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crystaljins · 3 years

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Finding Christmas again

Characters: Taehyung x Reader

Word count: 21K

Synopsis: After a lifetime’s worth of turbulent and miserable Christmases with your family, you finally make the executive decision to spend this year’s Christmas alone.

However, when you take home a box of old Christmas decorations from your friend’s shop, it seems that this Christmas is set to be different from the others.

ChristmasScarecrow!Tae x human!Reader

Notes: Here it is!!! My contibution to the @thebtswritersclub secret santa (and also their monthly holiday prompt, Holiday/festival)!!! And my secret santa is.... *drum roll*....

Hi @pars-ley, Merry Christmas!!!!! I hope you enjoy your secret santa!!

Anyway, I know the premise sounds weird but bear with me!!!! It’s kinda cute, I promise!!

Rating: PG13

Genre: Fluff, angst

Warnings: Mentions of divorce, fighting, alcoholism, depression, mean step-siblings (OC’s family). Mentions of house break-ins, some kissing and some ANGST, santa is real, really poorly explained world mechanics that are kind of glossed over because I’m lazy LOL

For you, the start of the Christmas season is always marked by Seokjin unboxing the stock for his December-long Christmas sales. Any stock from the previous year that didn’t get sold gets lined up along the shelves along with a few new trinkets here and there. He pulls out a series of dusty cardboard boxes, soft and collapsing from age and within are numerous fraying, gaudy Christmas decorations he likes to string around the shop to give off a bit of a “festive” atmosphere. Of course, an overstocked, tacky dollar store can only be so “festive” but Seokjin never seems deterred.

This year, however, marks a change. You sit amidst towering, overflowing shelves whileJin beams at you over the counter of his tacky dollar store and slides the first of the decrepit and infamous cardboard boxes towards you.

“If you’re being stubborn and insisting on spending Christmas alone this year, at least put up some decorations.” He insists. Hesitantly, you peer inside- the tinsel has lost some of its magnificent sparkly mane, but it’s still passable and there’s a few tangled lights that you know from experience may have a bulb or two blown but are still somewhat useable.

“I guess I could,” you reluctantly agree. Your small apartment could definitely do with a little apartment sprucing. “You’re not going to decorate this year?” You question. Jin shakes his head and beams, gesturing to a series of brand new cardboard boxes, freshly shipped. They’re crisp and upright in a way that makes the old boxes look even more soggy and pathetic.

“I’ve done a little bit of online shopping this year and thought it would be nice to freshen up my decorations. And I know you could use some decorations so I knew my babies would be going to a good home.” He announces, positively giddy with delight. Christmas always leaves Jin on the edge of manic. Starting the month off with his birthday and then finishing it off with the entire world decked out in festivities is like giving him a month-long sugar rush. Nothing says festive season like the terrifying sparkle to his gaze.

“Well... thank you, I guess.” You say. You’re hesitant but grateful. You’re not the kind of person who hates Christmas or thinks the grinch was a victim, but it’s always been a season that didn’t ring as joyful for you as it seemed to for everyone else. After all, for you, Christmas had consisted of you hiding upstairs while your parents had screaming matches while they were still together, and then it had been a mix of being picked on by your step-siblings the years you were stuck with your father, and nursing your mother after she’d get drunk over eggnog and cry over her broken family when you spent it with your mother. Perhaps this is your chance to reclaim the season. “I can load these up in my car and then we can get started hanging up your new decorations?” You suggest, as Jin finishes balancing the till.

Jin nods absently, counting under his breath, before leaning against the counter with a smile.

“That would be absolutely fantastic. Your santa hat is in my office- don’t forget it!” He reminds you. You groan.

“Do we have to do this every year? It’s demeaning.” You complain. Jin nods and then ignores your grimacing, returning to counting the day’s takings.

With a heavy sigh, you take your time loading the boxes into your car, parked out the back of the shop, before ducking into his office. Sure enough, two embroidered Santa’s hats sit haphazardly on Jin’s desk. You tug one over your head and grab the other for him.

You’re not sure when this tradition of helping Seokjin set up his shop for Christmas began. If you’re being honest, you’re not even sure when you started being friends with him, but this has been a yearly tradition since he started the shop, and the closest you’ve ever gotten to Christmas cheer. Your job is to string out the decorations in the least gaudy manner possible while Jin arranges his Christmas stock on his already overflowing shelves.

Back in the shop, Jin has just finished locking up when you come down the stairs at the back. He turns to you and beams, before gesturing to the boxes filled with new decorations.

“Time to put that interior decorator eye to good use, (Y/N)!” He cries, clapping his hands enthusiastically together. You wince- it would take a lot more than some Christmas lights to fix the mess that is Seokjin’s shop. Even a professional interior decorator couldn’t fix this chaotic mess. His shop is ten years past a clearance sale.

Still, you walk over and begin to open up the boxes, sorting through the decorations until you come across an older box. You thought you’d loaded them all, but it looks like you’ve missed one.

“What’s this box, Jin?” You ask, peeling back the lid to find a series of old, musty decorations. Jin pauses in his detangling of some dangling star lights to look over your shoulder.

“Those are the decorations I put up for sale every year that never seem to go. Even the words “clearance” isn’t enough for people to want them.” He sighs, and he’s surprisingly melancholy as he looks upon the unwanted decorations. You’ve never had much to do with the things he chooses to sell- frankly you’re a little afraid with the things you may find should you venture into the labyrinth of his dollar store. Curious, you peel back the cardboard flap and peer inside at the myriad of unwanted decorations.

Oddly, it makes your heart twinge a little, to see the stock that has been stuck gatherinf dust for eleven months. As dramatic as it sounds, you know a thing or two about being unwanted.

Not that your parents ever implied you were unwanted! It’s just hard not to feel that way when you’re born to a couple who want nothing to do with each other. The constant back and forth between your two feuding parents had constantly made you feel more like a “pass-the-parcel” package than a human being.

And when your dad had remarried, he’d always insisted that you were welcome, but it’s not difficult to see how happy he is in his new family. How his stepchildren’s achievements made him smile or how he’d finally achieved the noisy, warm household he’d always dreamed of. The household he never had with you. And now even your mother is trying new things- she’d asked you to come with her to meet the family of her new boyfriend, but you couldn’t bring yourself to suffer through the awkwardness.

That’s why you’d chosen to spend this Christmas alone- because you can’t seem to shake the feeling that you’re an afterthought when it comes to a holiday that involves spending time with your family. You exist, and you share their blood, but they have plans with people they actually chose to be in their lives. You’re welcome along, but not really wanted.

Jin watches the expression on your face with mild interest.

“Do you... want any of them?” He questions tentatively. “They’re a bit gaudy, but you could give them a home?”

You grimace at the ugly decorations- it’s not hard to see why no one wanted them. Tacky, corny baubles and cheap little mantle ornaments that a even a seventy year old grandmother would turn her nose up at.

But despite your general distaste, a tuft of red wool at the corner of the box catches your attention. You reach forward and tug it free.

A Christmas-themed scarecrow toy smiles back at you. Tufts of red, woollen hair peak out beneath his little santa’s hat, and two sewed on black buttons make up his eyes. His mouth is a simple stitched black line, a little upwards curve, and a little paint on upside down triangle makes his nose. He’s dress in a flannel shirt and overalls, but the overalls have a little christmas tree embroidered on the front and his flannel shirt has fluffy cuffs like the ends of a santa shirt. He’s sort of charming, if a little strange- why a christmas scarecrow? What an oddly specific decoration.

“I can kind of see why no one would want these.” You snort, though you don’t put him back. Jin nods sympathetically.

“This little guy has been with me for years. All the other decorations I bought with him eventually got sold but this guy is still unwanted.” He admits, taking the scarecrow from your hands to examine it fondly. “I even tried giving him away for free once but they didn’t want him.”

You bite your lip at that. The two button eyes stare up at you longingly, and for some reason you feel a sense of camaraderie with this stupid, gaudy christmas scarecrow.

If you’re taking a bunch of decorations, why not this guy? He clashes with every instinct you have in terms of decoration, but the thought of him sitting on a shelf, unwanted for a month only to go back in this dusty old box at the end of the year is too depressing for you to handle. With a sigh, you take him back from Jin.

“Might as well, since you dumped all your other old decorations on me.” You sigh.

And you miss the way Jin winks at the little scarecrow when you’re facing away from it.

You actually forget about the decorations for the next few days. They sit in your car, unpacked. You’re busy with work as they rush to wrap up the end of year projects before their deadlines. And it’s not like putting up decorations has a deadline, right? You put them up some time before Christmas and hopefully remember to take them down before February hits.

It’s when Autumn finally draws to a close and the first of December hits that you’re finally motivated to put them up. You’re in a deep clean kind of mood and when you duck out to your car to chuck out the various wrappers and old papers you’ve built up over autumn, you recall the boxes in your boot.

The little Christmas Scarecrow is the first thing you pull out once the boxes are unloaded into your home. The little button eyes gaze up at you mournfully, as if scolding you for leaving him unattended in your car for so long.

“Sorry little guy.” You sigh, straightening and setting him atop your mantle. He looks a little out of place with your decor but it feels right to place him there for some reason. This way he’s in full view of any guests that walk in. “Here. This can be your spot. Front and centre.” You tell him, and from this spot his button eyes look a little less mournful. With a smile, you begin puzzling out how to assemble Jin’s ratty old Christmas tree.

You’re in the middle of a youtube tutorial on how to make your tree appear fuller when your phone lights up with your mother’s contact image.

It takes you a few moments to steal yourself to answer her.

You aren’t on bad terms with your mother or anything. It’s just... for a few years after the divorce, when you probably needed her most, she just wasn’t your mother. And she’s done really well and gotten a lot of help and she’s in a really good place right now, but it’s still hard. It’s hard to talk to either of your parents, really.

“Hey mum.” You finally say as you answer the phone. You can guess what she’s going to ask- every since she found out you wouldn’t be going home for Christmas, she’s been doing her best to convince you otherwise.

“I was just at the store this morning,” she greets you. “And I saw all the ingredients for that christmas cake we used to make when you were small. Do you remember? And we always made it snowman-shaped and you’d cry when we’d eat it.”

You smile at the memory- it’s one of the very few fond ones you have on Christmas. When you were a very young child, before whatever your parents had between them went sour. Before life transitioned into hiding upstairs and trying to block out the sounds of shouting and being bounced back and forth between opposite sides of the country because your mother and father couldn’t even handle being in the same city together.

“I do remember.” You say.

“We could make it!” Your mother urges. “Just think- wouldn’t it be so fun? John has a daughter your age, and she loves to bake! She’s so eager to meet you too- we could-“

“Maybe next year, mum.” You say. “I’m just absolutely slammed at work this year. Besides, I’ll be down for your birthday soon. I’d just rather spend Christmas at home, this year.”

Your mother is silent for a moment. You know she didn’t miss the implications of your statement. When you had first moved out for studying, returning to your parent’s place had been “going home”. Even you’re not sure when avoiding your family for the holidays had morphed into “staying home.”

“I... I’m sorry. I know I keep bringing it up, but I heard from your father that you weren’t going to spend it with him either and I... I don’t like the thought of you alone for Christmas.” She finally says. “I know I’ve failed you in a lot of ways, but I don’t want this to be one of them. John’s wonderful and his family would love to have you. We could make room for you.”

You go quiet for a moment. Your mum is trying her very best. You know that- you know that so well and yet you can’t. You just can’t do it. You don’t have it in you to brave through Christmas with either of your parents and play happy families and pretend that the years of misery didn’t happen. You don’t want a Christmas where people are “making room” for you. You want to have a place that is just inherently yours.

“Next year.” You promise. Next year you’ll have steeled yourself. Next year you’ll have it together. Next year you can try again. Next year you’ll be a little stronger and more resilient and then you can face the mess of your broken family.

Your mother sighs on the other end, in a sad, disappointed sort of way.

“Next year.” She finally says, and there’s a promise in her words. Next year she’ll be better too. She’ll keep trying.

You stay on the phone a little longer, and when you hang up you just spend a moment in your empty apartment. Boxes are sitting, strewn around you and currently the only decoration is your little Christmas Scarecrow.

Oddly, he almost looks judgemental as he peers at you through the buttons.

“Don’t look at me like that.” You sigh, getting to your feet and beginning the process of organising the Christmas decorations. “It’s complicated. You don’t know my mum and I know she loves me and I know she’s trying... but it’s... it’s just complicated, ok?”

You continue to ramble as you finish up your decorations. It’s quite therapeutic, talking to an inanimate object. It almost feels like he’s listening- there’s something warm in the little stitched mouth and button eyes. You and your scarecrow, both unwanted on Christmas day. You tell him about your parent’s divorce, about your past Christmases. About Jin and your friendship with him. About your decision to be alone for Christmas this year because neither of your parent’s offers seemed particularly appealing.

By the time you’ve finish, your apartment actually looks decent. The Christmas tree sits in the corner, decorated with baubles covered in chipped paint and balding tinsel. There’s lights strung across the ceiling and across your mantle and maybe there’s one or two missing spots, and maybe it’s just a little tacky, but it’s warm. It’s home. You’ve carved out a little home for yourself in this apartment, and maybe it’s not perfect, but you like it.

When you fall asleep on the couch, exhausted, you dream of ringing sleigh bells and cheerful Christmas tunes.

You awaken suddenly. Your heart is in your throat.

There’s someone in your apartment. You can hear them rummaging around in the kitchen. You don’t know how they got there, but terror fills you.

The first thing you do is discreetly reach for your phone. You want to call the emergency number but you don’t want the intruder to know you’re awake in case they retaliate. Instead, you shoot a text to Jin.

There’s someone in my house. You text. The response is almost immediate.

I’m on my way. He responds. You resist the urge to groan. You’d told him so that he could call the police, not so that he could play hero.

You roll off the couch and sneak closely to the wall. A metal bat rests there- a housewarming gift from Namjoon when he first learnt you’d be living alone. You never thought you’d have to use it. You never forget to lock your doors and surely no one has the guts to scale a building and come in through your balcony, right?

Still, you’re grateful for it now as you grip the handle tightly between both fists.

Hesitantly and quietly, you inch towards the kitchen. The light is on and you can make out a figure bustling inside.

With a cry, you rush forward, swing the back in a downwards arc.

Only for your terrified intruder to whip around and catch the bat with the palms of his hands. Ignoring the fact that he just caught the full swing of a metal bat without flinching, you try and pull your bat back to tru for another swing.

But he merely tightens his grip on the bat and this gives you time to take in his appearance.

There’s a lot of striking things about the man’s appearance. Bright, brilliantly red hair, the colour of Christmas ribbons and raspberries, a straight, prominent nose. A sharp, well-defined jawline and two warm, dark eyes, almost familiar in their dark shade.

It’s hard to know what to take in first. His startlingly handsome face, his brightly coloured hair, or his outlandish outfit. You don’t think you’ve ever seen someone look cute in tacky, Christmas themed overalls or a flannel shirt that’s an odd mix of a Santa’s hat and a farmer’s uniform. Complete with the Santa’s hat and the bright red hair, the man could almost be twins with your Christmas Scarecrow.

“Who are you?” You demand. You attempt another futile tug on your bat, but the man’s grip is firm.

“Don’t panic, (Y/N)!” He urges. His voice is deep and velvety but edged with a little terror. Your eyes widen.

“How do you know my name?” You demand. If you weren’t afraid before, you are now.

“Seokjin said it! In the store, a few days ago!” He cries, still pressing firmly against your metal bat. Despite you pressing your whole weight into it, it doesn’t budge a centimetre closer towards him.

“So you’re a stalker?” You cry.

“No!” He counters. “It’s me, (Y/N)! The scarecrow!”

That startles you enough to relax your grip on the metal bat. He senses the lapse in your grip and tugs the metal bat free. He holds it away from you and approaches you slowly, cautiously.

“I was just making you some hot chocolate.” He says slowly. “You seemed sad after your phone call with your mum and I wanted to comfort you.”

He’s crazy- a crazy guy has broken into your house and has been listening to your conversations for who knows how long, and has been stalking you before that.

“How long have you been stalking me for, you psycho?” You demand. His eyes widen in horror.

“I’m not a stalker!” He insists. “I’m your scarecrow- turn around and I can prove it!”

“What? So that you can stab me while my back is turned?” You demand. You make a grab for the bat. “Get out of my house!”

He manages to throw the bat backwards and grab both your shoulders as you lunge for him. With impressive strength he presses on your shoulders and spins you around. In the same motion, he shoves you forward a few steps and you stumble to re-gain your balance.

Enraged and terrified, you whip around, ready to retaliate.

Only, he’s gone. Where a weird red-haired man previously stood, your kitchen is now empty.

The counters are scattered with objects- your milk is out, and an open tin of cocoa, a few of your spice jars are laid neatly next to the pile of pots.

And, sitting neatly where the man had been not a moment before, is your little Christmas Scarecrow. He smiles up at you, button eyes gleaming like he knows something you don’t.

You can’t help it- you crumble before it. The post-adrenaline crash hits hard and you stare dumbly at the embroidered smile for a moment.

“It’s a dream.” You finally conclude to yourself. “This is some messed-up nightmare and tomorrrow this haunted scarecrow can go right back to Jin’s store.”

You grab it and hold it at a distance, your arms outstretched like it smells bad.

“This is fine.” You assert. “It’s a dream. Just. Just go back here. And I’ll go... run into a wall or something. And this will all be some sort of fever dream.”

You settle the Christmas Scarecrow back into its rightful spot on your mantle, before turning around. You take a deep breath, mentally preparing yourself to run full speed at the wall just opposite.

“‘Haunted’ is a little much, don’t you think?” The same velvety voice from earlier asks, and you turn to find the very same intruder leaping off your mantle onto the ground. “I’m not a ghost, or anything.”

He comes to stand in front of you, arms folded and lips pulled into a frown. Looking upon him now, you see the similarities to the Christmas Scarecrow- even the loose thread in the embroidered tree of his overall pockets is identical. It... it really is your Christmas Scarecrow, standing before you in human form.

You nod to yourself, a peaceful wave of acceptance washing over you and-

No wait, never mind. That wave is nausea- you’re blacking out.

When you come to, you’re arranged neatly on your couch with your scarecrow hovering over you. You almost want to faint again, but you hold strong.

“You’re awake!” He cheers, waving a damp towel around. He’s been dipping it in a bowl of cool water and pressing it against your forehead and you flinch as his actions send icy drops over water scattering across your face.

“And you used to be a scarecrow.” You grumble, sitting up. You squint and lean in closely, taking in every detail. Each mark on his skin, each strand of bright red hair, the smooth curve of his smile... it’s so human. Probably the most ethereal and beautiful human to walk the planet, but still human. One of his eyelids is a monolid and the other is a double lid and one of his front teeth is just slightly longer than the other and yet the effect is that he’s just so charming. Far too beautiful to be sitting in your tacky, poorly decorated apartment and far too beautiful to be spending most of his time as a cringe-y christmas-themed scarecrow that Jin probably fished out of the bottom of a clearance basket at a thrift shop and thought he could get away with re-selling. “You have maybe thirty seconds to explain before I call the police. Or an exorcist. Or both.”

He holds up his both his hands in surrender.

“Wait. Please.” He pleads. The desperate way he says the words makes you pause. Honestly, the sane thing to do would be to kick him out. Leave the weird, haunted scarecrow out on the street to fend for himself and go about your days as if this particular little supernatural incident never occurred.

You sigh.

“Just... please tell me what’s going on.” You finally say. “I won’t do anything drastic, but at least explain.”

Relied and gratefulness shines in his eyes and he clasps your hands gratefully between his own. Your attention is momentarily caught by the way his large hands dwarf your own. The bony prominences of his knuckles catch your attention- they shift and glide beneath his skin as his grip around your hand tightens. For some reason, the tiny action seems huge. You lift your gaze slowly to meet his eyes, which are round and warm.

“My name is Taehyung.” He explains. “And I’m a Christmas Spirit.”

“Christmas Spirit?” You echo in bewilderment. Taehyung nods eagerly and sits forward. He pulls his legs together so that he can sit cross-legged and wraps his hands around his ankles.

“Yup!” He says, and he’s surprisingly nonchalant despite the supernatural implications of his statement. “We’re beings that come about from the magic of the season. And our job is to spread Christmas cheer to whoever welcomes us into their home.”

As if that’s just a normal thing that someone can spring on you and not expect you to panic! Yet he announces it like he’s a five year old excited to explain the drawing he made of you in school that day. All you can really manage is to nod mutely for a moment. Despite the absurdity of his words, it certainly sounds like what you had done- taken a tacky, unwanted Christmas decoration and welcomed it into your home.

“And that’s you, (Y/N).” He says warmly, and the way he says your name is so fond. Like you’re his oldest, most valued friend. It startles you- you don’t think you’ve ever had the syllables of your name pronounced with such care, like they are a precious gift. “You are the first human to ever welcome me into your home. All my friends eventually found people to take them, and I’m the last one to remain. I’ve never gotten to fulfil my duty, not even once.”

“Why not?” You croak out. Why was there a random little christmas ornament in Seokjin’s store that held this kind of power? Why did it end up with you? Who was this mysterious man in your house, gazing at you like you’re the best thing to ever happen to him?

“Well, it’s probably not hard to tell.” He admits, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck and then adjusting the santa’s hat atop his head. “Not many people want a Christmas-themed Scarecrow for a decoration. At least not around here.” He sighs. But then he turns to you and his gaze is bright. It’s a little blinding, his mega-watt smile, and it’s certainly overwhelming to have the full force of it directed at you. “But you gave me a chance! You took me home!”

“So... you spread Christmas cheer for me? What does that even mean? What happens when you finish?” You say, leaning back just a little to give yourself room to breath. His scent fills your nostrils and it’s overwhelming. A pleasant mix of christmas scents- gingerbread, cinammon, peppermint. It sits thick in the back of your throat like the pleasant burn of a hot, sweet drink.

He looks surprised at the line of questioning and a frown replaces the warm, glowing look he’d borne just moments earlier.

“Well, I’m not sure. I suppose when I finish then you put me away for a year or you pass me on to someone else.” He admits. “This is my first time, so I’m still learning the ropes.” He’s a little sheepish as he admits it. But then his gaze lights up again and he pulls himself up onto the couch so that he can sit shoulder-to-shoulder with you. “But spreading Christmas cheer is just helping you enjoy the season! You haven’t had a great experience with Christmas, right? I can help!”

You stiffen as you recall earlier that day; you had essentially aired all your dirty laundry to what you’d thought was an inanimate object. Taehyung now knew more about you than even some of your closest friends did. You’d unintentionally opened up and made yourself vulnerable to some guy you hardly knew. The thought has you recoiling. You’re not against the idea of opening up- certainly when people ask the right questions, you’ll answer honestly. But people rarely ask and you’ve never volunteered. No one has has access to every dirty detail like Taehyung now does.

And for some reason that thought has you terrified.

“I’m... I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Taehyung.” You volunteer quietly. Taehyung stiffens at the tone of your voice. “You seem like a nice enough guy. Or spirit. Or scarecrow. Whatever you are. And I hope that one day you’ll find someone you can give lots of Christmas cheer to. But I didn’t sign up for this. I don’t want any of it- the “Christmas cheer” or the festivities, or anything. I’m just...” you inhale deeply. “I’m just trying to make the most of what I have.”

You get to your feet, your back facing him.

“You can stay the night, but I’ll take you back to Jin in the morning. I’ll see if I can convince any of my friends to take you, if you like.”

A slight tug on the sleeve of your jumper stops you from leaving. You glance down at your wrist. Taehyung has just the tip of your sleeve, pinched between his fingers. It’s not enough pressure to stop you from leaving. The slightest tug would liberate you from his grasp and you’d be free to go back to your room.

“No one else will.” He admits quietly. There’s a sort of heart-aching tone to his voice that makes that tiny grip feel like he’s handcuffed to you. “I waited for five years in that store. I’d sit in a box for eleven months of the year, and hope that this year would be the one someone chose me and every day of December that passed I’d watch people walk right past me. And before that, I was passed around from store to store. People would keep me in the store until they realised I’d never sell and then they’d palm me off to someone else. They didn’t even have the guts to get rid of me. And I’d watch as the objects around me got chosen. They got sent to good homes. But never me. I have waited twenty five christmases for someone to let me in. You’re the first.” He quietly admits. He hasn’t changed or adjusted his grip on your sleeve. Just that tenuous, fragile grip, that little bit of hope that can be snapped at any moment keeps you in place. “Please.” He breathes.

You stare at his fingers, at the tacky cuffs of his sleeve, at his hopeful, pleading expression.

You don’t have to do this. He’s asking you, but he won’t force you. You can say no and have the bleary, lonely Christmas you’d originally planned. You can keep pushing everyone away and forever allow Christmastime to be a holiday of heartbreak for you.

Or you could let this random Christmas Scarecrow and his sparkly, bright eyes into your home.

“Ok.” You finally say. “My work hasn’t shut down yet so I’m gonna be super busy for the next few weeks. But in between you can give it a go.”

The answering smile he gives you in turn has your heart fluttering in anticipation.

Maybe Christmas won’t be so bad this year.

Although you had had every intention of welcoming Taehyung into your home and applying yourself to the festivities as best you could, your workplace dials everything up to eleven over the next few days, just as predicted. Taehyung, to his credit, doesn’t whine or complain. He spends most of the day while you are at work in his scarecrow-form or binging netflix on your account and he spends his evenings stretched on the couch, or beaming at you over dinner. It’s kind of like having a loyal golden retriever to come home to, but maybe with better manners.

It’s actually kind of pleasant. You occasionally catch him humming Christmas tunes and he keeps leaving his Santa hat in strange places but otherwise he’s a rather nonintrusive roommate. He even makes you dinner on occasion and he’s not a terrible cook.

It’s only as the weekend approaches and you’re contemplating how to spend it that it occurs to you that Taehyung hasn’t left the house once. It’s not like he can just wonder down the street in his scarecrow outfit- it’s not exactly designed to withstand subzero temperature. And you’ve been so slammed at work that it never occurred to you that you’d essentially let the poor guy stay with you and then left him to the equivalent of house arrest.

“Do you do much during the week?” You ask Taehyung across dinner that night. You had quickly learned that he does need to eat and shower and sleep like every human but he can stave it off by staying in his scarecrow form, and so dinner time had just become a shared meal most evenings. He had even waited in his scarecrow form for you to get back on the days you had finished late that week. He pauses through a mouthful of pasta and looks up, cheeks bulging.

“Not much.” He confesses, after a noisy swallow. “I don’t really have anywhere to go.” He reminds you.

Guilt churns in your stomach and sours your dinner. You had promised him you’d give him a chance, and yet here you were a week later, making him fend for himself in an unfamiliar and empty apartment with nothing to do but watch netflix and raid your pathetic excuse of a pantry.

“Right.” You sigh, thoroughly chastened. “I... forgot. I’m sorry- work just hit me really hard.”

“It’s fine.” Taehyung dismisses. “It’s my job to entertain you, not the other way round!”

You stir awkwardly at your food, still unable to dispel the guilt.

“Even so... we could go somewhere tomorrow, if you want? I have the weekend off.” You offer as nonchalantly as you can. “If you’re here for the rest of the month, you’ll need clothes. And proper bedding. We can pick that stuff up and then do some other things.”

He positively beams at your offer and it’s jarring. You aren’t used to such joy at such simple things. It’s so easy to win a smile from him, but rather than make his smiles seem meaningless, it just seems to make them brighter. You’re not used to earning such easy affection for so little and it leaves you unsure what to do with yourself.

“Really?” He questions eagerly. “The whole day?”

You duck your head slightly to disguise your fluster. You’re not even sure why your heart seems to race at his smile. Perhaps because you’ve never seen such a beautiful person smile quite like that.

“The whole day.” You reassure him. “I can make up for this week- I really didn’t mean to ignore you like this.”

Taehyung shakes his head.

“Don’t be silly!” He scolds you. “You told me that work would be busy. It just means we have to make your weekend even more enjoyable to make up for a missed week.”

He gets abruptly to his feet, wiping pasta sauce from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, I have so much to plan! Can I borrow your laptop? I have to plan our day!” He asks. A little startled, you merely nod at him in bewilderment and he grins determinedly to himself. “Ok! My first day on the job. Here I go.”

He storms off and then performs a quick u-turn.

“After I clean up my dishes.” He recalls sheepishly.

The next morning you shuffle into your kitchen a bit bleary-eyed and still in your pyjamas. Taehyung never seems to be tired or grumpy no matter what time of day it is, and so it’s not surprise that he’s up and humming to himself as he cooks breakfast for the two of you.

He hears you shuffle in the kitchen and glances over his shoulder to smile at you and it catches you off-guard for some reason. You’ve gotten used to him cooking meals, to his singing, even to just his general presence, but you can’t seem to get used to the way he seems to just smile so easily. Something about the way the wintery sun streams in through the windows and catches the tips of his hair and gilding the sharp edges of his handsome face is just ethereal. You can believe he’s not a human in that moment- he’s too gorgeous to be one.

“You’re up!” He cheers. You shake your head to try and rid yourself of your strange thoughts and shuffle forward to scrutinise the breakfast he’s preparing.

“I’m making a Christmas classic.” He informs you when he notices you attempting to peer over his shoulders. “At least, according to her.” He gestures to your ipad on the counter, where he has one of those food blogs run by stay-at-home mums that write essays on their blogs instead of the actual recipes. This one seems to have a picture of tacky santas made from pancakes and whipped cream.

Looking at Taehyung’s progress so far, it actually looks fairly similar to the picture, but that’s not saying that much considering the quality of the picture.

“Isn’t that like cannabalism for you? Isn’t eating Santa basically eating your coworker?” You point out. Taehyung laughs, a full-bodied laugh that makes his eyes curl up into little crescent moons.

“He’s actually my boss more than my coworker. But he loves Santa-themed decorations. He says it makes him feel jolly.” He tells you.

There’s a lot to unpack there and so you choose to ignore it by occupying yourself with the cleanup.

“So I was thinking that we can get some clothes for you today and maybe some other necessities if you’re going to be staying here all month.” You inform him. Taehyung nods distractedly, gently nudging one of the santa pancakes onto a plate. He reaches for a bowl of blueberries, arranging them into eyes and then spraying whipped cream in the shape of a beard. It kind of seems like he’s not very interested in your schedule for the day.

“Tadaa!” He exclaims, showing off his creation. He then reaches for a blueberry and pops it in his mouth. “They’re not bad for frozen fruits.”

“Looks great.” You praise him. “But the plan for today-“

“(Y/N).” Taehyung cuts you off. He looks a little stern, but there’s still a warmth to his expression that softens the harsh edges. “I told you I’d plan today. It’s my job to make your Christmas season enjoyable. I’m not here for you to babysit- got it?”

Chastened and surprised, you nod meekly. He grins.

“Good. Now open up.” He says, brandishing a blueberry menacingly between his fingertips at you. Your eyes widen.

“But Tae-“ you protest, and he’s shoved the blueberry into your mouth before you can finish your counterargument. This time, when he smiles, it’s a little smug.

“No “buts”.” He sighs. “Just sit down and enjoy breakfast and trust me. We can pick up some

clothes since the Christmas overalls are a bit weird, but after that, then I take over. Ok?” He demands, and you chew through the blueberry, a little disconcerted.

“Ok.” You finally agree reluctantly.

Breakfast is a peaceful affair, with the two of you enjoying the pancakes. Cleaning up with Taehyung is almost domestic- there’s something pleasant about having him stand shoulder to shoulder with you, drying the dishes as you wash them.

Outside is a frigid affair- it hasn’t quite hit the point where it’s snowing outside, but temperatures are definitely creeping lower and lower and Taehyung nearly glows blue in the short sprint to your car. You fix it by blasting the heater the second the two of you are safely secured in the vehicle.

“So, if you’re planning the agenda for today, what are we doing after we grab you some clothes?” You ask conversationally. Taehyung pauses from where he’s flicking through your phone, scrutinising your spotify playlist like he’s studying it for an exam. He looks up, his eyebrows still furrowed in concentration.

“Well, I called in a favour from an old friend and booked us a free Christmas bauble painting workshop.” He announces, looking pleased with him. You squint at him and grimace just a little.

“I don’t know if you know this, Taehyung, but I am terrible at drawing. I’m so bad that in highschool all these kids signed a petition to ban me from it.” You say, completely serious. He stares at you, bewildered for a moment.

“Surely it can’t be that bad?” He wonders aloud. You just shake your head grimly at him.

One shopping trip later, Taehyung discovers that it is, in fact, that bad.

“What did Rudolph ever do to deserve this?” He questions in abject horror. You feel your cheeks heat as you curl your hands protectively over your glass bauble.

“It’s not that bad!” You insist. And then you hesitate. “Is it?”

Taehyung pries your fingers back to expose your masterpiece- splotchy brown paint, sparkles, and a lovely dollop of red paint in the centre.

“(Y/N).” He says seriously. “It looks like someone walks into Santa’s stable, massacred all the reindeer and then scattered glitter over the scene of the crime.”

You squint at your painting, and, depressingly enough, his description is more accurate than what it’s meant to be. It was meant to be Rudolph, smiling happily through the glass of the bauble.

“Forget it.” You snap, setting the glass bauble down and moving to get up. “This is stupid, anyway- we still have to pick up a mattress protector for your bed.”

“Wait!” He laughs, grabbing at your sleeve before you can make a hasty retreat. A firm tug from his has you landing back in your seat, face to face with the awful paint spill you call a painting. “I’m sorry! Just relax, ok? This is supposed to be fun.”

“I’m not having fun.” You sniff. “I told you I wasn’t good at painting and now you’re laughing at me.”

Taehyung winces.

“Well... it’s not totally unsalvageable.” He finally compromises. He picks up the bauble, examining it for a moment. And then he picks up the paintbrush, and with quick, precise strokes of his paintbrush, he morphs the brown splotch formally known as Rudolph into a sort of sleigh-shape, and the red-splotch is rounded into the curve of Santa’s belly. “There.” He says, satisfied. You blink in wonder at the new creation. It’s still a little ugly and a little streaky, but it definitely doesn’t look like someone went on a Christmas-killing spree. “How’s that? Now you just have to decorate the sleigh an add sparkles. Surely you can’t mess that up.”

“You underestimate me.” You deadpan at him, and to your surprise, he snorts with laughter. A couple of the other people painting baubles glare at you, and Taehyung merely offers them a merry grin.

“There used to be an elf like you at Santa’s workshop. No matter what he did, he’s somehow always mess up painting the toys.” Taehyung recalls, shaking his head fondly. “The two of you would get along.”

It’s the second time he’s mentioned it, and this time you can’t keep your curiosity at bay.

“So... does that mean you’ve met with Santa? The Northpole and all that is a thing?” You ask. Taehyung nods.

“It sure is! It’s where all Christmas Spirits grow up. We get raised there and taught about the best ways to spread Christmas cheer and then we get sent out to spread the cheer.” He sighs warmly. “I was top of my class.”

You grimace as you picture it. Dozens of Christmas Scarecrows, sitting at tables, studying books on how to paint the perfect Christmas bauble.

“And so you just... get kicked out after a certain age? They raise you and send you out to sit on a shelf for eleven months of the year and then follow silly Christmas traditions for the last one?” You question him, and for a moment you’re horrified by the loneliness of such an existence. “Wouldn’t you... just get sick of Christmas? Spending your life only ever being in Christmas mode?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Taeyung reminds you as he sprinkles glitter over his painting of a snowman. He doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the idea, but you feel like he’s slapped you. “This is my first official Christmas on the job, remember? I haven’t had a chance to get sick of it yet.”

That makes you go silent.

Taehyung seems to pick up on the way the mood has shifted. He stops detailing the buttons of his snowman painting and glances at you. Your eyes are wide and slightly misty.

He’s never felt particularly sorry for himself. Sure, the many years he’s spent gathering dust on a shelf have been lonely. He missed his friends, and all he could ever dream of was getting to sit on a mantle as he watched a family enjoy Christmas. That would be the closest he’d ever get, and that’s been his dream for so long.

But for some reason, with you looking at him like that, the ache that he’s sought so hard to push down resurfaces. It’s like a damn breaking; it’s soothing. To have someone look at him and actually be acknowledging how hard and lonely and painful what he went through was.

“I’m ok now.” He reassures you, though his voice is a little hoarse. The sheen to his eyes is a little less brilliant, and your heart aches for him as you process the twenty-five year wait that Taehyung has endured. “After all, someone welcomed me into their home, right?”

You blink- that someone is you. You’ve welcomed Taehyung into your home. Christmas is perhaps even lonelier for Taehyung than it is for you, and yet all he seems to want to do is make it enjoyable for you.

You duck your head, distracting yourself by stirring the tip of your paintbrush in the bright red paint.

“I guess so.” You finally say. You offer him a tentative smile. “I guess I have a responsibility to make this your best Christmas ever, then.” You resolve.

Taehyung is silent for such a prolonged moment that you’re forced to face him again to ensure he hasn’t died. When you do, what you find is him gaping at you like a Christmas tree just sprouted from between your eyebrows.

“What?” You question, a little defensively. It’s hard to interpret the look on his face.

He shakes himself, coming back to his senses.

“Nothing.” He reassures you. “I just realised that you’re a bit rare to smile, is all.”

Something about the look in his eyes has you feeling flustered- your fingers tremble enough that you knock over the glitter and it spills across Taehyung’s newly bought trousers. You get up quickly, horrified, but he laughs it off.

“I think we’ve done enough damage to these baubles.” He says with a warm smile. “We still have things to buy, right?”

The rest of the day passes in a blur. Taehyung drags you from store to store, excited by the smallest things. He stares at a Christmas-themed hot chocolate for so long that you end up having to buy it for him. The look of gratefulness in his eyes is unparalleled and almost makes up for the fact that you literally have to plead with him to buy actual clothes and not just ridiculous Christmas Sweaters. In the evening, you wonder the shopping district, appreciating the lights that line the main street in brilliant arrays.

When you slump down on your couch beside Taehyung that night, showered and ready for bed, you’re exhausted to the bones. Oddly, it’s not the same kind of tiredness you feel after a long week at work or after you’ve had a long argument with your mother. Instead, it’s a satisfying fatigue- like you’ll drift off quickly and dream of christmas lights and children’s laughter.

“How did I do for my first day?” Taehyung yawns from where he is sprawled on the couch in a similar position to you.

“Good.” You say, turning your head to glance at him. The dim light of your living room softens the slope of his nose, and his dark eyes catch flashes of the light that makes it seem like his irises are tiny little galaxies. There’s something so inherently peaceful about the warmth of his presence beside yours .

“I’m glad.” He says, though his lashes flutter and you too find yourself fighting off the comforting waves of sleep. He shifts and turns his head so that his cheek rests against the couch and he gazes at you. “Hey (Y/N)?” He calls gently.

Your eyes are closed by this state.

“Hmm?” You hum, in acknowledgement of his statement. He’s quiet for a moment before he ask.

“Why did you want to spend Christmas alone?” He asks. You blink open your eyes and look back at him. His gaze is steady and unwavering. But it’s not scolding or judgemental- instead he just seems curious.

“You told me about your parent’s divorce and all their fighting on Christmas... but I heard the way you spoke to your mother on the phone too. You want to spend Christmas with her, don’t you? You just... can’t?” He asks. “You said you didn’t want the Christmas cheer... but you still took me home and decorated for Christmas. You painted the baubles and drank the hot cocoa and did the Christmas shopping... why do you pretend to hate it all?”

If it were anyone else, you would probably stop the conversation there. You have no interest in delving into your long, complex family history only to be met with looks of confusion, or worse, pity.

But somehow, in the short space of a mere week, Taehyung has become someone you feel safe opening up to. Perhaps it’s because he’s already heard your whole story already. Or maybe because of the way he genuinely just wants to see you smile despite there being no substantial gain for him other than job satisfaction. Or because he’s proven himself trustworthy in the little ways he’s slotted himself into your life, like sharing meals. Whatever the reason, you don’t clam up like you usually do.

“I don’t pretend to hate it.” You tell him softly. “I just got sick of trying to love it.”

Taehyung is silent for a long period of time. For a moment, it’s just the two of you, exhausted and sleepy. The weight of your confession hangs in the air, and the moment is strangely intimate.

Then he smiles.

“Then I’ll keep trying for you.” He promises.

The two of you don’t manage to stay awake for much longer. Eventually the long day catches up to you- you drift off first, with one of those rare but peaceful smiles on your face, and Taehyung follows suit soon after.

The week that follows is one of the worst you’ve had in a while. You’re putting in ridiculous amounts of overtime and everyone is a little on edge from sheer exhaustion and the mounting stress of deadlines.

And in that time, Taehyung is honestly a lifesaver. It’s remarkable, being able to come home from another hellish day at work to find him with dinner ready and a crappy Christmas movie set up. You spend your evenings laughing and unwinding. It’s not like you don’t have friends who will come rushing if you tell them you’ve had a bad day, but there’s something special about the way Taehyung does it. With bright smiles and easy laughs and an infectious joy that seems to chase the fatigue that plagues you away.

It’s towards the end of the week that you hit your limit. You’re not really the type to cry much. You’ve always been fiercely independent, and your upbringing meant that you were the kind of child to retire to your room and work things out for yourself when you felt the need to cry. It’s not like crying ever really achieved anything. Maybe the occasional sad scene in a movie would get you, but usually you’re the kind to feel sad internally.

But after this particular day, you’re close to tears. Your boss had yelled at you, one of the major projects you had been working on just hit a major snag, and you found out your favourite coworker was leaving.

All you can thing about as you walk in the door is spending another peaceful evening with Taehyung. You’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time to expand his taste past cheesy Christmas movies and had even made a list of films he may like during his lunch break. You swing open the door to your home, eagerly rushing in and calling out to Taehyung so that he knows you’re home.

And that’s when your phone goes off.

It’s your father, probably the last person you want to talk to right now.

Unlike your mother, who at least was trying to make up for the ways she’s screwed up in your upbringing, your father has never acknowledged his part in their divorce. It was always what your mother did wrong, how she let him down, how it was because she changed and wanted different things. He was the kind of man who always wanted a big family, and he had adored your mother at first. But her pregnancy with you had been difficult and you had, admittedly, been a sickly child. She’s never outright said the words, but you suspect postpartum depression might have played a part in her downward spiral. Either way, she had resolved to have no further children after you, something your father was heavily against.

You suppose it can’t have been easy- your father had been in love and the two of them had agreed on the kind of future they wanted together- the kind filled with children, a quiet suburban life not far from either of their parents. And for your mother to change so suddenly and drastically would have been devastating and incomprehensible to your father.

Still, you can’t help the resentment and hurt you feel towards him. Why did you have to get caught in the crossfire of his heartbreak? And then the icing on the cake was his remarriage.

His wife is a lovely woman. Coming into the marriage with three children of her own, she had treated you with the same love and kindness she expected of your father towards her children. Her children, however, were not bound to such conduct, and made it their personal mission to make your life a living hell. Perhaps they felt insecure over the fact that your father was related to you by blood and they weren’t.

Either way, it put him in a difficult position- perhaps he felt he couldn’t tell them to back off without it coming across as favouritism. But he could have done something- spoken to his wife, or chosen you before the family he married into. But he didn’t. He ignored it and turned a blind eye and to this day he continues to pretend that things are normal. Especially after the birth of your half-sibling.

“Hi.” You say, as you answer the phone. Taehyung has stepped into the entryway with you, watching curiously as you answer the phone.

“Hi sweetheart!” Your dad calls on the other side of the line. You wince at the unwelcome nickname.

“To... to what do I owe the pleasure?” You ask. You can hear a loud racket in the background. Its probably your half-sister. She’s always been on the louder side, even as a baby.

“Nothing! I was just thinking it’s been a while since we last chatted. You haven’t been returning my calls.” You have no doubt the sadness in his voice is genuine, yet somehow it feels insincere.

“I’ve just been really busy at work.” You lie, rather than admit you had seen the missed calls from him and not even bothered to listen to the messages he left. “I haven’t had a chance to call you back.”

“Right... right. No, that’s fine. I’m sure your very busy.” He rushes to reassure you. “I was just calling because your mother contacted me. She was hoping I could convince you to spend Christmas with us.”

You stiffen at the familiar topic. You had thought it had been a little too quiet on her end. Perhaps she had thought that if she couldn’t convince you to come home, maybe your father could. She’s always had this idea in her head that maybe you aren’t close to her because you prefer your father, and it’s not like she can handle having a long enough conversation with him to find out she’s wrong. It’s surprising she even managed to let him know your plans for Christmas.

“It’s fine. Like I told mum, I’d really much rather spend it here this year. Besides, I thought you all were going away for Christmas this year? We already spent Christmas together last year.” You say, pointedly trying to remind him that Christmas isn’t even a yearly thing with him. He does the contractual every-second-year with you, and then plans fun events with his family on the years he isn’t stuck babysitting.

“That’s true. But that’s why I’m calling! It took a bit of convincing, but there’s a spot on this trip with your name on it, if you want it.” He tells you. He almost sounds excited, like he’s really done something thoughtful and kind. Not just made some last-minute attempts to shoehorn you in. The invite hadn’t been there to start with, after all. It’s only as an afterthought that he’s made any attempt to add you in- a chance to pretend like things are good. Like the two of you aren’t on rocky terms the rest of the year. Like you’re close enough to go on holidays with your stepfamily.

“I think I’m fine dad.” You finally say. Taehyung is watching the expressions play across your face with mild curiosity. He probably can’t hear your father’s voice on the other line, but he can see the anger on your face, and hear the wobble to your tone. “You have fun on your trip. I’ll make do here.”

There’s a beat of silence and you hear your father sigh. You grimace- that’s his pre-scolding sigh. The sigh he gives before any lecture he thinks you’ve earned. As if he has any parental claim to scolding you.

“(Y/N),” your father begins. “It’s Christmas. Don’t be like this- you should be spending time with your family-“

“I did.” You cut him off, and you surprise yourself with the way tears fill your eyes. You squint, trying to keep them at bay. Taehyung watches with alarm as he registers the way you are on the verge of crying. “I spent every year. With you and mum. And then you and then mum and then you and then mum. I tried for so. damn. long. to do the family Christmas thing, but all it ever ended in was the two of you letting me down. Mum was too drunk or you were too busy. And yeah, maybe you guys were going through your own stuff. But don’t you dare try and tell me that Christmas is about family because if that’s what family is, I don’t want it. At least if I spend Christmas alone, neither of you can let me down.” You snarl into the phone line.

Your father is silent after your outburst. Taehyung watches you, waiting for your response.

And the tears finally spill forth, rolling down your cheeks.

“Well, if that’s how you feel, then I won’t stop you.” Your father finally says. He sounds hurt, as if you’re the one who’s hurt him. “I guess we’ll see you in the new year. Your sister’s birthday is coming up and Rachel wants to have a big party since she’s ten this year.”

“I’ll see you then.” You say, your throat raspy and your voice small.

You’ve barely hung up the call before two strong arms have wrapped around your figure. You go stiff in Taehyung’s arms. This is probably the first time he’s hugged you, and it isn’t unpleasant. Instead, the scent of gingerbread and peppermint fills your nose and it’s strangely soothing. You shift and turn your head just slightly so that your face is buried into the soft cream of his jumper, one of the fresh purchases from the other day.

“You can cry if you like.” He tells you, and you feel the words rumble from deep in his chest. “I won’t look.” He promises. “That was painful for me to hear, and it’s not even my dad- if you want to cry, then cry.” His voice cracks on the end of his sentence, and you abruptly realise that Taehyung is crying. He’s known you for just a short couple of weeks, and the only nice thing you’ve done for him is not drop a tacky Christmas Scarecrow back into a box of junk, and yet he’s crying just from hearing your half of a painful phone call.

Perhaps it’s the permission you need. For all of the long, lonely years you were stuck in the middle of feuding exes, you never gave yourself permission to cry. Instead, you’d retire to your room, pressing a pillow to your ears to drown out the sounds of screaming.

For a long time, you just stand there, sobbing into Taehyung’s arms. He runs his hands soothingly over the back of your hair, and eventually the steady rise and fall of his breathing lulls you into a sense of peace.

Taehyung is quick to act from there- before long, you are forcefully seated on your couch with a mug of hot chocolate and a blanket wrapped around your shoulders. Taehyung crouches before you, swiping at the tear trails on your cheeks with his thumbs.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks cautiously. You grimace and shake your head.

“It’s just the same old stuff.” You reassure him. “Long day at work; daddy issues; the usual standard.”

Taehyung smiles and settles himself beside you on the couch, tugging the blanket from your hands so that he can curl under it.

“Good thing your personal Christmas Spirit is here to save the season.” He whispers conspiratorially. He leans forward towards the coffee table and grabs your iPad, before pulling it into the safe cocoon of your blanket. “I’ve been researching all day! Tomorrow’s your day off, so it’s week 2 of spreading Christmas cheer.” He announces, unlocking the iPad and scrolling through the internet page he has open.

You nearly choke on your hot chocolate.

“Taehyung,” you rasp. Your oesophagus is probably blistering as you speak. “That’s a page for date ideas. This stuff is all for couples.”

“We are a couple.” Taehyung answers, confused. He points to himself and then to you. “A couple of people.” And then he grins at you and you realise he was teasing.

You snort and can’t hold back your laugh. Taehyung’s smile softens and he leans into your personal space.

“There it is.” He remarks. Wonder fills his tone. “That lovely smile.” He taps the tip of your nose fondly.

The smile slips off your face at his words. Lovely? Your smile? He thinks your smile is lovely?

A weird, electric feeling fills you at the thought, and you lean away from him quickly before your stupid heart can get any funny ideas. He didn’t mean anything by that compliment. He’s a Christmas Spirit- it’s literally his job to make you smile. You won’t overthink it and ruin this strange but precious arrangement you have going on.

Taehyung, to his credit, doesn’t look hurt or uncomfortable at the way you’d blatantly pulled away from him. Instead, his smile widens.

“Good idea. You gotta rest up those smiling muscles for tomorrow or you’ll get a cramp.” He tells you. He then gets up and and stretches, letting out a tremendous yawn. He glances over his shoulder at you with a wink. “Prepare yourself for the best day ever.”

Said “best day ever” begins with you staring listlessly up at your ceiling. Taehyung had talked big the night before, promising you a day of fun and enjoyment.

But you just can’t picture it. You’ve spoken to coworkers and friends before, about the excitement of Christmas. How they see lights or hear carols or even smelling gingerbread triggers this warm, nostalgic and joyful feeling deep in their hearts. But you’ve always felt nothing. Christmas has always been just another day, to you.

With a sigh, you roll out of bed.

Out in your living room, Taehyung is fidgeting with your smart tv, trying to get it to play what looks like Mariah Carey’s rendition of “All I want for Christmas is you”. He’s mumbling to himself, and his santa’s hat droops lower and lower on his head. The little white pompom at the end brushes his nose, and the bright red strands of hair that peak out from beneath the cap stick out in every direction.

Apart from the santa’s hat, he’s dressed remarkably stylishly. That had been a big surprise on your little outing the week before- his impeccable fashion taste. Today he’s wearing a soft, fuzzy red cardigan over a large white t-shirt and tan trousers.

“The volume’s off.” You inform him. He starts, glancing at you in surprise, before confirming that he has accidentally managed to turn the volume all the way down. “You operate technology like a grandpa.”

Taehyung grins as you take the remote from him, adjusting the volume and selecting the song so that the familiar opening begins to chime through your speakers.

“You say that like I didn’t catch you yelling at your printer two nights ago.” He chuckles. “Are you ready for our ultimate Christmas adventure?”

He must catch the way your guard goes up, because his smile softens from something amused into something more gentle and comforting.

“Nervous?” He asks. You hesitate, just a moment, before offering a terse nod.

“Sorry.” You finally settle on. “I just... I’ve tried the “christmas cheer” thing. And it didn’t work Tae. I just feel like... Christmas is just another day.”

“That’s because it is just another day.” He reminds you. “But if you give it a chance, it can be more.”

You bite your lip hesitantly, and he shakes his head.

“What if you didn’t think about it like Christmas?” He asks. “How about, today is a day for me to cheer you up after a long week. We’re gonna do fun things and enjoy ourself because we want to. Does that sound doable?”

It does. It’s strangely reassuring and low pressure, and something about his words and the patient, warm light to his eyes puts you at ease. You don’t know why you feel so much pressure about enjoying Christmas but maybe it’s because you don’t want to let Taehyung down. He has so much riding on this Christmas and you don’t want to be the person who ruins Christmas for him. Who makes its a tedious, miserable event like your parents did for you.

And maybe a small part of you wants to enjoy the season for you. To claim back the years lost to misery and fighting and to share in the merriment that everyone else holds.

“Ok.” You finally agree. “Lead the way.”

Taehyung beams in response.

First on the agenda seems to be in the park in the centre of your city. Not every year in this place has a white Christmas- some Christmases are just cold and muddy, with a thin layer of ice over dirty pavements. This particular Christmas has been quite frosty, and quite early on- the first snowfall had been earlier that week and now a thick layer of snow coats the ground and clings to thick winter coats.

“Tadaa!” Taehyung proclaims, waving a hand out towards your first activity of the day. An open carriage, decked out in sleigh bells, and two gorgeous white horses, standing tall and sleek in their crystalline surroundings.

You creep closer, and their handler spots you. He’s a cheerful man in a formal suit, offset by the bright red santa hat atop his head. He matches Taehyung, who seems reluctant to part with his beloved accessory no matter the time of day.

“You must be (Y/N),” the old man cheers, crowding closer. His horses snort and stamp their feet at his excitement, but he pays them no mind, instead skittering forward to greet you. “Taehyung has told me all about you! Come, get yourself seated and we’ll begin the tour.”

You glance at Taehyung, who merely shoos you encouragingly towards the carriage.

“How did you afford this?” You hiss at him. He shrugs and smiles.

“Christmas spirits have connections.” He whispers, before placing a hand on either side of your waist. You smother a yelp as you feel him practically lift you up the first step, and it doesn’t take you much encouragement to scramble onto your seat from there. It’s a vain attempt to distract yourself from the feeling of his large hands encircling your waist.

“All seated?” Your guide questions. Taehyung nods as he scoots in close to you and that’s really all the warning you get before the carriage lurches forward.

You steady yourself with a yelp, and an arm around you from Taehyung keeps you upright. You glance at him in surprise and are momentarily caught off-guard by his profile. A thin, delicate smattering of snowflakes has been caught on the breeze and they catch on his hair and lashes. The tip of his nose has gone endearingly red in the cold.

He turns his gaze when he feels your stare and he grins.

“Enjoying the sights?” He wonders innocently. You grimace and look away. He merely laughs. “Let me explain to you the logic behind our first activity of the day. First of all, it came as a package with the activity my friend got me for free. Secondly, I thought that it might help you see how little perspective can make the things you see every day so much more special.” He finishes his explanation by pointing an arm across you to gesture at the scenery of the park. He’s right; you’ve seen this scenery hundreds of times, across all seasons, but there’s something special about it in the moment. The warmth of families, covered in thick, puffy jackets, the flutter of chilly snowflakes against your skin, the sheen of frost over the pond on the far end of the park. It’s all familiar and yet in that moment, surrounded by the glimmering sound of sleigh-bells and the stead thud of horse shoes against the pavement, the park you’ve known since moving to this city is different, magical.

The carriage pulls to a stop beside a crowded pavillion. On the other side, you can glimpse people taking advantage of the outdoor figure skating rink thats set up in the park over winter.

“Is this our second stop?” You ask Taehyung, as he helps you alight from the carriage. Oddly, though he grasps your hand as he helps you down, he doesn’t release it once you’re on solid ground. Instead, he keeps his fingers wrapped around yours as he waves farewell to the carriage driver.

“You guessed it!” He congratulates you. “Stop number two; appreciating the fun of winter! Nothing screams winter wonderland like a figure skating rink.”

“Can you skate?” You ask him as he leads you to the skate rental counter.

“No?” He asks. “But how hard can it be, right? It looked really easy on all the videos I watched in preparation.”

A short while later, you get to bear witness to Taehyung learning just how hard figure skating can be.

“It’s just like walking.” You attempt to soothe him, all the while wincing at the vice-like grip he has on your hands. “Just keep standing upright.”

“Have I always been this tall?” Taehyung breathes. He’s gone deathly pale, and you don’t think the cold is the reason behind it. “Why is the ground so far away?”

“You can do it.” You urge, still allowing him to cling onto your forearms like he’s about to plummet off a cliff edge and you are the only thing keeping him from certain death. “Come on, Tae.”

He shoots up straight, eyes widening at the sudden nickname. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong move, because he topples forward, and the only thing keeping him from lying face-down on the ice is you. You’re toppling backwards before you can stop yourself.

Taehyung yelps and you brace yourself for your head to impact against the hard ice, but it never comes. Instead your head lands in the firm cushion of Taehyung’s palm. Somehow, in the chaos of slipping, he’s landed on top of you but managed to stop you from banging your head.

You blink open your eyes and for a moment, your senses are overwhelmed with the scent of peppermint and the warm brown of his eyes. He looks just as startled as you are. You feel your face heat and his breath puffs warm against your cheeks, contrasting the chill of the air.

“Maybe figure skating isn’t for me.” He volunteers sheepishly.

You can’t help but offer a crooked smile. He’s so silly but it’s strangely endearing. He looks surprised at your smile, and it seems that’s the moment he abruptly realises the position you’re in. Quickly, he scrambles off you and helps you into a sitting position.

“Sorry.” He says glumly. “I thought it would be fun, but clearly I overestimated myself.”

You get to your feet and offer a hand to help him get up. He looks nervously at your outstretched hand.

“It is fun.” You reassure him. “And it can still be fun. Just hold on to me, and trust me ok?”

Something in his gaze softens and he accepts your outstretched hand. It takes a bit, but with an arm around his chest, you manage to stabilise him between yourself and the wall of the ice-skating rink.

He peeks up at you through his bright red fringe. His santa’s hat sits lopsided on his head. The smile he gives you this time is different from all the other ones. It’s not as ecstatic or joy-filled. This one is more reserved, almost shy; you feel a bit like you’ve been punched in the chest for some reason when you see it.

You stretch out your hands again, your hands flat and palms extended skywards, and he place one hand into each of your palms. Even through your thick gloves, your skin feels oddly warm when he holds you.

Gently, you take slow, gliding steps backwards, while he follows with much smaller, much more jilted steps.

“It’s just like walking, but smoother.” You explain, and the words are forced through a tight throat. Perhaps the cold is getting to you- that’s the only explanation you can think of for why you suddenly feel so short of breath.

Taehyung nods, focussing hard on the ice. He gives a big exhale that releases in a huge, cloudy breath, and presses one foot forward. And then the other. It’s not long before he’s gliding along before you.

“That’s it!” You cheer. “I’m going to let go of one hand now, ok? I can’t keep skating backwards or I’ll crash into someone.”

Taehyung looks a bit fearful, but then he nods with determination lighting his eyes. Slowly, you release one hand and spin so that you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with him. He still maintains a death grip on the hand that’s still grasping his, but he manages to stay upright and not go tipping forward.

“Ok, here we go.” You say, and you take one step forward, followed by a second, and then a third and before you know it, you and Taehyung are drifting across the ice, albeit slowly and with lots of breaks to allow Taehyung to steady himself on the wall.

It’s actually quite fun, and relaxing, gliding across the ice like this. Music crackles through the speakers, and the people around you are all enjoying themselves. Surrounded by the bright flurry of December snow, it’s easy to smile and let loose and enjoy the season.

Eventually, the cold does manage to catch up with you, but Taehyung’s quick to press on to the next scheduled activity before you can feel too sad that the ice skating is over.

He crowds you off the ice, eagerly urging you forward with a hand planted on either shoulder.

“Hurry! We’re going to be late!!” He informs you. You deliberately slow down at that and he gets so huffy and impatient at your silliness that you find yourself laughing.

After warming yourselves up with a hot chocolate and some lunch in the warmth of a well-heated cafe, it’s starting to get a bit dark by the time Taehyung leads you to your final activity. He refuses to say what it is- instead he leads you in an increasingly convoluted route on public transport. He gets more and more amused the more unfamiliar with your destination you become, and by the time you step off the bus on the snowy outskirts of the city, you’re starting to think the whole Christmas Spirit thing was an act designed to murder you in a forest somewhere.

Particularly when he claps a hand over each eye, obscuring your vision.

“Taehyung,” you sigh. “If this is how you’re going to murder me, can’t you at least let me see the knife coming?”

“I’m not going to murder you.” He scoffs, though with gentle pressure, he leads you forward, his chest pressed protectively to your back. “I just want to surprise you.”

“I’m very easily surprised.” You remind him. “I don’t need to be blind in a forest to be surprised. Just give me a box of chocolates after a long day of work or something.”

“Hush.” He shushes you. “Just walk, and trust me.”

You take a deep, inhaling breath and your lungs fill with what has become the calming, warm scent of peppermint and cinnamon. It’s Taehyung, you remind yourself. He’s had plenty of opportunity to hurt you or scam you or even kill you but instead all he’s done is wait eagerly for you to return home and watch tacky Christmas movies with you.

“Ok.” He says, against your ear, and you shiver at the heat of his mouth tickling the cold tips of your ears. “Are you ready?”

Words fail you for some mysterious reason, so you settle for nodding mutely.

Taehyung drops his hands from your eyes and it takes you a few blinks to adjust to the sudden onslaught of light.

What lies before you is a long, brightly lit pathway. Market stalls line the paths, with vendors brandishing their wares. Fairly lights string across the stalls, in various tones ranging from warm-toned white lights to festive blues, greens, reds. Overhead, brilliant archways decorated with marvellous, intricate arrays of Christmas lights mark the path.

“What... what is this, Tae?” You breathe. Your chest hurts a little and this time you’re willing to admit that it has nothing to do with the cold.

“This is the Annual Christmas Markets.” He announces proudly. “Brought to you by your local council and sponsored by Subway (sandwiches not included).”

You take hesitant, wondering steps forward. You don’t really have any words for the strange, ballooning feeling in your chest. Like your heart is so full it’s about to burst. You feel on the verge of tears yet at the same time you feel free and light and happy.

“It’s so... pretty.” You say. Taehyung beams and steps in close so that he’s shoulder to shoulder with you.

“Pretty magical, huh?” He asks you. “I found it on google! Did you know the city throws this event every year?”

You shake your head wonderingly.

“I had no idea.” You admit. He tilts his head towards the festivities.

“Then let’s explore!” He cries, tugging you forward with a hand wrapped around yours.

There’s lots to do around the markets. There’s christmas light sculptures scattered around, like a scavenger hunt of sorts. Taehyung’s favourite is the one of a santa formed from wires twisted together, skiing across the snow on a sleigh, two reindeers are standing tall. Your favourite is probably a tunnel of lights, tightly woven together to create an archway as people weave through it- you like the way it turns Taehyung’s bright red hair into brilliant licks of flames, and how his eyes look like they hold the entire night sky within their depths.

There’s a mulled wine stall, although Taehyung pulls a face at the taste and you have to buy him a hot chocolate to get him to forgive you.

“I just don’t understand how anyone can dislike Christmas carols!” Taehyung protests across his hot chocolate as the night progresses. You’re nearing the edge of the market stalls, which open up onto a big open space, paved with asphalt and with the snow scraped off it where various families and groups of people are starting to gather. Most of them are in parked vehicles, all facing towards a central stage that hasn’t been lit up yet.

“If you talk to anyone who works in retail, they just get repetitive after a while.” You explain. “I mean, “Last Christmas” is a good song in theory, but not after the six repeats that played before your lunch break.”

Taehyung “tsk”’s and shakes his head.

“I think you just have the wrong associations with the songs.” He sighs. “If you associate it with work and bad things, of course you won’t like it! You have to make positive memories and think of those when you hear the songs.”

The stage lights up ahead of you and a small band starts to take the stage. You gaze at the performers as they prepare.

“Any suggestions?” You ask softly. You surprise yourself, and when you look at Taehyung, he looks a little stunned to. “To make positive memories. What should I think of instead, when I hear those songs?”

He searches your gaze for a moment, and then the corner of his mouth quirks in a little half smile.

“Follow me.” He urges, leading you across the asphalt towards the stage. You have to duck between parked cars where people have makeshift little dens to enjoy the show from. He brings you to a stop where there’s a bit of a space just before the stage. A few couples have already taken advantage of what is essentially a dance floor. He spins around and pulls you in close. You stumble a little, not expecting the movement, but it seems he was expecting that. He steadies you with a hand against your waist and tugs one of your free arms up to rest on his shoulder. “When you hear this song... you can think about today.” He tells you with a smile. “And about all the fun we had!”

He begins to sway you back and forth in a slow turn. You wonder why his weird Christmas Spirit school taught him how to slow dance. Up on the stage, the singer begins to croon the opening notes of “have yourself a merry little christmas”. You tell yourself its the cold that urges you to shuffle in closer to Taehyung as he sways you from side to side. He’s so warm, and solid. Unbidden, your heart starts to beat a little faster, and when you raise your eyes to meet his, something about the warmth in those dazzling depths has you feeling light-headed.

“What do you think about when you hear them?” You ask him, changing the subject in an attempt to overcome the strange, overwhelming emotion you suddenly feel weighted with. He spins you out in a twirl, before tugging you back in.

“Hmm...” he contemplates. “I think about hot chocolates, and snowball fights, and the smell of Christmas trees. And Christmas lights and Christmas bells.” He lists, his gaze hazy as he thinks through his list. It’s a bit of a scary thought, but you could honestly stay here forever, watching Taehyung list the things he loves, being swayed gently in his arms. And then he glances down at you and there’s something so warm and fond in his expression that you feel your face heat. “And I think about your smile.”

A funny thing happens in that moment, after his confession. Your heart goes on strike for a moment- even she seems shocked at the sudden turn of events. And then suddenly the air is electric, and all your senses are just filled with Taehyung. His smell, his eyes, his hair, his warmth... his lips.

It’s a sudden revelation, like being struck by lightening. The look in his eyes seems to thread into your veins, leaving burning trails in its wake. His scent washes into the very bottom of your lungs. You like him. In a very short amount of time, he’s wiggled past all your defences and now here you are, standing in his arms, and you realise you want to stay there. You want to keep seeing his smile and keep spending time with him and you don’t want this Christmas to end.

The songs draws to a close and you step away from his embrace. He seems to sense your sudden change in mood.

“Is everything ok?” He asks you and you nod, smiling in a way you hope is reassuring.

“Yeah. I just noticed how cold it’s getting, is all. Shall we head back home?” You ask. Taehyung blinks and glances around as if he’s just now realising how cold it is. He shivers and steps in close to you.

“Yeah, you’re right.” He admits. “Let’s head home.” He wraps his arms around you, rubbing his hands up and down your biceps to try and warm you up. “Did you have fun, though?” He asks eagerly.

“Yeah.” You say, and this time the smile isn’t forced. “Yeah, I did.”

A week later, you’re stressed and bustling around the kitchen like a madwoman.

“Is it golden brown yet or is it just the oven light?” Taehyung wonders, attempting to peer into your oven without opening the door. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just check now?”

Your realisation of your feelings hadn’t changed too much around the apartment. As work for the year finally drew to a close this week, you hadn’t really had a chance to overthink it, and then you’d been busy planning a pre-Christmas dinner upon learning that Taehyung has always wanted to try a family Christmas dinner. You’d insisted upon throwing one despite his protests that he was the Christmas Spirit, not you. Finally, he had relented, and you were keen to return all the memories he had given you tenfold.

Only a couple of your friends had still been without plans, this late into December. Jin always manages to make time where food is involved, and Dahyun had had to cancel flights back home for the year. She’s also dragging along an old friend of hers, Jungkook, and then Nayeon had invited Namjoon and Jihyo. They’re all good friends of yours, but there’s something about organising a home-cooked Christmas meal that is just inherently stressful.

“The recipe says another ten minutes.” You remind Taehyung in between your attempts to both whip the cream for dessert and finish placing all the appetisers into sufficiently aesthetic containers.

Taehyung frowns, and straightens. He watches you dance around in a frazzled manner for a few minutes, before catching you by the shoulders.

“Hey.” He scolds. “I know I said I wanted a Christmas dinner, but not at the expense of your sanity. I don’t appreciate you undoing all my hard work of making you enjoy Christmas.”

You stiffen at the warmth of his palms against your shoulders before taking a deep breath.

“You’re right.” You finally say. “I’m sorry. I just... I want you to have a good time. I’ve had so much fun these past few weeks and I want you to feel what I feel. I never thought I could ever look forward to something like Christmas, and yet here I am, throwing an entire Christmas dinner.”

“Seeing you enjoy Christmas and smiling like this makes me feel happier than you can imagine, (Y/N),” Taehyung reassures you. “This dinner is just a bonus. I’m grateful for it, but what would make me feel the best is if you’re having a good time.”

There he goes again. He’s remarkably smooth for a strange mystical being that was raised in the North Pole. He’s just so good at making your stomach feel like it’s filled with butterflies and making your heart forget to beat. With a deep, resigned sigh, you nod to him.

“Ok. I’ll chill out.” You promise, before returning to your preparations in a far more mellow manner.

Guests start trickling in. Jin just barely manages to avoid a throttling when you see him, after his stunt where he didn’t show up when there was an intruder in your home. It all worked out fine, but it’s always offensive to learn that your friend would leave you to die because he had “an oven emergency”. Jungkook and Dahyun come in bickering over the intricacies over some meme they’d seen, and Jihyo drags in far too much alcohol for the night.

The night settles into a comfortable sort of atmosphere- people scatter across the living space of your apartment, catching up and just generally enjoying the vibe. Taehyung gets a few probing questions into the nature of your relationship and Jin seems to develop some sort of facial tic with all the eyebrow wagging he’s doing, but otherwise things go smoothly.

At least until it becomes apparent that Jin had taken the liberty of doing some decorating of his own while you were setting up for dinner.

Namjoon and Jihyo are the first of the victims to the numerous mistletoes Jin has concealed around your home. Luckily, they are dating and so it’s just a quick peck between them to the sounds of laughter and hooting.

At least until the other attendees realise that if Jin has hidden multiple mistletoes around your home, at any moment they could fall victim to a dreaded mistletoe kiss, with a completely undesired partner.

From there, things devolve into a terrified, suspicious sort of scavenger hunt. Jin thinks it’s hilarious, watching you all scour the place like sniffer dogs, comfortably reclined on the couch as he shouts out hints that could be true or could be total lies. It’s always hard to tell with him.

Of course Taehyung, poor, sweet naive Taehyung, had missed the dramatic revelation of Jin’s prank. He had been in the kitchen, dutifully monitoring dessert as it slowly cooked in the oven, and he had only stepped out to check with you when you thought it would be done.

You feel him tap your shoulder in the middle of combing through your mantle, making sure Jin hadn’t hidden anything amidst the photo frames and decorations that sat there. You jump, surprised, and turn to face him.

Only for Jin’s screeching laughter to reach you.

“Victims number 2!” He calls triumphantly. Taehyung looks confused, and you grimace as you finally spot the offending object. A small bit of mistletoe twisted in amongst the tinsel lining your ceiling. You’re not even sure how the madman actually got it there without anyone noticing.

“Mistletoe!” Dahyun chants, from where she’d been pressed into a corner and snarling at anyone who dared walk close enough to her lest she too fall victim to the mistletoe. “Mistletoe. Mistletoe. Mistletoe.” Slowly everyone joins the chant until your apartment sounds a bit like a cult.

“Let’s not be hasty!” You plead. “Think about it. If you let me off, then we can all ignore this silly tradition.”

Taehyung, interestingly, has gone very still upon realising the two of you stand beneath a mistletoe.

“(Y/N).” he calls, audible only to you beneath the chanting. “We can’t leave. It’s a mistletoe- I have to.”

You squint at him.

“What do you mean? It’s just a silly tradition, why would you have to-“ you begin, before trailing away as it occurs to your that Taehyung is actually not a human. This isn’t two friends caught beneath a mistletoe and talking their way out of a silly tradition. Taehyung is a Christmas Spirit and thus bound to different rules to you. “Oh.” You breathe. “So I have to... do that?”

With a deep blush that nearly rivals the brilliant red of his hair, Taehyung nods. You wince and let your gaze drop. His mouth is a soft pink- one of the first things you’d bought on that first shopping trip had been lip balm after he’d seen you applying your own. He applies it meticulously and his lips are always faintly glossy and soft looking. This close you can count the tiny moles that sit against his skin like little stars, and you feel a little bit like your heart is in danger when you finally draw your gaze back up to meet his.

His expression is a little hard to interpret, but you don’t let yourself overthink it. You slide your palms up around the back of his neck and tug his mouth down to press against yours.

Taehyung makes a little surprised noise when you do, and it makes you blush. The smell of peppermint and cinammon is strong but captivating, and you wish you could stay there. You wish you could keep kissing him, but you know it’s wrong.

With a sigh, you pull back. Taehyung’s eyes are round and mystified and the blush sits high on his cheeks. His tongue darts out to swipe his lips and he clears his throat awkwardly.

“I...” his gaze flickers down and then he averts his gaze quickly. Around you, your friends let out a few wolf whistles before returning to the panicked search for any other offending items. Taehyung’s breathing seems a little faster and you can’t say you’re in much better state. “I just came out to ask you about the dessert.” He finally manages, though his voice comes out a little raspy. You nod, hoping he doesn’t think much of the way you mirror his fierce blush.

“Right...” you say awkwardly. “I’ll just... go and check on it.”

You dart around him, heading straight for the kitchen.

When you are there, you take advantage of the lack of other party guests and bury your face in your hands. It was just a mistletoe kiss, it didn’t mean anything and yet your traitorous heart is rioting in your chest, threatening to go on strike. Your mind can’t help replaying the moment- his lips on yours, his familiar, striking scent, the scratch of his ugly Christmas jumper beneath your fingers. The size of this stupid crush is embarrassingly enormous.

It takes a few moments, but you manage to regain your composure enough to discover that the dessert is very slightly undercooked, which you know Jin will bitch and moan about, but everyone else won’t mind. It’s nothing copious amounts of ice cream or custard won’t cover up.

When you step out into your living room, it seems the panic over the mistletoes has settled. Jungkook had smothered Jin until he caved and gave up all the locations and now your living room has devolved into a ridiculous Christmas dance party- Jin and Dahyun belt out the lyrics to Last Christmas with absurd amounts of drama and gravitas, and Jihyo and Namjoon are curled up on the couch, murmuring to each other softly. Jungkook has gotten ahold of Taehyung and is currently trying to teach him ridiculous tiktok dances, and all-in-all it’s kind of a dream vibe for a Christmas party. No pain, or fighting, or tears. Just warmth and laughter, and a shared camraderie of the season.

You find yourself smiling as you finally admit to yourself that maybe Taehyung was right.

Christmas isn’t so bad after all.

After everyone goes home, you and Taehyung are left to the cleanup.

It’s a bit awkward, standing shoulder to shoulder after the kiss. His movements are slow and hesitant, like if you move too quickly he’ll get frightened and bolt. But gradually you settle into a kind of rhythm, tidying things up together and you can’t resist asking him about the party. It had been for his sake, after all.

“Did you have fun?” You ask. Taehyung jumps from where he’d been gently working the sponge into a lather and a clang rings through the kitchen. The silence seems more pressing after the loudness of your party.

“Um... it was good.” He says, though his voice is a little high and squeaky. “I had a lot of fun- your friends seem nice.”

“It’s not really a family dinner.” You admit sheepishly. He pauses and offers you a smile, and the pleasant expression on his face seems to thaw through the lingering ice in the room.

“No, don’t be silly.” He tells you. “It was everything I could have hoped for. Except for Jin’s interpretative dance to Santa baby. I feel like I could have gone without that.”

You laugh and shake your head, stepping in close to pluck plates off the drying rack and drying them off.

“This was nothing. Wait till lizzo comes on and then you’ll see peak Seokjin.” You sigh. But then your expression changes and you offer Taehyung a smile. His eyes drop for just a fraction of a second, so quick you think you’ve imagined it, before raising quickly back to your eyes. “I’m glad you had a good time.”

He nods, and hums, still making his way through the pile of dirty dishes.

“What about you?” He asks. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

You pause to think about it. The laughter of your friends, the silly Christmas carols, the snap of Christmas bonbons.... you did. You really, truly enjoyed yourself in a way you didn’t think you could and it’s thanks to the man before you. The man who patiently waited for you to come home each evening to eat dinner with you, and who dragged you across the city to places he thought you’d enjoy... he’s truly a magical person.

“I really did. It’s gotten me so excited for the rest of the year, to be honest. Are there any other Christmas traditions we can do? Christmas is almost here, but what about New Year’s? We could do something fun then too.” You suggest. Suddenly the season seems so bright and exciting, and the fact that there’s a whole week and a half left to December leaves you unbelievably excited.

Taehyung pauses from where he scrapes at a stubborn crumb on your baking tray.

“What?” He asks, and his voice goes strangely soft, and tentative. You blink- something about his tone makes you uneasy.

“For after Christmas.” You clarify. “You’ve already got Christmas planned out for us, right? So I can plan something for New Year’s. Return the favour.”

By now, Taehyung has completely stopped cleaning. He doesn’t look at you, and stares straight ahead.

“There... there isn’t an “after Christmas”, (Y/N).” He confesses. Your heart drops into your stomach. He turns to face you, and for once, his eyes aren’t bright, and filled with joy. They’re dark and miserable.

“What?” You breathe, trying to speak past the sudden shattering sensation in your chest. “Why... why not?”

“I’m a Christmas Spirit.” He reminds you. “I bring Christmas Cheer and then I go back in a box for the rest of the year.”

You blink- you feel like you aren’t hearing him right, or just not comprehending things.

“Why? I can just not put you away. Why can’t there be an “after Christmas”?” You urge. You step in close, fighting past the sudden panic in your chest. “How could I just put you back in a box for the rest of the year? That’s crazy! Just, don’t go in the box.”

“It’s not that simple.” He protests. “There are rules, (Y/N). I can’t just ignore them. My job is to make you happy during Christmas and then that’s it. That’s what I was born and raised to do. That’s what I spent 25 years waiting for.”

Your eyes widen.

“But surely there’s another way? Surely you don’t want to be in the box.” You cry. You step in close and grab his hand, pulling it towards you pleadingly.

“It doesn’t matter what I want.” He says, and there’s a resigned note of finality to his tone. “After Christmas, that’s it. I lose the strength to turn into a human. You can keep my out of the box, but it doesn’t make a difference. It ends on Christmas night.”

That makes you fall silent as you finally learn the full truth. You’d been so busy having fun that you hadn’t thought about what comes next. You’d stupidly let yourself believe that you could just keep having fun with Taehyung. You hadn’t thought about the logistics or the long term of it. You feel like you’ve been slapped.

Christmas has an end date.

Taehyung spots the tears forming in the corners of your eyes before you do, and his expression softens at the sight.

“It’s not fair.” You rasp. Somehow, he manages to pull a smile from somewhere, though it’s tinged with a deep sadness that makes more tears spill forth. He steps in close and pulls your face into his chest.

“I know.” He soothes. “It is. It’s unfair. I want to... I want to stay. But I can’t.”

You can’t keep your composure after that, and the sobs come in in full force.

“I wanted to keep having fun with you.” You bawl, and he just shushes you with a tighter hug.

“I did too.” He confesses. “But it just means we have to have even more fun until Christmas. Can you do that for me, (Y/N)?” He breaks the hug so that he can gaze into your eyes, smoothing the tears from your cheeks. “Please.” He begs. And you see the way his own eyes are red and moist.

You want to tell him you absolutely cannot. That if he’s going to make Christmas fun and then leave you at the end, he can leave right now. Before you fall even harder. Before it’s too hard to say goodbye.

But you’re a fool. A masochistic, lovestruck, weak fool. You can’t look into his eyes and tell him no. Not when you know what this means to him; you can’t take away his first Christmas for selfish reason.

“Ok.” You finally rasp. “I’ll do it.”

You’re walking off a cliff face with your eyes wide open.

For once Taehyung’s smile isn’t enough to comfort you.

Christmas day dawns cold and subdued. The days following dinner had been warm, but quiet. Reserved. Like you both knew a goodbye was coming and didn’t want to acknowledge it. You spend one night curled up in your car at an outdoor theatre, laughing along to some silly Christmas comedy, and another day is spent going bobsledding. You both go through the motions of merriment, but it’s clear that neither of your hearts are in it. It’s hard to be enthusiastic and merry when each precious moment that passes is one step closer to when he turns back into a scarecrow.

When you step out in the kitchen, Taehyung is making breakfast already. He sees you and smiles.

“Good morning.” He calls. “Merry Christmas.”

It triggers a pang in your chest as his words confirm that this is truly your last day with him.

“Merry Christmas.” You yawn, attempting to conceal the way your heart aches by settling into a chair at your table.

Taehyung scurries over, a plate in each hand.

“Breakfast is ready.” He declares. He’s gotten quite creative in his cooking- he can now manage a fairly decent semi-scrambled omelette and his bacon is surprisingly crispy. You’re eager to see what he has prepared for Christmas Day.

When he sets it down in front of you, however, you glimpse the Santa pancakes he made that first day. Your face falls. Two familiar blueberry eyes stare dolefully up at you and even the banana smile seems less curved and cheerful. It’s clear Taehyung had been a little distracted making them, because they’re not as carefully put together as that first meal. But the sentiment behind them still stands; that Taehyung cooks for you. He likes seeing you smile and he goes to absurd lengths to get you to enjoy yourself and he has for the entire month of December. He’s come to mean so much to you in such a short span of time- somehow he’s made a season that previously only meant cold and misery become a time of warmth and laughter. And now you have to say goodbye, before you’ve even started. There’s so many adventures the two of you could go on together, and yet you don’t get to. It’s so cruel. You’re alarmed when the tears come, unbidden.

Taehyung watches the expressions play out across your face, before wordlessly reaching out with the sleeve of his sweater to wipe the tears that fall away. His touch is gentle and his expression somber. He hasn’t even donned his usual Santa’s hat.

“I’m sorry.” You say, in a small voice. “I know I said I wouldn’t cry.”

He shakes his head and smiles, pulling his chair up so that it’s seated as close as possible to you.

“It’s ok. Just means I have to work a little harder. I wanna see that pretty smile, before I go.” He reassures you. You sniff and scrub at your eyes before staring determinedly at your pancakes.

“Ok.” You say. “Let’s do this, then.”

Taehyung searches your expression, and you’re not sure what he sees there, but it seems to satisfy him. You feel that the last few days, his smiles had been duller and decidedly less genuine, but this time he hits you with the full force of his dazzling smile.

“First things first, we have to open presents!” He cheers. You frown.

“But I don’t have any presents-“ you protest, but Taehyung cuts you off with a sharp rush of air through his teeth.

“Then what’s that?” He questions innocently, gesturing to your ratty Christmas tree.

And sure enough, beneath it is laden with presents. You stare at it for a long time.

“I didn’t get you anything.” You finally admit. Taehyung laughs.

“You enjoying my gifts is the present.” He says dismissively, before crowding you towards the tree. “Anyway, it’s a universal Christmas tradition to open your presents after breakfast, and I have failed you as a Christmas Spirit if we don’t do that.”

He slides the first gift towards you and eyes you coyly. “Open this one first.” He urges you.

They’re all small gifts, relatively inexpensive. You’re not expecting Swarovski crystals from Taehyung considering he’s an unemployed Christmas Spirit. But each gift is thoughtful and sweet and bought specifically with you and your tastes in mind. By the time you open the last of the presents, you’re fighting off tears again.

“I didn’t get you anything.” You lament, sniffling slightly as you set the last gift aside. Taehyung’s eyebrows wrinkle together and his mouth pulls into a pout.

“I already told you. Just being here is a gift for me.” He insists. “Besides, it’s not like I can use anything you give me for eleven months.”

That causes you to fall silent. You bite your lip as you look away. You had been determined not to acknowledge the elephant in the room, but you can’t do it. You can’t spend the day pretending you’re not on the verge of tears.

“I know I said I wouldn’t. But I can’t keep pretending this isn’t going to happen, Tae.” You say, and when he looks at you, you know it’s the first chink in his armour. He’s held it together considerably better than you, and you’d thought maybe it just didn’t bother him. After all, you were the one with feelings, not him. “At least... you can answer questions, right? If I know more, maybe it will hurt less.”

But looking at him now, you realise that he’s been fighting to stay composed to.

“What do you want to know?” He finally says, and he’s quiet. Defeated. So unlike the optimistic, cheerful being you’d come to adore.

“Are you trapped? Will it be be uncomfortable?” You question. “Can you still hear me? Will you... will you be lonely?”

“Not exactly.” He reassures you. “I look like a human but I’m also a glorified Christmas ornament. Time and events are different when I’m a scarecrow. It’s hard to explain.... but it’s not so bad. It’s just... how I am. I’m waiting, but I’m not trapped.” He explains vaguely. “I can hear and see what’s going on, but I just process things differently. Time just... feels different.”

You nod, a little comforted that at least you’re not sending your friend to be trapped in a prison of his own body for eleven months.

“Am I meant to pass you on to someone else?” You ask. “Or do I keep you here?”

“I guess...” He looks uncertain, and tentative. “I guess it depends how your year goes. Eleven months...” his voice cracks and he clears it awkwardly to hide it. “It’s a long time. You can keep me here, and I’ll see you next December, if you need a little extra help enjoying the season... or you can pass me on to someone else if you don’t need me anymore.”

He’s right. Eleven months is such a long time. Long enough to forget Taehyung and his bright smile and cheery disposition. Long enough to spend next Christmas with your family and pretend like things are ok between you. Long enough... long enough to forget just how much your heart aches today, and fool yourself into doing the exact same thing next year.

“What do you want?” You finally settle on. It’s the last question of the interrogation. After this, you can pretend everything is ok. You can go on like nothing’s wrong.

Taehyung’s eyes go wide. He points at himself, bewildered by your question.

“What do... I want?” He echoes, as if he’s never heard the words before. You nod.

“I want you to spend Christmas happy.” You confess. “So where do you want to be, next Christmas?”

He’s quiet for so long you’re worried that his brain has stopped functioning or that his weird Christmas Spirit voodoo has kicked in. But when he finally looks at you again, his eyes shine with so much emotion that your heart aches in your chest at the sight.

“I want to be here.” He finally says. “I want to spend Christmas with you again. There’s so many things we still didn’t get to try, and I want to do them all.”

Your throat goes tight, because yet again, you’re signing yourself up for heartbreak. If you do this, you’re the only one who will be hurt. Pining alone for most of the year for a season you used to hate. The irony of the situation is not lost on you.

But you’re helpless to him, to his smile and his sweetness and his warmth, and you can’t say goodbye.

“Ok.” You agree. “Then you’ll stay with me. Now let’s have some fun.”

The day must inevitably draw to a close. Though you and Taehyung linger at every activity, attempting to draw out each moment, the point in the day comes where the two of you are back at the apartment, with the time drawing closer and closer to midnight.

You unlock your apartment door with trembling fingers and inhale a shaking breath. You glance over your shoulder at Taehyung. He’s a broad-shouldered person, tall and imposing were it not for the warmth of his eyes and his puppy-like demeanour and normally he just seems larger than life. But in that moment, he’s so small and uncertain.

There’s so much you could say. You could plead with him; try and see if there’s a way to bargain out of the inevitable goodbye. Or you could thank him, from the bottom of your heart, for the first enjoyable Christmas you’ve had in your entire life. Crying feels like a viable option too, or getting angry. Your heart can’t seem to settle on a response and so instead it’s settled on numbness. Like it’s cold, lifeless hunk of metal rattling around in your ribcage.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” Is what you finally settle on. He stares searching at your expression, before nodding to himself and squaring his shoulders

“Yeah. That sounds fun. I’ll make us some hot chocolate as well.” He says, stepping past you into the foyer.

You eventually settle on watching the Polar Express. When you sit on the couch, Taehyung sits far too close and tugs a blanket over both your laps. He hands you a mug of hot chocolate and the two of you settle into a peaceful quiet, opposite from the laughter and activity of the daytime. The evening melancholy seems to have settled in. The whole movie, you don’t really pay attention, instead trying not to think about the way the clock on the wall seems to be moving quickly.

“(Y/N).” You’re startled when Taehyung calls your name. It’s out of the blue, and you hadn’t noticed the way he’s steadily edged closer until the words are said almost directly into your ear. You’d been watching the clock instead of the movie, and you think for a moment that he intends to reprimand you. You turn to look at him and the proximity startles the breath out of you. “It’s almost midnight.” He tells you, as if you haven’t been glaring the clock down for most of the night.

It’s true, though- the minute hand is edging closer and closer to the dreaded twelve. It makes you realise that he’s been eyeing the clock as well.

“So it is.” You acknowledge, and he’s so close that his breath skates against the skin of your cheeks, staring at you with an intensity you don’t understand.

“Did I... Did I do a good job?” He asks you. You press your lips together; in a way he did. You think you may have smiled in this month alone more than you have the entire year. But you also know that the rest of the year will now pale in comparison; the rest of winter will leech by, depressingly dreary, and summer will come and go in muddy heat. The year will both inch and speed by and that whole time you will have the special month of December in mind. The times you spent with Taehyung.

“You did.” You finally say. “I... Christmas was always so lonely and miserable to me. Where we tried to pretend that things were ok and merry and it would just dissolve into screaming matches. But with you, it wasn’t. You helped me make it into something warm, and beautiful. And even though...” your voice cracks, and it takes you a moment to reclaim your composure. “Even though the ending will be lonely and sad, you gave me all these wonderful memories. I’ll hear a Christmas carol and think of you from now on, Taehyung.”

When you finally gain the courage to meet his gaze, you’re startled to find tears pouring down his cheeks. He’s been sad and a little misty-eyed ever since he admitted he wouldn’t be around after Christmas, but he’s also been frustratingly composed.

But in that moment, he’s anything but. He looks devastated as he brings his hands up to press into his eyes in a vain attempt to stem the flow of tears.

“I’m sorry.” He gasps. “I tried so hard but... I never imagined Christmas would be like this. I was only supposed to make you smile and then go back to being a scarecrow and that should have been enough but it’s not.”

He’s full on sobbing now, and you can only stare in bewilderment as tears form in your own eyes.

“I want to spend New Year’s Eve with you, and start the New Year together. I want to see you on your birthday. I want to see you on happy days and sad days. I want to...” he rubs his eyes clear and stares straight at you. “I want to make you smile the whole year.” He confesses.

And that’s when your phone goes off. You’d set an alarm, earlier in the morning, so that you’d know the exact moment midnight hit. You glance away, for just a moment, dread hitting you full force like a sledgehammer.

And when you turn back, it’s too late. The familiar little scarecrow stares up at you from the couch, where Taehyung had been seated just moments before.

And you finally let yourself break down at the sight of the familiar button eyes.

And just like that, Christmas is over.

“Why does your apartment smell like someone’s been dumped?” Jin sniffs as he steps through the threshold of your home, uninvited as usual. You’re not sure how he got in, but he probably had a copy of your key made somehow without you noticing. He’s prone to doing invasive things like that.

“Being dumped doesn’t have a smell.” You snap, from where you had been curled up on the couch under a mound of blankets.

“Yes it does.” He insists. “It smells like...” he pauses to take one long, obnoxious sniff to the air before wrinkling his nose. “B.O. and cheetos.” He recites.

You sigh, still not bothering to shift from your blanket nest. You’d been expecting his visit, to be honest. It’s the day before New Year’s Eve and you haven’t responded to his annual New Year’s Eve Bash invite. He’s very intense about RSVPs.

“What do you want, Jin?” You ask. He picks his way delicately towards you, navigating his way through your semi-dissembled Christmas tree before settling before you in a crouch. You’d made it part-way through the post-Christmas clean up before you’d been too upset to continue.

“Well, you aren’t answering my texts or calls. Zero activity on social media, no RSVP to my party... So I thought I’d make sure you hadn’t choked on a piece of tinsel.” He looks around your apartment with distaste. “I’m actually not sure if I’m relieved that you’re ok if this is what “ok” looks like.”

You ignore him, choosing to focus your attention back to Netflix. His expression softens, just a fraction.

“Tell me what’s going on, (Y/N). And where’s.. where’s Taehyung?” He questions tentatively.

You’re unable to conceal the way your shoulders stiffen, just slightly, at the mention of his name. You’ve been doing your best in the five days since Christmas to bounce back and return to normal life, but you can’t seem to. It’s easier to lounge around on the couch than to muster up the emotional energy to pretend you’re ok. You’ve spent too long pretending you’re ok. There isn’t a single drop of you left that can even try to do so.

“He had to go.” You say, hating the way your voice goes abruptly raw with tears. Jin’s eyes widen just slightly, and he shuffles closer.

“What do you mean he had to go? He’s-“ As he said the words, his eyes had been darting wildly around the apartment, but he abruptly cuts himself off when he spots the scarecrow on your mantle. “Why is Taehyung...” he begins, before his gaze flickers to you.

“Oh.” He exclaims simply, understanding dawning in his eyes. “Oh, (Y/N).” He says, his voice filled with sympathy and sadness on your behalf.

You’re surprised when Jin engulfs you in a hug. You’ve never had that sort of friendship- he prefers to show his love by nagging you. But it’s weirdly comforting and you melt into his embrace.

“I’m sorry I didn’t RSVP.” You say glumly. “I didn’t feel like celebrating.”

Jin pulls away and scrutinises your expression.

“Forgive me if it seems probing, but I don’t understand what happened. You guys seemed like you were going great at dinner the other night.” He says. “Why... why didn’t you use his wish?”

You pull back and blink at him in confusion.

“His... wish?” You echo. Jin nods.

“All Christmas Spirit receive one wish for their entire career. It was instituted recently, though, maybe only in the last twenty years or so, so maybe Taehyung didn’t know about it?” Jin wonders.

Your eyes widen.

“Christmas Spirit?” You splutter. “You mean you knew?”

For someone who’s dropping a bombshell, Jin looks remarkably deadpan.

“Of course I knew. You think I wouldn’t notice a Christmas Spirit living in my store for five years?” He questions you with exasperation.

You stare at him incredulously.

“And you never thought, just once, that it would be a good idea to tell me what I was bringing home?” You demand. He rolls his eyes.

“Oh please. Like you would have believed me.” He says dismissively. “Little Miss Grinch, hates Christmas, told her weird Christmas Scarecrow is actually a special Christmas Spirit? I’m a simple man, (Y/N). I see an opportunity for a great Hallmark movie, I take it.”

You stare at him in rage, and then something occurs to you.

“That’s why you never came when I texted you that night! You knew it was Taehyung!” You realise in horror. “What if you had been wrong?”

At least he has enough sense of propriety to look sheepish.

“Taehyung would have helped you if I was wrong.” He offers meekly. The change in pace of conversation has you deflating.

“If you knew... why did you let him go home with me? I could have spent Christmas at home, alone, and not be dealing with any of this.” You confess, and Jin softens just a little bit.

“Well, because I didn’t want you to spend Christmas alone.” He admits. “Every year, you’re so miserable. And I thought Taehyung could change that. And honestly, I didn’t think it would end up like this and even if I did, I thought Taehyung would use his wish.”

“What wish?” You ask. Jin shrugs.

“Every Christmas Spirit gets one wish throughout their career. Usually it ends up being that they become human, but I know of some who have wished for other things.” He admits. You brows knit together as you gaze at your friend. Where is all this knowledge coming from?

“Jin... just who are you?” You ask hesitantly. He smiles awkwardly and rubs at the back of his neck.

“I’m Jin. The same Jin you’ve known for years. But before that, I was a little Christmas bear who spent years trying to make people happy on Christmas day.” He admits. “And one year... I’d had enough. So I wished that I could be human. And here I am today.” He smiles at you. “And it’s not too late. Taehyung can still do the same.” He glances over at your mantle, where the motionless Christmas Scarecrow sits. “Anyway, I have to get going. I was just coming to make sure you were alive.” He gets up and dusts off his pants. “Maybe give the apartment a clean, and then you can sit down and have a nice, long chat with that scarecrow over there.”

He makes to leave, but can’t resist tossing one last comment over his shoulder.

“I’m just going to assume you’re bringing a plus one. I’ll change your response to “going” on the fb invite.”

One clean apartment later, you stand before your mantle, gazing into the button eyes of the scarecrow. It’s weird to know that behind them, Taehyung watches you. What is he thinking? Is he sad? Lonely? Trapped? Is he listening?

You’re strangely nervous. Taehyung had told you that he’d wanted to spend the rest of the year with you, but maybe he changed his mind. Maybe watching you lounge around your apartment the past five days made him realise how lame you are. And if he only gets one wish in his entire career, why would he waste it now? He’s only had one Christmas to live out his purpose as a Christmas Spirit- maybe he’s not ready to give it up yet. Maybe you’re asking too much of him. It’s only been a month; to ask him to become human and face the horrors of the human world is maybe the cruelest thing you could do.

But your heart yearns, and ultimately that it what gives you the courage to begin speaking.

“I... don’t know how much you heard of what Jin said earlier.” You admit. “He pretty loud so you probably heard at least some of it. But the basic gist... is that you get a wish. Only one wish, so once you use it, that’s it. So, you have to use it wisely.”

You look away and squeeze your eyes shut.

“And, I understand if you want to save it. You’ve only just started out and maybe you want more time. But I was thinking... if all that stuff you said before is true... Maybe you can use it now. To be a human.” You inhale shakily. The offer is out in the open now.

The scarecrow doesn’t move.

“I mean, maybe you didn’t. That’s ok. I’ll be ok if you don’t actually want to spend the rest of the year with me. It’s a lot to ask when it’s only been a month. But I want to.” You squint and you feel the hot prick of tears forming at the corner of your eyes. “This has been the best Christmas I’ve ever had. I’ve never smiled so much before, and so easily. Something about you makes it so easy. And I was never brave enough to say it, but I like your smile too. I like it so much. It’s ridiculous that you can say my smile is lovely when you can look in the mirror and see what your smile looks like. And I... I don’t want to only get to see it on Christmas. I don’t want to spend eleven months waiting for you but the ridiculous part is that I will.” You admit. “I’ll just keep comparing things to the time I spent with you. I’ll spend eleven months of the year waiting for you’re smile. And that’s because... I really like you, Tae. So much- no, too much. I like you too much.” You’re full on crying at this point. “So please. Spend it on me. Wish to be a human. Wish to be here the rest of the year.”

You fall silent, and still, the scarecrow stares at you. Unmoving, unchanging.

You smile helplessly, before scrubbing at your eyes. He doesn’t want to use his wish. That’s ok. He doesn’t have to. It was stupid of you to think that he would.

You sniffle and open your eyes.

Only to be engulfed by two arms around your body.

“I like you too much as well.” Taehyung gasps. It takes you a moment to process- your face is smushed into his chest and his arms hold you securely. “I didn’t know about the wish. But... I want to keep spending time with you. I’d have spent it on you a hundred times over if I’d known.”

You go to pull away so that you can see his face, but he doesn’t give you the chance to because his lips are meeting yours.

It’s a sweet kiss but also a little clumsy and eager. Like he’s worried time is running out.

Gradually, the urgency fades and he pulls away. At this proximity, you can see the way his lashes frame his bright eyes, and the way his eyes crinkle into little tiny half moons. It’s a little surreal, being able to gaze upon him so freely when just last week you’d been prepared for a goodbye.

“So... you’re a human now? You get to stay?” You ask. He pulls back and squints at himself.

“I guess so. I can’t seem to turn back into a scarecrow so I guess... that I’m human now.” He says.

You kiss him again, after that. It’s soft and sweet and perfect. When you pull away, his eyes are hazy and his expression is unfocused. He looks adorably dishevelled and distracted, and then he offers you that smile, the one that makes your heart feel like it’s about to burst. His fingers come up to delicately trail over the paths of your face, like he’s trying to memorise what you look like.

“You’re smiling.” He breathes, his tone filled with wonder. His thumb comes up to reverently trace the curve of your lips. “It was your smile.” He confesses. You blink up at him in confusion and he chuckles in response. “It threw me off guard. At the ornament store. Up until that point I’d been so nervous whether I was in over my head with the whole Christmas spirit thing. And then you smiled at me and it wasn’t even because of anything I’d even done and suddenly I wanted to keep that smile on your face.”

You flush, a bit flustered by his admission, but he isn’t finished, apparently.

“It’s so pretty. You’re pretty.” He insists. “When you kissed me under the mistletoe I thought my heart was going to burst and then I remembered what I was. That I’m a Christmas Spirit and that I don’t get to do this. I get your smile at Christmas and then that’s it.” He smiles self-deprecatingly at himself before it shifts into something warmer, and fonder. “But now... now...” he trails away, too emotional to continue and he settles for pulling you into another tight embrace, tucking his face into the crook of your neck. All you can smell is that comforting scent of peppermint and cinnamon, and you melt. “Now I get your smiles the rest of the year too. I can’t wait to spend the rest of the year with you.” He confesses, a soft, whispered confession into the warm crook of your neck.

And there’s lots to do, and things you need to work out now that Taehyung is by your side as a human. Your relationship with your parents isn’t fixed, and he doesn’t have a job or a source of income, and there’s still some remaining Christmas decorations that need to be placed in storage.

But that’s ok. You’ll both work all that out together eventually. After all, you have the rest of the year to do so.

#thebtswritersclub #kim taehyung x reader #taehyung x reader #castlebangtan #taehyung fluff #writing #secret santa

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bailey-reaper · 3 years

Note

How about a drabble of Barok serving as Klint's judicial assistant in his younger years, before he officially studies law to become a prosecutor? I like the idea of him becoming interested in and familiar with law from his brother. "Judicial Assistant van Zieks" has a certain ring to it.

Work Experience

Notes:

Oh that's a lovely idea, anon! I'd imagine that by the time he's promoted to 'Director of Prosecutions', Klint would most likely have been a very senior barrister known as a Q.C. ('Queen's Counsel'); they're also known colloquially as 'silks' because they 'take silk' (i.e. acquire a robe made of silk) upon attaining this lofty rank.

When a barrister becomes a silk/QC, they often only handle the most difficult (and expensive) work, but they will usually have a junior barrister assisting them (i.e. doing all the work, though I doubt Klint would conduct himself like that).

I can very much imagine Klint taking Barok as his junior and allowing himself to be 'led' by the latter. The term 'leading' basically means the barrister in charge of conducting the case where there's more than one involved.

Content Warnings: legal gubbins (that's the technical term btw... it's not); I take liberties with all things van Zieks, as usual...

──────≪⊰✥⊱≫───────

Klint's office was the very best place to study as far as Barok was concerned - the vast table in the centre of the room allowed him to spread his books out while the peaceful calm was greatly conducive to reflective reading. It was as good as, if not superior to, going to the university library. "Barok!" Klint said as he entered his room and shrugged out of his formal scarlet jacket, tossing it haphazardly on a coat rack, "What a pleasant surprise-- drink?" "Good afternoon brother," he looked up and nodded in greeting, "Mm, yes please. How was court?" "Fairly standard stuff," Klint sighed as he took two glasses and poured a measure of whiskey into each. Truth be told it was yet more of the depressing hypocrisy that grew ever-apparent to him day by day, but there was no need to sour a visit from his brother with such things. He set the glass down beside Barok and held up his own in a toasting gesture. Their glasses chimed melodically before both took a sip. Barok coughed a little, still unaccustomed to way whiskey punched the back of his throat when he swallowed it, "I imagine you were splendid, as always." "Oh?" Klint chuckled, his brother truly did worship him. Then, while he leaned against his desk, an idea came to him, "Hmmm! That's a thought..." "Huh?" "How about you take on a little work experience by my side, hm? I'm sure it would be fun to have you as my junior counsel for a while." "What? Really?" Barok looked simultaneously shocked and delighted, "I'd very much like to learn at your side, brother, I imagine there is much you could teach me about court etiquette and procedure!" "Then it's settled! I'll write to your professor and tell him you're to undertake a period of practical study beside me. After all, you're planning to become a prosecutor are you not?" he knew full well his brother intended to follow in his footsteps, which was incredibly flattering-- though he did have his reservations about what such a career might do to his darling brother's character. The younger nodded, "I should very much like to become a prosecutor." "Very good," he set his glass down and sat at his desk, taking a sheet of paper and his quill in hand, "We'll have that letter sent out today!" ──────≪⊰✥⊱≫─────── Barok had been to court many, many times but mostly to observe by way of the public gallery when safe to do so, or from a corner of the courtroom once he started being targeted due to Klint's ever-growing renown as the 'bane of criminals'. This, however, was on an entirely different scale: today he would be assisting with the proceedings -- a participant rather than a spectator. "You look nervous," Klint remarked as he stood beside his younger brother. "What... what do you mean?" "Your eyes," he said, chuckling behind his fist, "They're darting all over the place like a furtive rabbit's" "....O.. Oh..." he took a deep breath and shook his head, "I... didn't sleep much last night, my mind seemed to want to go over the case details again and again." "Mmmm, I had forgotten how it felt to be quite that nervous in court... still, it's good you feel that unsettled sense in the pit of your stomach. One should never be blasé about standing in this sombre hall of justice. It should always create a sense of disquiet, that is how you know you yet hold the essence of what it means to be an officer of the court," Klint took a glass and a decanter from under the bench and filled it with a small measure, "But, here, it doesn't hurt to settle your nerves." "Is that... whiskey?!" Barok uttered. "Yes, go on, for your nerves, little brother." He took a sip as directed, and choked again; still not used to that fiery punch in his throat, "T...thank you." Suddenly there were three loud knocks at the door followed by the court clerk's booming voice: "All persons who have anything to do before my Lords - the Queen's Justices - at the Central Criminal Court, draw near and give your attendance. God Save the Queen!" the clerk bowed to the judge then took a seat in the corner so as to record a transcript of the proceedings.

The Judge sat down, "In the name of her Majesty, Queen Victoria, I declare this court to be in session. God Save the Queen," the middle-aged man, whose hair was starting to fail him, though it was hidden under his white wig, cast his gaze over the persons in attendance, "Lord van Zieks, I see the prosecution has a junior member today." "Correct, my lord," Klint replied with a smile, "This is my younger brother, Barok, he desires to become a prosecutor, so I thought it only proper for him to accompany me on a few excursions so as to get a feel for the thing." "Quite right and very good," the Judge nodded, "I bid you welcome, young man, I hope you will learn much from your older brother, he is a skilled prosecutor and an invaluable asset to this court." "Y... Yes sir!" Barok said, standing straight to attention. Klint chuckled before placing a hand over his heart and bowing, "Thank you, my Lord, you honour me." "Now, Counsel, your opening statement, if you please." "With pleasure, my Lord..." ──────≪⊰✥⊱≫─────── Barok dutifully passed evidence and case notes to his brother as the case progressed, while also taking notes of things that struck him as important in terms of procedure, witness testimony and the general way in which matters progressed. He also made a few notes on Klint's control of the courtroom and general demeanour; the way he eloquently developed his arguments and appealed to the Jury with a seemingly effortless, poetic grace. It was a true masterclass in courtroom conduct and he longed to commit every second of it to his memory so that he might mimic his brother's style in the future. "I already told ya!" snapped the witness in the box, "I ain't never had nothin' to do with the gobshite!" Klint sighed while removing a handsome goblet, fashioned from silver and crystal, from under the bench and filling it with a measure of whiskey, "I'm going to overlook your use of a double negative, no doubt you'd have no sense of what that actually means, and presume that you're trying to deny all knowledge of the accused." "Double wot?" "Never mind all that, " Klint took a sip, startling Barok-- was his brother drinking in court?! The Judge didn't seem remotely bothered by it, in fact no one said a word. Did he do this often?? His brother continued, "You say you don't know that man in the dock." "That's right!" "Are you sure about that?" "W-Wot?! Why'd you keep askin' me that?! If you got somethin' to say about it then say it!" the witness looked flustered and vaguely guilty to Barok's untrained eye. "I'll do better than that," Klint said, setting his goblet down, "I'll show that you're lying to me, to this court and these fine men and women of the jury." "... U..urk..." the witness bit their bottom lip, "Yer lyin'! There ain't no proof to be had!" "I don't play games of bluff, good sir. Like any lawyer worth his salt: when I assert, I go on to prove what I'm saying," he held up a document, "Do you know what this is?" ".... Looks like a bit'o paper..." "It's a contract, signed between you and the accused. A... 'gentlemans' agreement of goods and for services rendered –– you, sir, would receive the stolen property from the accused and his associates, then sell it on for them via your Pawnbrokery!" "W-Whaaaaat?!" the witness recoiled, "W...Where'd you get that?!" "It was well hidden, I'll give you that," Klint replied with a smile, "But not well enough to escape my notice. You're as involved in this intricate criminal fencing enterprise as the accused!" The court descended into a shocked furor... ──────≪⊰✥⊱≫─────── "I think this is a good place to adjourn proceedings for today," the Judge observed after the breakdown of the witness, "Bailiff, have that man arrested and handed over to the Yard so he can answer questions about his involvement in this sordid affair!" The bailiff did as ordered and apprehended the witness.

"Thank you to both Counsel's, and our young junior, for their assistance today. We shall continue again first thing on Monday. Court is adjourned!" the Judge rose, nodding to the courtroom once before leaving.

Klint turned to his little brother and grinned, "Well? How was your first real day in court, brother?" "It... it was amazing!" Barok replied, eyes practically twinkling, "I was so awed by your performance! You truly are an exceptional legal mind and practitioner, brother!" He laughed, "Stop it... you'll make me blush!" "It's true! Though, I must say... I had no idea one could drink in court or kick the prosecutor's bench... those were most flamboyant and striking displays!" "Most people can't," Klint conceded, "But, well, it seems I have a flair for the dramatic. It must run in the blood... Our lord father was a similarly passionate man when it came to matters of court –– even when he occupied the bench as a Law Lord. Many a lawyer would refer to him as 'Good Lord Kicking' behind his back!" he laughed at the thought. "Wow... really?!" "Yes, really!"

#klint van zieks #barok van zieks #request

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tazmuir · 5 years

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Hello! I loved Gideon the Ninth so much!! and would like to draw fan art, would you mind sharing any helpful summaries of what each character looks like? or must us fans hunt through the book for every offhand line of description? (not that I'm not planning on rereading it anyway)

I have let myself drift back onto Tumblr after two weeks, am deeply affrighted and excited at the idea that anyone has drawn my kids (I had an AMA on Reddit and as said there, my editor every so often hollered into my inbox about amazing shit people were doing, but I was too busy complaining back to him that my face had gone numb and that I no longer slept, but instead the darkness of the grave claimed me for four to five hours each night). Thank you so much to anyone who has already done this. Many people on my team have yelled and yelled.

Back early on in the piece I made a document for him about what characters looked like in terms of basic ideas/outlines for copyediting, covers and sense purposes, and I’ve dug out that document and slapped it up here for general delectation. As a note: I imagine specific things when it comes to my characters (I am a Kiwi: I write Kiwis In Space as a default) but as I have nothing but joy in my heart for how anyone would want to draw these characters, feel free to glance over this, then toss it out the window. It would bring tears of beauty to my eyes if anyone was like “Yes, but when I was reading I imagined Naberius Tern as a huge monitor lizard,” because absolutely yes, Naberius Tern was just a huge monitor lizard, godspeed.

I had only described below the specific cavalier-necromancer pairs, so that’s what you’ll find below, sorry if anyone wanted Teacher.

SECOND HOUSE

The only ones who seemed even vaguely compos mentis were the Second House: as it turned out, they had been the ones to call Teacher to the access hatch, and now they sat ramrod-straight and resplendent in their Second-styled Cohort uniforms, all scarlet and white. They both affected the same tightly-braided hairstyle and the same amount of extremely gilt braid, and also the same serious-business expression, and they could be told apart by one having a rapier and one quite a lot of pips at her collar.

Captain Judith Deuteros and Lieutenant Marta Dyas are alike in posture, bearing and extremely crisp military uniform (think a cross between US Navy whites and the Regency navy). Unlike every single other necromancer on the cast, Judith never wears necromancer robes, but is dressed in the exact same way as Marta. Judith is somewhat less completely scrawny than other necromancers on the cast, though she should be less built than Marta is; Judith is imposing, solemn-faced and reflective, Marta is more keen-eyed and restless. I imagined both as Tongan.

THIRD HOUSE

[Coronabeth] was tall and regal, with some radiant, butterfly quality – her shirt was haphazardly tucked into her trousers, which were haphazardly tucked into her boots, but she was all topaz and shine and lustre. All necromancers affected robes in the same way cavaliers affected swords, but she hadn’t tucked her arms into hers, and it was a gauzy, gold-shot, transparent thing floating out around her like wings. There were about five rings on each hand and her earrings would’ve put chandeliers to shame, but she had an air of wild and innocent overdecoration, of having put on the prettiest things in her jewellery box and then forgetting to take them off. Her buttery hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat, and she kept tangling a curl of it in one finger and artlessly letting it go.

The second twin was like someone had taken the first to pieces and put her back again without any genius. She wore a robe of the same cloth and colour, but wore it like a very beautiful shroud on a mummy. The cavalier had lots of hair, an aquiline face, and a self-satisfied little jacket.

Coronabeth is massive, taller even than Palamedes, larger-than-life – statuesque, very bright gold hair, golden/bright skin, violet eyes. Ianthe is the same height but gangly and washed out. Skin colour defined heavily in Corona’s case as golden/olive-hued brown/tanned; Ianthe similar, but less radiant/more pallid whatever the case. Both have long hair: Corona’s should be big and bouncy, Ianthe’s flat/sleek.Naberius is shorter than both, brown-haired (brown can be light, medium or dark, it’s not defined) and blue-brown hazel eyes. Also has lots of hair, cut short, but sense of pompadour/waves. I imagined all three as Pakeha/white.FOURTH HOUSEBoth Isaac and Jeannemary are around fourteen and have pretty much the same body shape still: Jeannemary is semi-muscular and has lots of corners, Isaac is skinnier. Both are natural brunettes, though Isaac has bleached hair (orange, fauxhawk) and Jeannemary is described as having curly hair. Both have multiple ear piercings and eyeliner and the visual is somewhat Glassons storecard punk. Both have dark brown eyes. Jeannemary has a somewhat dusty, fierce, monochromatic appearance (brown hair, brown skin), and I imagine her as Māori. Isaac I imagined as NZ Chinese.FIFTH HOUSEMagnus Quinn is a man in his middling to late thirties, with short, curly hair: he is a frank-faced, nice-looking guy of medium build with a face inclined to wholesome smiles. His outfits should be absolutely exceptionally well-tailored and not very flashy. Imagined him as Samoan. His wife Abigail is perpetually neat, wears round spectacles and has long, glossy dark brown hair – she is the least described of a cast not very specifically described. Much like Magnus, she should always be beautifully and tastefully dressed, though in her case she would affect trousers as well as a robe. Imagined her as Pakeha/white.

SIXTH HOUSECrouching in front of the hatch was a rangy, underfed young man: he was wrapped in a grey cloak and the light glinted on the spectacles slipping down his nose. Standing next to him holding a big wedge of broken sculpture and the flashlight was a tall, equally grey-wrappered figure with a scabbard outlined at her hip. She had hair of an indeterminate darkness, cut blunt at her chin.Up close, he was gaunt and ordinary-looking, except for the eyes. His spectacles were set with lenses so thick they could make spaceflight grade, and through these his eyes were a perfectly lambent grey: unflecked, unmurked, even and clear. He had the eyes of a very beautiful person, and the head of someone with resting bitch face.

Palamedes is seriously underfed with a bony, thin face and glasses: medium brown hair cut short and with no particular thought for aesthetics, dresses just in greys, eyes particularly lovely clear grey. Camilla has very dark cold-brown hair – chin-length, straight and with a fringe – dark eyes. She’s compact and has lots of lean muscle, and I imagine her of being Middle Eastern extraction, though due to Sixth House parameters both will be fairly mixed. They’re actually second cousins, so there ought to be a faint resemblance.

SEVENTH HOUSE[Dulcinea] was a slender young thing whose mouth was a brilliant red with blood: her dress was a frivolous concoction of seafoam green frills, and the blood on it seemed more somber against such a backdrop. Her skin seemed transparent – horribly transparent, with the veins at her hands and the sides of her temples a visible cluster of mauve branches and stems. Her eyes fluttered open: they were huge and blue, with velvety brown lashes.

Dulcinea is a girlish woman who looks extremely fragile and sickly, like a neurasthenic Victorian maiden. Eyes should be extremely blue. Hair is light brown in long curls; skin is pale. Pretty in a frivolous, invalid way. Gives the impression of being slight. Outfits should be gauzy and nightgownish. Imagined her as Pakeha/white.

The man who’d put the sword to her neck was uncomfortably buff. He had upsetting biceps. He looked like a collection of lemons in a sack. He didn’t look healthy; he was a dour, bulky young person, whose skin had something of the strange, translucent tinge that the girl’s had. He was waxen-looking in the sunlight […] He was dressed richly, but with clothes that looked as though they’d seen practical wear: a long cape of greyish-green, and a belted kilt and boots. There was a long, shining length of etched chain rolled up and over his arm, and a big one-handed sword hung at his hip.

Protesilaus is massive, buff, and also sort of sickly and indistinct-looking in his colouring – he is described as being made up mainly of muddy, ashen browns. Think Greek warrior, but with no vibrant colouring. Biggest on cast, even bigger than Colum Ash. Imagined him as mixed Pasifika.

EIGHTH HOUSEIt was a pair who were both boys – well – a boy and a man; one was a wan, knife-faced kid dressed in antiseptic whites and useless chainmail you could cut with a fork, it was so delicate. [Silas] was draped in it even down to a kilt, which was strange: necromancers didn’t normally wear that kind of armour, and he was definitely the necromancer. He had necromancer build. […] He gave the impression of being absolutely no fun at all. He was prim and ascetic-looking, and his companion – who was older, a fair bit older than Gideon herself – had the air of the perpetually disgruntled. He was rather more robust, nuggety, and dressed in chippy bleached leathers that looked as though they’d seen genuine use. One finger on his left hand was just a gross-looking stump, which she admired.

Silas is in his teens, has shoulder-length white hair in a braid and dark eyes. He has extremely pale skin, and coupled with the white robes and silver chainmail (all of which somewhat swamp him – he’s sort of slender and purse-mouthed) gives the impression of being arrestingly white all over. Pointy chin, oval face, disapproving expression, a little insubstantial. Colum, his older, larger nephew is much taller, broader and in his early thirties. He has medium brown hair in a short back’n’sides crop, dark eyes, and appears jaundiced in skin tone – he’s very weatherbeaten and tan-skinned, scarred, and though he’s dressed in the same colours he tends to contrast heavily with them and his leather armour is also beaten-up. He looks tatty and ill-used, expression is apathetic or forbidding; Silas always looks perfectly clean, crisp and white. Facially there should be a similarity. They’re both Pakeha, with Silas being significantly the palest person on-cast.

NINTH HOUSEThe light fell on [Harrow’s] painted grey face and black-daubed chin, and her short-cropped, dead-crow-coloured hair. […] She had such a peculiarly pointed little face, high-browed and tippy everywhere, and a slanted and vicious mouth.

Harrow is a scrawny teenage girl with black hair cut short (as befits someone in a monastery) and truly black eyes: she never appears except in black and white skull facepaint. She has a pointed, rather triangular face, not very long, a triangular heart rather than a triangular diamond or oval. She wears black robes and long-sleeved, long-trousered clothes – all black – with no skin showing: the main decoration on this is bones. She wears a corset of rib bones and could have any other bone decoration, which has been written of in the book as bone bangles and multiple bone stud piercings in the ears. She’s more femme-androgynous than outright butch; in Book 1 she’s a bit birdlike and free of specific masc or femme gender markers in terms of outfit or build. I imagined her as being mixed Māori.Gideon is true butch: tall of height – at least, taller than Harrow – extremely, shreddedly fit with the muscular arms of a swordswoman or boxer. She should have a strong-jawed, boyishly pretty face with a big douchebag grin. Cropped hair same as Harrow, except that hers as an oblate is more of an in-your-face mop (could be partly-shaved except that implies more care than Gideon possesses) and is intensely, vividly red. I envision her as mixed Māori, darker-skinned than Harrow. She also wears skull facepaint, though hers tends to be much less careful and baroque than Harrow’s. She often affects a pair of black aviator sunglasses. She wears the same black cloak as Harrow, without any decoration, and a plain black shirt and trousers underneath. Her eyes are an extremely vivid amber with more of a yellow/golden tint than a russet one.

#wild spoiler nobody cared about: camilla and palamedes are second cousins #am I allowed to go look at the art now or will I fall about and die of joy #gideon the ninth #appearances etc #I have not come back to the Internet because my inbox was full and I was afraid. Thank you everyone who has read my book.#Naberius Tern is a monitor lizard in a wig. I'm not good at this #reply #otonin

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notafraidofredyellowandblue · 4 years

Text

Flake interview 2020-01

Not a new interview, but relatively recent, Flake with "Der Standard" 2020-01 before an appearance of Flake in Vienna (author Stefan Weiss), don't think there's a translation on the website, so here's a shot..:

Rammstein keyboardist Flake: "The reunification was a mess"

Christian "Flake" Lorenz hits the keys not only as a keyboardist, but also as an author. A conversation about controversial views on the GDR, fireworks and climate protection

At Rammstein he is the "keyfucker" - GDR jargon for keyboard players. His real name is Christian Lorenz, but he has been calling himself "Flake", pronounced in German, of course, since his youth. For a quarter of a century, the native of East Berlin has been the alien in the German rock band, the thin freak among the strong musclemen. In the meantime, Flake also hits the keys as an author: In "An was ich mich so erinnern kann" (2015) he wrote down his GDR experiences, followed in 2017 with "Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag", a literary autobiography about Rammstein. On March 26, Flake will come to Vienna's Globe Theater for a reading.

STANDARD: We are currently celebrating 30 years of 'Die Wende' *1). Your joy is limited, as one knows. How do you perceive the anniversary?

Flake: 'Die Wende' and reunification of Germany have to be separated. I experienced the change as a punk at the time. The ossified old concrete headframe of the GDR Politburo was also our enemy. We didn't want this idiotic regime anymore and we fought to loosen it up. When the wall came down, we didn't know what to do with the freedom we suddenly had. But then began an incredibly exciting time in which we tried to develop professionally, politically and musically in every direction.

STANDARD: And then came the reunification.

Flake: A lot went wrong from then on. We were annexed as a useless country, entire biographies were declared worthless, companies were closed so that the western companies could expand. We have been reset to such an extent that resentment and disappointment have built that have persisted until now. By and large, the reunification in this form was a mess.

STANDARD: If you look at Germany's east today, right-wing populism has recently had great political success there. A legacy of reunification?

Flake: Many people are disappointed because certain promises have not been fulfilled. But they already had the political left in their lives, now they are trying it with the right. Personally, I cannot understand how one can vote for the AfD *2). But those who do are doing it in large part in protest against the mainstream parties. It is clear that the AfD cannot meet expectations either. If the AfD were to rule, many people would notice very quickly that it is not getting better, but worse.

STANDARD: You grew up in the East Berlin punk scene. What are the differences between the East and West punks?

Flake: There was a fundamental difference: the Ostpunks didn't need any money because life was absurdly cheap, rent around 25 marks. The koney you made from one concert lasted over a month. So you could make the music you wanted to make and not just the music that sells well. Absurdly enough, it made us very free.

STANDARD: There were also IM Stasi informers among your band colleagues at the time (IM: unofficial employee, note). Aren't you angry with the repressive surveillance state of the GDR?

Flake: I'm not angry with IM informers in the bands. Because their IM status often made it possible for the bands to exist at all. The Stasi didn't lock up its own people. The best example of this is the GDR band 'Die Firma'. It was founded by IM informers. The gag was that 'Die Firma' ('The Company') was actually a synonym for "Stasi". Covered by the Stasi, they then sang anti-subversive texts. Almost brilliant really.

STANDARD: Do you understand when it is said that the GDR was an injustice state and that Stasi repression was a kind of terror?

Flake: I can understand it when people say that who have experienced it and suffered from it. But personally, I can't say that the whole state was bad. I don't want to know how many innocent people have been or are being imprisoned and monitored in the West. I do not find the generalization of the "unjust state" okay.

STANDARD: Would Rammstein have been conceivable in the GDR?

Flake: We wouldn't have founded a band like Rammstein within the GDR because it would have been the wrong answer to this system. We founded Rammstein because we noticed that our punk music wasn't getting anywhere in the West. It took harder stuff.

STANDARD: You have retained a kind of socialism within the band. Nevertheless, Rammstein is a millionaire company. Were there moments when you thought: The money could not only destroy our character but also the band?

Flake: Rammstein is a company where money fluctuates a lot. We have a lot of employees, we buy tons of pyrotechnics, we have a huge stage, costumes, our own electricity network, we shoot extremely complex videos. The money that remains private can actually hardly harm us, because it is so limited. We really have to make sure that the plus-minus calculation works out.

STANDARD: In your book "Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag" you describe the 25 years of Rammstein as a long partnership: It has become calmer in bed, but you understand each other blindly. Is divorce even an option?

Flake: Divorce is definitely not an issue. It's like a very long marriage: You don't even think about divorce anymore.

STANDARD: In the midst of tough muscle men, you were always the figure that breaks everything, especially in the interaction with singer Til Lindemann, who sometimes roasts you on stage like a cockroach. It looks like the traditional comedian constellation white clown and stupid August, Laurel and Hardy with SM components. How important is that to the show?

Flake: We developed that more by accident. We never made it up: you are the strong one, I am the weak one. At our first concerts we always stood around very haphazardly, then we started pushing and provoking each other. When I watch a normal heavy metal band I get bored easily. We always have something going on.

STANDARD: Do you sometimes long for a role change at Rammstein? To be the strong one for once?

Flake: Nah, I have other worries. With those couple of concerts, I can handle my role well enough.

STANDARD: Can you even enjoy appearances or does that only come afterwards? After all, a Rammstein show is precision work.

Falke: What do you mean enjoy? I enjoy when everything runs smooth and everything works like a machine. There are good and bad concerts, at the good ones we take off like an airplane.

STANDARD: Rammstein mixes black romanticism with black humor. You yourself love the blues, which often sails in similar waters. Can you draw joy out of melancholy?

Flake: The blues is the best example of this. Sadness and comfort go hand in hand. All of popular music arose from a problem of the respective author. This is exactly what you want to hear when you are not feeling well yourself. During puberty you normally don't want to hear "Walking on Sunshine" either.

STANDARD: Traditionally, there is also joy in melancholy and morbidity in Vienna. Is that the Eastern European impact?

Flake: Slavic music is very melancholic, on the other hand the Goth culture comes from the west. So I wouldn't really pinpoint that to anything local.

STANDARD: It is said that Rammstein did more to preserve the German language than all the Goethe Institutes put together. Are you proud of that?

Flake: Yeah. But the interesting thing is that we are regarded more highly abroad than in our own country. In Germany there is a lot of ranting: We are dull and foolish about Germany - complete nonsense.

STANDARD: Rammstein has always been compared to the totalitarian parody band Laibach. They recently played in North Korea with the aim of appearing subversive. Is something like that conceivable for Rammstein?

Flake: We'd have to think very carefully about what we want and why we want it. If that were to help someone, okay - but only to be able to say, "We're subversive now," that's not an argument.

STANDARD: For reasons of climate protection, there is an increasing number of missile bans. A topic for Rammstein?

Flake: We played a concert in Chicago once. The local fire protection was so rigorous that we shouldn't even have lit a match. Complete ban on pyro. We went on stage and said: either we are leaving because we are not allowed to make a fire here, or we are playing without. The audience wanted the latter, of course. And it became one of our best shows. You have to weigh it up a bit: should you stop all things like a Rammstein show for climate reasons? But I totally understand that there shouldn't be any more bangs on New Year's Eve. I was in Vienna once at the turn of the year, and there was relatively little banging. I thought that was good. Berlin is one of the most terrifying cities on New Year's Eve. There it's pure aggression.

Notes:

*1) i kept 'Die Wende' as the term for the political transformation in east germany, not sure what the official english phrase is

*2) AfD, short for 'Alternative für Deutschland' or 'Alternative for Germany' is a right-wing populist political party, often characterized as far-right, known for its opposition to the European Union and immigration

#flake interview #rammstein interview #interview 2020 #again with the marriage analogy #😊#rammstein #flake lorenz

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thatbanjobusiness · 3 years

Audio

Salty Dog Blues Before Flatt & Scruggs

Old Salty Dog Blues is a Flatt & Scruggs classic and today the song is considered a staple of bluegrass music. However, bluegrass itself is a recent genre, with its inception typically dated 1945. Many songs from its early repertoire came from other sources, both popular and folk.

Above you will hear a compilation of Salty Dog Blues from recordings between 1924 and 1950 (ending with the Flatt & Scruggs version). Below the cut I will provide more details of each selection you hear. This is not a comprehensive compilation; for instance, I don’t have Lead Belly’s 1948 audio here. However, what’s incredibly fun about this recording is how DIVERSE the music is. And how incredibly NOT bluegrass it is.

youtube

Like many people, I became familiar with Salty Dog Blues through the Flatt & Scruggs version recorded in 1950. The song was catchy enough for me to love it as it was, but listening to the lyrics further piqued my interest. I realized I was assuming what a “salty dog” was through the lyrics rather than comprehending a precise meaning. But looking at the lyrics for clues was hard. There’s a narrative, but it feels just off-kilter enough I suspected the song had folk origin. Some folk tune variations can sound like the verses were sewn together haphazardly like patches of different fabrics on a quilt. It makes sense, when you consider how people would’ve gotten the words. Passing lyrics through oral tradition can create curious, wonky results and fascinating variations and divergences. It’s a game of generational telephone. Clearly, I had to go beyond the Flatt & Scruggs version in order to decipher my term.

And so. I found myself. Deep-diving this tune’s origin.

There hasn’t been a second wasted in my life fishing through this. Holy wow have I run into a jackpot of wildly fun things! I still have so much more I could look into. I had suspicions of what I’d find, but the following lyrics posted into a forum went way beyond expectations:

Two old maids laying in the grass, One had her finger up the other one's ass Honey, let me be your salty dog!

Welp. If I hadn’t been interested already, I would have been THEN. And the sexual explicitness... and other fun times... just kept COMING (wordplay intended here).

So! Below cut, I want to go further into the meaning of “salty dog” and listen to how the song developed from a blues tune to the 1950 Flatt & Scruggs country song. It would require a whole other post to go past 1950, so that’s why I’ve restricted my range from the earliest recorded tunes to the moment it entered bluegrass.

1. What *IS* a Salty Dog?

The first entertainment I got was seeking a definition for “salty dog.” The OED gave nothing to me, sadly, so I was left to peruse other sources. Reading forums, interviews, articles, and more, I encountered a hilariously diverse array of proposed definitions. I got peeps saying:

It’s a type of soft drink.

It’s a type of cocktail using grapefruit juice and gin or vodka. It’s served in a glass with a salted rim.

It’s the name of a specific bar in North Carolina.

It’s a medicinal solution from early frontier communities, especially in eastern Appalachia. A sausage soaked in brine solution was placed under people’s clothes during winter as a counter to pneumonia and flu.

It’s an ornery sailor, mariner, or pirate who’s spent a large portion of their life at sea. Just like a sea dog or an old salt.

It’s any person who’s really good with their work. A tough fellow, since salty can mean “full of spirit and fight.”

It’s a sweetheart, someone you love, or a favorite person. Applying salt to hunting dogs was believed to keep ticks away, and because salt was a rare commodity in those times, you’d only apply it to your favorite and most valuable dog.

It’s an illicit lover or libidinous man or woman, someone getting sex the wrong way.

It’s a pimp.

It’s a reference to oral sex. Have sex with one individual, then shortly later have someone perform oral on you.

The last one, which was embellished by Urban Dictionary (thanks, Urban Dictionary) could likely be an instance of linguistic pejoration, in which a word’s meaning “worsens” semantically over time. That said, I’ve seen everyday people in forums comment that in the 1940s and 50s in their communities, it did refer to oral sex. I’ll believe their testimony. So, contemporary to the time Flatt & Scruggs recorded, the more crude sexual sides appear to have been in vernacular use. It’s likely most if not all of the definitions proposed are real meanings of “salty dog,” but clearly the song Salty Dog Blues isn’t referring to all simultaneously.

Bluegrass musicians have not always been helpful providing a definition. For instance, Curly Seckler, one member of Flatt & Scruggs, proposed the benign soft drink suggestion. He said in this moment onstage in 1985:

Curly Seckler: I found out what a salty dog was. I think I was down here before I didn’t know, but I do now. I went home here, I believe it was last year, they had a big day down there. And, course I went over through the Smokies over there, and I stopped over there at Wiley Morris’s garage. . . . And we sang Salty Dog Blues and some of the old numbers together. But I asked him, I said, “Wiley, I’d like to know before I pass on, what in the world is a salty dog?” See, they wrote the Salty Dog Blues, him and Zeke. He said, “Well, North Carolina, years and years ago, had a drink they called salty dog. Now that’s a pop, a soda. And I said, “Well, I’m from North Carolina, but I don’t remember that.” But he said that’s why that got them the idea of writing a song called—”

And then, hilariously, Curly is distracted by his band, who’ve been whispering to each other the entire time and grinning, and calls out, “What am I hearing?” I’d like to imagine they were talking about the real meaning and Curly picked up the chatter’s more scandalous side.

After all, Zeke and Wiley Morris did not write Salty Dog Blues, and their story seems to be a coverup to defend their writer’s credit (which for the record is legitimate... a novel arrangement was given writer’s credit frequently in these times) and a polite way to get around the meaning of what a “salty dog” was. An article written by Wayne Erbsen shows that the brothers themselves gave varying definitions of the term:

Wiley explained that “I have a different definition of a salty dog than Zeke has. Back when we were kids down in Old Fort we would see a girl we liked and say “I’d like to be her salty dog.” There also used to be a drink you could get up in Michigan. All you had to do was say “Let me have a Salty Dog,” and they’d pour you one.” Zeke remembers that “I got the idea when we went to a little old honky tonk just outside of Canton which is in North Carolina. We went to play at a school out beyond Waynesville somewhere and we stopped at this place. They sold beer and had slot machines. At that time they were legal in North Carolina. We got in there after the show and got to drinking that beer and playing the slot machines with nickels, dimes and quarters. I think we hit three or four jackpots. Boy, here it would come! You know you had a pile of money when you had two handfuls of change. The name of that place was the “Salty Dog,” and that’s where I got the idea for the song. There’s actually more verses to it than me and Wiley sing, a lot more verses.”

As I and others who’ve read the article noticed, the fact that the Morris Brothers admitted there were many more verses... is indirect admittance of folk origin. The Morris Brothers were professional musicians in the 1930s, their recording of Salty Dog Blues was recorded September 29, 1938... and our earliest audio versions of the song come from the 1920s. There are many recordings of this song that predate the Morris Brothers. Still, even in a documentary from the 1970s, they maintained their story they wrote it.

But the song’s true origin outside the Morris Brothers allowed me to expand the scope of my investigation. It was time to peep into the alternate lyrics from earlier versions, and hope that those gave me a better understanding of the song and what a salty dog in this context meant.

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2. The Lyrics of Salty Dog Blues

What the Morris Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs sang were fairly tame. However, the lyrics still involved a gun being shot and a person singing the following lines:

Looky here Sal, I know you Run down stocking and a worn out shoe Honey, let me be your Salty Dog

Let me be your Salty Dog Or I won't be your man at all Honey, let me be your Salty Dog

“I won’t be your man at all” in the chorus is a good hint of what a salty dog is supposed to be. It wouldn’t make sense to replace the term “salty dog” with mariner. I suspected from the start this song’s meaning veered toward the concept of a lover, and alternate versions of the lyrics prove that the case, oftentimes in wonderfully blunt or creative verses.

As I was investigating these recordings and their artists, I ran into information discussing the early years recording Salty Dog Blues, including times from before it was recorded. Jazz musician Bill Johnson (1872-1972) had his band playing this song circa or prior to the 1910s, and in an excerpt from the book Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar, I read:

Papa Charlie’s follow-up release, the ragtimey, eight-bar “Salty Dog Blues,” made him a recording star. . . . Old-time New Orleans musicians from Buddy Bolden’s era recalled hearing far filthier versions of “Salty Dog Blues” long before Papa Charlie’s recording.

Papa Charlie Jackson recorded his version of Salty Dog Blues in 1924 and Buddy Bolden (1877-1931) was popular with his band in New Orleans from 1900-1907. So... what were these filthier lyrics from the early twentieth century?

I want to go back to the lyrics I quoted at the beginning of this post... “Two old maids laying in the grass / One had her finger up the other one's ass. Honey, let me be your salty dog!” The individual who shared these lyrics on a forum said they heard Sam Bush sing that at Rockygrass in 2002. Maybe that was a recent permutation. However, I found variations on this lyric submitted independently by others, indicating this wouldn’t have been Sam creating lyrics out of nothing. Some posts, I don’t know if they were serious or not... “Two necrophiliacs lying in a bed / Each one a-wishin' that the other was dead,” but there’s too many similarities across what I’m seeing. Other individuals said they sang lyrics like these in college parties: “Two old maids, laying in bed / One rolled over to the other and said / Honey, let me be your salty dog.” And the Kingston Trio, whose music was folk-oriented and part of the Folk Revival movement, in 1964 sang in their version of Salty Dog Blues, “There were two old ladies sitting in the sand / Each one wishing the other was a man.”

Digging deeper, I found other folk songs contained variations on the “Two old maids laying in a bed / sand” concept. This discovery is in line with authentic folk lyrics. Remember that folk music is a game of telephone, and sometimes the same verses are found in two or more songs. I found several variations of Brown’s Ferry Blues with this couplet, some of them coming from Folk Revival musicians.

These lyrics give a starting point both to how Salty Dog Blues can contain bawdier concepts, and what a salty dog is.

But lyrics from Salty Dog Blues recordings in the 1920s and 1930s give even more reliable indication. Clara Smith’s 1926 version includes:

Oh, won't you let me be your salty dog? I don't want to be your gal at all. You salty dog, you salty dog.

Oh honey babe, let me be your salty dog, Salty dog, oh, you salty dog.

It's just like looking for a needle there in the sand Trying to find a woman that hasn't got a man. Salty Dog oh you salty dog.

Her lyrics also include a couplet I found in many of the early versions:

God made a woman, he made her kinda funny Lips around her mouth sweet as any honey, Oh, you salty dog, oh, you salty dog.

It says a lot: a verse about romantic love was one of the most oft repeated couplets across Salty Dog Blues variations. Papa Charlie Jackson included that verse, as well as these others:

Lord, it ain't but the one thing grieve my mind, All these women and none is mine.

Now, scaredest I ever been in my life, Uncle Bud like to caught me kissing his wife.

And for those of you who aren’t familiar with the sentential construction, “liked to” means “almost.” Uncle Bud almost caught me kissing his wife. This is a song about a lover, and in one of these verses, the lover’s doing something taboo.

Some forum dudes claimed Mississippi John Hurt and his friends sang a line like this one below, even though they also said it didn’t make any recordings:

Well, your salty dog, he comes around When your sugar daddy's outta town Baby, let me be your salty dog

And there’s yet more elaboration about what a salty dog is in verses in Afro-Creole singer Lizzie Miles’s 1952 recording, which we do have:

Mardi Gras is a dream You can meet all those Creole queens They’re salty dogs, yes, salty dogs

If you want to blow your cares away Just walk on in the Vieux Carré You’ll find salty dogs, yes, salty dogs

Never had no name, never went to school But when it comes to loving, I ain’t no fool I’m a salty dog, yes, a salty dog

I’ve got sixteen men in love with me But the man I love ain’t legally free He’s a salty dog, yes, he’s a salty dog

Granted, I *am* sifting through a huge storm of verses and intentionally picking ones that match this narrative. But these are all lyrics that show a wonderfully off-color, sexual side to Salty Dog Blues. This song sure as hell ain’t singing about soda pop or sailing.

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3. The Earliest Recordings of Salty Dog Blues

So. In my compilation you’re listening to, what is it you’re hearing?

Between the 1920s and 1940s, “race records” were records from African-American musicians. The term would be used to describe the blues, gospel, etc. that these musicians performed. OKeh Records was the first company to use that term in 1922. Also during the 1920s, another line of records, “hillbilly” records, began; this was used to describe what was perceived as rural white musician fiddle and string band music.

These record companies, however, were separating music by race somewhat artificially. There were plenty of Black musicians playing string band music, for instance, during these times. The early history of American country music involves an amalgamation of musical ideas from many demographics sharing and adopting ideas from one to another and back again. When you listen to the compilation I made of early versions of Salty Dog Blues, you may hear a difference between the white and Black musicians, likely because of that artificial distinction I mentioned.

Still, there’s a fascinating amount of overlap. I think it’s particularly interesting to pay attention to how the melodic material varies; it’s the same core melody, but there’s certainly differences. Listening to the variations can get you a sense of how folk music is a wild world of branching versions. There’s different strains, with both the melody morphing as it gets passed person to person, and the lyrics morphing as it gets passed person to person.

Specifically, I took my samples from the following recordings:

Charlie Jackson - Released 29 Nov 1924. Papa Charlie Jackson was the first commercially successful male blues artist who played both fingerstyle and with a flatpick on his guitjo. He was born in 1887 in New Orleans. Even when he was producing his records in the early twentieth century, his music would have been old-fashioned to listeners and given people an ear to what African American music sounded like before the turn of the century. He’s similar to Lead Belly in this regard, whose 1948 recording of Salty Dog Blues I did not include in the audio compilation. Jackson’s music was also in that vague area that leaned toward hillbilly in the early days before the race records / hillbilly records division became distinct.

Lem Fowler’s Washboard Wonders - Released 30 Dec 1925. Between 1922 and 1932 this jazz musician recorded 57 songs and 23 player piano rolls in New York and Chicago. A composer, most of his recordings feature his own work; Salty Dog Blues is one of three pieces recorded with his band that is not his own. I love this recording.

Clara Smith - Dated 26 May 1926. The first commercially successful blues singers were women. Clara Blues was an early classic female blues singer, a genre sometimes also referred to as vaudeville blues that combined traditional folk blues and urban theater music. This native of South Carolina excelled at emotional slow drag blues.

Freddie Keppard and His Jazz Cardinals - recorded July 1926. Freddie Keppard was a New Orleans musician. Interestingly enough, Papa Charlie Jackson is in this version as well, this time played with a full band, and you can hear someone declare “Papa Charlie done sung that song!” at the end.

Allen Brothers - Recorded 7 April 1927. I think this is the first recording of Salty Dog Blues by white musicians we have. Born and raised in Tennessee, Austin and Lee Allen were an early hillbilly duo popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Austin played banjo; Lee played guitar and kazoo. They were influenced by local jazz and blues artists as they were growing up. It’s interesting to note that Salty Dog Blues came out of their first recording session and became a hit, selling over 18,000 copies. And this band, the first white hokum blues musicians (so I’ve seen claimed), were accidentally issued first as a race record by mistake.

McGee Brothers - Recorded 11 May 1927; released Jul 1927. Sam and Kirk McGee were white old-time / hillbilly musicians from Tennessee who performed on the Grand Ole Opry starting in 1926. Sam learned blues techniques from Black railroad workers and street musicians, and the duo would adapt blues and ragtime pieces into string band music. I LOVE this version of Salty Dog Blues; while it squarely hits the “hillbilly” genre, some of the minor melodic fragments mirror what Black blues musician Kokomo Arnold sang.

Stripling Brothers - Recorded 10 Sep 1934. Fiddler Charlie Stripling and guitarist Ira Stripling were born in the 1890s in Alabama. They’re an old-time hillbilly music duo and Charlie Stripling is considered an important old-time fiddler. Their earliest recordings reflect what they learned at home; later recordings contained increasing pop influences. Salty Dog Blues is one of their later recordings; their last release was from 1936. I would love to know more about where they got this version of the song, as I feel its melody is diverges more than the others recordings in this time period.

Kokomo Arnold - 1937. Mentioned above. Kokomo Arnold was a left-handed slide blues guitarist from Georgia.

Morris Brothers - First recorded 29 Sep 1938; released 21 Dec 1938. Second version recorded 1945. I’ve already mentioned the Morris Brothers, but there’s more information you need to know. Zeke, Wiley, and George Morris were hillbilly musicians from North Carolina popular in the 1930s. The Morris Brothers was also the band in which now-famed banjo picker Earl Scruggs had his first professional job. Scruggs played with them about eight months in the late 1930s or early 1940s. If you listen to the full Morris Brothers, it’s obvious Earl learned it from them; Flatt & Scruggs keep everything from the lyrics, harmony choices, and instrumental break points the same as what you hear here. But the Morris Brothers’s version of the song is rather original compared to everything else in this compilation, which is probably why they managed a writer’s credit for it.

Flatt & Scruggs - Recorded 20 Oct 1950; released 1 May 1952. Earl Scruggs would have brought Salty Dog Blues to the band he was now heading, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. This song was often sung as a trio in concerts when their usual lead vocalist, Lester Flatt, was taking a break. Their band rotated singers, performers, and other forms of variety in their radio, television, and stage shows, but such repertoire never made it onto official Flatt & Scruggs records. This record is, as far as I remember, the only instance in which another musician besides Lester Flatt sings both the verses and lead. That singer is their fiddler, Benny Sims. In later performances and recordings of Salty Dog Blues by Flatt & Scruggs, Lester Flatt took his usual role singing.

I find it interesting to also note the early musicians’ origins. Everyone came from the South. New Orleans especially appeared to have old widespread use of the song. I haven’t had time to listen to see if the musicians’ home location correlates to similarity in lyrics and melodic structure, but that would be hella fun to do sometime, too.

But! I have already fished through the song enough and given you a giant essay. Maybe at a later point I’ll have to entertain myself more and keep digging into Salty Dog Blues.

#hopefully I didn't make a link mistake or some obvious type #typo #I've written on this long enough #hope it's fun!#music #Americana Deep Dive #thatbanjobusiness #that banjo business #long post #Song Showcase #Tuning In #Haddock Deep Dives #General Banjo Business #audio #audio compilations #those old songs

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archer3-13 · 3 years

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Naruto anime and some general thoughts

well i kept up with the manga back when it was still ongoing, ill admit i never had much interest in pursuing the naruto anime. Partly because of how i tend to consume media, partly because the show was never able to convincingly drag me in. However, ive decided to parse the anime a little recently so i thought id put down some bullet point thoughts from about the first 10 episodes

- the first theme songs weird, i kinda like it as a song in of itself as its very... 80s rock i guess but at the same time it just feels out of place. its not a very iconic first foot as it were i guess, which is fine cause not every anime can have one, but it doesnt help with its sense of misplacement in general tone is all.

- which brings me to how the ost is, cause the ost and first op feel mismatched af. that said the osts pretty solid for the most part, just used haphazardly at times. rising fighting spirit might be the more iconic fighting naruto ost piece, but i honestly feel its kinda bland and bad situation works better at generating tension.

- narutos an annoying shit just as i remember. it certainly works early on where hes suppose to be an annoying shit to some degree or another. it helps that a lot of these early episodes are dedicated to showing how out of his depth naruto currently is, its just bittersweet is all considering how character wise he'll stall out at this point as his weaknesses get gradually eroded over time.

- sasukes a hyper competent mf for the most part, as much as a kid his age and experience can expected to be. hes definitely not broody and emo all things considered, stand offish certainly but the really weird thing is, is that its gone out of the way to emphasize that even as early as now that sasuke could give a rats ass about the attention and thus is stand offish because people wont leave him alone. its somewhat similar to the usual aloof rival behavior in shonen, but in this case it comes off as unusual because sasukes shown to be unusually compassionate in instances. sticking up for naruto in front of sakura when he had no obligation to and just after naruto acted like a little gremlin child and tied sasuke up in a supply closet, among other smaller moments.

- veering back on topic, sasukes easily the most competent of team 7 genin both in terms of strategic thinking and raw combat skill, to the point that it genuinely felt weird for naruto to be the one to come up with the shadow shuriken trick when that feels more like something sasuke would come up with. its a good sequence mind showing naruto and sasuke teaming up to take on a stronger foe in contrast to the bell test and something that probably should have been extended or given more time to breath in order to sell the idea that the two are forming a genuine bond if through adversity.

- moving to the fights themselves they... aren't good? at the moment atleast the pacing of the fights makes something like the kakashi zabuza battle feel slow paced and kids happy slaps in comparison to the demon brothers brief taijutsu and weapons fight which feels more actively dangerous. to compare it to one piece fights around the same time of their production, it lacks snap and impact in the fights so to speak.

- i forgot how fun kakashi actually is, since he spends a lot of the rest of the series as a bit of a wet blanket. hes the man of mysteries wrapped up in the roshi unconventional teacher model 'i taught you by not teaching you' kinda manner. that and his 'im not touching you' method of annoyance in his mannerisms helps contrast and make more impressive his strong insights and the moments in the zabuza fight where hes pissed at the possibility of people dying on his watch. it makes the rest of his series performance feel especially clownish as he increasingly defaults to an empty caricature spouting off state propaganda and generic i love naruto catchphrases... but as it stands by the wave arc hes an interesting and fun guy.

- id be more willing to be lenient to you sakura if you didnt leave such a bad taste in the mouth even now. is she more then a generic fangirl here? in the sense of being very intentionally written as an aggressive bully yes but thats not even the backhanded compliment im making it out to be. shes useless not in the sense of never doing anything in a fight, or being a bad character. Shes useless in the sense that she really does nothing for the actual dynamic of team 7 as a unit of characters. individually sure theres some interesting meat and aspects to them but as a unit team 7 feels more like a duo then a trio and sakuras the quite obvious weak link in it because she might as well not be there in the 'team 7' scenes.

- hunter nin seem to be implied as something every village has in some capacity as opposed to a kiri exclusive thing its more so treated as later on. theres also the implication that anbu look a lot more mundane then they do later on since zabuzas anbu flashbacks just have him in a regular flakjacket setup.

- narutos mixed and confused anger at haku both for taking a life and for showing team 7 up well they tried extra hard is very confused in what it wants to be, but also something i wished the series explored more in naruto. cause like, later on its more so dropped to just have naruto be jealous of other people who are better then him because hes a petty bitch, but here theres very much an air of naruto being uncomfortable even deeply afraid of killing and death, both times he freezes up in the first 10 episodes are when hes presented with the physical possibility of dying, and having the grapple and struggle with that concept given his chosen profession would have been a hell of a lot more interesting.

#naruto #thoughts and what nots #anime

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isobel-thorm · 4 years

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#9 “You’re in love with her.” for ROBB please? 👀💕 I’m so soft for them

Din had learned the hierarchy of Mos Pelgo pretty quickly. It was extremely simple, and Cobb’s story had rung true. He was the local hero, so everyone had looked up to him. He was in charge, replacing some shitty mayor from a few years back who had died in the first skirmish in the town. And what Cobb didn’t get around to, he passed down the ladder to the second one in command - Raza, the co-owner of the the bar, who had been out of town on business when Din had first arrived. She had heard the commotion about the Dragon attack, had come back that night to get caught up.

Din had picked up the little things between them first. All the eye contact, little touches while still going out of their way to not stand so close to each other. Din had figured there was Something going on there, but they hadn’t said, so he didn’t ask.

Then came the second tip-off, the night after the Dragon attack, when people were regrouping and trying to ease their minds. Cobb had taken Din back to the bar for a drink, and once Raza had been done serving a few of the patrons, Cobb had taken her hand and motioned at Din to follow them outside to sit near a fire pit, and after a very pointed case of silent communication between the pair of them and apparently meaningful grunts and hand gestures on the Marshal’s part, Raza had admitted to Din that she was ‘technically’ a Jedi, and would be willing to help if any of her skills were required. Din wasn’t sure what ‘technically’ meant in that sense, but if they had a Jedi on their side, he wasn’t going to look a gift ronto in the mouth.

There was something strangely comforting about the fact that she was a Jedi, though. He had known some of the stories about the Jedi - had even taken care of a bounty on one once, not that he was proud of that anymore. Still, there was a sense of camaraderie he felt with her on principle- two people in a rare order, trying to lay as low as possible while others hunted them, and they had to be careful. He appreciated meeting someone outside of his kind that could understand him. And so he had allowed himself to ease up a bit, and when she had asked about some of his old jobs or other tales that night when they were all sitting around the fire, he had partaken, naming a few. He had asked her a few in return, though still careful to not sound too interested. He had already figured out that she and Cobb weren’t idiots, they knew he was a bounty hunter and Jedi’s called for a high price, but he had no interest in that anymore. Not for her, anyhow.

And he could say the same about any sort of interest in her outside of general politeness or friendliness - a fact that Cobb apparently hadn’t picked up on, considering he had caught the Marshal giving them a hard look across the fire a few times as they chatted away.

And it was all but confirmed when Raza had turned in for the night. She had wished Din a good night’s rest for ‘whatever you had planned tomorrow’, and given Cobb a light pat on the shoulder before leaving.

Din had caught that little too soft-smile and murmur of goodnight in only the way a lovesick person could, and Din decided to make himself look busy by distracting the Child, taking a stick and making a few designs in the sand. He was hardly surprised when he felt Cobb’s eyes back on him after a matter of seconds.

“Hey. The Jedi thing’s a need to know basis. I meant what I said, you seem like a good man, I’m hoping that sticks. But you come after her for a bounty or anything after all this, you and I are going to have a problem.”

Threatening a Mandalorian to his face. Well, maybe he had pegged Cobb wrong this time; maybe he wasn’t as smart as he gave him credit for. Still, Cobb was just protecting his people whether Raza was on a level above everybody else in the town or not, so Din had looked him in the eye, hoped that it came across as such even behind the helmet, offered up a simple, “Noted,” and that had been that.

He had thought that would have been it- hoped so, even. The last thing he needed when he was going to go after a Krayt Dragon was dealing with drama and a possessive man who couldn’t read signals well enough.

As it turned out, the next day Cobb was perfectly content to leave things how they had left them as Din reached the corner table in the bar. Cobb smiled, nodded a greeting, and there was no further comment. Din had considered the bar as their base of operations - as had Cobb. Which, evidently, brought about the second problem with dealing with… whatever the Hell Raza and Cobb were, because after not even ten minutes of standing in the bar minding his own business, he found himself the unwilling witness in what would have been a lover’s quarrel in quite possibly every other situation. At some point, The Child had manipulated his way into Raza’s lap, so the whole thing was even more ridiculous.

“No, Cobb, you’re taking your Marshal business out of my bar. This place has been through too much already. It’s enough that you thought it was a bright idea to potentially take on a Mandalorian inside of it without having any idea of what he was capable of!”

“Why do you think I came to see him with the armor on?! You think I’m gonna let a guy in Mandalorian gear walk into your bar and start trouble?!”

“My bar! Not yours! And rumor has it you were the one that was getting trigger happy, so you were going to shoot the place up at the drop of a damn hat! It’s not like you haven’t done it before!”

Cobb’s eyebrows shot up. “Wh- you helped me with that one! Hell, you picked off half of them your damn self outside the place! Besides, this time I wasn’t gonna shoot the bar up! I was testing him! There was a damn baby!” he objected, motioning haphazardly at The Child.

The Child, in turn, who had his attention drawn to the disc Raza had been levitating up and down just beyond his reach to keep him entertained, stopped short at Cobb’s words and had the audacity to make a gurgle that sounded downright skeptical.

Cobb pointed at him. “Hey, shut it, Pipsqueak.”

Din turned towards Cobb, ready to intervene, just as Raza had scolded him, “don’t talk to him like that.”

Cobb looked between them, then looked at the Child, but after the Child cooed at him and actually sounded insulted the man relented and ruffled what little hair the Child had on his head. “I’m sorry, Little Guy. But remember, I was looking out for you.”

Relieved that… whatever the Hell that had been was at least temporarily over, Din slipped the Child a few more of the nuts Baer had put down at the table for them a while ago. In his experience, bribery had gone a long, long way. This time was no different. The Child unknowingly intervening had done some good, and by the sound of it, they would need a lot more strategic distractions.

Luckily, they didn’t need to. Din and Cobb had headed out to the desert to scout an hour later, and then they had met the Tuskens, and had returned.

Of course, Din had nearly groaned out loud when their plan with the Tuskens had started drama again with the Not Couple. And this time it had been his fault.

Din’s solution with working with the Tuskens had been a risk. He knew that, he expected some pushback. But to his surprise when he and Cobb ran the plan by Raza, Raza was far more open than Din had expected- which apparently had set Cobb off again. She had cited her childhood, growing up an hour of Mos Eisley, and how her father had managed to broker peace via trade and protection with the local group that kept her family out of trouble.

Cobb had gone concerningly quiet as she and Din had started brainstorming ideas on just what to wager on both sides to keep things running smoothly. He felt Cobb’s eyes on him more than once and was exhausted just from being on the receiving end of the nonsense, even if it was brief moments. He had turned and stared down Cobb pointedly that time, briefly wondering if he was going to have to put the closest thing to a friend he had made in months through a wall over a ridiculous assumption.

The other man had just arched an eyebrow back at him before he broke the eye contact and pretended to be far more interested in his drink.

Addressing the town with the new plan had gone… less than ideal, even with Cobb and Raza’s help. Still, it had worked, and the town had prepped for the Raider’s arrival. As they waited, Din had been informed that Raza was staying behind to keep an eye on things there ‘town still needs a leader, there are Sand People here. We need at least one competent person to hold down the fort. Raz is the better people person out of the two of us,” Cobb had explained, and it took everything in Din’s power not to immediately respond, “I’ve noticed.”

Even their goodbyes had been loaded. Raza had gotten as close to Cobb as possible again and fussed with the armor briefly before she had pulled him into a hug. “Be careful.”

“I will, Raz.” Cobb had practically melted right into the hug, and Din noticed it was probably that exact moment that he realized just how dire the worst case scenario was, so when he flinched and held her a little closer, Din looked away to give them as much privacy as possible.

Once their moment was over, Raza had sidestepped over to Din. “You too, Mando. Be careful.”

“I’ll certainly try.”

She smiled at that, then sighed. “And bring our Marshal back to me, huh? Alive or dead?”

Cobb’s head had shot up at that. “Wha-”

But she had already turned to leave them, walking a little too quickly. When Din looked back to Cobb, he was watching her disappear, looking not unlike he had been shot.

Din wasn’t quite sure what the Hell that feeling in his gut was upon coming to terms with that exchange, but he knew he wouldn’t forgive himself if he did end up bringing back a corpse. He had already disappointed one widow, he didn’t want a near hypothetical one’s heartbreak on his conscience, either. Still, it got him thinking about his own potential mortality in all this, and briefly he entertained the thought that they would be decent parents. He had looked down at the Child then, nestled in his rucksack and had scratched his ear out of habit, then. If it came to it...

And it was that thought alone that had compelled him to shove his knife into Cobb’s jetpack and send him careening to safety.

But he had won. He killed the Dragon. Mos Pelgo was safe, or safer, anyway. And he didn’t have to go back to town and tell Raza that the fight had cost Cobb his life. He didn’t even have to go back to town period.

Cobb, to his credit, had been eager to complete his end of the bargain later in the day - or he was just eager to get rid of him. The pair had shaken hands, said their goodbyes- and then Cobb had hovered a moment before sighing. “Looks like you’ll miss Raz by a couple of minutes. She’ll be cross she didn’t get to say goodbye. She likes you something fierce. She’ll miss you.”

That was… … not as horrendous or defensive as Din had expected, but it still got him to stop and huff. “She’ll live. We’re strangers.” He tried to convey once again there was nothing to pick up on, he wasn’t a threat with each syllable.

Cobb leaned on the speeder. “I wouldn’t say that. Come on, admit it, we’re all friends now,” Cobb replied, his tone thankfully light.

Din wasn’t quite sure how to take it. It still felt… vaguely like posturing, but the fact that he had included himself in that statement made him ease up. Maybe the point had finally landed, after all. He still wanted to make sure it came across just in case he did go back, though, so, launching caution to the wind: “Maybe. But you love her. You’re in love with her. You should do something about it.”

Cobb blinked at him for a moment, and Din took more comfort in that. Good, the shock from being so direct made up for the shock Cobb had put him through when he first lifted that helmet off his head. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Cobb paused, then ran his tongue over his teeth in that way of his. “It’s… complicated. That’s ten years of a long, long history.”

“Uncomplicate it,” Din chided.

Cobb scoffed again. “What is this, the Mandalorian… matchmaking service?”

“What it is,” Din corrected, “Is me telling you that you’re hardly subtle, you’ve been picking up on things that weren’t there since day one, and I killed the last man who looked at me like that over a misunderstanding. But I needed you for this. We had a deal. Maybe the next person who comes through won’t be as willing to let things go. Maybe you should eliminate the cause of something that can get you killed.”

Cobb opened his mouth, probably to protest like he had so many times in the last week, only to be interrupted by an approaching speeder. Din noticed that Raza was among them.

As Din expected, Raza had jogged up to them, clapped Din on the pauldron as a greeting before practically tackling Cobb into another hug that he returned whole-heartedly, with his eyes slamming shut and head tucking firmly into her neck. “You’re heading out already?” Raza asked Din after a moment, still not moving from under Cobb’s arm.

“Long journey,” Din dismissed.

“Come back any time. We’ll always have a place for you, too” she replied.

“I just might,” he answered, before giving both of them a final look - taking a couple of extra moments for Cobb.

The other man waved. “Goodbye, Mando.”

Well, it had been worth a shot. “Goodbye, Cobb. Raza.” He fired up the speeder’s engines and got ready to push off, casting one final look in the mirror -

Just to see the pair giving each other that damned longing look of theirs before some sort of other emotion crossed Cobb’s face, he uttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘oh Hell’ before he bent to kiss her in plain view of the other Mos Pelgo residents that had shown up.

Din shook his head and cracked a smile when there had been a couple of cheers and wolf-whistles from the gathered crowd. Evidently, he wasn’t the only one who they had driven to annoyance dancing around each other. He hit the gas then, and started on their way back towards Peli’s.

The Child had stuck his head out of his rucksack when the town was nearly out of sight, reached up and tugged at Din’s pantleg.

When Din glanced down at him and saw the Child looking back eagerly, he sighed. “We’ll be back. You’ll see them again.” And then, just to take advantage of the situation, “... if you’re good.”

The Child gasped at that and immediately shoved himself back further into the sack and pulled the flap closed behind him, making a show of not moving - and therefore not causing any trouble. He allowed himself an honest laugh at that.

Well, maybe those two had been good for something, after all.

#catch Robb 1000% being Val and Rhonda here #listen that episode was Tremors from Hell so I have to #its very much them #Ship: Robb #geronimo-11 #cobb vanth

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thewrongexecution · 4 years

Text

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

#In This Essay I Will but for real this time #but hell if that's stopped me before #ff7 remake #blatant speculation #ff7 remake spoilers #ff7 spoilers #ff13 spoilers #ff15 spoilers #I dip into spoiler territory on more but these ones get a deeper dive #also if any of y'all know how to get images screen-read-able please lemme know #the screenshots are to point out that the game itself does do these things #but I don't wanna content-lock anybody out of my bad garbage #also also if the wordcount didn't clue you in:#long post #posting this right now immediately listening

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funkymbtifiction · 4 years

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I’ve been going back and forth between infp and isfj for ages (bought books, scrolled through your blog endlessly) but your recent infp post gave me pause.

‘INFPs have trouble wrapping their head around what most of the other types “settle for” – finding a job that pays the rent, even if it’s crap, and doing what you love (like write) in your spare time as a hobby. Their idealism and need to do what they love for work makes it hard for them to cope with the idea that realistically, that may not work out.’

I could barely relate to that. Even when I think I can incorporate my creative side I’m very realistic about it. I could be a hairdresser at a friend’s salon but I’m very sensitive to smells and have horrible allergies. I wonder if Ne would instantly be trying to figure out ways around that not just be ‘yeah, that’s off the table’. I’m a (almost forced) problem solver and do try to find loopholes in things but that’s more fear based than anything else ( that sounds so 6 XD ). Plus I keep wondering if I followed my passions as a career would that kill my joy of them. Would business and deadlines kill the creativity? Would people even like and respond to it (this ways heavily on me. The fear of disappointment and rejection).

Add a critical view of my talents and I’m going ‘settling’ is more than okay since you need to survive and keeping passions alive is needed as well so find time to do that during the day. Make it the best part of your day. A reward for making it through and if you can make some money from it then great.

Long story short if someone can’t relate to that is it a red flag that you’re not infp or you can be and my Ne decided to send me down rabbit holes - again.

Since everyone is different, you will relate to some things about your type and not others, and you can always factor in your Enneagram type (being a 6 tends to make people less risk-taking, more concerned with how others feel about them / considerate of others in general, and more practical) … but ultimately, you should be able to recognize your dominant function given your blind spots (lower functions). Being unable to detach from their strong need to do what they want to do, and not do what they don’t want to do, is an issue for INFPs. Most of the ones I know either work for less money, or took a pay cut, to leave a job that makes them miserable in order to do one that fulfills them in some way. The ISFJs learn the system they are working with, and do it, because there is no Fi-dom need in them to be “authentic” to themselves, and their stronger Si is aware that some jobs are boring. That’s life.

Given that nothing you said here has a strong sense of “I see things through how I feel about them,” and that still bleeds through even with 6s, I’d say you have your judging axis in the middle of your stack rather than at opposite ends. Your careful, meticulous questioning suggests perception > judgment. That would support ISFJ, if you are sure of being an introvert.

I suggest reading the “learn mbti page” and reading all the dominant function posts carefully. An INFP should somewhat relate to the ENP post (at least in the sense of “yes, that’s how I am… fanatical with an interest and then it disappears… and I no longer care about it… I want to change the world with my ideas / idealism / beliefs…”) AND the IFP post. IFPs are rather famous for shutting down anything they don’t want to talk about, whereas IFJs are more willing to discuss it, as perceiving dominants (less instant NOPE). If you are an ISFJ, you should somewhat relate to the Fe-dom post (in terms of seeing others in terms of “we” and wanting an emotional consensus, for others to agree with you, etc) and also Si (in your own interests, points of expertise, and the way you learn).

Just an example – I know two artists. One is an INFP, the other is an ISFJ. The ISFJ, being a Si-dom, is willing to meticulously work on one area of her art, until it is perfect. Si-dom artists are the ones who create the teachable art books, which tell you to keep drawing an eye until it’s perfect, then learn the nose, and so on… in so doing, their meticulous repetition establishes a base of learning that is an ‘expert’ not just in fingers or toes, but all elements of the face, and then of the body. That is Si learning. Methodical. You do it over and over, until you get it perfect. You learn it a piece at a time, to make the whole.

The INFP artist refused to use the book that taught drawing techniques through that repetition, since “I don’t WANT to draw that way.” She refused to use any books at all. She had to do it her own way. She drew for awhile. Then she made / decorated fandom hats. Then she painted doll faces. Then she went into sewing. She doesn’t really use patterns, either, that much. She just looks at it, draws a design based on what she knows she wants, and makes up her own pattern to get it to do that (often just by eyeballing it, cutting it, and then moving fabric around). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But she did not methodically learn to draw. She moved on to making Rey’s staff for Cosplay, used it for awhile, then sold it and went on to Victorian stuff. Because as an NP… she loses interest and moves on to other things. ;)

Low Si finds repetition boring and just tends to intuitively leap into things. So, for example, they may be a gifted writer with zero awareness of how writing as a technique (grammar, sentence structure, avoiding certain words at the ends of sentences) actually works – and they may not even care, until it in some way impedes them getting published. Then they will learn too much all at once, in the process skim-reading / not learning it properly, and missing half of it, as opposed to the ISFJ writer who carefully studies writing techniques, reads 20 books on writing by successful novelists, does the practice work, and then has all the knowledge in place to move forward and do it.

Not everyone is going to do this, obviously, but I’m illustrating how SiNe is much more methodical in how they learn something, vs how NeSi just haphazardly does it – often well, but it neglects learning the important fundamentals, and then later has to go back and fill in gaps in its knowledge.

- ENFP Mod

#question #infp #isfj #mbti #infp x isfj #isfj x infp #type contrast #submission

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notbecauseofvictories · 5 years

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Hi Sarah! You seem to be quite enthusiastic and well informed about cooking, and I was wondering if you had any tips for students at uni? I feel it's so difficult to keep a healthy diet and cook for yourself on a low budget. Do you have any good recipes you could share? Or ideas? Thank you so much if you are able to answer, no worries if you don't feel like it.

This is...kind of a difficult question to answer, given that I approach cooking as a decadent, pleasurable thing, rather than something functional. (Some people shop online when they want to splurge. I make 48 coconut macaroons hand-shaped and dipped in chocolate, and a parmesan-garlic cream sauce to drizzle over my steamed brussel sprouts.) If all I need to do is consume calories, I’m much more likely to cut corners---seriously, store-bought sauces, simmer pastes, and salad dressings are a godsend---or buy something convenient. I could probably survive on deli sandwiches, if I really put my mind to it.

However, I do want to suggest a couple tips I think are helpful:

1) Know what you like, know what you need.

What it says, because food is always a balancing act between getting the kinds of nutrients your physical, calorie-consuming body needs and the sugar/salt/fats you want. Personally, I will eat literally anything if there’s bread or cheese or both involved. (This is not a joke---I have eaten a lot of creamed spinach and deli sandwiches.) However, having discussed my diet with healthcare professionals, I know what I need is proteins and vitamin d. So when I’m preparing my schedule for the week, I force myself to think about both: what will I eat, what should I eat, what can I make that satisfies the difference? And then, what’s my timing? (i.e., do I need to stay late at work? do I have other plans that night?)

Like everything with my life, I review it vaguely sometime Monday and plan out my week. Though I do know enough about myself to build in some flexibility, because sometimes a bitch is walking home desperate for a burger, and shouldn’t have to apologize.

2) Google with abandon.

I do not have any private store of family recipes. My mother was a functional cook, and my grandmothers were either of the “hors d'oeuvres and martinis” generation or the “jello(tm) with colorful sprinkles is an actual dessert” generation. (The difference there, by the way, is class. But that’s a whole other tumblr post.) The point is that at the end of the day, there’s no secret treasure trove of recipes for me to delve into.

Which means I google everything. Every recipe I post here, every time I have spare ingredients I’m looking to get rid of. “Unsweetened chocolate recipes” is one of my latest searches, because I accidentally bought 4 oz of it instead of semi-sweet and don’t know what to do. (I’ll probably end up make brownies.) I have also googled in the last few months:

Reduced milk recipe

Quinoa recipe

Bean recipe

Dark corn syrup recipe

Pie crust recipe

Apple pie recipe

Scallion pancake recipe

The point is, just because you don’t know what to do shouldn’t keep you from making good food! Personally, I love Epicurious, and always check their suggestions first, but the internet is wide and deep and full of people who will suggest cooking times, oven temperature, and spices you can add to stuff to make it taste good. Don’t be afraid to scroll through 4 different recipes on different domains, even if it’s the same dish; or to add “simple” to you search terms. You have more cookery knowledge at your clumsy fingertips than anyone before us ever has---use it.

3) Store it, freeze it, stick it in a tupperware.

As someone who’s now been cooking for herself for at least 5 years, I am here to tell you that there’s no “cooking for one.” Cooking for one is a lie. What you do is cook for 3-4 people, and then freeze or refrigerate the leftovers. So it’s important to consider how well your various ingredients freeze and how you’ll reheat them when the time comes.

Meat and seafood freeze well when you get them from the grocery store! Unfortunately, if you cook something or marinate it, and leave it to sit in the fridge, it will get very tough or break down entirely. (This is especially true if you use a particularly acidic marinade.) Unless you get them already frozen, fruits and vegetables do not freeze well at all—water expands as it freezes, and your fresh fruit & veg are so watery that the ice completely ruins the cellulose structure and defrosting will make them mushy. If you have leftover cooked vegetables, those should be used in scrambled eggs or eaten with a sauce within the week. Cream-based soups and sauces freeze pretty nicely, you just have to be careful not to leave them long enough to get freezer burn. Freezing bread arrests the yeast and mold processes, so if you’re looking to keep your loaf from turning, stick it in the freezer in an airtight bag.

(I haven’t had a microwave in two years, so most of what I make is the kind of stuff I can reheat on the stove—or eat cold!)

Also, most food isn’t ruined by temperature---you can leave a lot of stuff out on the counter after cooking without fear of bacteria. However, too much exposure to the air will ruin just about any dish: creams curdle, meat toughens, vegetables soften, starches harden. If you’re going to store something at room temperature, stick it in a ziploc bag, plastic wrap, or aluminum foil quickly, and it’ll last longer even without the refrigerator.

4) Occasionally, try something new.

Obviously, as a uni student you should try lots of new things---but as a uni student cooking for yourself, I encourage you to occasionally experiment. Make bread, if you’ve never made bread before; try a desert if you’ve been focused on single-serving chicken breasts. Once every few months, try cooking or baking something you’ve absolutely never tried. (For hard mode, pick something completely out of the ballpark---for example, a couple months ago I tried to make a meringue and failed miserably. But I think I understand why I failed and that’s made me a better cook in the interim.)

It is, of course, very important that we eat in a way that serves our body and its needs. But at the same time, making food has always struck me as serving more than just need---we make food to show our love and appreciation for others (isn’t feeding an act of service?), to articulate desires we can’t verbalize, to satisfy unreasonable cravings, to demonstrate capability, to prove our worthiness, to offer something that isn’t-sex-but-is, etc. etc. etc. Food is very rarely ever just food. Which means that sometimes, we should sequester ourselves in the kitchen and see if we can make that....thing from the Great British Bakeoff.

As a footnote, I hope my coworkers enjoy haphazardly baked alaska.

#tw food #no love sincerer than the love of food #Anonymous

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dregstrash · 5 years

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gilded crowns (pt. 6)

A/N: Me? Updating my fics? Unbelievable. But here’s part 6! Thanks for reading as always!

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4 || Part 5

Description: Prince Kaz of Ketterdam has been subject of much mystery and speculation, but that doesn’t stop his brother, King Jordie, to arrange a marriage to Princess Inej of Suli. Neither party are happy with the arrangement. Kaz has other ideas and if he can drive Inej away, he can get back to the plans that’ll silence the demons that plague his dreams. Of course, what happens when she proves to be as stubborn as he is?

Tagging: @birdskullsandboats @lavehl @hysteriaas @definitely-not-procrastianting @fromferfer @lupine-teddy @ifangirlninja @spell-cleaver @s-artsnstuff @locksandbobbypins @friendo-nintendo @thatonefangirl-mrc @readmeaway @looking-for-wisdom @terrywho-cartoons @mykitchenisonfire151 @ysitsohardtofindaname @timeinhereyes @stormwitch-zoya @spvcexpeachvs

“Do my eyes deceive me or is this a wedding invitation?” Jesper’s brassy voice trampled any thoughts that Kaz was mulling over, and he didn’t hesitate to shoot his friend a glare. Jesper wore his grin much like his clothes, haphazardly and entirely too open. He held out a cream colored piece of parchment that had been sent out a week ago.

The Zemeni didn’t have a monarchy, but they still had a council and was governed by the general public. Both Jordie and Kaz had to learn about the different types of governance throughout the world, and had to know the corresponding terms that belonged to each. So while the Zemeni didn’t have a king, they did have chancellors, and Jesper happened to be the son of the High Chancellor herself.

The first time Kaz had seen the lanky boy, he had been twelve and Jesper’s mother had just been elected. Her and her husband had decided to take a tour around the neighboring kingdoms to assure no changes would be done with their treaties. At first, Kaz had been unsure about the boy who seemed to smile and talk far too much. He was a system of movements that seemed independent of one another, and while it was intriguing. Kaz also found it incredibly annoying. It wasn’t until he, Jordie, and Jesper took a trip to the armory that Kaz had decided to befriend the Zemeni boy. He did beat Jordie in a shooting contest, and any chance to knock his brother’s ego off its high horse was a good starting point to any friendship.

“You’re early.” Kaz stated as he watched his friend make himself at home in his study by pouring himself a drink and flopping down on his couch.

“Mother has some other business to discuss with your brother.” Jesper shrugged and taking a long drink, “And Da decided that he finally had time to examine the farming techniques of the Kerch or whatever.”

“Your mother still lets your dad run Jurda farms? Isn’t that slumming a little?”

“It’s not so much as letting him, as giving him a break from council meetings. He’s always hated the attention.”

“A trait that you don’t share, apparently.”

Jesper threw Kaz a wink, “Would be a shame to put these good looks to waste, don’t you think?”

“Why don’t you save it for someone who actually cares.” Kaz shot back.

Jesper just chuckled, and Kaz logged the reaction as a confirmation to Jesper’s changing feelings. He’s always known that Jesper had harbored some feelings towards him, but Kaz had never done anything about it. Besides the fact that he had always seen Jesper as a brother, Kaz wasn’t built for the kind of relationship that his friend was craving. The night he broke his leg was plenty of proof of that. Kaz had always thanked whatever saints were present that someone else had shown up at the right time to divert the affection.

“Speaking of someone who actually cares.” Jesper drawled while also getting up from his horizontal position to sit. He threw his legs out and tapped his glass with nervous fingers. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a shy, anxious, chemist running around, would you?”

Kaz rolled his eyes, “I’m not Wylan’s keeper. And you know better to ask me that.”

“Yeah, well, I figured I could hit two birds with one stone, I get to know about Wylan and also transition to the real reason I’m here.”

Kaz had a clue as to what Jesper wanted, but he still said, “Spit it out.”

“The Princess of Suli.” Jesper said his smirk reaching his eyes, “Do tell me all those sordid details.”

“It’s an arranged marriage, Jesper. How sordid can it be?”

“You forget I know the princess, dear Kazzie,” Jesper intentionally said the nickname that should have ended with Jordie, “And she’s not just beautiful, but accomplished, smart, determined, kind--”

“I know.” Kaz didn’t need the rundown. He notices Inej too much as it is, he didn’t need the comprehensive list. “But this is all just a means to an end.”

“I’m glad that all these years haven’t taken the cryptic out of you. Any chance you’re going to elaborate?”

Kaz hesitated as he weighed the cost of telling Jesper his plans. Nikolai had sent him a missive two days ago saying that they were close to uncovering the Dime Lions. Thus far, they’ve only given him the name of the gang leader: Pekka Rollins. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

It was enough for Kaz to find out that he used to be a stonemason on the small nation of the Wandering Isle. He had moved to Kerch almost twelve years ago. He ran gambling halls and whorehouses and leased his thugs out to powerful men. This could include the person who had ordered the assassination of his parents.

He’d need more information though. It wasn’t enough to rely on a king who sometimes moonlights as a privateer. He needed an ear on the ground, and as Kaz looked at Jesper, an idea came to him.

“You still play the tables, don’t you?” Kaz said casually.

Jesper scratched a spot behind his ear, suddenly sheepish, “Um...sometimes.”

“By sometimes you mean you try not to get caught?”

“My parents have made it clear that if they catch even one card in my hand, I’d be shipped to the Shu for university, so no I don’t get caught.” Jesper said his glass was empty but he rolled it in between his palms.

“How about a job then?” Kaz said slowly.

“A job?”

“Yes. One where you get some credit every night, and you get to play in some of the best gambling halls Ketterdam has to offer?”

Jesper’s eyebrows raised in shock. And he couldn’t blame his reaction. He knew that his friend had gotten into his fair share of trouble over nights of endless “just one more hand”s, but he couldn’t think about that now. Jesper wasn’t going to change unless he wanted to, so it seemed like a wasted opportunity to not use that to his advantage.

“Let me get this straight,” Jesper got up from the couch and started to pace, “You’re offering to give me money so I can play cards up and down the gambling district?”

“I’m offering to give you money, so you can play and listen to conversations and tell me what you hear.”

If he had looked shocked before, it didn’t hold a candle to the expression he had on now.

Kaz got up from behind his desk and moved to the drink cart, “I’m getting close, Jes. I’m getting close to figuring out who had ordered my parents’ death. And I need someone to get me information. I can’t trust anyone at the Crow Club and I don’t trust any of the guards to not tell my brother about this. Jordie can’t know. Will you do it?”

He turned around to face Jesper, and he saw him sift through the risks. It wasn’t just the playing in less-than-reputable gambling houses, Jesper would also be risking his parents finding out or that someone might recognize him, or losing to the wrong people. But then again, Jesper always had a taste of the wild and dangerous, it had benefitted Kaz on more than one occasion. And he felt Jesper’s agreement even when he said, “What do I get out of it, Prince Kazzie?”

“Besides my silence regarding the trouble you got into the last time you were in the Crow Club? I’ll tell you where Wylan is.”

Mischief danced in his gray eyes, “I can always trust you to deliver the vinegar before the honey, can’t I? Okay, fine. I’ll do it.”

Kaz nodded once, “Start tonight. I need anything you can find out about the Dime Lions and Pekka Rollins, but don’t be stupid about it.”

“When have I ever?”

“I’m serious, Jes.”

“Don’t tell me you’re actually worried about me?” There was that smirk again.

“I’m worried about the excuses I’d have to make to your parents and my brother if you’re taken hostage or dead in a ditch. So be careful, Jesper. I’ll have Anika and Pim escort you. Meet them at the Crow Club.”

“Nothing says safe better than bouncers.” Jesper rolled his eyes and began making his way to the door, but Kaz noted the tension in his shoulders, the danger of this assignment settling into his spine.

Kaz went back to his desk, his drink in hand, while Jesper raised an eyebrow at him.

Kaz sighed, “Wylan’s hiding out in the music hall. I suggest you hurry. His father thinks he’s at university right now.”

As soon as Jesper eagerly left his study to go bother someone else, Kaz waited a few more minutes before saying, “I can feel your questions burning a hole through that wall, Princess. Speak your mind.”

He sat back in his chair as he heard the secret door open off to his left and Inej materialized in front of him with a stony expression on her face.

“How did you know I was there?”

Kaz shrugged. Call it a sixth sense or intuition, but Kaz had always been finely attuned to the feeling of being watched, and since Inej walked through this world like a spirit, he had to more or less rely on that.

“You sent Jesper out to a gambling hall.” Inej stated, her eyes as sharp as the dagger sheathed at her waist. She was dressed in dark trousers and a tunic today. An attire made for battle than a palace.

“I sent him out to several.”

“And you know about the scandal he had caused because of his taste for cards?”

Kaz did know about that. He was the one who had bailed him out. With the added benefit of Jesper owing him a favor.

“Is there a point to his inquiry?” Kaz said instead.

“You sent him out to find information for you even at the risk of ruining his reputation and the reputation of his country?”

“Jesper doesn’t need my help in ruining his reputation. He does it fine by himself.”

Inej studied Kaz for a long while. Her rich brown eyes, analyzing his face as if there was some secret there that she longed to pull out. He stayed perfectly still under her scrutiny. He wouldn’t be intimidated by her. He wouldn’t let her infuriating righteousness distract him from his goal.

“How long have you been looking for your parents’ muderer?”

There it is. He knew that the question had to come eventually, especially since she seemed to have heard his entire conversation with Jesper.

“Since the day I had found my parents dead.” Kaz said simply. The rest of the story was on the tip of his tongue, but he held back. Those memories had already plagued his nights, he didn’t need that darkness to seep into his days either.

“Why don’t you want your brother to know you’re still looking for them?”

“Because he’d tell me to give it up. Jordie has always been the better man, so he was able to let it go. To move on. I won’t. I can’t.”

Inej was silent again, but he noticed a shift in her eyes. They went from scrutinizing to sympathetic and he hated the comfort he found there.

“Revenge is a dagger that you hold over your own heart, prince.” Inej said.

“I have no interest to hear your Suli proverbs, princess.” Kaz snapped. “If you have nothing else to berate me for, or if you insist on lecturing me on a pain you don’t understand than I invite you to leave.”

Inej’s jaw ticked, and the sympathy in her eyes disappeared. She stalked closer to his desk, and Kaz felt his own anger spark with hers.

“You will never know anything about my pain, prince. I had to suffer a kidnapping, two years in hiding with a circus, and no way to contact my parents. You have no right to say anything about my pain.”

Kaz knew the story. The princess of Suli had been taken, but no ransomed place. They said that slavers were responsible for it. His brother had tightened their security when the news had reached them. And the rumors were rampant about the fate of the princess. Some had said that she had died. Or that she was sold to a pleasure house on the shores of Shu. Or that she still lived. It had come to a great relief when she had turned up back to her home, dirtied, half-starved, but alive.

His parents had been dead for two years, and he had been floating on his own delusions to really have time to put out his own conjectures. While Inej studied him, Kaz took his time reading the emotions behind her eyes. There was annoyance, disdain, and more importantly anger. Anger was understandable. Anger was easy. Anger still meant that she cared. And that was worth everything.

“Tell me, princess, given the chance, if you could look at those slavers in the eye as you drive that knife into their hearts. Would you do it?”

Her hesitation was all the answer he needed.

“Revenge may be my undoing, but not before I take down the demon that created me.” Inej didn’t say anything, and Kaz felt something else move between them. Something other than contempt and disdain. It came close to understanding, maybe that’s why he offered something to her. “You have certain skills I can use, Princess. Skills that’ll bring our engagement and my goals closer to the end. If you help me, I can help you.”

They hung suspended in silence. Caught in a battle of wills that neither was used to losing.

Eventually, Inej took a step back. Her face suddenly unreadable.

“Can you guarantee that you can find them? The slavers that took me?”

“No.” Kaz said bluntly. “I can’t guarantee them, but you seem the type to still have hope in the impossible. Now, what do you say, dear fiancee? Help me, help you?”

#kanej #Kaz Brekker #inej ghafa #kaz x inej #kanej royalty au #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #Wylan x Jesper #six of crows #soc #crooked kingdom #ck

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physical-manifestation-of-spite · 5 years

Text

Jam - a Doctor Who Fanfiction

Rating: General Audiences (but it has some bad words in it)

Warnings: Cursing and jam violence (they’ll see me in court)

Categories: F/M, Gen

Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor & Rose Tyler

Genre: Humor

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 5947

Summary: In the unfortunate circumstances of the universe, all the Doctor had to be was the Doctor--which was to say, absolutely bleeding Mad--and the rest would follow. “The rest” being a chemical reaction resulting in fizzling, sticky goo, the distinct smell of sulfur, trioxygen, and cherries, and Rose Tyler’s infamous Look. Or: The Doctor smears himself with jam, and Rose suffers.

Read on Ao3 (advised, because I really didn’t want to have to re-italicize everything I wrote, and so I didn’t.)

The Doctor was an odd one.

It didn’t have to take long to know this. In fact, it didn’t have to take more than a second to know this. All it took was one look.

It wasn’t that the Doctor was particularly unfashionable. In fact, one could argue that his wardrobe, all tucked safely away in the many storage rooms of the TARDIS, contained the costumery needed to infiltrate the Buckingham Palace to look like the guards, the ministers, or the royal family themselves. No, no, the Doctor was quite alright with fashion, pinstriped suit and long-coat a frequent favorite of his, the slowly-browning converse betraying the clothing’s formality. And it wasn’t any unusual shade of skin color, like a blue or mauve, that suggested his non-nativeness to Planet Earth (the Doctor often enunciated “Puh-lanet” with a pop of his lips and a cheery grin). In fact, nothing really was odd about his appearance. (Well, save for perhaps his wild hair.)

Except the eyes.

Such glee in those eyes, such a wild fascination with the unknown--or perhaps known to him, but forgotten. They glinted at the most inappropriate moments, barrel of a gun (the shape, the material, and Earthly--or unEarthly--manufacturer varied daily) pointed at his head, or spinning razor heading toward the belly of one of his companions. Their respective aggressors would say something--and they always did --and the Doctor’s eyes would gleam with a sort of unbridled excitement. Then, he’d open his mouth.

Cheers to you if you could understand even a word of it, aside from the “ands” and “buts,” and those he didn’t use often. He spoke science, physics (still a part of science), various forms of molecular theory, space-travel--the works, really. No one, not even his companions, quite knew if he was doing it as a tactic to distract their assailants or if he really couldn’t help himself, like a child reaching for a sugar cookie. If you were to ask his companions afterwards, they would comfortably say he was doing both, and if you stared at them long enough, a bead of sweat would form on their temple and they’d ask you to please leave, yes thank you, take some biscuits on the way out.

Point is, the man was Mad. So Mad, in fact, that it was principle to capitalize the M to prove that he was the chief of it, or at least to make sure people got the hint. It’s just that they didn’t realize he was the sort of unEarthly Mad reserved only for Gallifreyans (but since we have no other Gallifreyans to look toward for reference, perhaps just for the Doctor) and it took them a while after meeting the Doctor to realize he was less Earthly mad and more a sort of alien Mad. The eyes, coupled with that unnatural grin, often helped get that idea along faster, though.

Rose Tyler was used to his Madness. Well, she’d say “used to,” but a better term would be better-to-adapt-to-it-in-a-high-stress-situation-instead-of-stare-at-him-blankly. Was there a word for that? (The answer is yes, and the word would be “acclimated.” Or “conformed.” Or maybe just “patient.” If you’re not reading this in the Doctor’s voice, you should be. In the same way his Madness is a part of him, so is his wise-assery.)

Rose wasn’t particularly immune to his Madness, but she had managed to develop what they both agreed upon (nonverbally, and without any prior conversation, consideration, or even hand-gesture) as The Look--a sort of defense mechanism. The Look was rather versatile in its meanings, adapted to the many changes in mood to her dear Doctor and the many situations that they had been in, which had become so repetitive during their travels that she could almost pinpoint when their assailants would pull out the death-ray (“It’s a figure of speech , Doctor, I know they’re not all death-rays.”) and never get a chance to actually do anything with it because the Doctor would either physically or metaphorically tear it out of their grasp.

The Look meant whatever Rose needed it to mean. A selection of her most frequent translations went as followed:

“Doctor,” (and they always started with “Doctor,” in an exhausted sort of sigh,) ”I’m sure this is fascinatin’ and all that (to you and only you), but if you don’t shut your mouth and start doing that thing you said you’d do to get us out of this mess, we’re all going to die a horrible death, and when we’re in Hell, if there is a Hell, I’ll tell you what I meant to say at the start: Shut up.”

“Doctor, this person’s parent/lover/child/close-friend and or relative just passed away and it’s probably for the best if you stopped talking about the marvelous way in which they died by a long-lost technology that you’ve never seen but would much like to piece apart. Insensitive is the word, yeah.”

“Doctor, you are the last living Time Lord in existence, and this act that you have performed not only threatens your life but my own as well, not because I was in physical danger, but because I don’t think I could bear living in a universe where you’re dead and I’m alive, so if you ever want to see me again, you better start treating this with the appropriate level of gravity it deserves to be given.”

and

“Doctor, take that out of your mouth.”

Respectively, these translations were ordered in the frequency that they were used.

And whilst today was supposed to be quiet, a sort of “off-day,” by the Doctor’s description, the universe had a sort of nature to it. Drop a rock in a vat of water, the water will ripple. Flip on a switch and watch a light turn on. Eat Jackie Tyler’s homemade haslet, get sick at exactly midnight.

In the unfortunate circumstances of the universe, all the Doctor had to be was the Doctor--which was to say, absolutely bleeding Mad --and the rest would follow. “The rest” being a chemical reaction resulting in fizzling, sticky goo, the distinct smell of sulfur, trioxygen, and cherries, and Rose Tyler’s infamous Look, being a variant of both the third and fourth regularity.

Because, while the Doctor was considered one of the most brilliant beings in the Universe, coupled with his Madness, Rose Tyler found him, on more occasions than not, utterly daft.

Presently, the Doctor smearing himself with jam.

Fourteen jars of it, sold for two pounds each at the local market down William Street*. Small glass containers, three hundred seventy grams each, all stacked together and rattling haphazardly on the metal-grated floor, compact with enough pectin to maintain structural integrity and hold the London Bridge together (not naturally, of course--otherwise the architects would be using blueberry jam instead of solid concrete--but the sonic screwdriver was handy in many situations, and strengthening the pectin bonds was no difference).

It was cherry jam (only because they were out of blueberry), and when he had gotten to the register, balancing all fourteen jars in his arms, the clerk had noted unhelpfully that there were trolleys at the entrance, before she began scanning the jars. Fittingly, because of the unusual number, and because it was one of the rules in the Unofficial Clerk Handbook to ask customers questions that the clerks didn’t honestly care about, she had asked, “Wot you doin’ with all these jams?”

The Doctor had perked up. “Well,” he began conspiratorially, “if you really want to know, I’m collecting enough pectin-laden adhesives to counteract the electric flow of my ship and redirect the pulsive energy centralized on the main control panel--since, well, the central control panel sits directly above the main engine--out and back into the capacitor--that’s broken, you see, the whole thing is broken, just ca-poot--and hopefully dissolve and/or store the excess energy that leaked from three of the central components. Well, that’s for seven of the jars.” He paused to take in a great gasp of air, scratch his chin, and point to the jars. “The other seven is for me and my companion--Rose Tyler, lovely girl, likes jackets a lot--to cover ourselves in during the process so that the propulsive energy doesn’t enter into our bodies and fry the very core of us from the inside out while the TARDIS is rebooting.”

He finished it off with a sniff and a smile. He waited, not particularly for applause, but for something, maybe that sort of daunted surprise that a lot of his past companions made their first several conversations with him. The clerk didn’t give him any of that. In fact, now that he thought of it, she had that distinct look of a divorced great-aunt whose love and affection was reserved only for her cat, Fransis, while she watched the rest of the world with slitted, vengeful eyes. Not that the Doctor ever had an aunt like that, or had seen one before, but some conclusions are easier to reach than others. Besides, you couldn’t trust anyone who named their cat Fransis.

“I’m making pies for a friend’s party,” he had said.

The clerk lady had nodded. “‘Ave fun with your pies.”

The Doctor took his bag of jams, suitably subdued from the conversation.

Which led to the now, where the Doctor was smearing himself with jam in the privacy of his own TARDIS. Which, to a human, sounded odd--even to a Timelord, it sounded odd (and this time, we do not need another Timelord to compare their feelings with). But for your information, he was fully clothed, thank you--didn’t want Rose running into the main room with the Doctor in such an embarrassing, ah, disposition, even if it meant smearing his pristine pin-striped pants with jam. To be fair, however, he was in a bit of a hurry--the sharp, bitter scent of burnt insulars, for one, can invigorate one’s adrenaline levels if you had enough knowledge to know where the scent was coming from, and that it was bad --and hadn’t the time to change, so when the Doctor saw the clouds of steam (and other things, most of which humans should not breathe in) coming from all the wrong places, he all but threw the bag of jams onto the ground, several shattering in the process, and began smearing the contents onto himself, internally weeping as the sticky ooze touched his suit. He didn’t have dry-cleaning on the TARDIS.

Rose was gone. This was not particularly unusual, and he did wish that she’d leave him a note sometimes, you know, so he didn’t have to wonder about her general safety during another alien invasion that would happen in the foreseeable future (it always happened when he was around, didn’t know why), but at the moment, she was placed in the back of his mind. Alarms were blaring. The TARDIS was informing him, with the clarity of a wailing banshee, that it was eleven minutes away from exploding. Well, metaphorically. Well, the TARDIS didn’t talk in metaphorics. Well, sort of with him it did. Or he just exaggerated the stakes a bit. The TARDIS was only going to explode a little bit. The three components he had mentioned to the clerk and the capacitor (which was already broken, but he supposed it would break some more, to an unfixable state) would shatter and likely rain sparks, fire, and pulsive energy which would effectively poison him, if the sheer heat didn’t burn him alive, and then to death. Or regeneration. Which would result in another explosion.

He rammed his entire fist into another jar and scooped the contents out like an over-eager toddler, spilling half of the red jam onto the grates below. He grumbled to himself, under the din of a dozen shrieking sirens. He’d never get the smell out.

The Doctor had estimated that it would take roughly 8 minutes to arrange the jam in its suitable position, which gave him an extra three to check and double-check and triple-check the positions. In the end, it took the Doctor exactly one minute to smear himself with jam, and four to cover half of the console and two of the components before the TARDIS gave a sort of ungodly wail. The Doctor looked up in a frenzy, stared at the monitor above him, before his face become suitably pale. “Oh,” he said, as if he’d found out his sushi had eel in it when he asked for crab. He fumbled for his sonic screwdriver.

Let it be said that, when under high-pressure situations, Timelords were especially good at manipulating time to their whims. There was no actual evidence for this, but the general public assumed that there was a sort of magical--or scientific--quality to the Timelords that allowed them to live up to their names, and, if they had the will, they could freeze time itself to accompany their needs.

The Doctor felt that this was a load of bollocks. It was adrenaline, nothing more, that forced the body to work at an intense pace. And he was running on so much at the moment that he made a sort of Mad titter as he cranked several dials and sent jam flying into the Unknowns of the TARDIS (not to be discovered until perhaps three decades from now, by which the little sliver of jam will have cultivated a generous colony of rare fungus, which the Doctor won’t have the heart to disinfect). The ship gave a resounding moan, and sparks began to fly. The Doctor busied himself with throwing the rest of the jam onto the necessary components, not caring anymore about the pristine arrangement. The sonic screwdriver whirred in his hand.

Another minute. That was all he got before the TARDIS made a sound like no other, and sparks became flames. His screwdriver had gone from a wild whir to a chaotic screaming, and the Doctor made a noise that could have been intended as a curse but was drowned out by metal roaring above him. The floor rattled. The last of the jars shattered into glass. The steam was building. It was getting hard to breathe.

As Mad as the Doctor was, as much of a clever, ancient genius he acted to be, even a Timelord, living for centuries upon centuries and building his experience with humans and aliens alike, surviving unusual occurrence and unexplainable oddity, always found one constant in all his travels: he couldn’t account for all of the variables.

The TARDIS exploded.

Rose Tyler was currently walking down Queens Road, on the complete opposite side of town. She wore a pink-lace dress, white jean-jacket, and her high heels--dangling from her two hooked fingers--clacked against each other as she walked down the road. She had a half-eaten muffin in her other hand.

She looked rather peeved for a shoeless girl at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. Perhaps the shoelessness was what made her peeved, if any fellow pedestrians were to speculate. High-heels had a strange power of doing two simultaneous things: making a woman look exceptionally powerful in almost all situations, and making the woman Lord Beezlebub, the spawn of Hell that all should avoid, directly an hour later. It probably had something to do with the swollen ankles. As Rose passed by, local shopkeepers wisely strayed away. (Let’s call someone else in, they mused. I don’t think I’m ready to atone for my sins just yet.)

The truth was that Rose Tyler wasn’t angry at any of the shopkeepers, or at her shoes, or even at her muffin, even though it made an ugly brown smudge at the hem of her dress when she nearly dropped it. She was angry at the one thing that had been consistently the source of her frustration, her exhaustion, and her swollen ankles, which would often lead to her tearing her hair out of shear strain or her falling asleep for twelve hours straight, on a weekly--and more often than not daily --basis: the Doctor.

It probably had something to do with their last conversation, which was less of a conversation and more of the Doctor talking at himself and then made a sort of noise when Rose asked a question. The TARDIS had apparently done something irregular, which was hard to discern for a human since all of the sounds the TARDIS made triggered that innate human instinct that said that the TARDIS was unusual and dangerous and that meant bad and Rose should very much get out to prevent her innards from exploding. But this was part of the thrill of travelling inside the police-box-shaped spaceship. Among other things. Such as the Doctor practically leaping from beyond the control panels and surveying the symbols on the monitor (which all looked like… well, it looked like alien language to her) with the excitement of a schoolboy child just recently gone out for recess.

“Oh, remarkable!” he cried, and the TARDIS made another noise that did not sound remarkable. “‘S never done that before.”

Rose felt a reasonable amount of alarm. “What’cha mean?”

“The capacitor!” The Doctor cried, still looking at the monitor as he fished inside his suit for his screwdriver. Rose wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be an explanation or if the Doctor was just talking to himself. “It’s broken.”

“ Broken ?”

At this point Rose knew that the Doctor was pointedly ignoring her. He began to scan the control panel. “Oh, dear,” he said when one of the buttons shined a color Rose had never seen before. As in a color she never knew existed. Her human mind, which could only contain so many impossible oddities, decided that this phenomenon was not something it was willing to comprehend, and she promptly forgot that the color ever existed. The Doctor sped past her.

“Doctor, what’s wrong?” Thankfully, the TARDIS wasn’t moving, so they were under no threat of crashing and being thrown around the main control room like a sack of potatoes. But the alarms were still blaring, and Rose’s ears were starting to hurt.

The Doctor disappeared beyond the grated floor down into the winding tubes and glowing lights below, and looking more greasy by the second. Rose could hear the sonic screwdriver whirring in between the pauses of the alarms, and the Doctor said something that Rose couldn’t understand. He stared unhappily at something that was blocking Rose’s vision.

“Doctor?” she urged, a tad irritably. The Doctor’s head popped back up, hair completely wild.

“Blueberries,” he said as an explanation. He vaulted himself back up and over the railing, onto the metal floor. He was shrugging on his jacket before Rose could blink. “I’ll be right back, don’t worry. Just gonna--- market, yes, probably has the most jars-- S’no problem.” He twirled his screwdriver into the air and caught it with one hand before slipping it back into his suit. His face split into that cheeky grin that always made Rose’s chest twist, and coupled with the wild hair and soft brown eyes, she couldn’t get a word out. “I’ll be right back,” he said again, and made his way toward the door. He paused and pointed to her. “Don’t go anywhere. It’ll only take a minute.”

Rose was going to tell him that his perception of time was skewed, and what would be a “minute” for a Timelord would be more of an hour to a human, and that she wanted to know what was going on, and why she couldn’t come. What she managed to get out, however, was, “Wha--” and then the door slammed shut.

In hindsight, she should have run after him, but she didn’t. She instead stood there in the still-wailing TARDIS and waited, just like he had told her to.

It had definitely taken longer than a minute. It had definitely taken longer than five. And ten. Fifteen as well. She made a strangled sort of sound in the back of her throat by the twentieth minute, fumbled for her phone, remembered that the Doctor didn’t carry a mobile on him, and made another strangled sort of sound albeit more passionately. She stormed out of the TARDIS and decided to search for him.

This had been a poor decision because she had gone (unknowingly) the complete opposite direction that the Doctor had gone. She found herself on the other side of Bristol after thirty minutes without seeing any sign, or even a trail of the Doctor (and there was often a trail, at least of several people who looked dazed and uncomfortable and obviously pretending like there had been nothing wrong). She came to the conclusion that she had gone the wrong way and mourned her loss by buying a small chocolate muffin from a local shop. She then spun around, shoes clacking against each other (she had taken them off sometime after buying the muffin, feet throbbing and on her half-way transformation into Lord Beezlebub), and made her way back.

On a whim, she called the Doctor on the TARDIS.

He didn’t pick up.

A white cloud clung to the ceiling. Sparks were slowly dying down, sputtering and coughing out from the wires with a sigh. The alarms, once shrieking and grating against the walls, were dead. The central control panel looked scorched along its lights and buttons, covered in a sort of blackened sticky soot that smelled like charcoal and something bitter. There was a coat, thrown over the metal railings, that was edging dangerously down into the abyss of wires and engines below. On the grated floor above the humming murmurs lied a figure, more still than the machine itself, legs crookedly folded over the metal, steam still trailing from the shoes. Beyond him, a strange thin tube, small enough to hold, fizzled in the dark, its round blue stone cracked.

Inside the TARDIS, it smelled sweet.

Rose was craving candy. Specifically cherry candy, the sort that you only find on Halloween night that were given by the odd old women who were missing an eye or a finger. (They weren’t actually missing any fingers or eyes, but a child’s imagination should never be challenged, and Mrs. Thompson did have a tendency to squint a lot.) The ones that you would find in grocery stores, that had the same brand and same wrappings, tasted like cough drops. Rose had privately wondered, when she was younger, if there had been a mischievous spirit that danced along the aisles and cursed the candy into sickly-sweet medication, else the candy be too powerful and become a new form of currency.

With this, she felt a bit self-consciousness, seeing as she just finished her muffin and shouldn’t feel the slightest bit peckish. She sniffed and regarded her stomach with a frown, and then sniffed some more. She raised her head.

Something was wrong. She couldn’t quite place it, with the wind rustling her hair and throwing dust and leaves and old-Bristol air into her face, but she felt suddenly cold. Uneasy. That sort of nervous sickness that settled in your gut and stewed a hot, sweaty chill in your bones.

The Doctor had emphasized, years ago, that those feelings were good, that they were built-in sensors, much like the alarms in his TARDIS, that all humans should listen to. The mind subconsciously gathered data from all surrounding sources, calculating various patterns from both the living and unliving to form a sense of normalcy, of safety, and that twist in your gut was your mind sensing that one of those patterns was off. “Listen to it, Rose,” he had said. Not that Rose ever didn’t. It was just pinpointing the what was the difficult part. What was causing the annoying twisting and churning and chilling?

When she turned around the corner, back to the empty park, and saw the blue TARDIS with its door cracked open and the trickle of smoke, she knew.

The door rattled against the hull when Rose burst in. She sucked in the air to shout for the Doctor, but there was smoke and mist and a horrible smell, and she choked halfway through before her eyes started streaming. Nearly tripping over her feet, she ran back and threw the other door open to let the cloud of smog out, lungs burning as she tried to cough out the muck. She staggered back inside, up the railing.

“Doctor!” she tried again. She heard a faint sizzling, a sort of hissing noise beneath her feet, beyond the railing and into the tubes and electrical wires and engines. The twist in her gut twisted more. She didn’t have to be the Doctor who know something was broken. Things that were broken tended to do things like hiss and sputter and groan, so Rose took an educated guess and assumed that the pattern wouldn’t be broken amongst universes, even in a craft that transcended space and time. She surveyed the clearing fog, heart pounding in her throat, hoping.

She felt sick when she saw something dark crumpled on the ground.

“Oh my god.”

She ran for the Doctor. He was lying on his back, bits of glass scattered around him--his head, his arms, some of it in his hair--and his legs were crooked as they were splayed haphazardly on the floor. His eyes were closed, his face covered in soot, and his clothes were covered in…

“Oh my god .”

A deep red soaked his clothes, stretched along his suit in streaks. It was along his neck, thick clumps of it dotting the skin, streaked over his cheeks and crusting over bits of stubble where he had missed when shaving that morning ( “Rose, have you seen the shaving cream?” he had asked that morning. “This one smells funny, like vanilla…” God, it was just a few hours ago. She should have told him, should have said something; the TARDIS had been making weird noises ages ago and she had thought it was all a part of the design, but she should have made a fuss, should have told him sooner, maybe if he had known-- ). The red was on his hands, like paint that smelled rotten and sweet , and oh God the TARDIS was spinning from underneath her. His fingers had made a trail, bright and glittering red, grotesquely dazzling against the dull metal, and she followed it along the floor and up the control panel. Her head throbbed when she saw fingerprints smeared over the buttons and lights, strips of red in the shape of claws. He had tried to stop it. Something was wrong with the TARDIS, and he had tried to stop it.

She couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking. The floor swayed beneath her and she tumbled down, right beside the Doctor, as her head sagged down and down and down. She covered her mouth with her hands. She was going to throw up.

“Doctor?” She reached out to touch him.

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open.

Rose screamed.

“Oh. Hullo, Rose.” said the Doctor, who was covered in red and soot and smelt like burnt fruit but was clearly and obviously staring at her, awake and not possessed by a zombie parasite (or, at least Rose hoped). He sat up, which apparently wasn’t a good idea, and immediately swayed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Sorry, sorry, excess thermal energy still coursing through. Makes me woozy.” His face twisted in a sort of exaggerated concentration and sniffed. He stayed there for a second, sniffed again, before snapping his eyes back open. “There we are.” He smiled and leapt back onto his feet. He surveyed the TARDIS, dimly lit and smog still clearing out, with an apparently satisfied conviction. “Damage not so bad, I suppose, and conveyors suitably sealed.” He leaned over the railing to stare below them. “Let’s see, one, two… and…. Three! Three components all properly contained, just in the nick of time, with some sugary sweetness to boot. I might just say…” He bent over and retrieved his screwdriver, ignoring the cracked gem as he gave it a spin in the air and caught it with a wink “An unequivocal success.” He frowned at his companion. “What’re you doing on the ground?”

Rose’s head was still spinning. “You’re covered in blood.”

“Blood? No, no, no . Not blood.” He smeared a bit of the red off of his suit and popped it into his mouth. “Jam! Not blueberry, sadly; the market didn’t have it. Which, by the way, what market doesn’t have blueberry jam? They had blueberries, of course, but not blueberry jam. Would have helped to even have some apple jam, though mind you, I don’t really expect a market to have apple jam** , sounds almost weird, apples-- You know, I don’t think the human race much likes apples. What with the story of Eden, and that one American who chopped down the apple trees, and with students bringing their teachers apples, hoping they choke--and don’t you act like I don’t know that, you can tell in their eyes-- Anyways, ” the Doctor took a breath. “Cherries! They had cherry jam, which wouldn’t be my first choice what with their lower pectin concentration, but it’s not like any of the human markets have pure pectin tubes that sit on a rack, so I had to do with the cherry jam and just aggravate the chemical bonds to--”

“It looks like blood,” Rose said.

The Doctor stared at her.“Well. Yeah. It probably does.” He scooped another swab of jelly with his fingers and examined it. “Must’ve gotten darker when it absorbed the smoke. And the pulsive energy must have unraveled the pectin bonds and… well, made it more watery to make it look… oh yes, strikingly similar to blood, yeah. But!” He popped his fingers back in his mouth, giving the jam another lick, before shrugging off his suit jacket, still smothered in sticky red, and tossed it aside to reveal his unblemished shirt. “Perfectly fine! See? No holes, no burns. My face feels a bit sticky and I think some of the residue energy is gonna settle into my calves for the next couple hours, but nothing a good bath won’t solve--”

“I thought you were dead,” Rose said.

The Doctor’s smile wavered. He glanced at the controls and poked at a few switches, the TARDIS humming around them, before he swiveled back with forced cheeriness. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about me! My biology is different from yours; blast was completely harmless--could only give me a little sizzle, like a bug bite.” His teeth clacked together, and he fiddled with the jam still on the control panel, all burnt and filled with soot. “This helped. Not just fruit preservatives. A small container filled to the brim with sugar molecules that sort of stick together, like cement--but not actually cement--that helps with not only with binding the components together and preventing the leakage of poisonous gas the TARDIS typically keeps filtered, but to also direct the pulsive energy into the jam and not me. So,” his voice light and squeaky, “I’m fine.” He licked his fingers a third time.

Rose hated this. This pretend little game the Doctor did, acting like nothing was wrong. It burned something deep inside her, something that made her teeth itch and skin crawl. His insistent independence, the unwillingness to tell her when something was wrong, drove her mad. One could even say Mad.

And as the Doctor continued to lick the jam, Rose fitted all her malcontent into the Look, and stared at his finger.

Maybe she burned it. She hoped she did, because the Doctor retracted his finger as quickly as he had popped it in. “Right,” he said. “Sorry.” He had the sense to look ashamed.

The good thing about the Look is that it was silent, and the Doctor was a smart man. All of the things Rose would struggle to say verbally was translated properly into the Look, and the Doctor understood, or at least deduced, as much as Rose intended. As said in the beginning, this time it was a version of the third and fourth variation (Don’t put yourself in stupid danger, and Don’t stick that in your mouth),*** and it seemed that the Doctor had gotten it. Slowly, the Doctor extended his arms as a hesitant invitation. Rose, never one to refuse the offer of a hug, fitted herself into the Doctor’s arms. They stayed there for some time, Rose listening to the Doctor’s double heartbeat, and silently choked on the scent of burnt cherries.

When they parted, Rose rubbed irritably at her nose. “Just,” she huffed. “ Tell me when you do stuff like that.”

The Doctor frowned. “I did.”

“No, you said ‘blueberries.’”

The Doctor made a face that said that “blueberries” had sufficed as a proper explanation, and when Rose made a Face of her own (one terrible enough to earn its own capital F), he stepped back. They both heard a crunch.

“Aw,” the Doctor whined, and looked forlornly at his feet. The remains of a small glass jar rattled against his sole, the red mush staining his converse. “That was lunch.”

They settled for a small cafe at the edge of Bristol an hour later, and after a couple of glasses of wine, they completely forgot about the jam.****

* The market in question is called plainly the Fruit Market, located on William Street in Bristol, UK. It was a bit difficult to find a proper market that had inside cashiers in Bristol, especially when all you have is Google and absolutely no knowledge of the UK. (I might have just chosen a supplier and not a legitimate grocery store.) I embarrassingly discovered later that markets and grocery stores were not the same thing and almost changed the store. But then I got too attached to the idea of a rumbustious Doctor entering a homey fruit market, looking deranged with grease smeared all over his face, complaining over the fact that they didn’t have blueberry jam, and doing a general job-well-done of disturbing the peace in this little market.

** Blueberry jam and apple jam have the highest level of pectin content, which is why the Doctor would have preferred either of them to use as a sort of glue for his capacitor and other broken things. If you couldn’t tell already, I am making up 90% of this, but within reason. I did a bit of research about the chemical bonds and makeup of jams, and how pectin are sugar-based bonds that hold the molecules together and make a jam harder or softer. If you’re actually a biologist, please don’t ruin this for me; I have a vague sense of knowing this would never work, but I’m proud of my bullshitting nonetheless.

*** After this incident, the fourth version of the Look (Don’t put that in your mouth) moved up the hierarchy to become the third version, because she had to repeat it several times afterwards. The TARDIS smelled like cherries for weeks.

**** Not because of the wine, but because another spaceship had crash landed three kilometers away from their cafe (remember what the Doctor had said about invasions happening near his vicinity? Must be another force of nature, like gravity.), and later in the day they discovered that the alcohol content was a good form of camouflage, and they had to douse themselves in several extra glasses. It was a poor day for both of their wardrobes. It was also a blessing nothing flammable was on board.

#it's a long bastard #doctor who #fanfiction #doctor who fanfiction #spiteful writings #tenth doctor #tenth #rose tyler #tenrose #dw #david tennant #billie piper #fanfic

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