#i have not yet watched the rest of the episode but its clear that the of coins in the safe is equal to the number of ppl he zapped

[tabithatwo]

are we ready to talk about shauna's barely hidden but somehow very ignored psychosis and how it, like a ton of her other qualities, is brushed aside by both those around her and the audience? like, i think its clear that a central focus of the show is the way lottie is the only one who got stuck in a facility (and natalie in and out of rehab being the next closest to reckoning with her shit) when the rest of them are very clearly not okay. as a certified Crazy Girl, i've been weary of how they'll handle lottie's story line (blurring psychosis and the supernatural is a very delicate and tricky thing and thus far i've been sort of just waiting to see where it goes). our data on and understanding of mental health is incredibly limited for a lot of reasons (but that's a rant for another time) but there is a large mainstream misconception of when hallucinations and delusions can happen. psychosis isn't just something that happens in schizophrenia and its very complex, so if you want to learn more there's plenty of info out there i'm not going to get into it here, but it happens in a lot of other cases. psychosis is, most simply put, a loss of contact with external reality. ptsd can cause psychosis, especially auditory and visual hallucinations.

so shauna is shown to have these experiences and i didn't realize that they were being so heavily overlooked by a large amount of people until the reaction to the scene where she beats lottie nearly to death. shauna is introduced in s1 as having hallucinations of jackie 25 years later. she is shown to disassociate. in 207, she both holds the baby's body and believes the delusion that they ate the baby. the episode shows her fighting the delusion until she can't anymore. meanwhile, adult shauna tells lottie she keeps callie at arms length out of "fear that she would die...i guess? or maybe that she was never even...real to begin with." then she adds "i think something is broken, lottie." implied: she's broken. something is wrong with her. this is the is the most honest about her mental state we've ever seen shauna be.

why? because lottie has always been and likely will always be perceived as crazier. lottie is the one they pin it on, lottie is the cult leader both then and now, lottie is the scapegoat, lottie is the one who got sent to switzerland. i think there's something to be said for the effect lottie has on people (again, a whole other post) but honestly, that alone is enough. shauna is feeling vulnerable for a lot of reasons and she can tell lottie that she thinks she's crazy, that she's never quite sure her daughter exists, that she's constantly afraid she'll die to the degree that she doesn't let herself interact with her in a real, tangible way, because it's always safer to tell the crazy girl you're crazy, too.

and lottie knows. shauna knows that. lottie clocked her psychosis almost immediately, when she was in the meat shed for all hours. the other girls were shocked by the makeup, and their shock was so fucking strange to me when i watched it, but now on reflecting i'm realizing maybe its the lottie effect. like, have i done the shit shauna has? abso-fucking-lutely not lol. but does my mind work in a way where i immediately would assume shauna was doing something along the lines of the shit she was doing out there, because to me its like...what else would it be? yeah. like sees like, in a way. lottie knows what this looks like at baseline, even if its coming out way different in shauna. even if in shauna it looks like aggression and violence a lot of the time. lottie gets it.

jeff doesn't get it, he thinks strawberry lube is too wild. taissa gets it to a degree, and we see shauna be the second most open with her, but tai suppresses and hides it a degree that she wouldn't dare step foot in a therapist's office (this is yet another thing that makes me crazy but is a whole other post lol). shauna's main goal in this life she's created is pretending to be normal. and she's like, impressively bad at it. but people let her, because what else are they going to do? addressing the clear issues is taboo, because we categorize people so heavily. she masks better than lottie, but it's fucking wafer thin. you see this when she interacts with people who aren't her family or the other yjs. the way she speaks to the taylors? to adam? shauna is only sometimes masking passably when she's in her set world, where she has a routine, and is surrounded by people she only has to half-convince of her sanity.

if shauna is honest about the level of psychosis she experiences, she knows she'll end up like lottie. and i think there's an argument to be made that the people around her (which at this point in her life is pretty much just jeff because she's done another common thing and insulated herself from other people, re: the way she behaves being clockably off to others who won't overlook certain things or can't relate) understand that too. it can't be addressed, because then in their minds there must be action of some kind if it is. (taissa yelling you're acting crazy, shauna is one of the most purely terrified moments we see of her in relation to shauna, because she knows she's admitting something. jeff yelling something to the same effect after the carjacking, same thing.)

the person we see try to get shauna to open up about it is callie. her teenage daughter, who bares the brunt of her difficulty maintaining reality, (who knows that shauna has never accepted her fully as her child, and seems to actually sense that there is a deeper reason for that), asks her to open up. she tells her after the club scene that she knows something is wrong. she even mentions jackie directly. she spends all of s2 trying to relate to shauna, to get her to be open with her about everything. there's no way shauna's trauma and psychosis and general issues have gone unnoticed by callie. daughters always know. they see it in their mothers before they even have a concept of the world. so we're watching a 16 year old try to get her mom to open up, because she doesn't understand fully why that's so dangerous to shauna. to callie, it may even be a secret she thinks other people are in on that she's being left out of. i think maybe she's realizing that it isn't personal and that shauna is guarded like this in general, and we're watching that happen.

callie is learning to care for and relate to her mother and she doesn't see why shauna won't let her in, because to her it's an innate truth that she'll be by her side no matter what (if only she'd let her be). she has unconditional love for her mother and that is the scariest thing in the world to shauna, because the last person who had unconditional love for shauna died because shauna didn't know what to do with it. a baby she never got a chance to meet in reality could've replaced the love that jackie gave her, and shauna was maybe starting to look forward to that, but that ended before it began. so twice shauna has killed that figure in her life. the one who loves her wholly and for who she is, which is terrifying to shauna in it's own right (she tried to take that away from jackie in their last moments, maybe you never really knew me, because that would be easier. shauna can't handle someone really knowing her because she can't handle really knowing herself because, again, that means addressing things that go unaddressed). and she doesn't plan on killing that figure again.

(if callie's even real, because the baby wasn't real when she met him and jackie wasn't real every time she's talked to her in the last twenty-five years, so who the fuck is to say callie is real?)

#this started purely as a shauna shipman psychosis discussion and ended with shauna callie mother daughter dynamics but i'm only human #they are so special to me #as the crazy daughter of a crazy mother that i had to let go of. watching them is a wild experience #shauna shipman #jackie taylor #jackie x shauna #taissa turner #shauna x jackie #jackieshauna #callie sadecki #tai x shauna #lottie matthews #lottie x shauna #yellowjackets #cw psychosis

[sungbeam]

nonidol!kim sunwoo x f!reader

you never thought your humble, little podcast would ever touch somebody's soul like it did one kim sunwoo's.

▷ genre, warnings. s2f2l, mutual pining/crushing, college au, fluff, minor angst, humor, comfort, swearing, i actually know very little about anything going on w their majors tbh LOL 💀, uhh sunwoo's a simp but wbk, the outline of sunwoo's abs but if u read too fast u will miss it, kissing, low-key miscommunication trope (im sorry i hate those too), rip sorry yangyang, uhm they're kinda cute i *guess* :/, if there r typos then whoops i don't like editing !!

▷ word count. 28.7k help TT

this is the fifth installment of the love in unity series! this fic can be read as a standalone, but there will be references to the main plotline and all other yns will be referred to as _!yn. ALSO, the second episode specifically has a direct reference to a scene from flight risk, but the rest of the fic won't need any other outside context!

a/n: for @justalildumpling and her chopsticks <3 i dragged myself out of writer's block, pls reblog :'))

EPISODE ONE (PILOT): RHAPSODY… LIKE THE BOHEMIAN ONE?

THERE was something about general education requirement courses that felt too much like a university scam. Why was it required to learn more about things that wouldn’t help one’s chosen career path in the long run? Sunwoo hadn't necessarily been thrilled when he wasn't able to get one of the lower level English classes to fill his requirement, but the 300-level literature class had so far turned out to be… actually interesting. Well, the literature itself was interesting enough. The professor?... Not so much.

There was one thing about this class that he could safely say kept him sane though. And it was more so a person than a thing.

The discussion classroom wasn't terribly full as he strolled through the door with his hoodie thrown over his dark brown curls and headphones, a pretty voice flowing through the ear pieces as he took his usual seat to the side of the room.

"...and we're back! Hope you all enjoyed this week's song recommendation. It's been a favorite of mine ever since my dad introduced it to me when I was a kid. An absolute road trip banger—"

Sunwoo's eyes flickered up to see that the TA for the discussion wasn't yet here, but he lowered the volume on his headset slightly in case.

"—kudos to all the songwriters out there. Writing relevant stuff that transcends time is hard, man. I can't even make meaningful conversation with my graduate student supervisor."

A small smile curled the corners of his lips upward. Just as he anticipated the segment on the host geeking out about her favorite oldies music picks, he heard instead—

"I can't even make meaningful conversation with my other grad student supervisors, you know?"

Wait a minute. Confusion flickered across Sunwoo's face as he checked and lifted one of his headphone ears. That can't be right…

Somebody sat down in the seat beside him, almost startling him because he had his back to the door. It was you, the pretty second-year who he had met on the first day of this discussion a few weeks ago. But he was peering at you now in a whole new light as a smile lingered on your face from your conversation with the class’s TA.

When you felt his eyes on you, you flashed him a bright grin. “Hey, Sunwoo.”

He cleared his throat, fumbling to turn his headphones off and follow your lead in taking out the materials needed for today’s discussion. “Oh, hey, Yn.” It occurred to him just how creepy he was probably being just then…just watching you. But the thoughts in his brain were flying around like mosquitoes around his head—had he been hearing things?

“What’d you think of the reading?” You asked him pleasantly.

The reading from the past week had been the first third of a novel called The Stranger, a version translated from its original written in French. Sunwoo sucked in a breath, grimacing, “It’s not my favorite,” he drawled. “I have no idea what the point of his character is, to be honest.”

You pursed your lips and nodded your head. “Yeah, he’s a little… flat,” you chuckled.

“Is this supposed to tie into the theory that professor was talking about last week?” He asked then, in an effort to actively shift his brain’s focus away from your awfully familiar voice and sayings, and to the present.

“Something about how he doesn’t fit societal standards. I think it’s existentialism and nihilism. Well, at least I think it is.”

Huh. Interesting. Sunwoo gave a little bob of his head, and this was just when the TA turned everyone’s attention to a class discussion about the novel. He definitely hadn’t thought of those terms specifically when reading, but at the same time, he did understand where you were getting that sentiment from. He just couldn’t articulate his view of literature quite as well as you could. That had made you somewhat intimidating to him in the beginning, besides your very cute smile, but he was hoping he could learn something from you nonetheless.

You weren’t even a literature major, he realized as he listened to you offer your thoughts to the group. It was cool, though—you were cool.

— ✶

The Songbird Station was a podcast, radio-esque show that Sunwoo had discovered over summer break, a few weeks ago. The podcast was hosted by an anonymous host who dubbed herself “DJ Dove.” She definitely didn’t mind talking about a few of her personal life experiences; it was easy to simply bar the names and identities. Sunwoo had binged all two seasons so far of the podcast, happily tuning in as a silent listener and admirer of hers for awhile, and he had always wondered where she went to school or who she was, but it hadn’t invaded his thoughts like this before.

Sunwoo laid in his bed the day after the literature discussion, his hands resting on his stomach and his expression turned up toward the violet-red LED-lit ceiling of his room. His phone sat on the edge of his nightstand as it played a playlist of songs that Dove had recommended to her listeners—or well, he wondered if he could safely assume that what he heard yesterday was correct, and that you were DJ Dove.

It would make sense, he thought. You were a sound and music production major, had great taste in music (from the brief conversations you struck up with him while in class), and you literally said the exact same thing that Dove had said over the podcast. It couldn’t have just been a coincidence. And now that he thought about it, your voice really did sound a lot like DJ Dove’s. There was a sort of friendly warmth to both of your voices, and—and—

Knock, knock— “Aye, Sunwoo! I'm going to Juyeon's place now. Are you sure you don't wanna come with?"

Oh, right. He had nearly forgotten that Eric had planned to head over to their new mutual friend's apartment tonight to watch a sports game. Juyeon was a friend of a friend of a friend—the connections ran long in their friend circle, he supposed. Sunwoo stole a peak at his phone screen for the time and his joints ached at the sight of 8:53 on the face. His face screwed up as he replied to his friend and roommate, “Nah, I think I'm still just gonna chill here tonight.”

He grabbed his phone fully off the nightstand this time and turned onto his side.

“Oh, okay. Don't burn the apartment down and don't steal my ramen!”

Sunwoo squished his face down into his pillow, raising his voice slightly since his words would probably be muffled, "I'm not going to steal your ramen!" This guy.

He heard Eric grumble something under his breath from the other side of the door, followed by the sound of footsteps moving farther away from his room. When he heard the front door close, he let out a breath and turned back to his phone. To his surprise, he had managed to absentmindedly navigate away from the playlist screen and to the Songbird Station homepage, filled with a collection of all of your links. One of these links was for listeners to submit song recommendations or ask questions, and most of the time, they were all anonymous with their own little nicknames.

He had never fully considered doing it… but that didn’t mean he hadn’t ever partially thought about it. He definitely imagined becoming one of Dove’s more frequent anonymous submitters and becoming friends with her—on a level that one could consider oneself friends between two anonymous users, at least.

But up until now, he hadn’t thought that he could do it. Well, because Dove was Dove; he was one of hundreds of listeners.

“But she’s Yn,” he thought aloud to himself, turning back onto his back to speak to the ceiling, as if the layer of plaster above his head could possibly give him a viable answer. “There’s probably a reason she doesn’t use her actual name,” he pondered further, expression contorted into deep contemplation. “This feels wrong!” He groaned.

There was at least one person he could count on to deal with his bullshit.

sunwoo’s phone: yes or no

tree rat: no

“Well, screw you, too,” Sunwoo huffed as he swiped out of his and Changmin’s text chain. Out of all the times Changmin said “no” randomly, it had to be this time.

It didn’t matter much anyway though. Sunwoo went back to the links page and clicked on the anonymous submissions. He was met with a customized greeting page from the hostess herself, as she thanked her listeners and asked what they’d like to contribute to the show.

Sunwoo moved to sit up against his headboard as he racked his brain for something to say. He had tons to say, but the first message had to be perfect, right?

“It’s fine,” he said out loud, thumbs flying over the keyboard to type out the first thing that came to mind. After all, it was completely anonymous, so it wasn’t like she would—or you would—even know it was him.

He probably read over his little paragraph about a hundred times before attempting to figure out an anonymous name to sign off with. He hugged his knee to his chest when he couldn’t come up with something cool, charming, or unique. Maybe he would stay completely unknown for now. Maybe he wouldn’t even have the courage to submit another message after this one anyway!—

"Rhapsody," he said aloud. Rhapsody was a cool word. Rhapsody anon? Was that who he would sign as?

He did the most logical course of action: look up the word. He asked the internet for its most basic definition, then somehow ended up in the rabbit hole of etymology of the word rhapsody. It described one who stitched verses or songs together—something of the sort. It sounded cool, at least.

It would have to do… and even if you—or DJ Dove—thought it was stupid, no one would know it was him.

Before he could psych himself out of it, Sunwoo pushed the submit button and launched his phone away from him onto the bed like it was explosive. There was something thrilling about anonymous submissions, but incredibly anxiety-inducing, as well. He could only hope that you would be pleased to read it.

— ✶

It was Wednesday when the next episode of the podcast dropped, and Sunwoo was swift to don his headphones on his way out the door of the apartment. The walk to campus was a good fifteen or so minutes, which would get him about a quarter of the way through the episode, but usually the line in the campus cafe was long, so he had plenty of time to listen.

“Welcome to Songbird Station! I’m your host, DJ Dove, and today, I went to my Groupon singing lesson and realized that I think my teacher is having an affair with her neighbor…?”

Sunwoo let out a snortish laugh, covering his mouth with his hoodie sleeve in slight embarrassment as he passed by somebody else going in the opposite direction. Usually, there would be anonymous submissions sprinkled throughout the episode, most of them having to be diverted to later episodes because they were song recommendations. Sunwoo wasn’t super optimistic about his chances of being featured in this episode, but a guy could dream, couldn’t he?

The sky was a pleasant shade of crystalline blue, even as the seasons shifted from summer to fall. There was a slight breeze wafting through the air that brought in the telltale autumnal chill.

"...and luckily the rest was history. My voice was completely dead and my throat is still a little sore, haha, so we'll do a couple more anonymous submissions and recommendations today! This is supposedly a radio show-esque podcast, after all. This one's from a new friend—Rhapsody Anon!"

Sunwoo nearly tripped over the flat sidewalk and sent a nervous smile to the other person waiting at the stoplight with him. Did you just say what he thought you said?

There came a soft laugh from you. "Ooh, like Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen? Such a classic, by the way. Rhapsody says: Hi Dove! Hoping you're doing alright and that songwriting is going well. I'm a relatively new listener but a fan from first listen—awh, wait… that's kind of like love at first sight but for the voice version, isn't it?"

He reddened. The crosswalk turned green.

"Anyways, that's really sweet; thanks so much—there's a bit more of the message that I'll post on my story later so we can save time, but Rhapsody, thank you for tuning in and interacting with me. Your message sounded so heartfelt to me? I dunno," you chuckled and he swore he could hear the smile in your voice, "maybe I'm a little biased 'cause I love your song rec, too. Speaking of which, Rhapsody recommends Painkiller by Ruel! An immaculate choice, if I do say so myself…"

Sunwoo couldn't help but smile to himself at your warm reception of his anonymous submission. He wished he could have gotten your full reaction to his entire message, but he understood that you needed to account for all the other things you had planned.

Even so, an acknowledgement from you would have been enough. He hadn't thought it was possible, but he thought he just became even more attached to this DJ Dove persona.

EPISODE TWO: I HATE VALENTINE'S DAY.

three months later.

THE curtains in Sunwoo's room were yanked open, the sound of metal rings against the metal bar scratched at his eardrums and made him grimace. It definitely did not help the pounding in his cranium, and—wait, was he in jeans? There was a disgusting after taste in his mouth, something akin to alcohol, and when he lifted his hand to rub his eyes, he felt dried tear tracks on his skin.

Eric stood at the foot of his bed with a scowl and his arms crossed over his chest. "I'm mad at you."

Sunwoo smooshed his face into his pillow in a sorry attempt to hide his eyes from the blinding overcast sky outside. "What's new?" He babbled incoherently.

It seemed his friend and roommate was not pleased with his answer and moved to tower over Sunwoo right beside him. "You couldn't have waited ten minutes before barging in? I was so close to kissing her!"

"Huh? What the hell are you…" Sunwoo's voice trailed off as the events of last night were slowly coming back to him.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Ugh. He remembered making plans to go to some singles party with Changmin and Chanhee, and that Eric was bringing EC!Yn over to woo her or something… yeah, he got all that. So why did Sunwoo drink so much and why couldn't he…

The notification… the tweet…

Oh no.

The emotions from last night came rushing back to him like the tide to shore. Horror contorted his face as his brain raced to string pieces of last night together. He released a groan as he brought both hands up to his face. "Oh my god," he muttered into his palms.

The distinct feeling of devastation and disappointment sank into his gut. No wonder he had thrown all caution to the wind last night and gotten himself drunk off his face.

"How bad?" He asked.

Eric still had his arms crossed. "You cried on EC!Yn like a whale and asked why women were perfect and why you couldn't have this one girl." By the drone of Eric's voice, he hadn't been pleased or amused by last night's events. Whoops.

"I'm—"

"You are going to be forever alone, by the way."

Sunwoo dropped his hands from his face and leveled a scowl up at Eric. Now, that he remembered saying, too. Unfortunately. "Hey! I'm still tender from last night."

Eric's smile was sarcastic and he said nothing as he made his exit from Sunwoo's room and left the hungover man to fend for himself. Left to his own devices, Sunwoo pushed out a harsh exhale as he stared up at the ceiling.

He remembered receiving the notification from the Songbird Station Twitter account and excusing himself to go to the bathroom to hear your voice memo. And when he'd finally found an empty bathroom and played it back, he learned a devastating piece of information.

Guys, I went on a date… updates in the next episode. That was what you had said, essentially—you, Yn Ln, the girl Sunwoo had met in his literature course last quarter and whom he had figured out was the anonymous host of the podcast Songbird Station under the pseudonym DJ Dove.

And he had gotten drunk over the fact that you'd gone out on a date, and said date hadn't been him.

"Dude," he said out loud to himself.

He couldn't believe he had gotten so off his rocker by this news. It wasn't like he knew you or liked you or—well, maybe he had grown an affection for you over the span of time he listened to your podcast and interacted with you via his own pseudonym, Rhapsody Anonymous.

But he was just another fan to you, and you would never know his identity.

A guy could dream though, right?

A thought suddenly occurred to him as he rolled over to go through the copious amounts of notifications on his phone he had. There were lots of messages in his group chat with Chanhee and Changmin that he would deal with later, lots of social media notifications, emails, and…

Wednesday. Today was Wednesday.

Sunwoo cursed. You were definitely uploading the episode today then.

He bit his lip as he sorted through the notifications to find one about the podcast. Sure enough, there it was: I Went On A Date? was the title, and he pretended like that didn't make him want to play Lany's Valentine's Day on loop—

The bedroom door opened and Eric poked his head into the room. "I made hangover soup."

Sunwoo blinked in surprise. "Oh. Thanks, man."

"Yeah, don't mention it," Eric mumbled, shifting on his feet. "Seriously, don't mention it."

— ✶

For the next couple of days, Sunwoo left the notification at the top of his phone, pretending like it wasn’t there. It had worked for about five minutes, but the remainder of time he was stubborn, he allowed his imagination to get the better of him. Although he no longer needed to take a literature course, he found himself deeply considering the vague title you had provided. Well, what could you mean by that question mark at the end? Had it not gone well? There was no way it could have, since your tone didn’t really scream “OH MY GOD I WENT ON A DATE!!!” (not that Sunwoo had imagined what he would have acted like post-date with someone like you or anything…). He didn’t even know who you had gone on a date with, and that made his stomach churn.

The curiosity devoured him alive over the two days he managed to torture himself with his overthinking. No one knew he listened to the Songbird Station podcast, and he planned to keep it that way. It would be the absolute death of him if any of his friends found out.

By Saturday morning, Sunwoo had had enough of his own stubbornness and caved. He donned his headphones, grabbed his bag, and headed out the door to do some work in a cafe located on the Ave. There was one that his friend Jacob had recommended to the group awhile back, and Sunwoo hadn’t looked back since.

As he tuned into the episode, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, shivering against the cold, winter winds. February weather was a doozy, and a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate sounded so very sexy right this moment.

“Welcome to Songbird Station! I’m your host, DJ Dove, and you’re probably wondering what the title of this episode even means, or why I sent that weird, cryptic voice message the other night.”

The traffic light turned green, and Sunwoo began to cross the road, the coffee shop in sight. His hands were beginning to get clammy in his pockets.

“Don’t riot, but friends, it means exactly what it says—” As you exhaled out a breathy kind of laugh, Sunwoo inhaled sharply.

“Helpful,” he muttered under his breath as he pushed into the warmth of the coffee shop. He shook the cold out of his body before hopping into the line to order.

“ —I did actually land myself a date yesterday. Honestly, I’m not really much of a dater; I never really had time with it over the past years because I would, uh… well, I would rather stay in and do music, y’know?”

The corners of Sunwoo’s lips curled up into a smile. Maybe he had been nervous before about this episode’s topic of choice, but he should have had more faith in you. Rather than speak about the date the entire episode, you always managed to worm in a discussion about your passions, and that was the kind of talk that had first gotten Sunwoo hooked. There was something so attractive about hearing or witnessing a person gush about their passions and ambitions—the way their eyes lit up, their posture righted itself, how they smiled so big that one could hear it in their tone of voice.

He was happy that you went out on a date, because you deserved to meet someone who treated you as special as you were. You were a good person, and it wasn’t fair that he was being so salty about it, especially when he was too chicken to��

“Sunwoo?”

His soul practically fell out of his body. “Shit—” He swore, yanking his headphones down with eyes as wide as the earphones. He whirled around to greet you with a flushed face, red like the old Christmas decorations still hanging up from the crown moldings.

You were standing right behind him with a mildly amused look on your face, your lips pressed into a smile and eyes crinkled in absolute delight. You were similarly bundled up like he was to no doubt shield you from the cold on your way here. “Sorry I scared you! I probably should have, like, tapped your shoulder or something, huh?”

Sunwoo let out a nervous laugh and cupped the back of his neck, the skin there warm to the touch. “Oh, uh, no problem at all. I just kinda…”

“Get scared easy?” You offered.

He huffed with a sheepish sort of smile. “No, no that’s not it. I—I just wasn’t expecting you, that’s all.” Inwardly, he winced. The fact that he was listening to your voice in his ears, and you just happened to say his name at the same time and appear in the same exact coffee shop as him. Weren’t there fifteen of these places on the block? There was no way you just happened to choose this one at this moment.

You chuckled, playing along. “Ah, I see, I see. We haven’t seen each other since fall quarter though. How have you been?”

You and Sunwoo inched up with the line, so the two of you now stood side by side. Sunwoo was trying everything he could to calm the racing of his heart. Play it cool, dude. “I’ve been okay…ish,” he grimaced, re-thinking his answer. “You know winter quarter is always the worst.”

“For sure,” you replied. “It’s so cold and dreary—nobody wants to leave their apartments, especially me,” you joked.

Sunwoo was about to chime in on how he could totally relate to that, when you popped the question: “And then there’s Valentine’s Day. Crazy how it never seems to rain on Valentine’s Day, though, so people can go out. Did you do anything for it?”

Sirens commenced their screeching in his head. WEE-WOO-WEE-WOO! Don’t let her know how much of a loser you were! He coughed, reaching up to scratch his head. “Uh, nothing special in particular, if that’s what you mean. A couple of my friends and I just went to this singles party.” Would that give you the wrong idea? Probably not, right? Why was he so bad at this, he thought, wasn’t he supposed to be a communications major?

You inched up in line. “Oh, that’s cool. I think I went to one in freshman year at my old uni,” you said.

Before he could stop himself, he said, “I almost forgot you transferred this year.” He knew that one from the podcast when you talked about the struggles of being a transfer student and having to almost “redo” your entire first year experience, social-wise. But you had also told him that when you and he had worked together in your shared class last quarter; it was just that the two of you didn’t really talk much about your old university much after that.

“It’s okay,” you smiled, nudging his arm with yours as a gesture for him to order first. “Not many people remember.”

Sunwoo wanted to protest, maybe to reassure you that it wasn’t that easy to forget something like that, but he was forced to switch gears and order his hot beverage first before he could say anything else to you. After he said goodbye to five more dollars, he stepped aside and made his way over to the pick-up counter to wait for you and his drink.

When you were done, you sidled up beside him, hands tucked into the folds of your coat.

Come on, say something, his inner voice chided. “So, uh, how was your Valentine’s Day?”

He immediately regretted it. Out of everything he could have asked, he had to go with the one topic he really didn’t want to hear about. However, it had been one of the logical progressions of the conversation, and who knew? Perhaps it wouldn’t lead to him feeling like he’d been shot down with lightning? (Was he being a little dramatic? Yes. Did it matter? Not when no one was going to hear him, no.)

You let out a small laugh and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “It was okay,” you replied.

It was… it was okay? What was he supposed to do with that answer—

“I mean,” you continued with a smile that looked more like a grimace, “it was—fine! It was fine. Uhm…”

Sunwoo’s thoughts came to a slow, teetering stop. Worry began seeping into the cracks of his brain as new scenarios formed. “Hey, if you’re uncomfortable talking about it, then we don’t have to talk about it.” All of the nerves and envy from before was becoming something softer in concern for your response.

“No! No, it’s okay. I promise,” you reassured him. The look you gave him was earnest, and he felt the fist tucked into his pocket gradually relax a bit. “It’s just weird putting it into words, y’know? I kind of chickened out of talking to my friends about it, and even to—” You stopped yourself short, and he could see you backpedaling in your brain. “Anyways, it just felt weird? I think it would have been a really nice night if I actually saw him in that light. But at the same time, I kind of want to try and give it a chance. Does that make sense?”

He nodded, tension falling out of his shoulders. “It does. I mean, sometimes there’s just no spark, y’know?” He added. “I was just worried he did something to make you uncomfortable or something.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. You don’t have to worry.”

“Okay, that’s good,” he murmured, licking his lips. “I’m just curious—” he piped up, “—and you don’t have to tell me, but who did you go out with?”

One of the baristas from behind the counter called your names, and the two of you both stepped forward. Sunwoo took a long stride to get there before you, and handed you your cup for you.

You murmured a “thanks” to him first before stirring in a packet of sugar. “Liu Yangyang. Do you know him?”

Did he? Yangyang was one of the people Sunwoo recognized from not only around campus, but as a person who made music online, too. Even if Yangyang was in the same year as him, Sunwoo always admired the man’s flow and way with words. It made so much sense that Yangyang would pursue you, someone equally talented and charismatic, especially if the two of you were the same major.

A tightening sensation creeped into Sunwoo’s chest as he marinated on the revelation further. If you couldn’t see someone like Yangyang in a romantic light, then where did that put himself?

As Sunwoo let his intrusive thoughts get the best of him, you finished preparing your coffee.

“I’ve gotta run now,” you told him with a soft-cornered grin. “It was nice seeing you, Sunwoo.”

Sunwoo managed a smile back at you, head bobbing in some semblance of a nod, before you were exiting the shop. He stood there for a moment to gather his wits, his thoughts, and his dignity.

“Did that really just happen?” He muttered to himself. He took his coffee with him to find an empty table and retrieved his study materials from his bag. Technically, he didn’t even have to listen to the rest of the podcast, but… who was he kidding?

EPISODE THREE: HEART TO HEART

“YOU’RE coming with me to the practice rooms, right?” Ji Changmin trailed behind Sunwoo as the two of them shouldered into Sunwoo and Eric's shared apartment with their bags and leftovers from today's lunch. It had been about a week and a half since he had bumped into you at that café and he had been feeling over the interaction since.

Sunwoo popped open the refrigerator while his friend perched on one of the breakfast bar stools, his duffle bag dumped at his feet. "Uh, yeah. 'Course, hyung," he said, shifting some groceries from JC!Yn around to make space for his white plastic container.

A thought occurred to him, and he groaned. "But you're gonna have to go first—without me," he clarified. He grabbed the carton of orange juice out to pour himself a glass, facing his friend's curious look.

Changmin's brows furrowed. "Wait, why not?"

It was a reasonable question, as it went against Sunwoo's normal pattern of behavior. Usually, Sunwoo would tag along with Changmin to the practice rooms at the back of the performing arts building. Changmin was a dance major, and with the highly anticipated winter dance showcase just around the corner, it was important that he got that practice in. Plus, with Eric out of town for an away game, Sunwoo was left alone in the apartment, which wasn't exactly his favorite thing. He would much rather go out and be around other people… unless there was something else occupying him.

Today, that certain occupation came in the form of your first live podcast session, something you were trying out. It was just going to be a live audio stream, so you could stay anonymous with your pseudonym, and answer people's submissions live. You had been advertising it for the past week, having excluded the weekly podcast in order to prepare for today.

Sunwoo was excited as you were and wanted to support you and be one of the people tuning in live. This was important to him, and he had even gone so far as to plan out his day.

"I just have something I need to turn in before the day ends," he said easily, shoulders lifting in a half-hearted shrug. He lifted the glass of orange juice to his mouth for a languid gulp.

Changmin made a teasing noise of disappointment. "Aye, you know if Chanhee were here he'd be on your ass, right?" He chuckled, the dimple of his smile pressing into his cheek.

Sunwoo pouted when he lowered the glass. "If Chanhee or JC!Yn were here, I wouldn't have admitted to procrastination. I have self-preservation skills."

"And you don't think I'd be on your ass?" Changmin gasped dramatically with a hand pressed to his chest.

With tongue in cheek, Sunwoo grinned amusedly. He shook his head, adjusting the hood pulled over him. "Hyung, you can't ding me for procrastination when you procrastinate religiously. Remember that one time you had to beg Professor Ka—"

"Yah! Nobody asked for specifics!"

Sunwoo's chuckle turned into nervous laughter as Changmin reached across the island with a claw-shaped hand. "Ah! No! You stay away—go practice!"

Changmin snickered. "Chicken."

Soon after, Changmin indeed took his leave to head over to the performing arts hall. Sunwoo drained the juice in his cup and refilled it before making a beeline for his bedroom.

The livestream was projected to last for an hour, about the length of a usual episode, but you did say the timing wasn't set in stone. Sunwoo set himself up at his desk, signing into the platform you always used. Over the past couple of months he was Rhapsody, he'd become one of your regulars, suggesting new and old songs from his music library, talking about his day or week or something the last podcast had reminded him of. He liked to think that the two of you were friends—parasocially.

A guy could dream, right?

He was on his phone when the waiting room faded and became a split screen: one half with a sketched sign that read "ON AIR: COMING TO YOU LIVE!" with a little dove in headphones, and the other half was a live chat feed that people who were tuned in could use. There was both a public and private feature, and Sunwoo kept his on the public chat, unafraid of what a bunch of other people behind anonymous names and screens could do to scare him.

"Oh! Woah, I think that worked," came your voice, loud and clear, through his laptop speakers.

He smiled to himself, reaching over to settle his fingers on his keyboard. A tingling feeling bubbled up inside him, starting from his toes and rocketing up through his chest. He could actually talk to you in real time today.

You clapped lightly on the other side, relief pouring through your voice. "Thank god. I'm supposed to be good with some computer programs, but this livestream feature is kind of new. How're we doing, everyone? It seems…" A couple clicks from your end, "... We've got some more people rolling in. I'll give it a couple minutes, but let me know who we've got here today! It's so cool seeing you guys live!"

Sunwoo was swift to type out a greeting message: Dovey hi!! He paired it with a little, hand-waving emoji.

The small gasp of delight from you had him giggling to himself. "Oh my god, Rhapsody! Hi, best friend, welcome in! We might actually be able to hold a conversation for once," you chuckled.

rhapsody anonymous: yeah fs haha

rhapsody anonymous: did u have a good week? it felt weird without an ep from u 🤧

"Oh! Yeah, haha, sorry about that—”

He rushed to type as you continued with answering his question: No no! Don’t worry, I don’t blame you or anything lol it’s just something I look forward to every week.

“...Ah,” you said after skimming over his message. “Understood—and aw, I’m glad it’s something you look forward to every week. That makes me really happy to hear… oh! It looks like the numbers are becoming a little stagnant, so I’m gonna get started. Hi, everyone! Welcome to the live edition of Songbird Station. I’m your host…”

— ✶

An hour later, Sunwoo ended up seated at the kitchen counter, drinking orange juice straight out of the nearly-depleted carton, while the livestream continued on. The whole experience had been one of a kind, and by the way you were able to seamlessly speak and engage with your audience for the entire time made Sunwoo feel warm and fuzzy. He was glad this was working out for you.

There was a gradual lull in conversation, however, and you were just wrapping up your last topic to bring your first livestream to an organic stop.

“...wanna thank you all for being here, of course. 57 people listening to my voice for over an hour is kind of crazy, but this was a lot of fun!...”

Sunwoo was just about to start typing up a message to you when his phone buzzed on the counter beside his laptop. He startled, fumbling with the device and grumbling under his breath until he saw who it was and picked up the call.

“Hyung?” He squeezed the phone between his ear and shoulder, attempting to finish his private message to you. I was wondering if I could…|

Changmin’s voice came out breathy and panting like he had just finished a run-through. “Hey, are you done with your assignment yet?”

I was wondering if I could hang back for…| “Huh?” Why couldn’t he multitask, for god’s sake? I was wondering if I could hang back for a minute? If it’s weird though, then it’s no problem…|

No, that wasn’t weird, right? Totally not. He pressed the 'enter' key, satisfied with the message.

“What were you saying?” Sunwoo asked and picked up the phone with his hand. His eyes flickered back to his laptop screen to find that you had sent him a private message back.

Changmin let out a grumbling sigh. “I was just thinking—”

“Uh oh,” Sunwoo joked.

He could hear his friend’s eye roll from here. “When you get here Kim Sunwoo…”

“Okay, okay, okay!” He chuckled as he read your message and silently punched the air in celebration. “What do you want? I was in the middle of something.”

“Rude! And I was calling you because I was thinking about you,” Changmin huffed. “Anyway, I was just going over some of the movement for Juyeon and my ‘Light a Flame’ duet, right? And I came up with this combo that would be perfect for three people—”

Sunwoo sucked in a breath. “Oh, nonono!”

“But!”

“No!” Sunwoo protested. “Hyung, you know that I don’t… y’know, I can’t dance up there with you and Juyeon hyung! That’s way too much pressure; you’re both so good at dance.” He pressed his finger against the edge of the counter and began mindlessly dragging it along the surface. There had originally been plans of Sunwoo joining Changmin and Juyeon’s dance partnership for this year’s winter showcase performance, but Sunwoo backed out. The winter showcase was far too large of an event for Sunwoo could even fathom participating in, let alone dancing with two of the best dancers he knew. There was just no way.

Changmin sighed from the other end. He’d heard this argument before and he’d argued against this argument plenty of times. “Okay, fine. See you in how long?”

Sunwoo placed his phone onto the counter again so he could tell you that he was still here and hadn’t just left you hanging. “Uh, give me like, thirty minutes.”

“Alright. I better see your ass here in thirty minutes, Sunwoo.”

“Yeah, I know. See ya, hyung.” He hung up then, shoulders sagging slightly from the conversation. It wasn’t like he had to participate in the winter showcase—he was no dance major, nor was he a dance minor. He technically hadn’t even decided on a minor, and had only been focusing on getting this degree finished. Whether or not he had chosen a minor yet was not his parents’ favorite discussion when they visited him, but… it would get done when he had the energy to. He didn’t want to bring up the idea of a dance minor—he saw what it did to Changmin and his parents’ relationship and—well, it was just better this way, for now.

Having finished with his phone call, Sunwoo returned his focus to you, where, god bless, you were still waiting for him in the livestream room.

rhapsody anonymous: omg i’m SO sorry!! >< a friend of mine just called and turns out i am awful at multitasking

“No worries,” you laughed. “I figured that was the case. Everything okay, Rhaps?”

The corners of his mouth curled up at the thoughtful ask. Even when the two of you had been classmates, you were new to the school, but still made him feel like the two of you had known each other for longer than simply a few weeks. It only made sense that you were the host of this podcast, the very thing that had been his source of comfort as of late.

rhapsody anon: yeah nothing really serious lol

rhapsody anon: i just have this friend who’s doing the winter showcase and i was supposed to go to the practice room with him

rhapsody anon: actually, i was going to dance and perform w him too but ig i kind of chickened out

He didn’t know why he was telling you all of this; this wasn’t even what he originally intended to talk to you about.

He heard you make a soft sound of understanding. You shifted in your seat. “I see… the winter showcase is a big event though, as I’ve heard from peers and friends. It's probably really intimidating to even perform in the pre-show, you know? Are you a dance student, by chance?”

rhapsody anon: i’m not, but i’ve taken the intro to hiphop course my freshman year and i usually dance for fun w my friend

rhapsody anon: i think i’ve just always been kind of insecure in my abilities to keep up w him?

“Is he a dance major?”

rhapsody anon: he is

Sunwoo leaned back from the laptop and took his hands off the keyboard. He settled his chin onto his folded arms as he listened to your reply.

“Well, I don’t think you should compare yourself to a dance major, right, Rhaps? I mean, it’s not fair to expect more from yourself when he’s clearly had more experience. And if you enjoy dancing, then I don’t see what the harm in trying to perform or even just being satisfied with private practice sessions is!” You paused for a second to gather your thoughts. “What I’m saying is… is that, I can understand where you might feel insecure, and that’s normal, y’know? And if you’re feeling a little unprepared for this year, there’s always future opportunities.”

Sunwoo peered up at his screen as if he could see you on the other side, speaking to him. He sat up to type out a response. Thanks for hearing me out, it’s nice to feel validated. Sorry this kind of took a downer tone haha it wasn’t my intention, I swear!

You giggled and he swore he was smiling a little too wide now. “No worries, really! I’m glad I could be of help, even if it’s to make sure that you know your feelings are valid. If I’m being honest, one of the few reasons why I even started this podcast thing was to kind of just put my experiences out there in search of validity.” You sighed, “I dunno. It’s a story for another time. I am curious, though, as to why you originally wanted to hang out with me after the others left.”

Oh, right. Sunwoo bit his lip.

rhapsody anonymous: this isn’t really a song rec, but ig it kind of is… i feel like superstar by taylor swift reminds me of u

He held his breath after he pressed the ‘enter’ key.

“Oh…” your voice was soft in surprise, and it made something like giddiness spike in his chest. “That’s really sweet, Rhaps. I… I’m not sure what to say, but thank you. Genuinely.”

rhapsody anonymous: u don’t have to say anything!! really haha ur work and ur words have touched a lot of people

“Even you?”

rhapsody anonymous: esp me

And even after you and he had said goodbye to one another and logged off; even after he was well out of the apartment and on his way to campus, that giddy feeling in his chest still hadn’t left him.

EPISODE FOUR: SHOT THROUGH THE HEART! [AND WE’RE ALL IN PAIN]

DEAD week was not typically something Sunwoo had to worry about, as fortunate as that sounded. There were, obviously, classes that made his stomach queasy and made him feel like the world was crumbling into Hot Cheeto dust, but his classes this quarter had been merciful to say the least. The week before finals week was always something that could be visibly observed on campus: students either manifesting like zombies or zooming around to claim seats in the library; grades rising and falling like the housing market; and snacks and coffee being more commonly consumed than any other moment of the quarter.

It was always a hot pile of shit, no matter the student or major.

“Someone just needs to tell Ouyang to chill!”

“Uh-huh.”

“For sure.”

“—it’s not like we’re the root of all of his problems! I’m just trying to graduate!” Eric halted in the middle of the hallway, causing Sunwoo, whose face was nose-deep in his phone screen, to ram into the baseball player’s back.

“Ow!” He hissed, furiously rubbing the place at his forehead that had collided with the nape of Eric’s neck.

“You’re not paying attention,” said Eric, flatly. He turned to Jacob, who also wasn’t paying attention. “Hyung!”

Jacob’s head lifted from where he was busy smiling down at some orange cat video. “What? Nacho’s learning the periodic table—” He flipped his phone around to show Eric, his face immediately lighting up as he forgot about why he was even mad in the first place.

The three of them were currently in the front half of the performing arts building, heading inwards from the main hall to the backstage area where a couple of their friends were already hanging out. Sunwoo had bumped into Jacob and Eric on his way from one of the campus libraries, and with nothing else better to do (than to study), he tagged along to go find someone to bother. (Jacob and Eric were both STEM majors though, which was weird to Sunwoo since… well, shouldn’t they be bunkered up somewhere trying to survive this quarter’s dead week? Anyways…)

Sunwoo sighed and brushed past his two friends to venture deeper into the building. He could already hear somebody’s music blasting from the sound booth as they rehearsed onstage. Over the past several weeks, everyone had been busy preparing for the winter showcase happening at the end of finals week, right before spring break. Ever since Sunwoo’s talk with you over livestream, he had felt a little better about not joining Changmin and Juyeon on stage this year. Plus, from what he could tell when he watched them practice, they already looked pretty much perfect with just the two of them.

Though, there would always be a part of him that wished he really had the courage to go up there and show the audience what he was made of.

Sunwoo wandered into the main auditorium with his hands tucked into his pockets and the doors closing softly behind him. There was indeed a group practicing their number on the stage at the moment. He could even make out the shapes moving from behind the curtains in the wings as other tech members and dancers rushed to and fro to get to where they needed to. Somewhere in that mass of chaos were his friends.

A familiar voice had him lifting his head toward the sound booth. His eyes widened when he recognized you standing in the booth with Bang Chan, one of the more prominent sound and lighting directors working here at the performing arts center. However, it looked like you were leaving, your hands clumsily wrestling with the zipper on your bag while you continued your conversation with Chan, and while attempting to walk backwards out of the sound booth.

Oh my god, you were going to trip on something if he didn’t help—

Both Sunwoo and Chan pounced toward you as the thought occurred to both of them at the same time.

“Yn, careful!” Sunwoo yelled, as he dove for your phone.

Chan steadied you at the bicep, and you hugged your bag to your chest with a flustered grin. “Oops?”

Chan ruffled your hair as he let you go, nodding his hello to Sunwoo, then ducking back into the booth. You stepped out into the main room and shut the door behind you. “Thanks,” you said to him sheepishly, accepting your phone from him.

The two of you naturally fell into step with one another and Sunwoo let you lead him back out towards the main entrance again. “I didn’t know you worked behind the scenes here,” he told you, cupping the back of his head. If he racked his brain, he couldn’t recall hearing about it from your podcast either. “This is the second time I’ve seen you here,” he chuckled.

You stopped for a minute in the middle of the hallway to get a hold of your things. You had to hike your knee up to properly zip your backpack before hauling it over your shoulder. “Oh, that’s right! Just a couple days ago you were here with your friends, right?”

He gave a bashful sort of grin. He had been here a couple days ago when he came to bother Changmin, and ended up hanging out backstage while Hyunjae’s best friend hosted auditions for her play. It was then that he had seen you hustling about with the Lee Jihoon about lights. He’d been caught so off-guard by seeing you; it was a miracle he managed to even get Changmin to forget about that whole interaction. “Yeah, sorry I was kind of… weird. I didn’t expect you, that's all.”

“Lots of surprise run-ins with us, huh,” you teased, the side of your arm bumping with his as you walked.

Us.

“It’s nice to see you more often though.”

You nodded. “The feeling’s mutual, Sunwoo. Thanks for warning me earlier; I’m usually more careful with my stuff, especially when I’ve got special cargo.” As you said this, you reached back to pat your backpack affectionately.

Sunwoo lifted a brow, opening the door for you as the two of you stepped out into the lobby. “Oh? What kind of special cargo?”

The smile on your face widened. “It’s, uhm, a recording mic, actually! I’ve been coming by to intern around the tech side of things here, and Chan and Jihoon give me some tips about music production, too.” You trailed off, an idea taking hold in your head, and that wide beam from just seconds ago became this shy, little thing. “Hey… would you maybe be up to listening to something of mine? I mean, it’s kind of a weird request, but your music taste from first quarter was top notch—”

“Yes,” Sunwoo said, without even waiting for you to finish your rambling.

You paused, and he rejoiced in the pure delight on your face. “Really? That’s—this is great. Wait, I’m so excited! We’ll need to find a private place to listen, but—”

“Oh my gosh, Yn?”

Coming in from the front lobby doors was none other than Han Jisung, a fellow second-year whom Sunwoo was familiar with. He was bundled in a massive, puffy cream jacket with his head shoved into a beanie, and his nose was reddened from the cold. Jisung tucked the earbuds in his ears away into their case, waddling over to you both with the joy of a baby penguin. “And Sunwoo! Woah, it’s so cool to see you, man. What’s up?”

Sunwoo clasped his hand in his. “S’cool to see you, too, dude. Yn and I were just on our way out.”

Jisung moved over to you and pulled you in for an affectionate side hug. “Oh, well, that’s nice to hear,” he snickered, wagging his eyebrows at you while you sent him a pointed look.

Wonder what that was all about…

“Anyways,” continued Jisung, “I just came by to bother Channie-hyung. Is he in the box?”

You bobbed your head in affirmation. “Yup. There isn’t anyone else with him right now, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of space for you to bug him.”

“Nice,” he grinned. As he walked away in the direction from which you and Sunwoo came, he sent a wave. “See you both around!”

“Bye!” Both you and Sunwoo called back before resuming your walk out the front entrance.

“So how do you—” The two of you laughed when you both started talking at the same time, saying the same thing. Sunwoo gestured toward you, insisting that you ask the question first. You did: “So how do you know Jisung?”

Sunwoo snorted at the memory. “I, uh, saw him in the hall once and smacked his ass, then asked for his number.”

You had to stop to double over in laughter, clutching your stomach while Sunwoo looked on in flustered amusement. Your face had heated up considerably, and you barely managed to follow him down the steps toward the bus stop. “You what?” You asked, once you could get out anything other than wheezes.

He chuckled, shrugging. “Okay, well, I actually know him from this music summer camp we both went to in high school. I didn’t realize he came to this uni until I saw him last year and… well, made my presence known to him.”

You clapped your hands together and collapsed onto the bus bench. “I was gonna say—that’s one hell of a hello.”

“It’s a true story,” he insisted.

“Oh, I believe you.”

The two of you shared a laugh for a moment and Sunwoo took a seat beside you, his knee bouncing up and down as you waited for the bus to come by. He nudged your shoulder with his. “So what about you then? How do you know Han?”

“Hm? Ah, I just know him ‘cause we share the same major-ish. I’m sound and music production, and he’s just a general music major,” you explained. “We also share a composition class, as well as a writing course. Did you know the guy is a fantastic poet?”

Sunwoo’s eyebrows arched upward. “I would not be surprised; the guy’s an ace.”

“Totally agree.” You fidgeted with your phone between your hands. “He was also one of my first friends here after I transferred. He’s kind of shy, but he’s one of the good eggs you can meet.”

A nod. He glanced over at you, his eyes breathing in the far away look on your face. “Yeah, he is. But hey, at least you got to befriend him then, hm? Maybe some things are just meant to be.”

You met his gaze and Sunwoo felt his heart stutter into a gallop. “Yeah,” you murmured, “I think so, too.”

— ✶

You and Sunwoo ended up in one of the booths of the restaurants on the Avenue. It was a cozy, little hole in the wall with soup that tasted like home and made your belly feel warm and content. You had set up shop at your table, your laptop with the audio file pulled up and your wired earbuds plugged in. You had to power all of your will into not showing Sunwoo how nervous you were for him to listen to this—your fingers shook slightly even as you passed him both of your earbuds.

In an attempt to pass off as cool, calm and totally collected, you brought your glass of water to your mouth to sip on. You'd thought to order food first, then let Sunwoo listen to the file.

"Let me know if you can't hear anything," you blurted out just before he put the buds in.

He paused, then smiled. "I got it," he assured you warmly.

Once the buds were fitted and the song started playing, you could only wait and watch to gauge his reaction.

At first, his eyes widened a smidge. Then he slowly began nodding to the beat, eyes falling closed as he soaked in the electric guitar chords mixed in that Jisung helped you out with. You watched him lean back in his seat… saw the smile bloom on his face, wide like a flower opening its petals to greet the brilliant sun.

And that beautiful smile… oh, he was so pretty when he smiled.

It was a couple minutes later that his eyelids finally fluttered open, and yet that smile on his face remained ingrained there. He passed you your earbuds as you awaited the verdict. "Girl, you've got pipes," he said with emphasis, his face screwed up in an expression one could only describe as appreciative. "Like—oh my god, I want that bridge tattooed on my forehead," he groaned and leaned forward to bury his face in his palms.

Your heart could fly, soar, literally ascend to fucking space! You smiled, big and wide, as you wrapped up the wire chords around three fingers. "I'm glad you liked it."

"Liked it?" He perked up, then melted to the table as he mumbled into his hoodie sleeve, "I could kis…" You didn't catch the end bit of his sentence as his voice dissipated into the fabric of his shirt.

"What'd you say?"

When he lifted his head, his cheekbones had flushed a shade of rose gold. He cupped the back of his neck with a nervous laugh, "Nothing! It was nothing. I just—I just love it, Yn. Really, I mean it. I'm not just saying that because we're friends—"

"Ah, so we're friends?" You jested, even as your heart skipped like a pebble across the surface of a lake.

Sunwoo blinked, lips pursed. "We're not friends?"

"No, I'm only kidding!" You said and leaned your cheek against your fist. "Your reaction was cute though."

You swore something shuddered across his face, but you didn't have much time to analyze it when you felt a presence make himself clear at the head of the table.

Yangyang appeared in a warm-looking jacket and scarf, his eyes flickering curiously between you and Sunwoo. You suddenly felt an anxious spike in your chest at the thought of what this might have looked like to him. That was, until he saw the laptop, of course. You saw the relief in his shoulders, the ease in which he smiled now. "Hey Yn-ie, didn't know you'd be here."

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Sunwoo scratch his jawline, then scoot forward and offer his hand to Yangyang. "Hey, I'm Sunwoo. You're Yangyang, aren't you?"

Yangyang clasped Sunwoo's hand good naturedly with a typical gummy smile. "Yeah, that's me. It's nice to meet you."

"I was just showing him the project," you said next, drawing both of the boys' attention to you.

"Ah," your friend nodded. "How'd you like it, Sunwoo?"

Sunwoo lit up. "It was—incredible. I don't even know how to describe it, y'know? If it was on my Spotify, it'd probably be on my Wrapped."

There went your heart, goodness. You and Sunwoo locked eyes across the table, and you wished you could convey how much his words meant to you by just a look.

"Totally agree," Yangyang nodded. "My Yn-ie's got a gift and she knows how to use it." He gave your head a gentle pat, and heat rose to your cheeks from the bombardment of attention. It hit you subtly, an epiphany—

Yangyang cleared his throat then and returned his hand to his side. "Anyways, I'll leave you two to it. I'll talk to you later?" He asked you as he was already taking a step backward.

—the heat wasn't for him. It simply wasn't.

"Yeah! I'll shoot you a text later," you promised. You realized then that you had barely even spoken to Yangyang since your Valentine's Day date ended several weeks ago. There had just been a lot of mixed feelings churning around in your head that needed time to be sorted out. (And it was currently being resolved.) With a slight inward grimace, you turned your focus back to the guy you'd brought here in the first place.

Sunwoo slid your laptop over to your side of the table. "Soooo… you and Yangyang, huh?" He laughed, and you weren't certain, but it sounded a bit unsteady.

You played with the hem of your sweater sleeve. "I mean, kind of? Not really? We went on that date a while back, if you remember, but that's about it."

He leaned in. "Yeah, I remember."

"Yeah, and we also haven't had time to really properly talk since?" You winced. "I guess it's not really as bad as I make it sound. It's just that, we've pretty much known each other since primary school. He had just moved from Taiwan, and we were pretty good friends. And he would move back and forth between here and this one town in Germany, but we would always—" you made a vague gesture, "—find each other? Is that the word?"

You let out a breathy sort of laugh. "I'm sorry, I dunno why I'm telling you my history with this guy. It's stupid."

Sunwoo frowned and shook his head. "It's not stupid, Yn."

You inhaled, then chewed on your cheek. "It's just that I always feel like people don't really stick around, at least for me. But Yangyang… he's been one of the few constants in my life, and I'm really grateful for that."

"I'm sensing there's a 'but' with this."

You indulged him. "But I'm starting to think that maybe I can't really see him as that kind of constant, if that makes sense." Your brows furrowed in thought. The boat you were on rocked roughly with the waves, the water turbulent and unsteady, as if at any moment it could throw you off. But you were used to the rocking, and you weren't sure why you should be so used to it. Settling for Yangyang even though you were beginning to realize that he probably wasn't The One? That was like staying docked in a home port you'd grown used to when you yearned for the horizon.

You heard Sunwoo crack his knuckles, and perhaps there really was a certain sheen to his eyes then. "I don't want to put words in your mouth," he drawled carefully, "and I can't imagine how exactly you feel and I don't know your whole story. But it has to be hard when it feels like, I don't know, like people are moving on without you." The earnestness in his eyes made his dark brown eyes deeper and richer. "And maybe it's comfortable with Yangyang and you want to try with him because you know that you two will always somehow find each other again."

"You kind of put what I was thinking into coherent sentences there," you mused, the corners of your lips curling upward.

Sunwoo reflected your expression. "That's good to hear, because I was pretty sure I sounded arrogant."

You laughed then, shaking your head. "No, I appreciated that. And you got it right." Breathing a sigh, you saw a waiter coming by to drop off the food the two of you had ordered. "I think it's just taken me some time with myself and with—with other people to make me realize it."

He glanced up with thanks as the waiter passed you your meals, and you swore you saw his hand make a move to reach for yours across the table. But he stopped short, and instead, helped move your hot bowl of soup over to you. "You never know," he said sheepishly, "The One could be right under your nose."

— ✶

eric 🤨: dude where did u go??? cobie hyung and i looked up and u disappeared into thin air

eric 🤨: omg jisung said u went somewhere w a GIRL??? IS THIS THE GIRL U WERE GETTING ALL DRUNK AND SAD ABT 👀

sunwoo’s phone: YAH!!! OH MY GOD STFU

eric 🤨: no.

EPISODE FIVE: LOTS OF THINGS BLOOM IN SPRING

“SO her name is DJ Dove?”

Sunwoo made a face around his toothbrush as he spat the frothy white into the sink bowl. “For the millionth time, yes.” Through the mirror, Sunwoo watched Eric’s face as his roommate perched himself atop the kitchen counter and went quiet, his face pensive. After coming home to Eric’s confrontation, Sunwoo promised to explain it all in the morning to him.

It was unfortunately the morning, meaning Sunwoo had spent the past hour bringing Eric up to speed on his nonexistent love life. Fortunately, it was also a Wednesday morning, which meant you had just posted your newest episode of the podcast, and Sunwoo could force Eric to listen to it with him. A part of him was tense at the thought of no longer “gatekeeping” his little secret that he had kept for the past several months, but this was Eric, one of his best friends. Maybe this would lift a weight off of Sunwoo’s chest by finally telling someone.

“...I’m still in the thrall of dead week,” your voice blasted from the speaker of Sunwoo’s phone at high volume, “and it’s come to my attention that next quarter will probably be a lot for me. I guess this is me forewarning you all that I might be late with some episodes because I’ve got this new internship thing.”

Sunwoo dunked his face into the sink bowl as he splashed water over his lathered foam cleanser. “She’s talking about her internship at the performing arts center.”

“How do you—never mind, forget I asked.”

Sunwoo patted his face dry, then opened the medicine cabinet for all of the skincare products he used to start off the day.

“...It’s been awhile since I’ve recommended something myself, so today, do enjoy ‘gone too long’ by lullaboy with me.” The song began a few seconds after you queued it up, and the apartment was then filled with muted vocals and strings.

Sunwoo straightened. He and Eric went quiet for a while as they both let the song sink in. Sunwoo continued to slather sunscreen on his face and neck, and Eric had started up the stove to make a batch of ramen for the both of them.

A peculiar sensation draped itself over Sunwoo’s shoulders, a blanket of something that wasn’t quite calm and wasn’t quite jittery. He didn’t know how to pinpoint or label the weird tightness in his chest. The song was strangely intimate, as almost all the music Sunwoo listened to was, but when it came from another person, it was always a whole new level of intimate. Whenever someone recommended a song, it was a way to view a piece of them—perhaps not a large piece, but a piece nonetheless. If eyes were the windows to the soul, then music was the viewfinder.

Maybe he missed you. But that didn’t make sense—it… it couldn’t make sense. He saw you yesterday, and he was listening to you now. How could he miss you?

“She has good taste,” Eric murmured as the song faded out.

Sunwoo nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah. She does.”

“...Hopefully when you miss me you’ll play that song,” he heard you say in a lighthearted tone, even though he felt almost like the complete opposite. “On that note, Rhaps sent in a message asking about the dance showcase coming up! ‘Are you planning on going, and if so, any acts you’re looking forward to? Isn’t it crazy that we could be sitting next to each other and never even know?’ —”

Eric perked up, his head peering over his shoulder to look at Sunwoo as he came out of the bathroom to join Eric in the kitchen. “That’s you? Rhaps?”

“Rhapsody Anonymous,” Sunwoo corrected. “And don’t judge me!” He added with a pointed look, finger jabbing in Eric’s direction.

Eric shook his head with a giddy sort of grin. “I didn’t say anything.”

For a moment, the two boys went quiet with only your voice and the sounds of the stove keeping them company.

A thought occurred to Eric though, and he worried his bottom lip between his teeth. “Does it ever feel like lying?” He asked and gestured for Sunwoo to grab a couple of bowls from the cabinet.

Sunwoo walked over with the soup bowls, then leaned his hip against the counter next to Eric. “Does what feel like lying?”

“Hiding that you know it’s her.”

Well… Sunwoo idly scratched his jaw. “I guess I never thought about it like that,” he said. All this time, he’d figured it was probably better that he didn’t bring it up to you. After all, you used a pseudonym for a reason and didn’t show your face. Maybe this was just supposed to be your secret passion project that you used as a safe space. He didn’t want to burst your bubble by confronting you with that information. How would he even go about doing it? Oh hey, by the way, I’ve known that you’re this podcast host DJ Dove for a very long time? That probably had ‘awkward’ written all over it.

Eric passed him a pointed glance. “Something to think about then.”

— ✶

Finals week had come and gone, a hurricane of destruction in its own right. But when the storm passed, it gave way to the beautiful cherry blossoms blooming in the quad. As per university tradition, the quad was filled to the brim with students, staff, and tourists alike gathering to pose in the falling pink petals that marked the coming of Spring Break. This was no different for Sunwoo’s friend group who was dragged out to the event by none other than Choi Chanhee. In an effort to appease his friend in some aspect, Sunwoo had come dressed in something decently presentable: black cargo pants, blue denim jacket, and his face fitted in a pair of dark frames (that were definitely not just frames or missing the lenses…).

He shoved his hands into his pockets after taking a peak at the time on his watch. The group had been here for about ten minutes thus far, and half of them had already split off with their significant others to take their own rounds about the quad. They weren't the only ones—in fact, there were probably as many couples as there were people taking grad photos and cosplay photos.

And wait, someone had come in their wedding dress—nothing spelled out Sunwoo's singleness more potently than a couple getting married.

He took a panoramic glance and accidentally watched another couple go in for a kiss. He looked away with a slight frown, blowing a curl out of his eyes. "I hate this more than Valentine's Day," he grumbled.

From beside him, Kevin Moon sighed as he tested a shot with his camera and had to adjust the settings for the right exposure. "You're telling me." When he raised his camera up again, he immediately had to bring it back down with a deadpan expression, "At least on Valentine's Day, people won't photobomb you."

As the group's self-proclaimed Dad, Lee Sangyeon, summoned the attention of the boys who were present for a partial group photo. Sunwoo smiled for it, then returned to his frown. Chanhee had his camera held up as he attempted to take a selfie shot since he had been staking out this one tree trunk that a group of people had just left. Sunwoo had to admire the way Chanhee wordlessly swooped in like a vulture over a dead carcass.

"Aye, Kim Sunwoo," Chanhee exclaimed and beckoned Sunwoo over with a curl of his two fingers. Chanhee's head scanned the immediate area and his nose wrinkled when he realized he was missing someone. "Where did Changmin go? He was literally right… ah."

Chanhee's voice trailed off and a sly, little grin when he located the man in question. "Look."

Sunwoo followed Chanhee's gaze across the field to where he was sneaking up behind a familiar person. Sunwoo had met this girl twice, once when he and Changmin had gone looking for Jacob and the other when he went with Changmin to go see her for moral support. Both times, strangely, had been at the lab. Huh, did she even go home…?

But then Sunwoo observed the way Changmin and CM!Yn looked at each other. Though Sunwoo had seen Changmin's eyes light up before, this was a different sort of twinkle, something softer. There had always been a cloud hanging over Changmin when it came to this girl, always some kind of bittersweetness that held him back. It made a smile crawl onto his lips at the sight of Changmin so happy.

"Wah," Chanhee murmured in awe. "They really mended their relationship well, don't you think?"

Sunwoo pursed his lips with an indulgent nod. "Yeah, I'd think so."

His friend sighed. "Oh, well. Looks like it's just us two then."

Sunwoo stepped forward and took Chanhee's phone from him, swiftly changing it to the forward facing camera. Chanhee struck a few poses beneath the blush pink trees as he soaked in the golden hour sunlight streaking across the lawn. Eventually, Sunwoo turned the camera back around to take shots of both himself and Chanhee.

He adjusted the phone so that the selfie mode could capture both of them when he spotted Chanhee scuttling back over toward him with a pile of pink petals collected in his palms.

Sunwoo's eyes went wide and he leapt backward away from his grinning friend. "Hyung, come on, let's talk about this."

Chanhee cackled and inched forward still. His hair was the exact same color as the flowers cupped in his palms. "Sunwoo-ah," he sang, "I think your hair needs a bit of color."

"I just did my hair this morning!" He whined and pleaded desperately. The last thing he needed was to be plucking stray petals from his curls later tonight. When Chanhee still wouldn't quit, adrenaline began to pump through Sunwoo's veins in anticipation for what he needed to do next. "Chanhee hyung! We can be civil about this."

"Civility is overrated!"

Just as Chanhee pounced, Sunwoo swerved on the ball of his foot and made a mad dash toward the other side of the quad. Chanhee's giggles filled the late afternoon air like the twinkling of bells, and though it was probably an amusing sight for onlookers, Sunwoo was running for his life.

Sunwoo pumped his legs furiously as he weaved in between people standing and taking their pictures, screaming out apologies for photobombing them as he went. And when he nearly tripped over someone's dog, he managed to lock eyes with yours.

You. Oh my god, you were here.

He had little time to fully comprehend what he was about to do, but he made a beeline for you.

"Sunwoo, hey—oh!"

Sunwoo grabbed your shoulders and careened himself behind you, his face partially hidden behind yours. "I'm sorry, but—" he screeched, "—he's threatening to ruin my hair!"

Chanhee laughed as he stopped in front of you and Sunwoo. His pale cheeks were dusted with the color of the flowers in the air. "Ah, well, hello. This isn't very gentlemanly of you, Sunwoo. Who's this?" He threw Sunwoo a look over your shoulder.

Fuck. He hadn't thought this one through.

Sunwoo laughed sheepishly and let go of your shoulders to clasp the back of his neck. It was only then he realized you were wearing a delicate, pastel sundress with cherry blossoms littered in your own hair. A gentle breeze wafted by and through your skirt and brushed back a few strands of your hair too.

Pretty…

"This is," he stammered, snapping out of his daze, "Yn. Yn-ie, this is one of my close friends, Chanhee."

"It's nice to meet you," Chanhee said with a warm smile and slight bow of his head.

You gave a little wave. "Nice to meet you, too, despite the circumstances."

"I would wave back," Chanhee gestured with his hand of flowers, "but this is a nice pile, don't you think?"

To your credit, you played along. You laughed, "I totally agree. It definitely should not be wasted on giving me a wave. Though, I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to get back at Sunwoo." You turned your head and cocked a brow at him, to which he smiled back boyishly.

Chanhee considered you again for a moment. "I like your style. I guess I'll just… leave you to it then," he drawled and sent Sunwoo very pointed glances with his eyes toward you. Something about the way Chanhee's eyes narrowed minutely made Sunwoo want to hide behind you again.

Chanhee whistled a merry tune as he went on his way, leaving you and Sunwoo to your own devices as he probably went to go find his next victim.

"I'm so sorry about that," Sunwoo lamented as soon as Chanhee was out of ear shot. "I did not mean to make you a human shield."

You chuckled. "It's okay, dude, really. Definitely didn't think I'd find anyone I knew in this mess, so it's nice seeing you out here."

Sunwoo gave you yet another once over and felt heat crawl up the column of his neck. "I—you look really pretty," he said, gesturing to your outfit.

"Oh, thank you," you chirped. "You clean up quite well yourself."

The two of you shared a smile then and for a second, Sunwoo's mouth went dry and no words leapt from his tongue. They all remained lodged in his throat where his heartbeat went pitter-patter.

He cleared his throat, breaking eye contact with you for a moment.

You made a vague nod toward one of the open benches lining the perimeter of the quad, an invitation. "Wanna come sit with me?"

"Do I?" Yes. The answer was yes.

When you and Sunwoo were seated side by side, centimeters separating your arms and legs from touching the other, his heart still had not settled. The adrenaline, in fact, also had her to dissipate. With wide eyes, he soaked everything in.

"Did you go to the winter showcase on Friday night?" He blurted, turning to you.

You met his gaze. "I did. It was such a cool experience, especially since it was my first time. Did you?"

He nodded, locking his lips. "I did, yeah," he murmured. "I had a couple friends performing, so we all went to cheer them on. It's always a really great time though; I'm glad you got to go."

"Oh, that's nice. I always find dancers so impressive," you said with a wistful gleam in your eyes. "Do you dance?"

He found himself fidgeting with Chanhee's phone that he still held onto in his lap. "A little," he admitted bashfully. "I took an intro to hip-hop class last year, and I sometimes dance with my friends. Just—not in public," he said.

For a second, something flickered across your face. But he must have been dreaming because it was gone as quickly as it came.

"So music and dance? You're a multi-talented threat, Sunwoo."

"Aw, not really," he giggled. He wanted to hide his burning face in the collar of his jacket, but there was something about you that also made him unafraid to show you this side of him. Actually, you made this side of him come out. He wasn't usually so terribly shy, always tumbling over his words and doing diction cartwheels… communications major, his ass. "What about you? You're literally a musical genius. You should be on my Spotify Wrapped, Yn."

This time, he could relish in making you flustered. "Aye, you can't say that and expect me not to wanna…" You lost your own words, biting your tongue.

He didn't know what got into him, but he leaned forward closer to you. "Expect you not to what?" He asked lowly, teasingly.

Your breath hitched in your throat, and he swore his own rapidly-beating organ was going to come flying out of his chest.

"Expect me not to—steal your glasses!" With a high-pitched squeal, you snatched the lensless frames from right off his nose.

Sunwoo gasped in scandal, diving to grab them back, but you had already stood up from the bench. "Yah! Those were expensive frames!"

Your face lit up as you donned them. "You'll have to take it off my face then!"

"Bet!" And he lurched after you as you took off into the setting sun.

Your voices echoed across the quad: "Jisuuuuuung! Jisung, save me!"

"Jisung can't save you when he's scared of me!"

EPISODE SIX: AND THE MUSES ARE OFF!

"IT'S not a date!"

"It's a date!"

"It's not a date!" Sunwoo stopped abruptly in the middle of his living room where he had been wearing a hole in the wood floors from pacing. He whirled on his sock-clad heels to face his sofa of judges, Changmin and Chanhee. Eric was out with his girlfriend watching the newest action movie that had come out over Spring Break. "She would say if it was a date, right?"

Chanhee smacked his palm against his forehead with a puff of air. Changmin, however, leaned back on the couch with a ponderous look on his face and rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "She probably would. She seems like she has more balls than you."

"Hey!"

Changmin grinned. "Just saying." He then leaned down to pick up his duffle bag sitting at his feet. "I've gotta run now, but let me know how it goes."

Sunwoo leveled a scowl at him as he passed by to go to the door. "I hope CM!Yn trips you in the practice room."

"Into her arms!" He hollered back, which was swiftly followed by the front door slamming shut.

While Changmin was headed out to meet CM!Yn at the practice room for her first time returning to dance after three years, Sunwoo and Chanhee were left to prepare Sunwoo for today's agenda. Yesterday, you and he had traded numbers, to which you had immediately asked if he'd wanted to hang out with you some more over Spring Break. The answer had been as easy as counting to three.

Now the only problem was to not freak out over it.

"You're picking up lunch, aren't you?" Chanhee asked as he shoved Sunwoo into the bathroom.

Sunwoo nodded shallowly and picked up his round brush and blow-dryer. "Mhm. I'm meeting her at the performing arts building, and we're gonna take the metro up to Lake Anchor. Ever been up there?"

Chanhee fixed the collar of Sunwoo's white button-up, then snatched the brush and blowdryer out of his hands to do it for him. "Nope. Heard it's nice up there though."

"Yeah," Sunwoo muttered, nearly dropping the serum bottle in his hands. "She said her friend Sieun recommended it."

"Ah."

It wouldn't have felt like a date as much if Sunwoo hadn't searched up Lake Anchor when you'd texted him about it last night. The place was gorgeous, a certified calendar-worthy landscape with purple mountain majesties in the back and shores lined with emerald green hills and willow trees. It didn't help that the Reddit pages all deemed it a "couple's picnic spot you can't miss." Oh, he wasn't going to miss it, all right.

Thirty minutes later, he found himself outside the doors to the performing arts center where you said you were currently taking a tech lesson from Bang Chan. He had a paper bag of snacks and sandwiches from the local convenience store in one hand and the other tucked away into his pocket.

He wondered if he could go in and see you, but he'd already texted you he was waiting outside, and you'd replied you were on your way out.

Just as he was about to go sit on one of the benches, one of the doors at the entrance opened. You emerged out into the late spring morning with the breeze in your hair, a tote bag slung over one shoulder, and a ukulele case hanging from the other. You smiled wide at him and waved.

Sunwoo's lips parted into a grin. "Hi. I got us snacks," he said and lifted the brown bag in his hand.

"Sunwoo, you didn't have to," you pursed your lips fondly, adjusting your bag straps.

"I wanted to." The two of you fell into step in the direction of the closest metro station. It would be a short walk from here into the university Avenue, and down a block to the station. Everything was conveniently placed in the name of accessibility. "Plus, I didn't really eat breakfast," he admitted.

"Me neither." You cupped half your face with your palm. "Aish. I always forget I have, like, yogurt in the fridge, y'know?"

Sunwoo chuckled. "Yeah, I get that. My roommate and I always forget that we have groceries in the fridge because we always see the ramen packets on the counter instead. How was the lesson with Chan?"

The two of you stopped at the intersection to wait for the light. You hugged your ukulele to your chest. "It was good! He's always really helpful and knowledgeable—and patient," you mused. "I hope you don't mind me bringing my uke along though. I thought it would be a nice form of entertainment once we got up to the lake."

"I'm not entertaining enough for you," he gasped melodramatically, jutting his bottom lip out in a pout.

You laughed, and the sound made him break his pout and smile. "I thought I would be the entertaining one for once. D'you know how to play?"

The crosswalk sign turned on for you, and you both made your way across.

"I know some guitar," Sunwoo answered, "but just the basics. They teach you a bit at summer music camp." As he walked by your side, he felt his hand brush against the back of yours. "My hyung—Jacob—he plays guitar pretty well. He's good at singing, too, like you."

He caught your smile from the corner of his eye.

"He did it to woo his girlfriend," he jested, sticking his tongue in his cheek when he remembered how JC!Yn brought him and Haknyeon up to speed last quarter about her love life antics.

You chuckled. "That's a shame you know the trick," you said with an impish twinkle in your eyes, "because that was exactly my plan."

Sunwoo came to a screeching halt in the middle of the walkway, and when you realized he was still staring wide-eyed at the sidewalk, you let out a laugh and went back to drag him along to the station.

— ✶

The view was something out of a magazine, the kind that took one's breath away. You and Sunwoo had claimed the shade beneath a willow tree and settled down across from each other with the brown paper bag flattened out to display the feast he had purchased. There were other small groups of people around, as well, all of whom seemed to have the same ideas as you two as they soaked up sun, read books and napped in the shade, and picnicked along the grassy shoreline. There was even a small booth a mile down the bank that rented out swan-shaped paddle boats and canoes for people to take out onto the water.

You and Sunwoo had pretty much demolished all of the goodies he brought with him. The conversation had been flowing, simple and organic, and you felt at peace—that was the best way to describe it. Maybe it was the location, the circumstance, the company, or all three.

You picked up your ukulele from where it laid in its case by your side. "Any suggestions?" You queried, taking the instrument out and checking that it was in tune.

Sunwoo brushed his hands of crumbs and braced his palms on the grass behind him. It was the visual of him in that white shirt, his sleeves rolled up and collarbone exposed, jawline clean and sharp as he gazed out at the view that made your heart race again. "Hmm," he hummed, "what did you first learn on it?"

"I think I taught myself Lemonade by Jeremy Passion," you said to him and scoured your brain for the right chords. You strummed a G-flat minor, and when it sounded about right, you shifted to B, until you managed to jog your memory of all four chords.

He watched you with softened eyes, his knees pulled up to his chest now as he leaned his cheek onto the tops of his knees. "That's a good song," he murmured.

"Do you know the lyrics?"

He chuckled, shaking his head and flicking his wrist. "Oh, no, no. I don't sing."

"Doesn't sound like you can't," you quipped back with a teasing tilt in your smile. You swayed a little as you played the tune over and over again. "A little shy, are we?"

You could see the smile peeking from his lips even when he tried to hide it in his arms. "I don't sing a lot."

"If I sang the first verse, would you join me in the chorus?" You offered as a compromise. You wouldn't push after this if he still refused, but there was a part of you that felt like you needed to hear this beautiful man sing for you.

He balked for a second, toeing at the dirt. Then, "Okay. I'll join in at the chorus."

A smile bloomed on your face. "Excellent."

You were a little shaky going in yourself. Though you had definitely practiced this song more times than you could count, performing it for someone else was always like playing it for the first time. And you wanted Sunwoo to enjoy it, and to be impressed by you. You wanted to do well for him and to be able to encourage him.

As he said he would, you heard him join in at the chorus—softly, at first, until he was the main vocal and you could bolster him with the harmony.

His eyes met yours, all smiles, as the song continued on. The ending verse… dear god, you could fall over from pure giddiness at the way he nailed the runs and you could do a little showing off with your strumming. Shivers, just plain shivers.

"She's exactly what… I need," he crooned, fingers playing absentmindedly with a strand of grass.

You let the vibrations of the strings linger in the spring air for a moment. It was like the two of you were encased in this bubble all by yourselves; and it was beautiful. It was perfect.

"I knew you could sing," you said to him. "I just had a feeling."

He hung his head, but the smile on his face could not be suppressed. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For encouraging me," he shook his head. "Believing in me."

You pursed your lips together thoughtfully and you wished you could pick his brain without risking total invasion. "Do people not believe in you often?" You asked quietly, shifting to move yourself around the pile of rolled-up trash and to sit next to him.

He followed your lead, scooting himself next to you until you were no longer opposite, but adjacent. "Not people, just me, I think."

"Ah." You could empathize.

He gave a shallow nod. "Do you ever get scared of making a mistake so you don't—I dunno—go for it? And then you end up thinking that maybe not taking that risk was the mistake?"

You set your ukulele down in the case beside you and mirrored his position, arms looped around your legs. "I do. All the time actually, and it's a scary feeling."

"Yeah," he exhaled. "Sometimes I wish I had just gone into music, full-on. I mean, a communication major is useful and all, but there are times when I wonder where I would have been if I had nurtured that passion."

His words resonated within you. There was a reason why you transferred to this university and decided to leave your original plan behind. You had gone into college with an intent to major in Computer Science, but less than a year in, it had become abundantly clear to you how unhappy you were. Leaving wasn't just a choice, it had been a need.

You turned to look at Sunwoo and you felt your chest tug toward him. You bumped his leg with your knee. "You still have time," you said. "It's not too late to still see where that goes."

But you knew the conflict that warred in his head; you knew it all too well because you had experienced it firsthand. It was much more complicated than simply chasing after one's dreams. There was obligations, expectations, fears, and physical obstacles that made the situation more complex than it seemed at first glance. You didn't know his family situation, didn't know the whole story of why he hadn't taken his summer music camp experiences and translated it into his current college career.

You didn't know it all… but you wanted to. You wanted to know everything about him.

"You said you don't have a minor figured out yet, right?" You asked suddenly, an idea coming to you.

He hummed. "Yeah."

"Well, why don't you choose music as your minor?" When he didn't answer right away, you added, "You obviously don't have to decide right this second—it's just something to think about."

(It seemed he had a lot he needed to think about lately.)

Sunwoo rose up and leaned back onto his palms again. When he turned to look at you, a sense of calm had come over him this time. "I really appreciate you."

You broke into a smile. "I appreciate you, too."

"No, really," he laughed, then bit his lip. "I'm sorry for screwing the mood—"

"You're not! Really," you insisted. "I don't mind. I like having meaningful conversations with people who mean a lot to me."

He didn't even have to say anything, because there was this look, one you simply could not ignore. It made your stomach feel like it was swarmed with butterflies and that you were walking on air. It was like watching him smile while listening to the song you wrote, like walking out of the performing arts center to see him waiting for you. He didn't have to say anything because you knew—you had to. There simply could not be any other explanation, right?

EPISODE SEVEN: WHAT IF SOULS FEEL FAMILIAR FOR A REASON?

YOU had been keeping a secret.

"So what you're saying is that you know that he knows, but he doesn't know that you know that he knows?"

You nodded, arms crossed. "Yeah, pretty much."

Jisung made a face and rested his temple against his palm. "My brain hurts."

From where she was perched on a stool, Park Sieun reached over and patted Jisung's nest of hair. "It is a little confusing. Why don't you just confront him about it?"

"I don't know," you huffed and fell back against the wall. The three of you were holed up in one of the private studios on campus. There weren't many buildings opened since it was still Spring Break, but many of the performing arts facilities were. Jisung had offered for you and Sieun to meet him in the room he had snagged and had been currently occupying in order to bust out as much creative energy as possible. (Newsflash, it was not going well, hence, yours and Sieun's invitations.) Studio rooms were pretty much soundproof, so they were good for those in the music programs who wanted a private space to practice or record things.

You had just brought them up to speed on your latest outing with a certain Kim Sunwoo up to Lake Anchor, as Sieun had so graciously suggested to you the other day. After your outing, however, you'd come to one very solid conclusion.

Well, and there was the matter of The Anonymous Situation.

Just this morning, you had opened your inbox to find another submission from one of your regular anonymous listeners whom you affectionately nicknamed Rhaps. Rhapsody Anonymous had begun to pop up in your inbox just last quarter, and it wasn't until recently that you figured out who it was. At first, it seemed completely implausible for Sunwoo to be the face behind the name, because there was no way out of a whole internet of people that he had managed to stumble across your podcast.

To make matters more complex, you had an inkling that he also knew that you were the host of Songbird Station. He had sent you something along the lines of: "Hey Dovey! I stumbled across this song recently that I haven't heard in awhile. It's called Lemonade, and I realize that I've only actually heard the ukulele vers. LOL anyways, I hope you're not too busy this Spring Break and that you've had time to relax. I've always wondered though… have you ever met someone who feels familiar to you? Not like in a 'I've reunited with you after five years' kind of familiar, but like… something more like kindred spirits……"

The whole message had the same amount of sweetness he always used to contact and interact with you, but the recommendation of the song Lemonade simply could not be a mere coincidence. You just couldn't accept that.

You had pondered this for a long time—the possibility of confronting him about his anonymous persona. And of course, there were several things that held you back from doing so. "I mean," you began, pushing off from the wall to slowly pace the little room available, "I don't want to scare him, y'know? Like I'm sure there's a reason why he goes by a pseudonym like I do, and I don't want to burst that bubble.

"Plus," you continued, "what if I'm just thinking about this all wrong? What if I've read the signs completely out of proportion and he's not actually Rhapsody Anonymous? That would just be embarrassing."

You stopped in front of your friends with your hands positioned on your hips and your head quirked to the side in thought.

"Would it really be so bad if you brought it up, like, even subtly?" Sieun asked you, her pink-tinted lips pursed slightly.

Jisung piped up, too, "Yeah, Sunwoo's a pretty cool guy. And based on what I've seen between the two of you and what you've told us, I don't think he would laugh at you or anything."

"I don't think he would laugh at me either," you confessed. "It's just kinda scary."

The two murmured their agreement. Though Sieun was your trio's only extrovert, you actually had no idea how you'd come to be decently close friends with these two. You chalked it up to all frequenting similar social circles. The music program was always a good way to make friends, and you were glad that it had yet to fail you, even in college.

Sieun made a vague gesture with her hand. "I think you should try, though. I'm sure you'll find a way to slide it in," she chuckled.

Jisung snorted. "I have never seen that man so flustered in his life."

"Yeah, he has to be whipped for you, Yn-ie."

A cough from the boy in the room. "Not like you're any more whipped than he is."

"Han Jisung!" You reprimanded, heat swarming to your cheeks.

He broke into a boyish grin, eyes wide and alight like a chipmunk. "What? Don't give me the government name; you know it's true!"

Even Sieun was laughing behind her oh-so delicately placed hand. "He's got a point."

You sighed, wrinkling your nose. "I came for support, not a call out."

"Are those not the same things—AH, I'M SORRY DON'T WHACK ME—!"

— ✶

There was a place on the Avenue with the best lime soda, as Sunwoo had claimed, when the two of you coordinated to get lunch together. Because you had chosen the place of your last hangout, you'd insisted that he chose a place this time. By his texts, he had seemed pleasantly surprised to be hanging out again so soon, and while your nerves were high in anticipation for the coming conversation, you also couldn't wait to spend time with him some more.

You met outside the storefront of a Vietnamese restaurant that you'd only seen in passing, and had yet to try. You glanced up from your phone just as Sunwoo came up from down the road toward you, dressed in jeans and a bomber jacket.

"Hey, sorry to keep you waiting," he said as he swung the door open for you.

You and he ducked inside. "It's no worries," you assured him. "Hope you're not sick of me just yet."

You saw that boyish grin of his as he caught your eyes and signaled the waiter for a table for two. "Never."

When the two of you were seated, your eyes greedily took in the options laid out on the menu. There were just far too many appetizing items—maybe you should have scouted out the menu beforehand.

"Any favorites?" You queried from over the rim of your menu.

Sunwoo was slinging his shoulder bag over his head as you asked this. "Oh, uh, I've been hooked on their shrimp banh xeo ever since my friend Haknyeon introduced me to it. It's like a Vietnamese crepe with stir fried vegetables and a protein. But I think in general, everything is pretty good here."

You hummed. "Mmh, sounds good. And you said the lime soda is really good, too?"

He nodded his head vigorously. "Yes, for sure. That stuff is addicting."

You took his word for it, and soon, the two of you had finished ordering your lunch for the day. A part of you wished you didn't have to disturb the pleasantness of this one-on-one lunch date (was this a date?) with Sunwoo by bringing up the podcast, but what if by clearing the air, it would make your relationship stronger? (Or, it could end in a fiery, hot pile of shit!)

Either way, you would try to get to it as organically as possible.

"So I wanted to talk to you about something." Yes, because this is totally organic, Yn… You grabbed your cup of lime soda and played absentmindedly with the straw.

You gauged his reaction carefully. He perked up. "You—you wanted to talk to me about something?" He parroted, pointing his finger back at himself. "That's not usually good."

"Sorry, no, it's not bad!" You promised. On the way here, you had come up with about a dozen ways to go about this, but at the end of the day, there would only be a yes or no answer. "Do you, by chance, happen to listen to podcasts?"

There was that flicker of recognition over his face, and for a second, he reminded you of something like a puppy with how wide his eyes were. "Uhh," he drawled, scratching his head and feigning nonchalance, "I mean, sometimes. Like casually."

"This might sound weird—"

"Uh-huh."

"—but are you Rhapsody Anonymous?"

If sweat could be animated, that was what you imagined to be dripping down the side of Sunwoo’s face at this moment. He seemed to be figuring out a way to reply. “Would you believe me if I asked you what a Rhapsody Anonymous is?”

“No, not really.”

“What’s a podcast?”

You huffed. “Sunwoo—”

“Okay,” he relented, slumping over slightly. He seemed nervous, in a way, eyes looking anywhere but you, twirling his straw between his thumb and index finger, his foot tapping furiously against the linoleum floor. “I’m sorry! I didn’t really want to bring up the podcast to you because I thought that you enjoyed the anonymity, y’know?” He told you with an apologetic wince. “And I really liked listening to the show, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to interact with you anonymously, as well, and over time, I thought we’d kinda become friends.”

He peered up at you nervously, and guilt wormed its way into the trenches of your gut. From what it seemed, he must have really thought that you would react negatively to him knowing your podcast-hosting side show.

“We are friends,” you finally said and scooped a lock of hair out of your face. “I’m not like, mad, or anything; it was more of me trying to figure out why you felt so familiar to me. And I’m really honored that you liked my podcast enough to want to interact with me there. It means a lot.”

With your small smile, Sunwoo’s posture flooded with relief. “So you’re not mad that I figured out your identity?”

“Definitely not,” you shook your head. “If anything, I’m relieved. I’ve been wondering about your identity for a while now.”

The corners of Sunwoo’s mouth lifted. “That’s… that’s cool. This is really cool,” he said. He let out a sigh, leaning back to slump in his chair with a dramatic expression of anguish on his face. “You have no idea how much it’s been eating me up inside, Dovey! Like how do you balance your two identities? It takes so much energy for me to make sure I keep them separate.”

“I can tell; you weren’t exactly the most inconspicuous,” you teased.

He sat up. “What do you—”

“Well, you kind of told me things in person that you’ve told to me on anonymous, and vice versa.” You recalled to him the two main instances that gave him away to you. It was amusing to see the way he grew increasingly more flustered as you kept talking about it, but you realized that this was probably incredibly painful for him to hear.

Sunwoo had his head in his hands by the time you were done. “I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot.”

He shifted slightly so that his cheek rested against one palm. “And to think that I was being all slick and secretive,” he pouted, scrunching up his nose. “You know, I always thought about being friends with you in real life. That one time that I told you about that one Taylor Swift song that reminded me of you?”

“Superstar?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” He meditated on that thought while sipping his drink. “It just felt right. Like you were far away but also right there in my ear. Does that make sense?”

You knew what the song was about; you could recite the lyrics by heart, and the fact that he associated that song with you… It sent your heart a-flutter. “It does.”

He jolted up so suddenly you nearly fell out of your seat with him. “Not that I’m desperately in love with you or anything,” he added quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth as fast as he mentally skimmed through the lyrics again and again. His cheeks were tinged with pink, and you were sure that your neck looked as hot as it felt.

You pretended your heart didn’t drop to the pit of your stomach when he said that. You laughed along with him, though you weren’t sure why it sounded like it did. “Oh, right, right. I didn’t think that; don’t worry.” All the butterflies in your stomach drooped.

Sunwoo scrambled to find the right words. “I just mean that I always felt like some average Joe, and you were…” He gestured to you helplessly, “you.”

Your heart couldn’t help but give a sharp pang at that.

“And how could I ever be anything more to you than just another listener in your stats, y’know?”

You never thought that you would have ever given off that kind of vibe toward listeners, or come to mean that much to any members of your audience. It had seemed simply impossible for you to ever become large enough to evoke that kind of feeling in people—a popstar to their fans. You folded your arms over the table and leaned toward him. “Sunwoo, you were never just another listener. You made yourself known to me and you made me feel like I wasn’t alone.”

He slowly met your eyes, and you sat up straighter, reaching toward the paper straw wrapper to fidget with. “I originally started this podcast because I needed a place to talk. After feeling like people were always moving on without me, I was trying to search for validation, and I found that in podcasting. I figured that maybe… if I was feeling these things, then there had to be someone out there who was feeling them, too.

“And the song recommendation and music talk was always a nice bonus,” you added. “I had people send in anonymous submissions, but never as frequently as you did, and it made me feel like I was reaching somebody. Not just a random hit every so often, but somebody.”

Sunwoo’s eyes shone in the artificial lighting inside the restaurant, and outside your little bubble, you barely registered the noises around you. It was just you and Sunwoo in this moment in time and space. He swallowed. “You’re really cool, you know that?”

You grabbed your cup of lime soda and softly knocked it against his. “That’s all you, superstar.”

— ✶

Lunch had progressed much smoother after you had confronted Sunwoo, to say the least. You were convinced, however, that you had to meet this Haknyeon character he kept telling you about. He was the one to recommend the Vietnamese restaurant, and he was going to be your new favorite person. (Sorry, Sunwoo.)

When both you and Sunwoo had finished up with lunch, you didn’t want to cut your time with him short and asked him if he’d ever been up to the Farmer’s Market north of the Ave.

“There’s a Farmer’s Market over there?” His mouth gaped as he let you lead him a couple blocks north.

You grinned, tipping your head up to the sky to soak in the last bits of sunlight before it was about to be blanketed over by gray clouds. “Yeah! It’s really neat. They’ve got one going every week, I think.”

The walk up was an easy one as it was a straight shot from the restaurant to the intersection where white picket fences were set up to barricade the street for vendors to set up in. Pop-up tents of different colors and sizes lined either side of the street as people milled about going from vendor to vendor. This had been one of the few gems you’d found when you transferred here, and though you didn’t often visit, you tried to buy at least a couple things to support the local businesses. The fruit here tasted much better than the ones in-stores, anyway.

You and Sunwoo slipped past the fences and into the throng of people, and you watched his face light up in awe as he took in the sights and smells. There were people selling beaded bracelets and art, farmers tossing blueberries into kids’ mouths… it was a lively slice of community here.

“Wow, this is incredible,” he said, but suddenly stopped short. “Oh my god, they’re selling melon pops, Yn-ie!” He pointed out a stand a little further down the way that he had peered over a few heads for. He grabbed your hand and pulled you along with him. “Come on! I’ll treat you to one.”

It wasn’t like you were going to refuse him.

Within another few minutes, you and Sunwoo had both acquired one melon popsicle each. It was adorable to see him bouncing along on the balls of his feet like a kid on Christmas morning as he lapped up the light green juice dripping down the side of the frozen treat.

“—look how pretty those sunflowers are!” He gasped at one of the stands to your left selling bundles of different flowers.

An idea popped into your head, and you scurried over to the booth and traded a two dollar bill for one of the baby sunflowers. You whirled around to where Sunwoo stood and waited for you. “Stand still,” you said while reaching up to tuck the flower behind his ear.

Before he could comprehend what was happening, you pulled out your phone and snapped a quick picture of him.

Sunwoo’s eyes had gone wide, his cheekbones the same color as the roses in the bundles behind you. “What… just happened,” he asked, blinking, then came over to poke your shoulder to get your attention. He peered over at your phone screen to see that you were setting the photo you took as his new contact photo. He let out a hum, “Wow.”

“It’s cute.” You let him see the picture.

He narrowed his eyes at the screen before finally giving it a nod of approval. “Okay, good enough.”

You scoffed, lightly hitting his arm with the back of your hand. “Good enough? I think it’s perfect.” You finished off the rest of your melon pop and tossed the stick in a nearby trash bin.

(If you’d looked up from your phone at that moment, you would have seen the utter bliss on Sunwoo’s face after hearing you compliment a picture of him and calling it “perfect.” To him, absolutely nothing could ruin this day, this moment, this year for him—!)

One raindrop fell onto your phone screen, followed by another, and another, and ano--

(He should not have spoken so soon.)

“It’s raining,” you observed dumbly, reaching a palm out to feel the pitter-patter of the sky’s tears on your skin. Others around you were beginning to notice, too, either huddling under their nearest tent or the overhangs of establishments lined on the sidewalk.

You figured somebody must have pissed the weather off because the rain only began to drum harder against the world.

"Well, shit," you laughed and patted Sunwoo on the back of his shoulder to move him toward the side of the road. "Let's find shelter!"

The two of you joined the crowd as you scrambled past the tents and up onto the sidewalks. Some people simply went into the shops themselves, but you and Sunwoo took a moment to stare out at the once-clear sky. Strange how springtime weather worked.

Sunwoo finished off his popsicle and found a trash bin to toss the stick into. He ran a hand through his dampened locks, then dragged that same palm down his face. "D'you like a little rain, dove?"

The nickname caught you off-guard for a second, but not as badly as seeing the soft-cornered smile on his face.

You cleared your throat. "I don't mind it. How about you?"

He made a frown at the sky as if he could reprimand nature for crashing the date—wait, this wasn't a date, was it? "It would have been nice if the weather report was accurate for once, but a little walk in the rain never hurt anybody."

You voiced your agreement. The next course of action you both decided on was making the long trek home in the rain together. You tried to stay out of the shower as best as you could, but there definitely weren't enough overhangs to get you home completely dry.

At one of the intersections, Sunwoo looked over at you through his dripping wet bangs. "You don't have a jacket."

On instinct, you glanced down at your bare arms, only clad in a T-shirt. "Oh, I guess I don't," you mused.

"Here—" he shouldered off the black bomber jacket and draped it over your shoulders.

"Sunwoo, I can't—"

"Yes, you can," he laughed and shook his head out. The light turned green to cross, and he wrapped an arm around you to keep you steady along the rain-slicked street.

The jacket and arm around you were both warm, but you had a feeling that even without the jacket, his arm would have been more than enough.

When you'd made it to your apartment complex and bursted into the front lobby, you and Sunwoo practically stood in your own self-made puddles. You took the jacket off from around your shoulders and shook it out; it was a shoddy attempt to get the water out, but at least the material was semi-waterproof on the outside.

"Here you…" Your throat went dry as you made to hand his jacket back to him and zeroed in on the way his wet, white T-shirt stuck flush against his skin. There was no other way to describe it but as see through, and there was no way in hell you were going to be able to erase that defined stomach from your mind. "...Go."

You coughed as you looked away, and he accepted his jacket back with a low "Thanks."

When he zipped his jacket up, you nodded toward the elevator. "Do you wanna come up and dry off before you go out? You can totally borrow my umbrella if you want, too."

He shook his head. "No, it's okay. My apartment's not far, I swear."

"Ah, alright. Get home safe then." You paused, then added, "Text me once you get back?"

Sunwoo flashed you a smile, and man, if you could engrave that smile, the wet hair, into your brain… "Promise. I'll see you soon, superstar."

He reached over and ruffled your hair, then ducked out of your apartment into the rain. Just before he was out of your sight, he turned back and waved at you through the front windows.

You let out an exhale once he had disappeared. A fuzzy feeling lingered in your chest, your smile never leaving your face. You were so far gone.

EPISODE EIGHT: SWERVE LIKE A CHICKEN

ALTHOUGH Spring Break had swept through the university faster than it came, Sunwoo could still say he felt like he was riding on Cloud 9. The beginning of the quarter was easily a more relaxed part of the term, but Spring quarter itself was a whole other nightmare in itself. Everyone around him was beginning to wake up from their break-dazed slumbers to clamber their asses back into uncomfortable lecture chairs and study rooms.

It was the first Tuesday back from Spring Break when he found out you were going to be in a practice room alone for a while, working on a new project. This intel had been courtesy of one Han Jisung, who had been texting Sunwoo off and on about a track he had been mixing with Chan.

han !!: yeah just left cuz my brain was feelin super fried 🤣 dunno how ynies still there

sunwoo's phone: oh fr?? she's still over there?

han !!: yuh bro that's what i just said

han !!: r u gonna do anything abt it 👀😳

sunwoo's phone: i have no clue what ur talking abt

han !!: okay bye chicken

sunwoo's phone: u did not just call me chicken.

han !!: 🐓🐓🐓

Sunwoo walked out of his room and stood in the middle of the apartment, staring blankly at the back of Eric's head. His roommate was seated on the couch setting up a movie, and when he sensed someone was staring at him, he began to say, "Baby!—wait a minute."

Eric made a face. "Never mind, it's just you."

Sunwoo scoffed and flopped onto the opposite end of the couch. "Rude! Before EC!Yn, I used to be your one and only."

"That's actually so incorrect—"

"Do you boys ever not cat-fight?" EC!Yn mused as she came out from the bathroom and found a seat between Eric and Sunwoo. Eric instantly curled an arm around her and pulled her into his side.

Sunwoo considered this with a frown. Why was he so single? "You're lucky I tolerate your boyfriend, EC!Yn," said Sunwoo as he folded his arms over his chest and sunk into the shadows of his hoodie.

"I'm glad you've come to like me more than your own best friend," she drawled in jest. "What's got you in the dumps, my friend?"

Eric perked up, pressing the play button on the TV remote to start the movie. "Oh yeah! You were in such a good mood this morning."

A grumble from the lump of hoodie. "It's nothing."

A moment of silence passed. Then, "He misses Yn."

"I think so, too."

"Do you think if we texted her to text him, he would at least smile?"

"Oh, I think I found her Instagram the other day—"

Sunwoo peered out of his hoodie with narrowed eyes. "I can hear you guys, you know that, right?"

Both Eric and his partner shot him impish grins, delighted that their very obvious conversation brought him out of silence. The thought forced a smile onto Sunwoo's face anyway. Eric's baseball game had been canceled today because the team who they were going up against this week had internal problems (something about an affair between coaches and players—it was complicated). Thus, Eric had decided to fill his afternoon with an impromptu movie session with his girlfriend. Sunwoo was invited by roommate obligation.

There were definitely more productive things that Sunwoo could have been doing (finding a minor, finding a job, finding the answers to his cognitive psych homework, etcetera), but watching… Wait, what were they even watching?

EC!Yn reached over and nudged his shoulder with her knuckles. "Hey, Earth to Kim Sunwoo."

He shook out of his daze. "Huh? Oh, sorry." He sighed, pulling out his phone. "Jisung just told me that Yn's at the practice room working still."

"Still?"

"Yeah," he bobbed his head. "They've been there ever since they finished their composition class this morning."

Eric lowered the volume on the TV. "Dude, you should go keep her company."

Sunwoo's eyes shot open as he began mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. "I don’t wanna bother her; she probably doesn’t wanna be bothered if she’s been working for so long.” The thought had crossed his mind to head over to the practice rooms right now and sit in for a session, but he had shut his own idea down almost immediately. Would you appreciate him going to bug you or would you mind him just going to sit with you and enjoy your presence?

“I was thinking the exact opposite,” said EC!Yn, “I mean, whenever Eric comes over unannounced to come sit with me at the dorm, I appreciate it all the time.”

Eric cooed. “Aw, you do?”

Sunwoo blinked and was suddenly glad he was staring down at his phone and not the couple on the couch next to him. But he glanced up to catch EC!Yn’s eyes. “Do you really think she wouldn’t mind?”

When Eric tucked his face into her neck, she idly scratched his head. “Oh, definitely. I think it’ll be a nice surprise, considering she probably feels the same about you, based on what you’ve already told us.”

“You’re right!” Sunwoo shot up off the couch, but halted. “Wait, she what?”

Eric snorted. “She said that Yn probably feels the same about you, which, if I’m being honest, I can’t believe—”

Sunwoo dashed into his room to grab his wallet and keys. “Nobody asked you!”

— ✶

Coffee. You liked coffee, right?

Sunwoo couldn't quite think straight with the giddy anticipation bubbling in his stomach and up his chest as he balanced twin cups of iced americano in his hands. Taking the bus to the School of Music would have been less effort on his legs, but waiting for it simply did not sit with the amount of energy currently carrying him down the street and up the stairs and across the quad like a madman.

People were probably eyeing him weirdly, but he was trying to come up with things to say to you. Preferably, these things were smooth and not strange fragments that weren't properly strung together. He wanted to look put together, to sound put together.

He was probably going to look frazzled, though, from half-running a mile uphill, but that was okay—he was excited to see you.

The School of Music stood right across from the School of Art building, the twin towers looming above the quad stairs. With school back in session, there were plenty of people milling about the entrance, and somebody graciously opened the door for Sunwoo so he didn't have to awkwardly balance his coffees and risk spilling them to get inside. He hadn't often visited this building, but he had been in here before to visit friends and upperclassmen. Though the architecture was grander, it still had the homey feeling of a high school band room, some place music students could call home.

Sunwoo navigated himself toward the practice rooms in the back hallways, murmuring "excuse me"s and apologies as he sidestepped string bassists and bassoons and snare drums. (He could've sworn there was a whole drum kit in one of these; it was strange seeing someone carrying around a single snare… huh.)

He reached the corridor to turn right into the practice hall when he froze, diving back behind the wall.

"—wait, Yangyang—"

Something in him sunk deep into the pit of his stomach, an anchor to the sea floor. He watched you launch out of your practice room and into Yangyang's arms, both of you hugging each other closely. He had his arms wrapped around you and his cheek against the crown of your head.

Sunwoo couldn't hear what you were saying to each other—if you were saying anything at all.

And you didn't let go. Not yet, at least.

When you did finally let go, the two of you were beaming at each other. It was near impossible to make out what kind of emotion was there from so far away, but Sunwoo couldn't look anymore when Yangyang leaned in towards you—

Sunwoo pressed himself against the wall he was peering around.

Oh.

He struggled to swallow; there was a large lump sitting in his throat that he had to wrestle down.

Disappointment—yeah, that was disappointment.

Before you or Yangyang could come down this way, Sunwoo retraced his steps from where he came until he was back outside. He sucked in a breath, mind abuzz.

He set down the cups of iced coffee, now perspiring, on a ledge nearby, so he could pull out his phone.

It rang twice. "Yo."

"Are you practicing right now?" Sunwoo asked, leaning his body against the railing. His free hand held his face as his brain replayed the events he had just witnessed. Did that mean what he thought he meant? You were totally allowed to see other people—the two of you weren't exclusive—but goddamn, did that hurt to think about.

Was he too late? Had he chickened out so long that you decided to move on, or was he never in the running in the first place?

He heard a bit of shuffling from the other side, then a sigh from Changmin. "Now I'm not. What's up?"

"I'm coming over."

A pause. "...Okay, see you soon."

EPISODE NINE: [YELLS.]

THERE was something different in the air and you could taste it. Not literally, of course, but you figured your paranoia had manifested strong enough within you to be able to sniff these kinds of things out. "These things" referred to the slight difference in the way you interacted with Sunwoo, or rather, how Sunwoo interacted with you.

You turned your phone off again, having checked it for what felt like the fifth time in the past two minutes. Usually, he replied relatively fast, but for the past week or so, he'd been a little more delayed. He didn't text dry, which was a relief, but there was something off about it. You couldn't articulate it too well—it was just a gut feeling.

"Oy, phone away, Yn," Sieun ordered, snapping her fingers and holding her hand out across the table.

You sent her a look, but reluctantly handed your phone over to her. "But—"

"No buts!" She tutted. She hid your phone within the confines of her purse before promptly returning to the warm bowl of biang biang noodles in front of her. "The more you check your phone, the sadder of a sap you look."

"Thanks," you deadpanned, but followed her lead and picked up your chopsticks to eat your food.

The two of you were seated in, arguably, the best Chinese restaurant on the Avenue. It had become a fast favorite of yours when you first transferred, saved for the long days and weeks when you needed something like spice to make you feel anything other than sad. Sieun had suggested coming down here for dinner rather than staying in and eating another round of instant ramen. It was something she knew would cheer you up easily, and so far, it was only half working.

You reached for your water, only to realize it was practically empty.

As if she could read your mind, the waitress taking care of your table appeared at your side and filled your water up for you.

"Oh, thank you!" Your eyes glanced over at her name tag—HN!Yn—and met her kind eyes.

"Of course. Anything else I can get you two?" She asked cheerily, swiftly filling up Sieun's cup, as well, with practiced grace. "Food's good?"

Both you and Sieun nodded your heads vigorously, especially since both of your mouths were now full and you couldn't speak. She seemed to get the idea and hustled over to a nearby table to tend to them. How waiters and waitresses always knew when you had food in your mouth, you could never figure out. It was always absolutely awful timing, but you supposed the skill was akin to Starbucks workers butchering name spellings.

When you finally swallowed your bite, you chased it with a gulp of water. "I don't think I did anything wrong," you said to your friend, pushing around the saucy rice in your bowl with the tips of your chopsticks.

Sieun covered her mouth. "I don't think so either," she replied, eyebrows furrowed. "Maybe he's just busy? It could be that he got a job or something, or school work is piling up."

You frowned. You thought he would have let you know he was going to be a bit busier, but at the same time, he didn't owe you anything. You just worried about him and hoped he wasn't overworking himself. It didn't help that you missed hanging out with him; it didn't feel like it used to between you just last week.

From behind you, you heard the door to the restaurant open and close with a loud smack! The door to the restaurant was awfully loud when it closed, unless it was carefully done. Something about the angle at which it was constructed, or something like that.

Sieun's brows flew up. "Speak of the devil," she muttered with her food pushed into her cheek.

"Hm?" You hummed and twisted around in your seat to see who she was referring to.

Oh. Well, she definitely wasn't wrong, per se.

Coming in through the door himself was Kim Sunwoo, as well as a few of his own friends, you guessed. You recognized one of them as Ji Changmin, one of the dancers from the winter showcase. Besides those two, there were four others, too—three other boys and a girl. You didn't recognize any of them, but you saw the way your waitress greeted them and squeezed one of the boys' hands.

You and Sunwoo made eye contact, and you shot him a small smile, lifting your fingers in a wave.

He seemed surprised to see you, and you didn't fault him for that. His wave was slight and smile shy, but you couldn't figure out why he ducked his head and didn't come by and say hi.

They're being seated for dinner, Yn. It's okay. Chill a little.

You turned back in your seat to face Sieun and your food again.

"Hey, cheer up, girl." Sieun's smile was sympathetic as she caught your attention. You hadn't even noticed how your posture noticeably slumped after that interaction—if one could even call it that. "Don't let this ruin your dinner, okay?"

You sighed out of your nose, testing your chopsticks over the rim of your bowl. "You're right. I don't know, Eun. It feels like we regressed? Is he avoiding me? Am I overthinking this?"

"I'm not sure, hon," she told you. "It'll be okay, though. I promise. Are you ready for the check?"

You nodded, reaching for your napkin to wipe your mouth.

Sieun lifted her hand and caught your waitress's attention, then made a motion for the bill. HN!Yn was quick to bring it over and set the little black tray with the receipt onto the edge of your table. In her hands she held a small device to input your method of payment.

"Are we splitting the bill today, ladies?" She asked you, eyes flickering between you both.

"Yeah, evenly split would be great, please," you told her.

Sieun leaned over to peer at the receipt as you reached into your bag to grab your card. Her face contorted into confusion, and she ran her finger over a line as if reading over it again carefully. "Oh, uhm, excuse me. It says we get a discount—not that I'm complaining! But…"

HN!Yn smiled. "Ah, you're friends with Sunwoo, right? That's what he told me, at least. I always give my partner and his friends my Friends & Family discount, so don't worry about it. I appreciate your integrity though."

You and Sieun exchanged wide-eyed glances, blinking, then turned to peer over at where Sunwoo's friend group sat. One of the boys sitting next to him whacked his arm to get his attention, nodding toward your table.

Sunwoo looked up.

Your head tilted to the side and you mouthed a "thank you?" to him, unsure of why he went out of his way to help you out.

He only nodded before ducking his head again. Huh. You'd have to thank him properly later.

HN!Yn was quick to help you and Sieun box your meals and finish paying. Before long, you tucked your arm around Sieun's to push out into the cool evening—not without glancing back at Sunwoo's table first.

— ✶

"She looks sad. Why is she sad?" Sunwoo sulked, lying atop his folded arms on the table and staring at you through the space between Haknyeon and JC!Yn.

You were the last person he thought he'd see when he and his friends walked into Haknyeon's favorite Chinese restaurant. You and your friend were pretty much wrapping up dinner when they'd come in, and he was quite literally startled by your presence. He'd been walking around on eggshells, he felt, all because of this stupid situation he'd forced himself into.

It was stupid. Yeah… it was stupid.

Changmin delivered a light whack to the back of Sunwoo's head. "You're dumb."

Sunwoo sat up and cupped the back of his head, leveling a glare at his friend. "Hello?"

"He's not exactly wrong," said Chanhee from the other side of him as he texted someone on his phone.

Sunwoo pressed his lips together and looked across the table from him at JC!Yn in a silent cry for help. The woman could only lift her shoulders half-heartedly. That meant that she agreed with them… great.

Eric snapped his wooden chopsticks apart and began using either stick to smooth the other for splinters. "We're saying you're dumb because you're doing this to yourself and to her unnecessarily."

Sunwoo huffed. "That's because you guys weren't there to see it happen! They're totally together—or at least, close." It still felt awful to think about. It felt like there was a hole in his chest left empty after considering the possibility that he was too late. He didn't want to get hurt.

"You can still talk to her like you used to, Sunwoo-ah," Haknyeon chimed in. "Even if they were—and I'm not saying they are—together, there's still a healthy amount of space where you can dwell as her friend."

HN!Yn appeared at the head of the table with a tray of water, and everyone pitched in to pass the cups down. "Thanks, guys," she said, tucking the tray under her arm. "Are you guys ready to order?" The question was directed towards the rest of the table, but Sunwoo saw the way her eyes lingered on Haknyeon and how Haknyeon's smile shifted to something that Sunwoo was sure was only for her.

It made him feel strange again.

The group, as usual, trusted Haknyeon's choices in dishes and let him take the reins in deciding what they ate tonight. Once HN!Yn had headed off into the kitchen to deliver their order, conversation resumed swiftly.

"I think you're just scared, Sunwoo," JC!Yn said to him over the rim of her glass of water.

Murmurs of agreement resounded from all around the table. Sunwoo's jaw fell open. "I—I am not scared. What would I be scared of?"

"The truth! Oooh," Eric pursed his lips and wiggled his fingers in Sunwoo's direction.

Sunwoo promptly smacked Eric's hand away.

"If you weren't scared of the truth," said Haknyeon, as he propped his elbows onto the table, "you would have gone up to her in that hallway."

"Didn't she tell you that she didn't see Yangyang that way anyways?" Chanhee chimed in. He was still going at it texting whoever it was on his phone.

"But she also said she wanted to give it a second chance," Sunwoo corrected.

Changmin scratched behind his ear and grabbed sauce trays from the end of the table to pass down to everyone else. "That was before she started hanging out with you some more. What is your point?"

They all made excellent points, he thought. That afternoon he'd seen you and Yangyang, he'd gone to meet Changmin in one of the dance practice rooms. After that, he'd gone home to yell into his pillow until his throat burned. Eric had muttered something about Sunwoo being dramatic and summoned JC!Yn over to the apartment to deal with him.

Sunwoo had just been bummed. He didn't even know if bummed was a strong enough word.

"I'm just scared of getting hurt, I guess," he finally admitted, meekly.

The table quieted to allow him room to speak his mind, and even Chanhee put his phone away to give him his full attention now. It wasn't often Sunwoo wore his heart on his sleeve like this, and it wasn't easy either. For anyone. Admitting to his fears in the middle of a Chinese restaurant while five of one's friends listened in was intimidating, but it was comforting to know that these friends he kept would find a way to support him. Even if he was being stupid, their tough love was out of desire to look out for him.

When he was done, Changmin clasped a warm hand on his shoulder and his dimple pressed into his cheek. "Sunwoo-yah, I think that you second guess yourself too much and you know that. You're self aware enough to know that you make the mistake of not going for what or who you want."

Sunwoo stared at an impurity in the table. What Changmin was saying hit the nail on the head—it was what happened with the dance showcase, too, and now he was about to let it ruin a friendship he had with a person he cared very much about.

"My advice," Changmin continued, "is to talk to her about what you saw and clarify it. I know it's… I know it's scary thinking you're gonna get hurt again, but I think you'll feel a lot better afterward."

EPISODE TEN: SUPERSTAR, I'M NOT TOO FAR

your phone: hey thanks for the fnf discount last night! sorry i didn't thank u properly before, but yeah, really appreciate it :')

sunshine (sunwoo): it was no problem, dw abt it!

your phone: btw is everything okay? u seem a bit distant lately and i wanted to make sure u were doing alright

sunshine (sunwoo): ah yeah, im sorry :( there's just been some things on my mind

You shot Sunwoo a quick text back to let him know you were here if he wanted anyone to talk to. His text had just come in after you'd sent him a reply in the early evening.

"Yn-ah. Still on your phone, I see?"

You jolted and shoved your device into the pocket of your jeans, smiling sheepishly as Lee Jihoon power-walked into the backstage area with a pen behind his ear and a clipboard in hand. "Hi, Jihoon!" You squeaked.

He lifted his eyebrows at you, motioning for you to come follow him. Since everyone was back from Spring Break, the work for the play being performed was kicked into high gear. Jihoon was a graduate student at the university and a director of the stage here; adding the fact that he majored in the same thing you did also made him one of your favorite mentors ever. The back hallways were bustling with costumes, props and other assorted technicians while most of the actors were either in the main backstage area or onstage proper with the play director, HJ!Yn.

You followed swiftly after him and weaved through the people littered about the corridors. "I finished synching the panel back here with the projector in the box," you told him, "though, it's weird that it was ever undone in the first place." You frowned. There had been a lot of strange things happening in the theater lately.

Jihoon gave you a curt nod and set you up in front of one of the house lights panels located in the hallway leading right out to the audience. He pointed at it with the back of his pen. "Yeah, some funky shit's been happening around here," he sighed. "You were here the other night when the speakers were acting weird, right?"

You nodded and let him guide you through navigating this backup panel. "I was. You and Chan seemed really stressed."

"We were," he said, adjusting his cap. "We really do need some more funding to update our equipment—careful, that knob is really sensitive. Good, nice work."

Once you and Jihoon had successfully finished with this panel, you lingered in the hallway for a moment. Normally, you would switch back and forth between shadowing either Chan or Jihoon, and tonight was with the latter. He was going through a couple forms on his clipboard—he must have been reading through them while working tonight.

"You seem distracted tonight, Yn-ie," he said. "Is everything okay?"

Despite being one of the busiest and hardest workers here, Jihoon was also one of the most observant, still. You leaned against the wall next to him, toeing at the floor. "Boys are stupid, right?"

Without hesitation or looking up from his clipboard, he replied, "As a boy, I can confirm."

That made you sputter out a laugh, and you saw him glance up and flash you a smile. When you couldn't find something else to say, he went forth. "I don't know the whole situation, and you don't have to tell me anything. But we guys are a little—" he made a gesture with his hands and wrinkled his nose, "—blind. You probably know that already, but dudes are dumbasses, and sometimes when feelings get in the way, they want to run for the hills.

"But if you think he's worth it, then reach out and be forward with him. And if he cares about you, he'll reach out and be honest," he finished. He let you settle with that thought, let it marinate in your brain to give you something to think about. (As if you didn't have a lot to think about already.)

You pressed your lips together with a slow nod. "Thanks Jihoon."

"Anytime, Yn-ie." He nodded back toward the direction you both had come from. "Let's go back that way, yeah? We've got some more housekeeping to take care of."

— ✶

Sunwoo was in trouble.

"...I thought I'd recommend a song that's been on my mind. I've actually been listening to quite a few Taylor Swift songs recently, especially since she's re-recording all her albums! So here's 'Superstar' from Fearless, Taylor's Version."

He had put your most recent podcast episode on full volume while he made himself dinner. It had been a long day today, and so his automatic thought was to listen to you. But now that he was getting into the meat of the episode, he was quickly coming to realize how much trouble he was in. You were playing the song, and it was a direct call out to him to wake the fuck up.

As the song faded to a close, your voice came back on.

"Actually, I was recommended the song by someone I know," you said in the mellow tone you'd been in for the entire episode so far. "I guess I'm just confused and I was wondering if they really meant what they said."

Sunwoo nearly dropped the egg in his hand onto the kitchen floor. Guilt swirled around in the bubbles of the soup in the pot and he frowned down at the rich, creamy liquid.

He sighed, tapping the egg against the counter and cracking its innards into the pot. "Of course, I really meant it," he said as if you could hear him. He wished he had the guts to tell you everything that was going on in his head… As his soup boiled away, he leaned against the empty counter to wait, cradling his head in his hands, groaning. "You're being unfair, Sunwoo."

"...This one's from Peony! They say: almost didn't realize Rhaps Anon wasn't in the last episode until the very end when we hadn't gotten a rec from them. Hope they're doing okay!" Ah, so you weren't the only one who noticed his brief absence. Your sigh filled the apartment, though, he heard the way you tried to force some kind of cheeriness into it. "Yeah, I hope they're doing okay too. But Rhaps'll be back! Let's all wish them well. Fighting!—"

Oh, man. Now he felt even worse.

He really needed to talk to you. Oh god, he really needed to talk to you. If not to confess, then to clear the air and assure you that all was okay on his end. He was just being a coward, and he knew that well enough now.

When his dinner had finished, Sunwoo turned the flame off and headed for his phone on the opposite counter. He lowered the volume as he went in and pulled up his text thread with you.

sunwoo's phone: hey,, i know ur probs busy w the play this week, but is there a possibility for me to see you sometime soon? i wanted to talk to u abt something

He gnawed on his bottom lip as he awaited your answer, until he realized you were probably working. That made him drop his phone and return to his dinner—maybe he just needed to not look, so his anxiety wasn't so high—

His phone buzzed and he bolted back over.

superstar 💫: i think i'll prob have some time saturday morning

EPISODE ELEVEN: [SOMEONE'S LOOKING OUT FOR YOU, LOSERS.]

YOU asked Sunwoo if he'd like to tag along with you as you did some grocery shopping before rehearsal on Saturday morning. His answer had been automatic, and you both agreed to meet each other at the bus stop to ride down to the larger supermarket down the hill together. Even as you stood at the corner of your street waiting for him beneath the overhang, you were trying to come up with possible things he was going to say to you. You had figured, when he’d texted you Wednesday night, that perhaps the best way to go about this would be to make this casual. Hence, why you were forcing yourself to go grocery shopping a day earlier than you usually did.

Casual, in this case, called for “you don’t have stare me in the eyes the entire time,” and to be frank, you were a little too nervous for that kind of setting anyway.

You tugged the edges of your cardigan over you as you heard your name being called from the opposing street. Sunwoo was bounding his way over to you with his arm raised in greeting. You returned the gesture with a soft smile. “Hey.”

He stopped by you, shoving his hands into the pockets of his gray jacket. “Hi,” he said, licking his lips. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

The bus slowed to a halt in front of your stop, and the two of you retrieved your transportation cards to board. “You say that like I wouldn’t have agreed,” you chuckled and tapped your card, Sunwoo following suit.

The two of you managed to find a pair of empty seats near the second half of the vehicle where the exit was for an easy departure when you reached the foot of the hill. But for now, you tucked your bag onto your lap and settled into the window seat, while Sunwoo occupied the one next to you.

You turned your head to gaze out the window and watch the world blur by as you did. The Avenue streets were a tad narrower than most around the university, so the bus traveled as efficiently as it could from stop to stop before turning the block to make its descent. It was technically still morning, and though it was spring, the sky had decided to blanket the sunshine with gray clouds to form an atmosphere that reminded you distinctly of the past winter quarter. Except, instead of thin, empty branches, the streets and walkways were encased in darkening green leaves and falling pink petals, a nod to the short-lived cherry blossom season. From the corner of your eye, you saw Sunwoo’s foot start to tap against the ground like Thumper the Rabbit, and you wondered for the millionth time what was going on in that pretty head of his.

“I don’t really understand,” you found yourself saying—his head swiveled—and you turned to look at him, “did I do something wrong?”

Sunwoo stammered, "What? No, it wasn't you! It wasn't your fault at all—I was just—" he sighed, grimacing to himself. "I was just being stupid. And I know that sounds super vague, but the short answer is that I was being stupid and scared and insecure."

Your brows furrowed and you felt the bus come to a gentle stop at the foot of the hill. "Scared and insecure? What's going on; is everything okay?"

You both got up to make a quick exit off the bus and began making the short walk from the bus station into the outdoor shopping center.

There was a jittery bounce to Sunwoo's steps as well as a tension in his shoulders. "Last week," he began, "Jisung told me that he'd just left you at the practice room and that you were probably going to be there awhile."

You nodded, grabbing a basket at the front of the grocery store. That rang a bell for sure. It had been a very long day in the practice room, so you weren't quite sure what direction this was going in yet.

"Well, I wanted to go surprise you and come hang out with you. You know, like, to keep you company." He started scouring the opposite shelf to you in the dried foods aisle, his eyes nervously darting from the BUY ONE, GET ONE pasta noodles deal signs, to your person. "And when I got there, I saw you and Yangyang."

Me and Yangyang…? Oh, me and Yangyang.

It was like a lightbulb went off in your head, and you stopped pretending to look at the overpriced vermicelli noodles on the shelf behind you.

"And you guys were hugging and close and stuff—and by all means! I—I have no problem with that, of course," he added quickly, "I mean, you guys are really close… friends? And I just saw him lean toward you and left because I… I got the message." The latter portion was delivered in a defeated tone as he looked on toward you helplessly and sorrowfully. It was how Sieun described you Tuesday night when you'd seen Sunwoo at the restaurant: a sad sap.

You both stopped moving down the aisle to face each other. In the white, fluorescent supermarket lights, his hair hung in his eyes like his head in embarrassment. You were going to let him finish.

He cupped the back of his head, suddenly feeling so bare before you despite not being physically naked at all. "I thought some space might distinguish or extinguish my feelings for you," he continued, nose wrinkling and lip curling in a wince. "Clearly it didn't help, and I think overall, I realized I wasn't being fair to you—as a friend. And that I was also being the biggest fucking loser ever."

Wait, you were still reeling from the mentions about feelings—

Before you could even address the aforementioned, you had to make something clear first. You felt the corners of your lips lift. "Sunwoo, me and Yangyang really are just friends." At the confused, puppy-dog look in his eyes, you explained further, "That day, Yangyang came by and I made it clear to him that I just saw him as a friend. I felt really awful for feeling like I'd led him on and was going to lose his friendship."

Sunwoo's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, and he struggled to come up with the response he wanted. "So… so when he was leaning in toward you…"

"He leaned in and flicked my nose, then almost gave me a nosebleed," you chuckled. You'd given him a very appropriate flick to the forehead after that.

His eyes widened at that. "Well shit. Are you okay?" He asked, and you saw his smile slowly begin to make its appearance, the sun peeking through an overcast sky.

"Yeah, perfectly fine," you dismissed with a flick of your hand. "Especially now. But yeah, we're just friends."

There was a surge of relief in his tense shoulders. "Oh, okay."

He trailed after you as you continued to make your way down this aisle in particular to pick up the things that were on your shopping list.

At one point, he coughed, handing you the jar of red peppers you were reaching for. "So no hard feelings, right? I promise it will be totally back to normal!"

"Normal, as in back to before?"

He nodded eagerly. "Yeah! To be honest, Dovey, I was just kind of scared that I had lost my chance after waiting so long. I don't know. And I realized that I was just scared to face that fact."

You gauged his reaction and your own heart thundered in your chest. "Scared to face the fact that you'd lost your chance with me?"

"Well, yeah. I—" He stopped and froze like a deer in headlights. And in any other circumstance, you would have been laughing, but he seemed so distraught by what he just admitted to that you tried hard to suppress your amusement. Tried. "I just said that aloud, huh."

Nodding, you grinned fondly. "You did."

He smiled, cute and flustered, cheeks tinted pink. "You're always too easy a person to talk to," he muttered.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I would've said something sooner…" He began.

Something jumped to attention in your brain. Oh no. "Was I giving you mixed signals?" You pursed your lips like you'd just gotten into something sour. "'Cause I swore I thought my attraction to you was clear. And, like, the thing where I totally began rethinking my thoughts about Yangyang when you came into the picture—"

"Wow, so Changmin was right?" Sunwoo made a face, holding his hand against his forehead. "That's crazy."

"Crazy good or…?"

He chuckled, and you couldn't help but admire the twinkle in his eyes as he did. "Crazy so good."

"I don't think people actually say that."

He whined, "Yah, you can't already be clowning me. Not when I just confessed that I like you."

That made you sober up, but you couldn't say the same for your heart rate. Man, your BPM alone could probably power a bullet train… "I like you, too. I hope that's clear."

There you two stood in the middle of the dried foods aisle with twin smiles glowing on your faces, soft and shared. You didn't know what the BOGO pasta was doing, but it was definitely adding to the atmosphere. You had intended for running errands to distract you from whatever Sunwoo had wanted to talk to you about, but clearly that was not the case—it would have never worked like that. You would be damned to have missed something like this. Not with him.

Perhaps he had made a mistake—he was now apologizing and clarifying and trying. You could hear Jihoon's words of wisdom ring loud and clear in your head. There was something perfectly fine about how this turned out.

"No more mixed signals?"

"No more mixed signals," he agreed.

— ✶

The remainder of your errand run with Sunwoo had gone smoothly, and soon, you were both seated side by side once more on the bus up to the University District. Sunwoo had gotten a couple things for his fridge, too, and so you both sat with your grocery bags by each other and your fingers grazing the other. Ever since you had clarified your position with Sunwoo a little over an hour ago, you had been feeling much lighter, your heart skipping for a different reason. You were back to feeling the giddy excitement you always had around him, and especially since you knew he saw you in exactly the same way.

The two of you shared a laugh as you stepped off the bus and onto your block, grocery bags in hand.

“—I’m being completely serious! Apparently I was just snot-nosed wailing into her shirt about being single and forever alone,” Sunwoo guffawed, grinning wide at you as you both stopped to the side of the walkway. “And Eric was pissed, oh my god.”

“I mean, you just kiss-blocked him; kind of understandable,” you mused.

Sunwoo sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Aye, I know. He’s a good guy though. Total loser, but a good loser. He made me hangover soup the next day.”

You let out a laugh, walking slowly with him down toward the entrance of your apartment complex. "That was sweet of him."

He snorted, "A little out of character, but yeah."

"You know," you piped up, "when I was applying and eventually interviewing for the position with Chan and Jihoon, I had no idea what either of them looked like. So I accidentally—woah, shi—"

Somebody coming down the sidewalk toward you crashed into your shoulder and sent you careening toward the sidewalk. Sunwoo swore as you let out a squeak—his arm looping around your waist and hauling you against him to steady you.

He lifted his head in the direction of the person with a glower on his face. "Hey! Dude, watch where you're going!"

"Thanks," you said sheepishly.

He turned to fix you with a smile, and you saw the moment he realized the position you were both in: you pressed firmly up against the side of his body, his arm wrapped around you, your faces so close to one another… He released his hold on you, neck burning as he cupped the back of it. "Heh, yeah. It's no problem. People should just really watch where they're going."

You coughed and nodded your head. "Yeah, for sure."

The pair of you were now in front of your apartment complex once more, reluctant to say goodbye. You wondered if he would ask to spend more time with you, but you had a feeling that he wouldn't want to intrude on your time any longer. It wasn't like he was intruding to you, but it was just a feeling you had about him. He wanted to respect your time.

And, well, you both had groceries to put away.

"So I'll uh, talk to you soon then?" You asked him, holding your grocery bags in front of you.

He peered at you through his lashes. "Definitely."

"This morning turned out way better than I thought it would, to be honest."

"Yeah no, same here," he echoed. "I'm just glad you actually gave me another chance."

You reached over and gave his shoulder a playful punch. "How could I not? I've always believed in you."

That seemed to ignite something inside of him. He jutted his bottom lip out and whined, "Oh my god, you can't just say that! You're so—wah."

You giggled, watching him squirm like he was being jolted by electricity. "Hey man, sometimes you've gotta be straightforward."

"Yeah, I know." He sobered slightly and took a step forward. Your heart clambered around in your chest and rattled your ribcage. There was this look in his eyes that made you glance at his lips—his perfect, plush, pink lips.

You held still, held your whole fucking breath, as he turned his head and kissed your cheek. It was feather-light, barely there, and yet, all the heat in your body seemed to rush to that single spot in a millisecond.

When he pulled away, his voice was soft. "How's that for straightforward?"

EPISODE TWELVE: ONE LOVE SONG CAN'T CONVEY HOW I FEEL FOR YOU, SO HERE'S TWENTY—

SUNWOO imagined that he looked as cartoonish as any man in love could. There had to be hearts in eyes, hearts around his head, hearts on a glittery pink trail that carried him everywhere he went. He giggled to himself as he fished his house keys from his pocket and unlocked the front door to let himself in.

"Oh my god. We've properly lost him."

With a loud, war-like AHHH!, Sunwoo yelped and nearly dropped his groceries, struggling to hold the bags to his chest as he pressed himself against the back of the front door. His apartment filled with high-pitched cackles of delight.

Though his heart was going through about a million cartwheels a second, he managed to force the fear from his eyes as embarrassment flooded his system. He flared his nostrils, frowning and tipping his head against the door. "I hate you guys!"

"You should hate Eric for giving JC!Yn your apartment key," Changmin wheezed, slapping his hands together and rolling around on the living room carpet as he pointed and laughed at Sunwoo's absolute misery. "You should've seen your face!"

Chanhee was on the couch with his legs curled up into his chest as he had his phone out, recording the entire thing. "This one's going in the drunk Sunwoo folder."

"Yah, I'm not even drunk!"

Chanhee shrugged. "It's become your general meme folder now. We should probably rename it."

Sunwoo whipped his head toward JC!Yn, who was seated on the opposite end of the couch with an amused smile on her face. "Noona! Are you just gonna let them bully me like this?"

Her smile widened. "Sorry, Sunwoo, but we didn't think you would miss us completely when you came in."

He let out a loud groan, fragging himself over to the kitchen so he could set the grocery bags on the counter and begin to unload them. "What're you guys doing here anyways? Isn't it Saturday morning? Where's Kei?" He asked, unloading a carton of juice from the bag and slotting it into the fridge.

Kei was JC!Yn's roommate, and the two girls always went on a grocery shopping date every Saturday morning with Changmin and Chanhee. They often made Changmin drive since he had the biggest car, and grocery shopping was an exclusive event that only the four of them were allowed to partake in. Eric, Sunwoo, and even Jacob had expressed distaste at that elitism. One of these days, they were bound to let someone else join… right?

But regardless, that always meant that Saturday mornings were occupied for them. So why were three-quarters of the group currently invading Sunwoo's apartment?

Changmin sat up from his place on the floor and fixed Sunwoo with a grin that made him nervous. "We dropped her off at their place, and we did go shopping this morning, but you'll never guess the curious thing we witnessed while we were there." His giggles sent a doom-like shiver down Sunwoo's spine.

Then it clicked.

Sunwoo abruptly stopped taking dried noodle packages out of the grocery bag. "You're kidding."

A snort from Chanhee. "Oh, you wish."

Sunwoo bashed his head against his sweater-covered palms. "No."

"Yes!" Changmin shrieked.

"I didn't know you guys went to that supermarket!" Sunwoo wailed, throwing his head back toward the ceiling. "You guys saw us?"

JC!Yn rested her chin against her arm as she leaned over the back of the couch to face him. "We heard you, too. I'm glad you decided to own up to your chicken-ness. See? Wasn't so scary after all."

Well, he couldn't exactly agree with that. But he also couldn't disagree with it. He'd been so scared he was about to lose your friendship then for being so insecure for no reason. A simple clarifying question could have saved the both of you so much strife. But the conversation also reaped rewards: your mutual confessions.

He sulked and didn't say anything.

"It was cute though, Sunwoo-ah," said Chanhee with a teasing lilt to his smile.

"And also," Changmin cut in, "what do you mean 'so Changmin was right? That's crazy?!'"

Sunwoo snorted. "Now that, I have nothing to say to."

"So what's the deal now?" JC!Yn asked. "Are you two dating now or…?"

Oh. Another long pause, then— "Oh my god, you didn't ask her out?"

"Hey! Listen!" Sunwoo yelled in an attempt to defend himself.

"We're listening." Chanhee folded his arms over his chest with a less than impressed look on his face. He scoffed. "I can't believe you pull."

"Shut up!"

"He hasn't even asked her out yet—how can he pull?" Changmin quipped back with frenzied gesticulations.

Sunwoo groaned as he flopped over the counter. He couldn't believe he was having such a good morning, and now he was being berated once more for his stupidity. How could he not ask you out? It was right there! The opportunity had presented itself a multitude of times, and yet, why was he still here, dateless?

Then there came the thought of how to go about this. There was a part of him who thought that just asking you was probably fine. But the other part remembered how much he liked you—so texting was simply not an option. It had to have some pizzazz, a bit of oomph, to it.

"We can see the gears turning in your head, Sunwoo," said JC!Yn. "What's on your mind, bub?"

Sunwoo looked up from where he had smattered himself onto the kitchen counter like a pancake. "I have no rizz."

Chanhee coughed. "Well, that's not news."

Sunwoo sent him a scowl. "How should I ask her out? I kind of want it to be special, you know?"

"Hmm." JC!Yn pursed her lips, tapping her chin in thought. "The other day, I was talking to Sangyeon about music or something or other, and he showed me the playlist he'd made his girlfriend—"

"His fake girlfriend," Changmin corrected with a little smirk.

She rolled his eyes. "I'm pretty sure Lee Sangyeon is not sad enough to make fake playlists for his fake girlfriend." It was a known inside joke amongst the friend group that Sangyeon had a "secret girlfriend" stashed away somewhere. A few of them liked to joke that she either didn't actually exist or that he kept her locked in his laundry machine or something. Mostly, though, they just wanted to know if he actually was single or not. What was the point of keeping her a secret anyway?

The slight change in victim brought Sunwoo's mood up. "What about the playlist, noona?"

She blinked, turning her attention back to her original train of thought. "Oh, right. What if you made her one of those cute, romantic playlists?"

The four of them exchanged glances with one another. It was a silent form of communication, one that had one uniform thought running through the wire.

— ✶

You'd received a text from Sunwoo about thirty minutes ago asking if he could stop by your apartment to drop off something of yours. Apparently, in the madness of the checkout aisle at the grocery store, he had accidentally "stolen" one of your cans of chicken noodle soup.

You hadn't bought chicken noodle soup though.

This was why you now anxiously awaited his arrival for the real reason he wanted to stop by. You had literally just seen him about an hour or two ago, but you'd be lying if you said you were happy at the prospect of seeing him again so soon. Your cheek still seared from his kiss.

As if he could read your thoughts, you heard a loud series of knocks at the door.

"Coming!" You called, hustling over from your living space area and over to the door.

After peeking through the peephole, you definitely saw Sunwoo, but what he was holding was nowhere near the likeness of a can of chicken noodle soup.

In a hurry, you ripped the door open, lips parted at the bundle of bright colored blooms in his hands. Sunflowers and carnations and lilies and roses—

He peered out sheepishly from behind the bouquet with his other hand occupied by his open phone. "Hi," he peeped.

"Hey," you exhaled, a grin fighting its way onto your face.

"If I made you a playlist, would you go out with me?"

You blinked, heartbeat rocketing into high gear. "Sunwoo," you started with a disbelieving laugh, "you don't have to—"

His thumb lowered onto a button on his phone. "Whoopsies, already did it."

Right on cue, you heard your phone buzz from your pocket. Curious, you withdrew it and opened the text message from him with a link to a Spotify playlist entitled: "One love song can't convey how I feel for you, so here's twenty."

You could have melted into a puddle of ooey-gooey goodness. "Sunwoo," you lamented, smiling way too wide now.

He beamed back at you. "What do you say?"

You shook your head, throwing your arms around him as he laughed and hugged you back. "You're so cute. Yes, I'll go out with you."

He gave you a little, warm squeeze. "Oh, thank god. I thought I was gonna die from anticipation."

You laughed and smiled into his shoulder. When you pulled away, your hand gently reached for the side of his face. "What if I kissed you right now?"

His eyes widened a smidge. "What if you wha--"

You cut him off and pressed your lips to his briefly, then pulled back.

"Wait, wait. Come back here," he murmured, chasing after you and crushing his mouth against yours. And it was perfect. Everything was perfect. The feel of his lips, the smell of his cologne, the firmness of his shoulders beneath your grip and the perfect pressure as you both sealed the deal with a kiss.

The two of you pulled away at the same time with labored breaths, foreheads meshed together as you caught your breath.

"You're not gonna turn this into a podcast episode, are you?" He asked, voice low and raspy, yet laced in a playful tonic.

You teased him right back. "As long as it doesn't end poorly."

He chuckled, and you could feel the vibrations of his laugh against your lips. "Then I guess I'll just have to make it the best date ever."

"Don't worry," you said with a cheeky hand on his chest, "I believe in you."

With a laugh, he grazed his lips over yours again. "Thanks, superstar."

a/n: hihi!! thanks so much for reading <3 if you enjoyed, i would deeply appreciate a comment, reblog, or an ask to tell me what u thought about it! much love, onto kevin's !!

permanent taglist: @flwoie @vatterie @seomisaho @hqrana @ja4hyvn @tinkerbell460 @kaaimins @hyunjaespresent-deobi @otterly-fey @zzoguri @floatingpluto @winterchimez @ethereal-engene @gyulfriend @polarisjisung @jaehunnyy @shakalakaboomboo @loveliestfelix @sodafy @zhaixiaowen @leaz-kpop-life @amourdsr @pxppxrminty @kqyutie @sseastar-main @kxthleen14 @fluorescentloves @mosviqu @justalildumpling @jaerisdiction @hibernatinghamster @super-btstrash-posts @jundundun @kflixnet

#kflixnet #bjnet #deoboyznet #the boyz x reader #kim sunwoo x reader #sunwoo x reader #the boyz drabble #the boyz oneshot #the boyz fluff #the boyz scenario #the boyz imagines #kim sunwoo scenarios #kim sunwoo drabbles #kim sunwoo oneshots #kim sunwoo imagines #kim sunwoo fluff #sunwoo imagines #sunwoo drabbles #sunwoo fluff #sunwoo oneshots

[glorious-sunset]

LBFAD is the most inspiring series I have ever watched and here is why…

Although Love Between Fairy and Devil (LBFAD) only caught my eye on Netflix in December 2023, I’m so glad it did and that I didn’t miss out on this stunning and thought-provoking masterpiece. It is the most inspiring series I have ever watched for many reasons. Aesthetically, I found the beautiful 4K production quality as enjoyable as high-budget productions such as Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. I frequently felt the need to pause and admire the well-designed sets, and exquisitely detailed costumes of even minor characters. The acting is superb across the board, and the leads act and respond very naturally to each other. The long hair of male characters is especially well-done, falling naturally with subtle highlights and looks real. All these details breathe life into this fantasy world and make it very realistic.

Every line of each song from the phenomenal OST is brimming with hidden meanings related to the series, adding lots of additional context! The artwork created for the opening and ending themes is also full of meaning (minor spoilers ahead). Take, for example, the last picture where the OTP are sitting on a boat in the Oblivion River, the junction between their two tribes, the male lead has removed his crown and hence his responsibilities at least for the moment, and they are watching the sunrise together for the rest of eternity after the close of the series (sigh!)

Every single character of note in the series goes through profound character growth, the only exception being the abstract ultimate villain Taisui. Even the secondary villains and dictator of Shuiyuntian have grown and changed their perceptions by the end. It made me believe that anyone is capable of opening their minds and bettering themselves. Both lead and side characters are repeatedly faced with overwhelmingly bleak choices and heartbreaking challenges, especially in the last ten episodes. Yet every time, they show courage, sacrifice and selfless love that is amazing and very inspiring.

It is rare to find this kind of poignance in any production. I used to find Game of Thrones inspiring due to Daenerys freeing the world of slavery…until Season 8 happened. LBFAD tops Game of Thrones in this regard by freeing two distinct realms from conflict. The actions of the OTP break through a hundred millenia of mutual hatred and relentless conflict between their people with no end in sight, to create a new dawn of lasting peace. LBFAD reminds me of Lord of the Rings in terms of its cinematographic beauty and themes of never losing hope and prevailing over overwhelming odds. However, the stronger focus of LBFAD on the lead couple’s development and on creating multidimensional villains and side characters made it, for me, more engaging to watch.

The world-building and depth of characters has many layers in LBFAD, to the extent that much of the context was clear to me only in retrospect on rewatching the series and on deep reflection. The fast pace of the series also means that a lot of action occurs off-screen in between scenes. There are no filler scenes, there is no room for them. Every scene adds new plot twists and depth to characters, making the series highly addictive.

I am not a native mandarin speaker, and came to realise how beautiful the language is only on encountering LBFAD and its OST. It inspired me to learn mandarin, which makes rewatching the series highly enjoyable as I am able to pick up new nuances. I’m embarrassed to be so late to watch LBFAD after its release in 2022, but have thoroughly enjoyed the posts on Tumblr from fellow fans, including episode analyses, enthralling artwork and links to fanfiction. It has encouraged me to post on Tumblr myself. I have started to post my reflections on each episode while rewatching them, translations and overviews. I am thrilled to be a part of this wonderful community!

Links to some of my other LBFAD articles:

Character Names in LBFAD - Meaning and Significance

Location Names in LBFAD - Meaning and Significance

Here is a link to my episode 1 review (contains spoilers). All of my LBFAD articles and episode reviews can be viewed with the tag #lbfad reflections (hyperlinked) and the table of contents to these is here.

#lbfad #love between fairy and devil #canglan jue #clj #dongfang qingcang #dfqc #xiao lanhua #xlh #cdrama #cang lan jue #lbfad meta #lbfd #cdramasource #asiandramasource #asiandramanet #dylan wang #wang hedi #yu shuxin #esther yu #lbfad reflections

[amywritesthings]

silver underground. / chapter 15.

( Read on AO3 )

Pairing: levi ackerman x f!reader (attack on titan / shingeki no kyojin)

Word Count: 4.6K

Summary: flashback five - also known as the start of the heist that may grant you a chance at living in the sun

Warnings: verbal arguments, miscommunications, self harm language, mentions of injury, death, and illness

Previous Chapter. / Next Chapter. | Masterlist.

CHAPTER 15 - FLASHBACK: FIVE

note: the next couple of chapters will be heavily influenced by the ova 'no regrets'. they are my interpretations of the material. please watch those episode first, otherwise you will get spoiled on elements revolving around levi's backstory.

“This is suicide.”

Furlan winces at your strong reaction. Isabel pales.

They’re both sitting on the edges of the love seat couch, equal parts surprised yet expectant of your reluctance.

Of course they had Levi break the news first.

Neither of them wanted the blow back of your rage at the mere entertainment of such a problem.

Levi, however, can take your anger and neatly fold it with the rest of the clothes you’ve shared since you were kids. He knows how to dismantle your rage in ways the other two have never quite mastered.

At the kitchenette table, the raven-haired man doesn’t move from his chair. Leisurely his arm drapes along its back, legs crossed in front of him. You wait a full table-length away from him, hunched with your hands pressed into the wooden surface separating you.

A stand off.

The other two watch like hawks, awaiting a response from Levi that never arrives. You feel the worry rolling off of Furlan and Isabel in waves, a concern they can’t quite voice, but all you can do is stare at him.  

Dead eyes, unwilling to express anger or excitement, meet you.

Right now, you hate him.

You hate Levi’s neutrality.

You hate this godforsaken city. 

Most importantly, you hate how easy a few pretty words can upend your entire operation.

After a long stretch of silence Isabel clears her throat, fidgeting with her fingers. “We would be careful, sis. We’re always so careful. The old man said—”

“I know what he told you, Isa,” you snap, and Isabel whimpers with uncertainty. “I think I heard it loud and clear — unless there’s a part of the proposal I missed. Levi?”

His eyes flinch to a narrowed state.

You’re angry.

You’re angry because a devil made an offer.

Not just any devil — a devil from the surface, one that lives within the walls and takes the sunlight for granted. A demon willing to dangle the one thing everyone in the Underground City district desires most on a flimsy little stick: 

Salvation.

More specifically, documentation that’s as precious as rare rubies. Papers that bypass the thugs bleeding funds dry at the top of the stairs. A ticket to a better life, one where a person like you can walk among the living rather than fight with the dead for scraps.

The offer sounds too good to be true.

It sounds too good to be true because it is.

(We were offered a job by someone from the surface, someone with the reputable means to back up his payment, and we accepted the terms and conditions in exchange for money and a one-way ticket to the surface.)

Ever since you were seventeen, finding a way for the four of you to live on the surface is all Furlan has wanted. Now you're twenty-one with an opportunity for a way out. You cannot take an entire gang there — the transport of underlings cannot work like that, the logistics are not feasible, but this?

For the people he’s grown up with, laughed with, cried with?

(His family — Furlan has said the doomed word more than once to your face, to Isabel’s, to Levi’s. None of you have ever corrected him.)

What was once a fruitless idea has been fertilized and harvested, corrupted by grubby hands who can make a pipe dream happen.

It’s poisonous to a dreamer like him — like Isabel, who has never lost her knack for dreaming no matter how dire things get, so you focus your efforts on the only other person in this apartment who may see the reality for what it is.

A lost cause.

(A trap.)

“Doesn’t it seem wildly convenient,” you begin with a bite, “that some rich asshole found the three of you wandering the streets with little to no trouble? We’re supposed to have eyes everywhere. We’re virtually untouchable, even on the main roads.”

“The Military Police have been after us for years, James,” Furlan argues, but his words falter closer to a plea. “Pretty sure everyone down here knows our names. And it’s not like the Military Police have no idea where we live, so it stands to reason this guy—”

“That isn’t the point, Furlan,” you tell him. “You’re talking about the MPs. This guy is not an MP. He’s an outsider.”

Furlan’s frown deepens. “So?”

“So?" you repeat. "So you don’t think it’s suspicious, at all, that this shithead is offering us a job—” The humorless laugh bubbling on your lips stops your train of thought. “Actually, calling this a job is an insult to what we’ve built.”

“James—”

“Blackmail, Furlan. It’s fucking blackmail.” You pause, allowing the word to permeate through the room. “He is blackmailing us with the promise of money and the one thing everyone down here wants.”

A right to the surface.

A chance to live a life in the sun.

“Because we’re the only ones who can pull off a heist like this!”

Isabel urges with a naivety you typically adore. Right now? You loathe it. 

“How many other people, what other gangs, have what we have? The numbers. The ODM stuff. The old man believes in us.”

On instinct, you sneer.

Belief, like it’s stronger than money.

Instead of taking your anger out on her — she doesn’t deserve it, not when you know her bleeding heart would pour itself dry without hesitation for a chance to bring this found family to surface safely — you snap your attention back to the quiet, contemplative man across from you.

He’s too calm about this; Levi trusts people from the surface as far as he can throw them.

Granted, it’s probably further than the distance you can toss, but still — it isn't far.

So you ask.

“Why?”

Levi's eyes narrow further, thinning to a sliver.

You lean in closer, gritting your teeth. Your necklace dangles off of your neck like a noose.

“Why are you okay with this?”

Curving your steps around the table, you walk towards him. Levi stays seated, eyes stalking your movements with practiced memorization.

“Why aren’t you telling them this is a terrible idea?”

Furlan holds out a noncommittal hand to stop you. “James—”

“Because we don’t have a choice,” Levi interrupts, finally standing from his chair. He doesn’t sound angry, but you know Levi sometimes better than you know yourself. Something is there, just under the layer of nonchalance. “It’s complicated.”

A storm flickers in his eyes when they meet yours.

“There’s nothing complicated about it,” you tell him, your words rushed under your breath. “We make the rules. From the very beginning until now, we make the rules. We don’t let surface scum tell us how to live our lives. We always have a choice.”

His chin tilts to the left. “Not this time.”

“Why?”

“We just don’t.”

“We do, Levi.”

“No, James, we don’t.”

He firmly emphasizes each syllable. 

Then, finally, he places the caveat on the table: 

“They have Yan.”

The warmth in your body pools at your feet, like the blood has seeped through the soles of your shoes and into the wooden blanks beneath.

It’s no secret that Yan, one of the long-time underlings of the gang, hasn’t been doing well.

Over the last few months, his legs have gone from bad to catastrophically worse. He’s barely managed on jobs, causing him to fall behind on earnings.

From the corner of your eye, you see it: Furlan’s head tilts back, eyes closed. He deflates, shoulders first, until his whole body shrinks.

It reeks of guilt.

(Why the hell would Furlan be guilty?)

Isabel is the opposite; her body tenses as her wild ginger hair flings side-to-side to look at Furlan, then Levi, then back to Furlan, waiting for an explanation.

Then you realize: she isn’t waiting for anything, not like you.

Because Isabel already knows that Yan’s being held hostage; she’s just waiting to see who will say it first — or if she’ll be forced to be the one to bring you into the loop.

Suddenly the world feels smaller, like you’re back in that little makeshift ring by an abandoned street stop.

Alone and fending for yourself.

“The hell do you mean, they have Yan?” You hate how shaken your voice sounds.

“Saw it with my own two eyes,” Levi tells you in a monotone manner. “There wasn’t anything we could do. So, no, we don’t have a choice — unless we want him to die.”

“Which means you all saw it.”

The words of doubt tumble from your tongue. Levi’s eyes tick in a squint to decipher what you mean, but you create physical space with a step backwards.

“All of you knew this wasn’t just about the money from some rich fuck, but you didn’t tell me the second you came back. Why didn’t—”

“I didn’t tell you right away because Furlan has been skimming money for Yan under the table,” Levi blurts, effectively stopping you from crawling into yourself. 

The ball of yarn halts in its unravel. An uncomfortable silence fogs the room.

“...what?”

But that isn’t your voice.

Isabel speaks now with the same confusion in your gut. Her fiery hair whips to Furlan for an explanation.

Furlan doesn’t move a muscle.

You blink back into your body, and soon you find Levi standing right in front of you. He urges you with just a look, a nonverbal reassurance:

Breathe.

You’re not alone.

(You aren’t fighting three against one again.)

“It’s no secret that his legs went to shit,” Levi explains, level yet earnest. “First it was his ankle. Then it was his knee. Then it became both knees. Whatever disease he has, it’s spreading and it’s spreading fast. All of us have seen it coming: he can barely keep up with his team. No jobs means no earnings. Those are our rules. Furlan chose to skim off the top to help with treatments.”

Levi tenses under your widening stare. 

“I knew," he finishes. "Furlan didn’t know I knew, but I did. Not Isabel, not anyone else — just me.”

Blame me, he’s telling you without saying so. Don’t punish everyone else for this.

(Levi Ackerman, always ready to shoulder your burdens without hesitation.)

Only one question numbly exits your lips: “For how long?” 

Levi studies your eyes.

“Since the Nightshade job.”

Piece by piece, the gravity of your situation comes together.

You can feel it weighing down your shoulders when your attention flickers to Furlan.

Furlan trembles as he continues to stare at the ceiling. His complexion is tinged with a mortified, red-handed glaze.

The corner of your lips pull to a sympathetic frown. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It wasn’t anyone else’s business but Yan’s and Furlan’s,” Levi answers for the other man.

“But we could have helped,” you protest, turning your attention back to Levi. "Me, Isabel, all four of us — we could have helped."

“It’s a gang, James, not a church,” Levi bitterly argues. “If we help one person’s problems, then everyone looks for handouts. That isn’t how we operate.”

A hefty glare settles on your brow. “And now these people have Yan, who — by all intents and purposes — we could leave to die. Right?”

A squeak bubbles in Isabel's throat.

Levi tilts his chin with a knowing sharpness.

“Sure, if we want those bastards to torture him for information about us.”

There: the spark, the swift kick in your ass, to ignite the fire in your belly once again.

You’re mad, you’re furious — but not at any of them.

“So I was right,” you chide, chin dropping to your chest. “This is just blackmail—”

“His legs are shit out of luck if he doesn’t receive treatment at a surface clinic.”

A fingertip lifts the tip of your chin back up.

It’s enough of a shock to your system to get you to listen — Levi rarely, if ever, shows blatant affection in front of the other two, yet here he is: blurring the lines for the sake of keeping your focus.

“Bottom line is that I want to work with these pieces of shit just as much as you do, but without the proper medical treatment, Yan’s as good as dead," Levi explains. "Even if we left him to fend for himself, it could still destroy not only our reputation, but he could give them access to everything we have. Bringing Yan back is the best option for business. Furlan, Isabel, and I will do the job—”

Furlan, Isabel, and I?

“Wait.”

“—get him what he needs, bring him home—”

“Wait, what do you mean by—”

“—and we’ll figure it out from there.”

“—just the three of you?” you finally finish, voice smaller with each word. “But what about…”

“The bastard didn’t intercept you,” Levi says, and you push his hand from your chin.

“We need someone to take care of everyone else,” Isabel chimes in softly, shrugging a noncommittal shoulder.

You blink towards the younger girl with her shining eyes, seeking your approval; a cease fire to an awkward evening.

“If it’s a trap created by MPs, then at least we know our gang can get away if they come knocking on our door, right?” she adds. “James is fast. She’s a fighter. She can take them on, no problem.”

“No, Isabel,” you start, “what you need is a B-Team.”

“Hate to say it, but Isabel is right.” Furlan finally speaks, exhaling in a short huff. “He didn’t see your face or ask for you by name, so you’re kind of off the hook.”

In a shocking turn of events, Levi agrees in a matter-of-fact finality. “The less people involved, the better.”

That overwhelming sense of dread rears its ugly head once again, creeping up the veins of your neck.

“Don’t be stupid. Every job needs a B-Team,” you argue right back. “The three of you cannot just go on this job without eyes on—”

“Maybe not this one,” Levi shuts down your offer with little remorse. “This shit’s already two people too many.”

Your eyes grow, appalled.

“You’re serious?”

He doesn’t budge.

“I’m sorry, but are you fucking insane? What the hell happens, then, if any of you get caught?”

“James,” Furlan begins, holding both palms up. Your hair falls into your line of deadly sight when your attention whips to the lanky man with shaggy, ash-blonde hair. “We were doing this way before you came into the picture, okay? Levi and me, I mean."

You scowl. “You two were beating people up for money in fucking alleyways before me, not taking sacrificial bribes from surface pigs.”

Furlan frowns deeply, and you decide you hate him just as much as you hate Levi right now — because Furlan responds quietly and full of respect. Adoration.

“We’ll come home. We’ll make it to the surface, together. Please, you have to trust us.”

Your nostrils flare and the fire in your belly quells as you lock eyes with your friend.

“It isn’t you I don’t trust.”

Never. 

You trust the people in this little apartment more than anyone in the Underground City.

You would go to war with them, die for them, if it meant they could be happy.

Surely by now, after all these years, the three of them knew implicitly where you stood.

The problem, however, no longer lies below: it’s the people above you in more ways than one.

(What lies on the surface is the enemy.)

One false move and the four of you stand a chance to lose everything —

Including each other.

Sickened by the absolutes you face, your hands push off the table.

"Fuck this. If you want to kill yourselves, then be my guest. Throw it all away. We’re not making it to the surface.”

Isabel stands from the couch as you turn on a heel, spinning towards the front door. “Wait!”

“I’m not sticking around to watch you die, Isa,” you bite at the young girl. She flinches from your venom. “Same goes for you, Church, and Ackerman.”

You don’t wait any longer.

Can’t; you feel sick to your stomach and don’t want to make a mess of the apartment.

Without another word, you step past the threshold of the apartment and into the damp outdoor air. Your boots shuffle down the narrow staircase, quick and panicked.

Isabel calls out your name — your first name, a cheap trick that usually gets you to listen.

You don’t.

Passing the corner is as far as you get when you hear a second set of shoes following in tandem, hitting solid ground and turning a similar edge.

Let them.

You’re too upset to confront, to ward them off, especially when you have a pretty good feeling as to who may have run after you.

You continue your trek, head bowed to avoid the watchful eye of your gang runts guarding the apartment premises. Through a main street and into an alleyway you’ve grown so familiar with.

Twenty-one; it only took a few years to finally get here, where the dream dries to a mirage.

A warm hand grabs your bicep, anchoring you in place. “Hey.”

You stop.

You don’t fight.

“Hey,” you greet in return without turning, allowing your arm to float in the finite space between bodies.

“Want me to let you go so you can continue your dramatic nature walk?”

Lessening his grip for emphasis, Levi waits.

(I won't keep you prisoner.)

The baritone of his voice, neutral with an edge of care, vibrates through your body like a soothing aloe. 

“Depends,” you answer, craning your chin to watch him over your shoulder. “Are you going to run after me?”

“Kind of already did.”

The anger evaporates from the crown of your head to your toes with each passing second. Eventually you drop the heel of your boot to the ground, lessening the strain on your raised arm.

Then the tension between his brows dissolves, too, when it’s only the two of you here.

“Talk to me.” The request is barely above a whisper. “Don’t shut me out.”

His choice of words — your words, thrown back at your face — almost steals your breath.

“You shut me out about Yan,” you argue childishly. “About Furlan.”

“Like I told you, it wasn’t any of our business.”

“And you’re shutting me out of the job.”

“I’m not trying to—”

“It’s our home, Levi.”

You blink away, embarrassed by your sentiment. His hand flexes to let go of your arm. It unceremoniously drops to your side.

“We’re supposed to be… We’re supposed to watch out for each other. All four of us. That’s what we do. We don’t leave each other behind.”

“I know,” he says, somber, as if to apologize in his own way.

“If this is your half-baked attempt to protect me…”

You trail off when something flickers in his eyes. His expression shifts, and your shoulders drop.

“I could be a part of the heist,” you surmise, “but you’re leaving me out on purpose.”

His jaw clenches. “If I could leave Isabel out, too, then I would. Same with Furlan.”

“So it—”

“You’re the only one.”

Levi pauses, fighting to find the right words.

“You were the only one who wasn’t forced into that carriage. Chances are we’ll be flanked on all sides by Military Police. If things go to shit, then I know you’ll be safe back here.”

“Who can really guarantee that I’ll be safe?” You shake your head. “Isabel said it herself: it could be a trap. They could be trying to attack the rest of the gang while the three of you aren’t here.”

“Yeah, and there’s no one I trust more to make sure we’re still in operation. No one.”

He speaks with such conviction that you almost believe him.

(It’s not about trust in protecting assets, but something more basic than that.)

“And if you get arrested, then you don’t want me there,” you finally say what he won’t, and Levi’s eyes dart to the left to avoid yours. “You want me to be the last person standing.”

“We won’t get arrested.” His wispy black hair jostles when he shakes his head. “We’re too fast on ODM gear. The MPs won’t stand a chance.”

Silence engulfs the space. Your brain continues to run the numbers, the logistics, of the proposed heist plan given by this mysterious buyer. 

Every scenario, every issue, every failsafe — you can’t shake the foreboding chill in your blood.

“And who’s to say they haven’t already killed Yan?” you decide to ask, running through your list of concerns.

“Yan contacted Furlan two hours ago,” he answers. “He’s already at a first-rate clinic.”

“What if it’s bullshit? A set up, where they’re pretending to be Yan?”

“Do you think I’d fall for a fake report?” Levi scowls, insulted.

“No, but Furlan would.”

“I checked, twice.”

Which means it’s true.

Your doubt never creeps up to Levi, not once. 

Dejected in what little choice remains on the table, your attention subconsciously lands on his parted lips.

“...how do we receive the surface papers?”

“He already paid half of what he’s promised. I checked: it’s not bullshit. The money’s real,” Levi explains slowly. “Furlan, Isabel, and I will take the ODM gear and finish the job. Then we’ll get Yan back safely, give the money to the gang, and take you with us.”

“So I just… sit around like an old maid and hope everyone makes it back in one piece? Then we all get to hold hands, walk up the staircase, and strut straight through Wall Sina like we belong there?” You sigh heavily. “It sounds too good to be real.”

“I know,” he murmurs. “But Isabel’s right: we have to make sure our people don’t get stuck in the crossfires with the MPs.”

“Then agree to a B-Team.”

You slide a boot forward, lifting your attention to his eyes. His attention, however, slides opposite of yours — further south, staring at your lips as you propose.

“Let me lead a small group of us to watch your back.”

“James.”

“Levi,” you murmur his name, “look at me.” Surprisingly, he obeys. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to butt out of the one job that might change our lives. You protect me, sure, but I protect you, too. We’ll maintain our distance and have units set up to guard the apartment, but I want to be on the streets making sure you’re clear.”

His brows knit together briefly. “...I need you to be safe.”

“I will.”

“Because if I’m out there thinking for one second that you’re not—”

Reaching for the collar of his shirt, you pull him in to press a chaste yet firm kiss to his lips.

He tenses, seemingly expecting a wild punch, but he melts on contact and wraps his arms around you with a fierceness only a dead man can possess.

Because that’s all anyone can be down here: dead lives, dead faces, waiting for the final nail in the coffin. The world doesn’t scare people like Levi.

(What he’s terrified of, however, is trapped against his chest. Two hearts wildly beating in tandem. Unspoken confessions. The light.)

You nip at his lower lip, causing a tiny, needy noise to exit his throat. His arms tighten, and his feet drag the two of you towards a nearby wall.

Out of view.

His tongue searches for yours and you relent, pressing your hips into his. He makes another short, broken noise, and bunches your shirt into his fist.

Running your fingers through his hair, you drag your nails against his scalp and try to convey your urgency: please don’t leave me behind, please don’t get caught, please don’t disappear.

After a minute he rips his lips away, face tinged with a pink, bashful hue. 

You open your eyes, drunk on the sight of his blush.

“...dirty trick,” he huffs without an ounce of anger in his voice.

“I got a couple of those up my sleeve,” you murmur in jest, smiling despite yourself.

He exhales again, sounding close to a laugh, and drops his forehead to yours. You press back, closing your eyes and allowing the moment to pass.

Peace.

(How much time do either of you have left?)

“Take a B-Team to the streets,” he finally relents. “Monitor our movements. Follow any MPs that might turn their attention to our employees. The client stated our target objectives will be making contact regardless of our consent, so as far as I’m concerned, the job’s already started.”

“I’ll keep our people safe, I promise.”

“I know you will,” he reassures, taking a rare moment of affection to lift his chin. His lips kiss the tip of your nose, warming your once frozen insides. “I trust you.”

You nod. “And when you finish the job, I’ll go where you go.”

He hums. “Is that right?”

“I made a promise, didn’t I?”

“Like a dumbass,” he jokes in that deadpan humor of his, and you can’t help but finally smile.

“But I’m your dumbass.”

“What an aspiration,” he groans, feigning annoyance. “My very own dumbass who’s gonna spend too much of her fucking time decorating our very dumbass house—”

“A house?”

Not just a house — our.

You abruptly pull your forehead from his to look him in the eye. Levi mentally backtracks, realizing his grave mistake from the way the whites of his eyes grow, but you press your hands into either side of his face to trap him in.

“Levi Ackerman, are you gonna get us a house?”

He sneers. “Where else are we going to fucking live?” 

“Are you kicking out Furlan and Isabel?” you ask, unable to stop the grin from growing on your face.

Levi, knowing damn well he’s been caught red handed, groans and drops his head back.

“With the amount of money we’re making from this heist, Furlan damn well better be able to afford his own house. I’m sick of cleaning up after his shit. Isabel can go with him.”

You bite your lower lip. “They could always be our neighbors.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.”

The sarcasm bleeds right through, and you can’t help it: the giggle bursts from your throat, and Levi leans in to pepper gentle kisses against the base of your throat.

“Can I get a pet?” you ask, lifting your chin to the sky.

“A furball?” His teeth nip playfully at your skin. You jolt. “The little shit’s hair will get everywhere.”

“It’s your consolation prize for demoting me to B-Team.”

He tsk’s under his breath, allowing a beat to pass.

“Maybe one.”

“A cat?”

“Yeah.”

“Or two.”

“You’re pushing it.”

“I’m negotiating, Ackerman.”

“You can negotiate once we have a key, alright?”

You giggle in response, tugging his chin up to stare into his eyes. Levi settles against you, arms still looped around your waist, and sighs through his nose.

He admires the view, clearly taking the moment to memorize every inch of your face.

It feels too final.

“Come back to me, Levi,” you murmur, pouring all of your emotions into five small words.

At first he nods, small and earnest, before sealing your words with a gentle kiss.

“I won't go far from you."

.

author's note: I'm glad we collectively giggled and screamed and kicked our feet in the last few chapters. It was a marvelous time. Now I'm out here ruining everything.

Thank you to all of your wonderful feedback, asks, reblogs, etc. I can't believe my draft doc is over 60K words! I want to say we're about halfway through the story I want to tell, if not further in. We're definitely halfway through the flashbacks, so I promise those who have been asking about the CH10 cliffhanger… just hang tight (like James - ha.)

Please note that there will not be an update on August 11, as I have a bachelorette weekend to attend for a friend, so I'm hoping to write through the week and maybe post the next update on August 18.

tag list: @lazylizzy3 @notgoodforlife @sad-darksoul @dailydoseof-love @maliakealoha @nube55 @kateastrophies @blinkingsuns @gomigami @voidszoro @tanyeonn @chishiyasan @im-just-a-simp-le-whore @vigilancio @nomi98 @urfavcelestialangel @milkersonmac

#aot #snk #levi ackerman #levi ackerman x female reader #levi ackerman x you #levi ackerman x reader #aot fanfic #aot fanfiction #attack on titan #attack on titan fanfiction #attack on titan fanfic #shingeki no kyoujin #shingeki no kyoujin fanfiction #shingeki no kyojin fanfic #levi x reader #levi aot #aot x reader #wip fanfic #silver underground #fic: silver underground #amywritesthings #levi fic

[arceespinkgun]

I really appreciate that Earthspark is unique and holds up amazingly well as its own thing, but is also constantly in dialogue with other parts of the franchise. I couldn't help thinking about Sari from TFA when I was watching Mo and Robby in the newest Earthspark episodes.

Remember when Sari, feeling like she kept being left behind despite being a key part of the team, upgraded herself and then lost control and stabbed Bumblebee, and the only way to stop her from her rampage was for the Autobots to shut down most of her upgrades? It reminded me of how Robby did something similar, throwing himself into combat, trying to be more adult (despite only being thirteen), and then dying (!) and becoming extremely ill when Mo brought him back to life.

I was thinking about how I was shocked when I saw Sari's rampage and was really interested in seeing, you know... how she felt about everything that had happened. Maybe she wouldn't be in a rush to grow up after all of that. Maybe she and Bumblebee and the rest of their friends would have lingering trauma from this experience—Ratchet was having PTSD flashbacks while operating on Bumblebee!

But no. None of that happened. Once Sari's upgrades were mostly deactivated, we got one scene with her unconscious with her father worrying about her... and none of this was explored any further. Sari became less and less prominent, her feelings about this situation were not addressed, and we never got to learn much more about her. Her origin supposedly would have been revealed by season 5 (not even 4!!!) which never happened, and the creators have been cagey about it ever since the show ended.

Compare this to Earthspark. After what happens to Robby when he uses his new Cyber-sleeve powers, we get to see the horrified reactions of his entire family. The next episode's premise is about searching for a cure to his illness. The episode after that is all about Mo's trauma from this situation, and we get to see an exploration of adultification and how unfair Mo feels life has been to her and her family. Her parents are struggling just as much even though they're not the focus, but it's clear how worried they are for their children.

I've seen some people think the pacing is too fast in Earthspark, but I'm glad it followed-up on all these themes so quickly. I've also seen people understandably be disturbed—like Dot and Alex were—by the fact that Mo is nine and yet was chosen by a Prime. But I think the truth is that this connects to real life. Life sucks and is exhausting for marginalized kids like Mo. The reason she saw all those "messed-up memories" was to see how life isn't fair, it isn't predictable, and bad things will happen no matter what, but compassion and a desire to be there for the people you love still matters and helps preserve joy and positive aspects that could otherwise be lost. I think that's what Quintus Prime meant when he said the power was always inside of her, and that's why her battle with Mandroid was in the mental/spiritual plane. This is why Mo is the "Legacy of hope" along with Robby, and why the powers she and Robby have were not taken away like Sari's were—they symbolize the qualities the Malto kids have always had.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that since their powers are similar, the Cyber-sleeves look similar to Sari's robotic palms and arms, they're all South Asian kids, they went through similar trauma and adultification, Mo and Sari are both nine, etc. I was really happy to see Earthspark take the time to explore all of that in-depth after it was brought up, while TFA didn't really and lost its chance.

#earthspark spoilers #transformers earthspark #transformers animated #TFA #my analysis #Mo Malto #Sari Sumdac #Robby Malto #long post #my gifs

[sgiandubh]

Jottings: Season 7, Episode 2. Nothing compares to them

A tiny, but welcome disclaimer: I have not read all the OL books yet, so do not expect witty repartees and connecting the dots with the current book follow-up by the series. In fact, I am still struggling right now with Voyager, after I gave a resolute middle finger and an excruciating amount of time to Dragonfly in Amber, which bored me to death with its sketchy depiction of eighteenth-century Paris. Unpopular opinion, I know: I can't help it, since I consider Paris, for many personal reasons, as my second, beloved home.

There go my two cents, with little to no spoilers. There is much to savor in there:

I thought I couldn't bear to watch one more single time Sinéad O'Connor's rendition of ye olde Skye Boat Song. I was wrong. I think it is exactly what this season needs: a bit bruised & battered & breathless. The perfect tinge of rough around the edges. This is no walk in the park and hers is the right cue, setting the tone for all the rest.

Vlachos. Excellent. Loved every second of it.

I suppose everybody will talk about the Look Jamie gave Claire right after Insufferable Bree gives birth to wee Mandy. I cackled all by myself, which is not even surprising. And so will you, Shippers United. Mark me.

SS upgraded a bit her game, to the extent she doesn't sound all the time like reciting United Airlines' flight schedule. She and Rankin finally manage to pull off a decent rapport (chemistry will always be at a deep-frozen 0). So, rejoice: at least they don't look like the mean troop leader forced them to share the same tent at Camp Sunrise. It's all fine and dandy, until she relaxes and slips back into that horrific, East Coast wannabe accent. Sorry, not sorry.

Did Lizzie say ”Fraser's Fridge”, when reading the birth announcement, or am I hearing things again? Now that's an earworm, sheesh...

Vandervaart looks promising enough, but what do I know, after a two-minutes scene with SS? Court is adjourned.

LJG & JAMMF, what a powerful, ambiguous, elegant scene. Tension is mounting, and this is when you crack open the Netflix & Chill'd ice cream bucket. It will come in handy, trust me.

The fireflies' scene was the death of me. There is something extraordinary about S's superb ability to speak volumes without uttering a single word. There is so much love and such despair to capture Bree's face, Bree's voice, Bree's alien joy when she mentions damn Mickey Mouse, and keep them forever. Did I ugly cry? I let out a sincere Fuuuuuck and couldn't help it. This is when the box of tissues came in handy, and you know, damn the consequences.

Dear (?) Diana Gabaldon: GET THAT WONDERFUL MAN THROUGH THE STONES, WHERE THERE'S PENICILLIN AND A HOT BATH AND A HIGHER AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY, STAT.

Yeah, sure. She missed that point five seasons ago, why do I even bother?

Spoiler: "What was it like.... there? It was.... magical". BOOO-HOOO-HOOO (I have no qualms).

Jeremiah's wooden toy plane in the streets of Wilmington and then the real thing across the sky, just after the little family gets through the stones. Clever reminder of that plane landing in Boston, with Claire, Bree and TMcG... ho-hum ... Frank Randall, after Culloden.

And finally, since I would really like to let you enjoy the wonderful last quarter of it, Jamie and Claire. That unspeakable tenderness that keeps us all completely spellbound. This is S&C acting, how could it be otherwise: and splendid, at that. But their acting, since that chemistry test, is informed by clear, present, deep feelings. We know. They know we know.

And they got their mojo back. I always hoped and prayed they will go out with a bang, not a fizzle. And it seems I was right. Fingers crossed. I trust them and, as always, I trust my gut.

#jottings

[jibunbosh]

a common experience many autistic people experience is struggling to put your own feelings for the people around you into the strictly defined categories between "platonic" and "romantic," to try to frame your own unique affections in the context of the words used by the people around you. especially when you're younger - when you're already used to the world around you seeming to speak in terms foreign to you, when the concept of love rears its ugly head in adolescence, one that could be found confusing to anyone... it can be nigh impossible to wrap your head around it, to try to quantize the feelings you know are burning brightly in your heart.

in episode 3, it's clear that sakiko is someone that tomori highly admired and appreciated - not just for her kindness, but how things always seemed to click into place with her around. sakiko helped tomori realize that her own words had value - and what are tomori's words if not her feelings put into writing? and if her feelings have worth, then what of the way she thinks of sakiko?

i feel many have (rightfully) subscribed to the autistic reading of tomori's character, but I still remember when the lead writer of the series, unico-san, wrote something to the effect of "if you're a fan of girls' love media, please watch mygo."

with that, I think there's much to be gained from reexamining the way tomori looks at sakiko from a queer lens, as well (to say nothing of the large overlap between neurodivergence and not conforming to societal expectations of gender and sexuality). crychic was a brand-new experience for tomori, with sakiko serving as the catalyst for tomori's joining of the band. unico-san even writes in her relationship chart, even well after crychic had disbanded and mygo had formed, that to tomori, sakiko is still someone tomori cherishes dearly and considers of great importance. I don't think it's too much a stretch to postulate that tomori's feelings for sakiko overlap what some may describe as "love." the difference between platonic love and romantic may be negligible - the matter of the fact is that tomori's life was greatly influenced by meeting sakiko, and for that, tomori feels very strongly about her... in some way. so strong, in fact, that she wished she could remain with her for the rest of her life. but, alas... it wasn't to be.

broken, afraid, tomori asks anon when she expresses interest in a band if she'd be willing to do it for the rest of their lives. it feels blunt and forward, but it's easy to see why tomori at that point would ask that: she's been in a band once with someone she cherished, and that person left. is she willing to feel that way about someone again?

"I don't think I can ever forget about CRYCHIC."

mygo ep 13 hands the baton over to ave mujica with tomori attempting to bridge the gap between sakiko and the newly-established mygo by offering soyo's words to her in writing, but sakiko doesn't entertain it - merely wishing her well and leaving, as if to wipe her hands clean of the whole affair that was CRYCHIC. yet, tomori, as much as she goes barreling forward with mygo, doesn't feel the same - the way she feels about sakiko is as strong as ever.

whether reciprocal or not, tomori's affection for sakiko is something that irrevocably shapes the rest of the narrative and the way tomori feels about everyone else in her life. it's something that can't go disregarded when it comes to examining the countless other dynamics in the show - from the protective and bashful taki speaking of tomori, to anon's newfound appreciation of tomori, to even raana's playful amusement with the girl. and, before long, we'll get to see more of how that shapes sakiko, too.

it's hard growing up as an autistic teenager, and it's hard growing up as a queer girl. what happens when you're both?

#mygo #takamatsu tomori #togawa sakiko #rambles #mygo spoilers #text poast

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Gotta say your au mixed with the art style and such and amazing work in what we seen so far with the horror and some laughs it's just become a treat every time I saw new details (whenever you supplies them up, thanks for that)

I know you already disclosure that it's gonna be bad BAD TIMES for the puppets gang but does it have it's soft ad fluff times??

The shot were Frank ask Wally if they're dying will looking up for the ceiling hasn't leave my brain, such a raw emotional clear on them, I wonder when they were just the two of them for a while they cuddle or hold hands for comfort??

I just.i just want them to have small victories of comfort

of course it has fluff and comfort! a lot of it! having a nice blend of both makes the fluff feel sweeter & the hurt hit all the harder <3 i will now supply some (written (for now)) examples and tidbits. putting it under the cut cause it got kinda Long

Frank & Wally do become very affectionate with each other! ofc as soon as Frank woke Wally was like "ok im holding your hand everywhere we go, this is Non Negotiable". because its dark! he doesn't want Frank to stray too far or get lost! and it's easier to yank Frank outta harm's way if they're already holding hands. comfort factors into it later, when Frank starts initiating & Wally does it purely to make sure Frank is still there. but yeah they get Very comfortable with each other, to the point where when Eddie wakes up he asks Frank - misinterpreting the situation entirely - "if you'd rather have Wally than me, i understand." ofc Frank laughs his ass off bc uhhh no that is Not what their relationship is, Ed

~ similarly, (almost) everyone acclimates to Wally's need to be as close as possible at all feasible times. he's Very physically affectionate and has little to no regard for personal space or boundaries anymore. like, he'll listen when someone asks him to back off or somethn, but until then he does not give a fuck. and this rubs off on the others as they get used to it

and then there's OH WAIT IDK IF I'VE MENTIONED THIS YET but! Wally - during his main exploration phase - found the Welcome Home episode recordings! and he eventually figured out how to work a tv he found, so he added "watch an episode of me and my friends" into his Routine. when the others wake up, he includes them in this. is it horrifying for them at first? yeah. but they get used to it and find similar if not the same comfort and enjoyment in it that Wally does. like in This Scribble, Frank & Wally & Poppy & Howdy are all watching an episode, and are quoting the lines they've memorized. they all cuddle up on a couch together and watch their favorite show <3

& Wally also teaches them (as they wake up) how to repair and care for themselves / each other, sleeping or otherwise. picture a little sewing circle of Frank, Wally, and Poppy, with Poppy giving tips and guidance on how to improve. these sessions provide them with genuine smiles and sometimes even some laughs.

before Wally & Home's divorce, they'd pass much of the time with games! go-fish, charades, i spy, etc. one of their favorites was when Wally would toss a ball at Home's door, and Home would hit it back. additionally, whenever Wally discovered something new, he'd rush back to Home with it - either the information or the actual thing, if he could carry it. ex: when he'd find books or files, he'd bring them to Home and (quietly) read them aloud while resting against them

and just in general know that the Post Office is a place of safety. Wally has made sure it's secure. i like to imagine like... little craft sessions and impromptu dancing lessons and story sharing going on in there among the awake neighbors. they try to have fun despite it all

that's all i can recall for Act One's fluff tidbits rn, but trust me there is More. and also abundant angsty comfort. the downright painful stuff has to earn its existence yk yk this au is Not grimdark

#oh there's also a really specific scene in my mind of like. #poppy taking notice that wally has developed a disregard for his appearance & that he doesn't seem to think he's attractive anymore #and recruits frank & howdy to give him like... a lil spa day as best they can #they tie (most of) his hair up in a ponytail and scrub some of the dirt out & they make a little patchwork sweater for him #and poppy tells him he looks very pretty #and wally has a moment of '...? im pretty? im still...? oh...!' #they notice him putting a teensy bit of attention towards his appearance going forward from this #oh also he makes sure they All get a little 'spa day' #good feelings all around.... #rambles from the bog #wh lights out au #they all pick up little Habits towards each other #like wally will hold others' hands and just fiddle with em w/o a real point or goal #frank will adjust his friends' clothes hair if it's a lil Too out of place #poppy will hold her wings around/behind others w/o really realizing it #howdy will pick up / carry the smaller neighbors for no particular reason #eddie tends to keep a hand on the nearest person #etc etc! #there was. Something Else i wanted to add. i don't remember what it was! #but yeah! there are good things. there are Always good things.

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Making the case to watch The Warp Effect immediately if you are watching Only Friends and have not seen that piece yet.

So I see much of my tumblr sphere was getting in to Only Friends today as is our God given right. We are only one episode in and I am already deeply in love with this show and also still trying to figure out how to process my emotions about it in to coherent thought.

But because my brain has not finished loading all the details of what occurred this morning, I would instead like to make a case for why I think it is important to watch The Warp Effect immediately if you are planning to watch Only Friends and haven't seen it.

(ps to @waitmyturtles and @rocketturtle4 I am so glad you started this show!)

The Warp Effect and Only Friends are co-directed by Ninew and Jojo and written by Jojo (+ the rest of the writing team obviously). If you are at all curious about what the style of Only Friends is going to potentially end up looking like, or you want to compare the structure of Only Friends to other paired works, I think it is worth it to watch The Warp Effect.

The Warp Effect and Only Friends heavily feature sex. It is my personal opinion that Jojo used The Warp Effect and its depicted sex scenes as a way to get his foot in the door for what he wanted to/planned to do in Only Friends. When I heard about Only Friends being sex heavy, I automatically placed my expectations for the types of sex and the depictions of sex in OF at the level we got in TWE. Only Friends in the first episode has already exceeded my expectations of what I thought we would get, but if you are at all curious about how the depictions of sex in Only Friends compare in terms how much of a sex scene is depicted on screen, the types of sex people are having, and the overall tone of the sex scenes (aka comedic or serious), I would recommend checking out TWE.

The Warp Effect and Only Friends are ensemble works with a lot of messy, moving parts. If you have been on tumblr and in the BL sphere in the last couple months, you may have seen a number of flow charts circulating, of how each of the Only Friends characters is connected to one another. As we have seen from the first episode, the relationships are already getting messy and complicated, and it stands to reason they may get even more so. The Warp Effect is another show that has a lot going on with all of it's characters that need to be kept track of. In other words, if you are curious about Jojo (+ crews) ability to successfully pull off a 12 episode story of complete and utter chaos.

The Warp Effect and Only Friends cover heavy themes. I must say I had nothing but unrestrained summer winter fun watching TWE, even as conversations around abortion, sexual assault, religious trauma, and homophobia came up throughout the show. I don't think we know the full extent to which Jojo (+ crew) will be covering heavy or difficult subjects, but we already know OF involves: substance use, sex work, and cheating. I have no doubt we are going to get even more sociopolitical commentary from Jojo and co. for this show. So if you haven't seen Jojo's work outside of things like Never Let Me Go I think it would actually be really beneficial for you to get better acquainted with Jojo's domain and how he navigates giving the audience a good time while also making political statements.

Vibes. The Warp Effect and Only Friends have a lot of similarities in terms of it's structure (messy, complicated; ensemble cast; political commentary; sex heavy) but tonally they are already shaping up to be very different. As @waitmyturtles said in a conversation with me and @lurkingshan after watching the first episode "[TWE] is so smart, it knows what it's doing from the very first episode". Similarly, Jojo has a clear vision for Only Friends and knows exactly what he wants to say. And with those surieties comes a distinct difference in the style of the shows. The Warp Effect is very frequently played for comedy. The sex scenes are often intentionally over the top. That is decidedly not the case for Only Friends, and I for one, think that is fascinating.

All of this to say, that I am not sure that we would have been able to get Only Friends without Jojo leveraging his power at GMMTV to first make The Warp Effect, testing out the concept of both feasibility and viewer engagement of non-sponsored, more overtly sexual shows. Or if we did I think it would have come at the cost of a lot of the physical intimacy/fucking moments we are going to get in this show. Which makes TWE worth watching as we start the Only Friends journey.

And while you are at it, you should watch Gay OK Bangkok, which is a partnership between Jojo and Aof as directors, which is incredibly well done, and which Jojo himself says he has drawn inspiration from for what is going to happen in Only Friends. Which is why I'm not writing a whole post about it, because it doesn't need one. Jojo himself has said OF draws from his GOBK days, which makes it required viewing before we get to deep in to Only Friends territory from where I stand.

(and if you do end up watching one or both of these, I would love to hear your thoughts!)

#only friends #only friends the series #ofts #the warp effect #twe #gay ok bangkok season 2 #gay ok bangkok season 1 #gobk #jojo tichakorn #ninew pinya

[animebw]

Seasonal Reflection: Winter 2024 Anime

My feelings on the first anime season of 2024 can be summed up thusly: Most of my favorite shows from winter 2024 were continuations of shows that were already great from last season, not new entries. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and there were plenty of new anime I at least enjoyed watching. But it became clear about halfway through the season that aside from a couple fall 2023 holdovers, there was barely anything truly exciting going on here. Most of the adaptations I watched didn't do much to truly elevate their source material, and most of the few original series we got ended up the worst of the bunch. I can't say nothing good came out of winter 2024, but if this is any sign of how the rest of the year is gonna go, we may be in for a slog. For now, though, let's take stock of the anime I watched this season, and which ones are worth your time.

Metallic Rouge: 3/10

If you asked me what the worst show I finished this season would be at the start, I never would've guessed Metallic Rouge. I mean, it's a cool-ass original sci-fi anime from Bones with slick 2D mecha animation, surely that's gotta be at least a little cool, right? Sadly, no. Because this is, without question, one of the most baffling scripts I've ever seen in anime. Almost every single detail of its world and plot are barely explained, if at all, and the mechanics of what's even supposed to be going on are so nebulous that every attempt at a plot twist feels like a twist on something that never actually existed. Characters are plopped into the story without even an introduction. At times it feels like whole scenes have been cut out entirely. The only thing I can compare it to is the original Suicide Squad movie from 2016: a story so cut to the bone in the editing room that you can barely tell what's supposed to be happening half the time, and yet enough of the original story remains to suggest it was never any good in the first place. The one thing it gets right is the prickly chemistry between its two leads, and then it fucking keeps them separated for like half the damn runtime! How do you even unforced error that badly?

Bucchigiri: 3.5/10

Man, this was not a good season for original anime. Bucchigiri might not have been as staggering a writing trainwreck as Metallic Rouge, but its sin is arguably even worse; it's boring. It's a wacky, colorful high school delinquent romp with rainbow-haired Jojo's punks beating the snot out of each other with genie powers, it's sort of a re-imagining of Aladdin, it's got freaking Hiroko Utsumi at the helm, and it's boring. Why? Because this show gets absolutely stuck in the quicksand of its own status quo and refuses to budge an inch. Character growth is nonexistent, the protagonist is an aggravating loser wimp who never learns his lesson, and nothing of actual meaning happens from the first episode to the end. Literally everything you think is setting up a character arc where someone learns a lesson or grows as a person, all of it amounts to nothing. It's a limp, inert world that perpetuates the same overdone jokes and contrived, misunderstanding-based drama over and over again until all the outsized Utsumi visual personality feels like a tacky coat thrown on top of a lifeless corpse. What an utter waste.

Urusei Yatsura Season 2 (1st Cours): 5/10

I'm still not quite sure what to make of the Urusei Yatsura remake. is it charmingly dated? Annoyingly dated? A welcome throwback or a sign that some things should stay in the past? If nothing else, it never fails to get at least a couple chuckles out of me every episode. But the more it tries to lean into being actually sincere, the more its inherent cheesiness and lack of depth starts becoming a problem. I'm sorry, this cast of characters is just too abrasive and purposefully insane to take seriously, and none of their relationships are healthy enough to unironically root for. Lum and Ataru are not a couple I want to see actually get together, at least not unless Ataru stops being such a fucking shithead. And if him being a jackass could be charming in season 1, then this season is really starting to test my patience with him. It's one thing to be a serial skirt chaser, but his actions this season regularly cross a line from womanizing to unambiguous sex pest, and there's only so many wooden mallets he can get knocked over the head with before it stops feeling like like he's getting punished as much as he deserves to be.

Undead Unluck (2nd Cours): 5/10

Good news, everyone: Undead Unluck finally gave up on those awful groping gags that were ruining its central romance! Bad news: at the same time, it spontaneously developed one of the worst cases of recap padding I've ever seen! I'm not just talking overlong recap segments at the start of the episode, I'm talking constant flashbacks to events we just saw just moments before, straight up playing the same footage again just minutes apart, all climaxing in a truly unforgivable episode that spends seven goddamn minutes on recycled footage. Not even Tokyo Revengers was this bad with its time-wasting. And to add insult to injury, once it finally gets its feet unstuck and returns to a reasonable amount of recap for the final arc, it's probably the best arc of the entire show! It's some of the most bonkers high-concept emotional storytelling I've ever seen attempted, let alone pulled off so spectacularly. It's proof that there is so much brilliance to Undead Unluck, if it could just get out of its own way. But as long as it continues suffering from such massive systemic flaws, it's only ever going to be an also-ran.

Solo Leveling: 5.5/10

Okay, look; is this show dumb as a bag of rocks? Absolutely. Is it as nakedly an adolescent power fantasy as any anime has ever been? Ditto. Does it solely exist for dweeby incels to feel like swaggering douchebag chads getting revenge on all the normies who looked down on them by becoming The Bestest Strongest Chadliest Awesomest Of All Time? You know it. But god dammit, it's actually fun. I cannot pretend I'm too mature and sophisticated to enjoy a big, helping heaping of dumb edgy schlock when it's actually done well. I'm the one person on the face of the earth who still caries water for Akame ga Kill, for crying out loud. And Solo Leveling makes two really smart storytelling choices that keep it (mostly) on the entertaining side of dumb fun: building a genuinely interesting and intricate world that exists well beyond the scope of the protagonist's actions (for now, at least), and making sure that no matter how stupidly overpowered Jinwoo gets, his opponents are always just a little bit even more stupidly overpowered, so he's still pushed to his absolute breaking point and barely scraping together a win by the skin of his teeth every time. There is an art to edge that's too often taken for granted, and this show is proof that being the living embodiment of a twelve-year-old boy's wet dreams is no excuse not to be at least a decent version of that. That said, let's be real, Jinwoo was so much more attractive before his supposed glow-up. Give my boy back his scraggly rat locks, you cowards.

Bang Brave Bang Bravern: 6/10

What happens when a campy, cartoony 70s-style super robot anime crashes headfirst into a much grittier real robot anime? Well, what happens is Bang Brave Bang Bravern, the latest ten-car pileup of mismatched genres from the Cygames masterminds behind "What if horse racing but idols?" Take a desperate war story of survival against impossible odds, airdrop a skyscraper-sized superhero into the mix, and watch him completely shatter the original tone one cheekily ironic powerup and power-of-friendship speech at a time. It's a beautifully bonkers sendup of mecha tropes that has some of the funniest individual moments in this entire anime season, and the absolutely wild twist it pulls with the titular robot's identity in the back half is more than worth the price of admission on its own. Unfortunately, if it wanted to be as perfect a parody-until-it-isn't mecha series as Akiba Maid War was a parody-until-it-isn't mob flick, it probably should've tried being as long as most mecha series tend to be, i.e. more than just twelve measly episodes. There's just not enough time to develop any of the characters or world beyond the most essential parts, resulting in huge chunks of the supporting cast hanging around with nothing to do but take up space. And it leads to this show, which is trying to be so big and over the top, instead feeling so small and half-formed. Also, the secondary romance is gross. Like, really gross.

A Sign of Affection: 6/10

I think this show has helped clarify something for me: I'm really getting tired of how quickly modern romance anime get their main couple together. As much as we rag on the endless will-they-won't-they of ages past, taking so much time to build up the characters and their relationship before they finally make it official can result in some truly one-of-a-kind storytelling when done right. I might agonize over how long Sawako and Kuronoma take to get together in Kimi ni Todoke, but the payoff is so transcendent that none of those complaints matter. Whereas Yuki and Itsuomi getting together so quickly in A Sign of Affection... I mean, they're cute, I guess? His cool demeanor plays off her sincerity very well? But it feels like the show's in such a rush to get to the good stuff- and so determined to make Istuomi the dreamiest, most perfect boyfriend ever- that it skips over so much of the careful character-building that makes all the best anime romances so special. It's a sugary sweet confection, but wipe the frosting away and there's just not that much cake underneath. Honestly, I find the side characters a lot more interesting because they're allowed to have messy internal conflicts with a bit more meat on their bones. But hey, props for putting a deaf heroine at the center of your shoujo romance and taking so much time to explore how that affects the way she interacts with the world. That's a cause well worth celebrating.

Sengoku Youko: 6.5/10

Rejoice, everyone, we finally have an adaptation of a Satoshi Mizukami work that doesn't look like absolute garbage! After the flaming disaster that was Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer's barely animated hackjob production, Sengoku Youko has arrived to give the cult fave manga artist a chance for his work to actually shine on the silver screen. As someone who only knows him through Planet With, I've always wondered if Mizukami deserved the reputation his manga gets, and with White Fox delivering as tight and intense a production as they gave Re:Zero, I guess it's time to finally find out. And the answer is... mostly? Like, the biggest problems in this sci-fi/feudal fantasy mashup are the characters being a little too eager to state the themes out loud and one pretty crummy death that's about as hamfisted and over-telegraphed as I've seen in a while. But there's a shockingly gripping narrative underlying it all, a story about the scars trauma leaves on people, of characters making bad decisions and facing real consequences for them, of hatred and poisonous ideology forced to reckon with the more complex reality of the world as a whole. And it all climaxes in an absolute barn-burner final episode that knocked my score up a half point all on its own. If future seasons can make good on all the potential this first season has set up, then I may just end up a Mizukami fan myself when all is said and done.

Blue Exorcist Season 3: 6.5/10

I'm of two minds about Blue Exorcist's second return after a six-year gap between seasons. On one hand, it's clear the new staff is just nowhere near as talented as the folks who first brought this series to life at A-1 Pictures. The action is abysmal, the storyboarding is clunky, and the animation feels like it's constantly fighting for its life to maintain a passable standard. And it sucks that a series that once brought such great life to its story is now held back by such a mediocre production. But on the other hand... holy fuck, am I glad Blue Exorcist is back. I once described The Devil is a Part-Timer as the mathematical average of anime as a concept, but if you were to ask me what the best possible version of that mathematical average looks like? It would be Blue Exorcist. This is, hands down, one of the best straightforward shonen action stories in the whole medium, a reminder of why all the most generic and overused tropes were once powerful enough to become generic and overused in the first place. It's proof that even the simplest of "superpowered teens kick demon butt with the power of friendship" concepts can result in a wonderful goddamn series when handled with good old-fashioned storytelling fundamentals. And not even the rough-as-hell production is enough to keep season 3 from delivering on the thrills, tears, laughs, and cheers that make this series so magical. Just, please, give the next season more time in the oven so it doesn't feel like it's wading through molasses to hit those heights. Okay?

Delicious in Dungeon (1st Cours): 7/10

Delicious in Dungeon's biggest problem is that it takes a while to really settle into itself. The opening scene of the protagonist's sister being devoured by a dragon sets the tone for an intense and desperate rescue mission, but the actual series that follows this harrowing opening is as lackadaisical as can be. And it's jarring to be thrust into a gag-filled, character-driven fantasy cooking comedy where the harsh tone of that opening scene and the ticking clock of Falin's digestion completely disappear from the characters' heads in favor of how beast to cook and eat the various fantasy monsters they encounter in the dungeon. Yes, it makes a little more sense once the mechanics of death and resurrection are explained later on, but it's a weird note to start on. Which is a shame, because once Delicious in Dungeon gets a handle on what kind of story it's trying to be, it's really fun! Its sense of deadpan comedy coupled with Trigger's expressive animation makes for some really unexpected gags, and the way it explores its fantasy cuisine is genuinely some of the most creative stuff I've ever seen in the cooking anime genre. Plus, with the dark tone coming back in at the end of the first cours- and landing much more naturally this time- I have high hopes for how this series will marry those two sides of itself moving forward. If the manga fans' reactions are any indication, I think we're in for a damn good time.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (2nd Cours): 8/10

So remember in my last post how I said that it was kind of disappointing whenever Frieren turned into an action show because of how disconnected the fights were from the beating heart that makes this show so special? Well, apparently the writers heard me and decided what I meant was I wanted this peaceful, meditative tale about grief, change and the passage of time to turn into the goddamn Hunter Exams for ten episodes straight. It's one of the most shockingly ill-advised storytelling swerves I've seen in an otherwise good show, discarding all this series' strengths in favor of a half-baked tournament arc with tonally jarring grimdark elements and a bland, overstuffed cast of characters who only start becoming interesting in the rare moments they're allowed to stop slinging spells at each other and just, like, talk about life? You know, the stuff that Frieren's actually good at? Not this brainless slice of shonen envy that only avoids being a complete slog thanks to how spectacular the action is across the board? Ugh. Look, Frieren is officially the most beloved anime on the goddamn planet right now, and its best moments are so incredible that I wish I could join that chorus as well. But it's so disappointing to me that a show this singular and special has so often chosen to be the least interesting version of itself.

The Dangers in My Heart Season 2: 8.5/10

It's official: director Hiroaki Akagi is the master of middle school rom-coms. No other creator so perfectly grasps the specific blend of immaturity, awkwardness, cringe, and heart-on-sleeve sincerity that defines the love stories of early adolescence. That was already clear with his work on Teasing Master Takagi-san, but now that he's pulled it off twice, there's no room left for argument. And just like with Takagi-san, the second season of The Dangers in My Heart takes a show that was already shockingly good and catapults it into all-time greatness. This is a coming-of-age triumph, a soaring tribute to embracing your own cringeworthy self, flaws and all, and sharing that self openly with the people who matter most to you. Ichikawa's journey toward maturity, Yamada's journey toward self-love, and the way their romance sparks the best in both of them is the stuff that dreams are made of. I laughed, I cried, I squealed like a little girl, and I felt my heart grow three sizes by the time it was done. This is a new gold standard for anime rom-coms, and if you can stomach a bit of groanworthy fanservice, it more than deserves your attention.

The Apothecary Diaries (2nd Cours): 8.5/10

Most of the time when I cover a two-cours show on these seasonal reflections, I end up in a pretty different place by the end of the second cours than I did at the first. Either it sort of fell apart in the second half, or found its footing and took it to the next level, or it changed in some interesting way that affects how I view the show as a whole. But The Apothecary Diaries has stayed the course from the first episode all the way to the end. Start to finish, it's remained pretty much the same show, with the same ideas and attitude, exploring the same themes in the same ways. And you know what? When you're as good as The Apothecary Diaries ended up being, there's nothing wrong with that. This is a spectacular historical drama that builds such a rich, compelling world for its equally rich, compelling characters to inhabit. It's a powerful exploration of how old society treated the disadvantaged- women, poor people, people with all severities of disability- and how one deeply abnormal girl carves her way through this viper's den with her body and soul intact. It's the kind of mature, thoughtful series we so rarely seen done this well, and with the announcement of a season 2 already confirmed, we may well end up with close to 50 episodes when all is said and done. That, folks, is what a true shoujo/josei renaissance looks like. And I'm so happy such a deserving series is leading the way in reminding us how damn good women's stories can be when they're given a chance to shine this brightly.

DROPPED

Cherry Magic: Dropped at 2 episodes for looking like butt and the central romance feeling pretty lifeless.

High Card Season 2: Dropped at 1 episode because I realized I didn't care anymore.

Ninja Kamui: Dropped at 2 episodes for being dull tryhard edgy bullshit with overdone fight scenes that are impossible to follow.

#anime #the anime binge watcher #tabw #winter 2024 anime #winter 2024 sr #sousou no frieren #frieren: beyond journey's end #the apothecary diaries #kusuriya no hitorigoto #bucchigiri?! #undead unluck #sengoku youko #delicious in dungeon #dungeon meshi #metallic rouge #blue exorcist #ao no exorcist #a sign of affection #yubisaki to renren #the dangers in my heart #boku no kokoro no yabai yatsu #bang brave bang bravern #urusei yatsura #solo leveling #yuuki bakuhatsu bang bravern #frieren

[pedrito-friskito]

strawberry wine - joel miller x ofc!liv stone/fem!reader

after - part twenty-five

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

you just have to keep going.

a/n: the big one. the biggest yet? I think? either way. this is pretty much the entirety of episode three in one part. I considered doing the rest of the story this way (one part per episode) but there's going to be a lot more added to the plot, so much more to come!

word count: 14.2k

warnings: if you've been reading this far, you know the drill, but explicit smut ahead!

✨@friskito-library for updates on new parts/works✨

You head west. Toward Lincoln. You walk for miles; maybe ten, if Joel had to guess. And the entire way, you don’t say a goddamn word. Not a single thing.

Ellie is uncharacteristically quiet the whole way, not a question or comment as you walk past the edge of the city, past what remains of the chain link fence you once told Joel was FEDRA’s original plan before the QZ was built. Ellie has your bat in her hands still, and she carries it silently, tapping her fingers against the metal softly, not hard enough to make any noise. You have Tess’s gun in hand, your grip on it so tight Joel is sure your knuckles are aching.

You walk through the forest until you’re all so tired you think you might drop. The night is cool, no rain to bother you, and you find a small clearing near the river to set up camp. Not that there’s much to set up. Ellie nearly collapses into the dirt, sprawling at the base of a tree, using her bag as a pillow. You go to shrug out of your jacket, stepping over and draping it over the kid. Joel follows suit, shrugging out of his own and putting it around your shoulders.

“Can’t risk a fire,” Joel murmurs to you, the two of you standing in the clearing. You ditched your bags once you found the spot, leaned them against a tree along with the bat, which Ellie had handed back to you, and the rifle. “Not this close to Boston.”

You just nodded in agreement, wrapping your arms around yourself. Joel rubs his hand up and down your back, and you turn to look at Ellie, completely passed out beneath Joel’s jacket. “What are we gonna do, Joel?” you whisper, your voice hoarse, and he can hear the panic in you. “What the fuck are we gonna do?”

“Exactly what we said we would. We go to Lincoln first. It’s a good hike, but we’ve done it before, we can do it again. We resupply, figure things out with Bill and Frank, and then…well, Tommy used to be a Firefly, maybe he can point us in the right direction.”

“We need to get to Lincoln as soon as we can,” you say, a slight waver in your voice, but you swallow it back. “We need to rest, to reset.” 

To mourn. 

It goes without saying, and Joel nods. He moves his hand to your shoulder, makes to pull you into his arms, but you move out of his grip instead of into it, turning to where your weapons are leaned against the tree. You pick up the rifle, and then head toward the edge of the trees surrounding you, toward where the river runs, the sound audible from where you’re standing.

“I’ll take the first watch,” you murmur over your shoulder, swinging the rifle up. “Get some rest.”

You never wake him. Sleep finds Joel easily, his body exhausted from the travel, but it’s the kind of sleep where he feels like he’s merely shut his eyes and opened them again, even though hours have passed. He closes his eyes on an inky black sky, and wakes to one filled with clouds, an almost lavender colour poking between the streaks of white.

The rifle is still missing from its previous spot beside your bat, and Joel knows gunfire would have woken him. But where are you? He gets to his feet slowly, every bone in his body aching with protest, leaning his good hand against a tree for a moment as he stretches out his back.

He walks over to where Ellie’s still passed out, and nudges her with his boot, just a light tap. She whines, hiding her face under his coat, and he taps her again. “Wake up, kid,” he grunts, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Now.”

Following the sound of the river, Joel steps through the trees, bowing his head to watch his step until the water comes into view. Sure enough, there you are, sat right at the shoreline, your arms wrapped around your knees, which are pulled up to your chest. The rifle sits in the dirt beside you, and there’s a stack of rocks piled neatly, almost impossibly high.

“You didn’t wake me,” he calls, his voice hoarse with the morning. You jump, turn to look at him over your shoulder, and Joel’s heart squeezes at the tears on your face. “Liv, baby—”

“I didn’t see the point,” you reply, sniffling, wiping your cheeks with your sleeve. “I knew I wouldn’t sleep, figured one of us should get some good shuteye.”

Joel grimaces, squatting down beside you, looking out at the river. “Y’know, I always heard sleeping on the forest floor was good for your back. Load of shit.”

“Ellie awake?”

“I nudged her.”

You just nod.

“Liv,” he starts, and reaches his hand out.

“Don’t, Joel,” you grit out, nearly flinching away from him. “Just…if you touch me right now, I’ll start crying, and if I start crying now, I’m not gonna fucking stop.”

“Liv—”

“Don’t,” you repeat, your eyes brimming with tears as you stare back at him. “Please? Just…let’s just get to Lincoln, and figure out what we’re doing next.” You scramble to your feet, grabbing the rifle up off the ground. Joel follows suit, straightening his legs, and for a moment, he almost says fuck it and grabs you. But he doesn’t. He watches your eyes move up his body, landing on his face, and one lone tear slips down your cheek before you swipe at it. You hand him the rifle as you brush past, heading back up the bank to your camping spot.

He feels the loss differently than you do. He knows that. What he and Tess’s relationship had evolved into was vastly different than the closeness that had formed between you, but it didn’t mean he cared any less. She was Tess, steadfast and reliable, determined and headstrong. Just like you. How many times had he thought about that, before he made it back to Boston? How well he thought you and Tess would get along, the way the ferocity in each of you reminded him of the other.

And now, she’s gone. Just like that.

Joel waits a moment, looks out across the river, at the slowly rising sun, at the tower of rocks you’ve left on the shoreline. He bends down again, leaning some of his weight on the rifle, his knees creaking as he goes. He reaches into the water, hissing as the cold covers his hand. He closes his fingers around a smooth, flat stone and pulls it from the riverbed. It’s nearly a perfect circle, dark stone with a vein of white running through it. 

Carefully, ignoring the way his hand trembles as he sets it down, he lays the stone atop your tower. He pauses, makes sure it stays upright, and then rises to his feet again, slinging the rifle over his shoulder and walking back to the clearing.

You’re still on your way back, and his boots find the footprints you’ve left in the mud, matching your steps as you walk ahead of him. You’re both silent as you walk back up the slight hill to the camp, finding Ellie fully awake, sitting against one of the tree trunks. Her bag sits beside her, and your jacket is now draped across her knees.

Wordlessly, you walk across to where your bags are set at the base of another tree. You pull Joel’s jacket off and hand it to him before stooping to your bag, yanking open the zipper, digging through the contents. “You want your jacket back?” Ellie calls to you, but you don’t answer, pulling out the little parcel of dried beef from your bag. You unfold the paper, take a small piece before handing it to Joel. He snaps off a bit, refolds the paper, and then tosses it to Ellie. It lands at her feet, and she shoots him a glare as she reaches for it, the paper rustling. “I’ve never been in the woods,” she continues as you re-zip the bag. “More bugs than I thought.”

You don’t say a word, but Joel’s close enough to hear your slow exhale.

“Look, I’ve been thinking about—” the kid starts.

“Don’t, kid,” Joel calls, lifting a hand.

“Listen to me for a second,” she shoots back, and Joel sees the way your back straightens, your shoulders pushed back. Defensive. “I was gonna say that I’ve been thinking about what happened. Nobody made any of you take me. Nobody made you go along with this plan. You needed a truck battery, or whatever, and you made a choice.” Her eyes flick from Joel’s to yours. “So don’t blame me for something that isn’t my fault.”

For a moment, the only noise around you is the river, bubbling in the distance. You brace your hands on your knees, slowly straightening, and Joel puts his hand on your back as you do, testing, seeing what your reaction might be. You surprise him by leaning into the touch, though he doesn’t miss the silvery line of tears along your lashes.

“She’s got a point,” you say, your voice still a bit hoarse as you turn to look at him. “We made a choice.”

It’s a loaded statement if Joel’s ever heard one. You made a choice. You both made a choice, all those years ago. Keep your secret safe, don’t let anyone — FEDRA, Fireflies, nobody — get their hands on you. Don’t let anyone take you from him. It’s the most selfish choice Joel’s ever made. He knows that. You both do.

But if you hadn’t, maybe Tess would still be alive.

Stubborn as he is, even he knows that’s not Ellie’s fault.

You made a choice, all of you.

“I’m sorry, kid,” you call, turning towards her. “It’s not your fault. It’s just…not what any of us bargained for.”

Joel snorts. “Ain’t that the truth.”

You both pick up your bags, you slide the bat between the straps, and Ellie gets to her feet, walking over to you with your coat outstretched towards you. You nod as you take it, pulling it on. “How much longer?” Ellie asks.

“Five-hour hike,” Joel answers when you glance at him.

“We can manage that.”

+

The weather holds up for your hike toward Lincoln. Joel leads, Ellie trails behind him, and you bring up the rear. You don’t miss the way Joel glances over his shoulder at you every once in a while, his gaze hard, and you just give him a slight nod each time.

Your head is a mess.

Tess knew. She knew almost the entire time, since Tommy fucked off to be a Firefly. That whole time, and she never said a goddamned thing.

Her final words echo through your mind, clear as a fucking bell.

It didn’t matter, Liv; it doesn’t matter. I knew Joel would never let them take you, no matter what it would fix, not if it wasn’t guaranteed, if it meant taking you from him. But now…this could be real. She’s real, Liv. The kid. She can fix it. Make up for all the bad shit we did.

These Fireflies out west, the ones looking for the cure, if they had more of you, would they have a better chance? Would the odds be better if they had two instead of one?

You shake the thought from your head as Joel looks back again, meeting your gaze. There’s a cut on his cheek, from your tussle in the museum yesterday, and you wish you had something to clean it with. You need to look at his hand again, too.

Take care of him, Liv.

You chew the inside of your cheek. You can let Ellie take your place, let her save the world, let her be the hero.

You can’t leave Joel.

The sun hides behind the clouds for the first leg of your journey, and once you’re out of the forest and on the open road, your trio falls into step with each other, Ellie in the middle of the two of you.

And fuck, does this kid ask a lot of questions.

“You’ve gone this way a lot?” she asks, the first thing anyone has said since you left the clearing. “No Infected?”

“We used it pretty regularly before,” Joel answers, but he doesn’t look at her as he says it, his head on a swivel, good hand tight around the rifle. “But recently, not so much.”

“What are you looking out for?”

“People.”

“Oh.”

She looks at you. “Are Bill and Frank nice?”

Before you can, Joel answers again. “Frank is.”

“Joel,” you chastise, shooting him a look. “They’re both nice. Frank is great, Bill is just more…practical.”

“Practical?” Ellie repeats, lifting a brow.

“Crazy, she means,” Joel quips, and you reach around Ellie, punching him in the arm. “Hey!”

The next question: “So are you two, like, married or something?” 

“We are,” you nod.

“For how long?”

You pause, realizing you’re not totally sure, and Joel answers yet again. “Thirteen years.”

Jesus, has it been that long?

Ellie looks at him, then back at you. “So you met after the outbreak?”

That sends something like a shock down your spine, and you and Joel look at each other over Ellie’s head. “No,” you answer, and for a moment, it’s 2001, you’re standing in the middle of the hardware store, and Joel Miller is standing in front of you for the very first time, asking for a quarter-inch drill bit in that lovely drawl of his. It’s a good memory, a happy one, one that time cannot ruin. Despite it all, the corner of your mouth lifts. “No, we knew each other before.”

Her head snaps back to Joel. “You said you were from Austin.”

“I am,” he tells her, but his eyes are still on yours. “That’s where we met.”

“Wait, so how long have you known each other for?”

“That’s a long story, kid,” you say, shoving your hand through your hair.

“Yeah, and this is a long fuckin’ hike.”

“Some other time.”

“Please?”

“Ellie.”

“Please?”

“Enough,” Joel barks, but it’s halfhearted.

Ellie sulks for all of thirty seconds before something else piques her interest. “How’d you get that scar on your head?” she asks Joel, tilting her head to the side to get a better look at it.

It’s like fucking whiplash, going from a happy memory to a god-awful one. Your side prickles with it.

Joel sighs, but it just spurs Ellie’s questioning. “What? Is it something lame? Like you fell down the stairs or something?”

“I didn’t fall down any stairs.”

“Okay, so what then?”

You’re staring at your boots, watching each step you take, trying to swallow down the guilt that has crept up your throat. You can feel Joel look at you before he speaks. “Someone shot at me and missed.”

“See, that’s cool,” Ellie replies, waving her hand in the air. For a moment, you think you may vomit. “You shoot back?”

“Yeah.”

“You get him?”

You swallow hard, kicking a rock out of your path. “No,” Joel says after a beat, “I missed, too. It happens more often than you think. Clipped him in the ribs, I think.”

“Shoulder,” you correct, and suddenly Ellie’s attention is on you.

“You were there?” she asks, incredulous, and you just nod. “Why’d they both miss? They suck at shooting, or just like, in general?”

Joel shakes his head. “In general.”

Ellie goes quiet for a long moment, looking at Joel and then back at you, back and forth again. “Y’know, I still have that spare hand.”

You’re about to say it’s not a bad idea, Tess’s pistol in the pocket of your coat, but Joel beats you to the punch. “No.”

“Okay,” she nearly whines. “Jeez.”

After about an hour more of walking, Ellie only pouting slightly, and a familiar gas station comes into view. The place is untouched, the only thing that’s changed over the years is the slow creep of nature taking back the space, the trees encroaching closer in on either side.

“Cumberland Farms?” Ellie reads out, her head cocked to the side as Joel heads for the door. “What are we doing here?”

“Got some stuff stashed inside,” Joel answers, rifle swinging from his shoulder.

“Stashed?” Ellie repeats. “Why do you have stuff stashed here?”

“Just in case,” you tell her, stepping over a crack in the pavement as Joel pushes the door open. “Like Joel said, we used to take this path a lot.”

“To get to Bill and Frank’s?” she asks.

“You ask a lot of goddamned questions,” Joel grumbles, and Ellie just grins.

“Yes, I do.”

As you step inside, Joel glances your way. “Shoulda grabbed her bag,” he says, his brow knitting together, and you don’t need him to specify. “We split the food between you and her, didn’t we?”

You just nod, opening your mouth as Ellie shouts, “No way!” She’s grinning the widest you’ve yet to see, beelining across the gas station to a large arcade game tucked in the corner. The glass is shattered in one corner, the whole thing covered in a thick layer of dust. She’s immediately hitting the buttons, rattling the joysticks. “You ever play this one?”

You and Joel just look at each other.

“I had a friend who knew everything about this game,” Ellie continues, and you find yourself staring at her back while Joel kicks a piece of wood out of the way, searching for the stash box. “There’s this one character named Mileena who takes off her mask and she has monster teeth and then she swallows you whole and barfs out your bones! Oh, man.”

Behind you, Joel pushes a long-empty shelf across the floor, the metal squeaking. Ellie turns to look at you both, and you instantly look away, feeling caught.

Joel kicks at an empty can on the ground and Ellie rolls her eyes. “You forgot where you put your stuff.”

“No,” he quips, lifting his head. “I’m just…zeroing in on it. It’s been a couple years since we came in here.”

“Okay, well, I’m gonna take a look around, see if there’s anything good,” she replies, turning on her heel and heading towards the back of the gas station.

“Trust me,” you call out, “it’s all been picked over already. We cleared this place out back in the day.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she replies, waving her hand in the air. Joel returns to his search, and Ellie turns back to you. “Is there anything bad in here?”

“Just you,” Joel calls back, and you smack his shoulder.

“Ah, getting funnier,” Ellie deadpans, and disappears through the doorway. A few moments pass, and you hear the scrape of metal.

“You okay in there?” Joel calls out, his brow crinkling.

“Yeah!” Ellie calls back, and he just shakes his head, pushing at the empty freezer in front of him.

“She’s a weird fuckin’ kid,” he grits, grunting as he shoves at the appliance. “So many goddamn questions.”

“If I was growing up in a time like this, I’d have a lot of goddamn questions too,” you reply, putting your hands on your hips, and Joel straightens with a sigh. “Where the fuck did we put that box?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, rubbing his fingers across his forehead. His hand drops, but a beat after it hits his thigh, he lifts it again, reaching for you. “Liv—”

You let him grab your hand, enough that his fingers thread through yours, knuckles locked together, but you shake your head. “Don’t, Joel. Please.”

“I just wanna—” I just wanna make sure you’re okay.

You’re not. It’s that fucking simple. But you can’t break down in the middle of the fucking gas station.

“I know you do,” you reply, squeezing his hand lightly. “Just…not here. Please.”

“Okay,” he grits out, and with a heavy breath, he lets go of his hand and reaches for his knife, kneeling down. “Let’s just find the box, then.”

You watch for a moment as he sweeps trash out of the way, a nearly white-knuckle grip on his knife. You want nothing more than to pull him up by the shoulder of his coat, haul him against you, bury your face in his chest. You want that warm, steady comfort he’s trying so hard to give to you, the thump of his heart against your ear and his arms tight around you.

It’s okay, baby. It’s gonna be okay.

But is it?

You crouch down to help with the search, rapping your knuckles against the cracked tiles, sweeping the debris out of the way first so you don’t cut yourself. You can feel Joel watching for a moment, but when you go to glance back at him, his eyes dart away.

Finally, you find a tile that sounds different than the others. “Joel,” you call holding your hand out for the knife, closing your fingers around the hilt. The blade hits the metal box with a satisfying clink when you jam it through the tile, and you use the blade to pry it up. “Jackpot.”

+

There’s a little bag filled with medical supplies in the box, and you reach for that first. Then you hand Joel the box of ammunition. He starts picking through it, fishing out the bullets that’ll fit his pistol, when he realizes there hasn’t been a sound from the direction Ellie disappeared in.

He hands you back the box, and curls his hand around the rifle, taking a step towards the door she went through. “Ellie?” he calls, lifting his hand in your direction, making you pause your movements. He can’t ignore the way his stomach drops. You call his name slightly, and he walks towards the door, calling louder now. “Ellie!”

“Picked over my ass,” she declares, appearing from the darkened doorway. She’s got a box of tampons in her hand, a smug smile on her face, and when Joel turns back, he sees you pop up from the floor, your jaw dropping when you see what she’s found. 

“No fucking way.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll share,” Ellie says, unzipping her bag and stuffing the box inside. “Least I can do.”

Joel returns to where you’re standing over the box. Sufficiently resupplied, Joel closes the box, fitting it back into the space it had been hidden, and, his dig through the box of ammunition proving fruitless for the larger gun, sliding the rifle in beside it. He can feel the kid watching him, and when he glances up, there’s something close to concern in her eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s not much ammo out there for this thing,” he tells her, reaching for the tile you’d yanked up and fitting it back into place. “Makes it mostly useless.”

“Well, if you’re just gonna leave it there,” Ellie says, waving her hand at where the gun is now hidden.

Joel shoots to his feet, hearing you huff out your breath as he tells her firmly again, “No.”

He grabs his bag from where it’s laying on the ground, slings it over his shoulder. “C’mon,” you say to Ellie, reaching for your own bag. “Still a ways to go.”

It’s warmer, when you step back out of the gas station, leaving Cumberland Farms behind as you head back towards the road. Warm enough that Joel shrugs out of his jacket, stuffing it through the strap of his bag. It’s not long before you and Ellie follow suit, Ellie tying hers around her waist. After a bit of walking, Joel feels you move up toward his right, sensing your presence more than hearing your steps.

You put your hand in his, your fingers tightly wound together. He chances a glance in your direction, just a quick one, seeing the firm set to your jaw, your eyes trained on the path before you. He’s surprised enough at your touch. You’d allowed him the same back at the gas station, but only long enough to tell him not to push it further, not to give you the comfort that was trying to claw its way out of him like some kind of rabid animal.

He just wanted to make you feel okay. He knows good is a stretch, knows it’s a hard sell when he doesn’t have his bare body pressed to yours, every ache and pain soothed away by the way you writhe beneath him, feeling the same. 

Joel catches himself, reaching down with his free hand to adjust the waist of his jeans. Not the fuckin’ time. Or place. He’s starting to wish he’d made more of it, when he’d woke you early a few days ago, before the sun was up, before either of you had to even think about getting out of bed. He’d moved over you slowly, woke you with soft kisses along your jaw, gentle until your eyes fluttered and you made a little noise, roused by his touches. 

He should have kissed you longer, should have let his mouth trail lower than just your chest. He’d lifted the hem of your t-shirt, teeth scraping at the sensitive flesh of your breast, but he should have roved lower. He should have tasted you at the source, lapped at you until your legs were shaking around his ears, until he could slide into you with little resistance, the only place that’s truly felt like home to him.

Coughing, tugging at his jeans again, he squeezes your fingers, lifts your joined hands until he can press his lips to your knuckles. Behind you, Ellie makes a gagging noise. “You guys are kinda gross,” she says, and when you both turn your heads back to look at her, she’s got a funny grin on her lips. “But like, in a cute way.”

“Gee, thanks,” Joel deadpans, and beside him, you actually giggle.

“So will you tell me now how you guys—” Ellie starts to ask, but cuts herself off, coming to a stop as you reach a break in the trees lining the road. “Holy shit.”

Off in the distance, sprawled atop a large hill, is a plane. Or, what remains of one. The pieces are long decayed, the rusted-out metal visible even from where you’re standing. 

Ellie whistles out her awe. “You fly in one of those?”

“A few times, sure,” Joel answers. your fingers flexing in his grip.

“So lucky.”

“Didn’t feel like it at the time,” he tells her. “Get shoved into a middle seat, pay twelve bucks for a sandwich.”

“Dude, you got to go up in the sky,” the kid emphasizes, and you stifle your laugh.

He’s begrudgingly grateful, for this weird kid, that she distracts you enough from what’s happened to make you laugh. 

“So did they,” you mumble, looking away from the scene before you.

“Oof,” Ellie fake-winces, squinting at you. “Grim.”

The three of you continue down the path for a little while longer, and just when he’s starting to think he’ll have peace and quiet the rest of the way to Lincoln, the kid pipes up with more questions. She seems to notice his reluctance to answer, however, because she moves around to your side, interrogating you instead of Joel.

“So, everything came crashing down in one day?”

“Basically.”

“But how? No one was infected with cordyceps, everybody’s fine, eating in restaurants and flying in planes. And then all at once, it was over? How did it even start? If you have to get bit to be infected, then who bit the first person? Was it a monkey? I bet it was a monkey.”

You chuckle again, shaking your head. “They don’t teach you this in FEDRA school?”

She blows a raspberry. “Yeah, they don’t teach us how their shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic.”

You’re quiet for a moment before you start giving her the spiel. “No one really knows where it started, or really how, but the best guess is that cordyceps mutated. It got into the food supply, some kind of basic ingredient like flour, something that was in basically everything. And certain brands of food were sold all across the country, all over the world even. Bread, cereal, pancake mix, that sort of thing.”

At the words pancake mix, Joel grips your hand tighter. You don’t flinch, squeezing back.

“They figure, if you eat enough of it, then it’ll get you infected. So all this tainted food hits the store shelves around the same time Thursday, people bought it, ate it that night, or the next morning, and the day went on. People started getting sick, started turning, and by the evening, it was worse. They started biting, started attacking people.”

“Were you attacked?”

You go quiet, but from the corner of his eye, Joel sees you nod. “My boyfriend at the time, Dean. I was out celebrating my birthday, and I came home and found him, just standing there. Then he started twitching, then he lunged at me. Gave me this.” Joel turns just in time to see you pulling back the strap of your bag and the collar of your flannel, letting Ellie see the scars on your shoulder, the jagged lines Dean had left in your skin.

“Shit,” the kid curses. “That’s intense. You killed him?”

Another nod. “With my bat.”

Ellie’s jaw drops. “That’s…pretty badass, actually.”

You bark a laugh. “Thanks, kid.”

“Wait,” she says, lifting a hand. “It was your birthday?”

“Yep,” you answer, nodding again. “Joel’s too.”

“No shit.”

“Shit. Friday, September 26th, 2003. My twenty-fifth birthday. By Monday, everything was gone, and they started dropping bombs not long after that.”

Ellie finally settles into silence for a moment before she says, “It makes more sense than monkeys. Thanks, Liv.”

“You’re welcome, kid.”

He’s been distracted as you’ve walked, listening to the sound of your voice, trying to catch any dip or crack that might give him space to swoop in, take over, make you feel safe again. Even if he doesn’t really want to answer the kid’s incessant questions, he can do it for you, if he has to. But you haven’t wavered, and Joel feels that begrudging gratitude take up a more permanent residence in his chest. At least, while the kid is still around. 

And then he realizes where you are. 

“Wait,” he calls out, and both of you stop in your tracks, you holding your arm out to stop Ellie from taking another step. “We’ll cut across the woods here.”

“Isn’t the road easier?” Ellie asks, glancing between the both of you. Joel sees the realization on your face, and you sigh.

“Yeah, it is, it’s just…” You trail off, clearly not quite sure what to tell the kid.

Joel finds the words before you do. “There’s stuff up there you shouldn’t see.”

She grins. “Well, now I have to see it.” And with that, she ducks under your raised arm, continuing on down the path.

“Yeah, but I don’t want you to,” Joel grits out, and pulls you to step after him, following her. “I’m serious, Ellie.”

She tilts her head back, calling back to the both of you. “Can it hurt me?”

“No,” Joel calls back, hearing you sigh after. 

“Not in the way you’re thinking of,” you say, rubbing at your brow. “Ellie, wait, just—”

“You guys worry too much,” she calls, picking up her pace a bit. “Besides, if you really wanted to stop me, you should have said axe murderer.”

You heave a sigh as she continues on, almost at the spot you didn’t want her to be. Joel’s spine tingles as you come up to the bend in the road. He still remembers the first time you found this spot, the first time you had gone to Bill and Frank’s.

“Uh, whatever it is,” Ellie yells back to you, “I think it’s gone.” But then her steps slow, her attention dragged off the side of the road, and Joel’s fingers squeeze around yours.

As you come up behind her, stopping when she turns to look at you, Joel answers the question before she even asks. You were the one to tell him the story, and after just rehashing your own experience on the day of the outbreak — and saving him from telling his own, he realizes — he can tell the kid this.

“About a week after Outbreak Day, soldiers…” 

He trails off for a moment. It’s hard not to imagine Cowan’s face as his eyes are pulled towards the ground. You had been adamant that Nick hadn’t been a part of it, but Joel had never felt like the soldier was telling you the entire truth. That, and a bullet to the head, and Joel is more than a little biased, but…

He sighs, continuing. “They went through the countryside and evacuated the small towns. Told you you were goin’ to a QZ, and you were, if there was room. If there wasn’t…”

The words trail off again, and his eyes can’t pull away from the bones in the dirt, the few scraps of clothing still tethered in the earth.

“These people weren’t sick?” Ellie asks, her voice snapping on the words.

“Most likely no,” you answer, and Joel feels your body turn against his, both of your hands now wrapped around his. 

“Then why kill them? Why not just leave ‘em be?”

“Better dead than infected,” you reply. “At least, that’s the way FEDRA saw it.” You turn your face away from the body pit. You reach out and tug on the handle of Ellie’s backpack. “C’mon. We should get going. Almost there.”

+

You’re more and more nervous, with every step you take.

Joel notices, gripping your hand a little tighter. You haven’t let go for hours at this point, and your palm is sweaty against his, but he doesn’t seem to care, and neither do you. Depending on what you find beyond the gate, you know he’ll be the only thing to keep you upright.

What if they’re dead? What if they’re dying?

You can’t decide what option is better. Which is worse.

As you round that final corner, the gate Bill built around the small town coming into view, your breath catches in your throat. Nature hasn’t let up anywhere, but when you were still visiting, Bill and Frank had always kept everything trimmed back — Bill more than Frank, but you knew the latter had a penchant for instructing the former what needed attention.

But now, plants crawl across the top of the fence, wrapping through the wires. Long-dead, thanks to the electrical current, but left in place, unbothered by the inhabitants of Lincoln. Your mind spins. It could be that Bill just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore, that his old knees couldn’t take the hike up the ladder. Maybe he’s got a laundry list of things for Joel to do now that you’ve come back.

The hum of the fence is familiar as you approach, the DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE sign split in half, whether by the decay of time or by something else, you can’t be sure.

Joel squeezes your fingers before letting go, murmuring to you and Ellie to stay in place as he walks up to the gate, reaching out a cautious hand to enter the code. Bill told you long ago what it was — 37265, F-R-A-N-K — in case you ever needed to come in when they couldn’t let you in. The man really had thought of everything.

Your shoulders sag with relief when the fence beeps open, Joel pushing the gate inward to let you all inside. Something inside you snaps, and the moment you’re through the gate, you’re off like a shot, striding with purpose toward the old house. All around you, Lincoln shows signs of abandonment, overgrown grass, leaves littering the sidewalks and streets. One of the fence gates at another house bangs against its latch in the wind.

Behind you, you hear Joel call your name, his boots picking up the pace to match yours, but he doesn’t catch up until you’re standing in front of Bill and Frank’s home. It looks less unkempt than the rest, but the flowers on either side of the low front gate are wilted, the steps nearly brown, petals covering the ground beneath. It’s not promising.

Joel catches your arm. “Let me go in first,” he tells you, his voice low, but you shake your head, shake off his grip, and stride up the walkway to the porch.

The door’s unlocked. It creaks open when you push it inward, the sunlight streaming through the doorway. Joel steps up behind you, Ellie behind him, and you step inside slowly, through the small foyer, stopping at the base of the stairs.

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

Joel turns toward the dining room and you toward the living room. The air feels thick with dust, the complete opposite of the homeliness you’re used to feeling the moment you walk through that door.

“What the fuck?” Ellie murmurs.

It’s only a beat after that Joel calls, “Bill?”

You step into the living room, seeing Frank’s half-done painting on the easel, the beginnings of Bill’s likeness looking back at you. “Frank?”

Nothing but quiet.

Your stomach twists, and you can feel Ellie looking at you. There’s a streak of concern in her eyes, and you lift your hand in her direction. You pull out your gun, and Joel follows suit. “Stay there, okay? If you hear anything, if you see anything, yell for one of us.” She doesn’t say anything at first, and you prompt her. “Clear?”

“Clear,” she repeats, nodding. But then her voice drops. “What if they’re gone?”

Then it’s just one more nail in my coffin, kid. That’s what you want to say. Instead, you say nothing, turning on your heel and striding towards the back of the living room. There’s a thin layer of dust on everything, every surface you look at. Distantly, you hear Ellie tap at the piano keys, and it sends a chill down your spine.

The living room leads you back and around to the kitchen, and you find Joel there, looking through the back door, the small greenhouse and the garden beyond it. It’s not as overgrown as the rest, but most of the garden is dead, threads of ivy climbing up the glass of the greenhouse.

“Anything?” you ask, willing your voice not to crack on the question.

He shakes his head.

Joel follows you out of the kitchen, into the hallway that runs the length of the stairs. There’s a bedroom on the lower level; when the stairs got too much for Frank, they moved downstairs. You lift your hand and knock on the door, the sound echoing on the other side.

Nothing.

Joel’s hand lands on your shoulder and your hand drops to the handle. Unlike the front door, it doesn’t give when you twist the knob. “Liv,” Joel says quietly, his fingers digging into your shoulder slightly. “Baby.”

The front door slams shut all of a sudden, moved by the wind, and you both flinch.

It goes without saying, now.

They’re gone.

You both look back to the front door, Ellie nowhere in sight, and despite the heartbreak that’s sweeping through you like a tidal wave, your instincts kick into gear, and you step out of Joel’s grip, calling the kid’s name as you make your way to the door. “Ellie!”

“In here,” she calls as you step into the foyer, and your head turns in the direction of her voice, finding her sitting in one of the dining room chairs. You hadn’t noticed before, but there are two plates set at the end of the table, the remnants of food on them long moulded over, flies buzzing around. Twin wine glasses stand between the plates, and there’s a small empty baggie on the table.

They’re gone.

Your attention turns back to Ellie, you force it there, seeing the folded piece of paper in her hands. Joel’s steps creak as he comes up beside you, reaching for your hand as Ellie says, “It’s from Bill.” You both put your guns away. There’s no need. Ellie reaches for the torn envelope on the table. “To whomever, but probably Joel. I figured I fell under ‘whomever’. There’s this, too.”

She picks up another envelope, this one unopened, and extends it toward you. Along with it, a car key.

“It only has your name on it. And the key was in this one.”

You both drop your bags, you lean the bat against the wall. Joel takes the key, and you take the second envelope. Your hands are shaking as you do.

“So they’re…?” you trail off, unable to say the words as Ellie looks back at Bill’s note. Dead. She gives a tiny affirmative noise. You inhale sharply, your fingers crinkling the envelope, and Joel reaches for your free hand. She extends the paper towards Joel, but he shakes his head.

“You read it.”

You don’t know if you can handle this. But you have to.

Ellie clears her throat, and starts to read.

+

August 29th, 2023.

If you find this, please do not come into the bedroom. We left a window open so the house wouldn’t smell, but it will probably be a sight. 

I’m guessing you found this, Joel, because anyone else would’ve been electrocuted or blown up by one of my traps. Hehehehehehehehehehehehe.

Take anything you need. The bunker code is the same as the gate code but in reverse.

Anyway, I never liked you. But still, it’s like we’re friends almost. And I respect you. I respect the love you have for that girl. You’ve done right by her, and I know you’ll keep doing it. So I’m gonna tell you something because you’re probably the only person who will understand.

I used to hate the world, and I was happy when everyone died. But I was wrong, because there was one person worth saving. That’s what I did. I saved him. Then I protected him. That’s why men like you and me are here. We have a job to do. And God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way.

I leave you all of my weapons and equipment. The truck is in the garage, and there are guns in the bunker. Use them to keep Olivia and Tess safe, until such time you decide you’ve had enough. At that point, I recommend pairing 40 Vicodins with a nice Brunello.

Good luck, Joel. You’re gonna need it. 

Bill

+

There are tears on your face, sliding down your cheeks unbidden, and Joel feels his own emotions crawl up the back of his throat.

Wordlessly, you tear into the envelope in your hand, pulling out the folded paper within. The note is shorter than Bill’s, the handwriting scratchier, letters falling off the pages in some places. Joel can only watch as your eyes scan over the words, again and again and again. The tears come harder. He wants to reach for you — he needs to reach for you — but before he can get a grip, you slap the paper again his chest and turn on your heel, bolting out the front door.

+

My sweet Liv,

This letter will not be as long as I would like. My hands are not cooperating lately, and I’m sure I’ll have to come back and finish this more than once. It’s okay. I’m old. This is just the way things are.

I hope you find this, someday. I could be writing to no one now. It’s been a while since we heard from you, since we were able to speak, and god, I miss you, Liv. I wish you and Joel and Tess had come when you had the chance. I wish we could have stayed closer, lived together.

But I can’t waste my time on what could have been. I know what you find here will hurt, and for that, I’m sorry. But you have to know, I had a good life. Were there bad days? Of course. The world ended, after all, and yet I still managed to make the most of it.

Take care of Joel. Promise me that you won’t ever stop paying attention, that you’ll keep showing him you love him. He’d move heaven and earth for you, and I know you’d do the same for him.

It might not feel like it now, but things will be okay, Liv. I promise.

All my love,

Frank x

+

“Stay here,” Joel tells Ellie. He doesn’t wait to see if she nods, he’s already out the door, Frank’s note crumpled in his hand. He steps out onto the porch, onto the walkway, and that’s when he sees you, on your knees in the grass, nearly crumpled forward.

He calls your name, but you don’t seem to notice. Even as he runs for you, moving in front of you, dropping to his knees, taking your face in his hands, you barely flinch. Your face is soaked with tears, your eyes squeezed shut, hands clawing at your shirt, pulling at the material. “I-I can’t—” you choke out, and you slump forward when he grabs your wrists, tugging your arms around his shoulders.

Your face pressed into his chest, he feels his shirt cling to his skin in an instant, wet with your tears. He fits his arms under yours, keeping you upright, keeping you against him.

“Liv, baby,” he murmurs, his cheek pressed to your temple. “Baby, you gotta talk to me. Let me help you.”

“Tess knew,” you blubber out, lifting your head so fast you nearly knock Joel in the chin. Your eyes are bloodshot, your lashes clumped together. “Tommy told her before he left with the Fireflies. She knew the whole goddamn time what I am, Joel, and she never said a damn thing. And if I hadn’t been so fucking selfish all these years, she could still be alive!”

Joel shakes his head, lifting his hand until he can cup your cheek in his palm. “No, baby, that’s not what—”

“Yes, it is! If I’d given myself over when it first happened, everything could be different now! This all could be over. It—”

“Or you could be dead!” Joel snaps, and he has both hands on your face now, forcing you to look at him. “They could have killed you for it, or what if it didn’t work? What if nothing changed? We made a choice, Liv. Tess made a choice. Bill and Frank, they—” He cuts himself off, dropping his chin to his chest. The sob you let out rattles his ribs. “We made choices, baby. Choices to stay alive, to stay together.”

Your eyes slip shut again and you nod between his hands, but another sob falls from your lips, your hands moving down to fist in the front of his jacket. “It hurts, Joel. It hurts so fucking bad and I can’t breathe and it just hurts and I—”

“I know, baby,” he murmurs, and pulls you close again, his mouth at the crown of your head. He puts his arms back around you, one around your middle, one across your shoulders. Slowly, he rocks you side to side, humming against your hair. “I know it hurts. It’ll pass, I promise you. You gotta give it time, you hear me? You’ll be okay.” He pauses, inhales sharply when you whimper. “We’ll be okay.”

He’s not sure how much time passes, the two of you kneeling there in the grass, but his joints start to protest after a while. Your sobs subside, your breathing levelling out to an almost normal pace. You don’t let go of him, your hands still locked in his jacket. But your head tilts back against his chest, until his mouth is resting on your forehead.

“What are we gonna do, Joel?”

He rubs his hand across your shoulders. He’ll hold you as long as he has to, to make you feel safe, make you feel okay. It’s just as much for you as it is for him. “We stock up, take what we can. We go find Tommy. That was always the plan, anyway.”

“What about the kid?”

“Tommy might know someone, somewhere we can take her. If not, we find a way to radio Marlene, find a new place to meet, something. We’ll figure it out. Always do.”

Your eyes slip shut again, your arms lowering slightly so you can sling them around his waist. Your face fits into the curve of his neck, and he squeezes you softly. 

“I promise you, baby,” he murmurs to you, lips grazing whatever part of your face he can reach. “We’ll be okay. I’ll keep you safe.”

“And I’ll keep you safe.”

Slowly but surely, you both get to your feet, and while you start in the direction of the front door, the double-door garage to the side of the house catches Joel’s attention. When you lift a brow, he pulls the car key from his pocket, and you follow his lead, walking towards the garage. You pull one of the doors open, and Joel steps inside, looking for a light switch. Fluorescents buzz in their sockets above the covered truck, and you both tug on a corner of the tarp, revealing the blue-and-white painted Chevy.

Joel pops the hood first, to see what he’s working with, and everything in him deflates when he sees what’s missing. He lets the hood slam shut, braces his hands on top of it. “What is it?” you ask, busying yourself with shoving the tarp into a corner of the garage.

“No fuckin’ battery,” he grits out, and your face pinches.

“There’s gotta be something around here,” you say, walking around the truck. “This thing’s in decent shape, and there’s no way Bill would have left it to us without it—”

His attention is caught over your shoulder, an old fridge pushed against the wall, stacked with bottles of different cleaning solutions. He steps around the truck, around you, and yanks the fridge open. Sure enough, everything he needs to make a battery is inside.

Joel can’t stop himself from smiling. Fuckin’ Bill. Really did think of everything.

You step up behind him, peering over his shoulder and into the fridge. “You know what you’re doing there, baby?”

“I do, actually,” he says, starting to pull the ingredients out of the fridge, a jar of sulphur, the plastic pieces of the battery itself. “Had a friend back in Austin that showed me how to do this.”

It doesn’t take him long. You hover at his shoulder the entire time, watching him work, asking the odd question, your brow furrowing as he connects the battery to the charger. You’re committing the steps to memory, Joel realizes as he finishes up, as you recite everything he just did back to him. He can see it for what it is — a distraction — but he nods along anyway, corrects you when you mix up the second and third steps.

You start over, counting the steps off on your fingers as you try again, and Joel turns to you, takes a step towards you, which has you stepping back once, then again, until your back is pressed to the truck. 

“Liv, let me kiss you,” he murmurs, reaching up and bracing his hands on either side of you, fingers curling against the roof of the truck. He has to; he needs to. The desperation bubbles to his surface, lurking just beneath his skin. You’re the only one he can be like this with, the only one who can see through that hard mask he’s been wearing since you left the QZ. His emotions are getting the better of him — grief, pain, desperation, fear. He feels them all.

But he just really wants to feel you.

“Please,” he begs, and a beat later, your fingers hook into his belt loops, tugging him against you, one of your legs sliding between his. He bends his elbows, hearing the truck creak slightly as he pushes his weight against it, against you.

Slowly, your chin lifts, drops. A nod. Yes.

Your lips taste like salt. It makes him groan. Tilting his head to the side so he can kiss you deeper, one hand coming off the truck to bury in your hair, fingers twining in the strands. He feels you melt, slightly, a chip in the shell that has formed around you in your grief. 

He feels the same, feels like everything that’s wrong, everything that makes him hurt, is gone, the moment his lips find yours. It feels heightened, the weight of the last few days nearly making his knees buckle, the loss of Tess, the revelation of Bill and Frank. It feels like too much, but for just a moment, he can forget.

You moan when he flicks his tongue against the seam of your lips, asking. Your hands move up, unhooked from his belt to slide beneath his shirt, the flannel bunching over your wrists as you slide your palms over his stomach, glancing across the scar on his hip. Your fingers flatten against his ribs, and he tugs on your hair lightly, tilting your head back, groaning when you sink your teeth into his lower lip. 

Joel pushes forward again, until his hips are nearly flush with yours. Your thigh tightens between his legs, rubbing against the seam of his jeans, and the feeling makes him choke, mouth tilted away from yours as his breath hitches, suddenly feeling like a touch-starved teenager. “Joel,” you whisper, one hand skirting around to rest against his spine, the other moving down to his belt buckle. Your fingers curl behind the metal, knuckles scraping his lower stomach. “We should—”

He cuts you off with another kiss, wanting to taste you more, lick the salt from your lips. You let him, tugging on his belt, moaning when he drops his hand from your hair and lets it rest at the base of your throat. Joel drags his mouth along your jaw, nipping at the space below your ear, where your skin is thin, and he can feel the thump of your heartbeat against his lips.

“Joel,” you grit out, leaning your head back until it’s resting against the truck. It gives him better access to your neck, lets him lick a strip up your throat. “The kid—”

“—can’t hear us,” he finishes for you, the words mumbled into your skin. “I wanna—”

“We’ve been out here a while,” you cut him off, and Joel sighs, moving his hand from your collar, replacing it with his forehead. He braces his hands on the truck again, but you give yourself away, pushing your thigh slightly against the bulge in his jeans once more. “She’s gonna think we ditched her.”

“She can wait one more minute.”

“Joel.”

He sighs, but relents, leaving one last kiss on your lips before he tugs on your hand and pulls you out of the garage and back towards the house.

+

You find Ellie in the same place you’d left her, sitting in the chair at the dining room table. When you and Joel step through the doorway, her head shoots up, dark eyes moving between you both.

You’d nearly frozen on the porch, the weight resettling. Joel had done his best to chase it away — in fact, your lips still tingled with his efforts, a shot of heat between your legs you’re doing your best to ignore for the time being — but the moment you stepped through the front door, it had spiked again. The plates at the end of the table, the empty wine glasses, they didn’t help matters.

“Is everything okay?” Ellie asks, her voice low as she gets to her feet. “Do you have a plan?”

“Joel just made a battery for the truck Bill left,” you answer. “It’s charging right now.”

“Okay.”

“I have a brother out in Wyoming,” Joel says, and you glance at him, squeeze your fingers around his. “He’s in some kind of trouble and we’re heading out there to find him. He used to be a Firefly, and my guess is, he knows where some of ‘em are out there. Maybe they can get you to wherever this lab is.”

“All right,” Ellie nods, her eyes still darting between you and Joel. Then they drop to her hands. “Listen, you guys, about Tess, and Bill and Fr—”

You lift your hand, cutting her off. “I need you to listen to me, Ellie. If we’re taking you with us, there are ground rules.”

“Okay.”

“Number one, you don’t talk about what happened to Tess. We don’t talk about what happened to Tess. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Two, you don’t tell anyone about what happened to you. If anyone sees that bite mark, they’re not gonna think twice. They’ll just shoot you, and there won’t be a damn thing either of us can do to stop it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And three, if Joel or I tell you do to something, you do it. No questions asked. You do what we say, when we say it. Are we clear?”

“Yes.”

“Repeat it.”

“What you say goes.”

Joel’s fingers twitch against yours, and you share a look, something in you deflating as you sigh. “Okay,” he murmurs, nodding to you.

���So, what now?” Ellie asks.

“We stock up,” you say, repeating what Joel had said to you earlier. You glance at him. “How long will the battery take?”

“Couple hours,” he replies, and lifts his hand, moving it to the back of your neck. “Enough time to rest for a bit. Find some food maybe. I wanna know what’s in that bunker.”

“You and me both.”

It was the one place Bill never let you see. It was his boundary, and you respected it. But you couldn’t lie; the curiosity was getting the better of you. The three of you make your way down to the basement, Joel pulling up the set of drawers that makes up most of the ladder. There’s a grate over the opening, a keypad embedded into the floor, and Joel crouches down, enters the code. It slides open a second later, and he heads down first, you following, Ellie after you.

“Ho-ly shit,” the kid mutters, as Joel flicks on the lights, illuminating the wall of guns, the shelves of first aid and cans of food. She bee-lines for the weapons, and you move towards the stack of security screens, the computer that played your coded songs over the radio. “This guy was a genius.”

“That he was, kid,” you agree, tapping at the keyboard. Joel moves behind you, puts a soft hand on your back. “That he was.”

“Why was the music on?”

“If Bill didn’t reset the countdown every few weeks, then this playlist would run over the radio and we’d hear it back in Boston.” 

Ellie leans over the desk, peering at the screen. “Eighties.”

You tilt your head to the side. How does she know what the code was? You turn to Joel, who just grits his teeth, pointing toward the shelves lined with food at the back of the bunker. “Grab some cans from over there,” he tells her. “Nothin’ dented or swollen.”

She nods, going to do as he asks, but pauses at the wall of guns again. “Can I—?”

“No,” Joel says instantly. Ellie’s eyes slide to you for a second, but you say nothing.

“There’s a wall of them.”

Joel glares at her, and puts her hands up in surrender. As soon as she’s across the room, you turn to him. “How did she know about the code?”

“Back in Boston,” he tells you, a slight flare in his cheeks. “She found the songbook, asked me what the code was, what eighties meant. I didn’t wanna tell her, but she figured it out on her own. Said she heard a fuckin’ Wham! song while I was asleep. I panicked.”

You can’t help your grin. “Smart kid.”

The rest of the afternoon finds you searching the house. You steer clear of the closed bedroom at the end of the hall, and Ellie follows you around like a puppy, letting you take the lead as you look through cupboards and closets.

Rolls of toilet paper, cans of soup and veggies and the like, paper towels, first aid supplies, camping gear. You stack everything near the front door, piling it into bags Joel finds in the garage. 

Bill must have emptied out the boutique since you were last here, because Joel unearths boxes of clothes in one of the upstairs closets, finding a few boxes filled with ammunition in the process. You and Ellie pick through them while Joel goes hunting for more bullets, pulling out t-shirts and sweaters. You both reach for the same red t-shirt and Ellie freezes, her brows shooting into her hair. You concede, pushing the shirt towards her. “You take it, kid.”

“Thanks,” she mumbles, staring down at the fabric. “Liv, can I ask you something? It’s not about Tess, I promise.”

You reach for another shirt, inspecting it for a second before tossing it aside. Not your size, or your style. “Shoot.”

“How did you find Bill and Frank?”

The question settles over you like a blanket. It’s a harmless question, warranted even, and you can’t fault Ellie for her curiosity, especially after your reaction to their letters. She’s owed some answers.

But your moment of hesitation must show on your face, because she’s instantly backtracking. “I-I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me. I’m just—”

“No, it’s okay, kid,” you say, picking up a patterned fleece sweater. “Really.” She actually smiles, and you return it. “You ever heard of Fleetwood Mac?”

You tell her the whole story, how you found Frank on the radio, your first meeting, the trading you kept up over the years.

The friendship you held so close to your heart.

“Were you always a smuggler?” she asks, having taken a seat at the edge of the bed. You moved on to another box, men’s clothes, trying to find something for Joel. 

“Pretty much,” you answer, pulling out a green plaid shirt that looks oddly familiar. “Well, I wasn’t before the outbreak, but after everything went to shit, it was kind of my only option.”

“What about before the outbreak?”

“I worked in an office. Sat at a desk all day, it was kinda boring, to be honest.”

“Is that where you met Joel?” You shoot her a look, your brow raising slowly. She’s full-on grinning now. “You said it was a long story, and you said I could ask you something.”

“You already asked me something. Many somethings.”

“C’mon,” she groans, flopping back on the bed. “Please?”

You blow out a breath. “Fine. Joel and I met…” You trail off, squinting. “Twenty-two years ago, in a hardware store in Austin.”

“A hardware store?”

You nod, unable to stop yourself from smiling at the memory. “My grandparents owned one in Texas, and when they died, my parents took over. I had just finished college, and I was home for the summer, so I helped my dad out around the store. Joel came in one day and that was how we met.”

“And you’ve been together ever since.”

Your head drops, eyes downcast. “Not exactly.”

Ellie rolls onto her stomach, ducking her head so she can catch your eye. “Would you just tell me already?”

“The office job was in Boston,” you tell her, and her face pinches with confusion. “I left at the end of the summer, and we tried to make it work, but the distance sucked.”

She’s got her fingers locked together, bouncing her knuckles off her lip. “So you broke up.”

“We did,” you say with a nod, finding another shirt for Joel, a blue button-up not unlike the one he’s currently wearing, just a few shades darker. “I’d been in Boston just over two years when the outbreak happened. Dean attacked me, like I told you, and he was the first Infected I killed. Then the bombings. Then FEDRA started rounding up any survivors they could find, and we were holed up in the mall for a while, but then people started turning, so they moved us.” You sigh, flipping the box closed. “Next thing we knew, the QZ walls were up, and FEDRA took over.”

“But, Joel…?” She trails off, her confusion deeper.

The corner of your mouth quirks. “Five years after the walls went up, Joel’s brother showed up. They’d been travelling the entire time, stayed in the QZ in Baltimore for a few years before they got kicked out.”

“They got kicked out?”

“Tess got—” You cut yourself off, drop your eyes again. “They got caught smuggling in Baltimore, and FEDRA wasn’t having it. I snuck them in, and the rest is history.”

“Wait, okay, so,” Ellie starts, counting off the years on your fingers. “You’ve known each other for twenty-two years, the outbreak happened twenty years ago, but you didn’t see him again until five years after that, and you’ve been married for thirteen and—” She groans, putting her face in her hands. “That’s too much math.”

You giggle, tossing the red t-shirt she’d left between you at her. “We’ve been together a long fucking time, we can just leave it there.”

Ellie catches the shirt, sitting up, rubbing her fingers over the logo imprinted on the fabric. “So you got married in the QZ?”

“Yeah,” you nod, reaching for the fleece sweater you’d pulled out for yourself. The memory sparks. “But then Bill and Frank threw us a wedding here, actually.” Tears crawl up the back of your throat. “Surprised me with it, Joel planned the whole thing.”

“Joel did?” she repeats, surprised, her brows raising again. “No offence, he’s just kind of a grump.”

You bark a laugh, the tears receding slightly. “Time will do that to you, kid.”

She’s quiet for a moment before she reaches between you and grabs your hand. Her palm is clammy. “I’m sorry, Liv. About Bill and Frank. They sound like they were really great friends.”

You swallow hard, squeezing her hand, nodding. “Thank you, Ellie. They were.”

+

“Needs another hour,” Joel informs you, checking the dial on the charger. 

You’ve all moved to the garage, combing through Bill’s impressive collection of camping supplies. The bed of the truck is already half-full, and Joel’s helping you load a camping stove into the backseat when Ellie excitedly declares, having turned the work sink on, “They have hot water!”

You shut the truck door, your hand grazing Joel’s back as you step around him. “We’ve got time for showers.”

“Can I go first?” Ellie asks, her question directed at you, nearly bouncing on her heels. “Please?”

“Go on,” you tell her, jutting your chin toward the door. “Just don’t be too long.”

The kid grins broadly before disappearing out the side door of the garage. After packing a few more necessities into the truck, Joel checks the battery once more before following you back into the house. You lead him upstairs, into the guest room you’d stayed in when you’d come to Lincoln in the past. There are shirts laid out on the bed, a pair of jeans that look about his size, and toiletries. A bottle of soap, toothbrushes, a tube of toothpaste, even floss. Joel can’t remember the last time he saw dental floss.

Ellie had gone in the shower in the master bedroom, and distantly, the pipes rumble as the water shuts off. “Go get in,” you tell him, jutting your chin towards the bathroom off the guest room. “I’ll go make sure she’s okay.”

Before he can get a word out, you’re gone, disappearing across the hall, and Joel turns on his heel, heading for the bathroom. Much like the rest of the house, every surface is covered in a thin layer of dust, and he cranks the shower on, but lets the water run for a while, cleaning the film from the bathtub, letting steam fill the room as he wipes down the counter with the sleeve of his shirt. It’s already dirty, anyway. The mirror fogs at the edges, and Joel finds himself face-to-face with his reflection as he strips down.

His belt goes first, the leather curling off the edge of the countertop, the buckle thunking to the surface with a metallic clang. He lets his jeans hang open, sliding slightly off his hips as he undoes the buttons on his shirt. As he reaches the last one, you reappear in the doorway, your face neutral until his shirt hangs loose, and Joel sees your bottom lip slip between your teeth.

“I thought you’d be in already,” you say, your eyes raking over him before they meet his in the mirror. “Hot water and all.”

The apartment had running water, back in the QZ. Most of the time, anyway. But hot water? Not unless you were wasting generator power heating it on the stove and dumping it into the tub. This is a luxury no matter how you look at it. “Waitin’ for you.”

For a moment, Joel wonders if you’ll protest, if the kiss you shared in the garage, heated as it was, was all you would allow. He’d drop it if you did, would respect the boundary and step back from your line in the sand. He’s about to say as much when you step through the door, pushing it closed behind you and flicking the lock shut. Your eyes find his in the mirror again, and he watches you step closer to him, his back still to you.

Your hands reach up, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt, and you pull it back. Joel relaxes his arms, letting you peel it down, keeping it bunched at his wrists, a makeshift restraint.

“Baby,” he murmurs, turning his head to look at you when you lean up and press your lips to his spine. It makes a shudder run through him, and you move even closer, until he can curl his hands around your hips. Your own slide against his ribs, one moving up to rest right over his heart, which thumps wildly beneath your touch as the other hand roves lower, nails dragging as you slide beneath the elastic of his boxers.

You graze the base of his cock, and he can’t hold back the moan that slips out of him. You bite at the muscle of his shoulder, hard enough to make him jump, and your hand closes around him. “We have to be quiet, Joel,” you murmur. There’s a glint in your eye as he stares back at you, your eyes just visible over the slope of his shoulder.

He moves quickly, taking you by surprise. Joel pulls his hands free, his shirt falling to the ground, and he spins, turning so your hand stays where it is in his pants, catching the other with his own. He walks you backward, until your back hits the wall, and pins your hand over your head, his other fingers on your jaw. The kiss you share is rough, rougher than the one in the garage, a mess of teeth and tongue. His jeans slip down his hips, and you release him long enough to shove his boxers down, cock springing fee, curving up towards his stomach.

You pull your mouth from his just long enough to lick a stripe up your palm, and your hand closes around him again a moment later, slick with your spit, the way you twist your wrist making his eyes roll back in his skull. He releases your pinned hand, feeling it curl into his hair as he busies himself with the buttons on your shirt, the button on your jeans.

He’s panting into your mouth by the time he’s got your pants around your ankles. “Gonna fuck you in the shower,” he grits out, his forehead pressed to yours. He’s not gonna last. “Gotta do somethin’ first.”

“What—?” you start, but the question dies in your throat as he pulls your hand from his cock, dropping to his knees on the tile before you. He lifts your legs one at a time, tugging the jeans from where they’re caught around your feet, your underwear going with it.

Joel curls his hand around your knee, lifts it up and over, effectively spreading your legs as you’re pressed to the wall. He keeps your thigh in place, and presses his face against it, sucking a bruise into the sensitive flesh. You hiss above him, one hand locked in his hair, your face tilted to the ceiling.

As long as he lives, Joel will never get over the taste of you. He has you committed to memory, by now, knows exactly where to lick, where to suck, when to give you just that slight edge of teeth. He knows how to make you cum, and make you cum hard. But the moment his tongue touches you, it’s like the first time, every time, his tastebuds exploding with your unique flavour.

“Shh, baby,” he whispers into the crease of your thigh when you let out a little whimper, your hips canting towards his mouth. “Gotta be quiet.”

He drinks his fill of you. He chases away every rogue thought in his head — in both your heads — with his tongue, flicks at that little bundle of nerves until your thighs are quaking in his grip.

“Joel,” you gasp out, tugging on his hair slightly. “The water.”

“Right,” he grunts against you, knowing full well that the vibration of his voice sends a zap through you. “Tell me what you want, baby. You wanna cum on my tongue right now, or on my cock in the shower?”

“Shower,” you reply, your chest heaving with breaths. Joel grins, giving you one last lick before he’s moving back up your body, setting your shaky leg back down on the ground. He lets his mouth roam on the way up, nipping at your stomach, your chest, all the way back up to your lips.

The rest of your clothes go quickly, and he holds back the curtain for you to step under the spray. The moan you let out when the hot water hits your skin is nothing short of euphoric, and Joel’s cock twitches at the sound. He’s quick to follow, tugging the curtain back across the rain once you’re both inside. You’re standing directly under the spray, letting the water cascade over you, soaking your hair to your scalp, running in rivulets down your body.

Joel reaches for you, the warmth coating his hands first, moving up his arms as you curl your fingers above his elbows, pulling him forward to share the spray with him. He groans too, when the water hits him, and it’s coupled with a roll of your hips against his, your wet mouth seeking his beneath the water.

Your kisses are sloppy now, both of you growing languid with the heat beating down on you, hitting sore muscles and aching joints in just the right way. You slide your hand down his front, curling your fingers around his cock again, and Joel’s spine prickles. He lets you stroke him once, twice, before he’s grabbing your shoulders and turning you. Slowly, he bends you forward slightly, until your hands are pressed to the tile in front of you, your back arched and your ass pressed against his crotch. 

“There she is,” he murmurs, skimming his palm up your spine, until he can lock his hand in your soaked hair. He rolls his hips now, his other hand curled around your hip, and he slides your feet apart with his, his eyes drawn down to the curve of your ass. He releases your hip to take himself in hand, and draws his hips back, angling just right, the tip of his cock catching on your entrance before he’s slamming forward, filling you to the hilt in one fell swoop.

Your hand smacks against the tile loudly, your voice punched from your lungs, and you go so tight around him for a moment, Joel thinks your cumming already. But then your head turns in his grip, your eyes nailing him in place.

“More.” 

He’s never been one to deny you, and now is no exception. The ache in his bones is forgotten, the only thing he can think about right now is the feel of you around him, the way you arch up, your back pressed to his front, one hand reaching back to tangle in his hair. His hands are everywhere, mapping you out, squeezing every bit of flesh he can get his hands on. And all the while, he drives himself into you, deeper and deeper, turning your head with his grip on your hair and claiming your mouth for his own.

You curl your fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand down between your legs. He finds your clit easily, groaning when he feels how hot and wet you are, not just from the water. You whine as he pinches the bud between his fingers, drawing a tight circle that makes you clench around him.

“C’mon, baby,” he groans into your kiss, nipping at your bottom lip. “I wanna feel it.”

You shudder as you cum, and Joel feels every second of it, his own orgasm not far behind. The water pours over you both, and he just stays where it is, the aftershocks rippling through him, leaving behind that different kind of ache, the good kind.

Sighing, you fit yourself into his arms, angling your bodies so the water doesn’t hit you both in the face. Joel stays buried in you, hips flush with your ass, and you lean your head back on his shoulder, letting him dot kisses along your wet throat.

“Mmm, I needed that,” you murmur, leaning your head against his, rubbing your palms along his arms.

“Me too.” He lets his nose ride the curve of your jaw. “We could stay the night. Sleep in real beds, let me wake you up proper in the morning.” At the mere thought of your spread out on a bed for him, Joel twitches inside you.

But he feels your hesitation, feels it bristle across your skin like goosebumps. “We can’t, Joel. I-I can’t stay here, not knowing that they’re…” You trail off, but Joel nods. You don’t have to say anything more.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he murmurs, tightening his arms around you.

“I know.”

You spend what remains of the hot water actually getting clean. Joel groans when you lather his hair with shampoo, dragging your nails along his scalp, and he returns the favour. Lavender-scented soap swirls down the drain, and he wants to eat you alive.

Wrapped in towels, standing on the bathmat, Joel knocks his fingers beneath your chin and kisses you soundly. You, the one thing that always manages to keep him grounded, the one constant in this hell you’re traversing.

He can keep going, so long as he has you.

+

You leave Joel to dress in the bedroom, leaving him with one last kiss, raking your hands through his hair. It’s damp enough that it stays in place, slicked back over his skull, and you grin against his mouth. “Handsome.”

You can hear Ellie moving as you reach the bottom of the stairs, and turn towards the dining room to see her standing at the hutch in the corner of the room. One of the drawers is pulled open, and she has Frank’s gun in her hand. Her eyes are wide, literally like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Liv, I wasn’t—”

“I didn’t see anything, kid,” you say, and turn your back. Once you hear the zipper of her bag, you turn around again, handing her a stick of deodorant. “Here.”

“Nice,” she answers, but you see her eyes go wary. “Liv, the gun—”

“What gun?” you repeat, lifting your brow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ellie.”

She catches on, her face softening, and she stashes the deodorant as well. The stairs creak a moment later, and you turn your head to see Joel walk down, dressed in the green plaid you’d picked out.

“Well, don’t you look pretty,” Ellie comments, offering him a grin.

Joel looks at you, and you don’t miss the way his cheeks pinch with pink. “Shut up.”

You reach for Joel’s hand. “Let’s go.”

The three of you head into the garage, locking the front door from the inside before you head out. You know you don’t need to, but something about it makes you feel better. Ellie follows behind you as you walk around to the passenger’s side of the truck, and you don’t miss the way her eyes light up with curiosity.

Joel slides into the driver’s seat, and you nudge her with your elbow. “You wanna sit in the front?”

Her grin is infectious. “Really?”

You nod. “Go for it.”

You take her coat as she opens the door, leaving you to clamber into the backseat, fitting your bags and jackets between your seat and the stack of cans on the other side of the bench seat. Joel glances over his shoulder at you, a question in his eyes, and you just wave him off, reaching for your seatbelt.

In the front seat, Ellie flips the sun visor down and then back up, leaning forward to inspect it closer. You watch as she reaches out the open window, pushing on the side view mirror until it moves.

“First time in a car?” Joel asks, his voice low.

“It’s like a spaceship,” Ellie replies, and you laugh.

“No, it’s like a piece of shit Chevy S10,” your husband grits, and you lean back in your seat, settling against the headrest, “but it’ll get us there. I think. Seatbelt.”

“Hmm?”

Joel stares at the kid for a moment, his eyes cutting to you before he reaches across, grabbing the belt and pulling it across her. “Seatbelt,” he repeats.

Ellie listens, clicking the belt into place. “So cool.”

It just makes you laugh again.

Joel turns the key in the ignition, and you hold your breath before the engine rumbles to life. You watch him lift his hand, adjusting the rearview mirror, and he meets your eyes through it, something unspoken in them, comforting.

We’re gonna be okay.

He shifts the truck into drive, and slowly, it rolls forward, out of the garage and onto the road ahead. Ellie busies herself with the glove box, rummaging through the collection of tapes inside. “Would ya leave it?” Joel grumbles, glancing at her. She opens one of the cases, shaking the tape between her fingers. “Put it back, Ellie.”

“Joel,” you call softly, reaching out to put your hand on his shoulder. He’s tense, but relaxes a little when you dig your fingers in slightly. Ellie pushes the tape into the slot, and a moment later, a familiar song plays over the radio.

And I think it’s gonna hurt me, for a long, long time.

Ellie reaches for the radio, clearly not a fan, but you reach out, grabbing her arm. “Wait. Leave it.”

“Really?”

“Really,” you repeat. “It’s Linda Ronstadt.”

“You know who Linda Ronstadt is?” Joel asks, and Ellie gives him a withering look.

“You know I don’t know who Linda Ronstadt is.”

Joel turns the truck towards the gate, and as he rolls to a stop, he meets your eyes again in the rearview.

One of the last times you were able to get to Lincoln, after Frank got sick, the pair revealed to you an unofficial anniversary of sorts. “I’ve lost track of the years,” Frank told you, sat on the couch with you, leaned against your shoulder, “but what feels like a lifetime ago, on this day Bill helped me out of that hole, and I never left.”

“Just like that, huh?”

He’d chuckled, weakly pushing at your arm. “Not just like that. He cooked me dinner first, played a song on the piano.”

“What song?”

Frank had called for Bill then, and he’d appeared in the living room a moment later, concern on his face. “What? What is it?”

“Play our song?”

And he had. You had tears in your eyes by the end of it.

And I think I’m gonna miss you, for a long, long time.

Joel reaches for the remote on the dash, keying in the gate code once more. Tears crawl up the back of your throat as the fence slides across, opening for you to drive through. Joel glances over his shoulder at you, and you squeeze his shoulder again. “Eh,” Ellie mumbles, tipping her back against the headrest. “It’s better than nothin’.”

Joel pulls the truck through, and you leave Lincoln behind. You turn, looking through the back window as the gate slides shut again.

And I think I’m gonna love you, for a long, long time.

PREV | NEXT

#my fics #strawberry wine #joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller fluff #joel miller angst #the last of us #the last of us fic #the last of us spoilers #joel miller x oc #joel miller x liv stone

[chuuyrr]

HELLO ITS ME, REQUESTER OF THE CRACK GOJO READER AND I HAVE COME BACK TO REQUEST if its okay with u 😃 BECAUSE, LOOK:

GOJO!READER. DOING. HOLLOW PURPLE. AND. DESTROYING EVERYTHING IN ITS PATH. sheesh

ada:

the mafia:

the rat– i mean decay of angels:

god i love overpowered women, did i say i love overpowered women?

honored one

bungou stray dogs x gojo! reader

masterlist of infinity

╰➤ CW(s): major spoilers for bungou stray dogs, and jujutsu kaisen's episode 20 is heavily referenced; but instead of todou and itadori witnessing hollow purple, it's the armed detective agency, port mafia and decay of the angel

╰➤ PAIRING(s): decay of the angel, armed detective agency and port mafia (mostly dazai, chuuya and fyodor)

before you read: i'm still reading the bsd manga. i haven't completely caught it up with yet, so the information about the decay of the angel might not be accurate. i'm also very new to writing them so they might also be ooc. sorry!

even though you were primarily from tokyo, you became even more well-known after coming to yokohama to clear your name and that of sugawara michizane, thanks to the armed detective agency investigating you and the port mafia pursuing you, and possibly you sending a section of the city into chaos when you fought against them using your ability.

to your surprise, they weren't the only ones who became interested in you. you'd piqued the interest of another organization, specifically the decay of the angel. a terrorist organization that specializes in murder and has members with powerful and dangerous abilities.

"so, this is the woman," exclaimed the tall, middle-aged man dressed in army green, flitting his gaze up to a screen that showed you effortlessly floating in mid-air. "gojo [name]."

"the strongest ability user." fyodor dostoevsky added as his deep purple eyes stared at you with interest.

"huh? can she see with that blindfold on?" nikolai asked, tapping his chin as he looked at you and the other members, noticing a black blindfold completely covering your eyes.

sigma raised an eyebrow at the clown, "did you happen to overlook the information we have on her?"

"the six eyes is an occular non-ability," fyodor explained to nikolai as he propped his elbow on the arms of his chair, his lips twitching into a smile, "it's something she inherited from the god, sugawara michizane, with her being a direct descendant of him."

"it's no surprise the armed detective agency and port mafia were after her," sigma said, "she's a rather complex individual as well; a member of heiwa, an organization that runs tokyo, and despite not being an executive, she's considered a big shot among them."

"well, not only does she have the six eyes, she's a literal descendant of a god," nikolai shrugged, an irking smile on his lips.

the decay of the angel continued to watch over you, following and analyzing your every move from the moment you were sent to yokohama, but they had no idea you were aware of how you were being watched, but it was nothing serious.

you were used to being watched all the time, so that was the least of your worries right now.

anyway, you heard that an entity from tokyo, your city, was wreaking havoc in yokohama. apparently, whatever that thing was, it was born from the experimentation of humans, abilities, and supernatural entities, while also putting the armed detective agency and port mafia in a tight spot, trapping their best assets (dazai and chuuya) inside a barrier and forcing the rest of the members to fight their kind, which is why you were sent to get rid of the entity and offer your assistance.

you broke the barrier that was trapping dazai and chuuya. with that, all of them, including the decay of the angel who was quietly watching you from somewhere, were astonished.

with your blindfold pulled down to your neck, revealing your heavensent aquamarine eyes, you were staring at them, particularly the monstrous entity in the middle of both organizations.

"is that gojo-san?!" exclaimed atsushi, who was in the outer part of the veil with akutagawa and kyouka, facing the human-supernatural hybrid, blinking wildly at you.

akutagawa's eyes widened at the sight of you being in mid-air like it was nothing, "she can fly?

also, they were all taken aback to see you without a blindfold or eye wraps. your eccentric blue eyes were one of a kind; it felt as if your eyes were trapping the heaven within them, which they couldn't help but be drawn to by its beauty.

you vanished in the blink of an eye, only to reappear a minute later, clutching both of your hands together, right where dazai and chuuya were. when compared to the armed detective agency and port members scattered throughout, they weren't in as much danger as dazai and chuuya.

in fact, judging by how battered the two were, it appeared that they were specifically targeting dazai and chuuya wherein chuuya was on the verge of using corruption as a last resort. it was a good thing you arrived.

"oi, dazai-kun, chuuya-kun," you started, your lips curving into a smirk as you tipped your head to the side, "you guys crying?" "

"what do you think we are? crybabies?!" chuuya scowled angrily at you, a nerve irked on his temple.

"actually, no, but i do think you guys are idiots," you deadpanned, narrowing your eyes at the battered detective and mafioso, "you seriously let yourselves be fooled by those curses?" you motioned over to the tall monstrosity humanoid, which was accompanied by several more of its kind.

"curses?" chuuya muttered quietly as he held his abdomen, which had been badly injured by flower buds and a branch that appeared to be stabbing him.

"yes, heiwa has decided to call their kind curses. they are the very fruition abilities and the supernatural. the higher-ups even said that human emotions has something to do with them too apparently," you sighed deeply, narrowing your eyes, "very troublesome right? anyway, you and dazai should sit this out for a bit. you two look like shit."

"is it really necessary for you to diss us?" chuuya scoffed bitterly, "we get it, you're the shit gojo." if he wasn't in such bad shape, it was obvious who would square up with you, but god did you enjoy pushing his buttons as much as dazai does.

"well, i don't mind it at all!" sighed dazai dreamily and dramatically as he clasped his hands together before tucking them under his chin, "i consider myself extremely fortunate to have been saved by an angel who literally descended from heaven~"

"but, i'm sorry to break it to you, this angel's going to be a little rough and devilish to be exact," with that, you winked at the distance between the two, right where you could see the decay of the angel's hidden camera.

fyodor, nikolai, sigma, and even the leader of the decay of the angel tensed up. while you pretended to be paying attention to dazai and chuuya, they couldn't deny that your gaze met theirs for the first time, causing the spectators watching the entire scene from somewhere secluded to visibly flinch and hold their breaths unconsciously. as you turned away and faced the curse you were about to face, a tiny smirk appeared on your lips.

"did.. did she just.. see us?" sigma sputtered out, taking a step back instinctively.

"she knows she's being watched," fyodor chuckled, shaking his head side to side as nikolai and the leader looked at you with wide eyes.

of course, you would know. your six eyes does not only provide immense brain processing power, but also vast perception, allowing you to view the world in terms of mass, energy, and even speed, but most importantly, see things from afar, which is why fyodor isn't as surprised as the others.

as your heavenly eyes fixed on the tall and large tan monstrosity of an experiment with black lines running across his entire body, you intertwined your dominant hand with your other hand. it even has a helmet-like head that doesn't cover his teeth, branches for eyes, and two black lines that zigzag down his face with a larger flower on his left shoulder.

"limitless: amplified blue."

there was a sudden turbulence of air in the atmosphere. 

"limitless: reversal red."

then there was an even greater disturbance in the atmosphere. it was coming directly from you, and it felt foreboding. but it was familiar to dazai and chuuya. they specifically remembered you using it against them when they first met you to fight you.

everyone watched you outstretch your arm, extending your hand and initiating a hand sign that extends your index and pinky fingers outward while leaving the rest folded with the curse readying to flee the scene, but it didn't take long for you to take action.

you took a stance with your feet apart, holding the sleeve of your outstretched arm with your other hand.

“limitless: hollow purple.”

by pinching your pointer and thumb and extending your middle finger, a luminous sphere of purple, an extraordinarily destructive energy wave of annihilation manifested and shot towards the curse.

the power was so powerful that it sent a shockwave through the forest, jolting the armed detective agency and port mafia members who were scattered throughout and facing multiple enemies individually.

dazai and chuuya were equally taken aback. again, they recalled seeing your hollow purple. the city would have been completely destroyed if dazai hadn't nullified your ability in time. at present, everything in its path had been completely destroyed, leaving it unclear whether you had permanently erased the curse from existence or if it had escaped.

"what the hell was that?!?" sigma shuddered at the devastation left by your ability, which had rushed and erased everything in its path. he was so shocked that his mouth was literally agape.

"god, i love overpowered women," nikolai exclaimed breathlessly, turning to face his comrades, hearts and admiration drawn all over his face, "did i say i love overpowered women?"

"HAHAHAHA! SO THIS IS THE GOJO [NAME] EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT!" exclaimed the leader of the decay of the angel, looking around at the chaos you had created after using hollow purple, "INDEED SHE IS THE HONORED ONE!"

fyodor flitted his gaze up on the screen to see you pulling your blindfold back to cover your eyes, giving dazai and chuuya a thumbs up as you childishly yet enthusiastically yelled out a "YAY! that settles everything!" to them, which he chuckled at.

you were truly a piece of work. it was so fascinating to watch you act so much like dazai, but you were so much more; more powerful and cunning. you were so beautiful yet dangerous at the same time. fyodor was deeply reminded of a rose, and in fact his desire to see you and have you grew stronger by the day, especially after seeing you use hollow purple.

may god forgive him for his greed, but he truly desires all of you, the honored one throughout heaven and earth.

your power, your beauty; your everything.

fyodor casted a glance at the rest of the decay of the angels before returning to the screen and stare at chuuya and dazai, and narrowed his eyes for a second.

of course, fyodor had a competition.

he wasn't the only one who was interested in you. there was the armed detective agency, specifically dazai; the port mafia, specifically chuuya; and now, the decay of the angel.

fyodor sighed to himself as his gaze shifted to your delicate face, which was cheekily smiling at chuuya, only to be replaced by annoyance when dazai embraced you, rubbing his cheek against yours, completely negating your infinity.

"aww, what's with that look, dos-kun?" nikolai asked, smiling at the russian man, "do tell me, do you like overpowered women?"

"who wouldn't?" fyodor returned the question, his eyes closed as he smiled. he was right.

who wouldn't want someone like you?

#bungo stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs x you #bungo stray dogs x you #bungo stray dogs headcanons #bungo stray dogs dazai #bungo stray dogs chuuya #bungo stray dogs fyodor #bsd headcanons #bsd oneshot #bsd x reader #bsd x you #bsd x y/n #dazai x reader #dazai osamu x reader #chuuya x reader #nakahara chuuya x reader #fyodor x reader #fyodor dostoevsky x reader #fyodor x you #fyodor x y/n #dazai x you #dazai x y/n #chuuya x y/n #chuuya x you #bsd imagines #bsd fyodor #bsd chuuya #bsd dazai #bungou stray dogs x jujutsu kaisen

[animehouse-moe]

'Tis Time For Torture, Princess Episode 1: You Need To Be Watching This

Do you like food? Do you like shenanigans and humor? What about great animation and direction? I'm sure most would say "that sounds like Delicious In Dungeon", and you wouldn't be that wrong. However, and this is a potentially really hot take, I think that the first episode of 'Tis Time For Torture, Princess is considerably better than Delicious In Dungeon's, and I'll explain why.

Let's lay some groundwork though. The staff on this series is surprisingly fresh. The lead director, Youko Kanamori, is a first timer in the position. Similarly, Hasegawa Mami is also brand new to being the director of photography for an entire series. There's also staff like Narumi Konno who are somewhat fresh in terms of their experience with color design. Then there's the 4 character designers and 2 cuisine designers, plus the rest of what you'd expect.

There's a lot of new talent on this series, and they're hungry to prove themselves. I really really love seeing new staff members, especially women (because of the nature of the industry), get a shot at big roles like this. And I mean, they're proving why they should be here.

Narumi's color design is very striking and full, always finding the right balance for each scene.

You'll get traditionally colored (yet still satisfying) scenes like this, but then you'll get a wonderfully novel approach to coloring in a dank and dark prison.

I love the coloring on the floor, it reminds of what oil spills end up looking like, and that idea of it being "dirty" and the ground and walls being covered in that layer of grime adds a lot of fun color to the episode.

Narumi just has a lot of range, though their second ever series being The Vampire Dies In No Time certainly helps with that. However, it's a pretty clear difference in color design between the two. Where The Vampire Dies In No Time leans heavily into its fantasy and simplicity, 'Tis Time For Torture, Princess makes a case for a more believable fantasy style- idealized, even. It's far less noisy of a color palette, but it has such intense range. I really really love it.

I also really really love Hasegawa's composition. The vast majority of the time you don't really notice it there, but when the humor or situation calls for it, Hasegawa breaks out some incredible composition work which wonderfully highlight the characters involved.

Also, they choose a slightly different style for the color shifts in their images. You can't really tell in the above so here's some better examples.

Rather than the more typical Magenta-Green shift you tend to see, Hasegawa opted for the less common/likely Blue-Red shift for their chromatic aberration. Of course, you can still pick out some greens and magentas in the more glaring aberrations, but it just shows Hasegawa's attention to detail, which I really love.

I mean, they're pulling out composition work that looks like it came from a high budget Gacha Game trailer.

And the praise doesn't stop there, just look at the food. Makes complete sense why they'd have cuisine designers on board, this food looks irresistibly delicious.

And then there's the incredible character acting.

I think it's arguably the most interesting aspect of the episode, truthfully. Largely because there's a total of 4 character designers (two main and two sub) in charge of the designs, and there was a total of 8 animation directors on the episode (1 chief, 7 regular, 1 food). Of course, 3 of those animation directors comprise half of the character and cuisine designers.

And that's interesting for two reasons. It's likely that the designers are rotating episodes. That is, 3 on episode one and then the other 3 on the next episode. And secondly, 7 animation directors is a surprising amount considering how "inconsistent" the Princess' model is (just look at all the different images in this one post). However, I strongly believe that it's 100% intentional. The designs look too good to be the product of simple off model issues, and their appearances too well timed with the events of the episode.

So we arrive at the conclusion that the animation direction and designers for this show are pulling some seriously cool stuff.

Finally, we can do storyboards. Gosh, it took long enough haha. I'll make it quick, Kanamori really prefers the super close ups to mask facial expressions and leave a lot of interpretation up to the viewer, and that sort of close up work pairs effortlessly with the obsessive focus on food.

But that's hardly the half of it. Kanamori also loves strong perspective in her layouts, and she makes that very evident when playing into the humor or intensity of a moment.

That of course also means that she imparts a fair amount of first person perspective to the episode as well. It's really amazing, Kanamori, much like many of the other high level staff members, is perfectly aware at how fluid Torture Princess is, and she expresses that wonderfully with all the different ideas employed with her boards.

And just one last little piece. The big troll/monster fight at the start? It absolutely lives and breaths Kanamori's experience in storyboarding for Ousama Ranking. You feel their incredible awareness of scale and size and it creates the feeling of a monster of unbelievable size that the Kingdom is forced to fight against.

Anyways, this is all to say that 'Tis Time For Torture, Princess has an all around incredible first episode that promises viewers that the series desperately wants to be one of the best of the season. And I wholeheartedly believe that.

#tis time for torture princess #hime-sama goumon no jikan desu #姫様“拷問”の時間です #anime #anime and manga #anime review #anime recommendation #anime reccs #delicious in dungeon #dungeon meshi #food anime #food manga

[pastelcheckereddreams]

Four Seasons Manor (四季山庄): Set Layout!

If you’ve been following my descent into madness my research progress for my next set design project, you’ll know that it immediately became impossible for me to work out the layout of Siji Manor from screenshot studies of the show alone. To backtrack to about a year ago: it quickly became clear that the exterior shots of the manor’s first courtyard and the birdseye view we see in episode 24 is not located in the same set, or possibly even film base, as the “interior set”. Unfortunately, that secondary set is where many of the indoor scenes take place (with significant rooms, such as Wen Kexing’s bedroom being redressed to be used for other scenes in the show), and is where the secondary courtyard is located.  I soon realised that I had to do three things in order to create a Four Seasons Manor for my project that feels as authentic as possible to the one we are presented with in the show. First, find the full film base on Google Earth (which has the most up-to-date satalite imagery I can find); second, identify all the buildings to create a “complete” Manor and confirm the secondary set isn’t just another part of the first; and third, find the secondary set in order to correctly map its layout and marry it with the birdseye view. Friends, I have achieved two of those three things. The second set still evades me. But so far, I have finally managed to correctly and completely identify the film base that is presented to us as Four Seasons Manor:

(Full research breakdown under the cut.)

This is one of two full manor sets on Hengdian World Studio’s No.1 Mountain in the ‘Spring and Autumn Tang Park’ filmbase. In anticipation for the birdseye plan in my set design project, I’ve gone ahead and mapped it out faithfully to the satalite image:

As you can see, there's five distinct areas that make up this manor: three courtyards (labelled 1,2,4) and two gardens (3,5). The first courtyard will be familiar to everyone who has watched Word of Honor:

It is the main courtyard of Four Seasons Manor. Likewise, the fifth area will also be familiar to you all, although you may not realise it yet. It's Sanbai Manor:*

*With the exception of the main gate. The main gate of Sanbai Manor is actually from another set in the Spring and Autumn Park filmbase - the Tang Palace. There is fantastic drone footage of that set here. The Sanbai Manor gate is at the rear of the set, but you may recognise the opening shot of this clip as another place we see in the very first episode of WOH 🤫 Edit: I forgot I had a second douyin clip for the Tang Palace set.

These are the main two areas used in WOH of this set. Confirmation of the rest of the set comes from drama New Life Begins and various douyin videos and tourist photos on the internet. I won't bore you with a breakdown because Tumblr has eaten too many drafts of this post and I am Tired, but here is a snapshot of my confirmation process:

Find the difference between these two pictures

Edit: On rewatch, I can confirm that are 4 is also used in WOH. We see it in the very first scene of episode 1, dressed as the Military Governer Li’s Manor:

Here is a daylight photograph (source here) of that same building:

You may be wondering though, about the alternate layout I have detailed in my map:

Friends, this is where I would like to hear your ideas.

After scouring many clips and photographs trying to confirm whether these photos are part of this same set or a later development, I've found that since the satalite picture of this site was taken by Google Earth in 2020, corresponding to what we see in WOH, Hengdian has remodeled this part of the set. You can see a wonderful walkthrough of areas 4 and 5 here, in which you can see the remodelled layout:

This douyin video was the last confirmation I needed to place the photographs from the article. This photograph in particular feels very much like Siji Manor to me, and so I will be trying to include this remodelled layout in my project design:

But.

Despite not having located the secondary set yet, I have been thinking over which area would be best to remodel myself, to try and incoporate the kitchen space and the two rooms it sits between, which I have confirmed to be WKX and ZZS's rooms:

Reminder of that early process here.

There are two options that I see right now:

1) I use area 4 as this second courtyard. I remove the gate, make the main room ZZS's room, remove the side halls, drop in a kitchen, put WKX's room where the gate was. Chengling's training dummies then get dropped whereabouts the hexagonal pavillion is in the alternate layout, and I tweak a random building here or there:

However, somewhat crucially - the view from WKX's moon widow would be blocked by the big building that is the centerpiece of area 5. I don't like that. Past the first courtyard, there's a certain sprawl and lack of uniformity to Siji Manor created in part by this CGI shot. I think that's why the above photo appealed so much to me.

So, 2) I remodel area 3. It's pretty sparse. I was thinking of making courtyard #2's main hall into a private study or meeting room, with the sidehalls being ZZS's "medicine room" and the "first night room" - the Cold River Room, as @minnarr​ called it in their stellar sleuthing post (I hope you don't mind that I'm using the name? And may continue to use it? Also, I'm still searching for this set and your sleuthing is going to be so much help.) - they could later become Chengling's room (and Han Ying's. For hanwenzhou headcanon rights).

Area 4 could then be used as a training courtyard and lecture hall perhaps? Meanwhile area 3 can be completely redone, to have ZZS's room at the bottom facing north, WKX's facing south:

The "training area" is then still technically past a covered walkway to the left of their courtyard. The spirit remains. However, crucially: The dotted line between areas 3 and 4 is indicative of a drop in elevation. The whole set is on a slope, with areas 1,2 and 3 at a higher elevation to 4 and 5. So. If the moon window in WKX's room did face west across the garden and down the mountain, it would actually be true to the CGI we see out of his window in the show: Especially because you see part of a roof. That could totally be the roof of the building that sits against the dotted line.

But additionally, there's also this alternate orientation:

It makes the kitchen feel more tucked away, and the additional screened walkway would give ZZS and WKX their privacy. But the view from the moon window would be blocked, and there's no reason to not have the rooms central to the courtyard the way they are here.

...Does any of that make sense? I bypassed Normal about this show a solid year ago. I'm leaning towards option 2 right now, but I will continue my hunt through cdrama for this other set. What's irritating is that I can see its style in lots of other places, including Lotus Pier, and I just can't find the real world setting for it...

ANYWAY, as always, thank you for joining me on my research adventures. Supporting me through ko-fi, and checking out my previous CQL projects here and on inprnt, would be greatly appreciated. 

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

#nikkidraws #nikkispeaks #my neurodivergance is showing #but more importantly #also my epic sleuthing skills #true to form i will now yeet this post from me because my brain is DONE with it #woh set design #set design saga #word of honor #four seasons manor #siji manor #wenzhou #my hanwenzhou agenda #shan he ling #hengdian world studios #spring and autumn tang park #spring and autumn tang garden

[little-diable]

She belongs to me - Joel Miller

Ever since I've watched the first episode, I felt like I need to write something like this. So, here we go. Please like and reblog if you enjoyed reading this! Enjoy my loves. xxx

Summary: Crossover between The Walking Dead and The Last of Us; Joel, Tess and Ellie are taking a detour through a forest, stumbling upon a rather gruesome scene, who would have thought that those once believed to be dead were still alive?

Warnings: 18+, smut, unprotected sex, mentions death and blood, typical Negan behaviour, but a good ending

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem!reader

The night was dark, barely any stars were twinkling in the sky above, making it harder for the three of them to see where they were going. They were surrounded by trees, a thick forest luring them further into its trap, wondering if they’d make it out alive after all. 

“Maybe we should rest here for the night.” Tess murmured, eyes set on Joel’s features, the slight scowl he wore, the way he had his eyebrows furrowed, weighing their options. His eyes kept wandering through the darkness, trying to find anything they could use to orientate themselves. 

“C’mon, it’s alright.” Tess’ hand found its way to his shoulder, feeling the tight muscles beneath his jacket, a clear sign of the nervousness clinging to his body. A shaky breath of air was inhaled into his lungs as if he was about to take a dive deep enough to reach the bottom of the uneasy ocean he was swimming through. The waves would swallow him whole if he wouldn’t be careful, a risk not even Joel was willing to take. 

“C’mon, it’s alright.” Tess’ hand found its way to his shoulder, feeling the tight muscles beneath his jacket, a clear sign of the nervousness clinging to his body. A shaky breath of air was inhaled into his lungs as if he was about to take a dive deep enough to reach the bottom of the uneasy ocean he was swimming through. The waves would swallow him whole if he wouldn’t be careful, a risk not even Joel was willing to take. 

“What was that?” They were frozen as the sound of a scream echoed through the air, heads whipping towards the direction where the sound had come from. It seemed as if the three worked on instinct, unable to communicate, giving into the pull they felt. Hurried steps carried them further through the forest, hoping to help whoever was screaming, praying to the cloudy sky above that no clickers were near. 

A stream of light could be seen from the distance, luring them closer and closer, and yet, before either one of the three could pick up on the danger lying ahead, they stumbled into a clearing. Their eyes were drawn to the scene in front of them; a group of people was kneeling on the ground, gazes focused on a man towering over them. A few cars were surrounding them, lights directed onto the group. It didn’t take Joel long to spot the screaming woman, she was crying, cursing whatever had just happened. 

“Well, look at that. You didn’t tell me that you were inviting some more friends, Rick.” The tall man’s eyes caught Joel’s, and with a smirk tugging on his lips, he forced the group to part, stepping closer towards the three of them. Both Joel and Tess pointed their guns at him, not daring to take any risks with the stranger whose black leather jacket was covered in blood, just like the baseball bat of his. “Oh don’t be scared, you sadly missed the fun of our gathering, but don’t you worry, we weren’t finished just yet.” 

“Don’t come any closer.” Joel’s gruff voice echoed through the air like the scream had moments ago. His eyes didn’t leave the man’s features once, silently wondering if they’d make it out without being pulled into a fight. 

“Joel?” A soft voice filled the few seconds of silence, and with his heart skipping beats and his pulse growing faster, Joel was forced to draw his gaze from the man’s frame. His eyes found hers, taking in her trembling frame, the dirt clinging to her features and the torn clothes of her. 

This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real. Fuck, this couldn’t be real.

“(Y/n)?” He took a step towards her, forced to a halt as the other men pointed their guns at him. His heart longed for her, had been doing so ever since that night, filled with pain whenever he thought of her.

“Leave, you have to, Joel.” Tears were running down her bloody cheeks, hand tightly holding his. His eyes were just as glassy, clearly filled with the pain stretching through him. 

“I can’t, you’ll survive this. I can’t do this without you.” With his other hand finding her cheek, Joel pressed a kiss against her cold lips. She had been shot, bullet forced into her skin without giving the two of them a chance to make it out. 

“We both know I won’t, leave, please. Do it for me, you have to survive, you’re the only good thing in this awful world, you have to save them.” 

It had taken Joel years to stop his nightmares from interrupting his sleep, memories bringing back the night he had left her to die. Months ago he had tried to make his peace, forcing himself to accept her passing, the way he had left her back there in the dark warehouse, somewhat grateful that she wouldn't have to endure this life any longer.

“Aw, look at that, isn’t that sweet. What’s your name, doll?” The man moved towards (y/n), eyes flickering between hers and Joel’s, smirking as Joel tried to take another step. She replied with her name, barely audible to those close to her, and yet Joel would always pick up on the words she was speaking, no matter how much force she’d use to express herself. “Sweet, (y/n), tell me, who is he to you?” 

“My fiancée.” The words left Joel’s heart aching, not daring to look at Tess, not wanting to see the emotions swimming in her pupils, undoubtedly thinking back to all those nights they’ve spent together in the dark of the night. Nights that now had lost their meaning to Joel, cursing himself for giving into the urges he had felt. Moments of weakness he’d forever hate himself for, he was sure of it. 

“Seems like he didn’t take good enough care of you, huh? Who’d leave a woman like you behind?” Before (y/n) could even try to come up with a reply, Joel spoke up, patience snapping like a rubberband flickered against his wrist with just too much force. 

“Let her go, she didn’t do anything. She's mine.” 

“I love you, fuck.” Joel murmured his words against her skin, drowning in her closeness, praying to whoever was listening that their moment together wouldn’t be interrupted. Their hearts were beating in sync, bodies searching their warmth. 

The moment was anything but hurried, allowing them to relish in the seconds fading by like the early morning hours. He fucked her slow, leaving his marks with his lips moving along her throat, sucking on her skin. (Y/n)‘s moans urged him on, back arched off the mattress just enough to feel his chest pressing against hers. 

“I love you too.” The words got stuck in her throat as he brushed against her swollen spot, dragging her further towards the edge. Her walls fluttered around his cock, drawing him in even deeper, desperate to feel every inch of him. The moment had something awfully raw to it, sharing their love as the world outside was no longer filled with anything but death and pain. 

A moment of hope both would cling to till their last breaths would leave their weak lungs. A moment of hope both would remember whenever the days grew darker and the nights grew longer. A moment of hope both would remember whenever rain clashed from the sky, momentarily washing away the reminders of the past weeks. 

“Fuck, faster, please.” He picked up his pace, hand disappearing between their bodies to circle her pulsing bundle of nerves. Joel was high off the feeling, wanting to hear her moans and whimpers, proud that he was the one making her feel like this. 

He could watch her for hours on end, admiring (y/n) as if she was a masterpiece created by the old masters, perfecting their skills. A masterpiece no other would ever manage to create. His one and only, and if there was one thing Joel had sworn to live by, it was appreciating her for eternity. 

“Let go, I got you, baby.”

“You see, I wish I could, but she belongs to me, just like they all do.” The words made Joel’s blood boil, threatening to push him into hot waves of anger he wouldn’t be able to control. His hand tightened its grip on his gun, wondering if they could shoot their way out of this situation, trying to pull (y/n) close. “But I’m not that cruel, who am I to stand in the way of your love. So, how about a trade? Give me your shit, all your weapons, and you can have her.” 

Joel’s eyes found (y/n)‘s glassy ones, almost missing the slight shake of her head - as if she was trying to stop him from saying yes, as if she was trying to tell him that it wasn’t worth it. That she wasn't worth the price of his safety.

“Joel,” Tess murmured his name, trying to catch his attention, and yet he didn’t give in. Nothing in this world was too expensive, too worthy for a trade, he’d give his very last shirt for her, and yet he couldn’t speak up. His mouth felt dry, throat constructing in pain as if his vocal cords were trying to keep his words bottled in. 

“I’m waiting, time’s ticking. Don't tell me she isn't worth your weapons.” The man’s words filled the night, the devil himself was speaking to them, a voice so booming it drowned out the panicked call of his name rumbling through Ellie. Only as the man’s eyes left Joel’s did he give in, finding the group of walkers making it out of the forest, breaking all hell loose. 

It took Joel three seconds to snap into motion, four to meet her halfway, arms slung around her middle. There was no time to cling to one another, to properly rekindle after years apart as they took off, running after Tess and Ellie to blend in with the night. 

She'd always belong to him, one love and two beating hearts.

#Joel Miller smut #Joel Miller imagine #the last of us #negan

[stylincheetah]

Trigun Stampede: A Multi-Part Critique

To preface this very long and passionate, multi-part essay: I am a massive fan of Trigun. I have loved the series since I was a kid, and the manga has always held a very special place in my heart. The initial announcement of Stampede had me so, so excited, but my skepticism set in as soon as I saw the first trailer. I gave the show a fair shake, and watched it to the end.

Ultimately, I have a lot of issues I want to address, starting with this first part! Here, I expand on my thoughts regarding the overall plot, side characters, and one poorly adapted organization in particular. More to come, if anyone cares to hear the rest of my thoughts in the future.

Part 1: Side Characters, World Building, and Cardboard-Flavored Nonsense

[Spoilers for Trigun Stampede and Trigun Maximum follow.]

-PLOT: A Mile a Minute-

Let’s start simple: the plot and pacing were all over the place. Sequences came and went in the blink of an eye, and none of the characters left a lasting impact. Episode 5 was, in a lot of ways, the end of my hope for the show. The cuts between the past and future scenes were so confusing that my friends and I were having a lot of difficulty keeping track of the plot at large. So much was shoved into every single episode that the show was constantly primed to burst, yet most scenes felt like little more than hot air to pad out the runtime. There was no room to build lasting connections with the characters, plot, or any aspect of Gunsmoke’s world. Interesting story beats were picked up and tossed aside without a single care (looking at you, Eye of Michael). And it was all in service of a (very bombastic and disjointed) finale, and the announcement of a Season 2. Somehow, that only makes me more upset. I’d understand if Stampede’s creators were trying to make the most of a 12-episode run by throwing in as much fan service as possible, but by making it clear that they did have more time to work with, the entirety of Season 1 gets chucked out the window as a ploy to set up future story arcs. By the time Episode 12 reaches its conclusion, not a single character is graced with anything beyond surface-level depth. Meryl, Nick, Knives, Rem, and worst of all, Vash, have nothing compelling to bring to the table. They’re caricatures of their manga–and even 90s anime–counterparts, and lend very little to the paint-by-numbers story set in place for them. Speaking of characters…

-Legato, Livio, Elendira: The Gun-No-Guns-

Talk about character assassination. 

There was one solitary interesting idea established by this show with Rollo’s inclusion. Sure! Tie Monev the Gale to Vash, that’s a fun and interesting way to re-establish the character. Not that the concept’s very original, considering there were other Gung-Ho’s (like Leonov) who already had their grudges against Vash in the source material. But fine, so be it. Then we get Legato, Livio, and Elendira. Oh boy. Let me try to make this quick. 

Legato “I don’t understand Love and Emotion” Bluesummers

Who are you? Aside from the fact that Legato appears for a fraction of screen time as a minion of the Eye of Michael (more on that later), his character serves absolutely 0 purpose in the grand over-arching plot of the story. No grudge against Vash, no adoration for Knives–not even a fun and horrifying on-screen murder spree! I kid, but not really. For how tremendously threatening his other versions are, this cameo of his was a major letdown that only gave way to more and more disappointment as the show went on. I have very little to say about him, other than the fact that his inclusion was as forgettable as his reworked “pretty boy” design.

Livio

Well-animated backstory aside, Livio was as flat as paper. His introduction in the manga is fast, punchy, and immediately menacing. He fights Nick with agency, and at the very least manages to stand by his convictions, however misguided they are. He fights because he believes in Chapel, and buys into the Eye of Michael wholeheartedly. He says little, but at least he has the capacity to do so at all! He’s not a mindless zombie–he’s Livio the Doublefang, and has the bite to back up the title. His new design is interesting, but fails to capture the looming weight of his manga counterpart, and, again he serves as little purpose to the story as Legato. He’s inserted as a temporary distraction, and acts a cheap vessel for the show’s lame attempts to squeeze out some extra characterization for Nick. Not that it leads to anything, but oh well. At least we got Razlo–for one frame. Wasn’t that neat?

Elendira…oh boy

If I had the mental fortitude, I would write an essay twice as long solely on how poorly they messed up Elendira as a character. Point-blank, the show’s portrayal of her is transphobic, and a far cry from what made her so interesting to begin with. In the manga, Elendira is a trans woman, the strongest member of the Gung-Ho’s, and one of the strongest humans alive period—a true force to be reckoned with. She’s witty and introspective, and plays off of Legato and Knives in very captivating ways. Her arsenal is unique and doesn’t require an explanation or forethought–she’s just cool, like a lot of Trigun is when it’s doing everything right. Antagonist or otherwise, she’s an interesting and refreshing member of the cast, and a relatively grounded portrayal of a trans character considering when her source material was released. Not to mention, she’s got her own perspective regarding the world at large that lends to some pretty cool scenes between herself and other members of the cast. And then, Stampede strips her of all of that. Not only is she no longer trans (which, why??? Why was that so hard to keep in?) but she’s also severely aged down, and transformed into some sick plant-human hybrid that serves no greater purpose than to throw a tantrum and kill off Roberto in one of the most contrived scenes of the show (RIP King). Not to mention Nick calling her a “monster”, “creep”, etc. Trans erasure is bad enough, but to link the only trans character to the idea of being a non-human freak isn’t just bad writing; it’s downright offensive. 

Zazie, at least, was pretty close to their original version, and got a really neat redesign. I dig it! So boom, there’s a positive. But hey–they’re not even called the Gung-Ho Guns here. Which makes sense given the prequel spin on the story, but then why were Monev and E.G Mine tossed in? Oh right. “Fanservice”. Can’t wait to see how they skirt around this major plot thread without tripping over their own feet. 

-Conrad: A Lesson In Humanity-

I liked Conrad in the manga. He was a bit player in a much grander story, but at least he served a purpose beyond exposition. His first introductory scene with Knives made for a really tender moment, which contrasted well with their eventual reunion. His presence by Knives’s side was fascinating, and I enjoyed the peeks into the inner turmoil of a man who had once devoted himself to the study of Plants, ethics be damned. Volume 6 has a really great scene where he and Knives come to a Plant on its last legs, and Conrad comments on how terrifying it feels to walk through a city while effectively leashed to a sentient atom bomb. While Knives watches in horror and disgust as his sister’s life is snuffed out for “one last run”, Conrad falls to his knees, begging for Knives to forgive the human race. Sounds familiar, right? Because Stampede rather shamelessly lifts elements of these pages for its mini-standoff in Episode 9. What the anime fails to recognize is that Conrad is not, in fact, some bland monologuing evil scientist hell-bent on filling the world with lots of overzealous plant babies. He’s a human, one who stands by Knives out of fear, pity, and an inherent guilt that drives him to atone in service of a boy he no longer recognizes. He does not approve of Knives’ actions, and still has strong convictions that give him hope that a future beyond his own exists for humanity. When the events of Volume 6 come to a head, he’s bold in his assertion that even a lone, insignificant human can know something Knives doesn't. And still, he offers help, and offers to keep his place by Knives’s side, presumably to dissuade him from harming anyone else. It’s a futile effort, but serves as a very strong and memorable moment that leaves the reader with a firm impression of his character. Stampede Conrad is a boring coward who likes to monologue, and whose motivations barely make a lick of sense. He’s as generic as the rest of the tropey collection of caricatures filling in the secondary roles. Seriously, I was waiting for Meryl to finally show some agency and shoot the guy, but that would’ve been too much to ask for.

-The Eye of Michael: Goodbye, Worldbuilding-

The Eye of Michael, as a cult, is a really cool and well-implemented idea…in the manga. The 90s anime doesn’t touch on it much, and Stampede puts too much of a spotlight on it in order to tie up loose ends that really didn’t need tying up.Everything circles back to them in one way or another, even if it translates to utter nonsense. Legato’s cool powers? The Eye of Michael! Monev and E.G. Mine? The Eye of Michael! Knives and Legato’s newfound proclivity for bible thumping? Boy howdy!

The Eye of Michael worked because it had a very strong identity and iconography that made its forces immediately recognizable. Clad in black, draped in Christian allegory, and touting slick cross-shaped weaponry, its members were well-defined and given ample time with which to make themselves known. They were an organization independent of Knives and his agenda, built by human hands for human means. By making every bad guy one of Conrad’s failed experiments within the cult, the threat of the organization has been effectively neutered. Once Conrad’s gone…who’s left to keep it running? What makes this crapshoot of a science fair worth a damn? If it’s not one of the many human-led organizations shown to be perpetuating destruction on Gunsmoke, thereby lending credence to Knives’s perspective, what’s even the point of keeping it around? I’ll touch on Stampede’s overall disrespect for the original’s compelling religious undertones in a future post, but I do think it’s worth noting that the Eye has been reduced to little more than a backdrop in Stampede, and has no purpose beyond its function as a spawn point for supplementary enemies. Trigun is not a story that needs a pretty bow plopped atop every unanswered question. In fact, the world feels a lot more intriguing and realistic because of how much goes unsaid, giving its weird cast of characters plenty of room to breathe. From puppeteers and saxophone players to Catholic assassins-for-hire, Gunsmoke features a whole cavalcade of killers from all walks of life. Knives hand-picks each one like he’s building a deck of cards, however nonsensical, because it suits his needs. The world is terrible with and without his influence, because there’s never going to be a perfect world without some form of strife. Where’s the fun in delving deeper into such a cool concept if the end result is cheapened by its over-explanation? It’s like the writers were trying to lift the curtain and yanked the cord so hard , it broke the mechanism altogether. What we’re left with is the hollow remnants of a planet that can barely keep its aesthetics straight, and a plot whose  antagonists  lack independence and motivation.

Thus concludes part 1 of my very tired, saddened rant. I’m coming hot off the heels of episode 12, and I definitely need a bit more time to collect my thoughts on the rest of Stampede’s hot mess. Look forward to that, I guess!

#trigun #trigun maximum #trigun stampede #really hope this reaches the right audience and it's not just me because I'm going stir-crazy #vash #knives #legato #livio #elendira