriend’s knee is solid against yours, heat burning through the layers of fabric.

              “I’m not going to lose,” Taehyung insists. He chooses the route for the game and you familiarise yourself with the controller.

              As the countdown begins on the screen, a large, fiery ‘3’ accompanied by the blaring of a horn and the revving of wheels with theatrical clouds of smoke briefly covering the screen, you hum, “We’ll see.” You’ve discovered that you quite enjoy pushing his buttons. And what Hyejin doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

              It might hurt you, the voice of reason points out in your head. You brush it away impatiently. You’ve got a race to win.

              It doesn’t take too long to get in the lead, and once you do, you’re determined to not lose it. You hear Taehyung let out a low ‘Fuck’ as you zoom past him, and he arches lower to focus on the screen, his knee pushing into yours. You’re determined to not pull away and to not let it distract you either as you work to maintain your position on the score board. To his credit, he doesn’t give up until the very end, sour look on his face as you do a little jig in glee when you’re displayed as the winner. He doesn’t seem mad, though. Not really. A little put out but still with a small smile on his face as he watches you laugh with the others.

              “How fun for you,” he drily intones, but with no real heat in his sarcasm.

              Jin and Namjoon replace the two of you on the floor as you get up, moving away from the centre. You’re about to sit back down on the couch, feeling light from the sheer positivity that’s there in the room and heady from your victory, when you hear Taehyung behind you ask, “Help me get the dinner from the kitchen?”

              It isn’t like you’re going to say no.

              You let him guide you to the kitchen as you try not to be too obvious in finally taking in the house. The furniture is nice, but not too nice. There’s a potted plant near the corner of the living room, and you suspect it’s placed there specifically because the windows let in sunlight in its direction. The walls are painted a light grey and are bare except for a clock and the generic light fixtures. It’s such a far cry from the grand settings you’ve seen him in so far, but definitely more comfortable. Of course, there are elements of expense – the large, flat screen television, the marble island counter you see in the kitchen and the temperature-controlled fridge (which is a bit excessive, in your opinion, but you’re not going to risk criticising his property again).

              “How did you get so good at racing?” he asks with no bitterness in his voice, only curiosity.

              You reply after a beat, watching as he takes out the boxes of pizza from the covers sitting in the counter that you suspect had been delivered before you arrived. “Just part of my charm, I guess,” you shrug, pleased at his amused chuckle in response.

              A loud whoop comes from the direction of the living room followed by the exaggerated sounds of vehicles crashing from the television. In the kitchen, there’s a hush, like it’s underwater and everything else is above you on land. It’s suddenly very small as you shuffle behind him, pressed up against the island, trying desperately not to brush against his back as you make your way to the refrigerator to pull out a large bottle of something fizzy, doing as he indicates.

              “There are tissues in the top drawer to your right,” he directs as he takes glasses from an overhead shelf. You grab a few napkins in silence, turning around to make your way past him.

              You end up staring at his neck, lurching a bit to stop yourself from walking straight into him. His hands shoot out, palms burning into your shoulders through the fabric of your t-shirt as he steadies both of you with a low, surprised ‘Oh!’. He’s close enough for you to hear his slow inhales.

              You can’t look up. You won’t look up.

              In the end, you can’t stop yourself from looking up.

              His arms are slow in leaving your frame, coming down to rest easily at his sides as he grins and playfully drawls, “This kitchen ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

              Again with that damned strand of hair that’s begging to be set right. Wordlessly, you take a slow step back, holding out the napkins you’ve collected for him to take and place on top of the boxes. You’re smiling on the outside; easy, nonchalant, suave. In your brain, Hyejin is vigorously and relentlessly ringing an alarm bell. The tips of your fingers twitch where they brush against his.

              Client.

              “Good?” he asks, placing a bunch of boxes on your outstretched arms as he watches you balance them.

              You nod, not trusting your own voice, letting him lead the way out of the kitchen with his own share of the load and the bottle.

              Maybe the universe is looking out for you, because when you reach the living room and you’ve set down the boxes near the couch, Taehyung is challenged to a rematch by Lisa, leaving you to take a seat in between Irene and Jin.

              Conversation with them is easy, you find. In the middle of watching the game and distracting the players with good-natured jibes, you find out that Jin is a bit older than the others and has just started practicing as a doctor, and that Irene is at law school. Both of them, like everybody else in the room (apart from you), are from families with old money, brought up in the lap of luxury, groomed to take over companies and legacies.

              You have to constantly remind yourself to not get too attached. Three more months, you think. Three months and I’ll be slipping out of their lives as suddenly as easily as I slipped in.

              “How do I look?”

              “Like you’re about to be insufferable the whole night.”

              Jungkook grins, tugging at the lapels of his black suit one last time to straighten it out. Next to him, Hyejin is going through the pointers that Taehyung had sent a few hours ago. It had been decided that the two of them would act as accidental guides for the Kims through the exhibition, strategically leading them to sections that are crowded, or where people happen to be discussing commissions at the moment.

              You don’t forget that this is your idea, and consequentially, you realise that if the plan somehow falls apart and makes the entire situation worse than it already is, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.

              Hyejin notices your frown as you absentmindedly smooth down the silver chiffon material of your dress. She gets that look in her eyes, the warning one that’s been making an appearance more often in the last two days, when you had returned from Taehyung’s house with a decidedly rosy hue blushing your cheeks from the all the adrenaline and the man himself. You appreciate her looking out for you, making sure your head is screwed on tight and reminding you constantly about the goal; you definitely need it now.

              “His relationship with his parents has nothing to do with you,” she cautions.

              You let out a huff as you sit down next to her on the couch, bringing your knees up to your chin and wrapping your arms around them. “I know,” you softly mumble.

              There isn’t much else you can say. You do know. Rationally, what his parents think about him is no business of yours whatsoever. What matters is your money, and you don’t have time to worry about anybody else’s. Already you’ve crossed lines with this client that you’d never dreamt of even toeing with any others. His friends know you, his parents know you, and now you’re pretty much a part of his life for the next two odd months – why did you agree to this again? Did you think yourself so immune to him? So invincible?

              It doesn’t bear thinking about, and certainly doesn’t bear speculating now; not when you need to have your wits about you for the rest of the night.

              “We should leave,” Jungkook says, casting a glance at the watch on his wrist.

              You sigh, unfolding and forcing yourself to refocus. “Let’s get this over with.”

              Your brain can’t comprehend what your eyes are seeing.

              The three of you are fairly early, just a couple of minutes past the opening time. The crowd is only starting to arrive, in all their understated finery paired with diamond earrings. From the outside, through the glass, you can see people milling about, gliding between photographs, all of which are too far away for you to make out. The champagne in the flutes that nearly everybody is holding sparkles even more than usual under the lighting of the room. All this you had expected.

              What you definitely had not expected was to see Kim Taehyung with his hand around some other girl’s waist, wide grin on his face as he speaks animatedly to a patron, champagne flute being waved around excitedly.

              “Does he have another fake girlfriend?”

              Your teeth clench, Hyejin’s dry question going unanswered. What is he playing at? Jungkook and Hyejin stand next to you on the curb, looking at the sight as you try to reel in the green monster. His hair is set professionally, smoothed above his forehead with gel, enhancing the stretch of his formal shirt, top button undone and sleeves rolled up.

              The person he’s talking to drifts away and you watch with increasing annoyance as he turns to the girl next to him, your hands curling into fists as they both laugh at something.

              “Y/N? Are you alright?” Jungkook asks hesitantly, his palm hovering over your shoulder, cautiously waiting for you to reply.

              Jaw tight, your tone carefully controlled, you answer, “That fucking bastard. How does he expect anybody to believe this ruse if he goes around doing shit like that?”

              Whatever feelings you had (or thought you had had) fly out the window as you tap into that anger. You’re here to get paid. You’re a professional. If he can’t do his part right, that’s his fault. Doesn’t mean you have to jeopardise your job.

              Shoulders back, chin up.

              Client.

              Fake.

              Fucking idiot, your brain helpfully adds as you see him give the girl a dazzling smile, one of his patented I’m trying to impress you grins.

              At that moment, you promise yourself. No more stupid banter, or unnecessary communication. Everything you do with this man henceforth is to meet your end, and that is to be his fake girlfriend for the next few weeks. You’ll do what it takes to get your fee – which is showing up and being convincing – and no more.

              “What are you going to do?” Hyejin asks, understandably a little worried. The reflection of your face comes into sharp focus on the glass, throwing the firm set of your jaw and determined eyes into stark light.

              “My fucking job.”

              “Y/N! Just in time to meet Mrs. Park. She was one of my first customers.”

              You let Taehyung pull you into his side and swallow down the bile when you think about how he was doing the same thing to somebody else just a few minutes ago. Instead, you put on your most charming grin and politely shake the old woman’s hand.

              “And I’ll forever be glad I found him,” she smiles, stopping for a second to fondly place a palm on Taehyung’s cheek. “I am convinced nobody else could have done my babies justice.”

              Taehyung laughs, light pink blush appearing on his cheeks. You take a sip of champagne, ignoring any bodily reactions you might be having at the sight.

              “Mittens and Whiskers would have looked good with any photographer, Mrs. Park. You just happened to hire the most handsome one.” He winks in a manner that can only be described as roguish, making you want to gag.

              And Mrs. Park – poor, sweet Mrs. Park – lets out the most flattered giggle, hand on her heart as she misguidedly tells you, “Smart as a whip, your boyfriend is.” Her next words are directed at said boyfriend himself. “Save a slot for me in the next few weeks, will you, love? My cats have missed posing for their favourite photographer.”

              With a bow, Taehyung replies, “Absolutely. I’ve missed my favourite customer.”

              The singular doesn’t go unnoticed by her, and you can still see a faint blush on the back of her neck as she walks away from the two of you.

              “You’re horrible,” you mutter, as you take a sip of your champagne.

              “Who’s horrible,” he starts, turning to look at you with a shameless grin, “is Whiskers, who still has my blood and a good three layers of my skin on her conscience.”

              You hum, keeping your smile fixed firm on your face as you wait to see who’ll be approaching next. Taehyung’s arm is no longer around your waist, but the heat of his body is ever present next to you.

              “Hyejin and Jungkook are in position, I see.”

              Your eyes find them hovering near the entrance, waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Kim to enter. Jungkook looks to be a bit on edge, constantly messing with the cuffs of his shirt, but Hyejin seems to have slipped into the role easily, appearing for all she’s worth like she’s highly interested in a close up shot of a flower.

              “Thanks for doing this,” he mutters, keeping his voice low and bending a bit so nobody can pick up on the conversation. “I know you didn’t have to.”

              The underlying current of gratitude in his voice makes your stomach squirm, but you don’t let it affect you.     “You’re welcome,” you shortly reply, in the interest of civility. You aren’t going to tell him that you’ve started to rethink it.

              If he notices anything amiss about your manner, he doesn’t mention it. He just places a large palm against the small of your back before steering you towards somebody else to schmooze.

              And that’s how the evening goes. He’s the picture of professional charm, effortlessly mingling with previous clients and new potential ones, constantly toeing the line between praise and flattery, easily playing this role. You don’t miss the glint of pride in his eyes in the moments between conversations as he takes in the room, watches people watching the photographs he’s taken. It makes you sick how fond you become in those instances, and it’s only the champagne in your glass and the tiny finger foods that he chivalrously holds for the two of you on a tissue that keep you from saying or doing something you’ll no doubt regret in the future.

              The exhibition-goers dole out these comments every so often, things about how lucky you are to be dating somebody so creative, what an incredible mind he has, what a terrible flirt he is, and you grin and bear it all, playing the part of proud girlfriend perfectly. The last one is courtesy one Mrs. Min, another elderly woman (Taehyung seems to have been collecting them like stamps), and you think you quite outdo yourself when you let out a soft giggle and playfully slap Taehyung on the chest as you titter, “How do you think we got together, Mrs. Min?”

              You feel his fingers flex on your back. You can tell he’s trying hard not to burst out laughing as he promises the poor old lady to write her into his schedule and sends her on her way with a charming kiss to her knuckle that has her fanning her face as the two of you turn away.

              “And I’m the horrible one?” he chortles as you both weave your way through the ever-growing crowd.

              You sniff pompously, not deigning to reply. This is always the part of the job you’ve enjoyed. Not so much the deception, of course, but the acting and the guarantee that you’ve successfully convinced somebody with no room for doubt whatsoever. You feel the buzz under your skin, the sensation of a job going well. At least for this one evening, Taehyung can be a regular client and this can be a regular job.

              You’re absolutely prepared to let the conversations around you just drift past unless you’re required to join in, but you have no chance to be a mute spectator. At that moment, you hear a familiar brusque voice behind you say, “Taehyung.”

              You feel rather than see his shoulders tense a bit before he regains his bearings. This is his turf. His photographs. His customers. Not his parent’s. When he turns around, he’s back to his charming host setting, boxy grin defiantly firm as he greets them.

              “I didn’t notice you coming in. I trust you’ve been enjoying yourselves?”

              Mr. Kim nods a bit half-heartedly, like he doesn’t want to admit it. “It’s not so bad. At least there’s a bit of a crowd.”

              It’s much more than a bit and Taehyung knows that, but there’s no further discussion on the topic. As grudging as the comment was, the slightly impressed tone in which it had been conveyed was unmistakable.

              You finish your greetings and momentarily tune out the preliminaries happening next to you. Mrs. Kim asks a very pointed question about how close Taehyung’s apartment is to the exhibition that he easily breezes over. He seems invincible here, under the lights and around the chic glamour, surrounded by his photographs and looking like one himself. More invincible than usual, that is.

              Your eyes seek out Hyejin and Jungkook in the milling crowd, and catch them hovering dutifully nearby, not taking their attention off of their targets. When they notice you looking, they flash identical wide grins. Jungkook throws in a reassuring thumbs up for good measure. Hopefully that means everything is going as planned.

              “I’ve got a few customers waiting to discuss projects with me. Why don’t you continue to have a look around?” Taehyung asks, and with identical polite smiles, you’re both pulling away from the circle. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice your trusty friends sidling closer, beginning to talk in too-loud voices about the composition of a photograph nearby. You have to hold in a snort, knowing for a fact that neither of them has any real knowledge about what they’re spewing.

              “That went well,” you mutter, only half-sarcastic. Compared to the previous time they had met, the Kims were practically turtle doves cooing.

              Taehyung seems to agree, giving you a short, satisfied nod as he has a sip of champagne. “I’m surprised they showed up at all,” he confesses, almost sheepishly.

              And that’s that. No more comments from you. You continue your role, as if nothing happened, as if you aren’t positively, annoyingly delighted at the at least halfway success of the night. But of course, just when you’ve started slipping into your regular professional mould, your guard having slowly come down over the last hour, you run into her. The woman Taehyung was with at the beginning of the evening.

              “Enjoying yourself?” Taehyung asks with a twinkle in his eye. You notice that there are no preliminaries with this one, no introduction, no insofar customary ‘This is Y/N, my girlfriend’. His body is still next to yours, his palm is still on the small of your back and his rose-scented perfume is still clouding your senses, but he’s never seemed more far away.              

              She gives him a smile, her fingers curled delicately around her champagne flute as she teasingly replies, “Here? In a room full of your best work? Hardly.”

              “I’m supposed to be winning all my visitors over, not the other way around.”

              “Don’t worry, Tae. You’re almost as good at it as I am,” she winks.

              Okay, that’s enough. You clear your throat. First softly and then a little louder to make your point.

              Taehyung shakes his head, as if he’s suddenly remembered where he is. Immediately, his regular grin is back on his face as he introduces you. “Jennie, this is Y/N, my girlfriend. Y/N, meet Jennie.”

              You nod politely at the lady who smiles back at you, her tone amused as she teasingly asks, “How on earth can you stand him? I see him twice a year and leave every meeting feeling like I’ve been pitted against a tornado.”

              “It’s exhausting,” you play along, slightly surprised but not letting it show. You’re so curious about who this is, and what she is to Taehyung, and how they seem so comfortable with each other. It doesn’t help that the man himself offers up no explanation except a wounded ‘I’m very charming, I’ll have you know.’ But your previous decision to remain neutral and Hyejin’s stern presence in your head guides you to bite your tongue, and you ask no more questions. It’s none of your business.

              “You’ve gotten better at self-portraits,” she observes, gesturing at the section in question with a subtle tilt of her glass.

              “I learnt from the best,” Taehyung replies with what can only be described as a smirk.

              You can feel it in your gut, that you’ve stepped into something far deeper than you had thought. Maybe they’re just friends, but he doesn’t talk to his other friends like that. In fact, the only person he uses that voice on, that face on, is you.

              You notice the way his eyes light up as he speaks to her, tone light and comfortable. Flirty even. You’re in no way excluded from the group. You talk and laugh, maybe putting a little bit more bite in your teasing taunts – capably aided, abetted and initiated by Jennie – at Taehyung than is strictly required, but you can’t stop wondering what they are to each other. What if they’re actually dating but they don’t want anybody to know? What if they just hook up from time to time? What if they’re exes who never really got over each other? Each possibility leaves a sourer taste in your mouth than the previous. And does he owe you an explanation? Does that come under information necessary for the job?

              Conversation finally has to still as another old lady (does he keep them stored somewhere?) comes up to Taehyung to talk about a commission, and Jennie slips away with a hug. Your smile tightens around the edges as you notice the way his hands linger on her back for a beat longer than needed.

              You aren’t sure what you’re more annoyed about – him being so obvious about whatever the fuck he’s got going on with Jennie in public and risking exposure of your scam, or the other, unmentionable feelings you’re grappling with. Regardless of the reason, whatever lingering warmth you had in your manner prior to the offending interaction disappears, leaving you cold.

              His questions are met with monosyllables, and you only do as much touching as the job demands; sidling close when you notice somebody watching and pulling a bit away as soon as they leave. You know you’re being irrational. Childish, even. But you are, as the kids say, over it.

              The frigidness of your manner doesn’t go unnoticed by Taehyung, and nearly an hour later, as the crowd begins to dwindle, only leaving behind a few stragglers, he asks, “Are my photographs so bad?” His tone is light, playfully curious, but you know that he’s waiting for an explanation.

              You don’t meet his eyes, preferring to continue looking at a polished frame that the two of you are standing in front of. “Your photographs are fine.”

              “That’s what I’ve always wanted to hear.”

              You let out a short, noncommittal hum.

              When he speaks again, it’s more serious. “Is this one of the hissy fits that Jungkook said you were prone to?”

              You want to smack him upside on the head. And then smack Jungkook upside on the head.

              “I am not having a hissy fit.” You cast a cursory glance around the room, noting that there’s only the two of you, Hyejin and Jungkook remaining. It seems like as good a time as any to escape. “We’re done here?” you ask, making sure you aren’t leaving anything unfinished in the assignment for today.

              His eyebrows knit together as he slowly replies, “Yeah, I guess. Are you sure everything’s alright? Did I do something?”

              “I don’t know. Did you?”

              You don’t know where it comes from. All you know is that you’re dipping your foot in shark-infested waters and that you need to leave. You turn before he can reply, beginning to move away, but barely make it two steps before you feel a heavy palm close around your wrist, making you stop to a still and look back up at him.

              His fingers burn into your skin, but that’s nothing compared to the near warning in his eyes as he lowly utters, not letting go of your hand. “I don’t like mind games, Y/N. If you have something to say, say it.”

              The sudden U-turn in his manner throws you for a loop, but you refuse to back down, holding his gaze. The photographs around you seem alive, like spectators. You can feel Hyejin and Jungkook waiting to intervene should the need arise, but you can take care of yourself.

              If he notices the flash of danger in your pupils, he makes no comment. “If you have something to say,” you bite out, wrenching your hand free of his grip, “say it. I don’t appreciate being blindsided on a job. Why hire me if you already have a girlfriend?”

              You don’t give him a chance to reply. You know you’re running on an assumption, not to mention you’re being completely presumptuous in speaking like this to a client at all, but uttering the possibility out loud leaves you wanting to crawl out of your skin and get under three layers of blankets to fall asleep and not wake up. Wordlessly, Hyejin and Jungkook follow as you brusquely walk out the door, your shoulders squared. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice their hard glares at the man you’ve just left behind, and you feel a rush of gratitude towards them.    

              Maybe you’ve just fucked everything up spectacularly. Maybe you’ve thrown away a huge sum of money that you had been practically relying on for next month’s rent, and maybe you’ve succeeded in making yourself look like a damned fool. But for now, you just want to leave.

              Kim Taehyung: lisa and irene want to hang out with you sometime next weekend

              What for?

              Kim Taehyung: idk. to ‘get to know you’. they want to grab lunch.

                                          what do i tell them?

              Okay.

              Kim Taehyung: okay

              You’re dying to bring up Jennie. You know you should have vanquished that curiosity, but if you’re going to get answers from anywhere, you can bet it’s going to be from two of Taehyung’s closest childhood friends.

              You had gone home the night of the exhibition with your head in a tizzy. First came a sort of vindictiveness, born from the adrenaline of telling Taehyung exactly what you had thought, and the cruel hope that he had been well and truly hurt – or maybe you just wanted to be responsible for some fraction of his feelings. Next, you had faced a grim satisfaction, knowing that it was something that had to be pointed out for the two of you to continue being convincing. Perhaps the theatrics could have been avoided, but regardless, it had to be done. And then that point had led to the spiralling realisation that you might have just doomed yourself and this operation.

              The ride back had been silent. Hyejin and Jungkook were obviously curious to hear the parts of the story that they hadn’t been able to piece together, but they held their tongues, letting you go through all these stages and finally arrive at a heavy dread that settled at the pit of your stomach like a block of iron.

              Hyejin had to force feed you dinner, and then you were tucked into bed waiting for sleep to take you away. You hadn’t said a word since the altercation, and you were a bit worried about what would come out if you attempted to talk.

              Miraculously, thankfully, you had fallen asleep soon. You had never been more grateful for your classes that kept you busy through the week, leaving you too busy to think about anything or anyone else. The next fortnight had passed in a blur as you focused on your assignments and caught up on course material. On the first Wednesday, you had told Hyejin and Jungkook everything, and it sounded even worse as you narrated the incident out loud. They had been understandably annoyed, but kind enough to not utter the real question that you had been studiously avoiding. Why do you really care?

              Every night you would look at your phone, sometimes embarrassingly opening Taehyung’s chat. The longer you went with no contact from him, the more certain you were that the job was off. You knew that an apology was in order, that it was up to you to reach out and tell him that it’s none of your business, and that you shouldn’t have reacted that vitriolically; but there was still a part of you that felt wronged. You had been blindsided.

              There had been no polite enquiry about whether you were free for Friday game night with his friends or Sunday brunch with his parents, and you were too scared of rejection and too proud to bring it up first. At least this way, you could cling to the little fibre of hope that he was just busy, and wasn’t attending those events himself.

              So, when you had read Kim Taehyung on your notification panel at 9:15 PM on Tuesday night, the absolutely embarrassing whoosh of relief you let out was extremely justified. There was none of the teasing in his texts that you were so accustomed to, just short and to-the-point, but you were still in business, and that elation was more than enough to tide you over the conversation.

              You had been thrown off but touched at Lisa and Irene’s invitation, and had accepted with only momentary hesitation. Then Taehyung had told you about what he had been up to in the past two weeks so you wouldn’t seem clueless when you met them. You had forcefully stifled the pang of guilt as he confirmed that he had done both game night and brunch, explaining your absence with the excuse of college work. Still, you didn’t apologise.

              The two of you had navigated around the sticky bits, making no reference to the incident, but you could feel it hovering like a phantom, gliding over every overly polite and bitingly civil message that was sent.

              Which brings you to now, sitting opposite a slightly tipsy Lisa as Irene laughs at her next to you. You don’t know what you were expecting, but it definitely wasn’t to have fun, which is what the lunch has pleasantly turned out to be. Fun.

              Questions about your relationship with Taehyung have been kept to a minimum so far in the conversation, to your relief. You’ve spoken about classes and their jobs and it’s almost painfully easy to talk to them, enough for you to have to continually remind yourself that this will only last another month or so.

              The tipsier Lisa gets and the more talkative Irene becomes, the more the idea itches – you should ask them who Jennie is. You’ve opted to stay sober, knowing that it’s better to keep your wits about you so you don’t slip up, but hopefully the same can’t be said for them, and they won’t think too much of your curiosity. And if they do, you justify, this is a perfectly normal question to ask. Which girlfriend wouldn’t question their boyfriend’s excessive friendliness with somebody else?

              “Who is Jennie?”

              Immediately, all sound ceases. Silence settles over the table like a blanket. The three of you had been laughing about something inconsequential, but now, there isn’t a trace of that glee. The reaction only serves to pique your interest even more.

              Cautiously, Irene asks, “How do you know Jennie?”

              You debate lying, coming up with some vague story about how you happened to overhear somebody talking about her or something. But in the end, you decide to be honest.

              Trying to sound suave (but not completely uninterested; you’re still playing the jealousy card), you truthfully reply, “She was there at Tae’s exhibition.” After a significant pause, you continue, “They seemed…close.”

              Lisa sighs softly before replying, setting her glass down. “She’s our friend. She used to be in school with us.”

              “And?” you drift off, pushing a bit, needing this information that you’re so close to getting.

              “She dated Tae for nearly two years in high school,” Irene continues, taking over.

              Oh, you think. That’s not so bad. Just an ex, then. But she isn’t done.

              “They were one of those couples who everybody thought would be together forever. Always hanging out, holding hands in the corridors, all that mushy stuff. Then they ended up going to the same college and it became almost certain.”

              Your voice comes out small when you ask, “What happened?”

              “It wasn’t her thing,” Lisa shrugs. “People say that the only reason she went to college at all was to be with Tae, but that wasn’t enough. She dropped out after two years and moved to Paris to apprentice under sculptors there. She’s been living in Europe ever since, working the art circuit.”

              “And Tae?” you enquire, already dreading the answer.

              “There was a moment when we thought he’d follow her.”

              “I think there was a moment when he thought he’d follow her too,” Irene adds slowly, thoughtfully.

              Lisa nods, continuing, “But he had this dream about his own photography brand and he was still trying to convince his parents that it wasn’t a mistake. Jennie didn’t have that responsibility holding her back. She could afford to be a little rebellious and follow her heart across the ocean and never look back.”

              “And he never fully got over her,” you finish, remembering the look in his eyes as they spoke to each other at the exhibition.

              Your spiral into embarrassment, guilt and pity is prevented by Lisa who places a comforting palm on your hand atop the table. Her eyes are still a little hazy, but she sounds perfectly coherent and honest when she says, “Until he met you.”

              You’re about to scoff, say something about how it’s unlikely that a two-month long relationship can undo the heartbreak that’s lasted four years, but Irene interrupts in an all-knowing tone, like she’s perfectly aware of what you’re thinking. “We were all sceptical when Tae told us he was dating somebody, and had been dating somebody for a whole month. Since Jennie, he’s only had one-night stands and fuckbuddies, and occasionally a casual thing with someone that’s lasted a week or two, tops. We thought you were one of those inconsequential hook-ups.”

              “Thanks,” you drily reply. Irene grins and gives you a mock bow.

              “But then,” Lisa continues pointedly, almost daring you to interrupt with more snarky comments, “he said he wanted to introduce you to us, and we saw how the two of you acted during that party, like nobody else was around.”

              You wonder if you should have taken up theatre as a major, if you’ve managed to do such a good job of convincing them. Even now, you can feel the beginnings of a small smile on your face. But that’s not acting. Not really.

              “I saw you guys in the kitchen that night, you know?” Irene pipes up.

              She ignores your blush (either you deserve an Oscar, or you should start writing love songs) and continues. “It was intense. I even bumped into the door while entering and neither of you noticed. It’s like you both were in a bubble or something.”

              You open your mouth to say something, but Irene rushes to reassure you before you can continue. “Don’t worry, I left immediately. I didn’t want to see you two make out on the kitchen counter,” she shudders.

              You begin to refute that anything of the sort happened, but stop at the last second. Let them think you got nasty in the kitchen. It’ll only hold the lie in good stead.

              They’ve got their point across well, and you nearly believe what they’re saying, but something still niggles at you. “The way he was talking to her at the exhibition was so…intimate. I felt like I was intruding.”

              “That’s how we feel anytime we’re around you and Tae, too,” Lisa grins, making you smile gratefully in her direction. Gratitude for what? For believing in the sham? Or for kindling your tiny hopeful flame?

              On a more serious note, as if recognising that you still need the closure, Irene comforts, “You have to understand, they were together for years. Their breakup was one of necessity, and it completely wrecked him. And I know it seems like he should be over it by now, but she only shows up in the city twice a year and he must have been pleased that he timed her visit with his show.”

              “So, you don’t think there’s anything left there, romantically?” you doubtfully ask, hating how desperate you are for this reassurance and loathing even more the fact that it’s coming more from a personal space rather than a professional one.

              They’re slow in replying, but you appreciate that they’re replying at all.

              “If it’s really bothering you so much, you should talk about it to Tae,” Irene says, tone sensible.

              In contrast, Lisa continues with a consoling smile, “But from the outside, this honestly is the happiest we’ve seen him in a relationship in years. You’re good for him, and we hope he’s good for you, too.”

              You think about the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks, the constant fear of being caught, the stringent avoidance of your feelings and the continuous war between your head and your heart, not to mention the exhaustion of always being on guard.

              “Yeah,” you reply with a smile, trying not to burst into bitter laughter. “Yeah, he’s good for me.”

              Fake.

              The package arrives Tuesday night, and Hyejin brings it in when she enters the apartment. It’s got your name on it and she tosses it towards your cross-legged frame on the couch.

              It feels soft and plush, like there’s some sort of fabric inside, and there’s no return address. Before you can open it, full of curiosity, your phone vibrates with a new message.

              Kim Taehyung: did you get it?

              You don’t bother replying, now completely intrigued and too impatient to see what’s inside. You’ve had no contact with him since your lunch with Lisa and Irene three days ago, and you want to know what’s finally made him break that stony silence. Carefully, you tear the outer packaging, leaving you to stare at the contents with muted awe. A soft gasp escapes your lips unconsciously as you look down at the open parcel, gently pulling it out of the inner wrapping and delicately laying it on the coffee table in front of you.

              You hadn’t even noticed her re-entering the room, but behind you, Hyejin breathlessly utters exactly what you’re thinking. “What the fuck?”

              The dress is a dark midnight blue, floor length and elegant. The clinch at the waist gives way to a sheer layer that glimmers with every shift of the fabric, and the silver glittery material is just enough to make it look like stars against the darkness of the blue underneath. It looks expensive to behold, and it feels expensive under the pad of your thumb as you silently let your fingers run down the length of the dress, lightly skimming the cloth as if it’ll disappear into dust if you put too much force.

              You slowly turn around to face Hyejin, who’s mirroring your slack-jawed expression. She surveys you, just as you do her, and she’s the one to finally break the pregnant silence. “Is that from – “

              “Yes.”

              She quiets abruptly at your subdued interruption. The silence morphs into something significant, and both of you turn your attention to the offending article in front of you.

              A grimace and a shrug accompany her next words. “At least you still have the job.”

              You nod. There’s nothing else to say. At least you still have the job.

              You’ve seen expensive dresses before. It’s unavoidable with your clientele. But you’ve never been so scared of one. This isn’t even the most extravagant outfit you’ve come across or been required to wear, but you still handle it gingerly as you fold and repack it, keeping it away from your body like it’ll grow teeth and bite your hand off if you disrespect it.

              Hyejin goes to the kitchen with a shake of her head that you ignore as you pull your phone out and open Taehyung’s perfectly timed message. You know what this means. A gala, and you’ll have to see him again. You still haven’t apologised. He still hasn’t brought it up. You think for a moment about your reply before you begin to type.

              Just received it.

              Kim Taehyung: there are two events over the next three weeks. one this sunday evening and another next friday. you'll need to be there for at least one of them in that dress. your choice.

              Sunday is alright. What time will I have to be there?

              Kim Taehyung: i'll let you know

              Okay

              Kim Taehyung: and can you make it for game night this week?

                                          they're starting to get suspicious

              You’re going to kick yourself for this later, you just know it, but you only briefly hesitate before replying in the affirmative.

              When there’s no further response from his end, you shut your phone and let out a deep sigh as you lean your head back against the cushions. Lisa and Irene had said that they wouldn’t mention the Jennie conversation to Taehyung, not wanting to get too involved, and allowing you to broach the topic in your own time, but you aren’t sure when you’ll get around to doing it. On the one hand, this awkwardness and the cold shoulder you’re on the receiving end of that’s only thinly veiled as professionalism leaves a bitter taste on your tongue. You didn’t expect to be so affected, but you hadn’t realised just how much you enjoyed the easy banter and competition the two of you had. However, on the flip side, this does make it easier for you to maintain your distance; your hand had been forced, but that doesn’t change the fact that the last few weeks have been more like your previous assignments than the beginning of your time with him. Safe and known.

              But you owe an apology, and the last week has shown you that you’re a coward. In four days, you’ll be seeing him and his friends again. You’ll have to pretend nothing is wrong, that you’re winding down from weeks of intense college work, that you’ve missed your boyfriend terribly. But only one of those three things is true. You still don’t know where he is with the trust fund. You don’t want to know why you care. What you do know is that you should let it go, and don’t have the strength to.

              The dress seems to glare at you through its cover as you think yourself in circles.

              Taehyung is just another client.

              That has been your mantra for the entirety of your journey to his apartment, repeating periodically in your brain, intervals decreasing the closer you get to your destination. It reaches a feverish pitch now, ceaselessly looping as you stand outside his front door.

              Taehyung is just another client. It is perfectly fine if he hates me for dredging up something painful or for being presumptuous. My job is to pretend to be his girlfriend and get paid for it, not to earn his favour or approval.

              You’re on time this evening, slightly early even, unlike the previous game night where you were only present for half the duration. You almost wish you could have been late today as well, to have the security of a crowd of people to hide behind, but instinctively, you know you’re on thin ice. You don’t want to jeopardise this any further. You’ll do what you’re being paid to do. You still haven’t apologised.

              From behind, you hear the sound of footsteps on the staircases that you had just climbed up. Not wanting to be caught nervously hovering outside your boyfriend’s apartment by somebody who could possibly be your boyfriend’s friend, you fill your lungs with air and knock on the door.

              “Hey,” Taehyung says, stopping short when he sees that it’s you. “I thought you were the pizza.”

              He doesn’t move aside, and instead opts to just silently watch you. He’s dressed comfortable again, in a hoodie and shorts this time, and the sight of him after so long nearly knocks the wind out of your body.

              Shrugging with a nonchalance you don’t feel, you reply, “Sorry to disappoint.” In your head, the chanting is so rapid that the words are tripping over themselves in an effort to keep you grounded.

              “We need to talk,” he says, either not noticing or not caring how you seize up at his words.

              You pull yourself together and give him a nod in agreement. Wordlessly, he steps aside to let you into the house. Not a second before you move into the living room, he moves to hold your startled hand. Loose, impersonal. Cold.

              Fake.

              Lisa and Yoongi are the only ones who’ve reached so far, and along with Jimin, they raise their hands in lazy greeting from their perches on the couch and the floor as they continue to watch the sitcom playing on the television. You respond in like, returning Lisa’s friendly smile with a genuine one of your own. Taehyung doesn’t stop, though. Once the greetings are over, he tugs you with little explanation towards the interior of the house.

              When the others look at him with questioning expressions, a cheeky grin makes an appearance on his face as he replies, “What? I missed my girlfriend. I want some alone time.”

              Even the uncertainty of the upcoming conversation and the discomfort at how business-like the evening has been so far aren’t enough for the blush on your neck to hide itself. Distantly, as Jimin waggles his eyebrows and Lisa smiles at you knowingly, you wonder if you should ask him if he’s interested in a career in fake dating. He could give you a run for your money.

              You’re quick to sober up as he leads you to what you think is his room, shutting the door and dulling the sounds of chatter and the television. He drops your hand instantly, and moves to stand to the side near his table, letting you linger hesitantly somewhere between the wall and the bed. The room is begging to be analysed and dissected. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice a bookshelf that you’re dying to inspect and the bedside table has a pair of glasses that you’ve never seen him wear. But now isn’t the time, and you don’t have the right. Maybe it will never be the time, and you’ll never have the right; you’re about to find out.

              You let him scrutinise you, knowing that you deserve the sharp look in his eyes. He’s going out on a limb even letting you continue working on this. You fight to not squirm under his steely gaze, your fingers itching to fidget and your feet begging to shift their weight. Finally, he opens his mouth, and what comes out makes the repetition in your head grind to a screeching halt.

              “My parents love you.”

              “Oh?” you shortly let out. The surprise is clear on your face.

              “They think you’re good for me.”

              Feeling like a broken record, you repeat, “Oh?”

              His expression is closed but keen as he asks significantly, “Are you?”

              The breath is nearly knocked out of your lungs with a whoosh. He’s giving you a chance to end this if he thinks you can’t reel it in. Irritation and admiration war for dominance in you. It’s true that you threw a wildcard at him the last time you had met, but does he have to treat you like a child? But this isn’t the time for righteous anger, or for praise. He’s looking for honesty. You’ll give it to him.

              “Yes.”

              Just like that, he nods shortly before moving around you to open the door. You want to chalk that up to a job well done, want to be out of the stifling intensity of this room and your position so close to his bed, but before you can stop yourself, you blurt out, “Sorry about what happened with Jennie.”

              At the exhibition. Four years ago.

              His fingers still on the door knob. Maybe he knows that you know. The longer the silence drags, the more you believe that he does. Your suspicion is confirmed as he replies without turning to face you. “Thank you. So was I.”

              You continue, rushing before he can open the door. “Will your feelings for her be a liability in this arrangement? The exhibition was a close call.” The words cause a pang when you say them out loud, a bloody knife twisting somewhere near your chest, but you ignore it. Maybe you’re entitled to some righteous anger.

              That one makes him turn around. You’re prepared for his anger and hostility, but not the grim honesty in his tone as he answers, eyes trained on you. “I’m sorry if I worried you about our cover being blown. There’s nothing going on between me and Jennie, but we were close and it’s difficult to let that friendship go. It won’t be an issue.”

               It’s almost more than you could have asked for, and it takes effort to school your expression into one of cool cognisance as you nod once at him, at direct odds with the sheer mind-numbing relief you feel at hearing him utter those words. You expect him to turn around and open the door at that, but the ensuing quietness in the room prolongs as he continues to survey you. Not with the hard, confrontational look that he had earlier, but a curious tilt of his head as his eyebrows furrow and his lips purse in thought.

              The chant in your head returns but for wildly different reasons.

              “Is there something on my face?” you concernedly ask.

              He replies with an entirely unrelated question of his own. “Am I the most interesting client you’ve ever had?”

              You don’t know the half of it.

              It pleases you that you’re back on solid ground with him, that he’s talking to you again. It annoys you that you’re pleased. “Definitely the most exhausting.”

              “Have you ever lashed out at any of your previous customers about their exes?”

              “None of my previous customers have ever flirted with their exes in front of me in the middle of a job before,” you shoot back.

              There’s no heat in either of your words, though, despite the open animus in the contents of the dialogue. Slowly, the side of his lip begins to quirk up and you mirror him. A weight feels like it’s been lifted off your shoulders as he finally smiles – one of those big, boxy grins that you’ve become so accustomed to seeing him wear. You marvel at how light you feel after weeks of having your heart in your mouth and holding your guilt up like a permanent umbrella over your head.

              Just to confirm, you ask one last time. “So, we’re good?”

              He nods affirmatively. “We’re good. Now mess your hair up a bit so it looks like we made out.”

              Obediently, ignoring the swoop of your stomach at his words, you turn towards the full-length mirror on your right and run your hand through your hair a couple of times, making it look uncombed. Behind you, Taehyung steps into frame, clutching at random fabric on his hoodie and making it look rumpled.

              You meet his eyes in the reflection and he grins at you, tousling his hair. “Thanks for the dress, by the way. It’s beautiful.”

              “You can keep it if you’d like,” he easily offers, waiting for you to reach his side so he can open the door. “Now look a little dazed, will you? I have a reputation of being quite the kisser.”

              Before you can even process what you’re saying, you reply, “So do I.”

              He can’t hear the clamour of voices in your head, the chant all in the wrong order, jumbled in your mortification. If he could, he wouldn’t have chuckled, low and dangerous, before squeezing your palm in his and pushing the door open.

              There’s a shift. You can feel it in the relaxed drop of your shoulders, Hyejin notices it the moment you greet her in the morning, and even Jungkook can tell from the soft humming under your breath.

              “What are you smiling about?” he suspiciously asks as he slips into the library chair opposite you, always one to start a conversation where silence is valued.

              “Am I not allowed to smile?” you retort. But you still tone it down a notch, slipping a bit in your seat so you can continue your assignment on your laptop without your transparent facial expressions being scrutinised.

              Jungkook is nothing if not persistent, though. Ignoring your pointed look at the ‘MAINTAIN SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY’ poster on one of the bookshelves surrounding your table, he continues, “Last I heard, you were all mopey about that asshole’s dress.”

              “I thought he was a ‘cool dude’?” you ask, fingers up in air quotes.

              Sniffing pompously, he replies, “That was before he decided to screw you over. I’d take him out in a heartbeat now.”

              Jungkook has the disposition of somebody who would rather send a strongly worded email and end it with ‘Yours respectfully’, but you’re touched by his staunch support nonetheless and tell him as much.

              You had thought Hyejin wasn’t paying attention to the conversation happening next to her, but she proves you wrong. “He isn’t an asshole anymore. He’s a friend.” The derision is clear in her voice, and you’ll readily admit that you deserve it.

              Jungkook’s eyebrows rise so high, they brush against his fringe. “What happened last night?”

              “I apologised. He apologised. We’re good,” you shrug, letting them fill in the words you haven’t said.

              It’s an over simplified version, and the only one you’re willing to give them. ‘Friend’ is the title you came up with last night as you watched him whine in consternation at landing on Jimin’s property for the third time on the Monopoly board. It’s a safe compromise, in between acquaintance and…anything else. You know you’re treading on a fine line here, continuing to get so comfortable with him, giving him a clepe so personal when you’re going to be out of his life in the next six weeks or so, but you’ve been flying high at the relief of having him back. In whatever capacity.

              Hyejin narrows her eyes at you, disapproval writ large on her face. “Remember the point.”

              You wave her concerns away. Can’t you have one day? “Yes, it’s the money. I remember.”

              “Will you stick around after the three months if he doesn’t get the trust fund by then?” Jungkook is shrewd. Shrewder than you give him credit for.

              You refuse to look either of them in the eye as you evasively say, “He’ll get it.”

              Hyejin’s sigh is more sympathetic than disappointed. “I hope you’re prepared to turn up the charm to a hundred tonight at the gala. Mr. Kim is hardly easy, if the exhibition showed anything.”

              There are many things you regret about the night of the exhibition. The idea of inviting his parents is not one of them. You had asked Taehyung last night about where they stood on the issue, if there had been any development. He seemed optimistic, more hopeful than you had ever seen him. The brunch you had skipped was the most interactive one since he had graduated from college, and Mr. Kim hadn’t completely flipped out when Taehyung’s job was brought up in conversation. It was heartening to hear, and you’re almost excited about the event tonight, to have a chance to be back on familiar territory.

              Kim Taehyung was made to be an heir. It is of no matter that he does not want to, or that he has other ambitions. Pride and elegance are stitched into his spine, and the invisible threads holding together his expensive three-piece suit that is stretched across his shoulders are spun in powerful gold. You know that he risks irking his parents further by not engaging with their business partners and distant relatives, but you had thought he’d be going into this half-hearted, with the weight of unfulfilled expectation on his back and a rude retort to anybody who dares to so much as breathe a sly, cutting remark about his career choices. As the night progresses, you see just how sorely mistaken you had been.

              “Oh, of course I remember your daughter, Mrs. Lee. I was hoping to catch up with her tonight. Is she around?”

              Mrs. Lee simpers in second hand shyness as she tells the man on your arm that her daughter is out of the country at the moment, but she’d absolutely love for them to meet when she’s back.

              You clear your throat with a polite smile, your teeth flashing. Best not to forget that you’re right here. Taehyung chuckles next to you, his other hand that your arm isn’t wound around coming up to conspicuously rest on your fingers tucked in the crook of his elbow. “My girlfriend and I would love that, Mrs. Lee. Have a good evening.”

              Even with a slight that obvious, Taehyung manages to come off as charming, his back straight and chin up as the two of you escape from the twelfth person who’s come to proposition him on behalf of their offspring this night. His palm is warm as it continues to rest over your hand. Out of the corner of your eye, in between the mingling crowd, you catch a flash of an approving smile on Mrs. Kim’s face. You shuffle closer.

              “Didn’t know you were such a hot commodity,” you mutter, even as you continue sporting a pleasant smile on your face as the two of you aimlessly amble through the crowd that’s gathered on the ground floor of the same house where you had been introduced to Taehyung’s friends for the first time what feels like years ago. You’re confident in the knowledge that you won’t be left alone and in peace for too long before another hopeful approaches.

              “Jealous?”

              “Shocked,” you correct immediately, trying not to smile too fondly at the low, appreciative laugh he lets out.

              “Mr. Kim! It’s been far too long. How is business?”

              The person who’s approached is weasel-like, and his nasal voice makes you want to throw a punch at him. But that might also be because of the obvious disdain in his tone as he says the last word. You’d rather not examine the reason for your defensiveness.

              Taehyung, on the other hand, has the patience of a saint, the experienced upbringing of an heir to an empire and the confidence of a man who’s just been solicited twelve times in the last hour. His easy grin doesn’t falter as he smoothly sidesteps, “Please, call me Taehyung. Mr. Kim is my father.”

              “Of course,” the man concedes, manner greasy and mockingly accommodating, before he shifts his attention to you. “And who might this be?”

              You move your palm to shake his hand, refraining from crushing his fingers. “Y/N. I’m Taehyung’s girlfriend.”

              “How is your wife, Mr. Park? I don’t think I’ve seen her this evening.”

              The man turns ashen, making you suspect that Taehyung’s hit a nerve with the question. He frowns and chidingly says, “Don’t embarrass me, boy. It is an open secret that we have...separated.”

              “I had absolutely no idea,” Taehyung replies, exaggerating regret in his voice. The hard glint in his eye makes you certain that he had all the idea in the world. “I’ve been a bit occupied with my business. I find it tiresome to keep up with these matters. Have a lovely evening.”

              And just like that, another critic cut down to size, you and Taehyung serenely glide away, leaving behind a sputtering victim. His diplomacy is unmistakably polite, veiled behind syrupy sweet words and a smile that can charm the hardest of people, but it’s no less biting.

              “His wife left him a month ago,” he explains softly when you look up at him with what you hope is more curiosity than impression. “All their shares in the company belonged to her, and he’s been ass-kissing for retribution ever since then.”

              Your eyebrow cocks up, surprise evident in your gaze. “I thought you didn’t care about what happened to the company.”

              “I don’t,” he winks. “I just like gossip.”

              His hair is black tonight per the request of his parents, probably dyed during the day since you had seen him just twenty-four hours ago with blue locks. With the dark navy suit and the confident tilt of his chin, he makes for an imposing figure. It’s no wonder that people seem to physically shrink out of the way when he walks past, cutting a path in the crowd. He’s a wildcard in the glittering room, and the guests seem to be equally drawn to him like a moth to a flame and wary of him like a cat to water. But uncertainty is nothing in the face of curiosity, and people continue to approach throughout the evening; if not for nothing else, just to see.

              You stand by his side the entire time, some part of him constantly in contact you; a palm on the back, a hand curled around fingers, elbows interlocked in silent support. You can feel the weight of speculative gazes on the two of you together, and you work your damnedest to seem natural. You smile and laugh and look at him adoringly, all the while wondering whether it seems so easy because you’ve just had a lot of practice or because you hardly have to put in any effort at all.

              He makes it so easy to believe that this is all real, that you could actually be attending this event as his legitimate plus one instead of being the admittedly costly key to his trust fund. You watch as Hyejin’s cautionary words are proved time and again right in front of your eyes, as he expertly wields his charismatic looks and easy confidence to leave the nicer conversation partners with hearts in their eyes, and to humble, humiliate and give a harsh reality check to the not-so-nice ones; all with a wide smile on his face and single pointed attention in his gaze. That’s how he gets them, and maybe that’s how he got you too, as much as you don’t want to admit it.

              “You want to take a break?”

              “I wouldn’t be opposed,” you carefully reply. “Will it be weird for us to walk out in the middle, though?”

              “Oh, absolutely.” His mischievous grin shows that he doesn’t care. “Let them think we’re sneaking out together.”

              The implication isn’t lost on you, but you can feel looks in your direction, prickling at your skin through your dress, as if waiting to catch you slipping up. You could do with a breather.

              At your confirmation, Taehyung discreetly leads you away from the centre of the room, towards the walls that are less crowded. Once he can tell that everybody who’s watching has turned back to their conversations, satisfied that there’s nothing of note to gossip and get excited about, he guides you out of the room. Not in the direction of the front entrance like you were expecting, and not even to the empty staircases that would have left you both in the open to be gawked at, but through a small door to the side leading to a dimly lit corridor that ends in what looks like the kitchen.

              You make to sit down on one of the chairs on the side, but he tightens his grip on your hand. When you look up at him questioningly, he puts a finger to his mouth and softly says with a shake of his head. “Not here. They’ll find us when they come in for more appetisers.”

              His palm burns in yours as you let him pull you further. It’s almost deafeningly quiet in the rest of the house, far away from the crowded room you’ve just left, and lighting is sparse. It only gets darker as he moves to the corner of the kitchen and guides you through another door that opens into what you surmise is a wine cellar.

              The room is small – smaller than all the others you’ve seen so far. It houses tall racks arranged in two columns filled with bottles, and the air smells a bit sweet and musty. Through the open door, you hear the sound of rapid footsteps approaching, likely waiters coming to the kitchen like Taehyung had predicted. On impulse, you nudge the door closed behind you. The soft click suddenly cuts out all the lights that had been filtering in from the adjacent room, and the ensuing darkness is only broken by two dull yellow bulbs hanging overhead.

              The sharp angles of Taehyung’s face are suddenly thrown into stark definition, and you hurriedly slip your palm out of his, instead opting to turn towards the column of shelves to the side closest to you, away from him, and attempt to engross yourself in the labels on the bottles at your eye level. He makes no remark, and the shuffle of his soft footsteps indicates that he’s doing the same on the other side. The only sound you can is the two of you breathing, and the thump of your heart beat.

              This is a different kind of awkwardness. Not the grim uncertainty before the talk last night, not the anticipatory shyness you had felt the first few times you had met him, not the crisp stubbornness you had employed at the exhibition and not the cool avoidance you had had to deal with for the two weeks you hadn’t spoken to each other. This awkwardness is associated with racing hearts and the hyperawareness of the distance between the two of you, fully caged behind fearful longing, overthinking and necessarily crushed hope.

              Your fingers twitch at your sides as your eyes unseeingly skim past labels, and then come up to find the other hand, just so you have something to hold and to keep steady. The silence stretches. You finish the first shelf in the column, imbibing nothing, and move to the one behind it. His footsteps stay away from you. You nearly jump when you hear the clink of a bottle being lifted off a rack, and by the time it’s set back down, you’ve scurried to the end of this shelf too.

              He hums something unintelligible, his voice low and soothing. It does nothing to ease the blood pounding in your ears, and only makes you wring your hands further. You almost wish you were back out there, in the middle of all the people. At least you’re lying to others then, which is infinitely easier than lying to yourself, when your body insists on throwing every proof of your misguided attachment in front of you like an unavoidable grenade.

              His voice is distant when he remarks, “I wish we had a bottle opener in here,” but it hits you like he’s standing right behind your frame and whispering the words in your ear, making you feel the timbre of his casual tone deep in your bones. When you reply with an acknowledging ‘Yeah’, you have to pinch your wrist to keep your voice steady and grounded.

              You wind in and out shelves, keeping an eye out so you don’t end up running into Taehyung in the middle of both columns, until you reach the second last one. You pause, pulling yourself out of your incoherent thoughts and forcing yourself to listen, searching for his footsteps. You find them getting louder. He’s coming towards you.

              In a flash, you move towards the wall, away from the direction in which he’s walking, intent on cutting around another shelf and emerging in the middle so you won’t be caught, but the moment you turn the corner, you stop short.

              He stands there, in between both columns of shelves, facing you with one hand casually tucked in his pocket and the other with the jacket of his suit draped over his forearm. The checked pocket square glares at you from its position on his waistcoat. Almost comically, one of the two bulbs hangs just a bit away from the top of his head, making him look like he’s under a spotlight, demanding your attention. As if anything could distract you right now.

              He looks you up and down. With a start, you realise that your hands are still clutching each other, and you immediately detach them, letting them hand by your sides once again. Your purse swings a little in the sudden jostling. It’s the first time you’ve slipped up in front of him, given him an indication of something other than the calm confidence you project, and it leaves you feeling awfully exposed despite the shadows that you’re thrown under.

              You say nothing, but you make sure your face is closed and back to the smooth mask of professionalism. It’s never been more difficult.

              He cocks his head to the side, tongue working his cheek before he grins – just a flash of teeth, tugging at your firmly rooted frame, and then he speaks. “You look nice in the dress.”

              “Thank you. It was a good choice.” Your voice comes out miraculously steady. Maybe your body hasn’t completely given up on you after all. “We should go back,” you suggest.

              “We should,” he nods in agreement. He doesn’t move. Neither do you.

              You’re glad for the terrible lighting. It means he can’t read your eyes. But luck is a double-edged sword; you can’t read him either. Why is he standing there, unmoving, almost adamantly keeping his gaze trained on you? What could he possibly gain by sending your heart into near palpitation?

              The beginnings of footsteps start filtering into the edge of your consciousness; first slowly, and then all in a rush, jolting you from all the feeling you’re trying in vain to avoid. You see a vivid flash of agitation in Taehyung’s face at the same moment you realise that somebody is about to open the cellar door, poised to discover the nearly disgraced heir to the hosts’ company far away from where he’s supposed to be, when he’s expected to socialise in the middle of a throng of equally admiring and suspicious relatives and business partners to please his parents who need to be kept happy and unaware of his escape. The gravity of the situation is not lost on either of you.

              Whatever tension was there in the air earlier snaps as both of you jump into action, swiftly making your way to the back of the room, intent on getting behind the last shelf. His breath echoes in your ears, his body so close to yours as you rapidly walk along the wall, keeping to the shadows. The door begins to creak.

              There’s hardly any space between the shelf and the back of the room, and if this were two minutes ago, you would have hightailed it out of there, unwilling to be cloistered in such close quarters with this man for fear of betraying your emotions, but you hardly have time to think about the repercussions, invested as you are in being hidden as soon as possible.

              You end up with your back against the shelf, the glass of the bottles cold against your body even through your dress, and your front cringing away from Taehyung’s chest. As the door finally opens in the front of the room, you fight to keep your breathing steady, knowing that he can detect any hitch because of how close the two of you are pressed and with your face directly at level with the skin of his neck. The slow puff of air in and out of his nose lightly hits the top of your head. Your hands are balled into fists, unwilling to unfurl for fear of reaching out to the man in front of you. You resolutely refuse to look up.

              Sound filters in from the kitchen as somebody calls out to the person who has entered the room. “Make it quick, will you? Just bring anything.”

              Inside, the entrant’s voice echoes as he irately replies. “Don’t rush me! I’m not going to risk getting fired because I served the wrong wine.”

              You hold your breath as he walks further into the room. In front of you, Taehyung is still as a rock. The footsteps get louder and you pray to the universe that they stop before reaching the back.

              The man must be around six rows away from you now, picking up and replacing bottles periodically, humming in a considering or dismissive manner occasionally. You’re inclined to agree with the person in the kitchen. Just take anything.

              As if you had summoned her, you hear a second pair of footsteps entering the cellar, much to your chagrin. Unable to stop yourself, you roll your eyes in exasperation at the turn of events. You want nothing more than to be out of here. From above, you hear an amused huff. You can’t stop yourself from tilting your neck back so you can see Taehyung’s face, and you find him already looking back at you. Even in the shadows, the ever-present twinkle in his eyes is visible, lips curled in mirth at your annoyance. You wish you could, but you can’t look away.

              “What’s taking you so long?” the woman says, impatience mirroring your own.

              “I’m almost done, don’t interrupt – “

              “Just take one, it doesn’t matter.”

              “I will not just take one. Wait.”

              You feel equal parts relief and respect as the woman finally, finally, says, “Fine, then I’ll take one. Here, look? Done. Now stop wasting time.” The man grumbles something not entirely nice and you hear bottles being replaced before footsteps move away.

              But you make the mistake of celebrating too early, letting out the breath that you had been holding before you hear the door close. In the ensuing slouch of your frame, your back presses against the bottles you had been resting on, and you hear them shift. With how you’re already stubbornly angled away from Taehyung’s body, that little movement is all it takes for you to lose your balance, and you’re suspended on your heels for an endless second with panic writ large on your face. The door to the cellar still hasn’t closed, you know they haven’t left, and you think this is it. You’re going to knock down a shelf, and then that shelf will knock down the other and it’ll keep going until the floor is full of broken bottles and spilt wine, leaving you and Taehyung exposed.

              Your worst-case scenario never plays out, because the next thing you know, you’re pressed against a firm chest with an arm around your waist holding you tight and steadying you. Your hands instinctively wrap around your rescuer, and in all the excitement, you let out a small squeak.

              It sounds like a marching band in the quietness of the room.

              “Did you hear something?”

              The arm around your waist tightens as you hear one of the servers turn. They sound far away, like they were on the threshold of the door when you fucked up. So close, yet so far.

              Taehyung smells like roses.

              You prepare yourself for the worst, cursing at your pre-emptive relief as the footsteps get closer, when the other server says, “Now you’re just stalling.”

              Your thoughts are running a mile a minute. All the hand holding, all the arms-over-shoulders – they all tame in comparison to this. They’re all casual, for show, to keep up the ruse. But this? With the smell of his perfume filling your senses and his thighs pressed to yours, so close that you can feel the rise and fall of his chest with each worried breath and the pounding of his heart in a rhythm that mimics your own? This is far more intimate and personal. And dangerous.

              The footsteps stop, and an insistent voice pleads, “No, I swear. I heard something.”

              “It was probably a rat. We’ve wasted enough time, come on.”

              This time, you don’t relax until the door closes and their arguing voices fade, away from the cellar, away from the kitchen. You don’t let go of Taehyung’s body until you can hear nothing but the sound of your own too careful breathing, his arm still solid around you. You’re about to move, when you make the mistake of looking up.

              You feel a sense of déjà vu as you see him facing down, eyes boring holes into yours. In slow motion, as if you’re outside looking in, you notice his free hand rising, the jacket crumpling into the crook of his elbow as his fingers stop bare inches away from your cheek. You can feel the heat of his palm on your face as it hovers. He’s no longer amused; only a curious uncertainty mars his expression. It looks dreadfully out of place compared to his usually sure, easy expression. You’re stock still.

              When his fingers make contact with your skin, the spell breaks.

              You jerk away from him, swiftly pulling out of the suddenly stifling circle of his arms and sidling out of the tiny space as fast as you can. You don’t look back until you reach the end of the shelf, stood in the middle of the columns and willing yourself to calm down. Your cheek burns where his fingers made split second contact, and your heart is sure to beat out of your chest, but you force yourself to think. Logic will make things easier. You remember the job, you remember the money, you remember Hyejin’s words and put everything else on the backburner.

              When you turn around, your mask is back on and so is his.

              Taehyung doesn’t meet your eyes when he says, voice rough, “Sorry.”

              “Okay. We should go back.”

              There’s no resistance this time. You look away as he tugs his jacket back on, smoothing the lapels. When you walk out of the cellar back to the party, side by side, both of you keep your distance.

               Kim Taehyung: my parents wanted to know if you’d be able to make it for brunch next week

              “I need an excuse.”

              “Good morning to you too,” Hyejin dryly replies, signalling you to continue as she takes another sip of her coffee.

              You take the seat across from her on the table, your feet erratically tapping on the floor below and your fingers fidgeting as they fold together on the surface in front of you. “Yes, very good morning. If one were to require a mildly fabricated reason to skip out on an engagement, what would you suggest they do?”

              She ignores your question, instead opting to fix you with a look that’s equal parts concerned and exasperated. “Have you been getting enough sleep?”

              You wave her off, but still attempt to discreetly move your face so it isn’t in the direct path of the morning sunlight streaming in through the window, hoping she won’t notice the tiredness in your eyes. How are you supposed to tell her that in the last three days, you’ve cumulatively slept for fourteen hours?

              Her eyes narrow a fraction at your clear disregard for her well-placed worry, but she doesn’t push, probably recognising that you don’t want to talk about whatever has been bothering you now. “What do you need an excuse for? What did you do?”

              “What makes you think I did anything?” you ask, trying to inflect offense. It’s half-hearted to your own ears. Didn’t you do something? Or almost do something?

              You get a lazy, unimpressed eyebrow lift and a silent sip of coffee in response.

              Sighing softly, you amend, “Okay, fine. Maybe something was done by one of the parties involved.” At her prodding look, you evasively continue, “That may or may not give some cause for thought.”

              “More thought that you’ve given it holed up in your room for the last four days without talking to anybody?”

              You’re about to deny her allegation, indignantly reply that you haven’t been holed up, but the words stop short at the tip of your tongue. Isn’t this the longest conversation you’ve had with her since you came back that evening?

              “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to avoid you,” you reply in lieu of a direct answer. “I’ve just been busy.”

              “Thinking.”

              “Yes, thinking.” There’s no sense in refuting it.

              The two of you survey each other silently across the table. Your nervous energy has long since evaporated, leaving you tired and slumped in your chair, and Hyejin’s cup is now empty, all her attention on you. The weight of your phone burns in your pocket.

              “I had to talk Jungkook out of an intervention,” she begins. “He was ready to do all your assignments for you.”

              “What did you say?” Both you and Hyejin know that you needed those submissions to distract yourself.

              “I told him he could do mine instead. He refused.”

              Your lips quirk up on the side unbidden, and she mirrors your expression with a small smile. “Is this an intervention?” you ask, suddenly suspicious.

              “Depends. Is it working?”

              “I don’t know. I’m tired.”

              “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, the closest to invasive she’s ever been. So it is an intervention.

              There’s no sense in stalling anymore. "Say, hypothetically, if something happened between certain persons involved, and it wasn’t supposed to happen – “

              “Could you be just a little bit vaguer? I don’t think this explanation is confusing enough.”

              You huff and shoot her with a reproachful look, letting her know that you don’t appreciate her sarcasm. But still, it serves to nudge you a little closer to coherence as you restart. “At the gala, there was a moment.”

              Confused, she asks, “A moment of what?”

              This is it. You take a deep breath and then say, “A moment where he and I did something.”

              “Did what? You’re talking in circles, get to the point.”

              “There was an almost-kiss!” you blurt out, sudden desperation lacing your words, watching as Hyejin’s eyes widen before settling into something wary.

              “Was it because somebody was watching, to not blow your cover?” she asks.

              “No,” you mutter softly, voice barely over a whisper. Still, it seems to echo in the stillness of the room. “We were alone in his wine cellar.”

              At Hyejin’s baffled expression, you relate the entire sordid tale. You begin at the full, unabridged conversation in his room and then move to the fateful night, finally ending by pulling up the message you had received an hour ago, the first instance of contact from Taehyung in four days, and showing it to her. She stares at the screen, stunned into momentary silence as you lean back in your chair, feeling lighter after finally letting go of everything you’ve been holding onto.

              “It’s like the both of you have the same, twisted understanding of client boundaries,” she mutters, nearly in awe.

              “I know,” you whine, relieved that somebody else is there to share the burden of the stupidity now. “It would have been so much easier if he just hadn’t done anything. Then I could have happily continued agonising over whatever feelings I had and then got rid of them next month, but no. He just had to go and pull something this idiotic.” You end your rant with a disgusted click of your tongue before letting your head fall on the table in front of you in a gesture of annoyed helplessness.

              “So we’re admitting you had feelings now?” she asks, her voice coming through muffled through the barrier of your arms resting on the table and cocooning your head.

              You come up for a second, just to give her a sour look. “We have bigger fish to fry, Hyejin. That ship has sailed.”

              “You know…” she starts, and you hear the soft thump of your phone being set back down on the wood somewhere near your head. “It isn’t so big a deal that you can’t finish the job. There’s just a month left, like you said.”

               You come up for good this time. “Were you listening at all? How on earth can I face him again after that? It’ll be so awkward.”

              “Or romantic.”

              You look at her like she’s grown a second head, waiting for her to continue. She fixes you with a significant expression, making sure you aren’t about to immediately interrupt and then explains, “You’re both pining. Won’t that come across to people as cute? All the lingering touches and unsaid words and secret smiles?”

              You sputter at her teasing, rushing to indignantly clarify, “There are no lingering touches and all that other crap. I am a professional, I’ll have you know.”

              “Then go be a professional. Use whatever happened to your advantage. It’s just a matter of covering up the awkwardness with a little acting. Or maybe chip away at the acting, since you’re so comfortable now with feeling things.”

              You think it over, letting the words crystallise and ignoring the internal cringe at the way she had phrased the last part. She isn’t wrong. “And what about him?”

              The fact that you’ve stolidly refrained from saying his name throughout the conversation doesn’t evade either of you, but she doesn’t push it. “Don’t bring it up unless he does. Makes it a little mysterious.”

              “You’re having far too much fun with this,” you grouse. She doesn’t even bother to deny your accusation, only wordlessly sliding your phone closer to you so you can reply to the offending message before you overthink it to death for another four days.

              I’ll be there.

              It’s a bracelet this time – platinum chain links interspersed with small gold stars that twinkle when the sunlight hits them just right.

              Taehyung doesn’t look at you, paying too much attention to the nearly empty road in front of the car. You fiddle with the new jewellery on your wrist that had been waiting for you in the passenger seat when you entered. You knew what you had to do. There was no reason for conversation other than short and conspicuously unbothered greetings.

              He pulls into the familiar driveway, parks in the same spot as he had last time, and the two of you walk to the front door in silence. No wine this time, just a bouquet of flowers that he cradles in the crook of his elbow. He rings the doorbell and then hesitantly lets his hand drop against yours. Your cheek burns at the previous time you had skin to skin contact. Unceremoniously, you tangle your fingers with his. How can something feel so familiar, but so foreign?

              Mr. Kim opens the door this time, greeting the two of you far more politely than he had previously. He grunts in thanks for the flowers that his son hands over and leads the two of you into the dining room. No waterfall to distract you this time.

              The moment you’re both seated and not a second later, Taehyung lets go of your hand, his fingers grazing your palm as they pull away. You’re horrified to hear Hyejin’s voice in your head teasing ‘lingering touches’.

              You aren’t sure what went down in the two brunches you had missed, but there’s a marked difference in the quality of interaction between the Kims. And today, they make a conscious effort to include you. Taehyung hadn’t been joking when he said that his parents like you.

              There are minimal signs of confrontation for you to de-escalate this time, save for the occasions when Mr. Kim passingly but significantly mentions the trials and tribulations of finding somebody else to take over the company when he retires. Years of misunderstanding and a lack of mature interaction can’t be eroded in a few months.

              Eventually, with no biting comments to distract them this time, they shift their focus to you. At least with this, you’re on solid ground. You answer questions about your classes and your plans after college. You’re touched when they try to invite you over to their place for Christmas if you aren’t going back home, but you’re quick to politely decline. You and Taehyung will be breaking up right about then.

              This is the easy part. The eating and the drinking and the answering of rehearsed questions and the gracious laughter as they say something they think is funny. What unsettles you is the tiny flashes in Taehyung’s expression, cracks in his smooth mask. You see it out of the corner of your eye as you discuss the bracelet with Mrs. Kim, your voice betraying your genuine fondness; but for once, you don’t try to hide it. Just as you’re leaning back in your seat, you catch sight of the look in Taehyung’s face that’s half turned to you – unreserved, open, and awfully reminiscent of the stillness it had held when his arm was tight around your body and his hand was hovering next to your cheek.

              It makes a reappearance as you’re talking up the garden to Mr. Kim, a tiny grin joining the already too sweet picture as you gush over fertiliser compositions that you both know you couldn’t really care less about. By the time you notice it again, as you’re passing the container filled with lemon squares to him per his request, your nerves are fraught with the strain of the knowledge that you’re being watched, and that you’re being watched like that. He’s quick to wipe it from his face when he sees that you’ve realised, and it smacks you upside on the head that he doesn’t want you to know. Going by the momentary quizzical flash that passes like a swift shadow across his face, maybe he hadn’t known either.

              Secret smiles.

              You need to get out of here right now.

              Mercifully, it doesn’t take long for the farewells. There’s decidedly less animosity in the family compared to what it was like previously, and you hope that means Taehyung will get the trust fund soon. Maybe even before you pack up shop and leave in the next three weeks. You’ve stopped entertaining the possibility of hanging around to see it come to fruition. Now all you want to do is hightail it out of this mess.

              The walk to the car from the house is tense, at least for you. There’s always a chance that somebody from the house might be looking through a window, so your hand remains ensconced in his large one. You fight to not memorise the feeling of the lines on his palm burning into yours; there’s no point. This time, you’re the one to pull away first, the instant you’re both out of eyeshot.

              The drive back is silent, as expected, and you don’t catch a repeat of the LookTM, as you’ve come to dub it in your brain, for which you’re thankful. You aren’t sure how much more you can take. It’s only when he finally pulls up outside your apartment that the quietness is broken.

              You wordlessly unclasp the bracelet and hold it out for him to take.

              “Keep it,” he says.

              Oh, fuck no.

              You don’t look at him as you gently place it inside the cup holder on the console in between the front seats. The minute interaction has sent the silence through a sieve, leaving it thinner and anticipatory, the atmosphere changing from a thick rope to an easily snappable thread. You should just leave. You should say goodbye, open the door and walk into your apartment with no ceremony; but the thought of being so formal and detached makes your skin crawl.

              “Your parents seem to be warming up,” you offer up as tribute to a conversation that’s filled with ambiguity before it’s even begun.

              “You deserve a lot of credit for that. Thank you.”

              You don’t look at each other. You don’t have to. The genuineness is amply clear in his voice, even when the words are directed towards the windshield that you’re both facing, stiff and unwilling or unable to move.

              “Glad I could help,” you reply, hazarding a perfunctory nod.

              The thread thins further in the ensuing quiet. When he sighs in preparation to say whatever it is that he’s going to say, it’s pulled impossibly taut, just a miniscule, weak tug away from finally snapping.

              “About the gala – “

              “Don’t worry about it.”

              You have to keep from laughing at your word choice. You have to get out of this car. You have to run far, far away from Kim Taehyung and his questionable actions with your feelings, and his terrible decision to bring up what you’ve been studiously avoiding, and his fluffy, black hair and his permanently twinkling eyes and his easy banter and his terrible gaming skills and his LookTM.

              But you stay. The thread has long since been cut.

              “Are you sure?” he asks. You can hear muted agitation in his voice. You risk a peek at his reflection and notice that he’s chewing his lip in concern. “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”

              You wave his consternation away. “It’s alright.”

              “Okay,” he concedes, making you let out an internal sigh of relief. “If you’re sure.” He’s indulging you. Not pressing despite the fact that you can both feel the weight of what happened hanging over your heads like a sword. But if you don’t want to talk about it, he won’t make you.

              Words can’t even begin to explain how unsure you are, and once again, you feel a slightly worrying urge to burst into hysterical laughter at how far from the truth you’re straying. What would he say if he found out that you haven’t been able to sleep properly, that you’ve been throwing yourself into college work with all the gusto of the straight-A student that you used to be in high school, that you had been avoiding your friends to avoid talking or thinking about him?

              “I’m sure.”

              He nods. You unbuckle your seat belt. The sound rings in your ears; too loud, too conspicuous, too symbolic and too dangerous around a thread that you’ve just haphazardly and messily repaired with painfully temporary untruths.

              “Is that all?” you ask, trying not to sound too eager.

              “Actually,” he begins. “Jin has a lake house where we usually spend the holidays. We’re going the weekend before Christmas this year, and they wanted to know if you could make it.”

              The weekend before Christmas is when your semester gets over. He knows it, you know it, and you can’t plead schoolwork to get out of it. It’s also a week before the breakup is scheduled. One last hurrah.

              “I’ll let you know,” you compromise.

              Unsaid words.

              Kim Taehyung: we need a headcount for the transport tomorrow. do we count you in?

              Your last paper is over. You’re done with the semester. There’s nothing holding you back, and there’s nobody to stop you.

              Yes.

              “Y/N! We’re glad you could make it!”

              The wooden house towers over and around you, the open windows letting in a chilly draft that makes you grateful for your woollen jumper. “Thanks for inviting me,” you reply with a smile, a little conscious at having the attention of all four people in the room on you.

              Jin waves away your politeness as he smiles, “Nonsense. We’re happy to introduce you to the annual tradition.”

              The consequences of your post-exam, impulsive actions only really hit you in the morning, when you had woken up and realised what you had agreed to. You had lied down on your bed, staring at the ceiling at 7 AM, waiting for some sign that it was all a confusing dream. But a quick look at your phone, with messages from Taehyung telling you that Lisa and Jimin would be picking you up from your apartment around mid-morning, was sad confirmation enough. It was harder to explain to Hyejin after that what you had gotten yourself into, mostly because you yourself weren’t entirely sure.

              You straddled the line between relieved and disappointed when you found out that you wouldn’t be spending four hours in a car with Taehyung, but Lisa and Jimin hadn’t let you dwell on it for too long. When you weren’t dozing off in the back, still recovering from the semester, they had graciously included you in their fun. You felt like a fraud, pretending to be so comfortable with them, but you felt that you owed them that much. This might be the last time you hang out with them, after all.

              There hasn’t been a whole lot of interaction between you and Taehyung over the last three weeks. You had been focused on school work and he had kept his distance. Apart from an encouraging ‘All the best for your finals!’ message from him, there had been virtually no conversation until the day of your last paper, when he wanted to confirm if you’d be joining on the trip. You don’t want to say you missed him – you were too busy for that; but some part of you is still a little giddy at meeting him again, as awkward as the last time had been.

              However, he isn’t there in the large living room. Jin, Irene and Yoongi have reached before your group, and they lounge around the cozy cushions in comfortable silence interspersed with occasional chatter. It’s only late afternoon, but the weather is cold enough for everybody to be bundled up in woollens and blankets. The forecast predicts snow soon. You hover with your backpack at the door, uncertain about where to go, when Jimin, who’s walked in with you, notices.

              “You’ll be bunking with Tae, of course. Where is he?” he asks the others.

              “Bringing in the supplies with Joon and Jennie.”  Yoongi’s tone is lazy, unconcerned. You are not.

              You try not to show your surprise on your face, but you’re speaking before you can stop yourself. “Jennie?”

              “Yeah, didn’t Tae tell you? She joins us whenever she happens to be visiting during this part of the year,” Jin says.

              You’re saved the bother of a reply by the entry of the three absentees at that moment through the back door. They’re each holding heavy crates of what you suspect are alcohol bottles, and Taehyung is mid-grumble about how they should have taken more people to carry the stuff, when they notice that the last car has arrived. You stand there with a hand on the strap of your backpack and the other hanging down as you take him in after so long.

              His black hair is longer, nearly brushing the bottom of his ears and framing his face perfectly. He’s wearing a dark blue jumper that stretches across his shoulders and he looks so warm that you nearly forget that he had omitted to mention the tiny fact that Jennie would be present. But it’s easy to forget everything else when he catches sight of you and his frown curves into an easy, genuine smile. Despite yourself, you have to mimic him.

              “Let me keep these in the kitchen. I’ll show you to the room then,” he says in lieu of a welcome.

              You wave at Jennie and Namjoon as they follow Taehyung into the kitchen when they greet you. In the minute it takes for them to return, the others in the room exchange sly glances that set you on edge until Yoongi airily comments, “I pity the fool who has to share a wall with them tonight.”

              You’re the fool, you think ruefully, letting your blush speak for you despite your inner turmoil. You’re all the fools who’ve been strung along for months with no clue that this is probably the last time you’re going to see me.

              It’s embarrassingly easy and almost instinctive to slip your hand into Taehyung’s when he comes back. All misgivings you had had about whether it would be awkward given the nature of your not-relationship and the dangling ends you had left the previous meeting with lock themselves into a tight box. You can only think about the solid, comforting warmth of his palm in yours and aching familiarity with which he smiles down at you as you walk out of the room towards a small corridor with doors lining either side.

              “We’ve got the one at the end,” he explains, not letting go of your hand even when you’re both out of eyeshot. You’re treading a dangerous path, but you aren’t going to complain. “Right opposite Jimin and Joon,” he continues, pushing open the door to the room you’ll be staying in for the next two nights, until Monday morning when you leave.

              It’s easily the room with the best view; large open windows on one side face the lake and smaller windows on either side of the bed open to show the edge of the woods that surround the house. There’s an attached bathroom and a single wooden wardrobe that you stash your bag in, next to Taehyung’s. Then you turn around and survey the singular bed.

              He points at the futon near the door that already has blankets and pillows on it and says, “I’ll take the couch.”

              Before you can stop yourself, you reply, “You don’t have to.”

              There’s an entire bed between the two of you, for fuck’s sake, but you can feel the uncertainty in his tone when he replies, “I can’t let you sleep on the couch. This is your first time in the house, I won’t deprive you of a bed.”

              “It’s a large bed. I’m sure we can both fit.”

              Silence.

              He looks at the offending piece of furniture, then up at you, and then back at the bed.

              You rush to backtrack. “Unless you don’t want to, of course. I don’t mean to tell you where to sleep, if you’d be more comfortable on – “

              “I’m fine with it if you’re fine with it.”

              “I’m fine with it.”

              “Alright, then.”

              Both your voices are light, but there’s an easily perceptible shift in the room and the beginnings of the tension that had enveloped you the last time you had been together. And you’ve only been here less than an hour.

              As if to cement the agreement, Taehyung walks towards the bedding and gathers the quilt and pillow in his arms from the futon before going to the cupboard behind you. The hairs on your arm stand on end as he brushes against you on his way, but you don’t make a sound. He places them in the bottom rack and then closes the door before straightening up to face you. “If you feel uncomfortable in the middle of the night, let me know. I really don’t mind.”

              You nod, softening at his thoughtfulness. But there’s still something nagging at you. “Didn’t know Jennie would be here,” you hum, and for the first time, you meet his gaze head-on. You need to know.

              He pauses, not answering but contemplating. “Should I have told you?”

              “I don’t know.”

              You could cut the sudden tension in the room with a knife, as both of you continue to stare each other down, expressions closed, waiting for the other to say something that won’t upset this precarious balance you’ve got going.

              It’s a tentative rap on the door that pulls your attention away. Jimin’s voice comes muffled through the wooden door as he says, “If you guys have finished…reacquainting, we’re about to start lunch.”

              “We’ll be there in a moment,” Taehyung replies as you hurriedly move to freshen up from the drive, cursing at yourself for your foolishness. What right do you have to act like a jealous partner? You wash your face almost furiously and look at your reflection, willing yourself to steel your nerves and to stop fancying that this is something more than a job.              

              Isn’t it, though?

              Outside the bathroom door, the floorboards softly creak as Taehyung paces.

              It’s going to be a long weekend.

              If the compulsive overthinking doesn’t do you in first, the cold will be to blame for your premature death.

              You rub your palms up and down your upper arms in an effort to stay warm as you longingly watch Irene, Jin and Namjoon try to coax fire out of the stacked wood in the backyard. The sun has long since set, leaving them to work with the light streaming out of the house and the torch of your phone that you’ve been employed to hold up. The others are inside collecting drinks, marshmallows and blankets.

              After a quick lunch, you had pleaded a headache chalked up to the academic tension of the previous month and had gone for what was supposed to be a nap, but a quick look at the dark sky outside the room window as you groggily sat up declared that you had overslept. When you had stepped out of the room, you saw the place bustling with activity, and Jin quickly employed you to help them light the bonfire.

              Unfortunately, the bonfire itself didn’t get the memo and seems to have no intention of being lit. Used matchsticks litter the ground as they continue to try in vain to get the wood to catch flame. Each breath comes out as a white puff of air from your mouth, even with your hoodie. You wish you had gloves.

              “Cold?” an enviously bundled up Namjoon asks, shooting you an amused look out of the corner of his eye.

              Taehyung had told you that you would need to carry warm, full clothing, but you had grossly underestimated just how bad it would be. Unlike everybody else, who’s come fully prepared.

              With a sheepish smile, you reply, “I didn’t believe Tae fully when he told me about the weather here.”

              “It’ll probably snow tonight,” Irene observes, standing from her hunched-up position and groaning as she stretches for a second before crouching back down. “If there’s enough, we can get the sled out tomorrow.”

              “Do you go out on the lake?” you ask, attempting to distract yourself from the chattering of your teeth.

              “Never during this time of the year. There’s a canoe, but if anybody falls in, hypothermia is a guarantee,” Jin grins. “And I’d like to not spend my holidays as well treating sick patients.”

              Taehyung and Jennie walk out from the house at that moment, pulling your attention away. There’s a tug in your gut as you watch them laugh together as they make their way towards the four of you, both of them carrying brightly coloured marshmallow packets; but even to your almost permanently cynical eye, there’s a perceptible difference in the way they’ve been interacting compared to the exhibition. He doesn’t lean into her as much now. As they get closer, they drop the goods on a chair nearby and join the group that’s now surrounding the sad bundle of sticks.

              “Does nobody have a lighter?” Jennie asks with a frown on her face as she surveys the matchsticks spread out on the floor.

              “There might be one near the kitchen stove,” Jin says thoughtfully. It seems to be worth checking, so he and Jennie walk back into the house.

              Taehyung turns towards you. “How are you not freezing?” he asks, scrutinising your impractical outfit.

              “I most definitely am.” Cold air escapes from your mouth as you speak. You turn off the flashlight on your phone and tuck the device into the pocket of your hoodie, keeping your hands there so they can be at least a little warmer.

              He notices your discomfort and a grimace crosses his face. “This won’t do,” he mutters, eyebrows knit together. “Give me your hands.”

              You see no way around it. Irene and Namjoon are still standing nearby; even with the closeness between your and Taehyung’s bodies, it’s quiet enough for them to pick up on every word. And you’re cold, goddammit.

              His hands are blessedly warm from being inside when they enclose each of yours. It’s intimate in a way you haven’t let yourself feel with him before – the weather has obviously addled your instincts. He takes one hand in between both of his, rubbing soothingly; or maybe it’s just soothing to you. You wordlessly watch as he easily covers your hand with his own, his fingers dipping in between yours occasionally to warm you up before he repeats the same with your other hand. In the second-hand light coming out from the house, his cheeks hollow as he gathers both your hands, cupped in his, and brings them up to his mouth to blow on them. The calluses on his palm brush against your knuckles, and his lips are barely a centimetre away from your skin.

              You’re warm now, but for all the wrong reasons.

              He’s fully focused on your fingers, his attention on your hands that he’s still holding and rubbing and blowing on, but you can’t look away from his face. When his eyes dart up unexpectedly, you’re given no warning, no time to move your gaze elsewhere. His expression is arresting, and he doesn’t break eye contact until he’s gently brought your arms back down and let them go with one last rub. The ghost of his skin haunts yours as he takes a step back, suddenly frazzled, face closing up in an instant.

              “Thank you,” you whisper, unsure as to why.

              “You’re welcome,” he replies, tone brusque.

              At that moment, Jin and Jennie return with a delighted shout of ‘We found the lighter!’. In the ensuing bustle, as you all go back to surrounding the unlit bonfire, you and Taehyung slip away from each other, trying to put people in between you.

              Your heart is beating out of your chest. That was too close, too reckless. If it happens again, you aren’t sure you’ll be able to keep yourself from doing something stupid. Thankfully or not, Taehyung seems to have come to the same conclusion as you. When the fire is finally lit and everybody’s outside and sitting on chairs, he ends up on the opposite side of the circle.

              The placement gives you too good a view and too much leeway for painful decisions. You’re thankful for the conversation happening around. If there had been silence with nothing to distract you, you wouldn’t have been able to pull your eyes away from him. He laughs at something Yoongi says next to him, and the sound is as rich as you remember it being. When he takes a sip of beer, the bob of his Adam’s apple is highlighted by the fire in between the two of you.

              You wish you could say you’re being discreet, that you’re subconsciously storing all these images in your mind secretly, but you’re just a few steps away from openly staring, and it’s only a matter of time before he notices. The reflection of the flames dance in his eyes as he doesn’t look away, and you have to fight to break eye contact and refocus on whatever Lisa’s saying next to you.

              As the fire begins to get smaller and the embers smoulder and slowly die out, you all trail in to the dining table. Even here, by mutual, unspoken consent, you keep your distance from each other. Complete avoidance is impossible for countless reasons, one of which is that you simply don’t want to; but it’s easier to pay less attention to him and to your own, blown-out-of-proportion internal reactions at every little thing he does here, when he isn’t in your direct line of sight. Jennie is on your right-hand side, and she proves to be an entertaining and interesting conversation partner.

              Your good luck carries forward to when you trudge to the living room, Namjoon already expertly shuffling a deck of playing cards. As you sit around the low table, your knee bumps into Irene’s next to you, and you feel a different kind of melancholy at how easily she smiles at you. How easily everybody smiles at you, how attentively they listen to your answers when they ask you about college, how graciously they include you in their conversations and banter.

              How soon you’ll slip out of their lives.

              You haven’t spoken about it to Taehyung yet, but you know that it’s on his mind too. After tomorrow, you’ll get your final instalment of the payment and you’ll be finished. The painfully uncertain, nearly magnetic push and pull that you’ve got going with him is temporary, as much as you don’t want it to be.

              It’s only a matter of time before your luck runs out, and you know that avoidance is no longer possible as people begin to sleepily meander into their rooms to go to bed. Goodnights are called as the group splits up slowly, doors closing and lights being turned off. You and Taehyung separate from Namjoon and Jimin last, and you turn into your room the same time as they do with sleepy smiles.

              Suddenly, there are no human buffers to hide behind anymore.

              The door softly creaks shut with a foreboding you shouldn’t be feeling. But you’ve been feeling a lot of things you shouldn’t lately. You’re wide awake after your nap in the car and your decided non-nap in the evening, but your roommate’s eyes droop just a bit. You wordlessly gesture at him to go get changed first, and spend your waiting time trying to distract yourself from your thoughts by turning on the dimmer lights. It doesn’t prove a very efficient diversion – it’ll take more than the paltry act of flicking switches to pull you out of your mind that seems to be surrounding your body whole these days.

              When he steps out, ready for bed in what looks like the cosiest pullover in existence, you take his place. Again, you need to have a pep talk with your reflection. You wash your face once, twice, thrice, hoping that you can shock yourself with cold water into calming down. It works marginally well. You re-emerge to find Taehyung standing at the foot of the bed.

              “Do you prefer a side?” he asks, voice slightly rough from sleep, pitched lower than its already deep tone.

              “Not particularly.”

              He nods, moving towards the side closer to the door, allowing you to walk to the one near the wall. Wordlessly, easily, too comfortably, the two of you fall into a rhythm of closing windows and drawing curtains. Your toes wriggle in your socks as they scuff the wooden flooring. When you’ve turned back around to face the bed after pulling the last curtain shut on your side, you notice that he’s got the spare blanket from inside the wardrobe, so you both won’t have to share one.

              Good.

              You slip under the covers, resolutely not looking at him. He does the same.

              The bed is big. Still, you can feel the heat of his body next to yours. In the sudden quiet after the bustle of flapping curtains and padding across wood, everything seems to sound deafening.

              His breaths next to you are too measured. Outside, an owl hoots.

              Your postures are identical; both stiff-bodied, palms resting on your stomachs, legs stretched out unmoving under the blankets. It’s your least preferred position to sleep in, but you don’t dare curl up on your side when the lights are still on.

              “Are the switches on your side?” you ask, knowing full well where the switches are.

              “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

              Darkness.

              Still, you don’t move.

              The mattress had shifted when he moved to turn off the lights, and then again when he settled back down in the same position. It’s made you hyper-aware of how close he is, how the slightest motion can disturb the heavy stillness.

              As your eyes adjust to the lack of light, your other senses prickle. Neither of you move. The owl hasn’t stopped hooting. You realise how your breath has picked up pace and calm yourself, slowing down to calculated inhales. There’s no question of him not noticing – there are no secrets in a darkness this loud.

              You should turn. You should go to sleep. You shouldn’t be here. You don’t want to leave.

              The slope of the ceiling stares back at you, illuminated by the faint light from outside, and you interlock your fingers over your stomach. A silent show of support to yourself.

              You had hoped that Taehyung would fall asleep soon, judging by how drowsy he had been, but he’s perfectly still next to you. Somewhere along the way, his breaths have come to adjust to a cadence similar to yours.

              “Do you have enough space?” he asks, voice soft and low. It reminds you of honey. It reminds you of angry bees.

              “Yeah. You?”

              “I’m good.”

              Silence again.

              You wonder if this is how the entire night is going to go – neither of you moving, bodies laid out in awkward discomfort, a million unsaid words stacked in the inches of air in between. Maybe he’ll fall asleep without meaning to. Maybe you can finally see him unseen then.

              He shifts. It’s a small thing, probably just a downward wriggle to cover more of himself under the blanket, or a quick repositioning of his leg that’s begun to fall asleep, but you can feel it deep in your bones. Your breath hitches and you completely stop breathing for a second.

              “What happens tomorrow?” he asks, mercifully waiting until you’ve resumed regular airflow into your lungs.

              “Irene said we might bring out the sled if it snows tonight.” That isn’t what he’s asking, and he knows that you know.

              He clears his throat before continuing. “I meant about the…job.”

              Your voice is blank, devoid of feeling when you reply, “The agreed upon period gets over. If you want me present for a staged break up, it’s an additional ten percent.”

              The ensuing silence stretches. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, half a minute. He clears his throat again, as if about to say something, but you get no response. You hear him breathe through his mouth when he opens it for a split second, and again, you wait for him to reply. Again, he says nothing.

              You offer no assistance. No more.

              When he finally does speak, it sounds like he’s steeled himself to say the words, his tone exactly the same as your previous, impersonal one. “I can handle the break up myself.”

              “Alright.”

              “Cool.”

              The quiet is tinged with something sour this time. But you’ve had enough.

              “Good night,” you mumble.

              “Good night,” he replies.

              He sounds mellow. The owl hoots again.

              In a fit of bravery, you take the plunge and fully turn to face the wall with your back to Taehyung. You feel him do the same to you.

              You don’t know how long it takes, but he falls asleep first. You listen to his breath evening out and getting deeper, as you continue to stare unseeing at the wall, your eyelids finally fluttering shut sometime later.

              A foot touches yours before it retreats hastily.

              There’s fabric between your fingers – soft fluffy material you can’t bring yourself to let go of in your unconsciousness. It smells like roses.

              It’s cold. Your blanket is nice, but it isn’t enough. Warmth appears in the form of a heavy arm around your waist, and a handy nook that you’ve managed to worm your head into. It’s smooth like skin.

              Your quilt is a barrier. You kick it out of the way and nuzzle closer to the warmth next to you. The sound of slow rustling nudges at the edges of your consciousness before you’re being secured further against something solid. The small puffs of air atop your head never falter, never wake fully. Their steadiness lulls you deeper, tugging you further into sleep.

              Your legs aren’t resting on the bed anymore. They’re entangled with something else. Somebody else.

              There exists a realm between dreaming and waking, and you feel trapped in it. Something tickles your neck, but you ignore it. You’re too warm, too comfortable in your blanket cocoon.

              But blankets have never felt so solid before.

              In the few seconds it takes for you to snap to full wakefulness after realisation sets in, you’re already moving. Or trying to, anyway. This blanket, in addition to being solid, is also quite strong. You settle for opening your eyes and squinting against the light streaming in through the windows, as it callously ignores the thin curtains and pierces into the room with a vengeance. Everything seems excessively bright and loud, and you give yourself a few, still moments to calibrate and become fully aware of your position.

              You wish you hadn’t.

              Your head is tucked securely into the crook between Taehyung’s neck and shoulder, his jaw resting atop it. One of your arms lies curled up in between your bodies, and the fabric of his pullover looks crumpled near your hand, like it had been caught and released from a rat trap. Your other arm has found purchase around his frame, and your palm is set against the small of his back. And as the icing on the cake, you register one of your legs thrown over his. Your only saving grace seems to be the fact that he doesn’t seem to have woken up and realised what a mess you’re both in.

              You need to get out of here. Fast.

              But it’s so comfortable here, and so cold outside.

              Impatiently, you brush the thought away and focus on extracting yourself without waking him up. Gingerly, you begin to undo what damage you can, piece by piece. First comes the leg that you slowly lift up from atop his, kicking off the blanket from the bottom half of your body. Then, you retrieve your arm that’s curled around his frame and tuck your hand that had been so close to his chest into yourself, removing contact. The biggest problem seems to be his heavy hand on your waist, grip unyielding even in sleep. You hardly dare to breathe as you begin to slowly pull away from his comatose form, reaching behind yourself to tug at his hand as unhurriedly as you can. His breath hitches when you start to pry his fingers off and you immediately stop short. Your momentary panic ebbs as he resumes his slow inhales. You listen closely for another second before you attempt again.

              This time, you get as far as closing your fingers awkwardly around his wrist before he begins to shuffle again. You make no sound and remain still in your weirdly twisted position until he settles back down, but your heart sinks when he sleepily huffs and tightens his grip before slipping back under, undoing all your painstaking effort and leaving you worse off than you were before.

              You’re starting to get increasingly impatient with him and with how hard he’s making this. Already, your feet are getting cold and you half-heartedly regret starting this operation at all. Staying like this, cocooned in his arms under the warm blankets and away from the elements outside, is exasperatingly starting to seem like a good idea. It would be so easy to just resume your previous position and copy Sleeping Beauty who’s currently being a pain in the ass next to you, but logic and rationality persevere. It’s probably barely eight in the morning, and already you’re having this debate with yourself, having to actively summon reason. It must be some kind of record.

              You decide to approach the problem a different way the third time around. You slowly, haltingly turn from your side until you’re facing the ceiling. Your resolve is sorely tested again as you have to blink a couple of times when you’re confronted by the increased brightness of the room that this new position allows. From this angle, it’s easier to reach his hand on your side. Delicately, with an internal sigh of irritation and impatience, you begin again.

              You only manage to last a minute of slow-moving manoeuvring before your luck finally runs out for good, just as you’re precariously half-sitting with his heavy arm in your grip suspended in the air as you prepare to set it down on the bed after sidling out from beneath it.

              His breath shallows and the offending fingers twitch as he begins to wake up and you begin to panic. It’s too late to pretend to be asleep. With your heart in your mouth and his wrist in your hand, you turn to the side as his eyelids flutter open, narrowing against the light.

              Sleepy mumbles. “Wazhappenin.”

              You’re so fucking endeared.

              Realisation dawns on him slowly, in bits and pieces, and you watch it all come together in his widening eyes that reflect your own. He sees your obviously escape-ready posture, your grip on his wrist that’s half-lifted. All you can do is wait in silence as he puts two and two together.

              He wrenches his limb back, tugging it out of your readily permitting hold as he immediately shuffles away from you, back to his side of the bed from the centre that you had both gravitated towards in the middle of the night. You take your first full breath of the morning once you’ve got more distance between your bodies. It feels stolen. You sit up fully.

              “I’m so sorry about that,” he says, voice gruff after just waking up and with the shock that he’s still processing. He looks equal parts guilty and confounded, and his messy hair combined with his wide-eyed, startled deer expression makes it too easy to regret moving at all.

              Should you tell him? Should you admit how you were just as wrapped around him, if not more, just a few minutes ago and that you wish that you could go back to sleep just like that? That it’s so poetically tragic, the way the beginning of your last day together is coloured in shades of longing and faceless embrace, and that it’s only in sleep that the walls crumble down?

              “Shit happens,” you shrug, turning to move off the bed like you’ve been trying to do for so long. You can feel him looking at you as you walk to the washroom to start your day. To escape from his terrified glance. You won’t look back at him. You won’t make it more difficult.

              Taehyung is still in bed when you get out, blankets ridden down to his chest and one arm thrown up to cover his eyes. You had tried to wash away the feeling of being so close to him, but the sight jolts your memory, making it near impossible to forget.

              The sounds of others waking up in different parts of the house trickle in, with doors creaking open and footsteps padding around the wooden floors. You’re going to join them, and you’re going to pretend everything is alright, leaving Taehyung behind in this room to work through whatever he needs to work through. You can’t be around him.

               It had snowed last night. You didn’t notice. You had been sleeping too well.

              The morning has been fraught with tension. Each miniscule touch translates into an inferno under your skin, the goosebumps that erupt when he’s near have very little to do with the weather, and you have to actively work to mask your anxious frown with a smile.

              Whatever good fortune the universe had bestowed upon you the previous evening that allowed you to navigate all group activities with minimal contact with Taehyung has obviously evaporated into thin air. Or maybe your body has decided that one unconscious betrayal is not enough and is intent on making you gravitate towards each other.

              Breakfast had seen the two of you foisted next to one another, and the table seemed much smaller than you remembered it being. His elbows brushed against yours far more often than necessary and he visibly flinched away when your knee bumped into his. You had to force yourself to relax when Irene asked you if you were okay. Specifically, she asked you if you slept well, to which you politely replied that you had never slept better, causing Taehyung to seize up next to you for a second.

              You didn’t have clothes that were warm enough to go out in the snow, and you tried using that as an excuse to avoid it entirely, but miraculously, unfortunately, Taehyung had extra. It hadn’t been his idea for you to borrow his off-white cable knit sweater, but when you put it on and stepped out of the room, you can swear his gaze darted towards you too many times to be accidental or coincidental.

              The sweater smells like him. Like roses and regret.

              It’s that sweater that covers your frame now, at the top of the small, snow-covered hill that stands a few metres away from the back of the house. As if proving a point, the universe has decided that your suddenly-not-fake-enough boyfriend is to be your sledding partner after you told the others that this is your first time, despite your greatest attempts. And you had attempted, but everybody else already had their groups, and you didn’t want to push for fear of seeming suspicious. Nobody seems to have noticed, but you reckon that the flash of hurt in Taehyung’s eyes as you go around trying to be with anybody but him isn’t a figment of your imagination.

              Either way, all your efforts are in vain. You stand next to him at the crest, last in line, dubiously watching Jin drag the sled back up the hill after his turn. It looks awfully small.

              The others are occupied in a highly competitive snow fight a few paces away, so they miss the way the two of you shuffle on the board at first, trying not to touch each other. Wordlessly, you move, trying to find some method of staying on without being completely pressed up against each other. Again.

              You manage with some compromises; the heat of his body is ever-present behind you, but not stiflingly so – there are a few, blessed inches that grant you that much, his arms hover on your sides, holding the steering cord in front of you, but he doesn’t make contact with your waist, and his legs frame yours, feet positioned half on the board, half out in the snow.

              “Ready?” he asks, voice too close but still painfully far.

              Securing your feet on the board and with one, last, reassured glance at Taehyung’s fingers wrapped tight and secure around the cord in front of you, you nod shortly and reply, “Yes.”

              Two things become apparent to you in a very short time, within moments of him kicking off. The first is that Taehyung is not a very good sled driver. You weren’t expecting a whole lot, but fresh snow shouldn’t be so bumpy, and you definitely shouldn’t be pitching so much to the right. The next thing is that for all the punctilious effort you had put in to keep your bodies as detached as possible, the rush of the wind and the speed of the sled down the hill doesn’t allow for such precautions. Barely a few seconds of rough sliding, and Taehyung has skid so far down the board that he’s almost as close as he was in the morning.

              Both realisations contribute to the cause and consequence of what happens next. You’ve lost your firm seat on the wood beneath you, and your body follows the motion of the sled. You don’t know when you let out the tiny squeak that indicates that you’ve suddenly become uncomfortably aware of how precariously you’re positioned, and how likely it is that you’re going to be thrown off, but it gets stifled partway as Taehyung’s legs instinctively lift off the snow and lock around yours. He substitutes both his arms on the cord for just one, using the other to tug you into his body before you can tumble into the snow.

              He laughs.

              Your heart is wildly beating out of your chest, none of you have contact with the snow to control the sled properly, your hands are clutching his forearm that’s keeping you from being flung overboard and the fucker is laughing right in your ear, adding to all the tumult you already feel.

              You could thank him. You should thank him. You could thank him, or you could shout at him for acting like a reckless idiot. You want to turn around and kiss him. He’s so close that you’d just have to tilt your neck up a bit and there he’d be. But in the end, the adrenaline, his proximity and the sound of his rich chuckles reverberating through you, his chest rumbling against your back – they all get to you. The giggles slip out before you can stop them.

              There’s no client and job here, no worry about the future, no fear of possibility and muted hope and none of the tangled feelings that you’ve been weighed under for weeks. There’s just him, the comforting solidity of his frame so close, the chill wind roaring in your ears and hitting your face, and the sled that’s hurling down a hill uncontrolled. You’re fit to burst from everything you’re feeling, and peals of laughter erupt uninhibited, ringing out into the mostly silent hillside and mingling with the deep guffaws from behind you.

              You’re both still laughing as the sled decides that this is too much movement, finally reaching its limit three quarters down the slope. You’re still elated when you feel yourself being thrown to the side, Taehyung’s body doing the same as he entirely releases the steering cord in favour of tugging you out of the sled with him.

              The giggles continue, interspersed with yelps, as you finally make contact with the soft snow, arms and legs holding on to each other in a confused jumble as you both tumble around. You finally roll to a stop a few feet away from the forced ejection, panting a bit in exertion but with a wide, seemingly unbreakable smile on your face.

              And then the position you’re in hits you.

              Your giggles unconsciously taper off as you take in the closeness of his body over yours. One of his forearms is sunk in snow right next to your ear, to hold himself up, and the other cups the back of your head, protecting you from the impact. The euphoric grin on his face mirrors your own, his cheeks slightly flushed from the cold and excitement, and his usually neat hair is mussed.

              He seems to register the compromising nature of the position a few seconds after you do. He doesn’t pull away. You make no move to ask him to.

              The coldness of the snow under your back feels like a minor inconvenience. You can feel his fingers still on your hair, nearly digging into your scalp from the suddenness of the impact, and the brush of his chest against yours, matching every slowing breath you take. Your wide grin steadily diminishes, and so does his, until you’re both looking at each other straight-faced.

              But eyes can’t lie.

              You’re so close, your faces so near, that you can see the muted buzz in his gaze, reflecting the same pull that you’re sure is present in your own. You’ve hidden it half-successfully for so long; no longer apparently. You survey each other, unmoving, deathly quiet compared to the noise of joyous hysterics from mere moments ago. The sounds of happy laughter and chatter from the rest of the group as they continue throwing snowballs at one another are regaled to the background of your consciousness. All you see is Taehyung.

              His expression doesn’t change as he lowers his head. Haltingly, he waits for you to push him away, to push yourself away, to startle and shove him off and jump up and continue this little dance of avoidance and attraction that you’ve indulged in for so long.

              You don’t.

              Your body thrums as his elbow bends next to your head, getting closer. You can count his eyelashes now. You can make out the chicken pox scar from fifteen years ago near the corner of his eyebrow.

              You don’t dare to move, or to make a sound. The moment proceeds at a snail’s pace, and you’re terrified of doing something that will disturb it –

              Thwack.

              The heavy snowball comes out of nowhere and shakes you to the very core. In an instant, your half-lidded eyes that were looking up at an equally unaware but strikingly alert Kim Taehyung are replaced by wide blown astonishment. It had struck him hard on the side, hitting true, and falling down cold and crumbling on your body.

              “Oi! Keep it in your pants till we get back inside. I’m not nursing any sore throats this time.”

              Jin’s more annoyed than playful order serves like a punch to the gut, and immediately, you and Taehyung are a mess of separating limbs, clambering up and dusting snow off from your clothes and hair, not meeting each other’s eyes. There’s a good two feet of distance between the two of you now, and you’re freezing more after standing than you had been while lying down. While you been willingly pinned down.

              Keep it together for just one more day.

              There’s nothing to be said, nothing that will change the situation, and the snowball fight in the distance is beginning to look incredibly inviting. Hopefully, somebody will accidentally pack a stone in one and knock you out.

              Not sparing the man next to you another glance, for both of your sakes, you begin to pick your way through the snow. Until a hand closes over your wrist. Instantly, you’re transported to two months ago, at the exhibition. It’s laughably different, but maybe, in some sense, it’s always been the same. You stop in your tracks, gathering your wits about you before turning around to face him.

              He makes to speak, expression intense. It’s the most open you’ve seen him, the most vulnerable he’s seemed in your acquaintance. His jaw works for a second, and you wait to hear what he could possibly have to say.

              You never get the chance.

              His face closes over and his grip slackens, fingers lingering for a bit, thumb tracing a whisper of a million almosts over your pounding pulse, before he pulls away for good.

              “Good acting, right up till the end,” he says, voice musing but rough. Unmindful of the shock on your face, he brushes past towards the others, chin up and back straight.

              The news about the trust fund comes after dinner.

              It had been too cold to go outside, and nobody wanted to put in the work to light the bonfire, so the cards were brought out again, and the television plays episodes of a sitcom that nobody’s paying full attention to. Around the centre table, Namjoon, Jimin, Jennie and Lisa quietly play a very diluted game of blackjack with no bets. The rest of you absently watch, attentions splitting between them, the screen in front and whatever conversation happens to be going on at the time.            

              The lights are dim inside the house, and there’s the general calm that comes after a long, satisfying day. It’s tinged with a bit of gloom at the thought of having to return home tomorrow, but you can’t wait to get out of here. You had already found his pillows and blanket moved from the bed to the futon when you entered the room in the evening to do the same.

              You’ve got Lisa’s head on your shoulder, and you’re warm indoors, in your own clothes, as you take a look around the room, letting the conversation ebb and flow around you. You hate how you know about Yoongi’s appreciation for a good tangerine, and Jin’s favourite whiskey. You’ve come to develop a strong respect for Irene’s quiet watchfulness, and Namjoon’s cleverness. Lisa and Jimin have done so much to make you feel comfortable and welcome, that you feel a physical pang of guilt when you think about what you’re soon to do. You regret ever feeling anything negative towards Jennie, as she’s become one of the people who’ve made you laugh the most in the last two days.

              It’s a soft but insistent call of your name that tugs you out of your thoughts. You blink a few times and turn to your left, where Taehyung is facing you. He looks just as tired as you feel. When you lift an eyebrow up at him in question, he ducks his head towards the kitchen in a silent request for you to get up.

              Hesitant as you are to leave the comfort of your curled up position on the couch, Lisa gives you no choice but to do so as she lifts her head from your shoulder with a smile. With a grin that’s becoming more forced with every passing second, you rise and follow Taehyung out of the room. You feel eyes follow the two of you, but nobody passes any comments. This is normal. People in relationships spend time together in private sometimes.

              He stops only after you’re both fully inside the kitchen, and at his wordless gesture, you close the door behind you. Outside, Jin’s shout comes through muffled as he complains, “You have a perfectly good bed, must you deface every other surface in the house?”

              Both of you ignore him.

              Taehyung is leaning with his back against the counter, and you stop a few paces away from him. A good, respectable distance.

              “They gave me access to the trust fund.”

              It’s so sudden that you have to do a double take at his face to ensure that he isn’t joking. Even the precautionary, adamant stalemate that you’ve both intrinsically agreed upon isn’t enough to detract from the excitement shining in his eyes. His shoulders are drooped a bit in relief, and there’s a hint of a smile that’s threatening to widen.

              You take the initiative and break into a pleased grin – fond, glad, and genuine. He can start that business now, do what he’s always wanted to. You don’t bother to hide the softness you feel at the thought; it’s far too late for that. You can leave knowing that you haven’t left anything unfinished. In a professional capacity.

              “Guess they came around after all, huh?” you reply, your smile smoothening into a something kinder as you take in the steady grin on his face.

              “Apparently so,” he shrugs, trying to act nonchalant and failing miserably. He switches to a more earnest tone as he continues, “I owe most of it to you. Truly, despite…everything, thank you.” He doesn’t have to explain what he means by ‘everything’. His vague, dismissive hand gesture does enough, and both of you can feel it hanging over your heads.

              “What can I say, I’m good at my job.” Your smile now mirrors his – a little sad, a little resigned, but grateful nonetheless as you repeat one of your oft quoted dialogues at him, revelling in the spark of recognition in his eyes.

              “There’s no reason to extend the job now,” he says. “My parents will be heartbroken at your absence from the brunch table.”

              Your eyebrow raises. “Did you think I’d stay if this news hadn’t arrived?”

              He shrugs. A mirthless, rueful tilt on the corner of his lips and clear honesty in his eyes. “I had hoped.”

              You say nothing.

              A beat passes. Then another.

              He’s laid his cards open in front of you, giving you the choice to do with them what you will.

              Your fingers itch on your sides. He continues to watch you, unwavering. You aren’t wearing his sweater anymore, but the scent lingers around you.

              “You smell like roses.” You don’t bother to hide the tremor in your voice.

              “Part of my charm.”

              You don’t know who moves first. Just that one second, you’ve got a good seven feet of distance separating your bodies, and that the next, there’s barely enough space for a pencil to be placed in between them. You both have too much practice in being too close and pulling away too soon, and this is nothing excessive considering this morning and last night, but the skin of his neck feels smooth against your palm and the warmth of his hand on your back has never felt more real.

              All the contact from the gala, the exhibition, the brunches and the game nights pale in comparison. Flashes of the closeness of his body in the wine cellar, the hidden looks over brunch, a leg trapped under covers and messy hair framing a gleeful face with the back drop of a clear sky run through your mind as you kiss him like how you’ve wanted to for a month now. Two months? Maybe more. The lines blur somewhere.

              You shouldn’t be surprised at how quickly it gets heated, considering all the moments that have happened and how much pent-up emotion you both have, but still, you can’t stop the surprised ‘Oh’ as you’re spun and leaning against the counter, easily clambering up as he chuckles softly, breathily, before your lips meet again.

              You’ve just managed to wrap your legs around his frame, and his fingers are secure in your hair. All you can feel is him and all you can hear are the sounds of kissing and tiny gasps, until the door is thrown open with a sudden, almighty bang.

              For the second time in less than twelve hours, Jin is responsible for the hurried detangling of your limbs from Kim Taehyung. He furiously watches, waiting until you’re both standing, righting hair and smoothing down clothes, facing him. You want to be embarrassed, you really do, but all you feel is light.

              Taehyung at least has the good grace to seem a little sheepish as Jin begins to scold the two of you. “What did I specifically tell you about making out in common areas? This is where we make our food. Y/N, we love having you here, and we were delighted to push this trip by a week so you could join us, but if I catch the two of you going at it like rabbits near the gas again, I – “

              “Wait, what did you just say?”

              Your expression is one of confusion, as you pose the question to Jin, who’s impatiently stopped in his tracks. You catch Taehyung subtly shaking his head at the annoyed man out of the corner of your eye.

              “Stop making out in public,” Jin promptly replies.

              “No, before that.”

              “We cook our food in this room.”

              Exasperated now, you prod again. “No, after that.”

              Doubtfully, Jin answers, “That we didn’t mind pushing the trip to this weekend so you could join us because Tae asked?”

              A beat passes. Your definitely-no-longer-fake boyfriend lets out a defeated sigh as you slowly reply, “Yeah.” Your confusion gives way to a grin of realisation. “Yeah, that.”

              Blessedly unaware of what’s happening, Jin dubiously frowns. The interruption had obviously thrown him off his righteously indignant rhythm. “That’s hardly the point. As I was saying, you have a whole room for yourselves that you could have used, and the fact that your first instinct was to come to the kitchen instead is honestly concerning – “

              “You know what, Jin?” This time, the interruption comes from Taehyung. “That’s a splendid idea. We do have a room to ourselves.”

              Jin throws his arms up in vexation. “Finally, now you understand. Wait, where are you going?”

              Taehyung’s hand in yours is solid, real, genuine, and everything it wasn’t as he tugs gently and pulls you along, both of you skirting the wall of Jin’s precious kitchen towards the door. He replies, as you try to hold in your laughter under the doctor’s disapproving look, “To that room you speak so highly of. Bye.”

              Leaving behind a baffled man in the kitchen, the two of you round the corner and quickly walk to the bedroom. On the way, you can’t stop yourself from teasingly asking, “You asked them to push this a week up so I could join? All for little ol’ me?”

              “Shut up,” he groans, making you laugh as you catch sight of the blush on his face and his embarrassed smile as you reach the door to your destination. His hand gives yours a playfully scolding squeeze, and it makes a trill run down your spine at the ease of the motion. It’s so lovely to not have to pretend anymore.

              Unable to resist the temptation, slightly giddy at the revelation, you continue, “Did you just want to spend more time with me? Did you have a crush?”

              Further goading stops in its tracks as the door is pushed shut behind you, and you’re swiftly pressed right up against it by a suddenly very confident Taehyung. The words dissolve on the tip of your tongue as he keeps you pinned with his hands and his eyes against the wood.

              “I still do,” he mutters, voice low, fire blazing in his eyes.

              You clear your throat, trying to remember how to speak in the intensity of his gaze, unable to recollect your question at the moment at the lightning quick change in his demeanour. “Huh?” you manage.

              “I still have a crush on you.”

              Those are the last intelligible words that are spoken for the rest of the night. It appears the two of you are back to challenges, but you can’t quite bring yourself to be annoyed by their new flavour.

              Real.

              The librarian still hasn’t realised that her favourite students are back yet, but it shouldn’t take long to change that.

              “Where do I start?” you patiently ask, amused by your friends’ incredulity.

              Jungkook sputters, “What – How? Wait. What do you mean it isn’t fake anymore?”

              “How about the beginning of the weekend? Tell us everything you couldn’t over text.” Hyejin replies, placatingly patting Jungkook’s hand. “And make it good.”

              “Oh, it’s good,” you grin, unable to stop yourself. You have an hour left before you need to leave for brunch with the Kims, and maybe forty-five minutes before you all get kicked out of the library, so you promptly begin.

#bts #btswritingcafe #btsbookclub #btsguild #ultkpop #thekpopnetwork #kwritersworldnet #kim taehyung #v #kpop #fanfic #kpop fluff #bts fluff #taehyung fluff #v fluff #kpop imagine #bts imagine #taehyung imagine #v imagine #kpop fanfic #bts fanfic #taehyung fanfic #v fanfic #bangtan boys #bangtan sonyeondan #jungkook #hwasa #hyejin #namjoon #yoongi

[bookofmirth]

I saw your recent response to an anon where you mentioned the drama that occurred the other day based around bookprofessor’s post. Obviously you don’t have to respond to this or publish it if you do not wish but I just wanted to bring up that while it is important to focus on the real life issues at hand, the OP was hypocritical in her post which is why people were getting upset. She was preaching against ableism while simultaneously flaunting her IQ and degree which is a form of ableism. She was speaking out against racism while ending her post using the racial slur “cracker” when talking about the possibly Caucasian Twitter elriels.

Obviously she had some important points but it was completely overshadowed by her participation in the hate speech and prejudice that she was speaking out against.

This does not in any way justify the nasty messages she received but on the same hand, I do not blame anyone that called her out for her hypocrisy. I hope you can understand why her post was so negatively received and how flawed it was. My hope is that one day everyone can just ignore the negativity, report those who are being racist/prejudiced in any way, and block those who are just being loud and who you don’t wish to see content from. But unfortunately I do not see that happening any time soon.

There are a few things I want to address in this because I think it's a good moment for the fandom to step back and reflect on how we treat one another, how we react to such issues, and how we behave moving forward.

First off, thanks for explaining your point of view without being antagonistic. I do think that everyone's emotional reactions to the post were valid. I do NOT think their responses, in terms of words and actions, were valid. Now before I move forward, I want to clarify that when I use the word "you", I am referring to anyone who may have had the response I am describing - not you personally, anon. Also please don’t freak out about how long this is, as a majority of it is a response to the fandom in general, not you in particular.

What was - and wasn’t - said in the original post

In this post, there were completely valid criticisms of the way that people in this fandom behave, and it wasn’t “generalizing” a certain group, it was literal, actual proof of things that had been said, by multiple people. I’m not going to get too into what Alyssa argued because her critiques of those tweets was flawless. The original post had very valid criticisms of what was happening on Twitter. Alyssa exposed the actually racist, homophobic, and imperialistic underpinnings of those tweets.

However, a lot of people are stuck on the bits before and after those critiques. @bookprofessor apologized for different aspects of her post in a few different asks. There were perhaps better ways that some of those things could have been phrased, some things that could have been left out. And she apologized. People can accept that apology or not but we can’t act like it didn’t happen. Like she didn’t reflect and learn to do better.

However, the people she was calling out have not done the same thing, and if anything, comments that focus more on Alyssa’s tone than why she wrote the post in the first place lets those people off the hook.

On cracker - Using the word "cracker" is not racist in the same way that using racial slurs against POC is. Is it prejudiced? Yes. But you cannot say that it is the same thing when that is demonstrably untrue, given centuries of oppressive history. No one has been oppressed for being white. Those are not the same. Reverse racism is not a thing because a white person punching down on POC is NOT AT ALL the same thing as a POC punching up at white people. The actions look the same, but the impact is so unequal it’s not even funny.

Racism is a systemic, institutionalized problem. It is not defined by individual actions, though those actions can either support or challenge racism. When someone calls a white person a cracker, there isn’t centuries of oppression giving power to and reinforcing that statement. That is not a “gotcha” moment.

Saying “I have x IQ” or “I have X degrees” is not ableist. I’m sorry to whoever told you it was ableist (again, not you specifically anon but people who had read the “aw shucks guys” vagueblogs about it), but it’s not. Those are facts. I have no idea what my IQ is, but I have five degrees from institutions of higher education. Me saying that is in no way ableist. 

Often, people mention those things to be elitist, yes. Sometimes, they can be used to say “hey I know more about this than you”. They can be used in a way that tries to make themselves feel superior. I suspect that this is the impression that a lot of people got of the post. However, there is a fine line between saying “hey that’s elitist” and professing anti intellectualism. Which is perhaps a side issue so I’ll let that go for now.

Another reason that people mention their degrees or qualifications is to establish their background knowledge and credibility. If I were to say “hey y’all I have two MA degrees” (which is true) I am not being ableist! It is a fact! It is factual! And I worked my ass off for those, I will be in student loan debt until I die for those, I have every right to mention them if I want to, and often I do so in order to establish my credibility, to explain the position I am coming from. And my prior knowledge of these topics is relevant when we are talking about literature since that’s what my degrees were on - literature and linguistics. That is why Alyssa mentioned her background, though she did pair it with comments about other people, for which she has apologized.

My final point about this is that I 1000% understand feeling insecure or less than because of educational attainment. I dropped out of high school. I had a complex about that for a long, long time. But I also know that if I took offense at someone else saying they had a PhD, then that offense is about me, not them. Someone else’s inferiority complex is not reason for people to pretend to be less than they are.

If those two comments are what overshadowed the bigger, more important issue for a lot of the readers of that post, then y’all allowed them to overshadow those more important issues. I am 99% sure that someone right now is reading this and thinking “but Leslie, it was the way that she said it!” Boy have I got some news for you!

How we react

This next section is not specific to this ask; instead, it is a discussion of how the fandom responded. If it were only one person who had said “but her tone” then I wouldn’t need to make this point. The fact that multiple people are exhibiting the behavior explained below is what makes this a cultural problem within the acotar fandom.

The main argument I saw on the post itself, and indeed any time I see people bring up how nasty Twitter can be, is that “it was a joke” and “that’s how stan Twitter works”.

No.

Those responses were quite useful for this post, though! So buckle up everyone, because I am going to talk about gaslighting, racism, respectability politics, and tone policing. While I understand that some people might have taken personal offense to what was said, there is a much bigger issue at stake that has nothing to do with individual feelings, and everything to do with ensuring that POC stay silenced and white supremacy is upheld. 

Back to the “but it’s a joke” thing. Thanks for gaslighting! Great example of that, person I’m not going to tag! Gaslighting is when you make someone question their experiences, when you try to make them think “wait, did I really feel that way? Is my feeling about that valid? Do I need to re-evaluate my response to this?? Am I blowing this out of proportion???” And saying “it’s just a joke” is a perfect way to do that. Did I say something accidentally sexist? It’s just a joke, nbd! Now you’re the problem, because you didn’t understand my joke and laugh!!! 

Saying “it’s a joke” or “oh they are old/young/ignorant, they will learn” is not a good response to... anything. It takes the responsibility off the people who are doing the harm, and putting it onto the people who were hurt. And in this case, anyone who read those tweets and found them harmful (which should be everyone?) is completely valid. You aren’t lesser for being angry or emotional or for seeing a problem where other people saw a joke. The people who see those things as acceptable jokes are the ones in the wrong.

This is a tactic that is used against women all the time. Any time a woman is sexually harassed at work or online, for example, and she gets upset about it, and someone chimes in with “oh they weren’t serious, can’t you take a joke?” So you can imagine what this is like for women of color.

It is a very, very common tactic for people of color to be silenced via tone policing and respectability politics. Tone policing and respectability politics are very closely related, especially in this context. The idea is that if Alyssa had just written that post in just the right way, it would have been more palatable to white people, and therefore okay to write. The idea that if she had tried to be “understanding” or “see it from their perspective” or understand that it’s “just a joke” are all ways to silence and de-legitimize any accurate, valid criticisms that were made of those tweets. It effectively re-routes the conversation away from the real issues, and to the person trying to bring them up. It’s essentially an ad hominem attack in disguise. 

We see respectability politics in media when people of color who act or dress or speak like white people are afforded more respect. Or any time that a person of color is pulled over and people say, “well if they had just done what the police officer asked...” There is a pervasive idea that if people just “act” properly, aka if you act white, then the police won’t feel antagonized and try to kill arrest you. If we are nice enough, meek enough, smile enough, etc. then we will be accepted.

When we tone police, we refuse to allow marginalized people the right to be angry. We say that "hey, we can only have this discussion if you leave emotion, which you rightfully feel, at the door, and we can only continue this discussion if you behave in a way that makes me feel comfortable." But guess what? It isn’t about you! These discussions are often highly uncomfortable. There is no nice way to tell someone they are being racist. And yet somehow, that is the ever-moving goalpost. It seems reasonable, right? “Just be civil, be nice, don’t insult each other!” And there is that. But those criteria change constantly, to the point where anyone (white) at any time can say “WHOA WHOA THIS IS MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE???” Then we find ourselves at zero, and suddenly the focus of attention has shifted away from the actual problem.

Before we go further, I want to say this: people have a right to be angry. They do not need to make their anger palatable or tasteful for the consumption of others (read: white people). 

We saw this last summer, and I’m not sure how the message didn’t get across. But people are rightfully angry about racism. They are angry about the murder of people of color by police, they are angry about lack of quality education, or clean water, of centuries of oppression that have led to this very moment when all of that ceases to matter because a white woman’s feelings got hurt one time. 

And that is what pisses me off so much. There is no way in this world that we could criticize tweets like those that everyone would agree with, and that everyone would “approve” of, that would be “nice” enough and yet still be impactful and make the authors of those tweets understand the gravity of what they have done. 

The least we can do is allow one another to express our anger, our outrage, because it’s highly likely that those people know exactly what the fuck they are doing, and they do not fucking care. By criticizing a woman of color for the way in which she chose to engage with this topic, we are avoiding the issue and letting the people in those tweets off the hook. 

There were many responses to that post that were positive, that agreed with Alyssa. There are a ton of people who disagree with those tweets, who find them disgusting, who understand exactly how and why they are problematic. That should be what we are talking about. Getting to the core of the argument, on that post or any about racism or other problematic behavior in fandom, requires getting past our own egos. It requires us to be able to step back, say “hm this thing is frustrating but there is a bigger picture here”. It’s not easy, and I recognize that. 

The fact that it is a common tactic though? To say “hey this hurt me personally and so I’m going to ignore any valid points you made?” That feeds directly into centuries of white supremacy because it, once again, silences POC and makes them try to play a losing game. And they will always lose, because no matter how hard they try to play the white game, the goalposts are constantly shifting. So you know what? Fuck the game, and fuck respectability politics, and fuck tone policing and “uwu be nice guys” because when it comes to things like racism and sexism, I don’t expect the people who deserve to be criticized to be nice. In fact, trying to be nice only serves to fuck POC over in the end.

Indeed, in response to that post, certain blogs have taken the opportunity to position themselves as “the nice ones” or “the ones who would never” or “uwu let’s be nice guys” while completely ignoring the fact that a woman of color was attacked for calling out racism. And yes - that was the point of her post. People getting hung up on mentions of her degree are (intentionally or not, it doesn’t matter) completely obfuscating the fact that that is not what her post was about, which was to call out disgusting behavior. idk how many words the post actually was, but essentially, people are focusing on 5% of it to the detriment of the 95% that was actually really important shit. These types of vagueblog posts about the issue fall into exactly what I am talking about - these are people who have decided to look at this issue, see how Alyssa (and anyone else who dares speak up) has approached it, and intentionally try to act like they are “better” because they can be “rational” and “kind”. Newsflash, if you don’t have something to be angry about, then being “nice” about racism isn’t that much of a flex. If it didn’t bother you, then congratulations. That doesn’t make you better than people it did bother. You just got lucky this time, and decided to use that to your advantage to look like the good guy.

I am not saying that all calls for peace are doing this. Obviously it’s what we all want. This is the worst I have seen this fandom in the 4+ years I’ve been here. But we cannot have that by ignoring the real problems and pretending that if we are all just nice to each other, then we will solve racism and sexism and all bullying in the fandom will stop. 

So combining all of this - the gaslighting, the tone policing, and what do you get? You get a fandom that refuses to actually engage critically with its own problems and take accountability for them. You get a fandom that decides that it’s easier to be distracted by this one mean comment over here than it is to engage in the fact that you know what, the culture in this fandom has actually turned incredibly disgusting and a lot of people are just okay with it. You’ve got a fandom that is using the tools of white supremacy to avoid the discussions that should actually be taking place. Maybe people don’t realize that that’s what they are doing. But if someone still thinks that after reading this post, then godspeed my friend, I hope you enjoy Twitter.

Okay so my last thing I want to say is that I didn’t come to all of this knowledge fresh from the womb. I do a lot of work, in my personal life and my professional life, to be better. So here is a list of books that I have found particularly helpful:

How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America also by Ibram X. Kendi

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (side note, I was kinda meh about this one but the chapter “White Women’s Tears” is particularly helpful)

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

I’m not going to talk specifically about Alyssa’s post anymore, but if anyone wants to continue talking about these broader issues going on in the fandom, I am game. (I really should be grading papers though, so it might take a bit.)

#cw racism #acotar #acosf #acotar fandom #fandom wank #fandom things #this is the long post i mentioned earlier #i will link it in my meta post

[ilikekidsshows]

The Marinette and Kagami Sub Arc Breakdown

Okay, it's finally done, the big analysis, where I tackle a topic I've wanted to write for simply because it's a topic I personally find interesting and fun, AKA, The Best Sub Arc in the Entire Series So Far, AKA, How Marinette Proved Without a Shadow of a Doubt that She'd Never Be Like Chloé And We Stan.

One of the most interesting parts of the Marinette and Kagami rivals to friends sub arc is that it's one of the aspects of the show that directly connects to Marinette's past as a victim of bullying and is, in a way, about her overcoming that past. Not many things in the show remind us of the revelation in 'Origins' that Chloé had been bullying Marinette for years before the show's timeline, especially since Chloé became pretty declawed as a school level threat as the series went on to the degree where I think many people watching forgot that she used to hold a lot more power, and Marinette used to be wary of her.

But, the reason why Marinette being a bully victim is important in her arc with Kagami is this: people who have been victimized don't necessarily recognize it when they're victimizing others, and I believe that Marinette shows signs of this mentality in the show, particularly in season three. I'll illustrate how Marinette's ex-bully victim mindset informed the early stages of her relationship with Kagami and how Marinette overcame her internal biases when it comes to Kagami and her behavior towards Kagami.

In 'Origins', when Alya quotes Majestia's by now immortal line, she also says something that is very much what someone who has been victimized would identify with: "That girl over there is evil, while we are the good people." While Alya was very accurate that she and Marinette are good people, she didn't really know much about Marinette at this point, so she was actually pretty much guessing. The reason why this line is important is because it relies on an assumption that a moral binary exists on the bully-victim scale, instead of these roles being dynamic and socially formed. If you’re a victim of a bully, the bully is evil and you are a Good Person.

Some people who've been systematically victimized think on some level that them being victims means that they can never be instigators, that they're automatically morally pure because the person who victimizes them is the evil one. This is a very typical argument in social justice circles, where a person who is victimized for one thing might say bigoted things about another group and claim that they can't be a bigot because they suffer from bigotry. The simplest example I can give is white women refusing to accept that something they've said about black women could be offensive to black women specifically, because "how could a victim of sexism be racist". Now, what happens between Marinette and Kagami in the show is nowhere near this level of victimization switcheroo, but it still has that false binary in that Marinette thinks that her actions have more moral justification than they actually do.

The interesting thing about how Kagami is introduced is that her future role as a love rival was downplayed in ‘Riposte’. Her Akumatization was because of family issues and the idea that she might be attracted to Adrien came from Marinette's jealous grumblings while she was rescuing him from Riposte (I'm mostly referring to the "She doesn't deserve you" line). Outside of that little bit, 'Riposte' comes across as a pretty standard Victim of the Week episode, instead of setting up a romance sub arc. As such, Marinette already viewing Kagami's Riposte form as a romantic rival serves more as foreshadowing rather than it actually forming their relationship.

Then we get to 'Frozer'. Marinette doesn't really know much of anything about Kagami at the start of this episode, as we can see in her mental image of Kagami as a cackling mean girl. Because Marinette doesn't really know Kagami at this point, when Adrien tells her he's thinking of asking Kagami out, her mind gives a placeholder mental image of her, seemingly based off of Chloé, another rich girl with a (supposed) crush on Adrien. This is the episode that establishes Kagami as a romantic rival to both the audience and Marinette, and Marinette’s negative mental image of Kagami establishes the idea of this rivalry being antagonistic. However, because this setup happens in Marinette's headscape, it's actually a one-sided antagonism.

Kagami isn't actually antagonistic towards Marinette in 'Frozer', but there is a certain assertiveness and physical presence to her in the episode that Marinette, as a former bully victim, might find imposing. Kagami gets in her personal space, because she's telling Marinette something she's sure Marinette doesn't want the boys to hear, but to Marinette, the body language could have come across as threatening. The way Marinette stares at Kagami throughout the scene with a deer-in-headlights look can indicate more general startlement or a sense of foreboding. And the episode ends with Kagami kissing Adrien on the cheek, establishing her as a threat in Marinette's eyes. From Marinette's view, Kagami's behavior in 'Frozer' confirmed her fears about Kagami, that she was a rich bully.

This interpretation of Kagami informs a lot of Marinette's actions in 'Animaestro'. Here we see just how much Marinette has started to view Kagami as the new Chloé in her mind. Even when the actual Chloé shows up, Marinette is more ready to side with her than Kagami. And why this happens is because Chloé actually accidentally enforces the idea that, because Marinette is a Good Person, any person who works against her happiness is a bully and a Bad Person. While we could argue that Marinette has no reason to listen to anything Chloé says, we have to remember that Marinette has been lowkey hoping Chloé would become a better person in episodes like 'Antibug' and 'Zombizou'. When they both agree that Kagami has to go, Marinette could have taken it as another sign that Chloé's not all bad, or Marinette could have simply come to the conclusion that Kagami is actually worse than Chloé, and so teaming up with Chloé to take her down is justified.

It's important to note that 'Animaestro' chronologically takes place right after 'Chameleon', another episode where Marinette thinks she's morally justified in practically bullying someone because they're acting in a way she disagrees with. Because Lila was revealed to be able to dish back the same, if not even worse, that Marinette could unleash, Marinette never learned that her behavior at the start of the episode was bullying and therefore bad. Lila "justified" Marinette's actions after the fact because she was actually a bad person all along, so Marinette doesn't need to feel bad about basically harassing her. If Lila had just been someone who fibs for fun, with no malicious intentions, Marinette's behavior would have been completely out of proportion.

This is why the approach Chloé and, by extension, Marinette take against Kagami is so vital. With Chloé hatching a scheme that was so much like one Marinette would put together, the lines between Marinette and Chloé were blurred in this episode. Simply because it was such a convoluted plan might have also been why Marinette didn't seem to realize the implications of what she was trying to accomplish. I mentioned during my liveblog of this episode that Marinette doesn't seem to consider that, since the plan was to publicly humiliate Kagami, the plan working would have meant hurting Kagami really badly. I also pointed out that, because the trap triggered for the wrong target, this fact didn't really register with Marinette completely, since she merely noted that of course Chloé would have a bad plan. The plan was bad because it failed, not because it was morally wrong.

However, even though we didn't see it happen in the episode itself, what happened at the movie premiere did alter Marinette's perception of Kagami. Most likely it was contrasting Kagami to the actual Chloé and realizing that she had been mistakenly attributing Chloé's traits to Kagami. The change in Marinette's perception is clear in her panic spiral when she realizes Kagami is her partner for the game in 'Ikari Gozen': "She's brilliant, strong, cute!" Marinette would never spell out all of Chloé's better features in such a way, which means her stance on Kagami has moved away from seeing her as The New Chloé.

Even though Marinette doesn't see Kagami as a bad person at this point anymore, she does still consider her strictly opposition. She refuses to work with her, preferring instead to sabotage her and her chances with Adrien, just this time without the attempted humiliation. This is mostly because Marinette sees Kagami and thinks she has it all: looks, confidence, influence, a connection with Adrien. Marinette is absolutely convinced that if they won the contest, all attention would be on Kagami and she'd be sidelined in favor of her. It's easy to think that a little bit of sabotage is okay when Kagami seems to have such an unfair advantage.

Unfortunately for Marinette's peace of mind, the point of 'Ikari Gozen' is to dissuade her of the notion that Kagami is fortunate in every way possible. We can see that Marinette thought that sabotaging the game was fine because Kagami had so many advantages because, as soon as she discovers that Kagami is friendless and has no connection to Adrien outside of fencing, she feels very bad for what she was trying to do. Marinette didn't actually want to hurt or upset Kagami. In 'Animaestro', Marinette didn't think about Kagami's feelings at all in relation to how Chloé's scheme might make Kagami feel, but this time she is thinking about them, she simply misjudged them at the start. She thought her purposefully throwing the contest would be a minor setback to Kagami, not what it ended up being: a betrayal by someone she was hoping to befriend.

I noted during my liveblog of this episode that Marinette's relationship with Adrien also started with a misunderstanding where Marinette first saw Adrien in a more negative light before that impression was proven to be false and they became friends. The development in 'Ikari Gozen' mirrors what happens in 'Origins' in that Marinette first has a false impression of Kagami, but is ultimately proven wrong in her assumptions and becomes friends with her. Marinette nominating herself as Kagami's friend even in her phone call with Tomoe suggests that Marinette recognized a similar need for friends in Kagami that she's seen in Adrien.

Marinette has gotten over seeing Kagami as an opponent in 'Desperada', where we see how Marinette reacts to Kagami and Adrien enjoying an inside joke together: she is miserable. Marinette recognizes the similarity between Kagami and Adrien and, rather than making her mad with jealousy, it makes her feel defeated. While Marinette's perception that Kagami was put together and perfect was taken down in 'Ikari Gozen', 'Desperada' shows us that she still thinks she can't measure up against Kagami, although now it's for the reason that she can see the connection between Adrien and Kagami and doesn't think she has what it takes to compete with that.

'Love Hunter' is the episode where this new sense of insecurity comes to a head. When Marinette's hair falls out of its usual style, it signifies her letting down her guard and enjoying both Kagami and Adrien's company, because Adrien and Kagami are both her friends at this point. However, when Marinette is reminded that there are things that Kagami and Adrien experience that she can't relate to ("It's not every day we can escape from everything they expect from us"), she hastily ties her hair back into the usual twintails, her insecurity forcing her to put her walls back up again.

Marinette is in emotional turmoil throughout the episode, allowing Adrien and Kagami to have what could constitute as an ice cream date alone at first, only to interrupt Kagami's attempt to kiss Adrien a few minutes later by whisking Kagami away to help solve the Akuma situation. This is why Marinette wanted André to pick the ice cream blend, because she started to project her relationships with Adrien and Kagami onto the ice cream too much. Marinette values her friends' happiness very high, high enough to stand aside when Kagami refers to their similarity as the reason she and Adrien are made for each other. Marinette does respond to Kagami that choices can be hard, so her standing aside is also about Marinette simply not acting at all, either to allow Kagami to go for Adrien unchallenged or to pursue Adrien herself. The choice between Adrien and Kagami was too much for her. Marinette being indecisive is of course a major character flaw I've discussed on this blog repeatedly, so the idea that it might have played a role here too makes sense from my perspective.

So far the Marinette and Kagami arc has been about Marinette learning not to subject other people to the kind of treatment she gets from Chloé, overcoming the temptation to turn into a bully to protect herself, and also making friends along the way. But there is still more ground that can be covered with this immensely interesting relationship. This is actually why I feel we really need to see Kagami and Marinette interacting after Kagami and Adrien break up. Because Marinette still has unresolved feelings about Kagami and not just Adrien after the season three finale.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #marinette dupain cheng #kagami tsurugi #ml meta #long post #popular

[nintickleswitch]

Yet Another Twist

A Magnus Archives tickle fic. Michael Distortion/Reader (gender neutral), typical Spiral mindfuckery, chasing, praise, CNC-ish (reader denies that they're into it until the very end). Inspired by the fact that there are no TMA avatar tickle fics aside from JonMartin fluff and boy do I want a giggly Spiral monster to wreck me!

A nuisance. Not how one would typically describe a spectre haunting their every step, always waiting around the corner to seize them and pull them into its nightmare dimension, but that's what Michael had become to you. His campaign of terror had started off well enough, at first a gradual flickering in the corner of your eye, tiny things to make you doubt whether your eyes were telling the truth. Then, as soon as your paranoia had ripened for harvesting, the door had appeared in your home.

There was nothing unusual about it. A perfectly plain, yellow door with paint peeling slightly from use. Except for the fact that... it wasn't there. It had never been there, and certainly had no cause to exist when it should have lead to a significant drop outside. Curiosity had killed the cat, but hadn't satisfaction brought it back? At least, that's what you thought when your hand began to turn the knob, a dire sensation tugging at you to stop, turn around and run from there until your thighs were aching and lungs were burning before anything happened to you. And then, he happened to you.

The creature that called itself Michael was the rippling, distorted shape that stalked the halls of that place lit only by stale, tinny yellow lights, where the ever changing wallpaper made you dizzy and the mirrors reflected that which scared you the most. It had preyed on your fear for the longest of times, leading you on endless chases through that evil maze of its until you found a mirror to smash, a door to fling yourself through to blessed freedom. You couldn't say when it dawned on you that it never truly intended to catch you, simply deceive you into thinking it was always getting closer and drinking in your panic like it was nectar. When you finally turned your back on it out of sheer spite, eyes ringed with dark circles from the sleepless nights he'd caused - that was when he became a pest.

Not that the frisson that traveled from your scalp through your spine disappeared when he actually spoke to you instead of simply laughing at your suffering, the words floating and dreamy through a haze of static, but you were capable of contending with him. The chases continued to be a part of your daily life, and you'd almost come to welcome them as somewhat of a break from the dullness of your work. Almost. What actually surprised you was the degree of interest it seemed to be taking in you. While he'd made it clear that there was no guarantee of your safety should you choose to repeat that little stunt, the display of bravery had surprised him. Clearly, it would take more creative methods to get you to crack. So began your twisted little relationship, punctuated by chats conversed entirely in riddles, the occasional drop in at work where you'd scramble to hide his intrusion and he'd simply laugh at your efforts, and of course, the thrill of the hunt.

It had been an overcast afternoon, where time flowed like molasses, thick and viscous. The tea in your cup had been swirling there for hours, hot steam curling in the air, rising in spite of the fact that it should have gone cold a long time ago. Why had you only now just noticed that fact? Your eyes darted to the couch across the room, and of course, there he was.

"Michael," you groaned in the voice of someone far too tired to deal with his petty shenanigans. "How long have you been sitting there already?"

High, clear laughter flowed easily from him, though you weren't even sure if he was moving his lips. It seemed to reverberate slightly, as if one track was layered atop the other, producing an unnerving effect.

"It can't have been that long, your coffee is still hot," it replied with a wry smile.

You looked down at your cup. Coffee... No, it was tea, and it must have been cold, not hot... Was it?

"Cut it out, Michael," you rolled your eyes at him, pushing away the illusory cup. "What do you want from me anyways?"

"You looked awfully glum today. I thought you could have used some cheering up."

His grin was ear to ear, never leaving him.

"If that's what you're after, let's start with stopping... Whatever you're doing right now, I don't like it."

The light headed feeling you didn't even realize was present had faded, and the cup was full of sad, cold tea once again. You almost felt worse for it, like he really had been trying to perk you up. A sigh left you.

"If you're looking to mess with me, I don't think you're going to get far."

"And why is that, I wonder," he spoke with a little less of that derisive edge, its grin softening into a closed smile - although it still stretched across his face. Since when did he care about how you felt? You gave it a vague shrug, not particularly interested in explaining the details of your mood, especially reluctant to admit that, well, you had been feeling lonely as of late. But you had no intentions to give him any more ground than he'd swept out from under your feet already.

"Tragic," it replied, putting sharp emphasis on the last syllable. Michael rose elegantly from the opposing couch, as if to take his leave. And he did appear to consider it, passing through the very same impossible door he entered through, the shade of yellow which you could never quite pinpoint... Until you heard the familiar creak of it behind you.

Quicker than a flash, its fingers curled around your chin, sharp and threatening despite the Cheshire grin that you could feel in your very bones. You dared not move, in spite of the shot of white hot panic passing through you. His lips brushed against your ear, at which you noticeably shuddered, producing another wave of dizzying laughter.

"I thought you might have appreciated my company~"

At this, he ran a long digit over the outer curvature of your ear, nails sharpened to inhuman proportions. To your utter horror, you were incapable of containing the burst of giggling the teasing provoked. It was something you tried to keep long out of reach of your conscious mind, a fact of your existence that had not been exploited for years and filled you with dread at the thought of Michael discovering: You were intractably, agonizingly ticklish. Immediately you tried to conceal the fright that flashed across your expression, but it was far too late. The air thickened, swirling around you, and you started to feel dizzy and light headed as your heart began to race. How much of this was Michael's doing, or simply your own anxiety at this discovery, was entirely your guess.

"Oh? What's this?"

His words buzzed around in your head, almost frenzied with excitement at all of the possibilities of what he could do to you. The blood drained from your face. There was no way you were giving him that satisfaction. Before it could tighten its grip around you, you broke away from the couch, racing towards the first exit you could find. Michael's laughter turned uproarious, keeping pace with you, hot on your heels. Fueled by instinct alone, you flung open the door to your apartment and tore through it, slamming it shut behind you as soon as you'd made it through. In the absence of rational thought, you'd forgotten that it had never been painted a sickly yellow.

Realizing your mistake, you whipped around to the door behind you, pounding on it, begging to be let out. You hadn't begged since the very beginning, but now you knew there was a dire consequence to being caught.

"Mercy?"

A high pitched voice came from just behind you, its hair draping over your shoulders. You froze.

"By now I thought you'd know better than to expect mercy from me~"

Your heart almost leapt from your throat as you pushed past it, the swipe of its claw missing you by centimeters. Running was pointless within its domain - well, not entirely. It made the meal of your fear just that much sweeter, but still you ran through the endless hallways with their swirling wallpaper, always changing colors, curving impossibly inwards. Giving him exactly what he wanted. Before long you felt your muscles begin to ache, faltering noticeably. The predator would inevitably outrun its prey... But it didn't have to. For in the far, far distance of the corridor you'd just ducked into was a shimmering mirage of what you could hardly call a person. Your fear was only compounded by the knowledge that if you looked back, the turn you took would be gone. All you could do was inch back, not daring to tear your eyes off the figure in the distance. Not realizing that it too was inching backwards, slowly, painfully twisting in the funhouse mirror, until it and you collided with your pursuer.

Letting out a surprised scream, you lurched forward, but only succeeded in falling to the floor, fingers sinking into the thick rug which curled and tightened around them, trapping you. The air buzzed and crackled, his soft curls spilling over your back as his triumphant laughter filled the space between you.

"It's not fair!"

You cried out to no avail, the anger in your voice noticeably cracking with your anticipatory smile.

"I would never be so cruel as to be fair to you," he replied, wiggling his fingers just barely over your skin. You couldn't see it happening, but the warm tingling in your nerves it produced made you fight even more desperately to keep composure.

"P-please, why are you doing this to me?!"

At this frantic question, it seemed to pause. Then, his form curled over yours, tracing your earlobe with his long tongue and sharp teeth, leaving faint imprints in the cartilage. At the same time, you could feel giant, raking claws drawing up the hem of your shirt from your hipbones to your ribs. And still you were pinned, with nowhere to go but down, down, down, hiding your burning blush and poorly concealed giggles in the softness of the carpet.

"I missed your laughter."

Came his reply, drunken on how soft and pliant, how sensitive you were. 

"Well, I'm - I'm not going to give you any more of it!"

A defiant lie that the throat of delusion incarnate himself would have been proud of, had he not taken it as a challenge.

"Is that so..."

You suddenly became painfully aware of your bare midriff, its fingers inching closer towards your skin with each passing moment. Eyes widening, you did your utmost to writhe away from them, but the attempt made it all the more obvious how stuck you were, only able to watch as he... Struck in the blink of an eye, causing a loud squeal to erupt from you, skittering his nails across your tummy with careless abandon.

"Then what's this sweet melody," it teased, ignoring your cries of his name in the midst of shocked and horrified laughter. Incapable of replying, you twisted from side to side to escape if only for a second. Never had you remembered being this sensitive, feeling this vulnerable. He knew exactly how to get to you, a fact which you were reluctant to admit. Even as he tortured you, he drew gentle, swirling patterns on your soft skin, which seemed to make the ticklish sensation of applying them last even longer. No matter how much you smothered your face in the rug, your laughter rang loud and clear throughout the halls, which seemed to shiver in pleasure at your torment.

"It's - ahahahahahaha - fuhuhuck you!"

"Oh, you'd like to, wouldn't you," he smirked, idly drawing an inward spiral around your navel as if you weren't screaming already. "But I'm afraid you're not in the position for that."

"Shuhuhut up!"

"Besides, you seem to be enjoying yourself as you are right now," its other hand traced outwards, grazing your lower ribs, which made you buck away, and that sweet spot between your hip bones and your stomach. You violently wrenched from him this time, which did not go unnoticed by the now cackling Distortion, who seemed to have discovered a spot he was all too fond of.

"Of - of course not!"

Why did that sound so unconvincing, when every twitching nerve in your body agreed that you couldn't stand one more second of this?

"I don't believe you..."

He spoke in that light, sing-song voice of his, before he closed his grip over your hips and you shrieked as all ten claws, although it felt like so many more, dug in. Prodding, pinching, squeezing, anything that would let your laughter pour from you like the sweetest wine. You tried your utmost to cry out, to appeal to some non-existent sense of humanity for him to stop, but in that moment your mind couldn't even remember what words were. And some small, hidden corner of your mind that you refused to admit was present thanked your lucky stars for that.

"You've always been a terrible liar."

Much to your horror, you found that even one hand was enough to cover the frame of your hips, and the other was now free to busy itself on spidering the backs of your thighs, occasionally sampling the tender inner part. The mock pity in its tone electrified your skin, and with two of your absolute worst spots being tickled out of your wits, all you could do was scream and thrash at your inescapable fate.

"You're a teheheror, Michael!"

You finally cried out after what felt like centuries, moments before he did the last thing you would have expected - he stopped. As your chest heaved and sweat trickled down your forehead, attempting to regain what composure you had left, he leaned his elbows on your back, hands folded together in a languid pose.

"That's the point, dear."

The grin on his face had clearly grown wider.

"What did you call-"

Your angered sentence broke off near the end when you felt those sharp, heavy points settle down to rest on your ribcage. A string of repeated no's tumbled from your lips before it became a cacophony of giggling at their gradual, yet deliberate movement.

"I called you dear. Or would you have preferred darling - "

He gently plucked at your lower ribs like guitar strings, sending you into a fit of helpless, silent laughter.

"Sweetheart-"

You gasped for air, pinprick tears in the corners of your eyes. Nothing had ever tickled you so much in your life, and you were never more desperate to escape as the creature that tormented you began cooing terms of endearment into your ear, sickly sweet like syrup. It only heightened the adrenaline rush you were experiencing, fighting to squirm out of his grasp like it was for your very survival.

"- perhaps pet would be more to your liking?"

A particularly loud howl broke your silence at the impossible sensation of him both kneading and lightly scratching over your ribs, both in front and behind. Every patch of new ground he covered was worse than the last, especially when he targeted multiple spots at once, two inhumanly long nails raking across the soft hollows of your underarms, down towards your ribs, then back up your inner arms.

"You seem positively enamored with that one, my sweet little pet," it threw its head back, the sound of his laughter tasting like pop rocks in your mouth. You could handle him being actively terrifying, but the saccharine praise on top of the excruciatingly witty tickling threw your head into a tailspin you weren't falling out of any time soon. Merely being in his presence was disorienting enough, but the prolonged torture had pushed your mind to a space you didn't even know existed. Perhaps it occupied some liminal space between the real and the unreal, where agony poured over into ecstasy. A low, flustered whine of resignation rose in your throat at his teasing, between hiccuping laughter and half-sobs. This was it, you were completely and utterly broken. Or so you'd thought before he paused to brush away a tear, leaving a lightly stinging mark on your cheek where the razor sharp talon had made contact. 

"Come now," it spoke softly, accompanied by a loud cracking sound. You looked up from the refuge of the warm, comfortable carpet, and there was his face, hanging inches from yours. No matter how many times you'd been chased by that thing down the warm, dark hallways, you were never prepared to see the Distortion's true appearance. Its features approximated a nose, eyes, and lips, but they were simply dancing lines that never connected in any way that your fragile mind could make sense of, and its curls shone in the light like an oil slick in rainwater. In a burst of energy that constituted primarily of panic, you yelped, attempting to leap back. Still you were firmly stuck, incapable of moving under the form which draped over you in a position that was... more than compromising. There was no willing down the heat rising in your cheeks.

"I assure you," it purred. "Our fun isn't over yet."

Before you could ask what he had meant, you felt yourself plunging headfirst into the answer. Suddenly it seemed to surround you all at once, leaving no inch of your body unmarked - fingers spreading your toes, lovingly raking over your bare soles, up your calves and the backs of your knees, squeezing your thighs, kneading at your sides, far, far too many hands and fingers than he had, than you knew he had. What filled the gaps he could not reach writhed softly against your skin, gentle yet merciless in its titillation, playing against the nape of your neck, the tenderness of your palms. All the while, time and space twisted themselves into shapes that you could not imagine, a torturous century squeezed into what may have been a brief instant of tangled limbs and broken smiles. And you laughed. You laughed, and laughed until there was not an ounce of anything but laughter filling your body. The squirming fractal mass had drowned out all rational thought, dragging you deeper and deeper into itself until by the very end of it, when he'd finally let you surface for air, the only question you could repeat as you lay there on your back was why. Why had you ever opened that door, why did he insist on tormenting you so? A million fragments of a million broken, senseless questions ran through your brain, but not more than one syllable of them could have been formed by your tongue past the frenzy of that horrible tickling.

"Aren't you a curious one, love," he laughed, now filled with a cruelty that chilled you to the bone, his speech barely comprehensible as human. "I suppose I owe you one honest answer. It's very simple. Your fear is intoxicating."

He paused, letting the dawning horror of your situation sink in.

"You really have no idea how long you've been here, do you? It could have been minutes or hours or weeks... But you don't know, because it's been an eternity to you and you're terrified this will be all that remains."

"No... No, no, no, please, I'm begging you-!"

"No?"

It asked with mocking incredulity.

"Your screams could feed me for decades, after all, I see no reason why I shouldn't keep you here for the rest of your existence."

A shot of genuine, primal dread pulsed through you. Paradoxically, but undeniably, somehow that notion excited you.

"What do you think," he traced under your chin with a light touch. "You could give up your tedious little life to be my tickle pet."

"I-"

The gentle proposition had caught you completely off guard. For how terrifying he was, his ability to fluster you on a dime was far worse than anything else he was capable of doing to you. Slowly you shook your head, unable to help the small whine you let slip as you buried your face in your hands.

"Such a shame... I think you would have enjoyed it."

"I don't... I don't know what you're talking about..."

"Oh, but I think you do," he replaced his hands at your sides, the playful lilt in his tone evident. You felt your lips cracking into a smile, but kept your face covered, refusing to let him see the truth of your expression.

"I think you like having your mind played with, twisted into paths impossible to trace."

Its claws began to move again, swiftly eliciting a steady stream of giggles from you, hips shaking from side to side.

"It's just as much of a game for you as it is for myself, isn't it," he leaned in, his tongue flicking at your ear, honey-sweet words pouring from his lips. "The adrenaline, the chase. The thrill of twirling into the arms of madness itself."

By now his fingers spidered relentlessly across your torso, and still you refused to give in, even though you were sure you couldn't take one more second of this, thrashing helplessly in his grasp.

"The door opens both ways, my pet, and you let me in~"

"That's- that's not true!"

"Really? Then answer this for me, if you still can: Do you ever remember telling me to stop?"

The grin that split his face was wider than you'd ever seen on him, practically triumphant as your eyes went wide in shock and you tried feebly to pry his hands off you, only succeeding in making them clamp down tighter on you, squeezing your hips until your laughter went silent.

"Oh, no no. I'm afraid it's not going to be that easy. You're going to have to admit something."

"W-Whahahat?!"

"That you're enjoying this, of course."

His assault was unrelenting, and on your very worst spot, you knew you couldn't last much longer. Your attempts to scream, curse and kick at him faded into soft wheezing and limp giggling, tears streaking down your burning cheeks. With your pride having been torn to shreds long, long ago, there was only one way out of this for you.

"Okay, okahahay! You win, Michael..."

You huffed, resigned to your fate.

"And?"

He stared down at you expectantly, fingers still hovering dangerously over your sides in warning. You took a deep breath, praying that admitting this to his face wouldn't make you combust on the spot. 

"I... I like being tickled by you."

As soon as you spoke the words, he let go. Scrambling to a sitting position, you backed yourself up against one of the walls of the corridor, chest heaving with exhaustion. Michael stretched out across from you, smiling like the cat who got the cream. If you didn't know any better, you would have said there was a certain fondness to it.

"There, that wasn't so hard now, was it~?"

Its eyes glittered in the dim, hypnotic light.

"... Shut up," you replied in as gruff a tone as you could manage, before crawling over to him and flopping into his lap, defeated. It chuckled softly, carding its fingers through your hair, twisting it into wild, spiralling shapes, until the line between dreams and reality blurred completely and you found yourself drifting off peacefully in the Distortion's arms.

#tickling #tickle fic #the Magnus Archives #michael distortion #TMA tickles #minors dni

[amiedala]

Something More (the mandalorian x reader)

Something More (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 2: Not Leaving You Here

Rated: Explicit (not this chapter, but future chapters will be)

Warnings: descriptions of violence, violence, there’s an interaction between the reader and a threatening man but it’s not that in depth and it ends quickly (but if that will trigger you PLEASE skip over it!! <3), descriptions that are sexual in nature

Summary: “You’re not fending for yourself on Corellia,” he says, and it’s abrupt. He turns back around, and you swallow a few mouthfuls of air because what are you supposed to say to that?

“I’m a big girl,” you chance, leaning forward, ever so slightly. “I can handle myself.”

“I’m not leaving you here,” he counters, and you fall silent. Okay, then. Your heart does a backflip in your chest. He’s not leaving you here. From the way he’s refused to let you leave the Razor Crest on the last few locations in sketchy places, you have a sneaking suspicion he’s gotten accustomed to your presence, and maybe even that he doesn’t want you to get hurt. It sings in your chest. Either that, or you’ve unknowingly been kidnapped for the better part of the month, but, if you were being honest with that deep down adrenaline rush that follows him around, you don’t even care.

It takes three weeks, a shady bounty on Bespin, and a mistake on your part of epic proportions, but you finally get the Mandalorian to talk to you more than in passing. He’s a man of few words, this much you figured when he first took you aboard, but it is intimidating how much silence he lives in. You aren’t used to the quiet. Even when you flew through the stars yourself your commlink was always on, or you’d fiddle around with the dials until you found a station from the closest planet that could croon to you as you flew. Back on Yavin, you shared quarters with other families and other rebels when your parents left on missions, and even in their death, you would curl up with friendly faces or droids whenever you went to sleep. You liked noise. Noise was human. Noise made you feel real.

 If the Mandalorian didn’t have a death wish for every single droid he came across, you might have made the joke that he was one himself. He’s robotic, systemic in his silence. He only ever seems to speak when he tells you to move out of the way or how long he’ll be gone when he goes to collect his bounties, leaving you in charge of the kid until he returns.

 You have literally zero idea why you’re still here. Still, though, there’s something pulsing in you whenever you talk to him, think about him. There’s something thrumming at the same frequency that you’re tuned into simmering under all that beskar, you can feel it. You want to ask him if he feels it too, that low humming in his chest when you’re alone together, if you could ever figure out how to broach the subject. The first planet you touched down on after leaving Nevarro’s molten surface was Corellia. You had asked, quite begrudgingly, if this is where you got off, where he left you.

 The question seemed to evaporate in midair. You were both in the cockpit, him in the pilot’s seat, you a few feet behind him. The baby was sleeping in his crib, the floating egg hovering somewhere down the ladder. It was so quiet there. You weren’t even sure, for what felt like full minutes, if he had heard you, and you were about to ask him again when he slowly turned in his seat, the visor fixing on your face.

 His legs were splayed open. His lap was so big. You gulped, trying to slow down your heartbeat as he surveyed you, completely unyielding in his quiet.

 “No.”

 Your eyes narrow. “I can—I’ve been in worse places, before, it’s okay, I can work my way off Corellia. I know you have bounties to collect, and I know this was just supposed to be my ride off Nevarro—”

 “You’re not fending for yourself on Corellia,” he says, and it’s abrupt. He turns back around, and you swallow a few mouthfuls of air because what are you supposed to say to that?

 “I’m a big girl,” you chance, leaning forward, ever so slightly. “I can handle myself.”

 “I’m not leaving you here,” he counters, and you fall silent. Okay, then. Your heart does a backflip in your chest. He’s not leaving you here. From the way he’s refused to let you leave the Razor Crest on the last few locations in sketchy places, you have a sneaking suspicion he’s gotten accustomed to your presence, and maybe even that he doesn’t want you to get hurt. It sings in your chest. Either that, or you’ve unknowingly been kidnapped for the better part of the month, but, if you were being honest with that deep down adrenaline rush that follows him around, you don’t even care.

 You’ve seen most of the Outer Rim before, and you had gone to a handful of planets away from your initial home on Yavin, but this kind of exploration feels different. It’s wandering and collecting. You missed the feeling of being in the sky without having to trade it for shady deals to earn your keep, and sometimes the Mandalorian will let you drive. Only when he’s exhausted, or when you have a long way to go, but still. Sometimes. Most of all, though, you think he’s relieved that he trusts you enough with the baby and the ship when he’s gone. It’s a silent agreement. You didn’t realize being a glorified babysitter could ever be so fun. You love the little guy, the way he coos when he sees you, how his big eyes glow whenever the Mandalorian is around. Keeping inanimate objects—and frogs—out of his big mouth is a job in it of itself, sometimes, but you don’t mind.

 If nothing else, it’s a nice vacation, planet-hopping and watching the Mandalorian’s kid. You have no idea what he looks like under the armor—you heard stories of one that fell into a Sarlacc pit on Tatooine from your parents’ friends in the alliance, but that was it—but you know he’s supposed to scare you. Intimidate you, at the very least. He makes that easy, sometimes, to dwindle hours down just trying to guess what’s happening in his head under the helmet. One time, you nearly fried your hand on a rogue wire, and he pulled your wrist so hard out of the flame that you spun around 180 degrees, the wind knocked out of you.

 “You need to be more careful,” is all he says, but his grip lingered. Just for a second too long, but enough to make his reprimand deeper, more meaningful. And then you wonder, am I doing it again? Making something out of absolutely nothing? Still, it lives in your head, his tone, his voice, the way he grits out the words. It pops into your head when you’re alone at night, sometimes, when your mind is wandering to someplace filthy and you’ve let yourself count how many months it’s been since anyone but yourself has touched you.

 And then Bespin happens. It comes out of nowhere. You’ve come accustomed to the creatures that the Mandalorian brings aboard, the way that he tolerates their presence until they get too chatty, or try to spark up a fight, and then blasts them with a hiss of gas that captures their entire bodies in carbonite until he can return them to the Guild. You’ve gone back to Nevarro twice since you left it, where the Mandalorian collects more bounty pucks and informs you where you’re headed off to next. You still have no idea why you’re here, why he’s refused to let you walk out on him or the kid, other than maybe playing babysitter is a necessity for him. But that begs the question of what he did before you were on board; before he ever met you. He doesn’t like you asking questions. He doesn’t seem to like talking, just treats it as an annoying necessity, so you’ve long given up on filling the space with noise, as much as you miss it. When he leaves, though, you crank whatever music is playing on the local stations up to the max. You play old cantina love songs for the kid, grabbing the little green baby and swinging him around the ship’s interior, putting him on your jutted hip as you swirl around the cargo hold, murmuring the songs to him like your mother used to do with you. It hurts somewhere deep down inside, the ache that your parents’ death left, something you learned how to ignore long before you met the Mandalorian or the baby, but something about them both dredges it up in you.

 As unsure as your presence is here, though, there’s something even in this tin can ship that feels warm. You can feel it even in the silence, even when no one’s talking. It’s crept up on you, and you’ve stopped asking where your ride stops. The Mandalorian is in no hurry to kick you out it seems, and he’d tell you whenever your contract, whatever that meant, ended. So, you whirl around, hair falling loose around your face, too long and spiraling out from your braid. You’re so engaged in your opera to the baby that you don’t even notice the hiss of the doors as the plank disengages from the Crest. You have your hand in a faux microphone, belting out notes from a song that doesn’t even have words to get the baby to do his squeal and giggle, the noise equal parts air and glee, and you don’t notice that there’s someone entering the ship who is very much not the Mandalorian until it’s too late.

 You freeze. The figure in front of you is tall, much taller than you, with a grimace on his face and something rough and scarily alight in his eyes. He reminds you of the one that tried to pick you up on Nevarro, and that alone makes your tummy flip backwards. The gangplank starts to hiss and crawl back in towards the ship, and you pop the baby up closer to your chest, so your good hand is free.

 “This isn’t your ship.”

 The man grins, and you scowl back at him. You still don’t have a blaster, which makes you feel utterly useless, but you can fight. You learned how to hit and evade, both in piloting and in combat, and the baby’s egg is right behind you—if you tried, you could probably hold him off. Probably.

 “It could be,” he sneers, and you pull the baby’s head closer to your chest.

 “I don’t think so.”

 “What is a girl like you doing here, sunshine?” His voice is so deep. It vibrates as more words fall out, and that alone scares you.

 “Visiting a friend.” Another lie. One that probably won’t even deter him. It’s time to go into fight mode. You glance to your right, where the baby’s cradle is waiting, mouth open. Okay. You could swing him into it with one arm and move forward into a punch if you needed to. You place the baby in the cradle, giving him a look. He shuts it as soon as he’s in it, and you push it back into the corner. “You don’t want to meet him.”

 “Maybe I do.”

 Your eyes flick away from his, just a second, to survey what weapons he’s packing. It looks like a sword on his back, and maybe a knife strapped to his thigh. It’s a mistake: he takes your falter as an opportunity to move forward and advance towards you.

 “Don’t touch me,” you manage, as a large, meaty palm moves forward. A quiver breaks your voice down the middle. Okay, you’ve gauged the situation. The baby is safe in his egg. You can evade this guy’s grip long enough to force him into the corner, and you can hit the release of carbonite. You can do this.

 He’s big, though. You knock his palm out of your proximity, but he’s still coming. You try to duck him—stupidly, it was way too predictable, and his forearm slams into your stomach and knocks the wind out of you. Something desperate clenches inside you—the Mandalorian has only been gone for an hour, and he usually doesn’t return with the bounty until at least three. You have to defend yourself, and the baby, because no one’s coming to the rescue. On the ground, you groan, locking eyes with the armory on the other side of the ship. You could potentially slide through his legs and open the hatch—but then you both have weapons within reach, and you don’t trust yourself to get there in time.

 Your chest hurts. He’s looking down at you, now, leering, and you get up, shoving off the heels of your hands like you did on Nevarro. It’s been a long time since you’ve felt the weight of being a relatively small woman traveling alone, especially since you’ve sort of joined the crew of the Razor Crest, and you forgot how dangerous the galaxy can be when you’re not in the pilot’s seat and you’re without your gun.

 “Relax,” the man says, and you clench your jaw down. “You can come with me, sweetheart.” You know he wants to hurt you. You can sense it, in the way his eyes are set, in the way he’s leaning towards you. You don’t want to give him the chance, but you don’t know what else to do.

 “I’m fine, thanks,” you manage, trying to step forward and not get boxed into the corner, but he takes the full weight of his palm and slams into you again, and you fly into the nook near where the Mandalorian sleeps. He’s got you fucking pinned, now. He’s moving forward, and the same giant hand lunges out in front of his hulking exterior, and then his hand is clenched against your throat and you’re being picked up off the floor, your feet kicking at nothing.

 “Let go,” you manage, using your fist to try and knock at something on his giant body. “Let go,” you repeat, strained, “I’ll come with you—please, just let me go, please—”

 The giant hand around your neck suddenly goes limp, and you think for a second that your sore excuse for a bargain maybe worked, until you feel blood dripping down your shirt and the man’s eyes go lifeless. Your ears stop ringing as your legs touch the floor, and your knees buckle as you gasp for air. There’s a body on the ground, blue blood pooling out all over the floor of the Crest, and the Mandalorian is standing at the entrance.

 “Are you okay?” His voice is quick, deep, low. You don’t even register he’s talking to you, at first. “Hey. Hey.” You realize, stupidly, that his hands are on you, hovering around your midriff. His gloved fingers are wrapped nearly entirely around the circumference of your waist, but he’s so hesitant with his touching. “Where are you hurt?”

 You stare down at the man, clearly dead, leeching blood all over the floor. There’s a knife the size of your leg piercing him straight through—his knife, you realize, the sword on his back that the Mandalorian stabbed him clean through with. “He’s dead.”

 “I don’t care about him.” The Mandalorian’s voice is terse, still low and desperate. It takes a minute, but you finally look up at him, register that his hands are supporting you, and slump into them. “Hey. Did you get cut at all? Where did he—what happened?”

 “Is that the bounty?”

 “What—no, no, the bounty wasn’t here. I was coming back when I saw this one in front of the ship. Where did he hurt you?”

 “I’m fine,” you manage, and the Mandalorian’s left hand moves from your back up to cradle your face. No, he’s not cradling your face, you realize, he’s cupping it, puckering your lips out with his grip. He’s looking at you, seeing if your eyes are unfocused, if you lost your consciousness. “He only knocked me around a bit. I’m fine.”

 “That was close.”

 You nod. It was. “It was,” you echo, and then your stomach clenches and you let out a low, deep groan. “I made a miscalculation—an overestimation in my own evasion skills, really, but I miscalculated how fast his arms were in comparison to my fight or flight reflexes. I’m fine—”

 “Don’t lie to me. Where did he hurt you?”

 This time, you gesture to your midriff, wincing as the Mandalorian moves his hand over your abdomen. “Ow,” you say pointedly, and he sighs, pulling you gently to the floor.

 “Stay here,” he commands, and you have nowhere else to go, so you obey, still gasping for air. He drags the dead body back down the gangplank, giving the guy a kick or two before he pulls the door back up. He shakes his hand free of the slick of blue blood, walks over to the baby’s cradle, and inspects him for any damage before he makes his way back over to you. “Stay still.”

 “Do you see me moving?” you ask, and it’s meant to be a joke, but he sighs, and suddenly, his hands are moving back towards your belly. Even through the gloves, you can feel how strong his hands are, how big they are in comparison to your torso. You gulp in air, your injured stomach doing backflips that aren’t helping the ache, but he’s right there, touching you, and it’s such a stark contrast to the way he’s acted around you that it’s intoxicating. Your heart catches in your chest.

 “Lift this,” he says, but hesitates long enough for you to pull your shirt up yourself, and the intention of the gesture after nearly getting choked out by the thug a few minutes prior makes your eyes spark with tears. “You don’t look like you’re bleeding internally. You…Your abdomen isn’t rigid enough for that.” He pauses, and his visor is trained on your bellybutton. Your own gaze frets back and forth between his helmet and his hands, and you realize what he’s looking at. There’s a jagged scar down the left side of your belly, leftovers from a knife fight back when you first started out on your own and accidentally got on a cantina bartender’s bad side.

 “It’s old,” you whisper. It’s obviously old, it’s scar tissue only a few shades darker than your skin, but he’s staring at it with such intensity that you feel compelled to explain it away.

 “Who did that?”

 You look up at him, again, his hand still resting on your belly, a featherweight compared to its size. It’s dizzying you. This is the most he’s ever consecutively spoke to you in the three weeks you’ve been aboard, and his voice is so vibrant, a baritone that lingers in the air long after it’s left it, even through the modulator.

 “He’s long gone,” you manage, and it’s not a lie. “It was years ago, really—”

 “Where else did you get hurt?” He interrupts, and it takes you a second to realize he’s referring to the guy he just killed, not the one from the cantina five years ago.

 “Just,” you say, gesturing a tired hand to your neck, “my throat.”

 Again, the Mandalorian falls into silence. His hand is still on your stomach, and the low thrum in your belly that pulses whenever he’s around is deafening. It feels like your ears are still ringing from being choked up against the wall, and you think if it were the Mandalorian’s hands doing the choking, maybe you wouldn’t have resisted so much.

 Maker, where the hell did that come from?

 You gulp as his free hand roams to the hollow of your throat, finger glancing off the necklace entangled in itself below your collarbone. You shiver, just once, as his gloved index finger traces the marks the intruder left behind. You don’t see them until in the mirror later than night, and they’ve faded almost entirely. You don’t know for sure what he sees, because even though he’s reflective on nearly every surface, light inside the Razor Crest is low, and you’re too distracted by both of his hands roaming two different parts of your body.

 “You’re breathing,” he says, finally, and a giggle escapes from your throat at the obviousness of his statement. “Now you’re laughing. I don’t think there’s any lasting damage.”

 “Thank you,” you say, fighting another one bubbling up in your throat, and you freeze again as he gently lifts your shirt back down over the injury, letting his finger on your throat trail off as he lets you go. Something shifts. Your heart is still galloping in your chest. “Thank you,” you say again, suddenly emotional. “Thank you for coming back…When you did.”

 He just pauses. You don’t know what he’s doing under that helmet, but you can imagine he’s looking at you. Straight at you. His silence is different this time, more vibrational. “Tomorrow, we’ll pick you a weapon out of the armory.”

 You do a double take. “I get one of your weapons?”

 “It’s not as safe on the ship as I thought it was,” he says darkly, and he extends a hand to you as you slowly, achingly, peel yourself off the floor. You pause sitting up as you digest what he’s saying. “You need to be able to protect yourself.”

 You look at him, and back at the baby, who started cooing at his side, and the Mandalorian picks his kid up out of the cradle without moving his gaze off you. “I’m…Am I staying on the ship?”

 He cocks his head. “You’ve been watching the kid on here, right?”

 You nod, then shake your head. “Of course,” you say, trying to explain the shift in your movement, “but I mean…am I staying here? Indefinitely?” You pause, then decide it’s been a hell of a day and you’re brazen enough to ask the next part of your question, “With you?” It flutters inside you, the boldness of the question, especially against the knowledge that you’re testing your theory—that he feels as right with you as you do with him, that when he walked into you, something cosmic happened.

 The Mandalorian looks down at you, almost entirely still. Before you can let your nerves get the best of you, he sighs, loose air exiting the modulator, and something sparks low in your tummy, deeper than your injury, and then he’s settled on the floor next to you again. “Yes.”

 You smile, wince at the gesture as your throat constricts, and then resume the position, ache be damned. “Okay.”

 “Can you make it up the ladder?”

 You slowly shake your head. “I think I’m sleeping on the floor tonight.”

 “You always sleep on the floor.”

“Not true,” you answer, shaking a finger at him. “Sometimes, I fall asleep in the chair. But yeah, I usually nest on the floor.”

“Nest.” The word is flat, even, but there’s something about the way he says it makes you want to giggle again.

“I need to be swaddled in things, usually, to fall asleep. And noise. Noise helps.”

He just stares at you. “Are you a Jawa?”

You furrow your eyebrows, completely lost. It takes full seconds before you realize he was making a joke. You laugh, again, and it hurts to bring a hand to cover your mouth, but you do it anyways. “I just like a little hodgepodge to sleep in. I don’t strip things for parts,” you counter.

“Obviously,” he says, his voice rich and deep. Something about the way he says it burns low inside you. This is the most the Mandalorian has ever spoken to you. This might be the most the Mandalorian has ever spoken, if how little he exchanged any language was indicative of how he’s spent most of his life. “Stay here.”

You smile again, because where else would you go, and he climbs the ladder. With how quickly he cuts his conversations short, you think he just decided he’s done talking for the day, and he’s going upstairs to set the ship on the next course, so you settle into the corner of the ship where you still are, just feet away from the alcove where he sleeps. You wonder what it looks like in there, if there’s only enough space for his hulking figure, or if you could shimmy your way into there next to him, your body pressed up against his in the tiny space—Stars, you’re letting your mind wander.

“No chance,” you whisper to yourself, despite the pull deep in your chest, that humming, that warmth that he gives you, despite how distanced he’s been from you. “Get it together.”

A moment later, shiny feet descend the ladder, and your water flask is pressed into your hand, and the Mandalorian has something in his hands. It’s a blanket, one you stole from the tiny medbay when you first climbed aboard. It’s unmade and he also has what looks like a small pillow in his other hand. He drops them, gently, at your crossed legs. “For your…nest.”

You smile, again, and if you tried hard, really hard, you could imagine that he was smiling under all that metal, too.

“Thank you.”

He nods, still standing awkwardly. “You should take the bed.”

You look to the closed alcove where his cot is, to him, and back again. “No,” you say, “no, that’s yours, and hauling myself off the floor right now is simply not an option. Thank you, though.”

He just stands there.

“Really,” you emphasize, even though the pull in your stomach wants very badly to climb in his bed and fossilize yourself in there, because he’s still standing there, talking to you, and you would trade almost anything in the galaxy for as many minutes as possible of this.

He sinks back onto the floor with you. The baby is now sound asleep in his cradle. You don’t know what to say next, but the Mandalorian doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. Your belly still aches, and your throat feels raw, but you can’t keep the smile off your face. It’s warm in the crest, warm enough that you don’t need to swaddle yourself in the blanket, and you look down at your chest, the white tank top you bought months beforehand stained blue and black with blood and grease. You probably shouldn’t have blown your scarce credits that was going to get stained so easily, but you didn’t know you’d be living with a bounty hunter and his baby when you first got it.

“Where are we going next?” you ask, and you’re not sure how much time has elapsed. The Mandalorian doesn’t speak, and you think maybe he’s faded off into sleep, and you reach up, wincing, to pile your loose hair on the top of your head.

“You missed a piece.”

“What?”

He hasn’t even moved. “Hair.”

You fumble with your fingers until you find the rogue lock of hair, shorter from where you hacked bangs into it nearly a year ago when you had first lost your other ship. It’s hanging in your face, and you don’t reach to move it, letting it tangle with your eyelashes. You can feel his eyes on you, it’s burning a sudden and violent hole through you. Again, that spark low in your pelvis sings, and your breath hitches in your throat.

The Mandalorian barely moves, just extending his arm in the dark to tuck it behind your ear. You sigh as his hand brushes against your cheek, the gloves smelling like dirt and leather and something uniquely him. You feel his touch everywhere. And then his fingers are gone as quickly as they arrived, and you have to take the lingering of the touch he gave you as proof that it happened at all.

“You should get some sleep,” he says, and his voice through the modulator spirals deep into you. You want to know what it sounds like under the helmet. You want to know what a lot is like under the helmet. You want to argue with him, keep him talking, but sleep is calling your name louder than he’s speaking, and you’re sliding down the wall, trying to curl up in the most comfortable position.

The last thing you remember before drifting off is the Mandalorian moving quietly to cover you in the blanket he brought down, settling back into the dark quiet of his ship, pulsing not even a foot away from where you slept.

#SURPRISE! #i thought i'd give y'all a chapter 2 a little early since i have so much written already <3 #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian fanfic #din djarin fanfiction #ENJOY! #something more

[dollwritesarchive]

dead man’s cove ❛ sylvie laufeydottir

part one: the cove

fandom marvel

featuring siren queen!sylvie x pirate captain!reader (f)

rating sfw

content warning mentions of death, vague depictions of death, mentions of head injury, mentions of blood, violence

chapter summary you wake up, disoriented, after being thrown overboard by your former crew, in a cave surrounded by strange women with peculiar and inhuman features.

word count 1.7k

attention please do not translate or repost my work anywhere ever. i’m very fond and sensitive of my sylvie fics, so please please give it a reblog and some feedback if you enjoy. lots of love 💚

dead man’s cove masterlist !

series tag list @enchantedlaufeyson / @agentofbarnes / @ghostsunderstoodmysoul

cold.

cold and wet and hurting. your head is pounding in tandem with the unsteady rhythm of your heart and the ripples of shuddering through your body creates a symphony of perplexity. there’s a sticky substance glued to the side of your temple, and you could feel the plastering of dried blood cracking beneath it. you brace your palms against the jagged rock beneath your body, that is heavy with its dampness, your clothes weighing what seemed to be twice as much as before, and propel yourself into a sitting position before your eyes even have the strength to open.

were you dead?

your body felt as if it were still at sea; last you remember, you were being tossed over the side of your own ship, falling headfirst into the icy depths of the ocean. sinking. darkness. abyss. the end of your days. this is how you imagined it would feel to be dead— but, why were you no longer thrashed about under the surface? why did you feel heavy, when being submerged made you weightless?

and then, there was the song. as if it had taken you the moments of sitting up to allow the saline water to drain from your ears, a melodious and mind-numbing song of countless feminine voices harmonizing fills the dark world around you. how many voices could you hear, or were there few, echoes of them bouncing all around your body, ricocheting off of every wall to paint the illusion of an orchestra?

you would have to force your lids to part to tell for sure, but with the throbbing in your head, you had to wonder if your gaze would betray you? what kind of damage, and to what degree, had your cranium taken in the plunge? by the pain increasing tenfold as you sit up, you expect it to be severe. one of your bruised hands flee to support it, pressing against the side of your head as if to keep the weighty marble steady atop your shoulders, and you elicit a long and groggy groan.

a gasp of startled proportions, or perhaps intrigue, sends a wave of salty, sea air that shifts your damp tresses. the ones that aren’t glued to your cheeks and forehead are whipped back by the sudden breath.

“She’s awake!” the voice was shrill and sounded excited, albeit much too close to your face.

“Sera!” another voice hissed from your left. you flinch at the harshness of it. “Back away from the human, you know what the queen said.”

suddenly, the singing stopped, and you could hear a movement in front of you, like sloshing water. “What is this?” you croak, demanding your lids to part. they feel as though they’ve been sealed with wax, but perhaps it was the slick ocean, or whatever stickiness has been applied to your aching head. your vision is blurry at first, eyes wet and tired and burning from the invasion of salt water, but you can make out a figure much too close to your face for comfort, and you recoil.

the girl before you, when she comes into a more clear view, is unearthly beautiful. hair long and slick from the water in which her torso disappears, it even appears to be part of the ocean, with seaweeds of purples and greens braided into the rustic waves. they cascade over her narrow shoulders and conceal her paltry breasts, though a string of translucent, scallop shells of the same tint as the sea plants braided into her hair form the most elegant inverted T from her neck to drape off of her lithe waist. what is truly unsettling is her hands. you peek down to see them clutching on to your trousers, as if you’re keeping her from sliding off into the water in which her lower half is hidden. each digit is joined by a thin web of flesh and tipped with black claws. she grips you and hauls herself closer, and you see her eyes. big and marble like, a bluish purple you would think impossible of a human’s genetics.

“Shall we see if the human can swim, now?” she taunts with girlish delight as she tugs on your trousers. the fabric tears in places, but she seems not to mind your bare leg being exposed before she pulls again; attempting to drag you into the water with her, you realize.

“Let go of me!” you holler, hand going straight to your hip where your sword should be. of course, you grasp at air, and the moment your bare toes hit the water, your fist clenches and flies through the air to make contact with the girl’s countenance. “You’ll kill me, let go!” though she is already flying back in recoil, holding her nose where your punch connected, you deliver a push with the dirty sole of your foot to her slick, bare chest. you’re startled to feel what her skin feels like. a dolphin’s flesh, perhaps?

she shrieks in pain, and you scramble back on to the sanctity of the algae covered rock you’d woken up on. you can see a glimmer of turquoise from beneath her hand, coating the bottom of her nose and her top lip. was that… her blood? what sort of creature bleeds green? her thin, rounded brows furrow tight as she glares at you, as if you were the crazy one.

that’s when a snarl sounds out from beside you, and you turn to see other female figures. some are floating in the water before you, like the one you’d hit (Sera, you deducted her name must be), some perched atop rocky outcrops in the cave. you had little time to count them before they all dive into the water at once. you could swear that you saw a flash of fins. thin, wispy fins like angelfish but much larger, in a muddied rainbow, before they disappear. you must’ve hit your head really hard, you decide, for you to imagine these women had webbed hands and fishtails.

you hear a clattering of metal against rock when they flee, and you spot your sword a few feet away. scrambling on your hands and knees over to it, you slip your hand into the handle and feel the comfort of its weight in your palm. it was a blessing to have your weapon back, but what had they been doing to it? inspecting it, perhaps?

Sera remains in the small pool of ocean water before you, covering her injury with one, clawed hand. “You shouldn’t have done this.” she growled, gesturing to her hand with a flicker of her inhuman eyes. “The queen wanted us to watch you, here, make sure that you woke up so she could question you at once.”

“Question me about what?” you demand, turning to aim the blade towards her. the confusion of your situation had melted away as your sentience intensified, breeding more agitation than anything else. “Which queen? I’ve taken nothing from any queen. Dead Man’s Cove is unclaimed ocean, I’m entitled to whatever I’ve taken here.”

Sera sneers, wiping the glimmering, green goo from her nose and rinses her hand in the ocean around her. “Unclaimed, yes. Rightfully untouched by filthy, human hands. But not uninhabited. You have taken from her, whether you know it now or not. You will.”

turning, she dives beneath the surface, a flittering, thin fish tail of shimmering purple like there were jewels lodged between her scales sending a freezing wave of water to crash over your feet before it disappears after her, leaving you bewildered.

the queen? the queen of what? the queen of where? and would you be punished for defending yourself when Sera tried to drag you into the water? and had these mad women, with their oceanic beauty and their fins for legs and their webbed hands, been the ones to save you from a watery grave? if so, why were they so hostile?

your head is swimming and thumping with unanswered inquiries as you inch closer to the rock formation you’d snatched your sword from. you hadn’t the strength to get to your feet just yet, but something clatters and crunches beneath your sore palms. you stop, all too familiar with the sensation. the feeling of raw bone. glancing down, you quickly pull your hand away from a miniature mountain of human skulls.

was this the work of the girls who were watching you? these sirens? you would think, upon first look of Sera, with her beauty and grace, that she couldn’t do something so heinous, but she’d tried to drown you only moments earlier, so perhaps she made sport out of it.

your leather boots are also over here, turned on their sides, and your leather vest and heavy jacket. this is when you realize these women have stripped you down to your bare threads— a flimsy, white top and black pants, that were now shredded in one thigh from Sera’s relentless clawing. you pull your coat over your shoulders, wrapped in its warmth. thankfully, it has had plenty of time to dry out. you opt not to don your boots, as they’re still heavy with water.

alone and beginning to warm up, you look around. you’re in some sort of cave. it’s dark, except for a sliver of sunlight from an aperture in the ceiling of it, and you can make out every rock outcrop and stalagmites line the edges of the cave, creating a matching bottom jaw to the jagged teeth of the stalactites directly above them. the formations appear as a makeshift prison for you, but you’re almost certain you could escape through the pool of bluish green ocean water before you, but that meant possibly colliding with the fleeing finned women in the process. you’d wager that you were no match for them under the surface, so that was out of the question.

your eyes are drawn back to the pile of skulls, and then flicker upwards towards a mostly intact dinghy and a battered oar, pressed against the wall of the cave as if some mighty wave had thrown it there. would you end up an addition to the effigy of bones and plankton covered memories, or would you become half of a stalagmite, frozen in place? or, would Sera return with this mystery queen of hers and drown you as she initially intended?

there were plenty of endings to this story, but in none of them did you live.

#sylvie loki #sylvie x reader #sylvie x you #sylvie laufeydottir #sylvie #marvel x you #marvel #marvel x reader #marvel imagine #loki #loki tv #loki show #loki x reader #loki x you

[shewhowillnotbenamed1]

I wanted to get this ‘Valentine’s Day’ piece out, even though it’s massively, supremely late. 😭It’s part of a longer piece (because I couldn’t stop writing it😶) and I’m still not sure whether or not it’s not terrible.😖

prompt list

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This couldn't be right.

Damian almost did a double take, his cool smirk withering when he glanced up, transfixed by the sleek storefront at the cross streets where he stood. Why on earth would Raven be in a place like this?

The building towered above the tottering sea of gray, black and blue below. And the mannequins in the display lorded over their dominion, propped loftily on their perches, arms and legs of impractical proportions, stilted at absurd angles.

And why would she summon him here?

His trousers began to buzz audibly and the shifting crowd of passersby jostled him closer to the glass. Damian delivered the faceless caricatures of the female form a final foreboding glare, before he reached down to free the device vibrating in his pocket. New Message. Raven. Apparently, it was urgent. He tapped the speech bubble icon with a fingertip and his jaw went slack.

I Need You.

The three words seemed etched into the surface of the screen. And they were more than enough to get him to take a deep breath and grasp the curved door handle, his jaw set, and wingtips marching determinedly onward.

The atmosphere inside the store was even more unexpected than the outside. When translated, the pounding music and low lighting read as more nightclub than boutique. It was completely impractical in Damian's view—how could anyone locate a price tag, let alone see the item they were intending to purchase? Although, after a few minutes of skulking around in the dark, he could see how the implementation of such a design was advantageous. With stealthiness like his, he wasn't in danger of being accosted by overly helpful employees hungry for commissions, before he located the heading of a dramatic script that read Dressing Rooms, and turned underneath it.

Down the row each stall had a flood light stationed above it, but only one appeared to be presently occupied: the corner room at the farthest end of the hall. And as he got closer he noticed it also appeared to be the largest. Damian glanced behind him and rapped on the door with a knuckle. And just as he began to wonder if he'd needed some sort of special knock or password prepared, the lock glowed black and unlatched itself.

"I'm here." The door creaked open and the floor groaned under his solid weight. Damian turned swiftly to shut it, growing steadily concerned.

"So what is it? What's the—big emergency..." He started, but his tongue began to feel heavy and leaden inside his rapidly drying mouth. And his eardrums began to beat violently until they matched the thumping of his maddened heart.

Red.

Blood red.

Burning. Blinding. Blazing.

In the carpet, the walls, the curtains, the chandelier.

It was everywhere—even in the deafening pounding hammering away at his head.

Thundering images suspended before him, going in and out of focus. They were searing his eyes, blearing his vision. In sinful shapes marred over pale flesh, it was red repeating over and over. Criss-crossing crimson. Damian had to dig his fingernails into his palms to ground himself with the tangibility of a familiar sensation.

And suddenly he realized that all the times before were incomparable, this was what it meant to be blindsided by a breath-taking blow. This was what it meant to receive a rush of blood to the head…

…or a rush of blood to the—

"I'm glad you came so quickly."

And the silhouette of Raven turned where she sat on a velvet ottoman, leaning forward in a way that was guaranteed to diffuse away the rest of his brain's processing ability. It was all he could do not to goggle at her like some cartoon character. Tawdry and tactless. Damian inwardly cursed the merciless Goddess above as he took in the cleavage created by cups, a series of straps and bows and elastic and he didn't know what. Only that he shouldn't have been so disarmed by it—by Raven's breasts pushed up to high-heaven. Like they weren't perky enough or distracting enough in their usual sheath of simple black cotton.

His wide emerald eyes strayed downward in spite of themselves and onto shapely, stocking clad legs folded one over the other, with a lace-up heel tapping out the bass of the synth pop bleeding into the background. Raven slid to her feet seamlessly, swaying slightly to the song. She took a single step, allowing the shadows to part for her as she did so.

There was a muted click, clack, click of her heels on the carpet as she drew near. He'd never seen her in stilettos, and he stared at them through slits.

Gods, they had to be four inches at least. Their impressive height only seemed to serve to make her look even more powerful. Just about as powerful as the force rooting him to the spot.

The deep panging in Damian's chest carried on, a racehorse charging from the starting gate, galloping faster and faster, as she grew closer and closer.

Suddenly he'd become aware of the fact that it was far too warm in here for the dead of winter. Or was it simply that Raven radiated such an intense heat?

Most definitely the latter.

The garnet colored lace gracing Raven's skin was a perfect match to her chakra stone. The semi-sheer fabric of her bra offered up a playful glimpse of the darker skin of her nipples beneath. When his gaze wound down her tapering waist, it appeared that the lack of opaqueness carried over to the front of her panties. He could just make out a little shadow—a promise laying underneath a tempting, well-kept diamond shape in plum wine. And last, but certainly not least were the thigh highs trimmed by garnet lacings and affixed to a red and black garter.

Damian's throat had somehow gone even drier. He tried to swallow with great difficulty, then tugged at his turtleneck for a reprieve.

However, there would be no such alleviation for his trousers.

"There's no emergency, Damian..." Raven assured him with a tilt of her head, lilac tendrils skating across a valley between pale peaks. "You'll have to forgive me, but I had to get you here. I had to know..." She paused, folding her arms as she prepared to pose a question to him. "Tell me... what do you think...of my outfit?"

Damian froze, fingers mid-tug and blinked several times as if he'd been struck dumb.

What?

That wasn't...

There was no way...

Was that a serious request?

She was being facetious—she had to be. It was the only explanation, unless Raven was somehow messing with his mind and Damian sincerely doubted that. But how could she ask him this with such bold-faced sincerity? Even if the wooden arch behind her housed a funhouse mirror and had been reflecting distorted proportions back at her. Or was there actually some warped reality in which they weren't looking at the same picture?

Although...

If he could muster up a voice to speak he would have asked, what outfit?

Lackadaisically, she trailed a hand down her body, tugging at the cups spilled over with supple skin. "The bra—do you like the pattern?" Raven traced the gorge between the swell of her breasts. "It's tulle and...French lace," she confirmed, squeezing the scant, semi-sheer embroidery molded to her chest. And Damian grimaced as though in physical pain.

"No?" she assessed, seemingly marking off boxes on a mental checklist. Raven smoothed her hands over her hips for a moment, appearing to be lost in thought. She paced slowly, revolving a full three-hundred and sixty degrees to pause with her back to him.

"And what about..." She swept a purple curtain over the nape of her neck to glance over her shoulder and he saw—of all things—a bow below the dimples on her back, nestled into the heart-shaped curve of her ass. "My panties...?"

Damian gritted his teeth, though not before letting a sound escape, like a hiss coupled with a wince.

"Are these okay?" The soft profile of her lips pressed.

Gods, it was almost as if she were seeking to offer all of this up to him. And who needed to clarify anything when she was all wrapped up and presented? Covered in the finest cardstock wrappings in gold-flecked marble, then laced up with champagne silk ribbon to await her unravelling.

Though his own would be more likely.

Right now, he'd forsake all his names, both Wayne and Al Ghul to get her to stop. Stop slinking closer, stop speaking in that sweet, scratchy undertone, and stop directing his focus to her various attributes, more than it already was.

It would only make his growing pain more pronounced.

A pale hand dangled down and spread across a smooth, silken thigh. "My stockings, then?" Raven hummed.

Though, Damian didn't speak. He wasn't entirely certain he was still breathing. Somehow, he'd managed to remain motionless and drag his unwilling eyes toward the floor. All his carefully constructed control was necessary to keep himself calm and centered in this moment. He could do this—he had to do this. Otherwise, what was the point of all those long years of training he'd endured?

Shiny purple strands bobbed; she'd started to shake her head slowly at the stony silence from the stoic cashmere wall standing before her, as if she expected as much.

"I bet you're still wondering why I called you here." Damian heard her voice go up in the middle, which it did whenever she was apprehensive or unsure. "I wanted you here to find out what you like—exactly what you like." When he arrived, Raven was blushing a delicious pink, so by now it had to be a violent red. "I wanted to get it right because...you're the first person, or only person I've ever been intimate with in any world, dimension, or universe..." She lingered.

And once again, Damian said nothing, and she resumed speaking.

"I do know that this is something that one does traditionally." Raven paused to worry her already cherry-red bottom lip. "That couples do... Buying underwear for your significant other is supposed to be something special, particularly for this holiday."

He was a mountain, immobile, unwavering...

"Oh, I see..." Her mouth set into a line. "Perhaps, it's the fit—or is it the color...?" Raven's large amethyst eyes swept over the room and landed on her reflection. "I thought dark red was classic. I knew I shouldn't have listened to Donna. I should have gotten something in black." She dragged a distraught hand through dark purple. "It's too much...or maybe it's not enough..."

"Don't," Damian growled low. His inflection was level and gave nothing away. If Raven was surprised by the outburst, she didn't let on, instead she continued.

"I bet the old string of socialites shuffling in and out of the manor were never caught dead in skivvies that weren't Kiki de Montparnasse or at least Agent Provocateur. But this..." Raven lifted her chin toward the mirror. "It's not your taste though, is it?"

That was far more than enough.

Far more than he could stand to hear and far more than he could stand to bear.

When his eyes flew back to hers at last, they weren't steely anymore, they burned—whittling her retinas down like they were wicks on candlesticks. As if he were all but telling her he dared her to do that again, to say that again.

"It's okay. I'm glad I found out before I bought—"

"I said...don't." Damian placed his hands on her wrists and whisked her right up to his chest. And he closed his eyes. He skimmed his lips along the length of hers like it was something sacred, his mouth trembling as Raven muffled out a note denoting her surprise.

He murmured to her, "you're brilliant, deadly beautiful—an empath...and for some reason unbeknownst to me, I'm your blindspot." Damian sighed resolutely. "But Raven, can't you take pity on me? I'm still a man." One that had been barely keeping it together since he arrived, but... "And you're you, so..."

There was no way in any world, dimension, or universe that he could ever resist.

Purple eyes grew wider as he told her and lifted a finger to her chin. Then it was Damian turning the tables and tipping her mouth towards his own. And though he hungered for her, he took slow and sweet and gentle grazes. It was tortuous, but he should only have a little at a time. This was an excess of an impossibly decadent dessert, an indulgence he was undeserving of. It was like the power in his sub zero freezer had short-circuited and he had no choice but to guzzle down that buried pint of vanilla caramel gelato.

Though who could blame him for being greedy when he had all of this spread out before him? And when her ass in those panties even resembled two round, creamy spoonfuls.

To hell with it then.

Damian lunged, face forward, longing for more of her. In an instant, he was inhaling her pulse, intaking the scent of leather-bound books with aged pages and the nectar from plums she'd probably narrowly avoided dripping on them. He dipped his tongue along the hollow of her collarbone as if he sought to test this.

"Mmm, that's nice."

"Nice?" Damian scoffed, his eyes on hers. "That's not what I was going for. Surely you didn't wear this because you wanted me to be nice." At the present, he wanted nothing more than to rip the tiny pieces of lace into twos, but Raven had selected them specifically for him. So he would continue to be patient and continue to savor this.

Let the pieces of fabric hold up for as long as he could hold out.

"Wait a moment," Raven gasped, quickly clutching his arm. "So your present...?"

"Present? Tch..." Damian's lip curled under his front teeth and he let out a piercing click. "If you're seriously considering getting me a present..." His palms glided down her chest and he gathered a scoop of softness in either hand. "Then these are perfect," he whispered in her ear.

And then Damian's mouth pushed back into hers and he was kissing her in ways that would make it impossible to return this lingerie after trying it on. He nipped urgently to gain entrance to her castle, then trapped her lip between his teeth like it was a drawbridge, at last releasing her tongue to collide with his own. All the while, his thumbs were sliding over her nipples, which puckered and pointed at his touch. He pushed up the cups of her bra for better access, head inclined towards his goal, soon to be met by a full mouth.

Each brush of his lips on Raven's chest made her fingers clench further and further into his shirt like it was a life preserver, and she was in danger of losing herself to the depths.

And after all, wasn't this the answer that she'd wanted from this—that she needed from him?

A chance to lose herself.

To stand in a dressing room in his arms, moaning his name like a breathy spell, her body bending until her back was arched under the avid swipes of tongue. He tugged her nipples between his teeth and they reddened, their response a glowing rave.

Yes.

Raven's eyelids squeezed, her pink face contorting in pleasure while Damian enjoyed the full weight of her breasts in his hands. He continued polishing the plush, pink rings. Left then right—until they were glistening.

"Gods, Damian..." Raven groaned. "Just—"

Just as sudden, there was a wet noise, a slip of suction. Damian had released a rosy nipple, taking note of Raven's expression. Hungry and dazed, and all his doing. Whether unconsciously or not, she pressed her legs together, clenching them as she watched Damian slip off the left sleeve of his coat and let it crumple to the ground in a heap.

The glaze of her gaze, her diaphragm's continuous rise and fall, her fingers digging into his arm, she needed this.

So why deny her?

"Yes, these are beautiful..." He whispered as he admired his handiwork under the chandelier light. The way the red nips and bites were like Damian Wayne watermarks upon the pale flesh. "But perhaps..." Damian's hands glided freely down the small of her back, just over the hill of her ass and stroked the burgundy bow, like an X marking the spot. "This."

When Damian glanced down at Raven, she was barely biting back another mewl, and moving restlessly in his arms. "I wonder what would happen if I were to pull this bow... Raven what do you think?"

"Damian... We shouldn't..." Raven murmured, sounding somewhat apprehensive and holding the fabric at his back tightly.

"Yes, we should Raven," he rasped darkly. "Right now, I can't seem to think of a reason why not..."

"Well, there's the fact that we're in public—"

"Public," Damian repeated flatly. "What of it? The outside world ceased to exist the second I entered the door of my own little version of Narnia."

Raven's jaw had unhinged in unmasked shock and Damian supposed this was an instance to take her remaining breath away by kissing her. Yes, he'd walked through a door and suddenly he was laying eyes on his half-naked demoness dangerous in dark red. So clearly nothing else in creation mattered.

When he pulled away her lips opened and closed, while her eyes remained shut, like a thirsty traveler prematurely cut off from a longer drink. And even though it seemed her body knew the truth, a darker part of him wanted her to beg for it.

"But, that's not what I asked," he said with a hard smile that wasn't. Damian drummed a divot on her lower back. "I fear I've gotten ahead of myself again. Tell me about the bow, Raven. What happens if I pull it?" His hand jutted out, he made a motion with his fingers, in mimicry of it.

"Why ask when you know the answer?" Raven asked him, her brow rising shakily.

"I could have asked you the same earlier. But..."

"But?"

Raven bit her lip but made no motion to stop his hands from climbing onto the curve of her ass. He taunted her twice, by tugging lightly on the tulle, until at last... The bow in the back came loose, and her panties slid down her legs with ease. She secured one pale thigh tightly over the other to hide herself.

No bottoms and bra half-undone, she was nothing short of delicious.

Though that scrap of fabric had barely covered much of anything, so why bother to tease? Or hadn't that been the sole purpose of this outfit?

A devious smirk sidled onto Damian's face as he realized something: these were the exact kind of underwear that one put on simply to take off.

"I pulled the bow, Raven," he murmured almost mockingly. "Don't I at least get to see the rest of my present?"

She stared up at him through her soot colored lashes and slowly opened her thighs.

#damirae #demonbirds #damian wayne #raven roth #raven #teen titans #dcau #damian x raven #me #fanfiction #writing #dc comics #dc #titans #raven and damian #damian and raven #lingerie #sort of valentines day #valentines day #valentines day 2021 #dressing room #very late #💌💌💌

[zephycluster]

Precolonial HWS SEA Rant Post, feel free to ignore

If you're still reading, then you're probably looking for evidence or some juicy tidbits to throw back at me or to try and find dirt to cancel me, like typical Tumblr/Twitter. Go ahead, I don't really care.

First off, let me just say that If you like Precolonial South-East Asia AUs, feel free to keep enjoying them. I will respectfully support your passions from afar. This post is just to explain why I don't like it, especially the way they keep insisting/portraying PH in it.

Still here? Then let me begin.

Since the recent confirmation that the ASEAN Six Majors (Can't really say ASEAN 10 atm since it's still missing some people) Were completed and the Ma-Phil-Indo Trio was included, there has been a large surge in 'Precolonial' fanarts and portrayals of South East Asians, those three especially.

Even long, long before, circa 2010's ish, a rather well-known fan universe known as 'Maaf' dealt with their story and how their Author thought their intertwined histories went. Written by (my best guesstimate) an Indonesian writer who wants to explore the old, SEA bond.

When I first stumbled across Maaf (I was in Highschool at the time, around age 16-ish), I took a casual interest in it and tried to read it through. But, I will wholeheartedly admit that at the time, Pre-Colonial cultures of South-East Asia in general, let alone Philippine, did not really interest me that much. The focus (I think) was mostly on Indonesia, a country I didn't really know back then, and the liberal use of 'ancient' names and artwork just made it feel like an entirely Original Work (that needed a degree in History to really appreciate) and not something from Hetalia. I also completely disagreed with what I could gather was the story's portrayal of PH but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Do I hate 'Maaf'? No, I don't hate it. Do I wish I never came across it or that it didn't exist? Of course not. Just because I didn't enjoy it or appreciate it that well doesn't mean I wish any ill toward it, its fans, or its creator.

Fast forward to April 2021, the long awaited inclusion of South East Asia to the canon Hetalia verse. I was happy, the other fans were happy, all was good.

Then started the questionable fanarts, fan theories and fan pairings.

Especially the expansion of Precolonial! PH.

Let's go back to Maaf for one moment. From what I understood of Maaf, PH there was a character who once was like all the other South East Asian cultures, trading with them, all around being a nice family.

But all that changed when the Spaniards attacked, so cry the precolonial buffs. They destroyed everything, ransacked and marginalized the tribes, erased everything that PH was!

Did that happen? ABSOLUTELY. The Spaniards had this vision in mind that they must spread Christianity to all of the 'savage, unchristian heathens' of their realm. :V /s

But back up a second, back to PH's portrayal in Maaf. The way she (yeah, she) was portrayed there was that she was slowly losing her memories of being a 'true' South East Asian and grew more and more westernized in the process, like some sort of Culture-specific Alzheimer's or something.

Firstly, that is seriously depressing, and secondly, I just really don't see that happening.

Here's why.

Point 1: Even before Colonial Masters, Filipinos as a people cannot agree on anything.

I'll just begin this segment with a Philippine proverb that outlines what Filipinos call 'Crab Mentality' or 'Crab Bucket Mentality'.

"You don't need a lid for a container when you're keeping multiple crabs. If you keep at least two crabs together, they will just pull each other down instead of helping each other up."

I don't know how it goes with Indonesian or Malaysian history class, but what I know of my homeland, both pre- and post-colonial history, we were never really 'united' or 'together' in the sense that Indonesia and Malaysia were (from what I assume).

Let me pull up a somewhat related question on r/AskHistorians.

The reason I brought this up as it shows the reasons why, in my opinion, a single entity that is 'Precolonial Philippines-tan' is an impossibility.

The answers are long and would extend this already long post to stupid proportions, so I'll just quote relevant sentences. The link is here for those that wanna deep-dive into the answer.

"All this to say that there wasn't a name used for the entire Philippine islands before the Philippines that people now would agree to. An interesting comparison would be the Holy Roman Empire, which might also be characterized as disparate politico-geographic groups of relatively small size that had a history of relations between each other, but one thing they had that the Philippines did not was a common language, or at least a family of mostly mutually intelligible languages, so that the name Deutschland or Germany isn't terribly offensive to anyone. If you called the Philippines the 'Lupang-Tagalog' or even 'Lupang-Tao' the other ethnic groups would protest."

For those in need of translation, 'Lupang Tagalog' means 'Land of the Tagalogs' and 'Lupang Tao' means 'Land of People', specifically. The first one is already exclusive and offensive, as the Tagalog peoples are but one of many ethnicities here.

And for the 'Lupang Tagalog' suggestion specifically, it's even more offensive as they are the majority ethnicity (not by much, just around 28%) From this chart from Geography Now! It would basically be alienating everyone else in the 72% remainder that isn't 'Tagalog'.

And even 'Lupang Tao', the most generic name in a local language you can think of, would be met with contempt because the name itself is in the Tagalog language.

Just travelling between two individual island groups today would sometimes require a translator because the words can change very rapidly and very drastically. Here's a sample of some differences coming from a friend living in Visayas (in Red) vs. the words I know living in Luzon (In blue).

Ate vs. Manang = Older Sister

Ibon vs. Pispis = Bird

Tumawa vs. Kadlaw = To laugh

Takot vs. Hadlok = Fear

Kain vs. Kaon = To eat

Ngayon vs. Subong = Now, at this point in time

Iyak vs. Hibi/Gibi = to cry

Talampakan vs. Tiil = Foot (in Tagalog, the word retains its 'body part AND unit of measurement' meaning)

Tulog vs. Tuyo = to sleep (Tuyo in Tagalog is either a dried salted fish or 'to dry')

The kicker is that just like Tagalog is just one of many languages here, so too is the language my friend speaks. Ask an entirely new person, like someone from Mindanao, they'll probably have an entirely new set of words.

It's not just Luzon vs. Visayas vs. Mindanao, either. Here's a map listing some of the ethnic groups here.

Even the way they're written differs from location to location.

While we're on the subject of Island divisions, a casual skim across Twitter and Tumblr has shown that their Precolonial PH has been one of the following ancient civilizations: Tondo, Butuan, Sugbu, Namayan. There may have been others but that was what I have found.

Notice how even today, the posters of Precolonial PH can't seem to agree on what he's supposed to be? With Indonesia it's either Majapahit or Srivijaya and Malaysia it's usually Malacca iirc.

What is the big deal? Well, let's go back to the Ask Historians post. "Why didn't the Philippines ever change its name to remove the colonial mark that being named after a Spanish King has?" The answer: "If you suggested something dating to precolonial times, the other ethnic groups would protest."

Since we're on a roll with maps, let me bring this up.

As you can see, the precolonial PH posts have a reason to not be able to agree on one thing, as there is a LOT of options. Do you also see how THAT list is also split up?

It's split up into those aligned with China (Sinified), aligned with India (Indianized), aligned with the Middle East (Islamicized), and no alignment (Animist). Now, let's go back to the main suggestions for which Kingdom/Polity/Civilization/whatever Modern Philippines used to be.

If the Filipino peoples' couldn't agree on something as simple as WHAT TO CALL THE LAND THEY'RE LIVING ON, what more a living, breathing, walking, talking entity that is supposed to be a beacon of all of their 'unified' culture? ESPECIALLY if that entity used to be a currently existing Kingdom/Polity/Rajahnate/Sultanate/whatever.

Tondo? "Of course, always the damn Tagalogs. Tagalog this, Tagalog that. First the capital city, then the language,* THE REST OF US EXIST, YOU KNOW! What about us in Visayas? Mindanao?"

*The national language known as 'Filipino' is just standardized Tagalog*

Butuan? "Wait, you want Butuan to represent us? They're they only Indian-aligned city in the Islam-majority Mindanao! They're not even that many of them! I'm not gonna change my religion!"

Sugbu, the other name for the Rajahnate of Cebu on the map? Lemme bring back my Visayan friend again. According to her, she hails from the Hiligaynon part of Visayas.

"Sure :v and the other islands are what?

Chopped liver?

Not to mention the language and writing barrier helloooo"

And Namayan? Well. I'll let this pic speak for itself.

To summarize, no matter who you pick as Modern PH's previous identity, it will not end well nor be accepted by the other Kingdoms at the time.

"So where does that leave Modern PH, he had to have been ONE of them, right?"

Well, not really. He doesn't HAVE to be one of the Ancient Kingdoms that lasted till the modern day. I mean, predecessor representatives exist in Hetalia canon, after all. Like Modern Greece is a different character from Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and Modern Egypt, heck even England and his brothers have a canon mother that was the rep before them.

Or you could even use the same logic that Germany does, in that each specific region has/had its own representative and that Modern!PH is just the 'mediator' between them (cause gawd does PH need one). There could be a Tondo, a Namayan, a Butuan, and a Sugbu, all arguing and this Proto-PH is just trying to make headway in making them all satisfied.

But, even after all this, there is another reason why I personally don't subscribe to the 'Precolonial PH' idea, and by tangential extension, the Indo x Phil pairing.

Point 2: Even without intending to, Precolonial Indo x Phil just comes off as patronizing

This second point is just ENTIRELY personal preference and barely has any facts to back it up.

Again, if you like the pairing and disagree with me, You do you. I will respectfully support you and your passions from a distance.

But for me, Indo being Phil's seme/bae/boyfriend and consistently bringing up precolonial times just comes off as patronizing.

Just one more time, I'd like to point out that I am NOT bashing Indonesia, its people or the subscribers of Indo x Phil. This is just how the pairing feels to ME specifically.

The way I see it, Indo x Phil as a pairing, especially if it extends back into precolonial times, reads the same way as a long-since married couple where the husband/wife CONSTANTLY brings up that ONE outing you had together, or that ONE prom night where you kissed while dancing, even it happened like 30 some-odd years ago and so much more happened since then.

Even in a platonic sense, It reads like two besties where one ALWAYS mentions stuff like 'Yeah but you looked so much cooler back in High School' or 'Back in Grade School you would've known that', or 'Remember back in Pre-school we did X? How could you forget that?'

How does one respond to the notion that no matter what you do now, it will never compare to a past you've already forgotten or barely remember? That the best version of 'you' is already long gone?

"That's because the westerners made you forget your culture! You gotta take it back!"

While it is true, yes, as a collective we barely remember the Kingdom that commissioned the Laguna Copperplate, or created the Banaue Rice Terraces, or created the millennia old bonds that we still share with Indonesia and Malaysia.

But to keep pushing the precolonial identity would be to neglect and cast aside the one REAL binding belief and culture that spans the entirety of these islands we call the Philippines.

We take on all the bad stuff that happens to us, conquer it, and make it our own. Be it natural disasters, foreign powers, or negative stereotypical mentalities.

Yes, we've forgotten the ancient kingdoms of old and are just now digging through the closet for those remnants of the past. Yes, the colonizers imposed that on us, and made us forget. But in the process we've also taken everything that they left behind, everything that they threw at us, and created something that can only come from us.

The lanterns that the Spaniards used to light the way to the morning masses they made us attend became our globally known symbol of Christmas. The junked vehicles that the Americans left behind in World War 2 are now rolling works of art that announce themselves loud and proud on the streets (for better or for worse). The iced dessert recipe that the Japanese forced us to learn while they were occupying the country is now so distinct and famous it is synonymous with us, and is so delicious even Italy has taken notice.

Even after all this? Even after all the 425-ish years total we have been under a foreign power, with all the progress we've made as a country, a people, and a nation, you would still imply our fragmented, jigsaw puzzle state of being in the past was better just because it was pure 'South East Asian' like everyone else?

We might not be as well put-together as Indonesia or Malaysia, but we made this melting pot of angry, leg-pulling, dogpiling, Native, Mestizo, Chinoy, and Fil-Am crabs OURS, damnit!

It's now 4:30 AM and I have work in 5 or so hours. I'll be going to sleep now.

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