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taleasnewastime · 3 years

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Flatmates | Part 1

Summary: You need to find a spare room after deciding to move out of your flat that you share with your best friend and her boyfriend. Stumbling upon an advert for a room that seems almost too good to be true, you decide for once to not over think and go for it. But who is the mystery flatmate you are now living with that you hardly see?

Pairing: Hoseok x reader

Genre: Fluff, angst.

Word count: 19.7k

Part 2

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol consumption (though just for fun).

Authors Note: So, I wrote a thing and it turned out to be very long so I have decided to split it into 2 parts. The second part isn’t currently finished but it is not far off so hopefully won’t take me too much longer. This has taken me a while to write and it’s not perfect by any means, but I like it so whatever. It’s based off the same concept as the book “The Flat Share”. I hope you all enjoy it!

Flicking through the ads for a spare room seemed like second nature to you now. You felt like an expert on the topic. You could easily create a presentation detailing the common mistakes people made when advertising a room, how you could easily spot if something was too good to be true, and when someone was probably a hidden psychopath, just from what they’d written about their spare room. You could probably draw a map of the city and detail the average prices of a room in each area, how fast some rooms went in some areas compared to others and which areas were best to look at. Having lived in the city for two years you felt like you knew it pretty well, but as soon as you started to search for a room to rent you realised how little you actually knew about it.

When you moved to the city it was with your best friend Lily. You had rented a two bedroom flat together and the first few months were amazing, the whole two years were amazing, but after living in the city for just 3 months Lily found a boyfriend. So after he basically moved in with her, and you effectively becoming a live in third wheel, and even though you were the one to find the flat in the first place, you decided you should move out. You didn’t resent Lily for it, and it was your decision to move, but it still made you sad, the end of a chapter in your life. You would still be in the same city and would still see each other all the time but it felt like a new chapter, one where she was getting serious with a guy and where you were still single and sharing a house with someone. It’s almost as if you hadn’t left university.

Finding a spare room was easier said than done. You had asked around at work whether anyone was looking for a flatmate but everyone was either in a serious relationship or already tied into a contract with other friends. You’d even been desperate enough to ask friends of friends, putting it out on your Facebook that you were looking for someone to live with hadn’t helped, so you turned to looking for spare rooms online.

Again, this was easier said than done. But you still looked, every day and night refreshing your search in the hopes of finding the perfect room or roommate, not wanting the perfect room to slip through your fingers. You had even looked around a few places, one that was an actual dump, clothes and dirty plates laying around the flat, one that was nice but a bit small and a 40 minute commute to work and one that was almost perfect if not for the fact the other people living there were doing drugs as soon as you walked through the door.

You had even wondered whether you should just up your search to find a flat of your own, you were on a good wage, you felt like a young semi-successful business woman, why couldn’t you have your own place? Well due to extortionate rent, that’s why. So after considering getting a flat to yourself for approximately 10 minutes it was back to looking at spare rooms.

Continuing to scroll down a page listing rooms you reach the point where you had already seen all the rooms past that point. You pause and stretch your back, twisting your neck slightly to ease some tension, and reach to take a sip of your drink. You had decided to come to a coffee shop early on a Saturday to do some searching, finding you were way more productive and less likely to get distracted in the public place. And though you had been good so far, that didn’t mean you had found any results. Deciding to refresh the page one more time before giving up for a bit, you set down your cup.

Scrolling to the top of the page you click refresh and watch as the pictures disappear for a second before popping back. You are shocked to see a new ad, one that wasn’t there a second ago. From the small icon it looked good, the description detailing a rough location and a price that seemed almost too good to be true. Clicking it to expand the details and see more pictures you were shocked at what you were seeing. A spare room in a flat that was probably double the size of where you currently lived, in one of the most sought-after areas in the city, and the price of the room wasn’t through the roof. You read through the details looking for some sort of catch but couldn’t see anything, just a number at the bottom of the page saying to call with queries or interest.

Instinctively you pick up your phone and type in the number given. This was so unlike you, normally someone to not make a quick decision, to mull over everything before acting, but even you could see that this could be something too good to miss. You were willing to risk looking into it more given how long you’d been looking, even if it was just to find out they’d accidentally missed a zero off the end of the rent price. It took 5 rings before someone answered the phone.

“Hello,” a female voice sounded out.

“Hi I’m Y/N, I’m calling regarding the ad that has been placed on spareroom.com,” you put on your most formal, chipper voice.

“Oh, that was quick,” you can hear the surprise in the voice.

“Yeah, I guess I was just looking at the right time,” you say, not wanting to sound too desperate in admitting that you basically live on that site.

“Well, is there anything you wanted to ask? Any details I missed from the ad?” She asks.

“I was actually hoping I could come and have a look at the room. The pictures and description make it sound great but it would be nice to see it in person,” you reply.

“Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll have to have a look when it’s free,” she pauses and you can hear the flicking of pages as if she is looking through a diary. “You see it’s not actually my flat, I’m just putting it up for a friend, I guess. It’s kind of complicated actually, but I can talk you through it all when we meet,” her tone and what she says worries you slightly, you knew that there had to be some sort of catch. This was definitely too good to be true. “We could actually go look this afternoon if you’re free?” She says.

“That would be great,” you say. Even though there was some doubt seeping into your mind from what she had said you decided that it was still worth going to look around. The worst that could happen is that it’s awful and whatever complicated situation she was talking about was a deal breaker and then you would continue your search. But this complicated situation might not be that bad and then you may finally have a place to live. It was worth spending some of your Saturday looking around a flat, plus you got to snoop in someone's house which was always a perk.

“OK, I’ll text you the address and a time, I’m guessing this number is ok?” She says.

“Yep, this number is perfect. I look forward to meeting you later,” you say.

“I’m Rosie by the way. Should have introduced myself earlier,” she gives out a small laugh at her words. “Anyway, just come to the address later and tell the doorman you’re meeting me and he’ll point you in the right direction. I’ll put all of this in the text, don’t worry.”

“Great, see you later,” you reply before you both hang up.

Placing the phone down on the table you go over the conversation you just had. A doorman? The place looked fancy from the pictures and you could tell by the address that it was in a good area but a doorman? Maybe this place was out of your league.

Just as you are think this a text comes through and you look at the message.

Hi Y/N, this is Rosie. It was nice speaking to you and I look forward to meeting you in person. As I said just let the doorman know you are looking for me and he will help you out.

At the end of the text she lists the address and you immediately open a new tab to look into the building. A few news stories pop up with a list of famous people who are rumoured to live in the building, a few pictures of them entering and leaving the building. Next there were a few websites that list the prices of the flats and you suck in a large amount of air, eyes widening at the price. You would never earn that sort of money in your lifetime let alone be able to spend it on a flat. Maybe Rosie was right when she said there was a complicated story behind this spare room. Why the hell was someone, that was obviously rich, listing their spare room for some stranger to live with them?

Looking down at what you were wearing and then at the clock you decide that you have enough time to rush home and change into something that could be classed as a bit nicer than your current attire. Almost slamming your laptop shut, you shove it into your open bag before downing your drink and rushing out of the café.

Your eyes pan up the side of the building, your head falling backwards on your neck so that you can see the top. It was shear glass and you imagine that the views of the city from the upper floors are beautiful. After taking in the building you look down and slowly move towards the door, continuing to question how you managed to find this place advertising a spare room. Glancing down at your phone and then at the fancy plaque by the door, you check for the tenth time that you are at the right place. Confirming the words do in fact match each other you reach for the door only for it to swing open for you, a man in a smart black suit holds the door and looks down at you. There is a small forced smile on his lips and you can see by the look in his eye that you would not want to be on the wrong side of him.

“Can I help you?” He questions, his voice just as stern as his demeanour.

“Hi,” you almost stutter the words, intimidated by the man. “I’m here for Rosie. I mean Rosie said to meet her here?” Your voice is full of the nerves that are currently swimming around your stomach and you curse yourself for not asking what Rosie’s second name was.

The small forced smile is replaced by a more genuine smile, the man's eyes softening as he looks at you. “She told me you’d be coming. Come on in,” relief washes over you as the man steps out of your way, holding the door open so you can enter the building.

Giving him a small smile as you walk past him, you step into the lobby. The ceilings are tall and light floods in through the windows. There are a few sofas scattered for people to sit, some coffee tables with magazines and books on top. A small desk is by the door, some buttons and papers scatter the desk and you assume that is where the man who had just held the door open for you sits. At the far end of the lobby there are some elevator doors and placed around the edge of the room there are large leafed plants. If this was just the entrance to the building what the hell do the flats look like, you think. This room alone was nicer than any other room you had stepped foot in in your life. The doorman steps past you and heads towards the elevator and you slowly follow him.

“You will be going to the 14th floor. When the doors open there is a small room, almost like a porch and there you will see the front door to the flat. Rosie is already up there so if you knock, she should come meet you,” he gives you the details after having pushed the button to summon the elevator and you nod at his words.

There is a small ding as the doors open revealing a small mirrored room. Looking to the man for reassurance you step in and say thanks just before the doors close, leaving you on your own. You can feel your heart thump in your chest as you push the number 14. The elevator feels like it's hardly moving as it ascends and you rub your sweaty palms on your trousers as you near your destination.

Just as the man described, when the doors open there is a small room. Again, a small sofa with some plants welcome you, just as they had in the lobby. Stepping out of the elevator you head to the door and knock hard before you can over think the situation you have found yourself in. It only takes a few seconds but each one feels like an hour before the door opens. A girl stands before you, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders, a well fitted black dress on, light make-up on her face. She beams at you as soon as the door is opened and you feel her energy infectious, a smile appearing on your own face as you look at her.

“Hi, it’s Y/N right?” She says as she extends a hand for you to shake. “I’m Rosie, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” you say as you shake her hand, nerves slowly dissipating as you do.

Stepping out of your way and holding the door open, much like the doorman had earlier, Rosie silently invites you into the flat. Taking a step in you slip your shoes off before looking around. The place looked exactly like the photos you had seen, if not slightly better.

“So I thought I’d give you a quick tour and then we can have a chat and go over a few points,” Rosie says and you nodded.

You silently follow her around the flat, where she shows you the kitchen, a modern open plan space with a big island in the middle where you could sit and eat. A living room with a light grey square sofa that could easily accommodate 20+ people, this faced a TV that covered nearly half the wall. Then you moved onto a hall where you walked past several doors before she opened one that held a large bed and had an attached ensuite. The whole place seemed like it was over the top, there was everything you would find in a normal flat but it seemed to be doubled in size here. Pictures and art lined every room that you went into and the decor looked like it was straight out of a high-end magazine.

Walking around you felt like you didn’t belong here, it was the most amazing place you had ever seen and you were unsure what the catch was. You would never in a million years be able to afford a place like this. When you had seen your could be room, Rosie leads you back towards the living room but carries on past the door to another room. Set up as a snug come library of sorts, it was definitely your favourite room you had seen, it felt the homeliest and the view of the city was amazing, if you really focused you could make out your office and current flat.

Rosie takes a seat on one of the armchairs and indicates for you to take one of the other seats.

“So that’s a quick look at the flat. What do you think?” She asks.

“I mean it’s beautiful. I’m kind of wondering why the rent is so low and why the spare room is being advertised in the first place,” you admit, hoping to get to the point quickly.

“Yes,” Rosie sighs and looks out the window which makes your heart pick up in slight panic. “Well like I said I don’t actually live here I’m just doing this for a friend. And as you will have also noticed the flat is empty apart from us. Basically, the person who owns the flat, my friend, he is a busy man and doesn’t actually live here that much. He often is travelling on business for long periods of time and when he is in the city he works a lot so even then he is hardly home,” she pauses to gage your reaction which is pure confusion, unsure where this is headed. “Well he doesn’t like the idea of the flat sitting empty all the time. He wants someone to move in and live here, keep it clean, use the appliances so they don’t seize up or anything.”

“So he wants a live-in house sitter. The rent is so low because I’ll be expected to do jobs around the place?” You question, slightly confused by the explanation. Was this guy making the rent so low because he was expecting the person to almost work for him in return. You already had a job, you didn’t need to be coming home to work some more. “Could he not just hire a cleaner to come here every day?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” Rosie is quick to reassure you. “He just wants someone to live here. You wouldn’t be expected to do any jobs, if something broke then someone else would come and fix it just like in a normal contract. And a cleaner comes here once a week already, so you would only be expected to keep the place tidy,” she pauses again, obviously searching for the words to explain what she means. “He just wants someone to live here, to enjoy the space, to make it homely, to just appreciate the flat in the ways that he can’t.”

You remain confused. The person that lived here was obviously rich, they were obviously successful, why would they want someone to invade their space just so that the space is enjoyed. Didn’t they want to enjoy the space themselves without someone lurking around. It didn’t really make any sense to you.

“You would hardly see him,” Rosie continues seeing the unease on your face. “To be honest you may never meet him, like I said he is hardly here and when he is, he is a pretty private person.”

“That’s what's confusing me,” you admit. “I’m not going to lie, this flat is amazing and beautiful and I have never seen anything like this in my life and I don’t think I will ever be able to afford to live in a place like this. But if I could, I wouldn’t want anyone living here, even if I was hardly here, I’d want it all to myself. And the rent is so ridiculously low for a place this nice, he could be charging through the roof and still have people paying him to stay here,” you have to stop yourself from rambling, remembering that you are still being considered to live here, you didn’t want to blow your chances by saying the wrong thing or convincing them of raising the rent to a figure you couldn’t afford.

“I think that’s the thing, he doesn’t want just anyone staying here, he wants someone normal. It’s not about the money for him, like you said he has money. Listen, I can’t speak for him about his reasonings for doing this, and to be honest I tried to convince him to not do it, like you said he could get any crazy living here. But I guess that’s my job, to find the best person to live here for him,” Rosie says.

“And have I passed the checks?” You smile at her, the tension in the room lessening slightly.

“I’m not sure yet,” she laughs faintly.

“To be completely open and honest with you, I googled this place when you sent me the address,” she raises an eyebrow at your confession a small smile on her face and you can tell that she was expecting this. “It’s seems like a popular building, lots of well-known people living here. Am I allowed to know who my potential flat mate is?”

“It’s a very nice building, and like you said lots of very famous people live here, but unfortunately the person who lives here is not one of them. Just some hot-shot business man,” you can tell the speech is rehearsed and you are unsure whether to believe her, but to be honest you are secretly glad it’s not a famous person. And it made sense they weren’t, a famous didn’t need some crazed fan living in their flat.

“Suits me,” you nod at her and you can see relief wash over her face. “To be honest I’m not the sort of person that is into the whole fame thing anyway. I don’t really keep up with the latest gossip or news about what people I don’t know are doing,” you admit, and it was true. Sure you could recognise some famous people and you could pick out certain faces from a line up, but that was just because it was impossible to avoid all celeb news. You honestly had no interest in what a person you didn’t know was doing with their life.

“You don’t read TMZ and scour the internet over whether Taylor Swift has got a new boyfriend on your weekends?” Rosie says and you can hear the sarcasm in her voice.

“I didn’t know Justin Bieber was married until last weekend, and I honestly have no idea who he is married to,” you admit and you see the smile on her face widen at your confession. “But then I do know who Leonardo Dicaprio is and I know he is into environmental issues and finally won an Oscar a few years ago,” you say with a shrug giving her an insight into your level of celeb knowledge.

“But then who doesn’t know that,” she laughs at your statement. “So you may not even know if you bump into a famous person here?”

“Honestly when I saw the list of names online there was a few a recognised but not many. I’d possibly recognise their face but may not be able to place it,” you say and she hums in response her faced scrunched in thought as she looks at you. You were being honest with her and you hoped she could see that and didn’t think you were saying all of this just to secure the room.

After that the conversation moves onto some questions about you; where you work, why you are looking for a room, questions about cleanliness and general upkeep, normal questions someone would ask a potential new flatmate. When Rosie finishes her questions you both get up and head to the door, she stands at the door and watches as you call for the lift.

“Thanks for coming today,” she says.

“Thanks for letting me look around so quickly. It really is a lovely flat,” you reply.

“I’ll be in contact with you to let you know our decision either way, obviously I will have to discuss this with Hobi,” she slips up and reveals the name of the man that lives here. You try to remain passive at the name though you can see the slight panic in her eyes at her mistake, though you honestly don’t recognise the name. “And there are a few other potential people that are going to come have a look around to,” she carries on as if nothing had happened.

“Of course, I don’t expect it to be a quick decision,” you say. “Do you have any idea when I’ll hear by?”

“I’ll get back to you by the end of next week,” she says.

You nod at her and hear the ding of the elevator from behind you.

“It was nice to meet you. I look forward to hearing from you,” you smile as you back into the elevator.

“You too, Y/N,” Rosie says before the doors close.

As you stare at your reflection in the mirror heading down to the lobby you are a bit in shock. What the hell was that place and who the hell was this Hobi that owned a flat that he hardly lived in? The situation all seemed so strange, something you could never have imagined. As you head down to the lobby you imagine living here, and as amazing as it was you wonder whether it is even somewhere that you’d ever feel comfortable. You feel out of place just stood in the elevator and would probably walk around on egg shells in fear of breaking anything in the flat. It was all in Rosie and the mysterious Hobi’s hands now so there was no point even thinking about it until you heard a reply, you reason as the doors finally open to the lobby.

“So let me get this straight. Some rich ass man wants you to live in his expensive ass house where you will basically have the place to yourself and all you have to do is make sure the place is tidy?” Lily says.

“I mean, kind of yeah,” you reply.

After meeting with Rosie you had come home and after changing into some comfier clothes you had collapsed on the sofa and told Lily about your crazy day.

“When do you move in?” You can hear the excitement in Lilys voice.

“I’ve already told you, today was just me looking at the place. They need to tell me if they want me first and then I have to decide if I want to live there,” you explain for what feels like the fiftieth time.

“I’m still not understanding why you would turn down this offer. It sounds too good to be true, an amazing flat that will basically be yours for basically shit all money.”

“That’s the point,” you sigh, your brain slightly aching from all the thoughts that had been running through your head since you left the flat. “It’s too good to be true, there has to be some sort of catch.”

“And what if there isn’t? What if it is exactly how it looks? You over think everything Y/N, please just this once don’t over think it,” Lily pleads.

“I’ve not even been offered the room yet,” you say, but when you look at Lilys face you give in. “But fine. If they offer me the room, I promise I will not over think it.”

Lily squeals slightly and leans in to give you a tight hug. “I can’t wait to see this amazing flat,” she says into your ear.

You simply roll your eyes at her, unwilling to correct her statement, you may never move in.

Over the next week, however, you can’t get the flat out of your head. You continue to look at possible rooms online, as you still might need to find something, but as you scroll you never really take in anything, nothing living up to what you had already found. By the Tuesday you all but stop looking, deciding that if everything falls through and you don’t get offered the room then you could pick up your search again. A few days off wouldn’t kill you.

But your lack of searching only increases your thoughts of the flat. You remember the details of the city out of the window, it never looking quite as beautiful from where you stood on the ground. You remember the big kitchen, and curse whenever you were in your own and Lily walked in, making it feel cramped. You remember the room that could be yours, the bare walls and how you would decorate them, the big bed you could be sleeping in, the shower that would surely have amazing high pressure that wouldn’t cause the water to be just a trickle. You remember the little snug room that you spoke to Rosie in, the books and CDs that lined the walls and the different comfy chairs that all had contrasting patterns. As much as you tried not to think about it, you couldn’t get it out of your head.

What you also couldn’t get out of your head was this mysterious man. Though you had caught the name when it slipped out of Rosies mouth you decided to respect his privacy and did not look into the name. If he wanted to remain unknown then so be it, as Rosie said you would probably never meet him anyway so it made no difference to you. And although Lily had asked several times you only told her that you didn’t know who owned the flat and that it was just some business man, that is essentially all you knew anyway.

As the week started to draw to a close you became more and more attached to your phone. Any notification or noise that came from it sent your heart racing at the possibility of it being Rosie. Yet none of them were her. As Sunday started to draw to a close you gave up hope entirely. To be honest you had expected to hear by Friday night so the fact it had been two whole days and you still hadn’t heard anything, you had essentially given up hope.

By Monday you were slightly annoyed. After work you opened up your laptop and started to scroll through your frequented websites in search of a possible new room. You were annoyed that Rosie hadn’t even messaged you to say that they weren’t offering you the room. When you had left her she had said that she would let you know either way, yet here you were without a word.

You became slightly grumpy at home too, pushing your bad feelings onto Lily and her boyfriend Eddie. Every time you caught yourself snapping or being moody you would apologise, but Lily understood and didn’t blame you for your behaviour. You were in a complete funk by Tuesday evening, annoyed at yourself now for getting your hopes so high. You should have been realistic and realised that the flat was too good for you. That of course they would offer it to someone else. That you were right from the start, you didn’t belong in a place like that.

As you sit on your bed your phone rings, you didn’t even look at the caller ID before answering, head somewhere completely else.

“Hello,” you say. Hearing your own voice sounded weird, it came out flat and devoid of emotion, not your normal self.

“Hi, Y/N? It’s Rosie,” you perk up at the voice and have to pull the phone away from your head to check the number. Sure enough it was Rosie. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”

“No, no, sorry,” you stutter out, coughing slightly to make your voice sound more normal. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting a call.”

“That’s my fault sorry. I said I’d let you know by last week and it’s my fault entirely that I am so late, there’s been a lot going on recently. But again my fault, no excuses,” she says.

“No, it’s OK,” you reply, feeling your bad mood drift away, only to be replaced by nerves. The anticipation of what she was about to tell you made you feel like you were back at school waiting for your exam results, were you going to pass and feel elated or fail and go back to your funk.

“So, as I assume you have guessed, it’s about the room you viewed the other week,” she explains as if you have no clue what is going on. You remain silent letting her fill it with an answer. “So I have spoken to my friend and as I said we did have some other people come and look at the flat, to be honest we had quite a bit of interest,” her words were not filling you with hope and you had to will yourself to sound positive when she lets you down. “But me and my friend both agree that you would be the perfect match and he would like to offer you the room.”

You almost drop the phone at her words. Your mouth pops open in shock, eyes go wide as you stare at the wall in front of you. No words escape your mouth and your brain fails to come up with anything to say. The line stays quiet.

“Obviously if you have found something else in the meantime, we understand. As I said it’s completely my fault for getting back to you so late,” Lily fills the silence.

“No,” you managed to say when there is another pause for you to speak. “I mean yes,” you almost shake your head in an attempt to get your brain to shift into gear. “Sorry. I mean you don’t have to apologise. And yes, I would love to accept the offer,” you are shocked at how calm your voice sounds as you feel anything but calm.

“Great, that’s amazing, Hobi will be so pleased,” she says the name this time with purpose as you will now be sharing a flat with him. “I’ll have to draw up some paper work which we can go through together, and there will be a few house rules that I should tell you, and I’m sure you will have lots of questions. Otherwise, I think everything is all set up for you to move in.”

“Great,” is the only word you can think to say as already everything seems to be moving at break neck speed.

“I’ll get everything sorted and text you about meeting up so we can go through everything,” Rosie says.

“I look forward to it. Thanks for getting back to me,” you reply.

“I promise I won’t leave it so long this time,” she laughs down the phone.

You both say your goodbyes before you hang up and drop the phone on your bed in front of you. Sitting there for a minute in silence, you stare at the wall, your mind seemingly racing but also unable to have any thoughts. After a second you leap into action, quite literally jumping off the bed. Running out of your room you start to scream Lilys name.

“What is it,” Lily burst opens her bedroom door, popping out into the living room just as violently as you had seconds ago.

“I got the room,” your voice is still loud and sounds out around the room.

“Oh, my, effing, god,” Lily stomps over to where you are stood and engulfs you in her arms. Looking over her shoulder you see Eddies head poke around the door.

“What's all the screaming about?” He says.

“She got the room,” Lily screams your earlier statement, jumping up and down with you still in her arms. You both laugh as you spin around in circles.

“What room did she get?” Eddie questions, still stood in the door way.

“THE room. I told you about this. She got the room,” Lily says, pulling away from you to look at Eddie.

“Oh right, the room,” Eddie says, and you are unsure if he is saying it just to appease the two of you. “Congrats Y/N,” he gives you a smile.

“Thanks, Eddie,” you say. “Hey, shall we pop something open? To celebrate? Me moving out, you guys finally having your own place, lots to celebrate.”

“Hell yes,” Lily replies, already walking over to the fridge to get something to drink.

It had been a mere two weeks since you had the call with Rosie to say that you had the room and in that time you had packed up your belongings, signed the paper work that Rosie had set up for you and gotten the keys to your new flat, well the room within the flat.

When you had met up with Rosie she had gone over some of the things that your flatmate would be expecting from you. How he expected the flat to remain tidy, he didn’t want to come home to dirty dishes left out or dirty clothes dumped over the flat. He wanted all his things to stay where they were, you weren’t allowed to go into his room or two of the other rooms that Rosie hadn’t shown you on your tour. She gave you details of people to call in the cases of emergency, of people that would come round to the flat such as the cleaner, and let you know the doorman was called Keith and he could help with almost anything. The only number she didn’t give you was that of your new flatmates. She told you that overall Hobi had said to make yourself at home and to treat the place like it was yours. Though after all the rules she had listed you felt like you may struggle to do that.

At the end of your meeting though you signed the documents and she handed over the keys to the flat. She gave you a date that you could move in and said she would meet you there to make sure you settled in and check that you had no final questions. As you left the meeting you felt like the whole thing seemed very formal, it felt like you were buying the flat not renting a room, even when you had rented your flat with Lily you hadn’t had to jump through this many hoops. You had just over a week to pack up all your belonging and move into your new flat.

That’s where you stood now, with Lily and Eddie outside your new building, each with a couple of bags in your hands.

“I kind of thought you guys were joking when you were describing this place,” Eddie says as you all head towards the door.

“I’ve seen pictures and even I thought Y/N was joking,” Lily says.

“I’ve been here, and even I thought I was joking,” you laugh with them.

Keith, the doorman, opens the door for you as you approach and welcomes you in, obviously now informed on the fact you’d be a new resident. Thanking him you make your way to the elevator and after all cramming in with the bags you had, you head up to the flat. You excitedly pull out your new key and twist it in the lock, and sure enough the door swings open. You give a small squeal as it does, it all finally hitting you that this was real.

“This is fucking insane,” Lily says after she dumps the bags she was carrying at the door and starts wondering around the flat. “Like fucking insane,” she emphasises, opening random doors in the kitchen. “Theres actual food in here,” she says.

“It’s almost like someone else lives here,” you say in mock wonder.

“But can you just help yourself?” She asks as she continues to open every door that is within reach.

“I have no idea. Rosie is coming over at some point so I’m sure we can clear all that up,” you reply. “Anyway, stop snooping. I want to give you both a tour.”

You grab her hand and start dragging her around the flat, Eddie diligently following you both around. They are both the perfect people to show around, providing the right sound effects when needed, ooing and ahhing when you open a new door. You end the tour where you had with Rosie, in the snug and you each take a chair.

“I will never stop saying how amazing this place is,” Lily says. “Maybe I should move in and you can stay in the flat with Eddie.”

“Hey,” Eddie mocks offense. “I think I should move here and you two can go back to sharing the flat,” he jokes and you both laugh.

“The one big thing I notice is a lack of pictures,” Lily says and you nod, having noticed the same thing. There were paintings and pictures on the wall but those were art, no personal pictures, no pictures of friends or family or of the man himself. “Do you not think that’s a bit strange?” Lily questions.

“Maybe he prefers art, I know people who don’t have pictures in their houses,” you defend your new flatmate.

“Name one,” Lily challenges and when you don’t offer any answers she carries on. “Maybe they’re in those secret rooms that we’re not allowed in.”

“You mean his bedroom,” you roll your eyes at her. “I wouldn’t want him going in my room when I’m not here,” you reason.

Lily puts her arms up in defence, doing a fake surrender. “Well the place is amazing,” she moves the conversation on and you’re glad of it.

“It’s pretty sweet,” you reply.

“I will miss living with you though,” Lily says with a small pout.

“We’ll still see each other all the time though,” you reason with a smile and she gives a reassuring nod.

Lily and Eddie help you unpack your belongings in your room. You hadn’t bothered to bring any pots and pans or plates as Rosie had said all of that was communal and you were more than welcome to use it. You had also left behind some of items that would be too big to fit in your room, deciding that the flat was fully furnished anyway and the stuff you owned would look cheap. So, it didn’t take the three of you long to unpack.

As promised Rosie popped round at one point to go through a few final points with you, show you some things she had missed on the original tour and answered any questions you had.

Eddie and Lily stayed for some food, otherwise they headed home and left you alone in the flat for your first night. The place felt big, bigger than normal, when you were along in it and after clearing up the food you decided to just stay in your room, the living room feeling too intimidating for you on your own.

It had been a few weeks since you moved into the flat. The first few days you felt like you were tip toeing around, not wanting to touch anything or put anything out of place in fear of getting some sort of telling off. After a couple of days and after seeing no one in the flat you started to care less, it started off small, not putting pots and pans back perfectly, leaving a book on the side, leaving one of your blankets on the sofa. And after no one magically appeared to tell you off, you started to care less and less. Sure, you kept everything tidy and in its place as promised, but you stopped caring about everything being perfect.

Though you started finally living as if the flat was somewhere you lived and not just somewhere you slept, you did start to feel lonely. Having always lived with someone it felt weird to come home from work and the flat be empty. Weekends when people were busy were hard, having to stay in a flat that was so quiet. You enjoyed being able to speak to someone, to walk out of your room at any moment and be able to just say hi to someone, to ask a basic question, to laugh at a film together, to comment on something that had happened in your day. You had to admit it, you missed actually living with another human being.

It was late on a Tuesday night, you were tucked up in bed and just about drifting off to sleep when you heard the front door slam close. You jump up in bed and pull the covers tighter around your frame. Your sleepy mind not comprehending what was happening in the moment, you listen for further sounds to confirm your suspicions. Sure enough, someone was in your flat as you hear footsteps sound out along the hall outside your room. It take you far too long to connect the dots and realise that it was your flatmate and not some random person breaking in. Slightly embarrassed at the fact that you had completely forgotten that you don’t actually live alone, you stay sat in bed with your covers wrapped around your frame unsure what to do. Should you go out there and introduce yourself? Should you stay hidden away in your room? Would he even remember that he had a flatmate, or will it have slipped his mind just as it had yours? What if he came in here because he had forgotten too and sees you sat in bed?

As the thoughts and possible scenarios run through your mind you continue to listen to his movements. You could hear him dragging a suitcase to his room earlier, and now you hear his footsteps making their way back towards the kitchen. Seconds later you hear the distinctive noise of a plate being taken out of the cupboard and placed on the side. He must have got some food from somewhere. Finally, you hear him head towards the living room and briefly hear the TV before the volume is turned down. It’s then that you realise that of course he has remembered you live here, and unlike you he is not being weird about the situation, instead being considerate and trying not to be noisy.

Laying back down in the bed, you turn and pull your knees into your chest. The adrenaline still pumps through you from the thought of your flatmate being so close. If you were to just open your door to go and get a glass of water you might see him, might finally get to meet the man you had thought so much about. But even that simple act caused nerves to wrack through you. Him coming home this evening was so out of the blue you didn’t feel mentally prepared for a situation in which you meet him. Though you would never know his schedule, the fact you had no way of contacting the man not helping. Instead, you decide that sleep is the best option, chickening out of trying to meet him. It doesn’t come easily but eventually you do fall asleep.

The next day you wake to your alarm and as you get dressed for work you almost forget that you may not be alone in the flat. Once you open your door and head for the kitchen however it becomes blaringly obvious. Although everything is clean and put away, you can’t help but notice how things have moved. Again, you start to tip toe around the flat, quickly making and eating your breakfast before tidying away. You are unsure if the man is even still here, but if he was you didn’t want to do anything to disturb him. Being ready for work in record time you leave.

By Thursday night and after having heard the late-night entrance of your flatmate for two consecutive nights you decide to leave him a note. You had made too much pasta for tea, which was a common occurrence, but rather than Tupperware the excess up and store it for a future meal, you decide to plate it. It was a spur of the moment decision and as you look at the two plates in front of you, you wonder what you were doing. What if he didn’t even come home tonight, maybe he’d gone off on another business trip. You stop yourself from over thinking and decide to just go with it, if he wasn’t here then you could just have the pasta yourself tomorrow.

After eating your meal, you place the spare plate in the fridge and then go in search of something to write on. It doesn’t take you long until you are back in the kitchen with a post-it note in your hand. Now it was time for you to over think everything you could possibly write down. Should you go for, made too much food, left you some. Or maybe, hope you didn’t have too hard a day, food in the fridge. They all sounded personal, as if you knew the guy, which you definitely didn’t. You spend a good 10 minutes thinking of all the things you could say and all of them sounded personal, you decided that there was no way around it so just settled on: There some pasta in the fridge if you want it.

Trying to not back out of it you place the note on the counter in a place that couldn’t be missed if you walked in the room, and then you left the room in a rush, as if you might be caught doing something you shouldn’t be. Watching a film in bed, one ear listening out for your flatmate, you eventually fall asleep without hearing any noise.

Getting ready for work the next morning and walking into the kitchen you see a note on the side. He must not have come home last night you think as you head over to get rid of the note. As you get closer however you notice that it is not your handwriting on the note. Instead a gentle scrawl is on the page.

Thanks, it was delicious.

Four words. Yet your heart manages to pick up speed in your chest due to nerves. Opening the fridge, sure enough the pasta you had put in there the night before was gone. A smile comes to your face at the thought of your flatmate enjoying the food you made, and you are glad that you decided to leave the note.

Over the next week the food cooking and note leaving continue. You still had not seen anything of the man, but you would hear his late night clangs as he came home from work. You started to wonder what it was he did that meant he got home so late. But, although you were unsure, he would still be in bed when you left for work, so maybe he just had a weird shift pattern compared to you. Every morning you would wake and look forward to reading the notes he left you. They started to get longer, as yours had, he started to give you ‘tips’ or requests for how to make it better next time. Things like less spice next time, please and the peanut sauce was great, add more next time! They never failed to bring a smile to your face, and over the week where the exchanges happened you felt your mood picking up, deciding maybe the flat wasn’t so lonely after all.

It had been two weeks since your first post-it note exchange and as you walk into the kitchen you can't help the smile that comes to your face at the sight of a new note. The smile falters slightly when you read the particularly long note however.

Delicious food, as always, next time you could add some mozzarella to the top? Won’t need food for the next few days, though I will miss it, off on a trip for work. Also, it still feels like I live here alone, where is all your stuff? Please feel free to move anything around or put up your own pictures. “See” you in a few days.

There was so much to take in. Your heart sank slightly when you read that he was going away again, the weekend was coming up and though you hadn’t seen him the previous weekends, part of you hoped that you would bump into him, thinking the weekend was the most likely time for it to happen. He hadn’t said how long he was going away for, just a few days, which could be anything from 2 days to a week. You wish you had a way of contacting him outside of these notes, you wanted to ask when he would be back so you could go back to leaving him food. The thing that really got you though was that he wanted you to add your own stuff to the flat. So far the only item that was yours outside of your room was a stray blanket, and even that wasn’t very you, having chosen the most beige one you could find that would fit with the décor. Pulling out your phone you open your messages with Lily composing a text.

Y/N: Fancy coming to the flat this weekend to help me decorate?

You get a reply almost instantly.

Lily: I thought you would never ask. I’ll come Saturday with some wine and pyjamas.

You smile at the text, that’s why you loved Lily, she was never shy and said exactly what she wanted.

“So you still haven’t met him yet?”

You were sat in the flat after having a day of shopping with Lily. Your purchases were still in bags on the floor as you sit in the living room.

“No,” you confirm.

“But you’ve spoken over post-it note?” Lilys face scrunches slightly at her words showing how weird she finds the situation you are in.

“It’s just notes about things around the flat, like if I leave him food or something,” you shrug trying to normalise the situation. “I don’t have any other way of communicating with him.”

“Maybe you should just ask for his number then.”

“He obviously doesn’t want me to have it or Rosie would have given it me from the start.”

“But now you actually live here and have for just over a month, maybe he’s changed his mind.”

You just shrug at her statement not knowing how to reply.

“Or you could just meet him,” Lily pushes. “You said you hear him come home. You could easily just come out of your room and introduce yourself.”

You regret ever telling Lily any of this, mainly because you know she has a good point. You could easily just walk out of your room and introduce yourself and not make it weird. But you knew yourself and you knew you would make it awkward and uncomfortable, just the thought of doing it brought out a cold sweat.

“Yeah, not going to happen,” you say.

“You’re going to meet him one day,” she says. “Why don’t you just do it now, on your own terms rather than when you are least expecting it.”

Again, she had a good point.

“We’ll see,” you respond as a way to show that you were not going to give in and wanted the conversation to move on.

“Alright, but when you do eventually meet him, you know I want all the details,” she says.

“That’s the only reason you want me to meet him isn’t it, so you can finally know what he looks like,” you roll your eyes at her.

“It’s killing me. How is it not killing you? How do you not just want to see what he’s like?” She asks and you can hear the desperation in her voice.

“You have a boyfriend,” you laugh at her.

“I didn’t say I wanted to get with him,” it was her time to roll her eyes at you. “I don’t care if he’s ugly or the hottest guy on planet earth. Are you not the smallest bit curious what he looks like?”

“He could be some old man for all I know,” you reply, trying to act indifferent, though you agreed with Lily, you were dying to know who you were living with. You had images in your mind of what the guy looked like, and with the lack of pictures around the house, your imagination grew even more, some days picturing some hot business man, other days imagining an older gentleman with a long beard.

“An old man living in a house like this?” Lily flings her arms around for effect. “No, he’s 30 max.”

You hum in agreement. “What do you think he does then?” You give in and start to play along with Lily.

“Some hot shot banker? Or maybe a lawyer,” Lily throws out some guesses.

“Or a spy?” You do a fake gasp.

“A spy who lets some random woman come and live with him? I think not,” Lily laughs.

“He is always travelling. Off chasing all those bad guys,” you laugh along.

“Humm, living with James Bond? I could be on board with that idea,” she nods, a wide smile on her face.

“James Bond it is,” you agree, your face mirroring hers.

“So come on then, how are we changing James’ flat?” She stands up and heads over to the bags of stuff you had bought.

You both spend the rest of the weekend changing around items in the flat. You don’t go wild and change anything too dramatically, small changes here and there, a few more vibrant coloured cushions on the sofa, some colourful blankets, a few more house plants strategically placed. You added a fruit bowl in the kitchen as well as some more jars on the side full with teas and coffee, a vase that you could fill with flowers on the kitchen island. You did change one piece of art, taking down the piece that you hadn’t liked since you first arrived, a dark colourless abstract painting. You placed it by your flatmates bedroom door so that he could decide what do you with it, placing a note on top of it that just read: you did say I could change things around.

As promised Lily stayed the night and you were so glad she did, having the best time with her. You drank wine, watched films, talked and decorated the flat. It was the best you had felt in weeks and by the time she left on Sunday you felt like you were more at home. Walking around the flat you were glad that the man had suggested you put your own stamp on the place. Though you were no longer tip toeing around you still had a feeling that you didn’t live here. But now looking around you felt like you finally lived here, like you could relax.

There were no new notes over the next week, the painting and its note remained outside the mans bedroom, indicating he hadn’t returned. The few days he said he would be away obviously meant longer than the weekend you had assumed. You didn’t mind, with the flat feeling more homely you felt like you relaxed more into the space, spending less time cooped up in your room.

When you woke up and went to the kitchen each morning your heart would drop when there was no new note however. Though you always wondered why, they were always short thank you’s, maybe the occasional longer note about something in the food he enjoyed or would change, never anything that special. You reasoned that the feelings were just because it made you feel less alone in the flat.

Eventually though the notes returned. Walking into the kitchen one morning you saw the distinctive post-it note lying on the counter top and had to stop yourself from running over to read it. Picking it up you read over the now familiar handwriting.

I’m back. The place looks a lot better. You were right about that painting, I have always hated it and don’t know why I kept it up for so long. Yours looks so much nicer.

The smile that you were suppressing came to your face. Such a simple note with hardly any information, yet it lifted your mood instantly. You were glad that he liked what you had added to the flat. It was his suggestion in the first place, but a small part of you did worry he would change his mind when he saw what you had done. Your style did seem brighter than his, apart from the much-loved snug room which you had not changed at all.

That evening you did as you had been doing whenever you knew your flatmate was home, you cooked extra and plated it up for him, leaving a note to let him know on the side. The days passed like this, you leaving him food, him leaving a thank you note in the morning. The notes started to get longer in length, sometimes you would find notes in other places around the flat. A note on a DVD recommending you watch it, a new colourful cushion with a note on it saying that he thought it would go with the ones you had added, some ingredients in the kitchen with a note asking if you could make a certain dish that evening. You returned the notes, leaving reviews of the films he had suggested, recommending books in the snug, adding your own in the collection that lined the walls, leaving notes on a new plant you bought that detailed the plants name and a fake greeting from said plant.

The post-it notes became an almost scavenger hunt, your heart leaping every time you saw the bright colour from corner of the room. Though you had still never met the man, you feel like you were slowly getting to know him better. Though you could walk past him in the street and not realise it was your flatmate, you knew what foods he liked, his favourite films and that he was prone to over loving plants accidentally killing them.

It was a Tuesday when you woke up early, your body aching all over. Your throat felt like it was on fire, your chest tight. You had felt a bit rubbish the night before but had gone to bed early and thought you’d wake up fine this morning, but as you lay in bed you felt like pure shit. Literally rolling out of bed, you groan as your feet hit the floor. You attempt to head to the kitchen but only make it so far before deciding to go lie down in the living room instead.

As you lay there, you wonder why you moved from your bed in the first place, it was much comfier there. You attempt to go back to sleep, having a few hours until you needed to get ready for work. This goes out the window fairly quickly as your body feels like it’s on fire, your head pounding, your limbs aching. You hadn’t felt like this in so long and you are unsure what had caused you to become so ill, and for it to get this bad so quickly and out of nowhere.

Getting up again you make it to the kitchen just to down some paracetamol and water before heading back to the sofa. Laying down you flick through Netflix, shoving a random film on in the hopes it would lull you to sleep. Opening your phone you text your manager, apologising for the hour but saying that you didn’t think you’d make it to work. With that you watch the film and it's not long before you drift back into sleep.

You wake hours later, the film long finished, TV off and a blanket over your body. Your mind struggles to function as you blink at the bright light streaming into the room. Your body still aches and you head continues to pound. Sitting up you catch sight of the cup of water and pills on the coffee table, a distinctive bright post-it note next to it. The temperature you were running at made it near impossible but your face still manages to heat up when you realise what had happened. Shrugging the blanket off, which you now realise you didn’t fall asleep with, you lean over to grab the water and pills, taking those before doing anything else. Taking a deep breath, you pick up the note your flatmate must have left.

Left you some water and paracetamol, looks like you might need it. Theres soup in the fridge. Don’t worry about cooking tonight.

The note confirms your suspicions that your flatmate must leave for work after you. It also confirms that he must have found you asleep in here this morning and put the blanket over you. Your face remains hot at the thought, not just because you were running a temperature. You’d never met this guy and the first time he sees you is when you feel like crap and are passed out on the sofa.

The next thing that has your mind racing is the fact that he said not to worry about cooking tonight. Why would you cook in your current state? You had obviously got into the routine of you cooking him dinner, but surely he wouldn’t want to eat anything you made in fear of contagion. He probably just wanted to make it obvious that he wasn’t expecting any food that night.

You don’t think about it for too much longer, your head starting to not hurt as much, the paracetamol you took earlier slowly kicking in. Putting something random on the TV again, it isn’t long until you fall back asleep.

Waking up from what felt like a deep sleep, you already feel slightly better, the sleep helping. Without opening your eyes you hear the noise of the TV and are surprised that anything is still playing, it felt like you had been asleep for hours, but maybe it hadn’t been that long and the film you had put on was still playing. Groaning at you aching body, you roll over, eyes still closed as you curl in on yourself. Deciding that you should check the time to see if you could take some more paracetamol or not, you slowly sit up, another groan leaving your lips as you do so.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” A deep voice speaks out.

Your eyes bolt open, head shooting towards the voice, you almost forget the pain your body was in as you go rigid with shock. You find the source of the voice. A man was sat on the opposite side of the sofa to you. Concern is written all over his face as he looks you, he is sat with a big oversized sweater on, a top poking out of the bottom, grey jogging bottoms on his legs that are crossed underneath him. He has dark brown hair that is slightly messy and parted to show off his forehead, his dark brown eyes look at you as you remain sitting in shock, you mind not comprehending what’s happening, wondering whether you were in some dream.

“What time is it?” You ask, your voice coming out croaky and hoarse from your illness and the fact you hadn’t spoken all day.

A laugh leaves his lips as he looks down at his watch and you notice his perfect white teeth and the way his smile causes his cheeks to squish and small simples to form on his face. “It’s 5.40,” he says, eyes going back to you.

The statement confuses you even more, if you weren’t ill today you would have just been getting home from work. Something wasn’t adding up in your mind, you had felt like you had slept for a few hours meaning it should be the time the man had stated, but you assumed the man to be your flatmate and yet he was never home at this hour. Maybe he wasn’t your flatmate after all. You put a hand to your head and groan at how much it was pounding.

“I’ll get you something for that,” the man leaps off the sofa at seeing your distress and almost runs to the kitchen. Reappearing within a few seconds he walks over to you, giving you a pint of water and some tablets, before he sits down on the sofa, closer to you than before.

You down the tablets and take a few extra gulps of water before looking over at the man, his eyes already watching you. “Sorry, I just feel really crap,” you state the obvious, your voice helping make your point by still sounding hoarse.

“I found you on the sofa this morning and got a bit worried,” he admits. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

So, this was your flatmate. Your face heats suddenly at his words, remembering waking up with a blanket over you this morning. Your eyes fall to your lap in embarrassment. “No,” you croak in answer to his question.

“Are you hungry? I could cook something? Or warm up some soup? Or just order some food?” He fires the questions at you and you bring your eyes back up to him.

“I’m not really hungry,” you say and you see his face shift to one that looks a bit annoyed.

“You need to eat something,” he scolds you slightly. “You’ll feel better for it,” he says before pulling his phone out, taping on it. “I’ll order something for both of us, you don’t have to have much, but you’re having something.”

You watch as he continues to tap on his screen, he doesn’t even bother asking if there is anything you fancy eating, deciding for you. Pulling the blanket tighter around yourself you flop down on the sofa so you’re are lying again. Feeling less nervous around the man, probably due to how ill you felt. You realise that this is the first time you had met and spoken to him in person. This is not how you imagined it happening, you looking like a complete mess, sweating and coughing all over his very expensive sofa. You look over at him from your current position, eyes taking him all in as his eyes are for once on his phone and not you. You had to admit that he looked familiar, you wouldn’t be able to place where you knew him from but you were sure you’d seen him on your TV.

Putting his phone down, he looks over at you and your face heats at the realisation that he has caught you staring at him. A smile forms on his face as he looks at you.

“All ordered, it should be here soon,” he says and there is a slight pause before he continues. “I’m Hoseok by the way. I’m assuming you guessed, but I’m your flatmate.”

Hoseok. Rosie had called him Hobi, but that was obviously a nickname. You give him a small smile before saying your name.

“I guessed,” he nods at you, his smile widening. “Nice to finally meet you Y/N.”

You hum lowly at him in agreement, your heart pounding slightly in your chest and you’re not sure if it’s due to your illness or the presence of the man currently sat in the room with you.

“Sorry I look and feel so rubbish, I’m normally more fun than this,” you croak.

“I think you look perfectly fine,” he shrugs keeping his eyes on you and you have to look away in embarrassment.

There is a seconds pause before you speak again. “Why are you here anyway?” You ask before realising how rude that must have sounded and continue to clarify your point. “I mean, you’re never normally home at this time. Did you get to leave early today?”

It was his turn to falter under your gaze, his eyes flicking away from your face and resting on the TV. You see a slight pink creep up his neck.

“We didn’t have much on this evening and I saw how ill you were this morning that I got a bit worried leaving you here alone,” he shrugs like it’s no big deal, but your heart almost grows in size at the gesture. The man hardly knew you yet he had taken time off work to come and look after you?

“You didn’t have to do that,” you say feeling slightly bad.

“Don’t worry about it,” he continues to act as if it is no big deal. “Anyway, it was about time we actually met.”

You hum in agreement, deciding to sit back up again, reaching for your water to take a sip. “I just wish I felt a bit better,” you repeat your earlier statement.

“Me too,” Hoseok says softly. “Anyway, I wanted to say that I really love what you’ve done with the place. I know I wrote it in a note but I want you to know I really mean it.”

“It’s just a few cushions and plants,” you try to push off his statement.

“Maybe, but it makes it feel like someone actually lives here. I enjoy coming back here now, rather feeling like I’m living in a hotel.”

“Some hotel,” you mock and he laughs gently. “But it’s seriously nothing. I should be thanking you for letting me stay here and invade your space with my rubbish.”

He rolls his eyes at you. “It’s not rubbish,” he says. “Just take the compliment,” he smiles at you.

“Ok, thanks,” you give in. “But I do also honestly want to say thanks for letting me live here. It is a very nice place you have here.”

“Can I be honest with you?” You watch his face shift in emotion again, an almost sadness coming over his features, and you nod at him. “Most of my friends told me that I shouldn’t do this, let someone live here that is. And I nearly listened to them. But I used to come home and just feel like it wasn’t my home. I thought that having someone else actually live here would make it feel lived in and more like a home, and maybe at the start that didn’t quite happen,” he shoots you a look and you know he is referring to how you didn’t put any of your stuff outside the confines of your room. “But that’s why I’m saying thank you for living here and putting your stuff everywhere, because now I enjoy coming home and I feel like I am somewhere that is lived and loved, and that makes me feel nice.”

Your heart warms at his words. He had said he liked the decorations on a note before and had obviously thanked you enough times. He had even started to buy more decorations for the flat incorporation with things you had added. But you had no idea that it had this much of an effect on him. You smile gently at him.

“I don’t know, is that weird?” He says into the pause, obviously worried he had gone too far with his words.

“No, not at all,” you reassure him. “It’s nice to know that you like my additions. But what about the snug? That always been warm and homely?”

“The snug?” His face scrunches in confusion before being overtaken by realisation. “Oh, the snug, I like that,” he smiles at you. “That’s all my sisters doing. I let her loose on that one room when I moved in and I think it’s where I feel most at home. It’s definitely the most me room. Believe it or not I actually like bright colours.”

He had a sister? You were slowly learning more and more about the man and everything was interesting to you. You wanted to know more, you wanted to know everything.

“I think it’s my favourite room. She has great taste,” you say.

“She’ll be happy to know that.”

“Are the two of you close?”

“In a way. We get on and I try to talk to her as often as I can. But as you may have noticed, I have a pretty hectic life so it’s hard to see her and my family.”

If anyone could understand that it was you, you lived with the man and this was the first time you had seen him. You felt sorry for him, he was obviously very successful and had a lot of money, but you could see that it made him sad that he didn’t get to see his family very often. Was money really everything? But then you still had no idea what his job was, maybe it was worth all these sacrifices he seemed to be making.

Before you can question him anymore a buzz sounds from the door.

“Must be our food,” he says and you slowly start to rise. “You stay here,” he leaps up, raising a hand in your direction. “I’ll go get it and bring it all through,” he says before leaving you alone in the room.

Pulling the blanket tighter around your shoulders you look towards the TV. You felt like you were in some sort of fever dream. You had expected to meet your flatmate at some point, but when you imagined it, it was some awkward meeting in the hall that lasted a few minutes, not what was currently happening. You had felt awkward at times, otherwise the conversation had been easy. You couldn’t remember the last time you had met someone for the first time and were able to talk to them as easily as you just had with Hoseok. Normally you would have been stuttering, especially if they looked as good as he did. You reach for your phone and open up your messages with Lily.

Y/N: I just met James Bond.

You send the message, both of you having called your flatmate James Bond ever since you had the joke about you living with a spy. Needing to tell someone about the encounter you had just had you of course told the only person you could. As normal with Lily you almost instantly got a reply.

Lily: WTF!! What’s he like? Send me a picture! I need details!!

Y/N: I am not going to take a picture of him. And he’s nice.

Lily: I need more than that.

Y/N: Can’t talk now, he’s coming back. Will call soon.

Lily: Why did you even bother telling me, it’s like you’re trying to torture me. Call me tomorrow.

You chuckle slightly at how dramatic she could be before looking up to see Hoseok walk in with arms full of food.

“So I know you said you weren’t that hungry, but I thought you might change your mind when everything got here,” he says, placing the banquet of food on the coffee table. “What do you want?”

“I’m honestly not that hungry,” you say genuinely meaning it, but when you look at him and see his stern face you give in. “Maybe just a bit of something plain? Those noodles look good.”

He gives you a wide smile as he picks up the noodles and hands them to you with some cutlery.

“Thanks,” you say taking it off him. “And you’ll know how much I owe you?”

He ignores your comment, instead picking up the remote and looking to the TV.

“What we watching?” He asks.

“You know when I said I don’t care if he’s the hottest man on earth, I take it back,” Lilys voice sounds through the phone the next evening.

You had taken the day off work again, although you felt slightly better you still weren’t 100% and when you called your boss he had said it was fine for you to have another day off. The previous night you had eaten a bit of food and watched a movie with Hoseok before falling asleep on the sofa again. You were awoken to him gently saying your name and rocking your shoulder, telling you to go to your own bed to sleep. The following morning he had knocked on your door to check on how you were, dropping some food and medicine off before explaining that he was heading off to work. You had no idea when you would next see him, and he didn’t let you know when he would next be home. After trying to sleep off your illness for the rest of the day you finally called Lily to give her the details that she was craving.

“You haven’t even seen him, how are you assuming he is the hottest man on earth?” You laugh.

“Y/N, you just described him, you made him sound like a walking god,” you cringe at her words, you hadn’t realised that you had made him out to be like that, but maybe you inadvertently had.

“He’s alright I guess,” you attempt to back track.

“Yeah, whatever,” you can almost hear her eyes rolling down the other end of the phone. “So what did you talk about?”

“Normal stuff,” you shrug. “He was mainly just making sure I wasn’t too ill.”

“Aww, he sounds like he’s the cutest,” she coos.

“He was probably just making sure I wasn’t infecting his flat, which would then make him ill,” again you try to downplay it.

“Will you stop. Just admit he ticks all the boxes. He’s hot, he’s sweet, he looks after you and he’s rich,” she lists off.

“Sure, but I never see him. I live with the guy and I never see him, surely that is the biggest red flag going,” you reply. “Anyway, it’s not like that. We are flatmates, we met last night and talked like normal flatmates and it was nice.”

“OK, nothing’s going to happen, sure,” she says. “Maybe he has friends? You could definitely settle for a friend.”

“This is not some dating expedition,” you laugh. “Can’t I just talk to a guy without their being any romance or possible intentions behind it?”

“You’re right, sorry,” she sighs. Lily always did this, you couldn’t bring up a guys name without her questioning you about him. You know there were only good intentions behind it, she just wanted to see you happy, but as you always told her, you could be happy and also single.

“It’s alright. It’s just he’s basically my landlord so I don’t want any weirdness there.”

“Yeah, you have a pretty sweet set up there, you wouldn’t want anything ruining that,” she agrees. “I just want you to have the best.”

“And one day I will,” you smile down the phone. “Listen, I think I’m going to have a snack and then probably sleep some more. I should probably try and get back to work tomorrow. I love you and will see you soon.”

“Love you too, hope you feel better tomorrow,” she says before the line goes dead.

After that one encounter with Hoseok, things went back to normal. You got over your illness and started to go back to work. Hoseok went back to his normal life of coming home at god know what time when you were asleep. You’re paths never crossing, except for the post-it notes, which seemed to almost double in quantity. Handwriting become smaller and more cramped on the notes so that more details could be given.

The notes still remain on fairly mundane topics, never straying into anything to personal. You still had no real idea who the man really was, what he did for a living, where he went every day. But you did have a good idea who the man was in the sense of his likes and dislikes. It didn’t feel like much, but you still enjoyed reading his notes every day. Replying to them with your own thoughts.

It was a Friday night and you had agreed to go out with some friends. It wasn’t common for you and your friends to go out, preferring quiet nights in. Heading over to Lilys to get ready you had both decided to make a bit of effort, sipping on drinks while you both dance around your old flat and slowly put make-up on.

Getting tipsy before heading to the club wasn’t necessarily your intention but you had both got carried away pre-drinking. By the time you met up with the rest of your friends you were on the right side of tipsy, this however quickly changed. You kept up with your friends, drinking drink for drink, and this was not good for either of you. It had hardly turned 1am as you were both jumping around the dance floor in each other's arms.

“I love you so much Y/N,” Lily slurs into your ear.

“I love you too,” you beam back at her.

A laugh escapes you as Lily takes you in her arms and spins you around. Then a hand is placed on your shoulder stopping the spinning and you look to see who it was.

“Eddie,” you continue to smile as you replace Lily with Eddie, squeezing him in your arms slightly. He had said that he was out with friends and that he would turn up at some point to join you, and then be around to take Lily home, so his appearance wasn’t too much of a shock.

“Hey, he’s mine,” you hear a voice behind you before you are almost ripped from the man, Lily taking your place.

“Hey, hey,” Eddie laughs. “There’s enough of me to go around,” he jokes.

Lily leans up to give him a kiss on the lips, Eddie allowing it until she tries to deepen it, when he pulls away.

“You seem happy to see me,” Eddie looks over to you with an apologetic smile. Lily almost seems to go limp in Eddies arms and he struggles to hold her. Rushing over you help him lift her up, looking up at him a bit concerned at the sudden change in her state. You thought that the two of you were on the same level, but you were obviously handling your drink a lot better than she was. While she seemed to be past drunk, you were on the perfect level still coherent to remember everything but drunk enough to not care about anything.

“Let’s go get some air?” Eddie suggests, already starting to drag Lily and therefore you outside.

“I’ll get some water,” you suggest. “I’ll see you outside.”

Rushing over to the bar, you ask for three glass of water and when they’re handed over you head outside to look for your friends. What you see is not pretty. Lily is hunched in a corner, Eddie stood over her with his hand on her back. You feel like you sober up slightly at the sight.

“Here, drink some of this,” you hand Eddie one of the cups to try and he tries get Lily to drink some. “God I’m so sorry, I should have got her to slow down,” you say.

“It’s alright, she’s alright. It’s no one's fault,” Eddie is now having to reassure you and Lily. “You just had a bit too much to drink didn’t you love,” Eddie continues to stroke Lilys back.

You down some of the water that you had got for yourself, your brain spinning at bit due to the alcohol.

“I think we should head home,” Eddie looks up at you.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Do you want me to come with you?” You ask.

“No, we’ll be OK, you stay and have fun,” he replies.

You nod at him, but now feel distinctively not in the mood to party. Lily was the main reason that you had come tonight anyway and as she was heading home you saw no need to stay.

“Home sounds good actually, I think I might do the same,” you say to Eddie.

“Alright, come on, I’ll call you a cab,” Eddie hauls Lily into his arms and helps you both over to the street to go home.

With Eddie calling you a cab it takes no time for you to get to the entrance of your building. You stumble slightly towards the door, and nearly fall on your face as you go to open the door but it opens before you get there. A hand comes out to help you before you fall though.

“Oh, hi Keith,” you smile at the doorman.

“Hi, Y/N,” he smiles down at you, his hand still helping to support you. “Good night?”

“It was great thanks. I just had a few drinks,” you say though you know you both know that is an understatement.

“I’m glad you had a good time,” Keith says as you both make your way over to the elevator, you still clinging to his arm for support. He calls for the elevator and you stand and wait, your head resting on his upper arm as you close your eyes and give a content hum. Over the time that you had been living in the flat you had grown to love Keith. He always seemed to be there and had helped you out many a sticky situation. Whenever you had time you would stop and talk to him about your day, and you had learnt so much about him in the process. But you know when you sober up and think back to this current moment part of you will die of embarrassment.

“I hope you have had a nice night too,” you pout up at him, always saying that he worked too hard.

“It’s been made ten times better now that I have seen you,” he jokes and you laugh at him.

“Always making me blush,” you say as the elevator arrives and you walk into it. “Hopefully see you soon,” you point a finger at him and smile.

He laughs at your drunken state and nods his head. “I’m always here,” he says as the doors close on him.

You have to take a breath to steady yourself as the elevator rises. Fishing in your bag you go on the hunt for your keys as the doors open. You decide to take one of the seats to stop yourself from wobbling around, helping you find your keys quicker. Once you have them you stand up and move towards the door. A hand on the door frame you jab the key at the key hole, missing a few times before you finally get it in the lock and open the door.

Stumbling into the house you close the door and wince at how loud you were being, only now conscious of the fact you probably weren’t home alone and it was very late. You haphazardly kick off your shoes, and wince again when they make a loud noise when hitting the wall. In your drunken state you continue to the kitchen and stumble around in search of a glass, filling it up with water when you finally locate it.

“Y/N?” A familiar deep voice sounds out and it is only then that you hear other voices in the flat.

“Hello?” You say, cringing slightly at the state you were in when Hoseok obviously had friends around.

“Y/N? Come join us in here,” Hoseok shouts again in the direction of the living room.

You take a few deep breaths as you slowly head to the living room, water in hand. Internally trying to sober up, yet your mind still fuzzy, and your walk a bit wobbly.

When you get to the door you look around the room, leaning against the frame for support. Hoseok was sat on the sofa facing the door and therefore you, a smile on his face. Around him are four other people. One man with blonde hair, and a wide smile like Hoseok, another man with longer brown hair and a boxy smile, a third man that only had a small smile that showed no teeth, and a woman who had long brown hair that nearly reached her hips. Your eyes whip around the people in the room, all their eyes on you, the room silent.

“Hi,” you give a small awkward wave at everyone with the hand holding the water, which sploshes around, some escaping the glass and you give an audible “woops” as you watch it.

“Hey. Sorry I would have told you about this but it was a very last-minute thing so I didn’t have a chance to leave you a note,” Hoseok explains. “I did knock on your door to invite you, but you were obviously out. Been anywhere nice?”

“No worries. I’ve just out with friends, sorry I didn’t leave you a note” you point over your shoulder as if to clarify where you had been, and the boy with blonde hair lets out a small giggle as more water leaves your glass. “I’ll clean that up,” you say stupidly as it’s just water, and Hoseok gives you a fond smile.

“You guys leave each other notes?” The blonde-haired boy continues to smile as he looks at Hoseok.

“Well, yeah,” he says awkwardly, looking over at you shyly, and you can only join the boy in laughing, realising how stupid it sounded.

“He’s never given me his number,” you shrug a massive smile on your face. The alcohol causing you to say things you would never normally say.

“So you leave each other notes?” The boy's eyes are now back on you as he continues his questioning.

“I guess it’s the only way I can talk to him,” you say, eyes going to Hoseok, a red tint coming to his face. “I just say the normal things, good morning, how you doing? What you up to? And then I get a reply 10 hours later, it’s like living in the 19th century,” you laugh at yourself, the blonde man joining you, unsure what the hell you were babbling on about.

“Maybe one of you should have just written your number on one of the notes. Then you would have caught up to the 21st century,” the boy that previously only had a toothless smile was now looking at you with amusement, a small gummy smile on display.

You hum in response. Honestly you had considered it, but you were too scared of the rejection. Hoseok had never provided you with his number and you thought maybe there was a reason behind it. You had left the ball in his court, though you were unsure if he knew that.

“I should maybe introduce you guys,” Hoseok speaks up, trying to move the conversation on. “This is Yoongi,” he points to the guy with the gummy smile, “Jimin,” the blonde-haired man, “Taehyung,” the boy with the boxy smile, “and Liv,” he points to the girl. “And this is my flatmate Y/N,” he introduces you and you do another embarrassing wave.

“We’ve heard so much about you,” Jimin smiles at you and your face heats up at the words.

“Have you?” You say, not believing him.

“Oh yeah lots. Only good things don’t worry,” he reassures you, though it doesn’t do any good, your mind thinking about all the things that Hoseok could have said about you.

You nod your head slowly at him, still unsure if he is messing with you. “I hope he didn’t tell you about how awful I looked when I was ill,” you say suddenly remembering.

“He mentioned it, though I don’t recall him describing you as looking awful,” Taehyung smirks.

“Did you want to join us?” Hoseok cuts in, and when you look at him you can see that his face has turned a slightly darker shade of pink.

“It’s alright, I was just going to head to bed,” you point to your room this time, making it clear where you meant, Jimin giggling at your action again.

“We have alcohol,” Yoongi mimics you by pointing at the bottles set on the table.

“I seriously don’t think I need any more,” you say. “Water should be enough,” you hold up the glass which causes more liquid to fall out.

“Just stay for one. Looks like your waters going to need a refill soon anyway,” Jimin jokes. “I promise we are nice. We want to meet Hoseoks flatmate that he won’t stop talking about.”

You look over to Hoseok to gauge his reaction, you didn’t want to intrude on his mini gathering. He gives you a small nod, letting you know he is ok with it.

“Ok,” you give in, finally moving away from the door you were propped against. “But I seriously do not need any more alcohol. God knows what I’ll start rambling on about then.”

“Just one,” Jimin says as he starts to pour out a concoction of different liquids. “I want to hear your rambles.”

You make it over to the sofa and almost fall down onto it, sat at the far end closest to Jimin. Downing the remainder of your water you place the now empty glass on the table before taking the glass Jimin hands you.

“To new friends,” he laughs as he raises his own glass so that he can cheers you.

You pout slightly as you take the smallest sip of your drink, even that feeling too much.

“So what do you do Y/N?” Liv asks you before you have even taken the glass away from your lips.

“I work in marketing,” you say, a small smile on your lips as you look at her. “Sounds boring I know,” you laugh at yourself.

“No, marketing's cool. What company do you work for?” She reassures you.

“I work in digital marketing at a relatively small company. I basically help work on their apps, making them better and more accessible for the customer,” you say and can almost see everyone's eyes glaze over in boredom. “It’s not the best job in the world, but I enjoy it,” you say feeling slightly insecure. Hoseok was in a career that made him a lot of money and he was probably friends with people who also did the same. You are suddenly very aware that you are probably in a room full of people that made more in a week then you do in a year.

“I think it sounds great,” Jimin jumps in. “I love apps.”

You laugh at his attempts to reassure you, thankful for his kindness. “What do you guys do then?” You say it lightly as it seems like the next natural question but you instantly regret it, all eyes in the room shooting to Hoseok who looks worried, and the atmosphere in the room shifts slightly.

“I’m a PR,” Liv speaks up and you are glad that she breaks the tension in the room. “Of sorts anyway. I basically just manage people schedules and what they need to be doing.”

You nod at her words, actually interested in what she was saying. “I’m not sure I would be organised enough for that,” you say.

“But come on, we want to know more about you. How come you’re living here with Hobi?” Liv steers the conversation away from jobs and though you are glad the tension in the room is slowly disappearing, it does not help your curiosity when thinking about what Hoseok does for a living.

“I needed a room, he was providing one,” you shrug, deciding not to go into detail, taking a sip of your drink to avoid talking.

“And are you enjoying it here?” Liv presses.

“Yeah, it’s really nice,” you give a smile, taking another sip of your drink. “The décor wasn’t the best, but now I’ve improved it, it’s great.”

A laugh ripples through the room and that combined with the alcohol gives you some fake confidence.

“What’s it like living with Hobi? Has his OCD cleaning annoyed you yet?” Taehyung asks.

“No, it’s late-night snacking that would annoy me,” Yoongi chimes in.

“Come on guys, it’s surely his singing. I’ve heard him in the shower multiple times and I think my ears are permanently scarred,” Jimin laughs.

“No, no, what about all his clothes. Has he asked to take over some of your closet space yet?” Taehyung starts to laugh just as hard as Jimin, and you can’t help but let out a small giggle.

“Go on then, what’s the most annoying thing?” Yoongi asks and all eyes go to you. Under the pressure of the eyes your face starts to heat up, your previous confidence dissipating into the air.

“We all know it’s my obsession for tea. I go through the stuff so quickly Y/N is probably having to buy the stuff daily,” Hoseok saves you and you give him a small smile to show how much you appreciate it. “Anyway, let’s stop harassing Y/N, she’ll never want to join you guys for a drink again if this is how you treat her.”

“No, I’m fun,” Jimin pouts at you. “She’ll want to hang out with me again,” he says and you giggle at his words. “Yoongi is the boring one here.”

“Hey. I’m not the one harassing her with questions,” Yoongi shoots back at Jimin.

“Well at least I’m welcoming and not sat in the corner looking all grumpy,” Jimin continues and you can tell that it is just the way their relationship goes by the smiles on both of their faces.

“I was the one that offered her alcohol,” Yoongi says.

“Neither of you are fun,” Hoseok jumps in. “Let’s just play a game.”

“A game sounds good,” Taehyung agrees, standing up to go and get something, coming back a few seconds later with a pack of cards in his hands.

You end up playing a game that you had never played before, yet somehow ended up winning the two games you played.

“You know the winner has to drink, right?” Jimin looks at you.

“That wasn’t a rule last time I won,” you say.

“That was a practice,” he defends.

“Why does the winner have to drink?” You look around the table in the hopes someone would back you up, finding no one was going to. You give a small huff and cross your arms in annoyance. “I would have at least tried to not be as good if I had known. Though it would have been hard to not have one you are all so rubbish,” you say with a small smile as they all start shouting out at your insult.

“That definitely deserves a drink now,” Taehyung chimes in, and you give him a small glare.

“Come on, as the newest member of the group you should drink,” Hoseok adds and you open your mouth in mock shock at him.

“If anyone was going to have my back, I was hoping it would be my lovely flatmate,” you say and you see a few eyes flick between you as internally cringe at the fact you had called him lovely. “Maybe you’re not so lovely after all,” you say unsure if you were making the situation any better.

Deciding to end your embarrassment you pick up your glass and down its contents, face scrunching up when it was all gone.

“Now that’s honestly enough, I don’t want a throwing up Y/N on my hands tomorrow,” Hoseok says. “I’ve already had to look after her once,” he gives you a smile and you look away in embarrassment at the memory.

The night turns to talking. They continue to ask you the occasional question but talk turns to topics and people that you don’t know. While they try to include you at the start, all the alcohol you had drunk starts to make you go sleepy and you end up passing out on the sofa to the sounds of their voices.

Head pounding, throat dry, a slight queasy feeling in your stomach, it felt like you were ill all over again, but this time it was self-inflicted. It takes you a moment to get your bearings, to realise where you were and what had happened. The last thing you remember is being on the sofa, everyone talking while you struggle to keep your eyes open. But this morning you find yourself tucked in your bed wearing just your underwear and t-shirt.

Slightly embarrassed about not knowing what occurred last night, you roll over in search of your phone, finding it on your bedside table. 7:10am. You groan, cursing the fact that you naturally wake up so early due to work.

After failing to get back to sleep, you decide you may as well get up and have some water and see if you can stomach any food. Rolling out of bed you change into your actual pyjamas and head to the kitchen. Downing a pint of water, you pour a second glass and sip on it while you make some toast. Taking a bite out of you, you walk to the living room planning on watching a film. You almost chock on your toast however when you see a figure on the sofa. Having assumed you were home alone, or at least the only one awake at this time, you are surprised to see Jimin tucked under a blanket.

Though he is fast asleep your face instantly heats up with embarrassment. You stand awkwardly in the door, not knowing whether you should turn on the spot and head back to your room, or go in and watch a film as planned and risk waking the man. You opt for the third option. Turning on the spot you head instead to the snug.

Settling into your favourite seat, looking out at the barely lit city below you, you continue to chomp on your toast. Placing the empty plate that once held on the coffee table, something catches your eye. Standing up you take a step so you are stood by the wall of books and knick-knacks. But placed on one of the shelves, right in the corner, is a picture.

Picking it up you pull it closer to your face so you can study it. A family, a man and a woman with a young girl and boy stood in front of them. They all have big smiles on their faces, looking like they are mid laugh. The little boy was unmistakably your flatmate Hoseok. Though he was probably 15 years younger in the photo, he still had the same eyes, the same hair, the same smile.

“My parents and my sister,” a voice says from behind you and you almost drop the frame.

Spinning round you see the man you had just been staring at in the photo. Hair fluffy and sticking up at odd angles, he obviously hadn’t brushed it, in a pair of long plaid pyjamas, and a pair of animal slippers on his feet. He had obviously just rolled out of bed.

“I’m so sorry,” you apologise, placing the photo back where you had found it.

“You don’t need to apologise,” he smiles at you. “It’s your flat too.”

“I don’t usually snoop around your stuff,” you continue to apologise even though he’s already told you that you don’t need to. “I had just never noticed this before and wanted to have a closer look.”

“I told you, it’s fine,” he chuckles slightly at your rambles. Moving closer so he stands next to you he picks up the photo you had just put down. “I decided a few more personal touches might be nice around the flat. You must be rubbing off on me,” he looks over at you and you shy under his gaze, eyes going to the photo in his hands. “My parents,” he points at the two older people in the photo. “And my sister,” he points at the young girl.

“Very cute,” you say.

“We were on a day out and my dad asked someone to take this photo. It’s one of my favourites.”

You look at him as he stares down at the photo and can see the almost longing in his eyes. You can tell how happy he is just staring at the photo in his hands. Almost snapping out of a daze, he visibly shakes his head before placing the picture back in its spot.

“A simpler time,” he says with a pang of sadness in his voice.

“Things always become more complicated when we get older,” you say. “Which reminds me. What happened last night?”

He chuckles at your words and you are glad to see the smile return to his face.

“You had obviously just had a bit too much to drink. I’d blame Jimin’s drink making if I was you,” he says.

“God, how embarrassing,” you shove a hand over your face in an attempt to hide, unsure what you had done.

“Nothing embarrassing. You just passed out on the sofa, don’t worry,” Hoseok continues to smile at you.

“Thats embarrassing,” you say, peaking through your fingers to look at him. “And how the hell did I get into my bed?” You panic slightly.

“Well, we tried to wake you,” Hoseok’s face goes slightly red at the words. “But you were completely knocked out. So I carried you to your bed.”

“Oh god,” you groan. “And my clothes?” You almost don’t want to ask but also need to know the answer.

“That was all Liv,” Hoseok is quick to defend himself, hands in the air in mock surrender.

“Jesus, I’m a mess. I’m so sorry, your friends are probably wondering why the hell you have me living in your flat.” Dismissing his clear embarrassment over how you ended up in your bed in just a t-shirt and your pants, for your own embarrassment.

“Forget about it. Let’s just go have some food and watch something,” he doesn’t wait for your answer before leaving the room, you trailing behind him.

“I think Jimins asleep in there,” you say sheepishly before Hoseok walks into the living room.

“He’ll be alright,” he shrugs at you before walking in.

You follow him in, noticing Jimin still sleeping on the sofa, seemingly not bothered by Hoseok clattering around. Being a bit quieter, you sit down on the sofa, legs out in front of you as Hoseok turns the TV on.

“What we watching?” He asks.

“I don’t mind.”

“Letting me choose may not be wise,” he warns and you just smile at him, letting him know you honestly don’t care. “The notebook it is,” he says and you can’t help but laugh.

It takes about 20 minutes of the film to play before Jimin finally wakes up. You and Hoseok had been relatively silent before he woke up, but Jimin is quick to change that. Sitting up you both watch him as he squints around the room in confusion.

“Looks like you had fun last night,” Hoseok laughs at Jimin with his blonde hair ruffled all over his head, his undercut on show.

Rubbing a hand over his face, his eyes squint as he continues to look confused. You give him a small smile when he meets your eye contact, before looking away, wanting to give him some sort of privacy haven just woken up.

“Have you guys eaten yet?” Are the first husky words that leave Jimins mouth, and you can’t help but laugh along with Hoseok.

“Fancy ordering something?” Hoseok asks and as you look around to him you see Jimin giving a silent nod, hand on his forehead.

“Do you want me to get you some water?” You ask Jimin a bit concerned. Nodding he hardly looks at you. “And I still owe you for the food you got me last time,” you say to Hoseok as you get up to get some water for Hoseok.

“And I told you not to worry about it,” Hoseok calls after you as you walk out the room.

Reappearing a few seconds later, hands now full with a cup of water and some paracetamol, Hoseok and Jimin are already talking food.

“Will you at least let me pay for this one,” you plead, handing Jimin the things in your hands getting a small thanks in reply.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hoseok barely looks at you as he scrolls through food options on his phone. “What about Moose cafe, they do good pancakes?” Hoseok doesn’t even look at you as he aims the question at Jimin.

“Jimin, tell me what you want, I’m buying it,” you say stubbornly, whipping your phone out.

“No, I have it,” Hoseok shoots you a glare.

“Jimin, I just got you that water, the least you can do is let me buy the food,” you say.

“Jimin, you’re in my house as a guest the least I can do is buy you food,” Hoseok replies.

“I pay rent to live here, so I could also use that as an excuse,” you roll your eyes at Hoseok. “You are the one that keeps telling me to treat this place like it’s mine,” you raise your eyebrows at him. “Please just let me pay,” you plea.

“For God's sake,” Jimin finally speaks. “Will you guys just shut up? Listen, he is not going to let you pay, and neither am I.”

“Why have you got to be so nice? I owe you money, why won’t you let me pay it,” you whine slightly. You felt like Hoseok was already doing you a favour by letting you live here so cheaply, you didn’t want him doing you any more favours on top of that. It may not be much money for him, but for you it was, if it was any other friend you would have paid them and they wouldn’t have refused.

“Don’t worry about it, love,” Hoseok repeats, a small smile returning to his face as he realises he may have won. “So, what’s everyone having?”

“I’ll have the pancakes with bacon,” Jimin says.

“Y/N?” Hoseok looks at you.

“I don’t want anything thanks,” you reply.

“Don’t be like that,” the smile falls off Hoseoks face at your stubbornness.

“I have food in the fridge I need to eat,” you shrug lightly.

“Just add some extra pancakes in for her,” Jimin pipes up and you shoot him a glare.

“I won’t eat them,” you say.

“They’ll just go in the bin then,” Jimin says.

“I can afford to buy my own pancakes,” you slouch into the sofa, letting them know what was getting to you.

“We don’t doubt that you can’t,” Hoseok voice is softer, realisation hitting him. “It’s just pancakes. Don’t over think it.”

You don’t reply to him, feeling like you were making the situation more than it needed to be, after all it was just pancakes. But your money insecurities were slightly getting to you. And he takes your silence as compliance to order the food, letting you and Jimin know that the food was on the way.

“Last night was fun,” Jimin attempts to cut the slight tension that has arisen in the room.

“Yeah, thanks for letting me crash,” you say. “Your friends are really lovely.”

“Was nice to have you join, everyone really liked you,” Hoseok says.

“Even though I passed out?” You cringe at the thought.

“Especially because you passed out,” Jimin laughs. “Now it’s not just me that’s done it in the group.”

“Great, not sure that’s the best reputation to hold,” you say. “I’m guessing you have the day off work?” You ask Hoseok, noting the fact he was still in the flat when he would normally be gone.

“Oh yeah, we have a few days off,” he says.

“You two work together?” You are still intrigued to what your flatmate does, but are also conscious that whenever the topic arises the atmosphere shifts.

“Unfortunately,” is the only reply you get, essentially cutting the conversation short, and increasing your intrigue on the subject.

“Have you got any plans with your time off?” You ask.

“I’m planning on just hanging around the flat, so sorry but you’ll have to put up with me for a few more days,” Hoseok replies. “Maybe Jimin and some of my other friends will come round one night?” Hoseok directs the question to Jimin. “If that’s ok with you, of course,” his head shots in your direction, almost as if he forgot you live here.

“It’s your flat, invite whoever you want,” you say.

“But you know you can invite whoever you want here too?” Hoseok says.

“Of course,” you say, though your voice doesn’t sound as sure as your words.

“Well if Y/N is here, I will be coming round all the time,” Jimin winks at you and you give a hearty laugh in response.

“Jesus, is there anyone you don’t flirt with?” Hoseok rolls his eyes, and you continue to laugh, feeling slightly embarrassed by the comment.

Saved by the doorbell, you almost leap up when you offer to go and get the food. Leaving the room, it doesn’t take you long to get the food and plate it up, carrying it all back on a tray you stop outside the door when you hear your name mentioned.

“You haven’t told her?” You hear Jimin ask.

“How does it really ever come up into conversation? It’s not something you just casually say,” Hoseok says.

“I’m still on team tell Y/N. And now I have met her, I am even more pro,” Jimin says.

“I will, I just need the right time,” Hoseok says.

“And like you said, there is no perfect time. The longer you wait, the weirder it will be,” Jimin says.

You have no idea what they are talking about. What could Hoseok possibly be keeping from you that Jimin thinks he should be saying? And why does Hoseok think there needs to be some perfect timing for him to tell you?

Realising you had been stood eves dropping for a second or two too long, you decide to walk into the room, pretending you heard nothing. The two of them seemed oblivious to the fact that you may have heard them, and you keep it that way. Eating your pancakes and chatting with them you enjoy your day off with your flatmate for once.

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welllpthisishappening · 3 years

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We’re watching the Blues white vs blue scrimmage and I’m so excited hockey is almost back! I think this calls for a Blue Line re-read because it’s so, SO good and I’ve read through everything on ao3 at least 5 times. 💙

This makes me the absolute happiest! Thank you for reading! And then reading again! I am unreasonably excited about the start of the season and the length of Chris Kreider’s hair and I was going to post a quick Blue Line one-shot here, but it was basically just original characters in that it was literally just Matt Jones being an idiot while meeting his future wife, so I wrote something else this morning and winning the Stanley Cup would mean they’d have to change their before-the-season starts ritual. Anyway, here’s like nearly 4K of everyone ragging on each other just before the season after Blue Line, while Emma and Killian try to figure out where they can make out without anyone noticing:

————

“Still looking?” “Yup.” “What she look like?” “Like the actual description of her face?”

Something dug into the bottom of Emma’s shoulder blade, and it took her far too long to realize that it was the jut of Killian’s chin because even the idea of Killian crouching behind her so as to avoid the overall force of Regina’s glare was something that hadn’t even crossed her mind. Until it was happening, apparently. “She’s staring,” Emma muttered, “got that little pinch between her eyebrows that always shows up when she’s—” Killian groaned. Directly where his mouth was resting, which was also on Emma’s back and likely just above the ‘o’ in his last name, if her knowledge of the jersey she was wearing was any indication. Maybe in between the ‘j’ and the ‘o,’ actually.

“You’re ridiculous.” “Me?” Killian countered, and Emma wished she hadn’t already finished that first glass of wine. Blurry thoughts bounced across her sleep-deprived brain because there was only one more sleep ‘til Christmas, or whatever Kermit sang in The Muppet Christmas Carol. Presumably Christmas. And not hockey. Or the start of the hockey season.

Splotches of ink still dotted the sides of Emma’s right hand, the product of dragging that same hand over forms she had to sign and other plans she had to approve, and the blue carpet wasn’t coming until next week because the home opener was actually three games into the season, which was not as comforting or stress-reducing as she thought it should have been and she simply did not have time to mitigate an argument between her boyfriend and his agent.

Even when that boyfriend was very good looking.

In his Christmas sweater.

The traditions of hockey players continued to boggle the mind. Emma’s, specifically.

If she drank any more wine, she was going to fall asleep standing up. “Yes,” Emma said, “you, but only because you’re the one currently trying to burrow your way into me. With your chin.” Humming in confusion, he lifted his head, and that wasn’t really a mistake, per se — but it did leave his soft exhale brushing against the side of Emma’s neck, and that sort of guaranteed that goosebumps appeared on her neck and she should have been more annoyed. By Killian’s immediate laugh. Of the vaguely victorious variety.

“What do you think about the sweater?” “That you’re fishing for compliments.” “I think I make Locksley’s stitched-on face look very good. Doesn’t get stretched out at all—” Killian ignored Emma’s groan, pressing a kiss to the exact spot her shoulder met her still goosebump-covered neck, and it was the wine’s fault. For the state of her increasingly wobbly knees. “—Which is more than I can say about his current face.” “Oh, that’s rude,” Emma argued. “And I’m not entirely sure it even made sense.” “Are you Locksley’s self-appointed defender, then?” “Are you the single most superstitious player in the entire National Hockey League?” That kiss came with a graze of his teeth and a noise Emma immediately regretted making. Something like a squeak bubbled out of her, flinching in the sort of way that only ensured she was even closer to Killian, and stepping on one of his toes would have detracted from the overall romance of the moment.

“You can’t do that sort of thing in public, Swan,” Killian chided, and he really did have very good reflexes. Spinning her, Emma’s hands flew to his chest — pointedly ignoring the stitched-on face of Robin Locksley — and he didn’t move. Didn’t stumble or come anywhere close to falling. Just arched his left eyebrow and had the gall to smirk at her like they weren’t in a restaurant filled with their friends and teammates and—

“I’m not taking the shirt off, Gina,” Killian yelled over Emma’s head, “so you can stop whatever you’re doing with your face.” “Trying to turn you to stone,” Emma mumbled.

“Last I checked, she’s not a Greek myth.” “Far as you know.” He moved. Shook really, once his laugh started to echo between Emma’s ears, and they definitely had more pillows in their house than blankets, but the sound of Killian’s obvious and consistent joy was oddly similar to the softest piece of fabric Emma could imagine. Like it was capable of wrapping around her, warm without being suffocating, just this steady presence that didn’t weigh down on her and made everything feel like—

Home, she supposed.

She was so happy; she was positive it simply poured out of her at this point. And the sweater really did not look half bad. Fit very well, at least.

“This worked last year,” Will called, shuffling between Roland and Henry. Several wads of napkins littered the floor by their feet, a makeshift hockey game that, as far as Emma could figure, had ever-evolving rules and a tendency to knock chairs over. Roland’s jersey wasn’t quite as long as last year, the hem stopping well before his knees.

Henry still had a twenty on his back.

“Still looks ridiculous,” Regina countered. Her wine glass was also empty, sitting closer to Robin’s chair than she had been ten minutes earlier. “Do you think you should send them an email?” Killian’s eyebrow dropped. Pulled low in perfect tandem with the other one, Emma’s head tilting with her own sense of confusion.

Something slammed rather loudly into one of the walls. Eric might have been doing shots behind the bar.

“What?” “An email,” Regina repeated, “to whatever website makes that monstrosity, so you can let them know that they should get more creative and offer more wardrobe choices to—” “—Idiots?” Robin quipped.

“Professional hockey players.” Ariel clicked her tongue, ignoring her husband’s objections when she jumped onto the edge of the counter. Only a matter of time until several kids tried to follow suit. “Is your husband not a professional hockey player, Gina?” “Yes.” “Oh, that was far less of an argument than I expected,” David mumbled, stepping next to Emma, and he couldn’t quite bump her shoulder when she was still standing so close to Killian. “And kinda rude,” Will added, “all things considered.”

Regina shrugged. “I cannot possibly overstate how much I hate that sweater.” “Take it up with Banana,” Killian said. “Her gift; makes it her problem. All I am doing is—” “—Wearing it?” “And wearing it well,” he promised. If Emma’s cheeks turned red, no one mentioned it. Which might have been one of the nicer things anyone on this team had ever done for her. “Plus,” Killian continued, “Scarlet’s right. This worked last year. If you want to risk tradition and potential—” A chorus of jeers greeted his near-jinx, complete with pointed fingers and one of Ariel’s legs kicking out like she had any chance of actually reaching Killian. Or wouldn’t be annoyed by whatever harm she could possibly inflict on his upper thigh.

Regina looked very pleased. “This does not mean you won, Gina,” Killian said, but she only shrugged again, and the first blast of Arthur’s whistle was as shrill as any sound had rights to be.

More cries bounced off the walls and the balled-up napkins, Arthur’s hand resting on Gwen’s shoulder because at some point in the twelve seconds between the first whistle blast and everyone regaining their ability to hear; he must have decided that standing on a chair was actually a good idea.

Killian’s entire body shook behind Emma’s.

Getting rid of the goosebumps would be something of a rather large miracle. Especially if he kept his arm around her waist like this, fingers splayed over her stomach.

“Are we ready yet?” Arthur barked, only to be met with murmurs and more confusion, and Emma didn’t think much before accepting the glass Mary Margaret was practically shoving into her hand.

“Is there a reason for the collective?” Robin asked. “Did you mean to include yourself in that? Are you not ready for your own speech?”

Arthur was not as good at glaring as Regina. No one mentioned that. No one had to, really. He took a deep breath before he started. “Day before the opener. We know what we did last year, and I want to be the first to tell every single one of you that I don’t give a flying fuck—” Another round of loud objections rang out around him, Arthur not quite able to wave them off because his balance really was awful, and Killian had to let go of Emma to haul Roland up his side. “—Anyone asks you about last year,” Arthur pressed, entirely unperturbed by the frustration of his team and their assorted families, “and you better tell them you don’t give’a shit about it.”

Emma tried to cover one of Roland’s ears. The other one was pressed against Killian, so she couldn’t really do anything about that. “Does he think you haven’t been quoted—like, all off-season?” “The ultimate idiot,” Killian grinned.

“Is this over yet?” Will demanded. “I’d like to know when I can boo without threat of interruption.”

Belle kissed his cheek.

While Ruby mumbled curses under her breath, all too aware of just how many people had asked about the Cup run and would keep asking about the Cup run and her job was not going to get any easier if the professional hockey players in that restaurant refused to answer questions all season.

“Nothing that happened last year means anything this year,” Arthur said, but it was starting to sound a bit like a proclamation or maybe an affirmation, and Emma was terrible at yoga. Never had enough patience for it. “So we are playing for something brand-new, and you better not start by screwing it all up on Thursday.” He nodded once. Glanced around because Emma knew he was waiting for some sort of reaction, but the only reaction he got was Will’s promised boo, and that was more than Arthur deserved. Especially when he knocked over the chair while getting down.

“Tell me he’ll be better with fans,” Emma said, and Killian had to shift Roland, but then he was the one doing the cheek kissing, and the quiet guarantee of absolutely, love was nice until he added—

“Can totally beat him up if he’s not.” “You’re a violent guy, Cap.”

Nosing at the side of her jaw did not impress Roland at all. Fair, really — but then Roland was on the same counter as Ariel, her sliding down the makeshift wood to get an arm around him and her phone already out and ringing, and Will stopped boo’ing.

To announce, in no uncertain terms, “It’s time! Leader better not screw things up, or I’ll walk to Colorado and kick him in the shins.”

“What a threat.” Robin groaned, but his phone was making noise too, and neither Elsa nor Liam were doing a very good job of sharing space in the frame. Anna was waving with both her hands, already talking a mile a minute with her sister and they were all wearing team-branded merchandise, as the ritual dictated, but this also felt like the first legitimate time Emma was part of the ritual and all three Vankald and/or Jones faces beamed when they noticed her.

“A,” Will sighed, “you’re supposed to tell us before the taxi squad gets on the call. Then we can prepare and we don’t have to go through this every year.” Anna’s eyes noticeably thinned. “What is this, exactly?” “The gossip wheel you’ve got to run through before we can—” “—Emma’s wearing KJ’s number again!” “We live together Banana,” Killian reasoned, and the jump in Emma’s stomach was undeniable and even more uncalled for. She also hoped she didn’t mess up the ritual.

“Still.” “Expand on that for me.” Will might have snarled. “We do not have time for this.”

“Are you an actual adult participating in this situation?” Ariel challenged. “Because I am not getting that right now.” Careful to stay out of Regina’s eye line and certain that Roland was at least momentarily distracted by another plate of onion rings, both of Will’s hands moved when he flashed specific fingers. Ariel nearly fell off the counter, she laughed so hard.

Elsa and Anna were absolutely having their own conversation.

And Killian kissed Emma’s hair that time.

“Also,” Elsa added, “should we be collectively annoyed by the taxi squad marker? That’s kind of—” Her voice dropped “A dick move, right?” “You’re a picture of parental responsibility, El,” Killian said. “Buy new clothes.” “See,” Regina cried, arms thrust nearly above her head in what wasn’t quite celebration but might have simply been her innate desire to be right at all times. “Liam, you’re going to have to say something different now, you realize that?” None of them had, quite clearly. Soft gasps and quiet oh’s echoed around their spot at the end of the bar, but Liam’s chin was doing something as well. So maybe it was just genetic. Jutting out, the confidence practically dripped off him, which would have been a disgusting thought in any other situation, but there was something to be said for constants and stability, and not one of them had so much as thought the phrase back to back all offseason.

“Your lack of belief is disappointing, Gina.” “I’m just covering our bases.” “Wrong sport,” Liam laughed, grabbing the stick that had been leaning just out of frame and it took some finagling to hold it out in front of him. Without also knocking the phone over. He nearly knocked the phone over three different times.

Elsa pinched the bridge of her nose. “Alright,” Liam started, and Emma didn’t think she imagined the way Killian stood up a bit straighter. Robin and Will, too. “Wait, wait, shit, sorry Rol—no, but how many years is this?” “Oh my God,” Ariel grumbled. “This is kind of messing it up.” “Leader, do you not know how to do math?” Will shouted, grabbing more than one of Roland’s onion rings. Like he needed something to occupy his hands with.

Blotches of color appeared on Liam’s face, Elsa’s head shaking back and forth now while several different grown adults tried to do the most basic math problem, and no one else heard Killian at first. Emma did. Presumably, because she was almost standing on his sneakers.

His arm was back around her waist. “Nine years,” he repeated.

Liam hummed. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” “I know it is.” Nothing about those words was enough to immediately catch Emma short, but the fingers pressed against her might have started pulling on her shirt ever so slightly and whatever look Elsa and Anna shared as soon as she circled her arms around Killian’s middle wasn’t important. Now, at least. Emma had every intention of getting them to give up whatever they knew later.

They definitely knew something.

She’d worry about that after the home opener. “Alright, alright, alright,” Liam chanted, the stick back up and Will’s salute lacked any sort of legitimate respect. “Nine years ago now, we all stumbled back into this stupid city and laced up skates and tripped over ourselves on the ice.” He had to glance down. Reading it off an index card, then. Emma’s heart gave a small, but sure tumble in her chest. “And we were God awful. Terrible. Embarrassingly bad. But, as with most things, we figured it out. We stopped tripping over that giant emblem at center ice and we didn’t stutter during post and we actually started scoring goals.”

The stick was starting to shake. Retirement affected forearm strength, it seemed.

“And we inexplicably won a first-round series and made the backpages of tabloids and then something kind of incredible happened.” Emma waited for the tension, for the sound of Killian’s knuckles cracking, or the exchange glances between Robin and Will. None of it came. It was stupid to think it would. And Liam was far from done. “Down two games in Pitt—” “—Oh my God,” Ruby hissed, “who calls it Pitt?” Liam ignored her. “A two-game hole, and totally fu—messed up media in Los Angeles, but none of that mattered because you guys kept scoring goals and the entire Kings organization is a black hole of talentless idiots.” “This is scathing, Leader,” Will said, “truly. Did you practice this?” “Yes,” Elsa said before Liam could open his mouth again, and Emma’s neck was going to give up sooner rather than later. Emotions twisted between the muscles there, another weight that somehow made it easier to breathe, like they had anything to do with her lungs, but none of her cared and all of her wanted. This, specifically. “There’s more though, Scarlet. Stop interrupting.” He saluted again.

“Getting everything you wanted’s kind of a weird thing to wrap your head around, but that’s because this isn’t everything. Not yet. Somehow you guys are still capable of scoring goals and—y’know, your quotes leave a little to be desired.” “Here, here,” Ruby murmured.

Liam might have been the best at glaring. Like, out of all of them. “But that just means the pressure’s on. Vankald cliché requirement; patent pending.” None of the boos that garnered had much bite to them. “Keeping the tradition alive is half the fun of hockey, this dumb sport with weapons on our feet and in our hands and it’s up to you guys. All over again. Start of the season, fresh slate, knowing you can do it because you already have. You ready, Rol?”

Roland nodded more than once, enthusiasm in every jerk of his head. “To the Cup,” he shouted.

“To the Cup,” the crowd repeated, not much enunciation between the lot of them when both of the phones had a slight delay and there was a baby crying in Colorado. Still, neither Elsa nor Liam moved and the shot glasses Eric put down were rather quickly grabbed. So as to avoid Arthur’s ire.

Alcohol burned the back of Emma’s mouth as soon as she tilted her head, shivering against the strength of whatever it was she just drank. If she cried, she was going to be really annoyed with herself.

And the restaurant never got too loud, or too warm, but Emma’s heart stayed at its above-average rate for the next two hours, making the prospect of walking out the door and standing at the edge of the sidewalk all the more appealing. Especially when she remembered how—

It took him two minutes to follow her. Give or take.

“Feels like we’re in a time warp,” Killian said, leaning against the side of the restaurant while Emma desperately tried to temper her own emotions and she had more emotions than she knew one person could be capable of containing.

“No dancing, though.” “Banana and I went to a midnight showing of that on Halloween once.” “Seriously?” “Mmmhm. Have I mentioned that I am ridiculously in love with you yet, today?” Her head fell. Neck finally giving up, Emma’s cheek twisted on top of Killian’s shoulder, and his sweater, and if there was a quota for kisses pressed to the crown of her head, he was certainly trying to reach it. Competitive weirdo. “I don’t think so.” “Idiotic.” “Eh, we’ve been busy.” “I love you,” he said, and she smiled. Wide and easy and so goddamn happy, it only occasionally felt like a massive joke. And it still wasn’t enough. As selfish as that might have been, but Liam was definitely right and this wasn’t the end, might have just been another point on a circle and hints of wholly enjoyable déjà vu. “Is this the part where we talk about dating some guy on a team?” Left eyebrow, that time. Perfectly arched while his ability to smirk continued to infuriate Emma just a little, whatever sound she made when he ducked his head and caught her lips somewhere between joy and laughter and the seemingly perpetual talent to make her swoon wherever she was standing.

They’d definitely gotten better at kissing in the last year.

A fact Emma had every intention of pointing out — once she was done sticking her tongue in Killian’s mouth. Or trying to get her fingers under his sweater, his soft hiss at the lack of temperature in her fingertips some kind of victory she’d think about until the home opener and possibly until the All-Star break, and the overall arch of her back wasn’t particularly comfortable. But then her hips bumped Killian’s and that drew another sound and made champagne bubbles of the far more metaphorical variety explode in the general vicinity of her heart.

One of her feet left the ground, not doing much to help her balance, but Emma had already spent too long considering the pros and cons of balance and she scratched at the back of Killian’s head. When her back pressed into the wall, threatening to scratch through her jersey and his fingers weren’t as cold as hers, because he might have just exuded heat, which likely wasn’t a sign and she wanted it to be a sign and—

“I love you,” Emma breathed, harder than she wanted. The force of his answering smile could have melted ice. In several prominent arenas across North America.

“You worried?” “Very vague question.” “Swan.” “No,” she said, pleased to realize she meant all three letters. With just about everything in her. “Coming out here was—” “—We could have just made out in the restaurant.” “Pushing me up against a wall probably would have gotten us kicked out.” “Which would have led us here and then home, so,” Killian shrugged, “I fail to see the problem.” “You want to go home?” His eyes closed. His smile didn’t waver. Just pressed into the side of Emma’s neck and under her jaw, scruff, and strands of hair that were a little longer than they’d been last season, and she felt him inhale. Like he was trying to breathe her in, or possibly them. The specifics didn’t matter. They were something of a package deal now, anyway.

“Did you cop this jersey from equipment?” Leaning back was impossible with the wall behind her, but Emma was something of a glutton for emotions now and inherently greedy. Killian’s eyes noticeably darkened when she moved her tongue. Directly across her teeth. “Nah, I own this.” The thump of his forehead falling to her shoulder was the most satisfying sound she’d heard in two weeks. Bar none.

“We’re leaving now,” Killian said. “Now.”

“You don’t want to—” Lacing his fingers through hers, he didn’t quite tug her back down the alley, but it was awfully close and Emma was glad she’d thought to bring her phone with her. “They’ll figure it out.”

She hoped they did.

Checking her phone was somewhere near the bottom of the list she had absolutely no intention of making that night, opting instead to leave a trail of clothes back to their room and she couldn’t wear the jersey to the game. They made out in the hallway outside the visitor’s locker room, though. So Emma figured it something of a wash; and the first win of the season.

#cs ff #blue line rambles #blue line one shots #LET EMMA AND KILLIAN MAKE OUT IN EVERY NHL ARENA 2K4EVER #this has been sitting in the back of my mind for weeks #so here it is in all its sports emotion glory #sammyjojaaaa #laura rambles

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coolgreatwebsite · 3 years

Text

Cool Games I Finished In 2020 (In No Real Order)

Oh, hey! Right! I have a website! I’m like a week late on writing this, but what’s a week on top of an entire year of not writing, right? 2020 was... well, we all know what 2020 was. For me personally, it was simultaneously the best and worst year of my life. The worst in both ways you can probably assume and ways you definitely can’t (neither of which I’ll be getting into), and the best in ways I absolutely never would have guessed. That uncertain job I mentioned last year got very suddenly much more certain, at a much bigger company, for a much larger amount of money. That allowed me to get my own place, making my weird living situation much less weird. Still haven’t gotten the majority of my belongings off of the east coast, but if the entire world wasn’t currently fucked up by a global pandemic I’d have sorted all that out too. What I’m saying is that, for the third year in a row, my life has been a complete whirlwind that has left me very little time to get comfortable with any aspect of it. But I did manage to play more video games than I did last year! Which is perfect, because it’s once again time for another one of these. Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2020.

Astro’s Playroom (PlayStation 5, 2020)

My one word description of Astro's Playroom is "delightful". It's just an absolute goddamn delight. A total surprise too! Included with every PlayStation 5, Astro's Playroom is, in my opinion, one of the best pack-in games of all time.

First off, it's an incredible tech demo for the PS5's new DualSense controller. It was easy to brush off Sony's talk about the controller's haptic feedback and triggers as some Nintendo-style HD Rumble bullshit, but it really is incredibly cool once you get your hands on it. The game is obviously more than a tech demo though, or else it wouldn't be on here. It also just so happens to be an extremely solid and fun platformer on top of that. Astro controls exceptionally well and the levels are all well-designed and fun, even the gimmick vehicle ones designed to show off different features of the controller. It also has an oddly compelling speedrun mode, made all the more compelling by the PS5 notifying you when your friends beat your times and the ability to load into it within two seconds from anywhere on the console. But the biggest thing for me and, call me a mark, because I am, is that the game is an honestly incredible love letter to PlayStation history.

For the first time ever, Sony has pulled off a nostalgia piece without it ending up as embarrassing garbage in the vein of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. There's a Nintendo-like joyful reverence for all things PlayStation oozing out of every single corner of this game. There are so many nods and references and gags for literally every PlayStation thing of note throughout the the last 25 years, and then on top of that there's a whole heap more for the things that AREN'T of note that only hyperdorks like me would get! A sly reference to the ill-fated boomerang controller? Yep. A goof on the fat PS3's Spider-Man font? You betcha. A trophy you can earn by repeatedly punching a Sony Interactive Entertainment sign until it breaks and reveals the Sony Computer Entertainment sign it was slapped on top of? Yeah buddy. It's deep cuts all the way down, even up until the final boss which had me grinning like a total dipshit the entire time. The game is endlessly, effortlessly charming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the perfect game at the perfect time. That doesn't mean it's a perfect game, I actually have some issues with it, but it could not have released at a better time than when it did. It came out at the very very beginning of everyone going into lockdown due to the pandemic, and it was the biggest game in the world for a couple of months as a result. I played like 300 hours and that pales in comparison to the amount of time many others put into it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most different Animal Crossing game there's ever been, and I'm of two minds on it. Like, I loved the game, I played a ton of it, but it's lacking so much of the stuff that made me love Animal Crossing in the first place. The series has been slowly trending in this direction for a bit now, but it's not really a game that happens around you anymore. It's all about total player control. You select where everything goes, you customize every detail of everything to your liking, hell, you can even terraform the landmass to be exactly what you want. Your neighbors take a backseat in focus and end up as little more than decorations with limited dialogue and next to no quests associated with them. Series staples like Gyroids are missing in action. Facilities and services that have been around since Wild World aren't implemented. It's similar to past Animal Crossing games in a lot of ways, but on the whole it feels like a different thing.

But like I said, two minds. New Horizons strays from what I truly want from an Animal Crossing game, but I can't deny that the game as it is is a hell of a lot of fun. There's SO much you can do and SO many options, it's super addictive. Plus it implemented my long-requested feature of letting you effortlessly send mail to friends online! Too bad the actual online play is as cumbersome as ever.

In conclusion, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a land of contrasts. I'm kidding. It's good, but definitely missing something in a way where I can understand some people being disappointed in it. I had a ton of fun though, and I'm probably going to get back into it later in 2021.

Trials of Mana (Nintendo Switch, 2019)

Late in 2019, with the physical release of Collection of Mana for the Switch, I decided I was going to play through each game on it for the first time and finally find out what this whole Mana thing was about. I went into Final Fantasy Adventure (the first game in the Mana series, because every RPG had to be Final Fantasy back then) with zero expectations and found a totally serviceable little Zelda-like with light RPG elements. I enjoyed my time with it. I went into Secret of Mana with the expectation of it being a beloved classic and found the worst game I beat that year, hands down. That game fucking sucks. I get why it made an impression on people at the time, but it's just so so SO awful to play. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. Honestly, I would have been disappointed even if I hadn't heard it was one of "the best games" for so long. It would have been a disappointing follow-up to Final Fantasy Adventure, a game that in and of itself isn't anything incredible. Secret of Mana is just that rotten.

I braced myself for more disappointment when (after a much needed vacation from the series) I started up Trials of Mana. This game had a reputation too, as a long-lost classic that never made it stateside. One of the best games on the Super Nintendo, criminally never released for western audiences! Like Secret of Mana before it, I'd heard nothing but effusive praise. Unlike Secret of Mana, however, I was very pleased to find out that Trials of Mana mostly lives up to the hype. From a gameplay standpoint, Trials is an improvement on Secret in almost every single way. It's not perfect. The menus are still kinda clunky, animations for things like magic and items are still frequently disruptive. But the main thing is it actually plays like a sensible video game designed by humans with brains. Attacking is responsive! Hitboxes aren't complete nonsense! You don't constantly get stunlocked to death! There are more answers to combat than casting the same spell for five straight minutes to kill your enemies before they get a chance to move! It's great!

On top of being an enjoyable video game to actually play, the presentation is top notch. Secret of Mana could be a pretty game with decent music in some spots, but Trials is consistently gorgeous and the soundtrack is across the board great instead of randomly having songs that sound like clown vomit. And while Trials of Mana doesn't have the deepest story in the world, it manages to avoid being completely paper-thin like Secret. The story actually kind of has a reason for being a bit straightforward, and the reason is that it has a really cool system where you pick your three playable characters from a pool of six. Each character has their own goals and storyline, some of which line up with other potential party members, some of which don't, and you'll even run into the characters you didn't choose as NPCs along the way. This and the relatively brisk pace of the game make it highly replayable.

I'm really glad that Trials of Mana made it over here in an official capacity, even if it was like 25 years late. It's as good as I expected Secret of Mana to be and singlehandedly saved my interest in seeing any more of the series. I'm aware the quality of what came after is very spotty, but I'll get to the rest eventually!

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PlayStation 4, 2020)

They (almost) did it. They (basically) pulled it off. They remade (a chunk of) Final Fantasy VII and (for the most part) didn't fuck it up. Ok, funny parentheticals aside, Final Fantasy VII Remake is astoundingly good coming off of over two decades of just absolutely dreadful post-FF7 sequels, side games, and movies.

Final Fantasy VII has been historically misremembered as this kind of miserable, angsty, brooding thing, both by fans and by the company that made it. FF7-branded media after FF7 itself is a minefield of changed personalities, embarrassing original characters, and monumentally lame stories. Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first post-FF7 anything that actually remembers the characters, setting, and plot of Final Fantasy VII and what made them memorable and special to people in the first place. Which isn't to say it's a slavish recreation! There's a ton of changes and additions, and I actually like almost all of them! Except for some really big stuff I'll touch on in a bit!

The combat in Final Fantasy VII Remake is great. I was super skeptical about it when the game was first announced, but they actually managed to make the blend of real-time action and turn-based RPG menuing fun and engaging. The characters all play super differently from each other too, which is a huge and welcome difference from the original game. The Materia system fits like a glove in this revamped combat system as well. The remixed music is good as hell, and the visuals are beautiful (outside of a couple of very specific spots that I'm kinda of surprised they haven't fixed in a patch yet). It's a well-executed package all around.

But alas, as always, there are negatives. For starters, this is only part one of the overall Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It goes up to the party leaving Midgar which, as you may or may not recall, is the first six hours of the original game. They compensated for this by fleshing the hell out of the Midgar section the game, ballooning the overall playtime to total of about 30-ish hours. The game feeling padded is a common complaint but for what it's worth, I didn't really feel it until the unnecessarily long final dungeon, There's also the previously mentioned and funny parenthetical'd changes and additions I don't like.

This is big time spoilers for this game so if you don't want that jump ahead to the next game on the list. The Whispers suck ass. Final Fantasy VII Remake should have been brave enough to be different without having to constantly derail everything in the most ham-fisted and intrusive way possible. You can have Jessie twist her ankle without making a spooky plot ghost trip her. I don't want to fight the physical manifestation of the game everyone thought they were getting as an end boss. If you're not doing a straight remake, that's fine, but have the fucking guts to stand by your artistic decisions without feeling the need to invent the lamest deus ex machina I've ever fucking seen. The last couple of hours of this game are 100% about the Whispers and are awful for it. It's a true testament to the strength of the rest of Final Fantasy VII Remake that this aspect didn't completely sour me on it. I can only hope that they stay dead and gone for good in the games yet to come and the remake can be different while standing on its own two feet.

I truly cannot wait for the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. I'm excited for Final Fantasy VII in a way I haven't been since the late 90s. I have a bit of trepidation that they could royally screw it up. I mean, they already got kinda close, as I said in my last paragraph. But they got so much right in this entry that, for the first time in decades, I'm willing to believe in Square Enix when it comes to Final Fantasy VII.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PlayStation 4, 2020)

My one word description of 13 Sentinels is "fucking crazy". I realize that's two words, but shut up. A bizarre hybrid of visual novel, adventure game, and strategy RPG, 13 Sentinels not only makes that work, but makes it work incredibly well.

The story is fucking bonkers. It's told entirely non-linearly and is purposefully dense and confusing, but it does an amazing job of hooking you with a cast of likable characters and some impressively well-paced twists, made all the more impressive by the fact that you can tackle the story in basically whatever order you want. I'll say it again for those in the back, the story is Fucking Bonkers. Wherever you think it's going, it's not going. Where it is going is PLACES. Seriously, if you want a wild goddamn ride, this is the game for you. The presentation is also stunning. It's a drop dead gorgeous game with a really nice soundtrack. Easily Vanillaware's best looking game, which is saying something seeing as looking good is Vanillaware's whole deal.

If I had to levy one criticism against the game, it's that the strategy RPG portion is just kind of ok. It's enjoyable enough, it doesn't get in the way and there's not too much of it, but once it starts introducing armored versions of previous enemy types it's kind of done doing anything different. It is really good at getting people to out themselves as having no idea what tower defense is as a genre though!

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Nintendo Switch, 2018)

I haven't really historically been a "Musou Guy". Not to say I've actively disliked them, they're just not something I've seeked out very often or played very much of. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition kinda turned me into a "Musou Guy" a little bit? It's good, surprisingly-less-mindless-than-you'd-think fun.

I actually super don't care about the Zelda branding. I think all the fanservice stuff is meh at best. What I do care about is that there's a ton of character variety and a metric shitload of content. There's so many different characters and weapons for those characters that all play differently from one another and SOOOOOO many levels to play. Like the story mode is, again, kinda meh, the real meat of the game is the Adventure mode and there's a ton of it. It's 8 different world maps, each based off a different Zelda game, with each square of the map containing a little mini-scenario with unique objectives and rewards. There has to be at least 1000 scenarios between all the maps. There's so much. And that's not even getting into some of the other side stuff like the challenge modes and the fairy raising. It's a crazy amount of game in this game.

And again, it's not as mindless as it'd seem. It's not really a game ABOUT destroying 5000 guys, it's an area control and resource management game where the 5000 guys are one of those resources. Knowing who to send where and when to fight who is way more important than pressing the XXX YYY XXX YYY on the more than one million troops.

I'd say that if you're even cursorily potentially maybe interested in a musou game, this is the one to try. And if you like it, it could literally be your forever game. A sequel came out recently too, and I'm looking forward to trying that out soon.

Phantasy Star Online 2 (Xbox One, 2020)

Phantasy Star Online 2 finally came stateside in the year 2020, eight years after its initial Japanese release and initial American cancellation. It's no Phantasy Star Online 1, but it is a really fun game in its own right provided you can find the willpower to break through its clunkiness and eight years of confusing poorly tutorialized free-to-play MMO cruft.

The main thing going for PSO2, and this is a major improvement from PSO1, is that the act of engaging in its combat is fun. The combat is just feels really really good. There's a bunch of different weapon types and classes, and once you find the ones that really click with you you're in for a good time, whether you're izuna dropping dudes with wire claws or literally doing air juggles and rainstorm from Devil May Cry with the dual machine guns.

The other stuff around that combat is weird. I generally like it, but it's weird. The story mode is one of the most bizarrely presented things I've ever seen. It apparently used to be something you'd seek out in the levels themselves, but presently it's just a list of scenes you pick from a menu and watch with next to no context until it makes you fight a boss sometimes. There's some weird moments in there that MIGHT have been cool if it were presented in literally any other way?

The systems and presentation are also way more... I dunno, pinball? Pachislot? In very stark contrast to how chill original Phantasy Star Online was, everything in PSO2 is designed in a way to maximize that flashy light bing bing wahoo you got ~*~RARE DROP CHANCE UP~*~ feeling. Which isn't to say I don't like flashy light bing bing wahoo, but it's a weird different thing.

Was it worth the wait? Yeah, sure! For me! This is another one that I played like 300 hours of! I haven't even seen half of it, I fell off right before Episode 4 released because it coincided with my move! I'm gonna go back and see all that shit! PSO2's fun! A different flavor of fun than the original, sure, but fun all the same. Another one that I'm glad finally made it over here.

Riichi Mahjong (A Table, 1924)

Holy shit I fucking did it I finally learned how to play Mahjong and it rules.

It started when I picked up Clubhouse Games for the Switch. I saw that it had Riichi Mahjong and something in my brain snapped. For whatever reason, I decided that this was the time I was going to rip the band-aid off and figure this shit out. It wasn't too dissimilar to the first time I decided to try eggs, but that's a different and much stupider story for a different time. I did the tutorial in Clubhouse Games, looked up some more basics and advice because the tutorial wasn't super amazing, and I kept playing while being aided by the game's nice helper features like the button that pulls up recommended hands. I kept playing and... sorta got it. I learned the basic rules, but none of the strategy. And then I stopped playing for a few months.

In that few months, for whatever reason, a decent amount of people I know had their brains snap the same way? Like a more-than-two amount of people I'm either friends with or following online also decided to learn Mahjong. I decided to get back on the horse and downloaded Mahjong Soul and I don't know whether it was perseverance or the power of anime babes, but this time I got it. I still refer to a sheet with all the hands and whether they work open or closed, and I'm by no means a master player, but I actually honest to god understand what I'm doing and it's an incredible feeling.

Mahjong has such a huge amount of what I like to call "Get That Ass" energy. It is the energy you feel when you get someone's ass. In Mahjong you are either constantly getting someone's ass or getting your ass gotten. Someone puts down the wrong tile and you fucking GET THEIR ASS DUDE! They're got!! They're a fucking idiot that put down the wrong thing and now you have their points!!! Or you draw what you need yourself and you're a brain genius all according to plan and everyone gives you points because you're so wise!!!! It's great!!!!!

Mahjong has long been one of those games where I'd say "I'll learn this someday" and never reeeeally actually try to learn, and I'm so glad I finally took the effort to because it's good as hell. And, truth be told, it wasn't THAT hard to learn? Like you can get to the point where I was where I didn't know the strategy fairly easily in my opinion, and once you do that It's just a matter of continuing to play to understand the rest. I highly recommended that you also go out and learn it if you similarly revel in getting that ass, it's so satisfying once you do.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PlayStation 4, 2020)

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio took a big gamble with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After seven games (more if you take spinoffs and remakes into consideration) they decided to focus on a new main character and, even more unexpectedly, they decided to change things up by turning the series into a turn-based JRPG. Their gamble paid off in spades. This is easily in my top 3 favorite Yakuza games.

The JRPG gameplay is surprisingly solid. There's definite room for improvement, but they nailed a bunch of it right out of the gate. Some mechanics are a little janky and I wish the job system was more fleshed out or just worked more like Final Fantasy V's, but they nailed one of the most important things and made the battles brisk and fun. It's a great foundation, especially for a team that's never attempted anything like this, and it's way more fun than the combat's been in any of the previous Dragon Engine games. I can't wait to see them iterate on it.

Everything else is top fuckin' notch. The music is great, the side content is fully fleshed out in a way it hasn't been since before they switched to the Dragon Engine, and I love the characters and story so much. Yakuza has a new main character in Ichiban Kasuga, and he's my son and I love him. Kiryu was great, and I love him too, but he was a bit of a passive protagonist. Stuff happened around him and he mostly just stoically reacted to it. Ichi is a much more active lead and it's great. He's a big lovable dope, and his tendency to keep an upbeat attitude and eagerness to leap into action is such a breath of fresh air. And it's not only Ichiban, since this is an RPG you have a whole party of characters and they're all great! Having them with you at all times bantering with each other and reacting to things is another great change of narrative pace, too.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon just straight up rules. As someone who has historically not been too much of a fan of the Dragon Engine games, it's simultaneously a refreshing new take on the series and a fantastic return to form. I can't wait for what comes next. Wherever Ichiban goes, I go.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

After 23 years of Japanese PS1 exclusivity, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure finally got an English release this year for Nintendo Switch. I'm glad it did, because Moon isn't just the very definition of A Sebmal Game. It's the Sebmal Game missing link. In addition to being just a great video game, it helped me make a mental throughline for a bunch of games I love and a large part of my taste in video games.

To keep a long story short (seriously, I have a much much longer version of this saved in my drafts that I'll maybe finish someday), Moon turned out to be not the JRPG I assumed it was, given the title and basic story pitch, but a secret prequel to a game I love named Chulip. Moon's developer, Love-de-Lic, was formed by a handful of ex-Squaresoft employees, many of which worked on an extremely formative game I love named Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Love-de-Lic broke up in the year 2000 and its staff went on to form a bunch of different studios that ended up making a BUNCH of different games I love like Chibi-Robo, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Dandy Dungeon, and the aforementioned Chulip. These games, when you make the connection and line them up, all have a very distinct weirdness in common that makes perfect sense once you've realized many of the same people worked on them. Figuring this all out felt like snapping a piece of my brain back in place, and it was really crazy to come to understand exactly how much this studio that formed and disbanded decades before I'd even heard of them had impacted my tastes and, hell, my life.

So what is Moon, for those who don't innately understand what I mean by "a secret prequel to Chulip"? Moon is an adventure game where you explore a world with a day/night cycle, learn about that world's inhabitants, and eventually solve their problems. Think of it kind of like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, but if the sidequests were the entirety of the focus with no Groundhog Day time reset mechanic and none of the Zelda stuff like combat and dungeons. You play as a young boy who, after a late night JRPG binge session, is sucked into the world of the game he was just playing. Everything is off from the way it was portrayed while the boy was playing the game, though. The hero he had previously controlled is actually a silent menace, raiding peoples' houses for treasure and slaughtering every innocent animal that crosses his path in an endless quest for EXP. The townspeople seem more concerned with problems in their day-to-day lives than the supposed world threatening crisis outlined in the game's intro. It's up to you as the boy to investigate this world's mysteries, help the townsfolk, mend the damage the hero has done, and eventually restore love to a loveless world.

Speaking of love, I fucking loved Moon. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the music, I loved the way it looks (even though the Switch port is a little crusty in that basic emulator-y kinda way), I loved how constantly bizarre and surprising and funny it was. Like I said earlier, it's the very definition of a game made for me. It was essentially the progenitor of a long line of games made for me, and of games potentially made for me but I don't know yet because I haven't played them due to not understanding Japanese (UFO: A Day in the Life translation next please? Anyone from Onion Games reading this??). For as similar as Moon and Chulip are in their systems and pacing, I think I might actually like Moon better despite it coming earlier? It's not as full force maximum impact absurd as Chulip is, but it is a lot more playable and less obtuse once you get a grip on the time limit mechanic. You don't need a full strategy guide included in the instruction manual for Moon, and you don't need to exchange business cards with every single character to get information vital to finishing the game either.

I truly cannot recommend Moon enough if your taste in games ventures anywhere off the beaten path. Maybe this is a little conceited of me, but I assume if you're reading this article, let alone this far down into it, you relate to my video game opinions at least a little bit? You should play Moon. Everyone reading this sentence should play Moon. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is my game of the year for the year 2020.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Death Stranding (PlayStation 4, 2019): Death Stranding, much like Metal Gear Solid V, was a game I enjoyed for the gameplay and not much else. The story, characters, and writing were a huge disappointment for me, but man if I didn't enjoy lugging those boxes around and setting up my hellish cross-continental goon summer camp lookin' zipline network. Mr. Driller Drill Land (Nintendo Switch, 2020): I am a known Mr. Driller Enjoyer, and I enjoyed this Mr. Driller. Originally released for the Gamecube, Mr. Driller Drill Land is another long-time Japanese exclusive that finally came stateside this year and it's packed with new and novel twists on the Mr. Driller format. It looks super sharp, the music's great (also the credits music is the most impossibly out of place and extra as hell shit in the world and it's hilarious), and it's just a good ass time. The main campaign is pretty damn short, but if you're a post-game content kinda guy it has that and it's all super hard. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (PlayStation 4, 2020): They finally made another good new Tony Hawk game, and all it took was perfectly remaking two of the best old Tony Hawk games! Plays exactly like you remember it with the added benefit of the best mechanics from up to THUG1, looks great, packed full of content, even has most of the music alongside some mostly crappy new stuff. It's the full package as is, but I do hope they end up adding THPS3 to it eventually. Mad Rat Dead (Nintendo Switch, 2020): Mad Rat Dead was a pleasant surprise that I only picked up because I saw a couple of people on my Twitter timeline constantly talking about it. A fun and inventive platformer where all your actions need to be on beat with the music. The gameplay feels great (aside from some not so great performance issues on Switch), the soundtrack is fun, and it's got a real good style to it. Demon's Souls (PlayStation 5, 2020): I love Demon's Souls and this is Demon's Souls. It plays exactly the same with some minor quality of life changes. I don't agree with many of the artistic changes, but there's no denying it looks incredible on a technical level. If you want to play Demon's Souls again or for the first time, this is a perfectly valid and fun way to do so. Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party!!!! (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Groove Coaster is one of my favorite rhythm games, and they finally made an acceptable at-home version with Wai Wai Party. It's not a perfect replication of the arcade game control-wise, I have some issues with the song choices, and the pricing is frankly fucking ridiculous if you're not a Groove Coaster maniac like I am, but the same ultra satisfying gameplay is all there. You can even play it vertically in handheld mode! Flip Griiiiiiiip!

And we're done! Phew! Honestly didn't realize I played that many good games until I typed all this out. Thanks as always for reading this far. I'm gonna try and get back to regularly posting Breviews this year at the very least. Honestly don't know if I'll get anything else up on here, but we'll see. Here's to hoping 2021 is a little bit less of a nightmare!

#article #Year Wrapup

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janeofcakes · 4 years

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KYFC..: Chapter 13

Hello, my friends! I hope you are all having/had a lovely Sunday. I apologize for being late with this chapter. I decided to try out a beta and it is definitely a learning process. I hadn’t anticipated the extra time editing would take, or wanting so many “final” read-throughs. Mind you, I truly believe the chapter is better for it. However....for whatever reason, I’m more freaked out about putting this chapter out there than any other so far. Haha. Whatever the case with me, I hope you all enjoy it.

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My heart burns with feeling, but whoa my mind, it’s cold and reeling. Is this love, baby, or is it just confusion? --Jimi Hendrix, Love or Confusion

John stares up at the red roof of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in the late morning sun. It is a fairly small and assuming home, but he cannot help wondering at what secrets it holds. He has bubbled with anticipation since he read the words “..walking into Poe’s Baltimore home is both disturbing and ethereal” on its website at breakfast. He had invited the skaters along, but they all had other plans already. So, here he is, standing before it alone.

He is about to walk up the small wooden staircase at its entrance when he becomes aware of a presence to his right. He turns quickly and comes face to face with a hesitant Sherlock Holmes, shifting his feet and looking at John with a face full of uncertainty.

“Hi,” John grins and Sherlock looks surprised. “I didn’t see you at breakfast. You did eat?”

“I put together something in my room,” Sherlock answers, his expression shifting. “I often request that the kitchenette be stocked with some of the basics.”

“That is a great idea. I’ll have to remember that,” John nods, making a mental note.

There is a moment of silence while he considers the coach’s demeanor curiously.

“Are you going in or just passing by?” he gestures to the house.

“Oh, going in,” Sherlock clears his throat. “Poe is a favorite author of mine.”

“Mine too,” John remarks. “Want to go through together? We could go for lunch when we’re done.”

John tilts his head and furrows his brow as he watches Sherlock. The taller man looks utterly flummoxed and John has no idea why.

“Erm…well, I rather thought after this morning…after what I did...and said...” he pauses awkwardly, waving his hand in a rather general way as if hoping it will somehow clarify his meaning. John raises his brows in question and Sherlock sighs in frustration. “I know when I’ve been dismissed.”

“What?” John huffs a startled laugh. “No. That isn’t what I meant at all. Look, I know I left abruptly.”

“Quite,” the coach replies curtly.

“Okay, okay,” John responds, his tone growing defensive, “and I didn’t say much.”

“You would have avoided speaking entirely if it were possible,” Sherlock huffed, aggravation pulsing off of him in waves.

“Okay, Sherlock, I get it. I’m sorry,” John murmured. “I was...disappointed.”

Sherlock gives him a pointed look, but one that cannot hide the hurt in his eyes.

“With myself,” John rushes to say and continues in a decisive tone. “Not with you. I didn’t mean to give the impression that I wanted to disassociate myself from you.”

Sherlock’s face adopts an expression that screams ‘Really, John? Really?’. He lowers his narrowed eyes a moment and then gives John a sardonic smile.

“What impression did you think it would give?” Sherlock’s voice drips with annoyance, his whole body radiating anger.

They stare at one another, their words hanging between them, like a thick smog that leaves no room to breathe. John is no idiot. He gets what Sherlock is saying, but his past was the last thing he had wanted to talk about, especially after such a fucking spectacular night. Still there was no way around it. John had been angry while telling the story, but it had soon faded, leaving him exposed and frustrated. He had wanted only to leave as fast as he could before Sherlock had a chance to properly judge his actions and throw him out. He hadn’t meant to cast any sort of judgment upon Sherlock or make him feel he was being rejected. Christ, he is such a dick.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, hoping his tone conveys the depth of his feeling. He does not want to lose this friendship. He cannot lose it. He watches Sherlock for any sign of forgiveness and, to his relief, he sees the coach’s grey eyes soften and his annoyance fading.

“I should be the one apologizing, John. I am seldom able to deduce you so fully and when I finally could, I got carried away. It was stupid and an obviously very painful part of your past. I’m sorry,” Sherlock says in a rush, his voice flustered. He bites his lower lip and looks at John with nervous eyes.

“You,” John pauses, his mind processing all Sherlock just said. He takes a step forward with a playful and mischievous smirk, “can’t always deduce me? Like you do everyone else?”

“Haven’t I mentioned it before? I’m quite sure I have. You guard your secrets with great care, John,” Sherlock nods his head; half annoyed, half in awe.

“Yeah, but hiding something from you,” John puffs out a breath.

“Is nothing short of miraculous,” Sherlock ventures when John simply pauses. It sounds pompous, but it is exactly what John is thinking.

The two gaze at each as the taller man takes a small step closer and looks at John with an open, honest expression. John’s heart skips a beat while Sherlock’s next words give him a heart attack:

“You are the most intriguing man I have ever met.”

John is speechless for a full ten seconds. Any longer than that and Sherlock would have thought he had done something wrong. John takes another step closer to buy himself some time while he searches his mind for a reply worthy of Sherlock’s declaration. It is still so hard to believe this wondrous man would ever be interested in John the way he so clearly is.

“But I’m so...ordinary,” John finally laughs, unable to think of anything more articulate. For all his intelligence, Sherlock completely disarms him.

“No, John,” Sherlock is shaking his head before the words are even out, “you are extraordinary.”

John looks at him with nothing less than adoration and gives him a radiant smile. He believes he knows Sherlock better than most, maybe even more than Victor Trevor had, the wanker, but he wants to know more. He wants to know every detail of this man and his life. Every thought and memory, every feeling, every inch of his body. God, his body. John saw so much of him last night and it wasn’t enough. He longs to explore Sherlock’s body again, worship it with his hands and his mouth.

John bites his lower lip and shakes away those thoughts. This is no time to get distracted by desire, especially when John is this confused. What he feels, what he wants is so much more than the physical. John wants Sherlock’s mind and soul. He wants to know everything, feel everything. He wants to share Sherlock’s life. John can already feel Sherlock with him, even when he is nowhere near, like he is a part of him. John feels him down into his bones. It’s like nothing he has ever felt before and it is breath-taking.

What he has told Sherlock about his romantic life is true. He has devoted no time to dating during his time in the States. He put little effort into it in the UK, to be honest, but had dated off and on in uni and medical school. He really only felt anything for two or three of them and none of those feelings came close to what he feels for Sherlock. It is… What is it? John is so confused, his head spinning. What does it mean when you don’t just want to spend the night with someone, but every day too? To talk to him and learn about him more than you want to sleep with him?

John looks at Sherlock and is damned if the coach doesn’t look like he knows every thought in John’s head. Sherlock could probably see it all plain as day as it flickered over his features. John huffs to himself in fond exasperation before making a small bow, befitting of Poe himself.

“Shall we?” John gestures toward the brick house before them.

“Please,” Sherlock replies with a dazzling smile and his own stately bow.

With the air between them cleared, they enter the house and pay admission. Soon their guide is leading them through a most fascinating tour. Though it is no longer furnished, it is not difficult to imagine what it looked like when Poe lived in it, between their guide’s descriptions and Sherlock’s additions. Not surprisingly, he knows a good many things the guide does not. To her credit, she smiles each time he begins speaking and waits patiently for him to finish. He is courteous as well, not interrupting her canned stories before jumping in. John appreciates it all until he begins to notice how her eyes stray from Sherlock’s face to glide down his body approvingly. Clearly impressed with more than just his knowledge of Poe, she begins flirting with Sherlock in more and more obvious ways as the tour goes on.

When they stop to view Poe’s portable writing desk and chair, Sherlock moves closer to marvel at it. After the guide is finished with her speech, the coach begins mumbling about Poe’s writing habits and his works. It is truly fascinating how much Sherlock knows and John is more than happy to listen. He would gladly listen to Sherlock for days on end and never tire of it. The man’s voice caresses John’s very soul. Each sound is rich, smooth dark chocolate coating John’s ears with warmth.

Unfortunately, John does not have time to savor Sherlock’s voice or his words. A few sentences in and he notices their guide slowly moving in on Sherlock. Irritation wells up within him and John immediately has the impulse to touch Sherlock. Stake some sort of claim with a touch that is just intimate enough to say ‘Back off. He’s mine.’. Something that will definitely tell her to get the fuck away from Sherlock.

But he doesn’t. Sherlock is not his.

John just presses his lips together into a thin line and grumbles nearly inaudibly. He has no business being jealous. No place warding others away from Sherlock as though he were his. Sure, they spent the night together, that annoying voice in the back of his mind reminds him. They had sex, but that does not mean they are together. It does not mean Sherlock wants to do it again. They are able to step back into their lives and friendship seamlessly. This little jaunt proves it. There is no awkwardness between them, just some initial misunderstanding and then back to their kind of normal. If John is honest with himself, he has never felt so comfortable with anyone in his life. Not even Bill, and that realization strikes him with the force of a bullet.

“John?” Sherlock’s voice finally breaks through his thoughts.

“What?” John shakes himself back to the here and now, only to see both Sherlock and the guide looking at him curiously. He blinks once or twice, trying to devise from Sherlock’s face what might have been said.

“Are you ready to move on?” he asks him, obviously repeating himself.

“What? Oh, yes, yes. Move along,” John marches on with a vigor he doesn’t feel.

The three continue with what remains of the tour and soon the duo bids the guide farewell. None too soon for John, who notices her pressing a bit of paper into Sherlock’s hand under the guise of a friendly handshake. Her number, no doubt. Christ. John huffs and rolls his eyes before he can stop himself. He has largely kept his jealousy to himself. At least, he hopes Sherlock has not picked up on it. He has given no indication, but the git probably noticed the moment the woman began talking.

Sherlock and John step down the small staircase at the front of the house and head for a row of shops and restaurants a few blocks away. They walk in a comfortable silence, each left to his own thoughts. John’s mind wanders to the night before, this morning, the tour, the guide. He had been such a fool to leave Sherlock’s room the way he had. Hurrying from the bedroom and refusing coffee like he was ashamed or angry. Well, truth be told, he was angry about Sherlock’s deductions. He had not wanted him to know about Claire or the supposed baby. But why? John had done nothing wrong. Claire had lied, made up the baby and tried to trap him. He has nothing to be ashamed of, right?

Wrong. John was wrong. He was always wrong in a relationship. He kept himself closed off and his partner at arm’s length every time. Never letting anyone in and never actually giving himself fully to another person. Relationships can only last so long when one half isn’t all in. Claire had simply been the most persistent, but it had not worked either. She could not crack his shell. No one ever had and that was ultimately what John did not want Sherlock to know. If Sherlock saw that there was no hope of John ever loving him, if he saw that John was incapable of it, he would go. That is the truth of it. John really should not try to hide it, even in the interest of prolonging a relationship with Sherlock. It is dishonest and despicable. No better than the lies Claire tried to use to keep John. He will not be that person.

John shakes his head, trying to clear it. Lunch was meant to be a pleasant respite with a friend when he had originally suggested it. There would be plenty of time later, after the bout when John is trying to sleep in his own hotel room to think about his stunted emotions. John huffs. Not emotions plural, just one. John has absolutely no problem getting angry or feeling jovial, sarcasm, friendship - all within easy reach, but love. He loved his parents, of course. Everyone does. He had loved Bill, but not that way.

Bill.

Could he have saved him? Would it have made any difference or is Sherlock right? Would he be dead too?

John blinks and pushes away the thoughts more forcefully this time. Now is not the time for nightmarish questions that will drive his mind into darkness. If John is going to think about Bill at all and how he fits into who John is today, he has to remain objective. If John had to guess, he would say losing Bill contributed, but he was already doing it before Bill. In fact, Bill seemed to have been the only exception and now Sherlock is too.

Sherlock.

He seems to be the exception to every rule, and he seems to encourage change in John with every passing day. Today’s is more obvious than any John has noticed to date. He simply does not get jealous as a rule. He probably hadn’t cared enough about any partner in the past to get jealous. Yes, he expects loyalty when he and a lover agree to be exclusive, which he and Sherlock have not done. John left Sherlock’s room before they had a chance to even consider it.

Why?

Why had he left like that? People say John is brilliant and Sherlock is very much his intellectual equal, if not more so. His ability to strategize and calculate is amazing, and John still wants to learn more about his mind palace. Surely he deduced John’s inability to love as soon as he learned of Claire. John had told him. He told him he didn’t love her, couldn’t love her. Couple that with the stories of his other relationships and Sherlock would know that a relationship with John is the worst mistake he could ever make. John’s breath leaves him in a rush. He simply cannot bear the thought. He wants to be with Sherlock. He needs to be with him, but...

“Stop it,” the words hit him like a freight train.

John nearly stumbles on the pavement when Sherlock’s deep baritone cuts through his spiraling thoughts. He looks up at his friend, not failing to notice how the wind blows his dark curls into an unruly frame around his face. John narrows his eyes marginally.

“What?” he asks, confusion clear on his face.

“Stop,” Sherlock repeats. “I can hear you thinking. Isn’t that what you said to me? Just stop before you come to some erroneous conclusion.”

“Erroneous conclusion?” John repeats incredulously. “I can reason things out just fine, thank you very much.”

“I was not suggesting that you couldn’t,” Sherlock looks at him evenly. He narrows his eyes. “But you do not have all of the data.”

John resists the urge to snap at him in favor of looking away and straight ahead instead. After a few moments of silence, John sighs and looks down at his feet.

“I should have stayed this morning,” he says quietly, still not turning his head to face the taller man. “We should’ve talked and that’s my fault.”

“Well, we could talk now,” Sherlock suggests, the smile evident in his voice and John finally turns to look at him, still expecting to be mocked somehow. Sherlock does look amused, but John should have known better than to think Sherlock would ridicule him.

John gives him a small nod as Sherlock gestures to a nearby cafe simply called ‘A Taste of India’. What the name lacks, the air drifting from inside makes up for with warm spices and the scent of freshly baked naan. They are soon seated and indulging in some of the best Indian food John has ever tasted.

Halfway into the meal, John wets his lips and leans forward in his chair. He glances down at his plate and then meets Sherlock’s eyes.

“Uh, we should,” he clears his throat and shifts in his seat. “We should talk.”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirks up. John watches him, trying not to look nervous and probably failing miserably, judging by Sherlock’s expression. There is nothing John would like more than to change the subject and brush this off as he has done so many times in the past. He has run full-steam in the opposite direction, but Sherlock is so different. John is different too and he just doesn’t understand what any of it means. He has been allowed into this man’s life and knows what a gift it is, he treasures it with everything he has. Sherlock makes John feel calm and free, whereas he has felt undeniably trapped with every other person he has dated.

John eyes the incredible man across the table as he elegantly slides a fork from between his plush lips and chews. John wonders at the feeling that blooms in his chest, all warmth and comfort.

Then he blinks and shakes his head a little.

“You said I didn’t have all the data?” John clears his throat, trying to get back on track.

“You didn’t,” Sherlock says simply. John huffs a quiet, disbelieving laugh as Sherlock leans in. “You are concerned about your past, about what I have learned of it, especially this morning.”

John swallows. Sherlock does not break eye contact or miss a beat.

“You’ve no reason to fear, John. No reason to hide. That is all behind you and has no bearing on us now,” he explains in a very serious tone. “It will not write our future or cloud my view of you. No relationship is exactly like another.”

If John’s brain was functioning properly, he would point out that all of his past relationships have been exactly the same for him. However, his brain has seized because Sherlock used the word relationship. He said it like it is something he wants, like it is already a thing, a real thing. He says it like last night was not a one-off as John had feared. Still with his track record, Sherlock cannot possibly mean that. Maybe he actually hasn’t put everything together yet, in which case it is John’s duty to tell him.

“Sherlock,” he finally says when his mind gets itself together, and it still is not firing on all cylinders, “there’s something you have to know about me.”

“Is there?” he tilts his head. “Please enlighten me.”

“When Claire, her name was Claire. When she told me she was pregnant it was because she wanted me to marry her,” John licks his lips and stares at his water glass like it holds all the answers.

“Yes…” Sherlock prompts him softly.

“I didn’t love her,” John stumbles on, sounding more ridiculous by the minute.

“Right,” an affirmation to continue, not a judgment.

“Sherlock, listen. I…” John stops to wrestle with the panic threatening to burst from his chest. “I didn’t love anyone. I have never loved anyone I’ve been in a relationship with. I can’t guarantee it will be any different if we...if we agreed…”

“To date?” Sherlock ventures.

“Uh…” John is astounded by his bluntness. His mouth is suddenly dry and he clears his throat again. “Um, yeah, if you’d be interested. Are...are you interested?”

There is a sliver of hope in the words and hangs in the air between them. Sherlock opens his beautiful mouth to respond as the ringtone they both know to be Greg’s sounds. He had insisted on his own specific tone after Sherlock ignored one too many calls, which was not long after the lanky git was hired. John has caught shit on occasion for not forcing him to pick up.

“Damn it,” Sherlock mutters as he produces the offending device. “Greg, hello. Your timing, as always, is impeccable.”

“As long as you’re not having a quickie, I’d say I agree,” Greg laughs. Sherlock closes his eyes in resignation and, as if he can see him, Greg’s chortling ceases. “Oh, shit. You’re not on speaker?”

“No, I’m not on speaker,” Sherlock snaps his eyes open, “but for god sake, Greg.”

“Well, put me on,” Greg ignores his admonishment. “I want to go over the plan for tonight. I assume John is with you.”

“We have already done that,” Sherlock rolls his eyes. “What do you think we did last night?”

“I don’t know. What did you do last night?” Greg jokes. Sherlock’s eyes go wide and he does not answer. Greg’s voice comes over the line again, his tone suspicious. “Sherlock…”

Of course John hears none of Greg’s side of the conversation and can only guess at what he said to elicit Sherlock’s expression of shock. He is about to whisper an inquiry when the coach lays his mobile on the table.

“You’re on speaker now, Greg. You said you want to review the plan,” Sherlock prompts, impatience clear in his voice.

The remainder of lunch is spent talking through everything they spoke of the night before in the hotel bar. Their former conversation pushed aside in favor of discussing the bout plan with Greg, much to John’s chagrin. As much as he likes the GM and knows hashing out the plan with him is the right thing to do, John wants to know what Sherlock was going to say. Hen cannot get it off his mind.

As they talk with Greg, John holds on to the hope that he and Sherlock can resume their conversation, but it is all in vain. By the time they are finished, John and Sherlock have just enough time to rush back to the hotel for a change of clothes, to collect the ladies and their gear, and hop the bus for the night’s venue. The ladies are scheduled for an extended warm-up before they take the track and Sherlock insists on keeping a schedule once he has made it. For his part, John tries to stay focused, but cannot get Sherlock’s last two words out of his mind.

“To date?”

Had his tone been hopeful, curious, dismayed? John can hear the words exactly, but cannot put an emotion to them. He tries not to talk himself into anything, recalling Sherlock’s assertion that he does not have all the data, but really only succeeds in talking himself out of things. He sighs as he watches warm-ups. It is going to be a long night.

---

Oh, just the idea that you’ll have all read it when you get to this is a relief. What did you think? Quite a different ending from the last two chapters, eh? Haha. Dear Jane took pity and didn’t leave you in the lurch this time. However, y’all need to brace yourselves. John was right when he said it’s going to be a long night. What? Is that foreshadowing, Jane? Da da DAAAAA! Damn you.

I hope this chapter finds you all well and provides a little respite, in spite of my not being able to provide Indian food with it. Mmm. I definitely recommend it though. Love, Jane

@zentris @221b-carefulwhatyouwishfor @tooolforthissh--stuff @shana-movershaker @melmey-fanfics @louise175dk @technicallywiseoncns @underestimatemethatwillbefun @jhamishw @weirdlittlegoofball @superwholockpotterincamelot @superwholocklmt @ladidragonuniverse @kittenmadnessandtea @srebrnafh @welcometomyharddrive @annecumberbatch @kingdomofbrokenhearts @philliphooper @whodwantmeasaflatmate @gloriascott93 @vvaticancameoss @cow-mow @echosilverwolf @spazzz32 @absentmindedstuff @swissmissing @shuukichan @maeliandmyself @wtgilsa @thetranslucentwallaby @red-pen-revolution @britishaccentfan @dischorde @plasticstrawsmuggler @youknowyougrow @francj96

#Sherlock Holmes #Sherlock #sherlockholmes #sherlock loves john #sherlock fanfic #sherlock au #sherlock roller derby #john watson #johnwatson #johnlock #johnlock au #john is confused

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rannadylin · 4 years

Text

OC Personality Test: Idalia

Tagged by @queen-scribbles and I’m passing on the tag to @aban-ataashi @serenbach86 @lunarowena @risualto!

Here are the rules:

1. Go to this website.

2. Choose an OC and take the test for them.

3. Put their stats here.

I’m doing this for Idalia. I think I had attempted an MBTI test for her earlier in the campaign and got INFP but have had my doubts as her story progressed, and this result seems quite a bit more accurate for her:

Defender (ISFJ-T)

Mind - This trait determines how we interact with our environment.

3% EXTRAVERTED | 97% INTROVERTED

Yep, no surprise there; I write/play mostly introverts but Dal is the shyest of them all by far! Even shyer than Xipil who also happens to be an ISFJ...

Energy - This trait shows where we direct our mental energy.

41% INTUITIVE | 59% OBSERVANT

Well, she did have plenty of high awareness rolls in the game. This is pretty close to the middle though.

Nature - This trait determines how we make decisions and cope with emotions.

21% THINKING | 79% FEELING

She’s one of those quiet ones with *very deep feelings* that no one else is likely to ever hear about, yep.

Tactics - This trait reflects our approach to work, planning and decision-making.

64% JUDGING | 36% PROSPECTING

I suspect she scored so high on J because she’s such a hard worker and diligent and also just not fond of plans changing in the middle of them and such. (Much as she loves Ona, spending a day with her highly spontaneous Waelite friend would probably wear Dal out!) She was kind of confused when the God Squad was first assigned to go spy on Waidwen but then immediately changed course to go look for Magran’s artifact; being Dal, however, she did not at all speak up about it but it bothered her. (It bothers her even more in retrospect once they found the artifact and it was used to blow up her god, I suppose.)

Identity - This trait underpins all others, showing how confident we are in our abilities and decisions.

28% ASSERTIVE | 72% TURBULENT

Honestly I don’t even know where that 28% came from, has Dal ever been assertive in her life? Well, maybe a little when she attempted that intimidation roll against Yarrow despite not being able to add her glow to it anymore. XD But then - if she’s committed to a course of action - like rescuing her brother - Dal does get a little more assertive to make sure she sticks to it.

Bonus, behind the cut: Some highlights of the ISFJ descriptions that definitely do fit Dal, though there are parts of them that aren’t quite her either, but hey, that’s how personality types go :-D

“Defenders are true altruists, meeting kindness with kindness-in-excess and engaging the work and people they believe in with enthusiasm and generosity.”

Yeeeep. That’s like the basic Idalia definition right there.

“Defenders are found in lines of work with a sense of history behind them, such as medicine, academics and charitable social work.”

Yeah I guess being a priest (pretty well educated for Gilded Vale standards, right?) with healing magic and then later being a cook in a soup kitchen kind of ticks all those boxes...

“Defender personalities (especially Turbulent ones) are often meticulous to the point of perfectionism, and though they procrastinate, they can always be relied on to get the job done on time. Defenders take their responsibilities personally, consistently going above and beyond, doing everything they can to exceed expectations and delight others, at work and at home.”

Hmmmm I hadn’t considered Dal being a perfectionist, but she’s certainly meticulous and reliable.

“Naturally social, an odd quality for Introverts, Defenders utilize excellent memories not to retain data and trivia, but to remember people, and details about their lives.”

So the idea of Dal as “Naturally social” sounds kind of odd, but she does enjoy interacting one-on-one or in small groups with people she knows well enough. It’s just getting to know them that is so awkward.

Her strengths:

Supportive (”choosing empathy over judgment whenever possible“ yeah that’s pretty much how hearing from her parents the story of why they left her at the temple as a baby went...)

Reliable & Patient

Imaginative & Observant (she sees you blushing, Nona)

Enthusiastic (not a trait we’ve had much chance to see, I must write her a purpose in life to be enthusiastic about now!)

Loyal & Hard-working (”Defender personalities often form an emotional attachment to the ideas and organizations they’ve dedicated themselves to. Anything short of meeting their obligations with good, hard work fails their own expectations.“ yeah she definitely had an emotional attachment to her temple!)

Good Practical Skills (”The best part is, Defenders have the practical sense to actually do something with all this altruism. If mundane, routine tasks are what need to be done, Defenders can see the beauty and harmony that they create, because they know that it helps them to care for their friends, family, and anyone else who needs it.“ Dal is a big fan of mundane, routine tasks that do in fact help others! Like cooking!)

And her weaknesses:

Humble & Shy (yeah this is like Dal 101)

Take Things Too Personally (”Defenders have trouble separating personal and impersonal situations – any situation is still an interaction between two people, after all – and any negativity from conflict or criticism can carry over from their professional to their personal lives, and back again.“ Definitely applies to Yarrow being suspicious of her after Waidwen’s camp!)

Repress Their Feelings (”People with the Defender personality type are private and very sensitive, internalizing their feelings a great deal. Much in the way that Defenders protect others’ feelings, they must protect their own, and this lack of healthy emotional expression can lead to a lot of stress and frustration.“ Ha this also is like Dal 101)

Overload Themselves (“Their strong senses of duty and perfectionism combine with this aversion to emotional conflict to create a situation where it is far too easy for Defenders to overload themselves – or to be overloaded by others – as they struggle silently to meet everyone’s expectations, especially their own.” Aw, poor Dal!)

Reluctant to Change (She really hated leaving her temple!)

Too Altruistic (”Being such warm, good-natured people, Defenders are willing to let things slide, to believe that things will get better soon, to not burden others by accepting their offers of help, while their troubles mount unassisted.” Again, poor Dal!)

I must also quote the bit on Romantic Relationships for ISFJs, because uh...some of these elements may already be in my fic outline for her XD

“When it comes to romantic relationships, Defenders’ kindness grows into a joy that is only found in taking care of their family and home, in being there for emotional and practical support whenever it’s needed. Home is where the heart is for people with the Defender personality type, and in no other area of their lives do they strive with such dedication to create the harmony and beauty they wish to see in the world.

The trouble is, these are the benefits of an established long-term relationship, and Defenders’ unbearable shyness means it can take a long time to reach this point. Defenders are most attractive when they are simply being themselves in a comfortable environment such as work, where their natural flow shows this kindness and dedication. Relationships built on established familiarity are a warm prospect for Defenders – they take dating seriously and only enter into relationships that have a real chance of lasting a lifetime.“

#idalia #poe god squad campaign #oc personality test #that fits her so well!#and i really need to write the rest of her story now #from the desk of ranna #long post

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afanoftheglassscientists · 5 years

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The Glass Scientists Art-Style Changes

Hey yeah sorry but I saw someone complain about how the webcomic’s art style is jarring in the later chapters and that the noses are bad because they’re big and I’m back in full salt mode WHO WANTS SOME TEA!?

@glass-scientists your art-style has only gotten more beautiful as the webcomic continues and you work extremely hard on the comic by yourself and I am amazed you kept working on this for more than four years now while in a career and I hope you’ll be able to do so for the foreseeable future. When I comment on how your art changed please know that I’m not doing it to critique you. Okay you don’t have to read more of this I just wanted to be the 156th person to let you know you’re doing great.

ONE - The noses have always been prominent on the characters’ art design and having a big noses does not automatically make it look ugly. Admittedly there are artists out there who draw very ugly noses for very ugly reasons, but Sabrina Cotugno is not and never has been one of those types of artists. Yes, Jekyll’s nose is bigger, but is not the end-all, be-all take from his design changes.

Here’s him from Ch.1 Pg. 15.

And here’s him from Ch.7 Pg. 22

(And no, I do not know why the latter two picture are bigger.)

As you can see, the nose in the earlier chapters looks smaller, but Jekyll’s face is also a lot more...soft? Like think of ceramic pieces. You start out with soft clay and you mold it into the shape you want (but don’t forget to wedge don’t want it to explode in the oven) but then after the clay firms up a little you’re ready to carve it and give it a more pronounced form. That’s what happened in the later chapters: Jekyll’s nose, the shape of his jawline, his sideburns, hair and even his eyebrows has become sharper and more distinct. His nose isn’t just an attachment like a Mister Potato Head, its a part of him. To give him a smaller nose would mean changing his whole character profile.

TWO - Like Clay, Art Changes. Admittedly I was taken aback by the change in the comic’s art-style as well, but that will happen to literally any long-form manga or comic. Unless you’ve been doing comics for literal decades your art is going to change, because you’re going to change, and what you want from your art and the characters you create are going to change. Look at Bluechair by Shen on WEBTOON: while his artstyle has solidified these past few years his earlier comics are unrecognizable, because he’s been working on his Bluechairs comic for five years, often updating two or three times a week, and is currently on Episode 536 of Bluechairs, but technically he currently has 706 of them under the Bluechairs page. His comics are like the Sunday Newspaper kind of comics, so I’m not asking you to read his stuff starting from the beginning (in fact please don’t try to read it all at once: his early stuff is pretty good but let me remind you he has SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIX COMICS OF STUFF) but maybe read a couple of them from the beginning and then read some of his latest ones.

So yeah, its not unexpected from comics to change in style, either slowly due to how the artists gains a more experienced hand or by an intentional shift in art direction. Sabrina was in the latter camp, due to the fact that she felt the earlier character designs was too much like a Disney Princess Line-Up, which she mentioned in a page description that I cannot find but I know was real.

Honestly I really do like the more recent pages. I disagree that they’re less vibrant, because I think removing the high glossy sheen made the characters even more distinct from each other. Before the shift in artstyle I felt like everyone was getting the same brand of hair gel. Hot take coming, but the character who most benefits from this shift is Rachel, who’s been looking gorgeous these last few chapters.

THREE - Sabrina Cotugno has been working this story, these characters and the art of this webcomic mainly by herself, while still working a job as a cartoon director for multiple shows and is currently working on a project for Disney. She does not have a lot of time on her hands to fix mistakes and asking her to change things or give her “Advice” on her art is...I won’t say unwanted because that’s up to her as to whether or not she’d use that language, but I will say she probably doesn’t need your advice on how to draw art when she has already worked in professional spaces as a storyboard artist AND as a director.

Plus I’m going to be upfront here, and this is going to sound harsh: Do not fucking nitpick and tear apart content made independently unless warranted by offensive language or imagery, because not only is it unhelpful it is just plain mean. Yes, Sabrina has worked on shows before, but The Glass Scientists is not made by a group of people working together, with producers and press and editors to back them up. This is entirely her work. She is spending her own free time making this. This webcomic is hours, days, weeks, years in the making, in the wake of hot days, sickness, travelling, other deadlines and dying plants.

And to turn around and say “Oh the way you do the art now isn’t as good?” Fuck off with that. I’m not Sabrina, so I get to be mean here - You are allowed to admit you dislike these changes, but sending the artist messages directly telling them of your dislikes is an absolute garbage thing to do. Especially when you yourself are not an artist.

Like Sergeant Brokenshire has a beard in one panel but loses it in the next few pages. Cue the Cinema Sins ding noise I guess. Okay, that happens sometimes, she doesn’t have an editor to correct. Am I going to directly send her messages letting her know she did her webcomic wrong? Fuck no. She probably has been sent hundreds of “helpful” messages about it already, and guess what? She doesn’t have the time to correct every mistake because she has a job.

Of course if Sabrina or any independent artist does something horrifically offensive or even just something that makes you uncomfortable you are absolutely allowed to air your grievances. But so far Sabrina has been good so I’ve got nothing to complain about, and the asks she gets that do have issues with the webcomic she answers with grace.

So basically this wandered completely off from the nose discussion and into the ethics of fandoms for independently made webcomics, but anyway long story short.

The Glass Scientists is not yours and its not mine. It belongs to Sabrina Cotugno, and its hers to change how she sees fit. Get over that and enjoy the webcomic as it is and you’ll have a much better experience.

Sorry to sound preachy there. I’m not trying to act like the Fandom Police and I’m not trying to fight Sabrina’s battles for her. I just see a lot of bad fucking behavior toward other independent artists and I don’t want to see it here. I have been that anon who “critiques” or gives “helpful” advice to artists who had far more experience than me, so its not like I’m pretending to be above it all here. I’ve buried many a blogs because of my shameful past.

Most of this Fandom has been wonderful. Let’s keep it that way while it lasts.

Anyway that espresso really did a number on me. I’m about to crash and I’m getting the awful sense of deja-vu here. Sorry for being so salty on Fandom lately, I won’t do it again unless I see some real trouble. This has accidentally become a Midnight Post, so go to bed!

...Oh wait one more thing: PLEASE DON’T REPOST FULL PAGES OF THE WEBCOMIC!!! Access to the official page is not hard and despite a few hiccups (which is not Sabrina’s fault but the webpage itself) we have been able to see all of the webcomic. There is no need to repost the whole page and on Sabrina’s FAQ she specifically asked people not do this. If you want to read each new page and don’t want to refresh the website twenty time on Monday morning you can always follow her twitter or her blog “arythusa” where she posts a link to each new page after it uploads. In fact starting tomorrow I’ll be sure to reblog these posts to make sure you have a link available to click.

Okay now good night.

#tgs #the glass scientists

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aramis-dagaz · 5 years

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How do you come up with names for your fictional settings, factions, characters, etc? -a fledgeling DM

In all honesty, through a lot of pain, wailing, gnashing of teeth, beseeching of dark and eldritch powers, and wrestling with my crippling self-doubt. I can come up with an interesting and intertwining system of government, religion, social castes, and the history of it spanning a thousand years in a day, maybe longer if I’m doing a lot of research. Coming up with names will literally take me weeks, completely stalling the project until then. God help me if I ever have children. If you have trouble coming up with names, you’re not alone.

In the naming of things, you’ll want to follow these three Rs: Research, wRite it down, and Remix. - Research: exactly what it says on the tin. Hit the books, visit websites, keep your ears and eyes open to anything that sounds or looks interesting. - Write it down: you will forget. Don’t let those thoughts get away from you. Also record where you got those ideas from so you can revisit that particular well. - Remix: the fun and/or painful part where you torture your initial fodder into something useful.

Thankfully, there are a lot of tools and resources to help make this process easier, though it really depends on whether you’re basing your names on an existing or historical culture or making something more unique.

If you’re basing your naming schemes on existing cultures or fictional settings, then your best bet is https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/. This site, by far, has name generators for just about anything you can possibly want as well as generators for things other than names. Best of all, Emily, the site creator, explains her logic for why the names sound the way they do.

Another good resource and the one I use probably more often than fantasynamegenerators is http://www.behindthename.com/random/. This site provides actual real-world names along with some mythical, ancient, and literature-based names. Best part of using this site is that you can look up what the names’ etymology, historical development, and what they actually mean, which is perfect if you like to give your characters symbolic names. There’s also a sister site for surnames as well, https://surnames.behindthename.com/.

Sometimes, though, you’ll either not find what you’re looking for on the previous sites or want to dig a little deeper into the logic behind certain naming schemes. In that case, you’ll have to do some legwork. Doing an Internet search for “[whatever] name generator” or “[whatever] name lists” can help. Avoid baby name sites, they are complete garbage. Wikipedia can also help if you want lists of kings or historically important people (such as this list of ancient Egyptians, though admittedly these are for very important people who had their names written down somewhere, so your mileage will vary). This will help you at least get an idea of what these names look and sound like, if not actually create as-close-to-authentic names as you can. Also look up the languages involved so that you know how they look, sound, and are put together. Anglicized versions of names from non-European languages can be fraught with peril, as the combinations of letters you read don’t always translate to what you think they should sound like (especially Irish Gaelic and Chinese. Whomever did the Latinization of those languages needs to be slapped).

If you want to make names that are essentially just basic words from another language (like naming a character “Radish”, only in, say, Japanese), Google Translate is a good start and will give you an idea of what those words would look like written in English as well as similar words. However, I highly recommend trying out other online translators as it’s already firmly established that Google Translate is not completely reliable. I named a character this way, Altarus Almakhzun, which is bastardized Arabic for “Gears Inventory”, which fits because he’s supposed to be a djinni artificer.

If you’re looking for place names that are based on a real world culture or language, a good method is hopping onto Google Maps or getting an old road atlas that shows all of the tiny towns and villages, picking a random spot, and then just wandering around, making note of any interesting-sounding place names. If you’re ever on a road trip, keep a piece of paper and a pen handy to jot down interesting names you see on the roadsigns, but please please please be careful if it’s just you driving.

Okay, that covers names that are at least grounded in some version of reality. But what about truly unique names?

In all honesty, the sky’s the limit and you’re kinda on your own. But here’s my process: - Start with a strange or interesting-looking word or name (eg, Inpalav evolved out of Impavide, meaning fearless, the motto of the 90th Missile Wing) - Find the syllables and sounds that appeal to you. Make a list. - Load those syllables and sounds into the Hadron collider of your brain. Smash them together, rip them apart, twist them into a fractal gordian pretzel as many times as you please - Take a few of the results that stand out, and then mutate them through a thousand permutations, swapping out letters and syllables each time - Imagine someone saying this name in casual conversation, awed, reverent tones, and at the top of their lungs swearing eternal vengeance - Pick the ones that pass this Darwinian struggle

That said, though, here are a few other rules to make sure that you have something that’s workable: - Say the name out loud. If you can’t pronounce it on command, adjust it so you can. - Make sure how it’s pronounced and how it looks jive together. In my experience, I’ve found names that look cool and sound cool, and they don’t always coincide. - Keep apostrophes to a minimum. One per name is fine, especially if the apostrophe is culturally or linguistically relevant, but avoid them if you can. - Share your ideas with friends and see what they think. If they immediately think of a cutesy nickname for your Dark Lord of Ancient Evil or just immediately call your Elven Prince of a Thousand Apostrophes “Bob” in lieu of twisting their tongue into a klein bottle, it’s back to the drawing board.

Once you have some workable names, think about the fictional etymologies of them. You don’t need to go all Tolkien here and actually write out the exact origins of these names, but at the very least think about a few rules for this particular culture. Does the name mean something? Are there any common or reoccuring syllables? Does a particular syllable denote something about the character, such as gender, place of origin, or social class? This will help make the names feel more real and part of a larger culture.

A couple examples from my own settings: - The Fhalsnir are a very widespread species and have multiple cultures (they are the humans of the Firmament), but there are a couple of etymological holdovers from their homeworld. Typical names are about two to four syllables long and typically end in -ig, -rig, -vig, or -ith (eg, Sorvig, Sorvith, Maegrig). -ith is usually considered feminine, but cultural drift and change has made that rule largely irrelevant in the present day. Some cultures cleave to these rules, some ignore them entirely and adopt names from other cultures and languages, and most adopt some combination thereof. - One culture names everyone with numbers, with some of the longer names resembling a fantasy version of an IP address (given name, parents’ names, clan/tribe name, perhaps town of birth, etc). Should such a character found a ruling dynasty, they may end up be Primus of the Third Dynasty of the Nation of Seven, with their parents retroactively given negative number names for the history books, never mind that Primus of Third (informally Prime-Three) was originally Twelver, child of Octus and Quint, born of the Fiftieth Tribe of the One-O-Sixteenth Province.

As a reward for reading all of that, I’ll share a couple of links for some more esoteric and whimsical names: - 16th-19th century Puritan names: https://aramis-dagaz-imaginarium.tumblr.com/post/134169440876/brookenomicon-sonnetscrewdriver - If you want to give your characters some descriptive names but want to use some very esoteric words, such as Sagacious Zu from Jade Empire, this site has got you covered: http://phrontistery.info/clw.html - A collection of blog posts on names, including some random generators, ways to create fantasy names, and some name-based humor for writers stressing out over naming characters: https://aramis-dagaz-imaginarium.tumblr.com/tagged/names

Hope this helps! May your characters and nations get the memorable names they deserve!

#worldbuilding #midnight-mod #names

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journeysintowebcomics · 5 years

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Homestuck Liveblog #181

UPDATE 181: Meat

A long time ago, I finished reading Homestuck. It was quite the long tale, and it was rather enjoyable! At the time I thought there ‘d be nothing else, because Act 7 seemed like quite the final chapter – or if there was anything, it’d be bits and pieces that wouldn’t warrant a liveblog. Yet here we are! Turns out, after this long, there’s epilogues. In plural, as you can see. Somehow, there are now epilogues and they’re said to be quite long, too. After taking a cursory read that made me read more than I thought I would, here I am, reopening this liveblog to explore the epilogues.

What I have read so far...is not particularly enticing or even likable, at least in terms of enjoyment, really, but there’s something about the writing that makes me want to continue. Credit where it’s due, yeah. Still, I’m interested in seeing where this is going, and now, I’m posting my thoughts here for everyone to see. Here we go! So, let’s start with the epilogue liveblog!

You know, before that, I should note that now the story has its own URL instead of being into the old mspaintadventures website. Kind of late in the game for this change, Mr. Hussie. I mean, the story is over, and although there’s a whooole lot of new content, it seems a bit senseless to have this in its own domain. Then again, the rest of the mspaintadventures stories were kind of...hidden away in the website? I don’t remember links to them, when I used to read Homestuck. Maybe Homestuck getting its own domain is for the better. I do wonder if this is a hint more stuff will come in the future. The extra-epilogue. The postscript-extra-content. The seriously-guys-this-is-the-end chapter.

There are two epilogues, it seems. One is meat, the other is candy. I immediately notice this is related to the cherubs’ food. I wonder if it means one epilogue will be...bloodier? Crueler? More chaotic and violent? I mean more like something Caliborn will like, while the other will be more to Calliope’s tastes. I’ll start with the meat epilogue, simply because it’s to the left.

From what I can tell at a glance, there are no images, but there are colored words, most likely from conversations between characters. That should be fine, although Homestuck was pretty visual at times, its strength was the writing and characterization.

Well then! The very first paragraph already beats most of Homestuck in terms of extremely descriptive stuff. Heck, this reminds me of Worm, with its extensive paragraphs about bugs and how they crawl on people and cause all sorts of nasty effects. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Meat was definitely the right choice, you think, as grease drips down your chin. The meat is cold and undercooked, so you have to grab it with both hands while you rend it apart with your incisors. It bursts in chunks, filling your mouth with blood and your throat with mangled knots of gristle and long strings of muscle fiber. You take big bites, almost too big to swallow, so big that you choke on the meaty mulch and hock some of it up into your nasal cavity. You sneeze out a gooey rope of phlegm and flesh. You stop for a moment to wipe your face, but your chin is still slippery after you swipe the mess away. Slivers of meat catch between your teeth as you masticate with bestial enthusiasm. You use your thumbnail to fish them out.

...am I eating this meat straight from the cow.

Apparently the person who is eating meat that’s almost raw is John, who I guess gained a taste for raw meat at some point. Maybe he’s trying to emulate Jade’s canine half, for all I know. He’s with Roxy and Calliope, the later providing the meat. I suppose cherubs wouldn’t know about cooking meat. Speaking of cherubs, eating meat reminds John of Lord English, and he gets so sick thinking of Lord English he decides he knows what he must do. Alright! Didn’t waste any time dilly-dallying around!

JOHN: i have to go back and kill lord english.

ROXY: u sure?

JOHN: i think so. it will probably be hard. but i think it’s the right thing to do.

JOHN: everyone is counting on me.

When is this epilogue set? Before Act 7? I thought by now Lord English was dead and gone, not that it still was something that needed to be done. Then again, it’s not like Lord English’s death was shown on screen, if I remember correctly. Maybe this is after Act 7 and he’s going back in time with his retcon powers. I suppose he’d still have them.

Roxy seems disappointed, so I suppose she knew this had to be done at some point. Given John’s retcon powers, it’s not impossible this is the last time she sees John if things go wrong. Calliope is more accepting, saying it’s John’s decision. Time to leave?

Seriously, things have gotten quite more descriptive now. Still unsure if that’s good or not.

The farewell is quite unsatisfying, and the moment passes without John being able to make it better, so he goes to prepare himself and write a note for Roxy as a farewell and/or apology. Not only to her, to all of his friends. It’s like he’s aware the chances he’ll return here aren’t that high. I wonder if John would die here at the end. It’d be quite...something!

In this epilogue, there’s a Troll Kingdom, which I imagine is ruled by the trolls who survived Homestuck, raising the grubs created by ectobiology. Dave and Karkaroni are there, Dave lives with the trolls, I suppose because his relationship with Karkaroni now includes living in his hive.

KARKAT: NOT NOW DAVE. JAKE’S ASS IS ON TV AGAIN.

DAVE: stop ogling jakes ass this is important

KARKAT: WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO TELL ME WHOSE ASS I SHOULD STOP OGLING.

Apparently the reason why Jake’s ass is on TV again is because he and Dirk have a show involving rap battles and robot wrestling, which I suppose is the natural progression from when Jake used to get said ass kicked by a robot. People like the show, and I’m already convinced it’s partly because of the schadenfreude of seeing Jake losing against robots – because no way Dirk is losing, hah

Karkaroni has a few choice words for the fake gladiatorial show, and points out this show is all about zooming onto Jake’s ass. Maybe ‘pumpkin patch’ is an euphemism. Either way, the relevance of the TV show is eclipsed by the announcement Jane is running for president of the entire Earth. Aha, truly the wretched pastry baroness’ descendant.

DAVE: i dunno crocker is just an ambitious woman i guess

KARKAT: THIS SOUNDS FUCKING AWFUL.

DAVE: oh it is

DAVE: it absolutely is

DAVE: also like

DAVE: dont tell her i said this but

DAVE: i think shes basically a fascist

...well then. Oh all things that could have been used to describe Jane from what I remember of her, ‘fascist’ didn’t come not even close. Then again, it’s not like Karkaroni had any meaningful contact with Jane, and all Dave did was call her hot, which isn’t really the epitome of camaraderie and intimidate knowledge. They both even admit to that.

DAVE: oh also shes a fucking xenophobe

KARKAT: OF COURSE SHE’S A XENOPHOBE!

...ah.

...

Did I miss something? Was there something between Act 7 and these epilogues that revealed Jane harbors xenophobic inclinations? Why am I having to ask aloud ‘hey is Jane a xenophobe’

KARKAT: DAVE, I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE NOTICED, BUT

KARKAT: A LOT OF HUMANS ARE???

DAVE: yeah ive noticed

Well, that part isn’t really surprising. Humanity just has a knack for looking down on other people, I can only imagine how it’d be when it’s about other sapient species. If aliens ever make contact with humanity it’ll be a social mess.

Since letting Jane claim the spot of president of Earth is not good, apparently, Dave wants to stop her, eliciting laughter from Karkaroni who is already imagining Dave running against her. No, Dave couldn’t handle that responsibility, no way.

DAVE: anyway no

DAVE: im not running

DAVE: you are

Hm...unless Karkaroni got over the many issues he had from his leadership attempt during Sgrub this can’t end well. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t like the idea, precisely because he doesn’t feel like he has what’s needed to be a leader. It’s not that he would lose horribly – Karkaroni actually is rather popular. I suppose all of the Homestuck survivors are popular – it’s that he doesn’t feel ready and he seems to hate the attention. Understandable.

KARKAT: MAYBE I DON’T ACTUALLY LIKE BEING FAMOUS?

KARKAT: AND MAYBE THAT’S AS GOOD A FUCKING REASON AS ANY *NOT TO RUN FOR THE FUCKING PRESIDENCY OF EARTH*?????

KARKAT: NOT TO MENTION THE IDEA OF AN ELECTION IS KIND OF A FUCKED UP AND WEIRD THING TO ME CULTURALLY ANYWAY, AND I’M STILL KIND OF GETTING USED TO THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE CAN JUST... “CHOOSE” THEIR FUCKING LEADERS AND NOT HAVE THE SAME OLD MERCILESS BITCH IN POWER FOR SEVERAL MILLION YEARS.

Perfectly valid reason. I mean, it’s not something kind of inconsequential as being the class president of sophomore year in school or whatever it’s like up there in America. It’s president of the entire planet. If Karkaroni wins there will be consequences, even if he steps away immediately. Either he commits to this fully, or he simply shouldn’t run.

DAVE: ok ill just be the one to come out and say it

DAVE: shes going to be a fucking disaster for the economy

So Jane’s a republican. Haha! Ah, I shouldn’t touch this not even with a ten-foot pole. Nevermind that.

DAVE: i guess i have to admit

DAVE: part of this

DAVE: for me personally

DAVE: its

KARKAT: WHAT ARE YOU SAYING DAVE

DAVE: its about obama

Somehow, I didn’t even bat an eye with Dave described part of the reason why this is personal for him is because Obama didn’t get to be president due to, you know, the end of the world. I find it in-character, somehow. This isn’t the first time Dave extols Obama’s virtues, and after quite an extensive diatribe, he says maybe Obama reincarnated in Karkaroni. Thaaaat has to be the most Dave-y encouraging thing he could have ever thought. It’s for things like these that I like Dave, haha

Apparently only humans have tried to get to high offices, because no other species has even tried. They lack ambition, and given what I remember from Sburb, that’s believable. The only species that could come close to taking part in this are the trolls, and they’re not used to elections. No wonder humans have the high spots of politics.

DAVE: karkat dont stereotype

DAVE: remember the mayor

DAVE: remember how at one point a long time ago he raised an army and rebelled against an evil king

KARKAT: OH YEAH

KARKAT: SOMEHOW I ALWAYS FORGET HE DID THAT.

KARKAT: KIND OF MIND BOGGLING, REALLY.

KARKAT: HOLY SHIT, I MISS THE MAYOR.

DAVE: me too

Ah, yeah...I miss him too. I wonder what happened to him.

The government is in charge of troll reproduction through cloning, I suppose because the mother grub isn’t ready yet. In the meantime, the balance of power will get entrenched to the point where even when there’s a functional mother grub, humans will restrict troll population so they don’t take over the planet and make the horrors of Alternia happen. No lie, that’d be pretty bleak for humanity. Last time the horrors of Alternia were forced onto Earth everyone died. No troll right now would try, buuuut yeah, that’s not going to be forgotten...for a while.

Somehow, Dave’s arguments about how Jane has zero business acumen, is sinister, and trolls are getting the raw end of the deal are actually getting Karkaroni to pay attention, until he finally caves, simply because it’d make Dave happy. That’s sweet. But yeah, this is...not what I expected what would happen in the epilogue. Well then!

DAVE: aw yeah

DAVE: you wont regret it this is gonna be dope

DAVE: i think we have a great shot too

DAVE: with my political savvy and economic genius and outrageous flair for subversive anti establishment messaging and propaganda, and your big loud fucking mouth...

KARKAT: WHAT THE FUCK

DAVE: um i guess also your charisma and likability and shit

KARKAT: YEAH.

KARKAT: YOU MIGHT BE RIGHT...

KARKAT: I’M PRETTY SURE I CAN FAKE THOSE THINGS WELL ENOUGH.

DAVE: oh also

DAVE: your weirdly sincere humility

KARKAT: I PREFER THE TERM “SELF LOATHING” ACTUALLY.

DAVE: ok lets try to avoid that phrase on the campaign trail too

KARKAT: THIS ALREADY SOUNDS LIKE A PAIN IN THE ASS.

I’m not a political strategist, but if Karkaroni is going to run on a platform about how Jane sucks and there’s inequality towards the trolls, I’m not entirely certain it’s good there’s a shadowy human pulling the strings in the campaign. Kind of seems like bad optics to me. Then again, can’t say I know where this is going so let’s just wait and see.

Yup, Dave definitely will be the brains behind this presidency. They already agreed he’ll write what Karkaroni will say, even though he should improvise and speak from the heart, like he tends to do. Not a bad idea, it’s part of what makes him endearing.

DAVE: time to talk some strategy

DAVE: we need to rally as much high profile support to our cause as we can

DAVE: but there are some uh

DAVE: “lines of loyalty” to figure out

KARKAT: WHAT?

DAVE: i mean which of our friends are going to side with us and which ones will side with jane

It’s a safe bet to think the New Wonderteam will side with Jane and the Original Flavor Wonderteam with Dave and Karkaroni. Calliope likely will stick with Roxy, so she’d be on Jane’s side. All the living trolls would go with Karkaroni, so...overall? It seems to me the advantage is clear. Dave is slightly less optimistic than me, but he does think they can get many on their side.

...okay, what happened to Jade? What kind of twisted scenario involved her to the point where neither Dave nor Karkaroni want to talk about her? I’m almost afraid of finding out.

So there are four kingdoms, if I understand this correctly: one for humans, one for trolls, one for...carapaces, I guess, and one for the consorts, which would be aaaaaall the silly reptiles and amphibians from Sburb.

Jake’s support will be pivotal, and since I’m already betting he’ll be on Jane’s side out of, you know, being friends with her for quite some time, it seems like she’ll have the edge there. Then again, it’s true Jake is fairly timid, so there’s also a chance he’ll refuse to take a side. I’m starting to think any sane person would stay the heck away from any side in this mess, honestly. These two haven’t even announced Karkaroni as a candidate yet I already kind of dread what’s coming. I don’t know, it’s just this...constant atmosphere that something’s pretty wrong. I don’t really like it.

During all this, Dave receives a call from Dirk, so he calls back to ask what’s going on. This page ends with Dirk abut to insinuate he needs Dave to cut his head off again. I see these two’s weird pseudofamilial relationship is as messed up as ever. Charming.

So, back to the more Homestuck-y stuff. John zaps back to the story, apparently he agreed with Rose what needed to be done. First he makes sure Aranea won’t be up to shenanigans, taking off that ring of life from her finger. Good! Then he stashes Gamzee into the fridge again. Good! Everything’s fine over here. John zaps to the next plot point.

Ah, I have to read just two paragraphs to know what moment is this. The conversation below confirms my thoughts. Wait, I have to get the image for this moment:

There we go. Boy was it a pain to find it now that the long outline list is gone.

I think in Homestuck they had noticed John hanging out above them, and this time they see three of them, one of the Johns being an adult version. That’s going to be difficult to explain. Questions are asked, and evil Jade is zapped away to maybe get ready for the fight against Lord English, hopefully she won’t still be evil when the time comes, even if she technically is against Lord English and wants him dead. John is here to talk with Dave, anyway. If I recall correctly, Dave was supposed to give the final blow with that sword with the Welsh name, so my guess is that John is here for that. Get ready, Dave, you’re going to fulfill the fate you didn’t want in the first place! But at least I’m fairly certain John will be more successful at this than evil Jade was.

Turns out I’m not wrong about why John is here. In fact, the narration even says this:

Dave’s eyebrows descend beneath his sunglasses. You feel pretty bad because you’re about to completely circumvent the life-changing epiphany he’s just had that you know for a fact will make him a happier, chiller, and altogether more well-balanced human being.

Pretty unfortunate, really. It sucks to be Dave.

As I said before, Jade is zapped away to parts unknown, and Dave is informed of how everyone was spending their lives as normal adults with no big problems and a fairly peaceful life. Clearly John left the present before Dave and Karkaroni started their political war against Jane. Oh well. Off you go, Dave, get ready for a fight with Lord English. In the meantime, John will gather the rest of the team.

You know, I’m starting to realize I had a lot more to say about Dave and Karkaroni’s new political adventures than about the more familiar Homestuck-y messing around John is doing with the plot. I guess it’s because, as strange as the other plotline is, it just has...a lot other stuff to comment about that hasn’t been present in Homestuck before? Hm.

Yup, Dirk immediately asks for his decapitation as a solution for the tremendous defeat he has suffered at Jake’s hands, defeat that shouldn’t have happened because, as Dave states, Jake is pretty awful at everything. Either the show is rigged or Dirk must have quite a lot in mind for him to not even make an effort.

Yep, it’s rigged. I hope Jake knows. That guy never had a break during the game, hopefully he’ll get a break now. Speaking of Jake, he has to take the brunt of entertaining everyone while Dirk takes the call in the middle of the show. Whatever he has to talk about must be somewhat urgent, if he felt like calling Dave in the middle of it.

This narration sure is calling attention to Jake’s ass a lot, I lost count of how many paragraphs include something about it. Hussie, is there something you’d like to share with the class? Last time I checked the story he didn’t seem particularly interested in Jake’s ass, or in...Jake in general, really.

It seems what Dirk is doing here is intentionally making himself the villain of this show, but it’s not because he’s throwing Jake a bone or anything. No, it turns out there are more sinister goals here, or at least they’re sinister for Dave and Karkaroni’s newfound political ambitions.

DIRK: The point is, this is much less about me, and more about providing a foil for Jake’s heroism and charisma.

DIRK: It’s very important that his popularity continues to be cultivated, to maximize his political capital.

Sounds like they were planning Jane’s campaign for quite a while, if they went so far as to make Jake the hero of their show just for political capital. I bet that was the plan all along, right from the very first time this was broadcasted. How long ago was that, I wonder? But yeah, as Dave predicted, Dirk is fully on the Jane corner of this mess. He’s fully aware of Jane’s flaws and theoretical fascist/xenophobic tendencies, I presume, and he believes Jane’s the best for the current situation of the world. Whether he’s right or not...well...until proven otherwise I believe that too, yeah.

DIRK: We’ve all had our fun here, but it’s easy to overlook the fact that civilization on Earth C is hardly a sustainable proposition.

DIRK: Just beneath the surface, it’s quite a dangerous and unstable place.

Won’t lie, that never crossed my mind at all. From the way Act 7 ended, and how happy the ending was supposed to be, I simply thought things were going to be just peachy. I’m interested in knowing just how exactly it’s a quite a dangerous and unstable place. Care to explain, Dirk?

Guess not. I hope he explains how he knew what Dave and Karkaroni are planning, then. They took this decision like ten minutes ago.

DIRK: I think your heart is in the right place, but the dude is a complete amateur.

DIRK: He’ll get eaten alive. I also have a hard time imagining he even wants the job.

DIRK: Really, it’s an awful idea for him to even run. Think about how much it’s going to inflame the interspecies tensions on this planet. Is that what you want?

DIRK: I’m happy for both of you, really. It’s nice that you encourage and support each other in this way. But you’re sending him on a fool’s errand which can only end badly.

To be perfectly honest, other than the part about inflaming interspecies tensions on the planet, that was more or less what I thought. So far I agree. Even the part about inflaming interspecies tensions sounds plausible.

You know, it’s kind of fun both sides have a savvy Strider political operative. These two are more alike than Dave would like to admit, really.

The reason why Dirk is calling is because he wants to dissuade Karkaroni from running, even if he doesn’t say it. He admits Jake is not under Dirk’s beck and call, though. Does that really change anything? Dirk may not be on Jake’s good graces, but perhaps Jane is? Either way, this is a call to subtly dissuade and it’s not going to work because Karkat is stubborn as hell once he gets his head into something and he did. Tough luck.

The call is over, Dirk is back into the staged fray, so Jake thinks about Dirk’s capricious nature.

DIRK: Sorry for the momentary diversion, Jake. Now where were we?

JAKE: Momentary??? Gadzooks man you were on the phone for half a friggin hour!

JAKE: I know you like to get the crowd all hot and bothered but we are supposed to be professionals here!

...no wonder the crowd was starting to get so upset. Half an hour?! Just how slowly were the Striders talking?

Jake pulls out rhymes that honestly reminds me of Dave’s old rapping convos from like Act 1 or 2, peppered with old-timey sayings. It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder how Jake is popular all over the planet. It’s said it’s out of pity, but goodness, that must be a metric ton of pity. The rap fight ends with Dirk sedating Jake to take another call. Geez, no wonder you’re not on his good graces anymore, Dirk.

Aaaanyway, back to John. He has gathered everyone back at his childhood home, ready to start the discussion on how to get rid of Lord English once and for all.

Jake is sort of ruining the mood anyway by bouncing away on your old Green Slime pogo. Doesn’t he realize how dangerous that thing is? Of course not. The fool.

To be frank that thing looked fun to me, even though I wouldn’t ride it without a helmet. John needs to appreciate more the painful playground elements in his life.

It’s nostalgic to read a convo with the kids. I hadn’t realized until now I missed Jade’s goofy mannerisms. Jade was always someone I was so fond of. Heck, all of the kids are people I’m fond of, although I’m less fond of Dirk and Jake than the rest. My opinion of Homestuck may not be as high as it once was, but the characters are something I still appreciate.

John answers a question: what happens to the people from the timelines they all left? Who knows. They may have stopped existing, which I’m sure is something they’d have liked to know before, but there’s nothing that can be done about that. Better start planning so they don’t die horribly and make nothing matter, alright.

The planning is mostly disorganized and structureless, although some common themes that often recur involve you and your original three friends leading the charge, since you are the oldest and wisest, and therefore the strongest, with the exception of Jade, whose gaudy array of powers make her the most formidable of the group, bar none. Aside from that, it appears the consensus is that the melee will likely devolve into an absolute free-for-all—at least going by the general patterns of incoherent banter, shit-talking, and points of pedantic tactical disagreement plaguing the jam session.

Sounds about right. I still think Jade would be very useful in the fight as long as she’s actually there and not...getting knocked out by mailwomen-turned-winged-dog. Maybe this time there’ll actually be something about the kids getting into a fight with Lord English. I’m not really going to hope for that too much, given how Hussie is not into catering to orderly narratives, but eh. No harm in dreaming.

The reunion ends when Jake eats dirt when he falls from the pogo, and in all this there wasn’t even a word about the plan. Not a good omen for the ‘show everyone fighting Lord English’ dream, really. The kids all talk together, some of them meeting each other for the first time, while John wistfully stares at Dad Egbert who is visible through the window.

The sun is hitting the glass in such a way that you can’t see his face.

Ah, yes, how could I forget the eternal sun that was in Dad’s vicinity all the time, that’s why his face always appeared mostly blank. That’s why the sun was right beside the Homestuck letter logo, it’s always there. Besides, if it’s a bad idea to go talk with Dad Hebert, may I ask why they’re all gathered in this yard, one week before the meteors strike? I know I’d be alarmed if I looked out of the window and saw seven hooligans and one adult hanging out in my yard.

There are other things to be wondering about, anyway, like the fact John may not be seeing these as real versions of his friends. Then again, in my opinion, he’s thinking a bit too hard about this. Of course he’d feel kind of detached, simply because of the age difference. That’s hard to overcome. Is it time to leave and go possibly die? Grab hands and hope it’ll go okay!

No, seriously, why am I taking like a page for John’s retconning and like three and half for Dave and Karkaroni’s Elect-a-Troll 20XX? Oh well. Dirk is still in the stadium, apparently their shows always ends in a riot, making me wonder how are they popular with people. Public disorder doesn’t really paint a good image of you. The caller is Rose, and she’s not feeling happy.

ROSE: The bottom line is this.

ROSE: I am ascending, and it is terrible.

Is Rose reaching Nirvana? How else am I supposed to interpret ‘ascending’? It’s not like she’s not a higher existence already, what with godhood and all.

What’s going on is that Rose is being plagued from visions and a higher awareness of her alternate selves’ lives and tribulations, giving her something close to omniscience when it’s about the universe, and Dirk is going through that too, which I suppose helps explain how he knew what Dave wanted to do. That’s what Dave will have to go against? Good luck to him.

I have to wonder if Dirk being such a stalwart Jane supporter is fueled by his recent omniscience. Maybe he knows something Dave and Karkaroni don’t, maybe the warning he gave them was something he foresaw. That aside, then he also must have known how useless it was to call Dave and that it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Having omniscience must seriously suck. At least Dirk has a way to work with his omniscience in a way that won’t wreck him apart, and I’m curious what it’s going to be. That said, though, a story about Dirk and Rose having foreseen a nasty future and working to stop it even at the cost of a few valuable friendships would be interesting. I’d read that.

Any conversation that will come from this will be at the studio later. I for one am looking forward to it, I admit. It’s an interesting topic, rich with possibilities and potential for development. It’s a shame these are epilogues, though. In the end, this will go nowhere, I imagine. Isn’t it a pity when you come across an idea or a plot that could span an entire story, but you know it’s not likely to come to fruition? Real shame, that.

I think I’ll stop for now. I have read only seven pages out of forty-three or so, but this should be enough for now. I can’t say I have been...enjoying this. I’m interested, but not really happy so far. Maybe it’s because a couple rather questionable things have come out of the blue and for the life of me I can’t make them fit with the characters or the story. Strange.

Also, something about the writing style is...off. It’s far more descriptive than Homestuck usually was. Most of the time it’s nice, other times I wonder if it was necessary. Still, I wonder where this will go, so at least the epilogues have that on its favor. Just for that, I think liveblogging it will be worth it.

Still, these epilogues are non-canon, aren’t they? If they’re canon can you please tell me that? Thanks, readers! So, for the time being, this update ends here.

Next update: next time

#homestuck #homestuck liveblog #webcomics #liveblog #webcomic liveblog

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