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#there is only one live version of another's arms that matters

ffsg0jo · 3 days

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tw: grief, death, illness, and angst - i wrote this in like half an hour and i was really in my feels, so pls excuse me if it's bad

uncle sukuna, who's been in and out of jail, is always seemingly in trouble with the law and couldn't give two shits about it. ever since leaving home and his twin brother behind, he's only lived for himself and himself only. he'd be damned if he lets anyone change that.

he receives a voicemail from his brother one day, telling him he's had a little baby boy called yuuji. jin wants to put everything in the past behind them and would love for his brother to meet his precious son. sukuna only scoffs and deletes the voicemail almost immediately.

it's only when jin texts him a video of yuuji (who he's surprised to see almost looks exactly like him, minus all the tattoos) 8 months later babbling what could be interpreted as "papa", does he falter. the kid's adorable, but sukuna isn't ready to face his brother just yet.

many more months go by, and jin seems to have taken the hint. except he gets sent another video, this time on his birthday. he clicks on the video, unable to resist and its yuuji, wobbling on two legs, clapping his hands, and singing his own version of happy birthday (??). he's gotten so much bigger and looks so much like his father.

the only word sukuna recognises from yuujis incoherent nonsense is 'kuna', and his heart softens. he messages back a "cute." and leaves it at that. jin sees the message and doesn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

jin messages him again a week later, only this time sukuna's heart drops. kaori's dead, and her funeral's next week. he's only met her twice, but she was good for his brother, and she was always good to him too.

he sees his brother for the first time in years at the funeral. jin's hair is a mess, his face unshaven and sunken in; grief seemed to have aged him 10 more years. sukuna's many things, a bad brother included, but something in him breaks when he sees yuuji screaming in his father's arms, not understanding where his mum's gone.

he doesn't know why, but he walks up to jin and offers to take yuuji instead. the toddler immediately calms down in his hold, now more confused as to why there's a man that looks exactly like his dad but with sharpie all over him. jin breaks down, stammering out a thank you, and excuses himself, leaving sukuna alone with his nephew. he'll hunt down his brother later, but for now, he'll keep the brat occupied so his dad can grieve.

sukuna hears from his dad that jin's fallen ill months later. he's speaks to his brother more often now and has even met up with both him and yuuji a couple of times. but jin's never mentioned being sick. he's been looking worse, for sure, but he just put it down to being a single father to an energetic toddler.

he moves in with them the next week. jin keeps getting worse and even little yuuji's noticed.

sukuna tries his best. he really does. he's not been there for jin previously, but he makes sure he's there now when it matters. it's all new to him, caring for people. he tries to cook the most nutritious meals for jin, making sure they're yuuji friendly too. he makes sure the house is always clean, even though yuuji's making a mess every 10 minutes. he changes diapers (both yuuji's and jin's), bathes them both, and tucks them both into bed. he even reads yuuji a bedtime story just to maintain normacly even though he hasnt read since he was a child.

he checks up on jin, constantly seeing if he's feeling okay and gives him his medicine. he holds onto jin with the utmost care (almost carrying him) when they go to visit kaori's grave or when yuuji insists on both of them coming to the park with him. when jin can't sleep at night due to being in excruciating pain, he's there. by his side and holding him. he's never been this affectionate, but he's also never had a dying brother before.

it's still not enough, though. the last couple of days were the hardest, and even yuuji knew enough to be on his best behaviour.

sukuna silently sobs into his pillow at night, when the whole world's asleep. he's filled with regret and hatred for himself, but he knows it's too late now. he tells his brother he loves him and that he promises to take care of yuuji no matter what. jin only smiles, his eyes shining with unshed tears, and tries to kiss his cheek as a thank you, and i love you too.

jin died with one arm holding yuuji, the other holding sukuna's, and his wife's name on his tongue.

sukuna was left all alone, once again. except this time, he had no brother to give yuuji back to. as he promised jin, the stars as his witness, he'd do anything for yuuji and to keep him safe.

his life was no longer his own. he had his nephew to think about.

#🌻.sunspell #why did i cry writing this 😭😭#jjk #jjk writing #jujutsu kaisen #sukuna ryomen #ryomen sukuna #yuuji itadori #itadori yuuji #jin itadori #itadori jin #sukuna x reader #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #🌻.uncle sukuna au #uncle sukuna

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dean-winchesters-clit · 6 months

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I need y'all to understand how fucking important it is that their lovemaking song was La Vie En Rose.

Those translated covers you hear on TikTok take their lyrics from a Louis Armstrong cover of the original French version sung by Edith Piaf. The English lyrics are beautiful but there are some things lost in translation, which is why I love that they had Izzy sing the original French version while Stede and Ed are making love.

Edith Piaf's version of the song is all about the intensity of love and finding love after a trying time. Her vocals are incredible and bleed all the different emotions she feels while singing. Izzy starts with the English translation of the song, which goes:

But a closer translation to the original French would be:

"Quand il me prend dans ses bras; When he takes me into his arms/ Il me parle l'a tout bas; He speaks to me softly/ Je vois la vie en rose; And I see life through rose-colored glasses."

Obviously this is fine and dandy, but it's the translation of the original French lyrics used later in the episode that really get me. Izzy sings this:

Which translates to this:

"He speaks words of love to me/ They are every day words/ And they do something to me.

"He has entered into my heart/ A bit of happiness/ That I know the cause of.

"It's only him for me/ And me for him, for life/ He told me, he swore to me, for life."

It's that last verse that the English version just wouldn't be able to capture. The translated version of that verse is about angels and love songs and mentions nothing of a vow to love one another for life.

That's what's so special to me about the French version of the song being used in that moment. Edith Piaf sings as a person who has lived through so much pain and suffering (which she definitely did as a French woman living through World War II) and finally finds comfort and peace in the arms of her beloved.

That is ultimately what Ed and Stede are for one another. Safe harbors, calm waters, peaceful days and nights in each other's presence. They bicker and argue and hurt one another, but they always come back together so easily. Stede was hurt and needed reassurance, needed to prove to himself that he wasn't a whim, needed to feel the security of Ed in his arms. And perhaps they shouldn't have gone all the way that night, but they're both impulsive and obsessed with each other and they needed something.

It's that song that lets me know they're gonna be okay. They're intense and impulsive but they compliment each other. They fit together perfectly, and they find comfort in one another no matter what's happened to them in the past. They need their harbors, their anchors, each other. They'd never leave each other behind. They make each other's lives la vie en rose.

(Edit: fixed a translation error)

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mo0nfairy · 10 months

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ᥫ᭡ . # ۫ , ⸺ THIS IS A LIFE, PART ONE !

summary :: in every universe, spiderman will inevitably lose the one thing that matters most to him: y/n l/n. miguel o'hara, peter parker, and hobie brown have all suffered through this story. they soon discover another version of you is alive, bound to fall in love with miles morales and to die abruptly. with the prospect of a second chance and a newfound obsession, these four men will do anything to keep you at their side.

chapters :: the masterlist.

word count :: 7.5k

content warnings :: yandere!miguel, yandere!miles, yandere!noir, yandere!hobie, reader death, gore/violence, murder, electrocution, fire, guns, alcohol, cigarettes, suicidal tendencies, kidnapping, stalking, physical restraint, child abuse/neglect, allusions to a child's death, physically abusive ex-boyfriend, infidelity, & torture.

──── October 17th, 2099 — Miguel O'Hara remembers the day the same way he will never forget you. August 24th, 1934 — Peter Parker remembers the day the same way he will never forget you. July 3rd, 2020 — Hobie Brown remembers the day the same way he will never forget you.

Y/N L/N. Miguel O'Hara, Peter Parker, and Hobie Brown will never forget them the same way they will never forget how it felt to lose them.

The inevitable fate of your demise is a cannon event for all spider-people. To love this person with every shred of their being only to live the rest of their lives without them; to love this person with all the might their body can contain only to let go of their hand in the end. It crushes their soul. Countless people are forced to live with the consequences of being bitten by a spider, not one had suspected it would be so detrimental.

Not when it is your life that has been taken.

Written in the stars is this destiny. How they will never love another again, but vow to be a hero and refrain a similar fate from falling onto anyone else. Many have been able to crawl out of the bottomless pit that is grief, but others have succumbed to the unforgiving anguish and let their life escape them. Just the way yours had. After all, what is life if you are not present? What is the point of living if there is no one there to patch up their scars and praise them for their heroic acts? There is no point, which leaves these three particular spider-people here. Their body is stuck in the past, reliving each moment with you up until they lost you forever.

October 17th, 2099. It was all his fault. Maybe if he hadn't let his violent tendencies toward anyone who isn't you slip through the seams, maybe if he had been more persistent in his reminders of how loved you are. Maybe if he had tried harder, Miguel O'Hara would still have you here at his side.

Miguel's attempts to make this sudden transition in your life as easy as possible turned out to be disastrous. He is not stupid; he knows this upbringing into this new lifestyle you claim to be "kidnapping" was blunt. He knew this, yet still, his plans on easing you through this change had collapsed right before him. Time had passed, and he naively assumed your fear had depleted, far too caught up in the sheer delight that came from holding you in his arms. Days and nights spent trailing his fingers down the expanse of your skin and kissing away the bruises his fangs had left upon your lips. This is a dream, Miguel always catches himself thinking.

And his sweet daughter, Gabriella. How she adored you so much. Even more so than her own father, he often joked. Coming home to find you both brushing the hair of her numerous dolls, baking treats that were rich with far too much sugar, or fast asleep on the couch while some whiny kids show plays on the television. His heart hammers like a fluttering hummingbird at the sight of you so soft and calm with his daughter. However, your guard then builds itself back up, brick-by-brick, faster than a gust of wind when he makes his presence known. In a way, Miguel found himself... jealous of Gabriella. That gentle and loving nature of yours, why couldn't he have it for himself? Why couldn't you give him some of that attention, even just a blink? What could that crybaby brat possibly have done to deserve such an amazing thing!?

No matter what kind of thoughts suffocate his mind, Miguel always tried to keep himself composed in front of you. With his tall, muscular physique, it makes sense why you are so intimidated by his appearance. If he were to ever let this satiating envy bleed through the bandaids, however, you'd certainly never open your heart to him. The prospect alone makes his chest tighten with dread.

And he had been so negligent towards his daughter, it only makes sense why she would turn to you. With how breathtaking, elegant, brilliant, electrifying you are, Miguel can understand why she loves you so much. Still, this does not refrain him from tightening his jaw whenever his daughter does something as trivial as hug you. That should be me with Y/N. Let me hold them, let me hold them, let me hold them like that.

It's his fault he had so frivolously expressed his envy through sharp gazes, a towering frame, and muffled shouts through the thin walls. It's his fault he never assured you these ugly emotions were never your fault, since you could never do any wrong in his eyes, after all. It's his fault he didn't drown you in even more heaps of affection, to further remind you of just how much he needs you.

It is his fault you are dead.

Overcome with drowsiness, Miguel heedlessly packs his daughters lunch for school that day. Despite how you are usually the one who does this task, since you have always adored looking after the little one, you needed your rest. And he was insistent on treating you with even more intensive care, all to prove that he is the right one for you. No one else. Meanwhile, Gabriella sits at the kitchen table with her backpack on, swinging her short legs back and forth. She is bright with full energy that contradicts her father's state in a comical manner.

"Y/N/N always cuts my food into cool shapes! Yesterday, they made my sandwich star-shaped!" Gabriella exclaims to her father with admiration.

The mere mention of your name from someone else makes Miguel freeze. A sudden surge of anger wraps around his lungs like a sheen layer of morning dew resting on Spring grass. You treat her with such attentive care, why can't he get any of that? What is so special about her that he doesn't have? What does he need to change about himself in order to get you to love him the way you so fatuously love her? Miguel casts his gaze across the counter and finds several bottles of cleaning products you must have forgotten to put away. So endearing, so adorable. An idea then sparks. While Gabriella continues to babble about how cool and amazing you are, Miguel finds himself considering something he will never be able to take back.

Just a dash of some drain cleaner in her sandwich and this problem will fade away.

"Y/N/N!" The sound of your nickname shouts through the air upon your arrival. Gabriella is more than elated to greet you, but your eyes remain locked on Miguel. In other circumstances, he'd be thanking the heavens above for this bit of attention you have given him. At this moment, however, there is a disturbed gleam of horror in your expression that makes his stomach twist with apprehension.

The energy is not directed towards Gabriella, as you caress her cheek and gift her that smile of yours that rivals sunlight. Miguel inadvertently rolls his eyes at the sight, envious as ever. As she continues to ramble to you about her success at a recent soccer game, you retrieve all the cleaning products and return them to their respective place underneath the sink. Not without shooting a burning glare at Miguel, however. Had he made his intentions that obvious? You wave him aside from his stance at the pink, glittery lunchbox and he obeys. Pretending to finish up his original efforts, you examine every snack inside for anything this crazed man may have tampered with.

"Good morning, button..." The nervous tremble in Miguel's voice doesn't tarnish the sheer adoration that seeps from his tone.

Your short response of "'morning" could barely be heard over the thunderous sound of his heart shattering. Yet again, you have broken his heart. And still, he will crawl back to you every time, aching for any inkling of your regard. Soon, you're saying your goodbyes to Gabriella and wishing her a wonderful day at school. Planting a quick peck to her cheek, Miguel's talons grow and dig crevices into the steering wheel while he waits for his daughter to join him in the vehicle. Oh, if only you could give him the same act of affection, he would never ask the universe for anything ever again.

And if only he had known how the rest of the morning would play out, he never would have left the house.

When Miguel finally pulls out of the driveway, giving you a quick wave that is not reciprocated, you let your guard down. You almost watched this man murder his daughter. Tears begin to form in your eyes as the revelation simmers like boiling water. With more time here, who knows what lengths he'll travel to?

Fortunately for you, with how occupied he was with his daughter and his own inner turmoil, he had entirely forgotten to lock the door to his office. The one place neither you nor his daughter were allowed to venture into. You were unaware of what is within the room or how anything inside could aid you in your attempts to escape. What you were aware of, however, is how paranoid he was in his efforts to keep you out of there. Peeling back the curtain and taking a fearful glance out the window, just to ensure this psychopath who claimed to be your soulmate wasn't lurking, you embark on your journey into uncharted territory.

Miguel had mentioned several times in his late-night talks with you about his job at Alchemax. His boring explanations about the technology he was working on there did wonders in lulling you to sleep. Now, seeing the scatterings of machinery that littered the room made you gasp from their futuristic appearance. One contraption had caught your attention, however. It seemed to be a current project, evident in the numerous tools and papers inked with equations littered around. Upon stepping closer to the contraption, a holographic screen sputters to life. You find several distorted, glitching files that all attain to you in some shape or form. Y/N's wish list, Y/N's checking account, and Y/N's security camera footage. Curiosity does spark, but with how swiftly Miguel is able to drop his daughter off and speed home to return to you, the time you had was not versatile.

If I can piece together how this gadget works, I may be able to call for help and get Gabriella and I as far away from this man as possible, you think to yourself.

The machine continues to stammer pathetically as if it were desperately chasing its own life. Trying to peruse through the technology to find anything useful, its poor performance prevented you from any fruition. In a fit of frustration, you pull your hand back and deliver a harsh smack! to the side of the machine. With how little time you have, you can feel your opportunity for freedom begin to fade away with every glitch that erupts. With one final, violent slam to the machinery, the metal borders protecting the numerous open wires inside fall, and a sudden wave of electricity surges through you. Your entire body goes rigid before you splat harshly against the ground. You are now left entirely lifeless, except for the electric shocks that cause your stiff form to twitch in response.

With that, your life was over. October 17th, 2099 — the day Miguel O'Hara inevitably lost the only thing that ever mattered to him.

August 24th, 1934. It was all his fault. Maybe if he had stayed with you more and neglected the city, maybe if he hadn't been so careless with expressing his love for you. Maybe if he had tried harder, Peter Parker would still have you here at his side.

Peter, too, attempted vigorously to make your transition to this new life with him as smooth as possible. At the very beginning of this new adjustment, hope had still plagued your mind. As days turned into weeks, soon months, the forest fire that was your persistence had slowly been snuffed out like an old candle. Now, all you can do is sit at the window seat of his apartment and just pray that someone will recognize your face. From the numerous missing persons' posters that were now left behind in dumpsters and rain puddles, you could feel your luck grow thin. Everyday looked like this, all with this lovesick maniac at your beck-and-call, deluded enough to believe this fantasy of being your doting partner to be reality. The amount of egg-creams you've drank is bound to make you vomit at some point.

At the end of the day, you had gotten what you had wished for. You were once a journalist, putting all your time into unmasking the famous Spiderman. The truth of his identity was now in the palm of your hands. However, there were far more consequences to this wish than you had originally anticipated. And Peter is overcome with guilt when he thinks back to how disastrous his efforts to give you his heart turned out.

It's his fault he had so carelessly exposed his acts of heroism through the stench of gunpowder and chunks of blood beneath his fingernails. It's his fault he didn't spend more time showering you in the affection you truly deserved. It's his fault he never assured you the inevitable fate of the bastards that hurt you was never your fault, just so you can realize that everything he does, no matter how calamitous, was all for your benefit.

It is his fault you are dead.

Slow dancing with you in the gentle haze of the moonlight peaking through the window, swaying along to some romantic melody echoing from the saloon across the street, amorous words that you'd hear from the lips of a poet whispered into your ear — this is where heaven is. This is all that he has ever dreamed of; this is all he has ever wanted for the two of you. This is what makes him happy.

"My heart is bleeding in your hands, dollface. It's all yours, I'm all yours." Peter's breath tickles your neck, the infatuation-stained harangue finally coming to an end as he continues to sway you along to the harmonies outside.

You often joke to yourself that you could stab Peter in the heart, give him even just a sliver of the turmoil he has forced into your life, and he would still give you a smile with blood painting his teeth and that revolting gleam of pure, unadulterated devotion in his eyes. With this devotion, however, comes dark, dark side effects. This was not a surprise to you, considering how you've been locked up like a bad dog for these past several months. Still, when you inhale and the sharp odor of iron poorly masked with bleach overwhelms your senses, you find yourself taken aback.

The clamoring sound of the bolts to your prison cell your captor claims to be your love den being unlocked brings you out of your thoughts. When the door opens and Peter walks in, all you see is a euphoric, hopelessly-besotted partner. With the sudden stench that is still heavy in the air, however, you feel a new, sudden sense of dread with his presence. He is elated to see you, as he always is. An impassioned kiss to your lips and an ardent compliment are essential to your everyday encounter with the man you thought once to be a superhero. Sometimes, a gift of fresh, blood-red roses may accompany him in his attempts to woo you further, as well.

Through the whiff of cigarettes sitting on his trench coat when he envelops you in a much-needed embrace after his long day of work, you sense something else. The tang you had inhaled from outside the bedroom is now stuck to his form, nestled beneath the aroma of late-night brume and smoke. You force a gag down your throat and reciprocate the affection, trying to push your suspicions to the back burner in your mind. The rest of the evening is like any other: listening to some tunes from the radio as the two of you play a card game, all that Peter deems as a "romantic date". Your winning strike against him (he always lets you win, but he won't tell you this) falters when your brain can't help but wonder what he was so occupied with outside that door.

As devastating and exhausting as the truth is, coming to terms with reality is the only chance you have of returning to the life you once had. Hoping he'll wake from his delusions and let you off your leash is nothing more than a pipe dream, you realize. If you want freedom, you'll have to take it by the neck and claim it as yours. So, as the hours of the night fade into dawn, you conjure a plan in your head while the man beside you snores in a deep slumber (not without a few sleepy mumbles of flattery for you, though).

The scheme you had so flawlessly crafted was quick, simple, and easy. You would do something you have never done before: initiate affection with Peter.

This was your ploy: fulfill all the fantasies his lovesick brain was infested with and watch with a newfound sense of hope as he forgets to lock the door, too dazed from the pleasure your sweet attitude had brought him. And it worked marvelously. Not only did this man forget to lock the bedroom door, he had entirely forgotten to lock the front door of the apartment altogether. The prospect of this mistake being a test of your loyalty lingers, but when you watch through the window as he swings away from building to building, you let out a roar of laughter.

After your fit of hysterics, a smile sits on your face as you tread to the front door. Something stops you in your tracks when your hand hovers over the doorknob. When you leave, you will have nothing but months of memories to defend yourself with. Who are the authorities going to believe — you, a mischievous journalist, prone to bending the rules for a good headline, or Peter, the famous superhero, notorious for his restless efforts to save the city? Despite the freedom you have dreamed of being right in your palms, you step away from the door. Instead, you look around for any evidence deemed beneficial. Whatever can put him under the negative limelight is satisfactory to you.

No stone was left unturned in the apartment, all besides a single door at the end of a long corridor. The night before, Peter had been so frantic with his time inside (all in order to get back to you sooner) that he was sloppy with his efforts in cleaning his mess. The spilled bleach he had accidentally knocked over was still lying in a puddle; the nauseating scent of fresh blood still satiated through the air like a fragrance. And lastly, the latch on the door had been left unlocked.

Without so much as a second thought, you enter the room and let your curious eyes soak in the sheer horror that resides within.

A metal chair rests in the middle of the room, leather straps tightened around a body that sits motionless. Two tables are located on the sides of the room where all sorts of gut-wrenching tools reside. And there is blood everywhere. What was once a second bedroom for buyers of the apartment has now been morphed into a torture chamber of sorts.

The person restrained in the chair, you weren't sure if they were even alive. Everything is drowned in so much heaps of red, attempting to use your mere first-aid knowledge is impossible. What is most perceptible, however, is the way their eye had been forcefully torn from its socket. It resembles a runny egg how it causes bodily fluids to cascade down their face. The amount of flesh on their body that had been torn asunder, the gag in their mouth that was oozing with tears and saliva, the gushing blood that continues to hastily seep from infected wounds. Everything makes your eyes blur and your stomach churn with nauseau.

With the career you once had as a journalist, you've seen some disgusting sights. Sneaking onto crime scenes from a brawly saloon fight gone too far or snapping pictures of the result of Spiderman's "heroic" acts to save citizens, you've become desensitized to gory scenes. But, this. This wasn't like anything you have ever seen.

"Y/N?" You hadn't realized how deafening the silence was until the poor victim is able to speak out.

With one eye practically staring daggers into you, the revelation hits you like a train. That voice, that eye. This is no other than the man you had called your boyfriend before this mess had snuck into your life. Or, ex-boyfriend, as you'd prefer to refer to him as. The status of your relationship was left a mystery after the night he had come to your home drunk and reeking of someone's perfume. Your insistent demands for him to sober up and inform you of his recent whereabouts earned you a harsh slap across the face. With a loud shout of how much of a “shitty partner” and "piece of cityside trash" you are, the person you thought to be the love of your life storms out of your home. Never to be seen again.

Hastily, you unclasp the restraints that left his skin numb and bruised. With how malnourished he had become from his time spent here, it was fairly easy to support his weight. You swing his battered arm around your shoulder and help him stand on his emaciated legs. After only two steps, he pushes you off of him harshly with what little strength his body was able to garner. His attempts served well, as you feel your stomach hit a table adorned with blood-stained utensils that make you sick to imagine how they were used.

"You... How could you...?" As his weak voice fills the air, you feel your stomach fold into itself. Does he think you did this?

Opening your mouth to begin stammering your way through what you intended to be a thorough explanation, a loud bang! then pervades the air. Without a second to process his actions, the man grasped the pistol left on the table and pulled the trigger. A stream of smoke now stems from the barrel. The betrayal, the aversion, and the debility in his expression tell you everything you need to know. You were so close to the finish line that would grant you freedom, but when you shift your gaze down, you're devastated to find a bullet hole protruding through your chest. You then slump to the ground and your killer falls not long after you, the act of merely standing too much for his abused body.

With that, your life was over. August 24th, 1934 — the day Peter Parker inevitably lost the only thing that ever mattered to him.

July 3rd, 2020. It was all his fault. Maybe if he had been more attentive to your safety, maybe if he hadn't exposed how soul-crushing the love he has for you is. Maybe if he had tried harder, Hobie Brown would still have you here at his side.

As opposed to the others, Hobie did little to ease you into this new life with him. The transition was curt, violent. With you as a bartender, drunken customers are most certainly not a rare sight. However, when you rejected a man who had one too many drinks and he reacted with violence, it caught you off-guard. And Hobie, the lead singer of the band that consistently played at your bar, had become blind with rage. Through the mess of the blood on your head when the beer bottle shattered against you and the apple-red matter staining Hobie's guitar as he smashes it relentlessly into the man's skull, these events somehow landed you where you are now.

An abandoned building on the outskirts of town, that's where you had woken up. The debris around the room was masked with string lights and band posters adorning the walls, as well as a rickety bed frame scarcely supporting a lone mattress. With bleary vision and an even fuzzier head, you gain consciousness abruptly. You find yourself on the bed with thick, itchy blankets draped around you, clothes that certainly do not belong to you on your body, and spiky belts used to restrain your limbs. Barbed wires and decaying planks of wood board the windows; the lack of passing cars and loud pedestrians outside cause you to worry about how far you are from the lively city you called home.

A lanky figure makes their presence known, dressed in those all-too-familiar garbs. Spider-Punk, the man you'd always see performing at your penurious bar, despite how widespread their band was. Much to your shock, his large hand finds the trim of his mask before tearing the garment off. Beneath is a gorgeous face embellished with piercings and a wild head full of hair. Large, wet eyes overwhelm you. And there is only one discernible trait you could read clearly through his expression: desire.

The way your plump body pools from the hems of the small clothing he dressed you in from his closet, fuck. Hobie has thought of this moment plenty of times — finally being able to take you away, just the two of you. He swore up and down he'd keep his fervid cravings at bay. But, when you're truly here in front of him, looking like that. He has to dig his long nails into his palms to physically restrain himself from lunging for you like a feral animal in heat. God, you look too fucking good.

From here on out, the relationship you have with Hobie sprouted into something only you would call treacherous, something only he would call rapturous. Being trapped within the small expanse of this grimy room, your new life has shown how perceptibly different your reactions are from one another. You are entirely dumbfounded at these new circumstances you've been forcefully thrust into. Meanwhile, Hobie attempts to put space between you both to avoid giving into his irresistible hunger. Though, it doesn't take a genius to notice how his hands always find their way to your naked skin and how his eyes linger on the intimate parts of your body. And it most certainly doesn't take a genius to notice the sheer terror and confusion stuck to your expression.

The discomfort the residence brings does little to ease you, as well. How your body is restricted against the firm mattress has your limbs aching with cramps. Your neck throbs from no support, considering the lack of pillows. But, Hobie always remarked that his chest is more comfortable to lay on, anyway. His clothing reeks of alcohol from the numerous bars and parties he’s attended, but also from the expensive perfumes, lotions, as well as the skin and hair products he received from his time being a runway model. The scent now clinging to your skin fails to bring you any of the tranquility he wished you would feel. Meals shared between you two were often dowsed in grease and cheap in flavor. Your captor never put much effort into making your dinnertime together anything reminiscent of a romantic date in Italy or something along those themes. He would much rather eat something else for dinner, after all.

This is what life looked like for the next several months. Records spinning and filling the air with headache-inducing songs he says he had written about you; Polaroid pictures scattered around the room that display different variations of the same scene: you sitting pretty with Hobie's hands and lips all over you. Never, never, has this man ever felt so much bliss in his entire life. He has always preached about how the idea of "love" is nothing more than propaganda meant to earn greedy, capitalistic companies more money with their cheesy movies and Valentine's Day garbage. When you entered his life in all your glory, however, he was ashamed to put his pride aside and admit those irritating pop songs may have been correct.

"I don’t need nothin’ else. 'Long as I have you here, birdie." He fidgets with the necklace he had given you that was currently draped upon your neck. His lucky guitar chip is swung upon the chain, since it always belonged to you, anyway. You will always be his muse.

With how carelessly he let himself be swathed in the warm blankets of love, how carelessly Hobie had let you slip from his fingertips.

It's his fault he had so frivolously expressed his protective nature through blood-stained bar floors and constricting arms encompassing your body. It's his fault he never assured you these conflicts weren’t your fault, it was only the monsters outside who wished to separate true love. It's his fault he had disciplined himself so heavily for his big heart, fearful of losing self-control with the love of his life.

It is his fault you are dead.

You regret not tallying the days you've spent locked up in this birdcage. Carving lines into the deteriorating walls to represent the slashes this new life has left in your sanity. It feels as if lifetimes have tread by you, the same day repeating itself like your own personal nightmare. Mere months have gone by and unbeknownst to you, the sweet escape you so despairingly crave is sitting upon the horizon. The circumstances of your freedom were the absolute last thing you had wished for, however.

Hobie’s history of being a heartthrob and heartbreaker were no secret to you, but his newfound loyalty to the innocent person he had taken from their previous life was even more evident. All the possessive, delusional fans that were convinced they'd marry their favorite singer, it was just so easy for Hobie to indulge in some casual fun before leaving them behind in his dust. As the story of all Spider-People goes, however, Y/N L/N is the tool that throws this man into a whirlpool of enamoring disarray. Embracing this newfound happiness was exhilarating for him, but Hobie was so dazed from it, he never had thought that karma would slither itself between you two.

A certain groupie, wholly convinced she and Spider-Punk are soulmates, was devastated to see how carelessly the love of her life abandoned her. Her mind had sprinted to all sorts of gut-wrenching conclusions. Am I not enough? Is he moving on? Is there someone else? Her worst nightmare materializes into reality when she stalks behind his tall figure and follows him to a building one late night, an odd pep in his step as he enters. What she assumes is just another exclusive club location with more taboo forms of partying, she is left stunned when she catches sight of what sights lie within.

The man of her dreams is found in the depths of infidelity. Through the crack of a rickety door coated with locks, there he was. Chest pressed against the back of someone else, who was sound asleep beneath an array of blankets like a baby in a crib. With his arms locked around them like a lifeline, Spider-Punk presses long, intimate kisses to their face. The words she had begged to hear from him, he was so frivolously drowning this stranger in such, despite their unconscious state. Every syllable was dripping with lust and smitten-induced hysteria. Tears brim in her eyes from how desperately she covets to be you in this moment.

With a shattered heart and a festering rage, she comes to the conclusion of what she must do. She will take him back, no matter what it takes.

Rarely did Hobie ever leave the expanse of your room, he wanted to stay with you forever. When he did, however, it was for some quick cash at yet another gig he and his bandmates had landed. Singing his lungs out, knowing every lyric revolves around the one waiting for him back home — you have brought him ecstasy he still cannot fathom the sheer weight of. A Friday night like no other, Hobie would spend the evening beneath the blinding spotlights, drinking the hours away, before returning home and cuddling with the only reason he chooses to live.

Through the barricaded windows and doors, a sudden stench of what appears to be smoke invades your senses. A big city like this, something along these lines is nothing out of the ordinary. After all, you were so thrilled to finally be granted a night to yourself, anything that would jeopardize this gift from the universe is seen as insignificant. When the heavy smell becomes more perceptible and the unmistakable sound of fire cracking gets louder, you feel dread tickle down your spine. The fear settles into your bones before you can think of a logical way to escape. Hobie did everything to ensure you wouldn’t leave his side, after all.

Air soon becomes precious, your lungs begin to squeeze, your skin is burning with scorching pain. It brings you the hell you had carelessly thought you felt before. A final cry of help into the suffocating air and you feel your life begin to fade. Meanwhile, the lost groupie stands near the entrance, holding back a satisfied smile. An onslaught of concerned pedestrians and firefighters accompany her. And Hobie was still far away, alcohol heavy in his system and the joy of returning to you seeping through his body like a drug. So blissfully unaware of what awaits him when he comes back to the place he had called home only with you.

With that, your life was over. July 3rd, 2020 — the day Hobie Brown inevitably lost the only thing that ever mattered to him.

The effects your departure has left on these men are all nothing short of disastrous. No longer do they have the vibrant, loving souls they once held. Day by day, they are dragging the dead carcass that is their own body, suffering through every second and hoping it will be their last. The paths your death have led these three are unique from one another, but they all find themselves in one specific space. Spider-HQ, within Nueva York on Earth-928. The story the multiverse has written for them had so selfishly taken their happiness away from them. Taking the pen for themselves and creating the most beautiful fairytale where you are alive and back in their embrace is the only purpose they now have.

Now, Miguel O'Hara stands at the office he earned from becoming the leader of this society. Upon the various monitors displayed around him are scenes taken from numerous different universes. Lethargy sits like bags of bricks beneath his eyes, slowly blinking as he ensures no minor mistake is present. If the multiverse were to crumble, his sole objection to save the only important person in Spiderman's life will fall with it. When he verifies all is well on Earth-1610, something perceptible then catches his gaze and he does a double-take. Any sign of fatigue within him is snatched out of his body, leaving him more awake than ever before.

Within this universe, Miguel finds you.

Before, these universes have only displayed the effects your death has left on all the spider-people. Today, however, is the first time he has seen you alive since the day he lost you. Lyla snickers and accuses him of having a cute, teenage-like crush when she takes notice of the sheer captivation in his expression. Little does she know how much history lies in your mere face. It is heart-crushing, how much the simple sight of you enjoying a cup of coffee (with one too many sugars, as he knows you've always preferred) has such catastrophic effects on him.

Piles of schoolwork are scattered around your desk, covered in information adhering to your current college major. Even with your lack of sleep, school-induced annoyance, and general exhaustion over everything in your life, Miguel has never seen something quite as breathtaking as you in this moment. An epiphany sprouts in his brain as quickly as the sight of you caused his soul to blossom, just like it did all those years ago.

Maybe he can stop it. Maybe he can get you back.

Your death is inevitable, and even though Miguel was aware of this, dread still pervades his stomach at the prospect and churns with his breakfast. What really makes him shudder is when he reads through the cannon events assigned to you. A flare of jealousy ignites within him when he finds an unfamiliar name in the midst of your story.

Miles Morales, the Spiderman you are meant to fall in love with. What good is he? He's just some stupid kid, what more could he possibly do that Miguel can't? Why would you choose this loser when he can give you everything you have ever wanted!? In a sudden fit of rage, he grasps hold of whatever matter was closest to him and uses all the strength within his muscular arms to hurl it across the room. His chest heaves with infuriated huffs; his claws slice into the meat of his palms. He is enraged, yes, but he is mostly devastated that the beautiful face on his screen will soon meet their inescapable demise.

Not only will he do everything in his power to stop your death, but Miguel also vows to put his blood, sweat, and tears into ensuring you do not fall for this boy. Additionally, he will formulate a plan to bring you back into his arms without destroying the multiverse as a whole. With that being said, this does not change how reality on Earth-1610 continues to play out in front of him. It’s like a television show; a show he'd give a 1-star rating out of sheer pettiness.

In his last year of high school, Miles Morales' life was thrown into a tornado when his parents enrolled him in a new school to finish his last semester. And the 18-year-old boy absolutely dreaded this. New people, new location, new clothes that poke and jut at his skin uncomfortably. With the hefty responsibility of being Brooklyn's sole hero and hiding this truth from his loved ones, this sudden alteration in his environment does not relieve any stress. Swiftly, Miles conjures a plan to convince his parents to send him back to the way his life once was. Slack off, play dumb, and bring home report cards that are absolutely atrocious and his parents will have no choice but to give their son what he wants.

However, this is not what happened. Much to Miles' dismay, the grand idea his parents had was to not let him continue his education comfortably. Instead, they hired a tutor to aid him through his final months of high school.

Rio and Jeff had invited this tutor for dinner at their home, which Miles had flaked on entirely. Mostly due to his duty as Spiderman, but partially from how sour he was about the state of affairs. When he returned home, their anger was practically palpable. However, this disappointment soon shifted into a long, insufferable tangent about how marvelously smart, mannerly, and kind this tutor was and how embarrassed they were because of him. That Saturday, he was expected to join this tutor in the school's library or his parents may consider grounding him once again. Miles has to refrain from rolling his eyes at their never-ending lecture.

March 11th, 2023. It will be all his fault. This day is the day Miles Morales will inevitably meet the only thing that will ever matter to him.

To earn some extra support through your time in college, you had decided to take up tutoring in your free time. The myriad of students you had met all possessed the same attitude — the kind of attitude you'd expect from teenagers whose parents forced them to do schoolwork in their free time. Miles fit this category well, at first. And how your situation developed, it was oddly refreshing to finally meet someone who isn't repudiating every second with you.

15 minutes late, open backpack spilling with paper, tie loose around his neck, the student most certainly made his presence known when he stumbled into the silent library. Attempting to fix his untied shoelaces, you rush over to help him and save him from any further embarrassment he was already enduring. You are able to catch the folder that had tumbled out of his bag before it hit the ground, to where he mumbles a quick "thanks" in response. His gaze is still locked to the strings of his shoes he was attempting to tie together as swiftly as possible. Nearly tripping, Miles makes it to the table you had once organized thoroughly, but was now cluttered with everything this boy had thrown onto the surface.

Oblivious to you, the boy whose parents described as having a "heart of gold," was doing everything in his power to appear as rude and ill-mannered as possible. Deliberately arriving late, making a fool of the two of you, messing up the neat array of lesson plans and pencils you arranged. Anything to convince his parents to send him away from the nightmare that is this school. This plan of his was seized from his mind like a rug pulled out beneath his feet when he finally turns his shoulder and shifts his attention to you. What Miles expected would be the slowest, drawn-out hour he's ever experienced would actually be the most exciting, life-beaming 60 minutes he’s ever experienced.

Your voice sounds like honey as you introduce yourself to him. And that heart-stuttering smile of yours works wonders on him. Miles had already known your name, but hearing it from your mouth made him think he was listening to a symphony of angels. Since the last few stages of high school are stressful for everyone, you decided to cut him some slack and offer a kind hand for him to shake. All thoughts of his old school and the comfort it brought are all eradicated as he stares into your soul with those wide, bambi-brown eyes. After months in this new environment, you must be a gift the universe sent to compensate for all the misery he has endured. And fervently, Miles accepts you as the best gift he has ever received.

"I'm Spiderman." His mouth moves before his brain can compute. Your brows furrow in response, scrutinizing the confession for some sort of punchline.

“I mean- shit, uh… I mean, I’m Miles... You-You know, like- kilometers, yards, feet. Except, it's Miles this time... Y-... Y'know?"

His relentless stammering to try and prove himself worthy of your time while also acknowledging he accidentally told you his deepest secret earns him a quick giggle. And the sound bouncing from your lips is nothing short of paradisiacal, especially when he is the cause. A sudden wave of silence then rests between you both. You, laughing nervously to lighten the awkward tension. Miles, entirely flabbergasted at how he could have ever wanted to miss out on something as profoundly magnificent as this. His mind runs rampant while his wide eyes remain locked on your averting ones. Do it, do it, do it. Just do it already, Miles!

He pulls his hands up, your eyebrows furrowing once more trying to consider his intentions. He then lands his touch upon your shoulder.

"Hey..." Miles' voice drops several octaves, a fiddly excuse of a smirk forms on his lips, and he squints his twitching eyes that still hold the same crazed wonder they've had since they first landed on you.

"Hi...?" Your response expresses nothing but sheer confusion, not your face burning from the attention like Miles had initially strived for.

Wrapping your hand around his, your mere physical touch sends flares of electricity down his skin. Goosebumps bloom across his arms and his entire body halts in place, tense with shock and nerves. In an attempt to forcefully remove his hold on you, you're startled to find how he is now stuck to your hand. As if he had lathered his hand in heaps of glue before touching you, the efforts you took to get this boy off of you only resulted in your skin painfully stretching.

So enveloped in the way his heart lurches from holding your hand, a sudden, hushed whimper of "you're hurting me!" and Miles feels a gasp involuntarily escape his throat. Attempting to pull away from you, as much as he wishes not to, only intensifies your pain. What had Peter told him to do when this happened? Oh yeah, just relax! But, how on Earth can he possibly relax when your hand is in his!?

People are staring, exclaiming in annoyed distress over their interrupted study time. You're trying to piece together how Miles had managed to cement his hand to yours and why he refuses to let go of you. Meanwhile, Miles is apologizing profusely for inadvertently harming you, while also soaking in how rhapsodic it is to have your hand in his. He knows he has fully fallen into oblivion when the prospect of letting go of you hurts him more than the relentless pull and twist of his flesh.

So much for first impressions, right?

⁺ 🎧 , 🪷 you are currently listening to . . . ⁺ 🪺 , 🎵 ꪆ

❝ MANY LIVES THAT COULD HAVE

BEEN ENTANGLED FOR ETERNITY . . . ❞

gif credits :: miguel, miles, peter, & hobie.

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cy-cyborg · 2 months

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Disability Tropes: The disabling change of heart

When a character in a story becomes disabled, they'll sometimes experience a trope that I like to call "the disabling change of heart". This is when the character goes through a massive change in their outlook, their personality, their goals or even roll in the story, specifically because they became (or are about to become) physically disabled. Sometimes, this will be in relatively small ways: the happy-go-lucky comedic relief character might become bitter, angry and jaded after getting into an accident that caused a spinal injury, or the severally depressed and nihilistic character might suddenly start acting more cheerful and hopeful, stating that loosing their leg has "put things into perspective and showed them what really matters". In other cases though, the impact is much larger, the heroic character you've been hearing about looses an arm thanks to the main character's actions, causing them to become consumed with anger and self-loathing which they take out on everyone else, eventually becoming an antagonist as they seek revenge for what the main character did to them. The morally grey or even villainous character is injured by their own scheme, giving themselves a permanent disability in the process, which prompts a change of heart and leads them to turn their lives around and become better people, maybe even deciding to team up with the heroes.

Now, having a character go through a personality and goal change due to a major life event, such as becoming physically disabled, isn't inherently bad. A lot of writers are told to tie major shifts in your character's development to major life events, because realistically, something like becoming newly disabled will at least impact how you view the world around you. I very frequently talk about how if I didn't loose my legs, I would have become a vastly different person, but the issues with this trope depends on how it's used and the reasons behind these developments, and whether or not the change suits the character in question.

Before we get into things, I would like to specify that in this post, I'm only going to be talking about how this trope is used with physical disabilities and other easily visible forms of disability. It does show up with characters who develop disabilities under the mentally ill and neurodivergent umbrellas, and is actually a bit more common than what I'm talking about today, but the specific ways its utilised are so different that it's more or less a separate trope, and one that deserves much more attention than I could give it here as this is already going to be a pretty long post. So for today, I'm keeping to it's use with physical and visible disabilities, and we'll talk about how this trope is used with neurodivergence and mental illness another day.

The main thing you need to be mindful of is ensuring that you, as an author, are not including your ingrained biases about disability into the reasoning behind the change. Let's look at one of the examples from before, an evil character who, after loosing their arm (because it's almost always loosing an arm for some reason) becomes a villain and wants revenge against the main character. In a story like this example, the character who became an amputee often views this new disability as something that has ruined their life. It's something that has caused them to suffer, and they want to make the main character (or whoever has "wronged" them) suffer like they did. Stories like this example portray disability as something that is not just horrible, but life-destroying, especially with villains who become all-consumed by the misery this disability has brought them. Many stories that utilise this version of the trope also often perpetuate the idea that if you become disabled, you'll have to give up all the things you love and your goals, even when this wouldn't necessarily be true for the character in question.

Let's say your character was a knight, and the main character cut off their arm in a training accident. obviously you can't be a knight with only one arm because you can't fight anymore, so they left their order. Now this character has become a villain and has found power that "makes up" for their disability, perhaps magic or some other force that doesn't exist in the real world, and are back to get revenge on the character for ruining their lives. Here's the thing though, the loss of a limb, or at least, the loss of an arm specifically, often isn't the career ender people think it is, even back then. In fact, there are many historical records of real amputees continuing to serve as knights and other similar military roles after loosing an arm or at the very least, continuing to fight in other ways. One such example was Götz of the Iron Hand, a mercenary knight who lost his arm to a cannon. Götz had fought as part of the Roman empire's military in 1498, but shortly after left to form his own mercenary company. He lost his hand in 1504 and continued his career as a mercenary with the help of an iron prosthetic capable of holding his sword and the reigns of his horse, among many other things such as writing, for another 40 years. Götz wasn't unique in this though, several suits of armour from the same time period have been found with integrated prosthetic hands, though the names of their owners are unknown. There was also Oruç Reis (aka Aruj Barbarossa), A privateer admiral who served the Ottoman Empire in and around the Mediterranean who lost his left hand - earning him one of many nicknames: Silver-Hand, thanks to the colour of his prosthetic. Oruç, like Götz, continued his career for several more years until he was eventually killed in 1518.

My point in bringing this up, is to highlight how important it is to double check that the reason your character's whole motivation for turning to villainy, isn't just based on your ideas about what a disabled person can or can not do. Actually double check it, research it, especially if it's important for your plot.

Even in the cases where the disability in question actually would stop someone from being able to do something, the incorrect assumptions can still occur and cause issues in different ways. For example, a character in a more modern setting who looses their arm due to an accident the main character was responsible for while serving in the military would be discharged, ruining the character's plan to become a general some day. This absolutely would be devastating for a character like that, and they realistically could struggle to adjust, both in terms of getting used to their disability and finding new goals for their life. They may well feel anger at the main character, however, if you are portraying just living with a disability, in the case of this example, living with an amputation as inherently "suffering" for no other reason than they are disabled, it is still perpetuating those really negative ideas about disability. I've said this a few times in other posts, but villains who are evil or even just antagonists purely because they're disabled or are trying to avoid becoming disabled is a trope all its own and one that is best avoided if you yourself aren't disabled, as even outside of spreading these negative ideas about life with a disability, it's just an overdone and overused trope.

But what about when this trope goes in the other direction? when you have an antagonistic or even just morally grey character who becomes disabled and this is the catalyst that turns them into a good guy?

For the longest time, I knew I usually disliked this version of the trope too, but I couldn't put my finger on why. With disability being the reason someone became a villain, the underlying reason it's there is often able to be boiled down to "I, the writer, think being disabled would be terrible and life like that is inherently suffering, so this character is angry about it," which is obviously an issue (the "inherently suffering" bit, not the anger). However, when a character becomes good due to becoming disabled, the reasoning is usually more along the lines of, "this is a big change in a character's life that has caused them to reconsider and revaluate things" (or at least, that's what I thought). This isn't bad, nor is it necessarily unrealistic. Hell, as I already said, I do consider my disability to be a catalyst that made me into who I am today. I also know plenty of people who, after becoming disabled later in life, did have a big change in how they viewed themselves and the world, and who consider themselves better people since becoming disabled. It's far, far from a universal experience, mind you, but it does happen. So why did this version of the trope still not sit right with me?

Well, I think there's a few reasons for it. The first being that there's a tendency for non-disabled people to think real disabled people are just incapable of evil deeds, both in the sense that they aren't physically capable of doing them (which is bad and not even always true for the reasons we already discussed), but also in the sense that there's this idea that disabled people are, for some reason, inherently more "good" and "innocent" - As if breaking your back or loosing a limb causes all evil and impure thoughts to be purged from the body. This is a result of many folks viewing disabled people as child-like, and thus attributing child-like traits (such as innocence) to them, even subconsciously. This is an incredibly common issue and something disability rights organisations are constantly pushing back against, as this mentality can cause a lot of unnecessary barriers for us. With how often I and many other disabled people are subjected to infantilization, I would be honestly shocked if it wasn't at least partially responsible for people thinking becoming disabled is a good reason to kick off a redemption arc.

This infantilization isn't unique to physically disabled people by the way, in fact it's way, way, more commonly directed at people with intellectual and developmental disabilities - or at least, people are more open about it, but as I already mentioned, how that is reflected in tropes like The Disabling Change of Heart is vastly different and deserves a post of it's own.

That's mostly just speculation on my part though, since that infantilising mindset does show up a lot in media, but not usually as part of this trope specifically.

However, it's not the only reason I wasn't a fan of it. When the disabling change of heart is used to fuel redemption arcs, I think, once again, that the disability itself being credited with causing the change directly is another factor. When this happens, it's usually because "it put things into perspective for me and showed me what really mattered."

This sounds better than our previous example on the surface, but stories that use this logic are often still portraying disability as an inherently bad and tragic thing, something so bad, in fact, that it makes all the other (legitimate) issues they thought were massive before seem so small by comparison. This is a type of inspiration porn: content made to make non-disabled people feel inspired or just better about their own situation. It's the mentality of "well my life is bad, but it could be worse, at least I'm not disabled like that!"

In a fictional story, this might look like an athlete character who dreamed of making it big so they could be famous and get out of poverty. They were a dick to anyone who got in their way but only because they were worried about not being able to make rent if they don't constantly win. One day though, they overworked themselves and got into a car accident on the way home because they were too tired, and now they're in a wheelchair and can no longer walk, which is (supposedly) absolutely tragic and way worse than anything else they were already going through. But they end up becoming a better person because it has put things into perspective for them. Yeah they were struggling to make ends meet, but at least they weren't disabled! Now that they are, they know they shouldn't have cared so much, because money doesn't matter when compared to not being able to walk, right?

As well as portraying disability in a negative light, these kinds of stories dismiss and diminish the other struggles or challenges the character is experiencing, placing the status of "not disabled" above all else.

There's also the fact that, when a lot of real people say their disabilities had positive impacts on their lives, they don't usually mean the disability itself is directly responsible for the change. There's exceptions of course but for myself personally, and most of the people I know who say they are better people because of/since becoming disabled, the disability has been more of a neutral catalyst than the actual cause of positive change. Meaning, it opened the door to allow those changes to happen, but it wasn't the direct cause. For me personally, becoming physically disabled at a young age didn't make me a nice person like people expect, I was still a little judgemental asshole for a lot of my childhood. However, because I was disabled, I had to travel a lot, initially because I needed medical treatment that my local hospital wasn't equip to provide, and later, because I started competing in disability sports. because of both of those things, I met people I never would have otherwise who made me reconsider what I'd been taught on a wide range of subjects, and made me question where those beliefs had come from in the first place. When I say my disability played a part in who I became, it wasn't because my disability itself change me, but it helped me meet people who were positive influences on me and my life. but when creatives make characters who experience arcs like this, they ignore this, again, defaulting to the "this was a bad thing that just put all my other problems into perspective" reasoning.

Some iterations of this trope also use disability as a kind of "karmic punishment" where the disability is portrayed as a rightfully deserved punishment for an evil character's deeds - usually something relating to the disability they acquired but not always. An example might look like an evil tyrant who punishes the rebels they captured by cutting off their hands. Eventually, this catches up with him, maybe the friend or a child of one of the rebels is able to capture the tyrant and cuts his hands off as payback so that he gets a taste of his own medicine, a taste of the suffering he imposed on others. Now facing at least one of the same realities of the people he subjugated, he realises the error of his ways. With some pressure from the main characters, he has a change of heart and surrenders himself, steps down to let someone else take his place, or perhaps he decides to start changing policies to be more in-line with these new morals until some other character usurps him, becoming an even bigger threat than the previous former tyrant.

Once again, stories that use a disability like this are still portraying the disability as an overall inherently bad thing, but there's the added layer at play in this example. The thing is, there are a lot of people in real-life who actually believe disability is a punishment from God. I remember one time when I was over in the US, an older lady came and sat down on the seat beside me on the bus and started asking me about my disability and specifically, how I became disabled. This isn't an unusual interaction, it happens fairly regularly whenever I use public transport, but on this particular day, the conversation suddenly shifted when I told her I became disabled when I was very young. This woman, despite the bus-driver's best efforts to get her to stop, ended up lecturing me for an hour and a half (during which time I couldn't move due to how my wheelchair was held in place) about how my disability was punishment from God for my parent's sins. She then tried to convince me to attend her church, claiming they would be able to heal me. And the thing is, this isn't an uncommon experience.

A lot of disabled people are targeted by cults using this same method: they'll convince people their disabilities are a punishment, make them believe they deserved it, that they just weren't good enough, but don't worry, if you repent and come to our specific church we can heal you. There was even a case in Australia recently that uncovered a cult called Universal Medicine, who taught that disabled people were reincarnations of evil people, and that being disabled in this life was their punishment, as well as that parents who have disabled children were being punished for other sinful behaviours. They were found to be operating a disability care service named Fabic that was being paid for by the NDIS, a subsection of the Australian government funded healthcare system that specifically aids disabled Australians by paying for and subsidising treatments, technologies (such as mobility aids) and other services relating to their disability. Fabic was found to be stealing excessive amounts of funding from their disabled clients under the guise of therapies and carer services, but was not actually helping their clients at all. Whether it's just taking advantage of them to get their money, or actually using this logic as a justification to mistreat them, this mentality of "disability is a punishment" actually gets real disabled people hurt or worse, and so seeing it come up in media, even if there is no ill-intent, can be very distressing and uncomfortable for disabled audiences.

So with all this being said, is the disabling change of heart a trope you should avoid in all it's forms and versions? No, but it does need to be handled with extreme care. I do think it should be avoided as a reason for a character becoming evil for the most part. If that really can't be avoided in your story though, at the very least, ensure that you foreshadow the change. Your happy little ray of sunshine, embodiment of sweetness and innocence type character probably isn't going to turn murderous and want revenge for an accident for example. A character who is likely to be driven to that kind of extreme of wanting revenge for their disability, so much so that they become a villain, probably already had at least a few traits that would predispose them to that line of thinking already, before becoming disabled. As for when it goes in the other direction, and you have a character becoming a good guy, avoid using the reasoning that "the disability put things into perspective for me". Instead, if you must use this version of the trope, use the character's new disability as the reason they encountered other people and situations that challenged their views, things they wouldn't have encountered otherwise. No matter the reason though, be very careful to avoid inspiration porn, and as always, try to find a sensitivity reader to give your story a once-over, just to make sure something didn't slip under your radar.

[Thumbnail ID: An illustrated image showing the same elf character twice. The picture of her on the left shows her laughing evilly, two tiny horns protruding through her brown hair. She is wearing a black dress and red shoes. On the right shows her in a yellow dress, sitting in a bright pink wheelchair with her head held eye and her eyes closed. The horns have been replaced with a glowing halo. In the centre is text that reads: "Disability Tropes: The disabling change of heart." /End ID]

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moonlinos · 3 months

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Invisible string (pt. I)

♡ Pairing: Lee Minho × fem!reader / Hwang Hyunjin × fem!reader

♡ Synopsis: With your terrible history of boyfriends during high school, you swore off love and vowed to get through university without a relationship. Things are great: you’re in your junior year, in an uncomplicated arrangement with a friend with benefits, and living in a nice sharehouse with two amazing roommates. But things begin to change once you meet Lee Minho, a student in your new class who vows to change your perspective on love.

♡ Genre: A ‘lite version’ of a soulmate AU, fluff, eventual smut, light angst, pining, jealousy, strangers to friends to lovers, friends with benefits

♡ CW: Swearing, sexual themes and discussions, mentions of anxiety/panic attacks, alcohol consumption, mentions of smoking

♡ Word count: 16.4k

♡ A/N: This is a three-part story because I can’t shut up. The second part will be posted sometime next week, and I’ll link it here. I’ve been writing all my life and have written for maaaany fandoms, but being on Tumblr as an active reader of SKZ fics made me want to write for them. So, yeah, guess this is what I’m doing now.

part II →

You are woken up by Hyunjin shifting beside you on the bed. He groans, arm reaching to mess with your already closed curtains. You chuckle.

“You know, the curtains won’t close any more than that.”

“I keep telling you your bed is in a terrible position,” He grumbles as you turn to face him with a smile. “Who thought placing a bed right under a window would be a good idea? Mornings are fucking hell here.”

You shrug. “Well, it’s not my house so I didn’t exactly have a say in that matter.”

“I told you a million times I could help you move it.”

“And I told you a million times Mrs. Choi doesn’t like for us to mess with her furniture,” You explain, turning under the sheets so you could face him before bringing your fingers up to pinch his cheek. Hyunjin scrunches his nose. “Speaking of which, you need to leave. You know her rule: no—”

“No boyfriends spending more than two days at the house,” He interrupted you with an eye roll. “I’m not your boyfriend, though, so that rule shouldn’t apply.” He shrugs.

Hyunjin has been one of your best friends since you first met over two years ago. It was Hyunjin’s first college party and one of the many times your housemates had dragged you along on a night out. His friends had dared him to try and chat you up, arguing it would be hilarious to see him get turned down by an older girl. What they hadn’t expected, however, was for Hyunjin’s clumsy attempt at flirting to be so endearing to you; his pink cheeks and bowl-cut hair made him look like a helpless kid despite his height towering over you. Before you knew it, you had spent the entirety of the party talking to him about everything and anything, only stopping once your housemate Eunha emerged from inside the house to drag you home with her as she desperately tried to dodge a rather insistent guy’s advances. After that day, you and Hyunjin became almost inseparable.

You can’t quite pinpoint when you began hooking up. It was meaningless in the best sense of the word. It was simply something that had happened. All you can remember is that Jisung had recently bleached Hyunjin’s hair after yet another dare from his friend. It had started with cuddles, which turned to kisses, which turned to touches, until you eventually slept together for the first time sometime last year after an excruciatingly stressful exam period. It had never once gotten weird between the two of you; the line was always clear: you were just friends who hooked up due to convenience. Everybody had needs and stress and shit complicating their lives, and fucking your best friend was far more practical and safe than going out to look for a random hook-up whenever you needed it.

You find yourself smiling at Hyunjin once again. His now long black hair fell in his eyes as he stretched his arms over his head.

“Yes, you’re not my boyfriend, but how am I supposed to explain what we are to a little old lady?”

“Doesn’t she always say she’s super modern?” Hyunjin raises his eyebrows at you with a chuckle. “Maybe she’d like a situationship of her own and you’re depriving her of that by keeping this knowledge to yourself.”

You roll your eyes at his words, attempting to push him off your bed. “Why did you sleep here, anyway?”

Hyunjin sits up on the bed, a pout on his full lips. “I had a shitty date. I was sad and lonely. Glad to know you were paying attention to my story.”

“Hyune,” You sigh, ‘When you tell me said story while fucking me, can I really be blamed for not remembering anything?”

Hyunjin flicks your forehead lightly. “Yes, you can. At this point, it’s like our thing to vent about bad dates during sex,” He argues before getting up from your bed, finding his shirt, which had somehow been thrown over your study desk.

“You mean it’s your thing,” Correcting him, you get up as well, turning to fix up your sheets. “I don’t even go on dates and you know that. The only thing I vent to you about is how awful academic life is.”

Once you turned to face him again, Hyunjin was busy messily tying his hair. His brows promptly furrowed as he took in your words. “Remind me why you literally never leave the house again?”

“Just don’t want to get distracted. Getting my degree is more important than getting a boyfriend.” You lie with a shrug.

Your history with relationships was something you kept secret from everyone you met after high school. You feel embarrassed, as if it was all somehow your fault. After five failed relationships where you had been the one to be broken up with or cheated on, you began to accept that maybe the problem really was you. Maybe something about you makes men want to yell at and cheat on you. Perhaps you are just bound to be a distraction until they find someone better.

Which is why you don’t date.

Would anyone go through the hassle of reading a long, tedious book if they already knew about the bad ending?

Hyunjin rolls his eyes at your answer, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your degree isn’t going to keep you company when you’re eighty and alone.”

“Well, my degree isn’t going to wake up one day and suddenly decide to leave me either,” you refute, earning an annoyed groan from your friend as you walk past him to leave your room.

“You literally never have fun, though. All you do is go to class, work, and study. You should at least pick up a new hobby,” Hyunjin insists as he follows you, walking into the kitchen-living room area. “Go out more, stop avoiding college parties like the plague before it’s too late to experience the joys of watching your friend throw up on some random person’s couch.”

You make a face at the offers, grabbing your mug from the cupboard. “Why would I want to see that? Besides, I have hobbies.”

“I meant a social hobby. Sitting in your room watching fucking iceberg videos isn’t sociable,” He explains, and you let out an aggrieved gasp. Your iceberg videos were educational and entertaining, thank you very much. Behind you, your housemate’s bedroom door opens, and you turn to watch as she stumbles out of her room, looking half-awake. “Soojung, don’t you think she should get a new hobby?” Hyunjin addresses the blonde girl, who stares daggers at him.

“If I say yes, will you two stop speaking so loud?”

Hyunjin slams one hand on the kitchen counter, his other pointing a finger at you. “See, she said yes. You’re outnumbered, now you have to stop spending all your free time holed up inside your room.”

Soojung groans, stepping into the kitchen and shoving Hyunjin to the side. “He’s annoying, but he is kind of right,” she mumbles.

Truthfully, you did feel bad about having essentially wasted three years at university by actively avoiding parties and invitations any chance you got. The only parties you did attend, however, only served as an irritating reminder as to why you shouldn’t put yourself in those situations. Parties and bars only meant desperate college boys. Desperate for sex, for attention, for a potential relationship. For someone’s heart to break. You had met Hyunjin at a party, for fuck’s sake. Who knows just how south things between you two could’ve gone if he had become interested in you romantically?

But, as much as you hate to admit it, Hyunjin is right. Your life is essentially an endless loop of studying and working. You only socialize when your roommates are home, when your few friends come over, and when you and Hyunjin hook up. But you aren’t ready to step out of your comfortable bubble of avoidance, so you settle for the best thing you can think of.

As Hyunjin rummages through your fridge like he lived there and Soojung stirs her coffee blankly, you loudly set your mug down on the counter. “An elective course,” you announce.

The both of them turn to face you with the same puzzled expression.

“The fuck?” Hyunjin questions, and you roll your eyes.

“I’ll take an elective,” you explain matter-of-factly, “The university offers a lot of great courses in things I’m actually interested in. It’ll be a way for me to get out of the house without having to watch a friend of mine puke on a couch or whatever atrocity it is that you said.”

Hyunjin slams the fridge door closed, earning a scolding scream from Soojung, and walks over to where you’re standing. He pulls you into a tight embrace, and you can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “You’re such a fucking nerd, what the fuck, but I’m so glad your hermit life is coming to an end.”

The elective course you choose is Japanese. It’s a language you’ve always been interested in learning, and while you know the class is merely introductory, you figure it will be fun to learn some phrases and expressions. You might even find yourself wanting to learn more in the future, and you’ll undoubtedly be glad you took this class during university.

Even if that means having to endure Hyunjin calling you a weeb.

You are able to begin attending classes a week after signing up; the lessons lining up with your work schedule to a T. The professor explained that, since you had joined the course late, you would likely need some guidance with phrases and words the class had already been taught. You didn’t mind, actually feeling excited in the morning despite your boring routine classes since you knew you would be doing something new you enjoyed in the afternoon instead of simply killing time around your house until it was time for you to work.

You walk into your first class ten minutes late, mentally cursing Eunha for being so good at telling stories about her weirdly entertaining life that it made it physically difficult for you to drag yourself away from her. You mouth a brief apology to your professor before scanning the room and scurrying over to the only available seat.

You sit down in haste so as to not disrupt the class any further, swinging your bag over your chair and accidentally knocking over your seatmate’s water bottle all over his side of the desk. Luckily, the bottle lands on the soft surface of his notebook, barely making any noise. Unluckily, said bottle had been filled with coffee, staining his notes a faded brown color. You silently gasp, instinctively reaching out your hands to fruitlessly try and dry the pages that are now sticking to each other.

“I am so sorry, what the fuck,” you mutter under your breath as you continue to inspect his notebook frantically. “I’ll buy you a new notebook and another cup of coffee as soon as class ends, I promise,” You whisper to him, your eyes boring holes into the stained pages as you watch the bitter liquid slowly dissolve some of the black ink. At this point, you’re rambling out of nervousness, but you can’t seem to stop, adding, “Hell, I’m so angry at myself for what I did I’d bind you a new notebook and brew you some fresh coffee myself.”

You mentally berate yourself for your word vomit. It was just your luck that you would make someone hate your guts on the first day you attended a class.

After what feels like minutes of silence from him, you are prepared for the imminent burst of rage bound to come your way, the guy’s wrath more than likely stirring inside him as he sits beside you and watches as you foolishly shake the piece of paper, hoping it will miraculously return to its untainted state.

However, what you aren’t prepared for is the small burst of laughter that leaves your seatmate’s lips; it’s quiet, but you’re close enough to him to be able to hear it.

You furrow your brows, finally mustering the courage to look up at him for the first time.

“Did you…” You trail off. You feel a strange sensation inside your chest as your eyes meet his. It was something you had never felt before, a small burst of a fluttering that briskly washed over you before disappearing just as quickly. Like a pinwheel was placed inside of you and a strong wind had suddenly started blowing. You shake your head, returning to the matter at hand. You are probably just experiencing some anxiety due to what has happened, you argue mentally. “Did you just laugh at me?”

As you finally take him in properly, the guy before you looks as dazed as you felt just now, courtesy of your minor panic attack; his lips agape and his round eyes blinking while his dark pupils are fixed on you. You two remain that way for a few seconds in an impromptu staring contest that causes the peculiar feeling to bloom inside your chest once again.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft. “You… offered to bind a notebook for a stranger,” His lips twitch into a grin. “It was a little funny.”

You open your mouth but promptly close it, unable to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make you appear like more of an idiot than you already do. You sigh. “Sorry,” you mumble, your voice low as well. “I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “It’s okay. I’m—”

“You two, on the back,” your professor calls out in a louder voice, however still keeping her calm demeanor. You and your seatmate turn to look at her. “I’m going to teach a few new phrases useful for traveling now. How about you two talk after class? This is actually quite perfect. Minho is one of my best students, so he could help you catch up to where we are.” She offers the two of you a small smile, and you feel your cheeks burn.

This class wasn’t mandatory, and you didn’t need it to get your degree. It is still a class, nonetheless. Ever since high school, you’ve always hated people who disrespect their professors by brazenly talking or sleeping during class.

“I’m sorry, professor,” You muttered. Beside you, your seatmate — Minho, as he was just called — scoots closer to you and whispers something you don’t understand under his breath. You look at him, confused. He chuckles, and you feel his breath on your cheek. It makes the odd fluttering return.

“Gomenasai,” He repeats more clearly, his voice louder, “It’s ‘I’m sorry’ in Japanese.” He offers you a smile, and you soak in just how good-looking he is. Ever since you first raised your head to look at him — when the pinwheel inside your chest rapidly spun and unexplainedly made you feel nervous — you knew he was a handsome guy, but his soft smile and calm eyes made him look even more annoyingly pretty.

Before you’re able to do it yourself, your professor speaks again and pulls you out of your trance.

“In this case, Sumimasen would be a bit more appropriate,” she corrects Minho, who clicks his tongue and mutters something under his breath. The woman chuckles at his reaction. “It’s okay. This is also something you can explain to Y/N after class.”

As the class went on, you couldn’t help but notice how Minho didn’t take any notes. Your mind latched onto how you ruined his notebook and how it was your fault that he couldn’t properly study during today’s class, so you couldn’t find the courage to offer him some paper so he could take notes.

After almost an hour of unrelenting guilt swallowing you up slowly, you place your hand on Minho’s shoulder as soon as the professor announces class is over after assigning the students a small written assignment.

“We could talk outside? If you want,” you offer him, feeling the now-familiar nervousness come back, making your mouth speak faster than your brain can even think to rationalize, “There’s a bench I really like outside this building. It’s a good spot. There’s a nice shade, and it’s secluded enough that people don’t bother me when I’m studying. Or googling how to bind a notebook.”

Minho lets out a brief chuckle. “Okay. I would love to talk on your favorite bench.”

You blink at him. “I don’t have a favorite bench.”

“Hm, it sure sounded like it. You listed some good attributes of that bench,” He argues, a grin etched onto his lips.

“I told you I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He raises an eyebrow at your words. “You’re nervous?”

“Of course I am. I never bound a notebook before.”

Minho lets out a hearty laugh this time, his head thrown back and his eyes turning into crescent moons before he shakes his head. He picks his notebook off the table, showing you the crinkly light brown-tinted pages. “It’s dry now. I actually kind of like it, gave the pages a sort of vintage vibe. You don’t have to bind me a new notebook,” He reassures you, placing the small book into his bag. “As much as I would love to see how that would turn out.”

And just like that, your nervousness fades away. You smile at Minho, asking that he follow you over to your favorite bench.

The two of you talked for almost two hours. During that time, Minho helped you catch up with the vocabulary and phrases you had missed in class. When you asked him how he was able to know so much off the top of his head, his lips curled into a crooked grin as he sheepishly told you that he had been taking Japanese lessons since he was in high school. He explained that because he procrastinated signing up for an elective course, the advanced class was full by the time he got to it, so he decided to go for the introductory one instead. You chuckled and questioned why he would choose to spend his time on a course when he already knew everything being taught. He shrugged and explained that it was nice to have at least one class in which he didn’t have to try and that the fact that it made him feel smart also helped.

Not even your shift at work was able to make your conversation stop flowing, as Minho offered to walk with you to the coffee shop upon realizing it was near his apartment.

That was one of the many coincidences and things in common you found to have with each other that day.

It started with ordinary things like the fact that Minho had three cats back home just like you and how he had been collecting plushies since he was a child, while you had started your own collection as soon as you had access to money of your own. Or how your favorite authors were Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë — Minho swore you would die if you saw the special edition books he had back at home.

Then, it became a bit more amusing as you found out that Minho had worked at a convenience store chain when he first finished high school, and it was the same one you worked at for your first job after starting university. And you both had worked there for exactly a year and two months before quitting. You then told him about how you ended up attending this university after your top three choices turned you down, and his choices were the same as yours. And just like you, he also got rejected by his top three options, which led him to attend the same university as you.

You two couldn’t hide your bewilderment, eyes widening and lips bursting into laughter as these linked facts kept spilling out during your conversation. It was strange, you thought, but in a comforting way. It was almost as if you two had been living weirdly similar lives, all while having no clue about the other’s existence.

The two of you approach the small coffee shop while talking about your degrees. You try your best not to bore Minho with your ‘existential crisis-inducing psychology talks,’ as Hyunjin always put it, and you mostly listen to him as he talks about programming. He tells you that his dream is to develop cozy games that people can jump into without much thought, simply to relax. He says he knows how stressful life is and that people sometimes need something they can mindlessly do to get their minds off of shit. You resonate with it more than you care to admit, as cozy idle games are one of your favorite things to do while locked inside your room.

“So I do these freelancing gigs to make money but I’m actually set to start my first quote-unquote real job in two weeks,” he beams as you two stop in front of the coffee shop. Minho’s eyes lit up the moment he started speaking about his degree, and although you didn’t understand most of the terms he used, it is always endearing to watch someone talk about something they’re so passionate about. “There’s this guy who’s graduating soon who recruited me and a friend for a project he’s working on, so it’s not technically a job and we’ll work in his living room. I’ll still get some money and the chance to actually develop something, though, so it’s better than nothing.”

You smile at him. “If you like programming as much as your words led me to believe, I’m sure it won’t even feel like a job.”

Minho’s ears turned a faint shade of pink, and he scratched his head. “Sorry, I talked your ear off about shit you don’t even understand.”

“I think everybody likes to hear people talk about things they like,” you assure him, “It was a good talk. I still can’t believe we have so many things in common. It was kind of funny how they kept coming up.”

Minho chuckles, bouncing on the heels of his feet. “Guess the universe is giving us signs that we should be friends.”

“It seems like it.”

That day, you work with a persistent smile engraved on your lips. You can’t remember the last time you felt so good about meeting someone new. Despite your awkward first encounter, you found that talking to Minho was as easy as talking to an old childhood friend. It felt refreshing. The last friend you made was Hyunjin — whom you were so grateful to now for pushing you out of your comfort zone — and after that, you had unknowingly closed yourself off.

Minho had managed to open up your mind to the idea of letting someone in almost comically fast. And you loved that.

It’s been a month since you’ve been attending Japanese classes, and your studying sessions with Minho — which always turned into long conversations on what now had really become your favorite bench — were a weekly appointment, much like having him walk with you to work twice a week.

Today, however, Minho stopped you with a hand on your shoulder as you made your way toward your usual spot. When he asked you if you would like to study at his favorite bakery today instead, his eyes rapidly blinking as he looked at you through his bangs which had grown to slightly cover his eyes since you met him, you just couldn’t say no. He stammered as he promised that the place was even closer than the one where you worked, so you wouldn’t be late for your shift.

You smiled at his apparent nervousness, finding it endearing. You knew all too well how stressed you felt when offering something new or initiating plans with a new friend, and Minho seemed to be the same.

“Good thing you made this offer today, on my day off,” you bumped shoulders with him. “It’s almost like you knew.”

You begin walking, and Minho gently pushes you to the side so that he’s the one walking on the edge of the side of the sidewalk. You shoot him a questioning look, and he blinks at you again.

“Sorry, force of habit,” he chuckles, “My mom taught me a guy shouldn’t let a girl walk on the street side. I know it’s old-fashioned and probably made me seem like an ancient guy who wouldn’t let his wife work or something. Sorry.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s kind of sweet. I never had anyone do that with me.”

You feel the pinwheel twirl inside your chest again.

The two of you approach a familiar building together. You furrow your eyebrows as you take in the floral curtains on the windows and the pretty font adorning the store sign of your favorite bakery. You think about how it would be nice if you two came here on another day. Maybe you could use that opportunity to finally introduce Minho to your other friends.

You only realize Minho has stopped walking when he calls out your name. When you turn around, he’s standing in front of the bakery with a smile.

“This is the place.” He points toward the white door with a nod as you return to where he’s standing.

No fucking way.

“This is your favorite bakery?” You ask, although it is a stupid question. Minho nods. You play with the strap of your bag. “Okay, this is starting to sound ridiculous, but I swear I’m not lying. This is my favorite bakery, too.”

Minho’s eyes widen at your words, and his lips curl into a smile again. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I will not,” You chuckle.

Minho opens the door and the two of you walk inside, the familiar smell of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods bringing back great memories you made in this place. You often come here with your two roommates; it’s close enough to both your house and university that you can skip out on taking the bus, the atmosphere is always relaxing and comforting, not to mention the delicious cakes they sell. You smile to yourself as you remember Eunha scuffing down far too many slices of their chocolate cake after a nasty breakup a couple of months ago, tears streaming down her face so violently that the poor little old man who owns the shop appeared to check up on her.

“Their lemon cake is my favorite.”

“The lemon cake is what made me—”

You and Minho speak concurrently, with you unable to even finish your sentence before you both freeze for a couple of seconds in front of the only small table available at the crowded shop.

He’s the first one to move, pulling out his chair a bit awkwardly. “We should…” He trails off before clearing his throat as you sit down before him. “Should really make a written list of things we weirdly have in common.”

“At this point, I think it’d be easier if we made one of what we don’t have in common.”

You two settle for the obvious choice of two pieces of lemon cake with a cup of coffee for him and a glass of cola for you. Minho almost looked offended when you informed him that you hate coffee, wondering out loud why you even worked at a coffee shop before ensuring he could change your mind with just the five amazing facts about coffee he thought about off the top of his head. You shrugged him off with a grin. You couldn’t deny the irony of being a barista and having to make endless cups of a drink you despised daily, but you were sure Minho could never change your mind about coffee.

You two talked about your improvement in Japanese in the last month until the waiter returned with your order. Minho insists you’re a natural and could be on his level in a couple of years if you tried, but you roll your eyes at his compliments. You’ve never been naturally good at anything. That wasn’t about to change now.

“You know,” Minho begins once the waiter steps away from your table, looking around the coffee shop. People slowly started to leave as it got later in the day; the place was now much quieter, and the atmosphere even more cozy. “I used to think I would meet somebody in a place like this.”

“Like, in a romantic sense?”

Minho hums, still looking out to his side. You notice his side profile is really pretty, and you have to hide your smile by sipping your drink.

When he returns his gaze to you, he’s the one smiling. “Yes, in a romantic sense. Like being destined to meet someone.”

“Look at you, a hopeless romantic,” You roll your eyes with a chuckle. You never thought of Minho as someone like that. He seemed rather methodical, always following a routine and too engrossed in his codes to be preoccupied with something like love.

Minho furrowed his brows. “Why the eye roll?”

“I just don’t believe in that stuff,” you shrug with a small smile, “Stuff like destiny, soulmates, love…” You trail off, taking your spoon and poking the slice of cake in front of you. “Love has the awful tendency of being bad.”

Of course, you once believed all those things. Doesn’t everybody? But love has shown you time and time again that those are things reserved only for some people. And, clearly, you are not one of them. So why believe in it?

“It’s the most amazing thing in life,” Minho’s voice almost startled you as you were so deeply entranced in your thoughts.

You don’t lift your head to answer him, instead drawing mindless shapes on the icing on top of your cake.

“What is?”

“Love,” He replies in a soft voice. When you finally look at him, you’re surprised to find Minho’s deep eyes already looking at you, a small smile adorning his lips. “Love is the most amazing thing in life.”

You freeze.

You tear your eyes away from him, gaze focusing on the plate in front of you again.

You were careful with your rules. No parties, no bars, no talking to your male co-workers unless absolutely necessary, and no male friends unless they were in a relationship or proved beyond a reasonable doubt to only be interested in you platonically — which was what Minho was. So, why did him bringing up love make you feel so nervous?

Under the table, you unwittingly bounce your leg. This was stupid. Minho has been your friend for a month now; you see each other twice a week, and you talk for hours, always so comfortable around each other in a way that is still so new to you. He has never flirted with you or treated you in any way that led you to believe that he wanted anything more than to be your friend. You will not let your foolish trauma ruin what was proving to be an amazing friendship. He was simply sharing his thoughts on a topic. That’s all love was: a conversation topic.

You force out a chuckle as you snap yourself out of your senseless panic and look up at Minho once more. “We can just agree to disagree?”

He’s quiet for a few seconds, something you can’t quite pinpoint swimming in his deep eyes as he looks at you. Instead of breaking the silence, he scoops up a piece of cake with his spoon and raises it like a glass. You shake your head with a giggle as you realize what he’s doing, toasting your spoons together at the center of the table before you both eat your spoonfuls of cake.

“You know,” He speaks as soon as he’s done eating, his eyes having never left yours. “Love can never be bad. I don’t think so, at least. It never makes anything worse. It can only ever make things better.”

You hum and shift in your seat, lowering your gaze toward the table. The truth is, you hate talking about love. That — coupled with your shame regarding your past relationships — is the reason why you never indulge in this type of conversation, even with your own mother. But years of swallowing down your thoughts and opinions whenever the subject was brought up only caused a buildup of emotions in your throat. So much so that you only realized you were talking once you were midway through a sentence.

“Love can make so many things worse,” you affirmed, your eyes following the polka-dot pattern on the tablecloth, “Losing someone is bad enough, but put love into that equation, and it just worsens tenfold.”

Minho nods. “By that logic, you can say that having someone by your side is always good, but if it’s someone you love, it makes it better tenfold, right?”

You let out a chuckle as you realize you two could go back and forth about that subject for ages.

But it felt good to finally speak out your feelings on the matter, so you continue, “Love can’t be that great if people can so easily fall out of it and for so many different but equally stupid reasons. You’re suddenly not attractive to them anymore, or you have different opinions, or they love picking fights but hate it when it’s the other way around…” You trail off, swallowing down a lump in your throat as you speak out of experience. But Minho didn’t need to know that. You lift your eyes. “Not to mention falling in love with a new person all while supposedly already being in love with someone.”

“That’s not genuine love,” Minho shakes his head with furrowed eyebrows, as if it was his first time hearing of such things happening. “Real love is unconditional and understanding. Real love makes the person you love beautiful simply because they’re them. Real love doesn’t allow you to hurt the person you love because it feels like you’re hurting yourself as well.” His expression softens, and his eyes lock onto yours. “And real love makes it so that you can only see the one you love. You can’t possibly fall in love with someone else if you’re truly already in love.”

You gnaw on your bottom lip, nodding slowly. You hate the fact that part of you is desperate to believe that what Minho said was true. And you hate it even more that an even bigger part has already dismissed every single word that left his lips.

Desperate to shift the subject from Reasons Why My Exes Left Me — which only leaves you feeling sad and pathetic — back to Love Is Amazing, you decide to try and lighten the mood.

“Okay, but then explain to me how love is so great when you can just have sex with anyone, and it feels the same either way?” You question him with a teasing grin on your face. Minho shakes his head with a smile and eats another bite of his cake. You continue, “Be it a stranger at a party you met ten minutes ago or the love of your life, sex will always be sex. Therefore, you’re wrong, mister Love-Makes-Everything-Better.”

Minho chuckles around his mug, eyes closing as he almost spits out his coffee. His eyes are like crescent moons when he looks at you again, clearly amused by your words. “Well, yeah, of course, sex will always feel good no matter who you’re doing it with. It’s sex, and sex feels good,” He shrugs dismissively. “But sex with love is different. You aren’t just fucking, just fulfilling your own desires selfishly. Love makes sex better because you feel good simply by making the person who’s so important to you feel good. It makes you want to melt into the other person and become one with them because close isn’t close enough when you’re in love.

“Touching them feels like a gift, like heaven. Tasting them feels like heaven. Hearing their voice in their most blissful state feels like heaven. The trust and connection you feel in that moment is heaven, and that’s only possible through love. You can have sex with anyone, but you can only make love to someone you love, and those are two different things. That’s how love makes sex better. Therefore, I’m not wrong.”

As you take in Minho’s words, spoken so casually, like it was common knowledge, they leave you speechless. You watch him as he smiles triumphantly when he realizes you aren’t going to refute him — because you can’t refute him.

You berate yourself mentally as you notice the familiar feeling of arousal wash over you as you repeat his words inside your head. Not because it was Minho who said those things, but simply because that kind of sex sounded so good. Good in a way you had never once experienced before. Like heaven, as he had put it.

Your experience with sex has always been simply about fulfilling desires. You thought that was all there was to it.

Until now.

And even so, with your ex-boyfriends, it was always unbalanced. Ninety percent about their pleasure and only ten percent about yours. The first time you had a guy go down on you was the first time you had sex with Hyunjin, and by that point, you had already had five boyfriends. It felt weird when it happened, and you remember Hyunjin whining about how you didn’t have to ask him every five minutes if he was really okay with doing that. It had always been different with him, the good kind of different. He had never been selfish during sex; if anything, Hyunjin was too much of a giver, sometimes forgetting about his own pleasure in order to focus on yours. You thought that was the best sex you could ever have.

Until now.

Because, even with Hyunjin, there was never a genuine connection. It never felt like a gift to touch him and have him touch you. It was never anything more than sex, more than something you both did because it felt good and it was easy. He slept in your bed, and he cuddled you until morning came, but it had never once felt anything close to what Minho described.

You can’t help but wonder if Minho has ever experienced that. You desperately want to ask him, but you two aren’t close enough for that yet.

You also can’t help but wonder why you spend the rest of the evening raging a war against yourself as your mind is consumed with thoughts of what it would be like to experience that kind of sex with him.

It’s late in the night on the following Saturday, and your phone incessantly vibrating under your pillow rudely demands your attention just as you’re about to fall asleep. You squint your eyes as you type in your password. You sigh as you see Hyunjin’s name on your screen because of course it’s him.

Hyune: I’m outside open the door Hyune: please open the door? quick? Hyune: mrs. choi is gonna kill me if I use the intercom pls I don’t wanna die Hyune: I’m in my pajamas do you know how humiliating this is

Hyune: and I’m highkey pissed off Hyune: I WILL sleep on the bench outside your house if you don’t let me in and then I’ll die and who’s gonna live with the guilt? Hyune: you Hyune: OPENM TEH DOOR

You roll your eyes at his dramatic texts, stepping out of the comfort of your bed and padding across the floor as quietly as possible so as not to wake up your roommates. You open your front door and speed past the hallway and Mrs. Choi’s home, reaching the outside door in record time. It’s something you’ve done more times than you care to admit in order to let Hyunjin into your house. Your tenant was a sweet woman, insistent that she was modern and understanding of ‘young people’, but she despised people coming into your home any later than midnight.

You step outside, finding Hyunjin pacing back and forth like a creep in front of your house. True to his words, he stood in his checkered pajama pants and a black t-shirt. His hair was in a ponytail, the strands messily sticking out everywhere like he had tossed and turned in bed before coming here.

“You look like shit,” you speak up, causing him to jump and let out a gasp. You chuckle as he scowls at you, climbing the few steps to reach the door.

“I had a fight with Mingyu,” he grumbles as you two walk toward your front door. “He told me I spilled paint on his favorite shirt, which is fucking impossible since I don’t even paint anywhere near his shit.”

“I mean, you are a messy painter.”

Hyunjin shoots you a look as you close your front door behind you. You take off your shoes and walk toward your bedroom in silence. This was routine. Hyunjin knew the rules: no knocking on the outside door, no buzzing the intercom, no shouting from outside, keep your voice down in the hallway, no talking until you reach your bedroom. It was all automatic at this point.

His voice is louder when he speaks again inside your locked bedroom. “First of all, I am not a messy painter. The paint is messy, not me. Second of all, if Mingyu wasn’t a fucking idiot, maybe he wouldn’t leave his favorite shirt on the floor of the living room right by my art corner,” Hyunjin huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, “If that’s how he treats his favorite shirt, I feel bad for his girlfriend.”

You let out a chuckle, which is cut short by him pulling you into his arms. “Hyunjin, that analogy makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. You treat your favorite shirt like shit, you treat your girlfriend like shit,” he states matter-of-factly before pulling you into a kiss.

This was routine. It was all automatic at this point.

Hyunjin kisses you like he’s angry. Because he is, and that’s one of the reasons why you two do this. You let out your frustrations during sex. You complain, and you let off steam until you both feel okay again. It’s been this way for a year and some months now, and you never once thought anything of it. It was beneficial for you both, so why change or question it?

But that was before your talk with Minho. Before you were awoken to the truth that you’d been having meaningless sex your whole life.

When you’re pulled away from your thoughts, you’re already laid in your bed with Hyunjin hovering over you. His lips and hands wander through your body as he mumbles things you can’t quite understand; you can only make out your name and Mingyu’s mixed with curses. You try to bring yourself back to the moment, bringing your legs to wrap around Hyunjin’s waist and bring him closer to you.

He stops kissing your neck and yanks his shirt over his head, his hair untying in the process and falling on his face like a curtain. You giggle and try to fix it with your fingers. Hyunjin pouts.

“Don’t you think I’m right?”

You frown and hope he can’t see your confused expression in the dim lighting. You truly weren’t paying any attention to what he had been saying, too engrossed in your thoughts and too busy feeling sorry for yourself. Hyunjin’s tendency to tell you about his frustrations during sex always left you a bit puzzled, but it was also oddly sweet. It was like he trusted you so deeply as a friend that he believed he could share anything with you, no matter the time.

So you nod, lightly pulling at his hair. “Of course you’re right.”

He hums and buries his head on your chest, grinding his hips into your clothed core. “Of course I’m right,” he mumbles under his breath.

Everything is a blur after that, your mind insistent on repeating Minho’s words like an annoying echo. When Hyunjin’s tongue fucked you hastily, and he murmured something about you tasting so good, all you could hear was Minho’s voice telling you how tasting the person you love feels like heaven. When Hyunjin pushed his cock into you, his hands gripping your thighs and head buried in your neck, all you could think about was how this sex paled in comparison to what you could’ve been having — what you could have already had — if only you weren’t so damn unlovable.

You knew that Minho didn’t intend to make you feel bad with his words. They weren’t targeted at you. But that didn’t stop your mind from sabotaging and putting yourself down. It was one of your biggest talents, after all.

Your body was present and responsive the entire time; you moaned because it felt good, and you kissed Hyunjin because you wanted to. But you were mentally somewhere else.

And the worst thing is, you’re a hundred percent sure Hyunjin doesn’t even notice it.

Because this wasn’t love. This was only sex.

And this was all you had ever known.

Time flies by faster than your brain can comprehend; before you know it, another month goes by. You only managed to go to your favorite bakery with Minho one more time before your work hours were changed, your shift now starting a mere thirty minutes after your Japanese class ends. He still walked you to work twice a week, but you would be lying if you said it didn’t upset you to have to let go of your weekly talks.

Minho also became busier due to his own job. With so little time to see each other face to face outside of class, most of your talks took place over text. He talked about his job with so much adoration it made you a little jealous; his partners were now simply friends he worked with, and his joy over finally being able to create a cozy game made it so that he pushed himself over his limit, often sleeping on his friend’s couch after working until four a.m. and getting through the next day on excessive amounts of coffee.

That was how you two came up with the idea of Minho dropping by the café where you work to pick up coffee for him and his friends. He would drop by at least twice every day, his friend’s house — which also served as their office — only one bus stop away.

The first time Minho came by, he had his wallet and phone in one hand, a sharpie and a block of sticky notes in the other. You eyed him curiously as he scribbled on the piece of paper while your co-worker prepared his coffee. When he was done, he stuck the note to the monitor in front of you on the counter. You furrowed your brows as your eyes shifted from the Japanese words on the bright yellow note back to Minho’s smug face. You were certainly grateful he at least had the courtesy of including the romanization of whatever he had written down. Not that it helped you in any way.

“Since our studying sessions after class were rudely taken from us, this is your extra homework. It’s all words we already learned. You just gotta think a little bit, and you’ll figure it out. You’re smart, I know you can do it,” He assured you.

Expect you weren’t that smart and ended up giving up by the time you got home that night. The piece of paper was no longer sticky on the border due to you carrying it around all day, boring holes into it as if that would magically give you the answer. You snapped a picture of it as you got ready for bed and sent it to Minho, begging him to put you out of your misery and simply give you the answer. ‘I want to drink coffee,’ he replied. You slapped your hand over your forehead with so much force you were sure the entire house had heard you. He was right; you did learn that in class. Curse the Japanese language for being so difficult.

After that, it became a routine. You waited expectantly for Minho’s visits daily, but you are extra excited today. It’s a Friday, and your birthday is tomorrow. After much pestering from Eunha, you agreed to have a small gathering at your house. It only made sense to invite Minho; he’s become one of your closest friends in the two months you’ve known him, after all.

As he walks into the coffee shop, sticky notes and sharpie in hand, you chuckle to yourself. You two chat about the development of his game, with Minho kindly using layman’s terms when explaining it to you. He also tells you about how one of his friends got so frustrated with a code that he threw his phone at a wall before immediately regretting it and crying on the floor next to Minho’s desk. Before you can get worried, he assures you that it’s just an ordinary day at the office, and the three of them end up laughing everything off at the end of the day.

After taking his order, you watch as he begins writing down your homework for the day on the small piece of paper in his hand. As you look around the coffee shop, most tables are empty, and the sun is starting to set outside the glass doors.

“You wanna come over this Saturday?” You ask Minho, who looks up at you before adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. That was one thing you learned about Minho since he began coming over: he wears glasses. Not every day, but enough times for you to notice how good he looks with them. But friends find each other attractive all the time, you justify it. “You never came over to my house, and my roommates really want to meet you. Plus, it’s my birthday tomorrow.”

Minho’s eyes widen. “Your birthday? And you save that information to the end?”

“It’s not a big deal. I usually never even celebrate.” You shrug lightly. You’ve never been big on birthdays, as you just don’t see the reason why it’s supposed to feel different from any other day of the year. “But my roommate pestered me to do something this year, so I agreed to have a party.”

Minho shifts on his feet. “I… really hate parties…” He trails off.

“It’s not a party party. I promise!” You hold up your pinky finger. “It’s more of a get-together, just my roommates and my only two other friends. And, you…” You trail off, “If you come.”

Minho blinks his eyes a couple of times before tearing the piece of paper he was writing on from the pad and crumpling it in his hand. He quickly jots down something new and sticks it to your forehead.

“Minho!” You scold him, to which he laughs, his nose scrunching and eyes crinkling. You advert your gaze from him as your persistent thoughts regarding how unfairly pretty Minho is begin to flood your brain once again. You take the note and analyze it:

はい (Hai)

You smile as you understand the word, looking up at him.

“I’d love to come to your birthday party,” He beams. “Thank you for inviting me.”

To say Minho is nervous would be an understatement.

He gets out of his car twice, ready to march back inside his friend’s apartment like a coward and pretend that nothing happened both times. Only when he thinks back to how you smiled at him when he agreed to your invitation does he find the courage to start the car and drive to your house. He’d noticed for a while now how much he likes you. But it was when he agreed with the idea of going to the café you worked at to pick up coffee that it truly dawned on him that he really liked you. Minho hated taking the bus, he hated doing anything other than zoning out on the couch during his breaks, he hated bustling shops, and he hated how his co-workers both managed to have such intricate coffee orders.

Yet he agreed to that idea, even suggesting he drop by two times a day.

He noticed he’d felt a familiar small whirlpool inside his chest whenever he was with you, when he heard you talk about something you liked or saw you smile. He’s also noticed that this tiny whirlpool has been growing bigger and bigger the more he’s been around you.

But that doesn’t scare him. Minho loves love. He loves to be in love, to love someone, and to make that person feel loved. It’s his favorite thing about life. If he was honest, he missed it so much he didn’t know how he was able to live without it.

Just down the block from your house, he parks his car and gathers his phone and his present for you — clearly clumsily wrapped, even with his co-workers’ help. He feels another wave of nervousness wash over him as he approaches the house; he’s an hour late and needs to mentally prepare to socialize with people he’s never met before. Minho chuckles as he realizes a silly party makes him more nervous than the prospect of possibly falling in love.

You open the door almost as soon as he rings the intercom, and he walks down the hallway into your house door; the crooked box he’s been holding makes his hands sweat. The first thing he notices as you open the door is your styled hair with a big white bow on the back, looking much prettier than the ugly bow he and his friends managed to stick on top of his present. He smiles at the sight and scratches his ear in a futile attempt to stop them from turning red.

God, he really liked you, didn’t he?

“Thank you for coming,” you tell him with a smile. Minho notices the quiet music playing inside the house, the simple decorations, and the cake on top of the kitchen counter. He mentally sighs in relief. This truly wasn’t anything like a big party. “You’re wearing your glasses again,” you point out as Minho walks inside and removes his shoes. He subconsciously reaches his left hand to touch his wire-rimmed glasses that sit on his nose bridge. He grimaces and curses at his friend for making him stay later than he was supposed to today.

“I had no time to go home and change,” He apologizes, fingers now toying with the stupid bow on top of the box. “I usually wear contacts, but they make my eyes dry if I stare at the computer for too long, so I just… wear my glasses at work…” Minho trails off, suddenly feeling stupid, his eyes looking anywhere but toward you.

You chuckle, lightly touching his glasses for a second before moving away again. “You always come to the coffee shop wearing them, and I think you look really good,” you assured him. His eyes quickly met yours, only for you to advert your gaze this time. “You should wear them more often.”

Minho only hums, lightly nodding his head. He feels stupid all over again as the image of himself throwing his contact lenses down the drain crosses his mind.

Clearing his throat, he finally hands you your gift. You giggle at the mismatched wrapping paper and poor excuse of a bow, which makes Minho let out a chuckle and murmur an apology. You open the box, and your eyes light up when you spot the stuffed bunny you have been raving about since you two met. It was the only animal missing from your collection, but you couldn’t find the right time to save up money to buy it. Minho didn’t need to ask if you liked it as he watched your smile grow bigger as you looked at the brown bunny.

“Come, I gotta put him in my bed now,” you beamed and took Minho’s hand in yours, leading him to the living room. There, five people sat on the couch and on the floor. Minho furrows his brows as he takes in a head of light brown hair covered by a familiar beanie. “These are my friends. Eunha’s the girl with short hair on the floor, and Soojung’s the one with blonde hair next to her. They’re also my roommates,” You point at them as you speak. “That’s Jisung sitting next to Soojung; he’s also her boyfriend. And then Hyunjin, with the long hair, sitting next to Chan on the couch. Everyone, this is Minho from my Japanese class.”

With that, you pad off to your room with your bunny in tow. As Chan finally turns to look at Minho, his shocked expression mirrors his. They stare at each other for a while before Chan finally breaks the silence.

“What the fuck, that’s my co-worker.”

Minho narrows his eyes. “So this is why you had to leave an hour earlier today?”

As you come out of your room, you chuckle. “Chan is your co-worker?” You ask Minho, “I can’t believe this. He’s been our friend for longer than I’ve known you. He came like a package deal when Jisung began dating Soojung.”

“Damn, dude, you hate me so much you never talked about me to your friend?” Chan gasped, a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt.”

Minho rolls his eyes but is unable to stop a small grin from forming on his lips as the entire living room erupts in laughter. “Of course I talked about you. I talked about you and Seungmin all the time. It’s just I…” Minho shifts on his feet, shrugging. “I never said your names.”

More laughter seeps out of the group of people, including Chan, and Minho finds himself laughing along this time, shaking his head at his own stupidity.

He sits beside Chan on the couch while Hyunjin heads to the kitchen with you. He quickly asks him how he came to be friends with you in the first place. Chan explains that he’s been in a class with Jisung for almost two years, and the boy had always pestered him about ‘old people’ needing to hang out with people their age. That’s how he ended up meeting Soojung as soon as she became Jisung’s girlfriend. You and Eunha were an inevitable addition, seeing as you were not only roommates but also great friends.

You offer Minho a beer, which he declines. As much as he wanted to, no beer was worth having to take the bus back home. He silently sips his cola as he watches your group of friends chat. You end up sitting beside him on the couch, your friend Hyunjin to your right.

Minho finds that he missed getting together with people like this and didn’t even realize it. His only friends were left behind back at home, and although they were less than an hour away by bus, their busy lives prevented them from meeting in person. Minho’s favorite memories from his teenage years were having his friends over and just doing nothing for hours, talking about stupid shit until their stomachs hurt from laughing. Eating takeout on the couch with Chan and Seungmin after work came close, but they were always too tired and too stressed to entertain the idea of making jokes. Those were times when Minho realized he had really become an adult.

Jisung’s loud voice suddenly booms through the living room and startles an already drunk-looking Eunha, who murmurs something about the younger boy giving her a heart attack one day.

“I’m bored,” he grumbles, draping his body over Soojung. “Let’s play spin the bottle.”

Soojung rolls her eyes at him, flicking his forehead. “Are you a teenager?”

Jisung pouts, sitting up straight once more. “We’re in university. University students play this fucking game all the time,” he states matter-of-factly. “Don’t make me regret falling for an older woman.”

“Jisung, I’m only three years older than you, I’m not—”

“Don’t make me call you noona.”

Soojung inhales deeply before turning to face the people sitting on the couch, placing one of the empty beer bottles scattered around her feet on top of the coffee table. “Let’s play spin the bottle. But let’s do dares instead of kissing, that’s too boring.”

Jisung beams, cuddling close to her like a needy child. Minho chuckles at the sight.

Eunha scoots closer to the couple so the group is seated in a circle around the coffee table, half of them on the couch and half on the floor. Minho never had the chance to play spin the bottle, which seemed to be such a staple game of one’s teenage years. By the time his friends were off sneaking into clubs and drinking behind their parents’ backs, he was already in a committed relationship and well aware of the fact that he didn’t enjoy parties.

It seems silly, but he’s glad he won’t live past his youth without experiencing such a trivial thing.

Soojung spins the bottle, and the neck stops facing Chan while the bottom faces Jisung.

“Take your shirt off,” Jisung waves a finger at Chan, who looks somewhat disoriented. Minho chuckles under his breath just as you do the same. You two face each other and let out a hearty laugh, your arm coming to rest on his bicep before retrieving back to your lap faster than Minho hoped it would.

Soojung squishes Jisung’s cheeks and places a small kiss on his lips. “You’re such a fucking chaotic bisexual,” she giggles, “Y’know, Chan, Jisung has had the biggest crush on you since you two first met.”

Chan shakes his head with a stifled laugh and proceeds to remove his shirt, neatly placing it on his lap.

Jisung is next to spin the bottle, this time landing on Soojung, who you dare to show her most embarrassing text. After showing the group a string of texts showing raunchy screenshots of a manhwa she’d been reading at that time, all sent to one of her class group chats which included some professors, she lets out a heavy sigh and orders Eunha to spin the bottle before any questions can be asked.

This time, the neck faces you while the bottom faces Eunha herself. With a smile, the short-haired girl dares you to kiss Minho.

He feels his smile drop at the very second the words leave her lips. This was not what he had in mind for tonight.

“What?” You sputter, “Why?”

Eunha shrugs, adjusting herself so she’s seated upright and staring right at you. “Well, he’s the only one here who would be actually fun to see you kiss. Jisung and Soojung are okay with each other hooking up with other people, so that’s no fun,” she explains, using her fingers to list her reasons, “I’m not into girls, so that’s no fun for me. Hyunjin is too obvious. We all already know Chan, so it would also be boring. Minho is like fresh meat. That is fun.”

Minho’s brain begins finding a suitable excuse for why you two can’t kiss, because he’s certain you have no interest in doing it. Not only are you friends, but your reaction didn’t exactly exude excitement at the prospect of kissing him. Just as he’s ready to lie through his teeth, you turn to him and place your hand on his shoulder, a touch so soft he’s barely able to feel it through the fabric of his shirt.

“Is this okay with you?” You ask him, the tone of your voice so sweet Minho feels like it melts his every thought until his brain is nothing but a sugary pool filled with only you. So he nods because god, yes, this is okay with him.

You gingerly place your right hand on his cheek, bringing your faces closer until your lips press together. The whirlpool inside his chest spins fast, like a vortex dragging every sense of his body toward you and only you.

You remain still for a few seconds, Minho’s eyes opening slightly to search for any sign of regret on your face. Before he can even properly look at you, your lips begin to move against his — gently and carefully, like you’re not sure if this is what he wants. Minho deepens the kiss and hesitates three times before committing to placing his left hand on your waist. The giggles around the two of you nothing but a muffled murmur to him. He presses another kiss to your lips, his body shifting until he is all but caging you against the back of the couch. But just as he swipes his tongue across your bottom lip, you push him back with a smile, Minho chasing after your lips.

He blinks a couple of times, eyes zoning into your smudged red lipstick. He subconsciously bites his own bottom lip, wondering if any of the color transferred to him. The surrounding murmurs bring Minho back to the moment this time, awkwardly clearing his throat before lifting himself off of you and sitting upright on the couch. He tunes out every comment regarding the kiss to the best of his abilities, focusing his energy on slowing down his heart rate. When he catches you giggling while looking at him, your arm touching his bicep yet again, he nods, grabbing his cola bottle from the floor and taking a sip.

Minho can’t remember the last time kissing someone got him so worked up. He entered a long-term relationship at such a young age that he’s only now realizing how unaccustomed he is to kissing someone new, to the rush that comes with having your lips pressing against the ones of someone you like. It was exhilarating and a bit terrifying all at the same time. He was awkward, unsure where to put his hands, uncertain if you were enjoying yourself. He was also greedy, wanting the moment to last for much longer than it had.

This had cemented the fact that he does, in fact, really like you.

After kissing you, the whirlpool living in his heart had now fully transformed into a tiny hurricane — with great chances of growing even bigger.

Minho only notices the game has continued upon hearing your voice complaining beside him. He watches as Soojung shrugs.

“It’s the only thing I could think of, sorry.”

“But why?” Hyunjin asks, placing his cup on the coffee table. “It’s a stupid dare.”

The blonde girl scoffs. “No, it’s not. I’ve had to basically live with you two for the past year, and it’s common knowledge how easily you get a boner for her.”

“Not true,” Hyunjin retorts, although it sounds more like a question than an affirmation.

Eunha blurts out, “You once got a boner watching her stir a cake mix.”

Hyunjin opens and closes his mouth before groaning, pulling you into his lap by the waist. You apologize to him quietly, to which Hyunjin shakes his head with a small smile.

Minho feels as if he’s intruding on something private.

You sit on Hyunjin’s knees, almost falling off his lap as you clearly try to keep some distance between the two of you. Hyunjin clicks his tongue and pulls you closer to him until your back is pressed up against his chest. He whispers something in your ear, to which you lightly slap his arm as his lips upturn into a grin.

Minho is definitely intruding on something private.

At some point, you turn so you’re sitting across Hyunjin’s lap, your body now facing Minho. He can’t help but watch with dark eyes as the younger boy’s hands wander through your body; playing with the buttons on your blouse, squeezing your thighs, and caressing your skin a little too close to the hem of your skirt. He furrows his brows as he tries to understand your relationship with Hyunjin, seeing as you’re obviously not put off by his hands on your body.

Minho is so transfixed by the sight and his racing thoughts that he only realizes the game has ended when someone taps his shoulder from behind the couch. When he looks back, Chan is holding a cigarette and motioning towards the stairs that lead to the house’s terrace.

In the chilly open space above the house, they sit on a bench behind a tall vertical planter. Minho wonders who tends to the garden as he observes the various flowers, as well as some vegetables and herbs scattered around him. The terrace is small; the garden taking up all the space, an old wooden railing that overlooks the quiet street the only other thing in his sight.

He and Chan chat about school and work, as they often do nowadays. After Chan recently broke up with his girlfriend, Minho found that his friend had become much more closed off, so the list of subjects they would talk about became minimal. Chan bites his thumb before taking a long drag of his cigarette. He chuckles when he mentions being scared of graduating next year. Minho bumps his shoulder with him, arguing that being in his situation is worse. He admits that he regrets starting university late and that being in his first year when he should already be in his third is discouraging. Chan dismisses his worries, reminding him of how Minho is often the one to fix broken codes and come up with ideas for their game whenever Seungmin gets stuck.

“A degree is just a piece of paper,” Chan says, throwing his cigarette butt at a nearby trashcan. “You’re already a fantastic programmer, Minho.”

“You’re just saying that because I saved your ass today.”

Chan shrugs. “You’ve saved my ass basically every day since we started working together.” After a beat of silence, he asks, “Why did you start uni so late, anyway? You never told me.”

Minho hums, digging his brain for a way to sum up the entire story. “It’s complicated—”

He’s interrupted by footsteps on the stairs leading to the terrace. A loud giggle echoes through the open space before you and Hyunjin step into their field of vision. The long-haired boy holds you from behind, and you two stagger toward the railing.

“Wish everyone would go home already so I could just fuck you,” Hyunjin whines as he turns your body around so you’re facing him. Minho almost chokes on nothing at those words, and Chan stifles a laugh with his hand. He curses the small space as they’re able to so clearly hear everything you’re saying.

You playfully kick Hyunjin’s shin. “Don’t say it like that, Hyune, what the fuck.”

“It’s true, though,” Hyunjin continues, pressing you against the railing. He towers over you, so the only thing Minho can see from where he’s seated is your white skirt floating in the wind behind the tall boy. “I had a stressful, terrible, awful, dreadful week. All I kept thinking about was coming over and relaxing with you.”

“See, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so awful.”

Hyunjin clicks his tongue. “There’s nothing awful about fucking. I know how much you like it, don’t act so coy.”

Minho watches as your hands clench around Hyunjin’s gray shirt, pulling him closer and kissing him softly, much like you had done to him a few moments before.

Minho presses his lips into a thin line. He connects every dot available to him inside his head and suddenly feels pathetic.

Hyunjin being too obvious of a choice for you to kiss, his hands all over your body, his words about fucking you, the way you kissed him like it was a habit.

If you had a boyfriend, why did you agree to kiss him?

The words swarm Minho’s brain. He vaguely recalls you and Hyunjin eventually walking out of the terrace. Chan starts a one-sided conversation about one of his classes, with Minho humming after every couple of sentences to appear like he’d been listening when his head is too busy wondering how to feel about everything.

Minho recalls Eunha walking up the stairs and shouting for the two of them to come downstairs to sing you happy birthday. He recalls Hyunjin’s hands wandering through your body throughout the song, his lips pressing small kisses on your face and lips as you smiled. He recalls feeling confused, stressed, jealous, and pathetic.

Minho is only truly back to the present moment once Chan’s voice bids him a loud goodbye, and the door slamming behind him makes his senses finally return to him. As he looks around, he notices that the only people left in the living room are Jisung, Hyunjin, and you. Beside him on the couch, Hyunjin stretches with a loud groan.

“I’m gonna take a shower. D’you have any of my clothes in your room?”

You sigh from where you’re sitting on the floor, resting against the television stand. “Of course, I do. You’re always living shit behind, you’re like our third roommate at this point.”

Hyunjin chuckles, walking over to give you a small peck on the lips before disappearing into your room. Minho gnaws on his bottom lip with a bitter smile as he realizes Hyunjin will sleep over at your house. The ugly feelings return as he remembers his thoughts about you these past few weeks when he unknowingly cultivated too big of a crush on you. Even on his way here tonight, when he had chuckled to himself at his lack of nervousness in the face of potential love.

Love.

Minho can’t help but wonder why your view of love is so negative when you’re in a relationship. And, at the same time, he doesn’t dare to think about it for too long, fully aware that his foolish affection-filled brain will come up with a myriad of reasons — all where your boyfriend is the sole culprit for your distaste — and Minho knows better than to let those thoughts linger for too long inside his mind. He knows himself all too well, knows only awful shit would come out of assuming things about your relationship; the urge to beat Hyunjin senseless for being a shitty boyfriend and making you think that way about love being the worst of them.

“I’m too drunk to go back to my dorm,” Jisung suddenly speaks, his eyes glazed over as he stares ahead. “Gonna crash here tonight, too.”

Minho takes that as his cue to leave.

You walk him outside, a small smile on your face the entire time. He feels guilty not being able to reciprocate the gesture. As you tell him goodbye, thanking him for coming, you pull him into a hug. You hadn’t hugged much since you met, and Minho foolishly wants to draw you closer to him, to feel your body pressed against his just as it was pressed against Hyunjin most of the night. But he can’t do that.

“Are you okay to walk back by yourself?” You ask him as you pull away.

Minho nods, forcing out a small smile. “My car is parked just down the block.”

“That’s why you didn’t drink!” You exclaim with a giggle, “I forget that most people our age already drive. My anxiety didn’t allow me the chance to even try and get a license, so I just accepted my fate of taking the bus.”

“I could drive you…” Minho trails off. There he goes again, being pathetic. “If I have the time… You can give me a call and I’d be happy to drive you anywhere.”

You smile at him, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into another embrace. Minho smiles genuinely as he buries his head in your hair.

The drive back home has Minho feeling stupid all over again as he thinks about how you’re probably in bed with Hyunjin by now. The whirlpool is back inside his chest, but it isn’t good or welcome this time. It’s agonizing and painful.

Love had never been painful. Love had never been bad.

But he had never experienced love toward someone who already loved somebody else. Although you brazenly state that you don’t believe in it, you must feel some type of love toward Hyunjin if you’re willing to be his girlfriend.

As he silently drives home, Minho finds himself agreeing with you.

Maybe love can be bad, after all.

Minho feels stupid.

This has become a constant in his life.

He had always thought of himself as a logical person. Programming had taught him that everything is predictable and fixable if you work on it hard enough. A broken code? It may take him six hours of staring at the computer to figure out it was nothing but a missing semicolon, but he will get there in the end. It was annoying and frustrating, but it was always something easily fixed.

He thought love was like that. It had always been like that with him.

Until he fell for you.

Minho was coming to terms with the fact that maybe love and programming were nothing alike. Love isn’t predictable. Loving someone who is already in love with someone else isn’t easily fixed. He can’t backspace and delete your boyfriend from the equation.

It’s been a little over six months since you two first met. Minho has consistently gone to the café you work at every day, and you two still had endless talks over text messages. You talk about everything and anything, from silly things like sharing pictures of both your growing plushie collections or your love of that particular coffee shop’s lemon cake to more serious topics like how Minho learned how to cook when he was twelve so his mom wouldn’t have to do it by herself, and now his roommates take advantage of that, or how sad you are that next year you will have to leave the house you’ve grown to love so much.

But, whether it is in person or through text, you still avoid the topic of love. You don’t ever bring up Hyunjin unless he’s part of a story you were already telling, and Minho feels his heart heavy as he slowly allows himself to imagine what it could be that led you to hate love so much.

He desperately wants to ask you, know your reasons, and make sure you’re happy with your boyfriend. But he doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries and doesn’t know how to go about it without scaring you. So he never does anything, like a coward.

Minho finds himself coming over to your sharehouse on most weekends since summer break ended. Your countless get-togethers at that house have become a hard-to-break habit. Hyunjin, Jisung, and your roommates are always assured to be there, with Chan joining whenever he isn’t overwhelmed with work or school, which was rare.

Minho had always been a hopeless romantic, always doing things for love that people repeatedly warned would result in regret. This time, it was forgoing visiting his parents and friends back home just to spend most of his summer with you. Despite not being able to pursue you in the way he truly wanted to, Minho still wanted to be your friend. You were still a fantastic person he loved to have around; that didn’t change simply because you had a boyfriend. Although he could feel a bit of his heart cracking every time he had to see you, all while knowing he couldn’t do anything about his feelings for you.

He couldn’t change your perspective of love if he weren’t allowed to love you.

In all the time he spent at your house during summer break, he ended up becoming good friends with Jisung, as you tended to stick next to Hyunjin most of the time. Minho didn’t mind it; he is your boyfriend, after all. At least, that’s what he repeats to himself every night he comes over like a mantra as he almost masochistically forces himself to watch how Hyunjin kisses your lips and caresses your skin or how you play with his hair and snuggle with him on the couch. He also endures the countless nights he’s left your house knowing all too well that Hyunjin would be spending the night with you in a way that Minho can only ever dream about.

Tonight, in particular, Hyunjin seemed to be all over you like bees on honey, buzzing around you everywhere you went, his hands never leaving your body as he pulled you closer to him every time you even slightly pulled away. Because god forbid your bodies not be touching in some way for even a split second. Before he knows it, Minho is downing his third bottle of beer of the night.

From where he’s sitting on the couch, Minho rolls his eyes as discreetly as he can while he watches Hyunjin pull you to sit on his lap on the floor as you all get ready to play a game of cards. He gnaws on his lower lip because he knows he’s being petty and borderline childish. You’re Hyunjin’s girlfriend. Of course he’s all over you, of course he wants to be close to you, of course he wants you on his lap. Minho concludes with a bitter chuckle that he is, indeed, pathetic when it comes to you.

He gulps down more of the awful-tasting cheap beer.

The night comes to a close after far too many rounds of Cards Against Humanity, with Jisung winning more than half of them. His ethics and morals fly out the window the moment the cards are handed to him, as he manages to create the most absurdly offensive phrases known to men every single time. Minho found himself groaning and yelling at the younger boy as the alcohol took over his system. He doesn’t know how much of it was simply his annoyance at Hyunjin clinging to you like a koala throughout the entire game disguised as competitiveness.

He doesn’t think he’d like to know either.

Like every night he comes over, Minho is the last person to go home. He has to call an Uber, far too buzzed to want to sit at a bus stop all alone at this time of night. He hadn’t even noticed how he kept downing his drinks until he felt the familiar buzz of inebriation wash over his body a while before the game ended. Although slamming his fist into the coffee table with a whine about how he had only been given lame cards should’ve been a sign.

As he waits outside your house by the fence, he suddenly hears the door shut behind him and your voice calling out to him. He smiles at the faint slur of your speech and the way you drag out the last syllable of his name like you always did when you were a bit drunk.

“I told you to wait for me!” You reprimand, opening the gate to stand next to him. “Look how lonely you look here all by yourself.”

Minho just shrugs with a smile, shaking his head. He did wait. He waited almost half an hour after announcing he should leave as you disappeared into your room with Hyunjin. He was still waiting, in fact, only mindlessly scrolling on his phone for the past ten minutes instead of finding a ride as he hoped you would come outside when you saw he wasn’t in the living room anymore.

You poke his shoulder, bringing his attention away from his phone to your smiling face.

“Tonight was fun, wasn’t it? Especially that last round when Hyunjin won after being tied with Jisung for the whole game,” you grinned, “Seeing Jisung make a whole damn case about how much better his card was really made my night. Think that’s the first time I’ve seen him act like a law student since I met him.”

Minho chuckles, bringing his attention back to his phone. Seeing your smile and how your eyes light up while you talk about something you like brought back the whirlpool inside his chest, which wasn’t a pleasant feeling any longer. It made him glum to think how a once beautiful feeling had turned into nothing but discomfort simply because he was lovelorn.

He hums. “You must be proud to have your boyfriend put an end to Jisung’s annoying winning streak.”

“What do you mean?”

Minho looks up from his phone, eyes wandering through your puzzled face. He furrows his brows for a second. Maybe you’re both drunker than he’d thought.

“I mean, it must’ve been nice to see Hyunjin win after Jisung basically made us all want to quit the game,” he explains, watching as your expression turns from confusion into shock before you let out a loud laugh.

Minho’s eyes widen, worried your laughter might wake up your neighbors. He gently shushes you, his arm grabbing your shoulder, but your smiling face only makes his lips stretch out into a grin. He suppresses a giggle as you catch your breath, shaking your head.

Minho smiles at you so fondly he’s certain he looks like an idiot. “What’s so funny?”

“Hyunjin isn’t my boyfriend,” you explain like it’s obvious. “We’re just friends. I thought you knew that.”

Minho only then realizes he had never once heard you refer to Hyunjin as a boyfriend, nor had any of the people around you. But his assumptions weren’t so ill-judged, either. You two acted like a couple. It wasn’t so absurd to assume that you were one.

He finds himself staring at your amused face for a few seconds before forcing himself to turn his attention back to his phone.

You acted like a couple, but you were just friends. Minho groaned mentally.

“So, you’re like friends with benefits?”

“Yeah… I don’t particularly believe in love anymore, Minho. I thought you knew that from our talk a while ago,” You chuckle, shifting on your feet. “Hyunjin is one of my best friends. We just hook up ‘cause it’s convenient.”

Minho hums, his fingers ghosting over his phone screen. “Sounds like you’re running away from love.”

He blinks a couple of times as he takes in his own words. He would have never said such a thing if it hadn’t been for the liquid courage flowing through his veins.

You shrug, moving to sit on the white bench just outside the house. “Well, yeah, that is what I’m doing. Love hasn’t been kind to me at all. I have no interest in going after it, only to be hurt again. It’s a movie I’ve watched before and I hated the ending every time.”

Minho bites the inside of his cheek, finally clicking the button to find a ride, his thumb pressing on his phone screen more forcefully than he intended. He felt angry. You didn’t deserve to settle for a friend with benefits due to convenience. Had you wanted to be in that situation, it was your every right to do so, but you were in it out of fear of being hurt.

He felt sad. He wished you didn’t equate your past experiences with love to everything it could be. Bad experiences in love were possible for everyone — even for him, who used to believe unwaveringly that love could never be hurtful — but that didn’t mean it was all there was to it. Minho desperately wanted to show you that. The good side of love, the side that made him put it above everything else in his life on so many occasions, the side that made him crave it even now when it hurt more than it felt good.

And, strangely, Minho felt relieved. It was a small percentage of the chart of current emotions he was experiencing, but prevalent nonetheless. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he felt happy Hyunjin wasn’t your boyfriend and, most importantly, that you weren’t stuck in an unhappy or toxic relationship, as he had so often feared.

His ride arrives, and he’s overcome with a wave of courage. Minho would much rather live with regret than with a constant ‘what if’.

Shoving his phone inside his pocket, he offers his hand to you, who looks up at him curiously from where you’re sitting on the bench before taking his hand. Minho pulls you to your feet and hugs you. With his hand on your waist, he pulls your body closer to him, finally holding you tightly the way he’s always wanted to do. He presses a kiss to your head, bringing his lips to your ear and whispering, “I’m gonna change your mind.”

He feels your body shake with a chuckle, but he only tightens his hold on you.

“What?”

“About love, I’m gonna change your mind,” He answers matter-of-factly, “You deserve to feel love without being afraid.”

Minho pulls back from the embrace just enough to see your face, and he’s surprised to find you smiling up at him. He smiles back.

“I will change your mind.”

Minho had just dropped you off at your house, ready to drive around aimlessly until he absolutely had to go back to his dorm, when Seungmin texted him.

Kim Seungmin: hey my sister’s engagement dinner is tonight Kim Seungmin: and i might have fucked up something in the code i was working on so now there’s a chance that you fish 100 rare fish at once 🤪 Kim Seungmin: pls pls do me a solid and fix it before chan sees it and kills me? Kim Seungmin: love you hyung 💚

Minho initially groaned at the messages, thinking of the many ways in which he could murder Seungmin and get away with it. But, ultimately, he didn’t want to go back to his dorm anyway, so he gladly turned his car around. If he was lucky, this would take hours and he would have a valid excuse to crash in Chan’s cramped living room.

He punches the code to the front door and his friend greets him with a puzzled expression.

“I forgot to do the, uh, troubleshooting for this week,” Minho blurts out. It’s the first lie he can come up with, and he hopes it’s convincing enough. Chan nods slowly. Seungmin might have saved him from having to endure his roommates on a Saturday night, but he still owes him.

“It’s all good,” Chan says with a sigh, “I’m most likely gonna pull an all-nighter designing these new characters. Anyway, how did you waste your time today?”

Minho has been taking you on what he likes to call Subtle Dates for a month now.

Chan affectionately calls them Waste of Time Dates.

Minho rolls his eyes, sitting down on his own desk. “We went to Han River and walked around till sundown, then watched the Banpo Bridge water show.”

Days like today were rare, so Minho was happy. Most weekends, it seemed as if the whole world was conspiring against anything he planned with you.

“Oh, how romantic of you,” Chan gasps, feigning amazement. “Did you at least kiss her this time?”

“You know I can’t just kiss her like that. I know she’d freak out if I tried to do anything romantic with her,” Minho taps his fingers on his desk, knowing he sounds ridiculous. But he has a plan. He just hopes this plan actually works out soon. “I don’t mind being patient.”

He hears Chan scoff. “So, you took her on another one-sided date and then drove her home so Hyunjin can fuck her?”

Minho’s fingers stop tapping on his desk, his hand coming down to slam on it before he can stop himself. He lets out a heavy sigh, and Chan mumbles an apology. But, the truth is, he knows his friend is right. Just last weekend, Minho dropped you off straight into Hyunjin’s arms, the younger boy waiting for you to come back in front of your house.

And Hyunjin wasn’t the only inconvenience that rendered it almost impossible for the two of you to spend time together. Minho had to cut most of your dates short due to Chan calling him about something urgent that only he could fix at work, or you canceled altogether because your roommate was upset and you didn’t have the heart to leave her alone like that. There were also times when Minho was too tired to even go out at all, like on the day of his birthday, which resulted in you coming over to Chan’s apartment and eating cheap takeout food with him and his two friends.

Minho found himself dealing with countless bumps in the road when it came to finding a way into your heart.

“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Chan says hesitantly, “You clearly like her a lot.”

Minho repeatedly opens and closes the code he’s supposed to fix. He sighs. “I like her more than a lot, and I don’t even know when that happened.”

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” His friend explains, his face disappearing behind his own computer screen. “I just can’t see what will change if you go on dates with her when she doesn’t even know they’re dates and if she’s just gonna go home and have sex with someone else. I don’t get it. What difference does it make?”

He can hear Chan scoffing, although he tries to disguise it by clearing his throat. Minho shakes his head.

“It makes all the difference because that’s not love. I wanna show her what love is, and that it isn’t always bad. I promised her that I would.”

Chan sighs, sliding his chair toward the mini-fridge by the couch. “Agree to disagree?” He asks, grabbing a bottle of water and tossing it in Minho’s direction. He grabs it mid-air, just before it hits him in the face, and clicks his tongue.

“Agree to disagree.”

Minho plugs his headphones into the computer, drowning out the noise of Chan’s pen sliding across his iPad with his brown noise playlist. But he can’t drown out the obstinate thought ringing inside his head, screaming at him that Chan is right.

Taking you out on dates — which you don’t even know are dates — doesn’t really make a difference if you’re just going to go back to your convenience with Hyunjin at the end of the day. If you think you’re just friends going out together, and you go back home at night to the comfort of sex without the love you’ve been running away from for so long, what Minho is doing truly is useless.

It’s just like when he argues with Seungmin through their codes, screaming at the younger boy in all caps about something that’s broken, even though he knows he’s going to be the one who will end up having to fix it.

Minho’s fingers come to a halt on the keyboard.

Closing his work, he opens up Google and finds the first flight he can to Japan. Almost as if he’s on autopilot, and his brain is completely shut off. He books the flight and the cheapest hotel he can find, using almost all the money he’s saved up to move out of his hell of a dorm. It might be the most idiotic thing he has ever done in his life, but he’s so in love it hurts him. And he loves love, and love with you — the thought of that alone has his heart beating at his throat. He doesn’t want to keep on with these futile attempts at trying to make you see that love is good and that, maybe, love can be good with him.

The truth is, he feels scared. Maybe even more scared than you do. He is terrified of knowing the answer, of finding out that maybe he could change your mind about love but that it would simply lead you to someone else’s arms and he would have to endure the pain of unrequited love until it inevitably faded away with time.

Minho would gladly live with that pain if it meant you were happy.

But he needed to know.

He adjusted his glasses — a childhood nervous habit that returned after he started wearing them more often since you complimented him months ago — and retrieved his phone from his backpack.

He typed and deleted more times than he’d like to admit.

Me: Hey, it’s late sorry Me: Just wanted to know if you’d be up for a trip to Japan? Me: In two weeks Me: For study purposes Me: We’d finally have the chance to use what we learned in class lol Me: Chan was supposed to go with me but he has a family thing so he can’t anymore Me: Everything’s already paid for and he said he doesn’t mind if you go in his place Me: Lmk what you think

Minho’s fingers typed as his brain came up with excuses and lies, sending more messages than he needed to. He couldn’t tell you he booked a whole damn trip with you just to see if maybe, possibly, you have feelings for him too.

He all but throws his phone across his table after turning on Do Not Disturb. He’ll need to muster up the courage before reading your answer, and having his phone buzz for anything that wasn’t your reply would just be torturous. He felt stupid, would feel even more so if you turned down his invitation. He almost doesn’t want you to answer, wants to pretend he never even sent anything.

Because it was stupid.

But love is stupid, and he is in love.

Worst-case scenario, he’s stuck with Chan in Japan for a weekend while he laughs at him.

Best-case scenario, he spends a weekend with you in Japan. No letting you go back to another man at the end of the day, no more hiding that he is taking you out on dates, no more distractions, no more inconveniences of your daily lives.

Minho opens the code he was working on again, quickly typing out:

// NOTE: Minho will fix this.

869 notes · View notes

gay-dorito-dust · 2 months

Note

Hello! Can you do a Damian and reader who are friends, and one day the reader goes over to the Wayne Manor and called Titus? Like both Damian and the reader got into a silly little joke about who Titus loves more? I think it would be funny if Titus went to the reader because they had treats or something in their pocket haha

‘This is utterly ridiculous.’

‘What? are you too chicken that Titus might like me more.’ You taunted as you then started clucking like a chicken in Damian’s ear, to which he then shoves you away by the shoulder.

‘I am not chicken and besides it was only one time that Titus wrongfully ignored me for you.’ Damian replied but you weren’t buying it.

‘If you aren’t chicken then why are you trying to get out of our bet then? Hmmm? Seems a little suspicious there Wayne.’ You asked and Damian could only curse himself for acting so brash and accepting the stupid challenge you pestered him with as Titus patiently stood a good distance between you and Damian, tilting his head to the side as though to ask him what was taking so long.

‘Our bet? You mean your stupid-‘ you raised your brows at Damian as you started clucking again, though softer this time and Damian knew there was no version of this where he got out of participating in your bet. Not a single one because you wouldn’t let him live it down otherwise and Damian prides himself of being a man of his word, no matter how ridiculous it might seem. So Damian bites his tongue and swallows his pride before moving a couple of spaces away from you before muttering under his breath. ‘Let’s get this over with before anyone dares see me in such a state.’

You smiled and then looked towards Titus, who was still stood perfectly still in his spot, before dropping down to your knees and holding out your arms saying. ‘Titus! Come here boy! Come here!’ Damian scoffed at this display and looked at the Great Dane expectantly as he clicked his fingers and pointed to the spot in-front of him. ‘Titus. Come.’ He commanded. Titus didn’t move for a good couple of seconds, as though contemplating who he should go to, his owner or his owner’s friend who gives him the bestest tasting treats he’s ever tasted; which was saying a lot coming from a Great Dane who’s owner was the son of a billionaire.

‘Titus sweetie come to y/n!’ You called out sweetly.

‘No. Titus come to me.’ Damian commanded again.

Titus walked forwards a little, still hesitant on who to choose, but as though he was being chased by a bat out of hell, the Great Dane bolted over to you and rammed into you hard. So hard I fact that within a blink of an eyes you were knocked to the floor either Titus sticking his muzzle into your face, his rancid and warm dog breath cascading over you, as Damian stood over you with crossed arms and what looked like a pout.

‘You cheated.’ He said after a while.

‘No. I won.’ You replied pridefully at your victory over him.

‘No, Titus was coming towards me, only to stop and run towards you instead. You did something, I know you did and I’ll find out what it is.’ Damian barks, bearing his teeth at you but you were more than use to his occasional outbursts that ultimately mean nothing.

You shrugged as Titus then decides that he wants to lie down, but as he does lie down he goes and rests his head on your stomach and a paw on your leg, making it so that you wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon if Titus had anything to say about it. ‘You’re just a sore loser Damian.’ You tell him as you laid a hand atop of Titus’ head and rubbed behind his ear just the way he liked. ‘I won the bet fair and square. Titus likes me and there’s nothing wrong with loosing once in a while.’ You concluded and Damian grits his teeth.

‘Tt. Whatever, I’ll prove that you cheated one way or another and until then you can keep parading this so called victory because I can assure you it won’t happen again.’ He threatens as you and Titus visibly perk up at this. ‘So you’re saying there’s a next time?’ You asked and Damian throws his head back a groans before walking deeper into the Manor and away from you and Titus, murmuring under his breath as he goes. ‘That’s all you took away from that? Unbelievable’

You nonchalantly shrug your shoulders and dig into your jean pocket to pull out a dog treat for Titus, who engulfed it with one quick bite of his powerful jaw. ‘There was no rules against bribing your best friend’s dog with dog treats.’ You justified to yourself as you fed Titus another treat, ‘after all what Damian doesn’t know won’t hurt him, isn’t that right Titus?’ You then asked the Great Dane who only sneezed as he looked at you expectantly for more dog treats for his participation in your schemes against his owner.

‘Good boy.’ You praised as you continued to feed him treats to his hearts content.

#damian wayne x y/n #damian wayne x you #damian wayne imagine #damian wayne x reader #damian wayne imagines #damian wayne fluff #dc imagine #dc x reader #dc x you #dc x y/n #dc comics x reader #dc fic #dc fanfic #dc fanfiction

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somevagrantchild · 5 months

Text

Missing Loustat scene discovered in Anne Rice's diaries

I HAVE SOMETHING AMAZING TO SHARE WITH YOU!!

As I was reading Anne Rice's diaries in the special collection library at Tulane University while I was in New Orleans for the Vampire Ball, I discovered this intensely sexy scene she wrote between Louis and Lestat that never made it into her books. This is Anne Rice's original writing, never before shared anywhere online.

Anne Rice wrote this scene by hand in her diary dated November 6, 2015 (which she mentions is the day before Stan's birthday. He would have been 73😭). I have deduced that it is her very first (and very rough) draft of the scene that eventually became chapter 4 in Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, aka the scene where Louis agrees to move into the chateau and be Lestat's partner/companion again. The final version of the scene in the book reads like wedding vows, serving as the beginning of their marriage in the modern era. As you'll see, the first draft was rather different.

In Prince Lestat, Louis and Lestat's interactions are extremely brief, and they aren't able to talk beyond one stolen moment to reassure each other of their love. It would seem that in the six months between the end of Prince Lestat (when Louis thinks to himself that he will be with Lestat very soon), and the beginning of Atlantis (when that finally ends up happening), Louis and Lestat do not have any intimate conversation. They may have talked somewhat, but only briefly about superficial matters, or they may have not even spoken to each other once over those six months until Lestat asks Louis to meet him in New Orleans for chapter 4.

In an earlier diary entry, I found a note where Anne said she wanted their first reunion conversation to begin by finally addressing Louis dumping Lestat's body in the swamp after Claudia tried to kill him—something they have never once discussed. So when I came across this scene in a later diary, I could tell it was a direct follow-through on that idea.

The scene begins with Lestat speaking to Louis, and it seems they are outside on the streets of New Orleans, but someplace private where they aren't being observed by mortals. This is different from the final book version with them sitting at a sticky table at the Café Du Monde (though it is similar to how Lestat tells us they walked around the city streets together for hours after the reunion scene was over).

Anne headed this part of the diary entry with: Early on: L+L quarrel—

“I can forgive her for what she did. She was never a human being. She went from being an infant to a monster. But you—you stood there and watched. You carried my body into the swamps and dumped me there as if I were trash—you were the one I hated! How could you do that to me? Decades we’d been together!”

He stared at me for the longest time—not defensive, not angry.

“I could do it because I was afraid,” he said. “I didn’t know how I was going to live without you.”

“I don’t believe you. You were fine without me. You were preparing to sail to Europe. You were making plans.”

A torrent of words.

“Stop!” he said. “I’m here now. I love you! I thought you wanted me here! I thought you’d forgiven me. I thought we had a second chance, now, you and I. And miles to travel together!”

I nodded.

“A second chance!”

I nodded.

Then I took hold of him as if I was going to kill him. I threw him up against the wall and bit into his neck for the first time in two hundred years—the first time since the first time—and when the blood gushed into my mouth, I saw again—for the first time in two hundred years—his soul, his heart.

I was lost in his mind, his thoughts, his dreams, flashes…

I drew back—I’d drunk too much. He was being held there by me, his head bowed. I slapped him hard and when he opened his eyes, I pushed his open mouth against my neck. I forced his fangs into me.

And we were together, wrapped in one another’s arms…

Finally I pushed him back.

He was sitting on the paving stones, hair in his face, back to the wall. I took his hand and helped him up.

“Kiss me,” I said. “No, really kiss me.”

Finally I let him go.

“I can’t live without you! “ he said. “I swear, you wander off on me again, I…”

“I won’t. I won’t ever.”

We walked along in silence.

“He loves you too,” he said.

“Who?”

“The silent one, the one who’s never spoken to me, the one inside you.”

It was time. I could have lingered a half hour more in the old times, but the time was now.

The End

------------------------------------

Above is the clean version, which I have corrected for missing punctuation, missing letters/words, and necessary dialogue tags.

Below is the original rough version as I have transcribed exactly from Anne Rice's handwritten diary.

------------------------------------

“I can forgive her for what she did. She was never a human being. She went from being an infant to a monster. But you—you stood there & watched. You carried my body in the swamps & dumped me there as if I were trash—you were the one I hated! How could you do that to me? Decades we’d been together!

He stared at me for the longest time—not defensive, not angry.

I could do it because I was afraid, he said. “I didn’t know how I was going to live without you.”

“I don’t believe. You were fine without me. You were preparing to sail to Europe. You were making plans.”

—A torrent of words.

“Stop! I’m here now. I love you! I thought you ’d wanted me here! I thought you’d forgive me. I thought we had a second chance, now, you & I. And miles to travel together!”

I nodded—

“A second chance!”

I nodded—

Then I took hold of him as if I was going to kill him. I threw him up against the wall & bit into his neck for the first time in 200 years—the first time since the first time—and when the blood gushed into my mouth I saw again—for the first time in 200 years—his soul, his heart—

I was lost in his mind, his thoughts, his dreams, flashes — (more)

I drew back—I’d drunk too much He was being held there by me, his head bowed. I slapped him hard & when he opened his eyes I pushed his open mouth against my neck. I forced his fangs into me.

And we were together, wrapped in one another arms — (more)

Finally I pushed him back.

He was sitting on the paving stones, hair in his face, back to the wall. I took his hand & helped him up.

Kiss me. No really kiss me.

Finally I let him go.

I can’t live without you! I swear, you wander off on me again, I … I ”

“I won’t. I won’t ever.”

We walked along in silence —

He loves you too

Who

The silent one, the one who’s never spoken to me, the one inside you.

It was time. I could have linger a half hour more in the old times, but was now —

The End

------------------------------------

The spots where she wrote (more) are clearly areas where she intended to expound upon all Lestat was seeing and feeling in Louis's mind, soul, and blood, and then what he felt and saw as Louis was drinking from him. How I wish we could know what she would have written there! Also the lines that start or end with a — make me wonder if she intended to add more to those bits as well. Would she have actually written out Lestat's torrent of words?

Lestat's line "Kiss me. No really kiss me." isn't in quotation marks in Anne's diary. I chose to add them, because there were many other obviously spoken-aloud dialogue lines also without quotes. But it is possible that Lestat only thinks these words as he and Louis are kissing each other. It reminds me of in Queen of the Damned, when Daniel thinks, "I like kissing. And suggling with dead things, yes, hold me." The narration doesn't tell us Armand actually starts holding him, but Anne's style of using internal monologue makes it clear that's what happens in the action. So the "Kiss me." could be similar in this instance as well. And in that case it might mean Louis is the one who initiates the kiss, and this is Lestat’s internal “yes, yes!!” reaction to it. But I do suspect he is actually meant to be saying it aloud.

With the em dash at the end of it, the very last line could have been meant to continue: "but was now ______" was now...something. But considering she wrote "The End" after it, it seems like it was meant to be a final statement, so that is why I added the missing words I chose in my edited clean version.

Although this conversation is very different from the one we get in the final version of Atlantis, I do still see elements of it in the book's scene:

Louis's line "I can’t live without you! I swear, you wander off on me again, I …" became "so I'll come. And when you tire of me and want me gone, I'll hate you of course."

They still kiss, really kiss. In the book, it is moved to before their conversation, when Lestat first sees Louis in their Rue Royal flat, wearing the new clothes he ordered for him and Louis says, "This is what you wanted, isn't it?" and Lestat is so shocked, he's unable to respond.

They do still discuss Amel in the book version, in much more depth than he is mentioned here. Louis having never heard Amel's voice in his own head remains consistent.

They do still go walking around the streets of the Garden District, though it happens after the conversation, not during it. Lestat does say they talked for hours during that walk, but about Amel and what's been happening to Lestat as Prince. Not about themselves or their past.

MY THOUGHTS!

The confirmation here that Lestat never tasted Louis's blood before their new marriage begins in Atlantis is one of the most amazing parts to me, when combined with the offhand way that Lestat mentions what Louis's vampire blood tastes like in Blood Communion. Even though the final version of Atlantis never shows us Lestat drinking Louis's blood (either forcefully like this scene, or consensually in other ways), the mention in Blood Communion does confirm that it DOES happen off the page at some point during the years between Atlantis chapter 4 and the beginning of Blood Communion.

We know that Louis drank much of Lestat's blood at the end of Merrick, and this was his first time doing it because we were told in previous books how much he resisted his powers being increased by drinking ANY other vampire's blood. It is nice to have it confirmed that Lestat never bit Louis or drank any of his blood in return either before or after Merrick. But now, after Lestat becomes Prince, this is now a new element to their relationship. It makes me consider more strongly that Anne perhaps meant to imply that they then for the first time began to engage in blood sharing the same romantic way Lestat did with Akasha in Queen of the Damned, and then in the even more explicit way she shows us with Rhoshamandes and Benedict in Prince Lestat.

I don't take all Anne wrote in her diaries as canon. It is clear that much of what she wrote there were spitball ideas that she later chose to absolutely reject (as opposed to deciding they were true but she just didn't mention them in the books). But I do not see anything in this scene that the final versions of the books contradict. So even though this scene didn't actually happen in canon, we can believe that the feelings and emotions that drive this scene are still canon. And I love that for us 🥰

I have cross-posted this on ao3 to give us a good place to talk back and forth to each other about it in the comments section there. Reblog and reply to this post as much as you like, but if you want to have some conversations and share your own thoughts on what she wrote, ao3 will give us a much more organized place to do it, where other people will be able to easily find and read your meta as well.

#anne rice #anne rice diaries #tulane #vampire chronicles #interview with the vampire #prince lestat and the realms of atlantis #loustat #louis/lestat #lestat de lioncourt #louis de pointe du lac

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lazycats-stuff · 20 days

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What about male reader being Alfred's nephew who came to live with him because his parents died or were just unfit parents? Alfred isn't all too happy that he's here, but not because he hates him, no, but because Gotham isn't the safest place and the fact that he's bow living with the vigilante family isn't the greatest fact. I feel like Alfred would be very overprotective of his nephew, and just the family's reaction to Alfred's nephew, i feel like the family didn't really ask Alfred about his family and such .

Oh yeah, some Alfred for the soul. That man needs more love. Also, this will be under Batfamily since I'm too lazy to put a new masterlist for Alfred.

Summary: Alfred's nephew comes to live with Bruce and the rest of the fam.

Warnings: child abuse, mentions, mentions of what happened, everyone trying to make sure that (Y/N) is comfortable, Alfred being protective.

Alfred left the UK and London behind a long time ago. He had his training and career as a soldier and then as a spy. Soon enough, his path led him to the USA, where he got a job as a butler for the Wayne family, even before Bruce was even in the picture. It wasn't really easy to leave his life behind, but Alfred knew it was for the better.

He needed a new beginning after everything he has witness over the years. Especially since his sister cut contact with him. Alfred, while said, he knew he couldn't change her mind in the slightest. But that didn't matter today. What mattered was his new family and his four grandsons and son.

Yes, he did consider Bruce to be his son. After all, he did raise him from when he was 7. And as his four grandsons came along, he was happy.

As far as his old family? Around 13 years ago, his sister had a baby. A boy named (Y/N). Yes, Alfred kept some tabs on his family, just to make sure that everything was like okay back there. Years went by and when (Y/N) was 13, Alfred got a call.

It wasn't a pleasant one.

Alfred sighed as he ended the call, rubbing his temples, muttering a lot of unpleasant things underneath his breath. His nephew (Y/N) was taken out of his sister's custody because she was abusive in every since of the word. And in every shape too.

Starving, beatings... Neglect...

Alfred was really mortified and he could barley speak as he remembered the conversation... He sighed and quickly made his way down to the kitchen opening up the cabinet where he held the strongest drinks in the manor. He poured himself a glass of scotch, since it was the first thing he could see.

I downed the scotch in one sip before pouring himself another one. He sighed yet again, leaning on the kitchen counter, trying not to snap.

" Something happened? " Bruce asked from behind him and Alfred sighed for the third time.

" Well master Bruce... Something did happen. " Alfred said, taking the glass and turning around to face Bruce. Alfred knew that (Y/N) had to come live here... But this family is full of vigilantes... But this is also a safe space too.

" What happened Alfred? " Bruce asked, worried for the man. Alfred is often composed and sarcastic, but now, he was shaken and just... Sad?

" My nephew is in the custody of CPS, well, at least the British version. " Alfred started and Bruce crossed his arms as he leaned on the doorway.

" I didn't know you had a nephew... " Bruce admitted softly and Alfred chuckled, sipping his scotch slowly.

" Yeah... My sister cut contact with me a long time ago master Bruce... " Alfred acknowledged and Bruce nodded, not knowing what to say.

" Either way... I'm the only family he has master Bruce, which means he will have to come here. " Alfred whispered, downing his scotch again.

" That's not a problem Alfred. I'll make space for (Y/N), clear out one room for him and talk to the boys. " Bruce responded and Alfred shook his head, making Bruce frown and tilt his head in confusion.

" That's something I know you would do master Bruce. " Alfred explained and poured himself more scotch. " It's... You are Batman and the danger that comes with that name... I can't bring my nephew into more danger. " Alfred finished explaining and downed the scotch once more.

" It will be different. We will be honest with him. " Bruce said and Alfred did have to agree, they had to be honest with him.

" He will flying here tomorrow master Bruce, so we will need to pick him up. But before hand, we need to talk to the boys. And it will need to be serious. "

" Of course it will be serious Alfred. (Y/N) will feel safe here. And if any boys are out of line, send them to me Alfred. I'll call them down now so we can talk about this. " Bruce said before he went upstairs.

Alfred just finished a bottle in the meantime.

Bruce sat his sons down, telling them that this is very serious.

" Now, listen to Alfred intently. He is officially a lead on this. " Bruce said and sat down. The four boys looked at Alfred, who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.

" Well... My nephew is coming here to live with us. His parents, my sister and her husband were abusive to him... Physically, verbally... They starved him too... Either way, he is in a bad mental place. Which means that you four better be on your best behavior. No fights in front of him, both verbal and physical. Don't force him to talk about it and try to befriend him. " Alfred finished, looking at his grandsons with a pointed look.

" Is that all you had to say? " Dick asked and Alfred nodded.

" You have a nephew?! " Jason exclaimed and Alfred nodded.

" Okay, that... I thought you had no family. " Tim said and Alfred sighed and Bruce smiled sadly.

" I thought you were an agent for the MI6 and had no family... Like killed off. " Damian said and Alfred sighed yet again.

" Okay boys, that's enough commentary. " Bruce said and they all grumbled. " It's important that (Y/N) feels safe here. And Alfred has my full permission to put you all back in line. "

" As if he ever needed permission. " Jason mumbled quietly and Dick smacked the back of his head.

" Thank you master Dick. "

" Everyone, this is (Y/N). " Alfred said, introducing his nephew to his grandsons. " (Y/N), these are the infamous Wayne kids. I don't think anymore introduction is needed. " Alfred said, glancing at his shy nephew.

" Now (Y/N), let me lead you to your room. " Alfred said and gently lead (Y/N) to his room. It was one of the bigger ones, with a lot of room and a comfortable bed.

" Now (Y/N), are you hungry? Because it's lunchtime in America at the moment. " Alfred said as (Y/N) put a small suitcase on the bed.

" I could eat something. " (Y/N) said and Alfred nodded, smiling at the fact that (Y/N) would eat something.

" I was thinking about some burgers actually. I can make a good one, with my awesome recipe. Do you want to come down or do you want to stay in your room? " Alfred asked softly.

" I would like to go down... This is a nice place... " (Y/N) said, still nervous.

" I agree it is nice, now come on mate, lets go down. " Alfred said and let (Y/N) go down. Alfred gently led him down to the kitchen and (Y/N) sat down, the boys all around him, keeping some distance, trying to not make him feel overwhelmed.

" So... Is it true that the Queen is a lizard? " Jason asked out of the blue and (Y/N) rolled his eyes at that, but with a smile.

" She passed away. " (Y/N) said and Jason raised his brow.

" No. "

" Yes. "

Jason scoffed with a smile and Alfred listened as he started making the meat mixture for the patties.

" Is it true that people from London speak the best English? " Dick asked and (Y/N) rolled his eyes.

" It's not true. It's so far from the truth... " (Y/N) said and Dick chuckled.

" Well, the royals are there and they must be educated... So how come? " Dick joked and (Y/N) shrugged his shoulders.

" Is it true that gun control is tighter? " Jason asked curiously and (Y/N) nodded.

" Damn... Well, welcome to the land of freedom. " Jason joked and (Y/N) smiled, but it was tiny. Tiny as hell.

" If you hear a bald eagle screeching it means you have reached the peak of staying here. " Tim stated and (Y/N) rolled his eyes a bit.

(Y/N) turned his head when he saw Titus, the Great Dane walking in with his head high and tail wagging at the sight of a newcomer. Damian was ready to intervene if necessary, but Titus was calm with people.

Damian watched as Titus sniffed (Y/N)'s hands, licking them softly and then (Y/N) hesitantly petting him.

" What's his name? " (Y/N) asked, not sure who to ask directly.

" His name is Titus. " Damian answered as he kept watching, tilting his head in wonder.

" Is he yours? " (Y/N) asked as he scratched Titus' ears.

" Yes he is. " Damian answered and (Y/N) moved down his hand to Titus' cheek. " He is huge... " (Y/N) mumbled as he kept patting Titus, who was wagging his tail.

" He is a Great Dane so he is big. " Damian explained and (Y/N) stopped petting him, making Titus whine.

" He is a big baby. " Jason chimed in and Damian nodded.

Alfred put the things he needed aside and checked on (Y/N) and the way he was handling the situation was great. The boys didn't push him, joked about something with him... And (Y/N) was comfortable. That was the most important thing here.

Thankfully, Alfred and Bruce both have experience with sort of traumatized children so (Y/N) will be able to heal properly. And the truth about them being vigilantes... Well, that can wait until (Y/N) is more stable.

#dc comics #dc x male reader #x male reader #alfred pennyworth x male reader

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theemporium · 4 months

Text

and here we have my favourite wee softies, carlos and butterfly🥹enjow some marriage bliss!

series masterlist

You had seen Carlos in a variety of situations over the years you had known him, various of them being in medical situations.

You had seen him go under intense medical checks before and after each of the races.

You had seen him after particularly bad crashes that left him winded and disoriented and a little worse for wear.

You had seen him when he was sick with the flu, bedridden and whiny and desperate to just be held by you.

You thought that after so many years of marriage and even more spent together as a couple, that you had truly seen it all with Carlos Sainz. You didn’t think there would be any more new levels to your husband that you would ever come to learn—as naive as it sounded. You thought you had seen him in every version of himself.

And then, he had to get his wisdom teeth removed.

Your husband was stupidly stubborn in the most bizarre and unsuspecting situations, and it turned out this was just another one of those. Despite the pain in his gums, Carlos was adamant that he was fine. He was adamant that he was being very normal, that he totally wasn’t wincing every time he kissed you and had definitely not been favouring colder foods over the last few days.

It had taken a week to convince him to go to the dentist. It had taken an hour of both you and the dentist convincing your husband that the procedure was necessary and the best option if he wanted to stop being in pain and not risk anything worse happening. It had taken a grumbling amount of apologies on the ride home and a homemade meal from Carlos for you to finally stop giving him the cold shoulder for his stubbornness.

Everything had seemed normal when you drove him to the dentist practice (as hard as it was for him to accept he was in too much pain to drive) and kissed him softly before he headed in for the procedure. You honestly assumed it would be no different to the few times he had been given strong painkillers after a crash, you thought you were prepared.

You were most certainly not.

“MI ALMA!”

You tried to bite back your grin, shaking your head as you continued to rush around the kitchen.

“MI AMOR!”

You snorted, grabbing the tray with both hands before you began making your way towards the living room where Carlos had been settled since he arrived home.

“Mi mariposa!” Carlos grinned, his blinks a little slow and his cheeks puffed out with the gauze inside, but he was still the prettiest boy you had ever seen. “I’ve missed you.”

“I told you I’d be five minutes,” you said with a soft smile as you placed the tray down on the coffee table, a bowl of soup and a spoon lying on it. “You need to eat.”

“I don’t want to,” he huffed out as he opened his arms for you, only to pout when you didn’t instantly climb into his arms.

“You have to eat before you have your next dose,” you reminded him as you nodded towards the soup. “C’mon, I’ll help you.”

“Mi amor, the only thing I need is your hugs,” Carlos stated like his words were matter-of-fact and weren’t slightly slurred. He sounded exasperated, like your refusal to hug him was the biggest inconvenience in the world—despite the fact you had been cuddling the boy since you two got back from the dentist. “Not soup.”

“It’s your favourite,” you bargained. “Tell you what. If you eat the whole bowl, you can have me for the rest of the night.”

His glossy puppy dog eyes looked up at you. “Promise?”

“Promise,” you nodded.

You laughed as Carlos scrambled to sit up, already reaching for the bowl as you let out a laugh—one that made him smile a bit wider. You slapped his hands away, reminding him to take the gauze out before you grabbed the bowl and the spoon, already gathering a spoonful to feed your husband.

#carlos sainz #formula one #f1 #carlos sainz x reader #carlos sainz x you #carlos sainz x y/n #carlos sainz fic #carlos sainz one shot #formula one x reader #formula one x you #formula one x y/n #formula one fic #formula one one shot #f1 x reader #f1 x you #f1 x y/n #f1 fic #f1 one shot

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the-oblivious-writer · 5 months

Text

Memories

Tara Carpenter x Reader

One-shot

Summary: Your relationship with Tara Carpenter became too much. But even when you cut the string loose, Tara still manages to come back each time

Warning(s): Swearing, no pronouns used, angst, toxic!tara, mentions of the Woodsborro killings (so brief mentions of death), drinking & intoxication (tara using alcohol as an outlet)

Notes: Starting off the holiday seasons with an angsty one

1/7 for Seven Days Of Christmas

After Woodsborro, nothing was the same. As much as you wanted it to be, it wasn’t. You and Tara started dating your sophomore year, and the two of you seemed to have it all planned out. Graduate, move in together, adopt a dog, and eventually get married. Although you both never said that last part to each other out loud, you both knew.

But then the killings happened. The stabbings. The events that would forever change yours and Tara’s lives. The lives taken, the trauma, the heartbreak—it ruined your life. Two years ago, you couldn’t even fathom losing the woman you always thought you’d marry… but things change.

You and Tara needed each other and you were willing to stand there by her side no matter what. At least, that’s how it started out.

Unfortunately, Tara had a more toxic outlet for everything that happened—alcohol. It seemed “liquid courage” was the only thing that helped her, other than you. Whenever she woke up in the middle of the night, tossing and turning from another nightmare, you would be there, holding her in your arms as you whispered sweet nothings into her ear and reassured her nobody was coming for her.

When you weren’t there, alcohol was. Drink after drink until she felt numb enough to go back to sleep. It’s predictable that this also meant she did the same with parties, going to one after the other.

You hated seeing her like this, you couldn’t, not anymore. It was starting to become too much. It didn’t help that there was no predicting what side of Tara you were going to get whenever she was drunk. Some days you would get the sweet Tara you fell for, other times, you got a cruel version of her. A person you couldn’t even recognize.

She often got out of you confronting her about the issue, sweet talking her way each time or leaving in the middle of the conversation. One night, you tried confronting her about it once more. This time, not backing down. That happened to be the same night you broke things off. One moment, you’re sitting her down on the couch, the next, you’re storming out the door as you miss Tara’s regretful face—despising herself in that moment.

It’s been a couple months now. A couple months since you broke things off with Tara Carpenter. That's just about enough time for you to stop crying when you look at all the pictures of you and her. At first it was hard, leaving Tara like that. The pain you felt the first month was practically unbearable, but you knew it was necessary. You were both only hurting each other as time went on. You could now look back at the memories and recognize how you made the right decision. Now you kinda smile, you haven’t felt that in a while–

–It’s late, you hear the doorbell ringing as it pours outside. You walk over without thinking. You open the door to see Tara’s brown eyes at the entrance.

“H–Hi. I just wanna talk,” she stammered a bit, looking at you.

No. No, things were starting to finally get better. Don’t ruin this for me, you pleaded in your mind. Oh, but you can’t turn away a wet dog.

“Come in…” You say timidly, moving to the side so she could enter. You don’t miss the falter in her step as she walks in.

“I’ve really missed you,” she started to speak. “And you know, I–” she tripped over a nearby table, you instantly squeezed your eyes shut for a moment.

“Tara–”

“I never apologized,” she continued.

“So is this gonna be, like, a monthly thing now?” You suddenly ask, catching her off guard.

“What?”

“Well, you did this last month. Is this gonna be a recurring thing? Cause’ it feels like you showed up today just to ruin me…” You rolled your eyes when you saw the clueless look she wore. “Yeah, I expect too much. You were probably too drunk to even remember that night, just like you are tonight. If not, drunker.”

“No, no, Y/N, I just,” she walked up to you, holding your face in her hands. You couldn’t look her in the eye, tears threatening to fall at any moment as you felt her soft touch. “I never apologized…”

“You can apologize by staying in my memories and never showing up again,” you harshly spoke, your throat feeling tight as a single tear escaped your left eye. “We’re not good for each other,” you said; you knew it needed to be said. You knew she needed to hear it.

“Don’t leave me again, please,” she started crying, unable to hold it in anymore. You immediately felt a sharp pain in your chest when you saw her curl up on that ground as her lip quivered.

You want to put her in the past, ‘cause you’re traumatized. But she’s not letting you do that, 'cause tonight she’s all drunk in your kitchen, curled in the fetal position, too busy playing the victim to be listening to you when you say, "I wish that you would stay in my memories."

You can’t say goodbye if she stays there the whole night. It's hard to find an end to something that she keeps beginning—over and over again.

The ending is always the same.

“You’re everything, Y/N. My everything,” Tara suddenly spoke from her spot on your kitchen floor.

“Dont…”

“And I’m sorry that I was such a shitty girlfriend,” she continued.

“Stop. Don’t ruin this for me. I was finally getting back on my feet.”

She seemed to ignore your pleas as she added on. “I can’t—I can’t do this without you. You’re one of the best things that’s ever happened to me,” she let more tears roll down her cheeks.

A part of you wanted to believe her. A part of you did. Her words started to pull you in, until you remembered something important; she wasn’t going to remember a thing tomorrow. Her sweet nothings truly were nothing. They were just empty words she used in an attempt to keep you wrapped around her finger. You’ve been down this road before, and you refuse to go back down.

“And I can’t do this,” you finally said, the ‘this’ being your relationship with Tara.

She didn’t say a word. As predicted.

“Since you’re already here, you can stay the night. I don’t want you being by yourself while under the influence. But, just for the night,” you told her, walking towards the cabinet.

She did stay the night; she ended up falling asleep on your couch. You looked down at her restful face, no longer able to hold it in. You rushed to the bathroom, closing the door before leaning over the sink as you cried with your head in your hands

Why couldn't she just stay in your memories?

-----------

A/N: srsly how tf is it december already 🧍🏻‍♀️

#tara carpenter x you #tara carpenter x y/n #tara carpenter x female reader #tara carpenter x reader #tara x reader #tara carpenter x gn!reader #gender neutral reader #tara carpenter #jenna ortega x you #jenna ortega x reader #jenna ortega

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miguel-owhora · 5 months

Note

Something like one day Miguel assigns you some task and in the process you encounter a variation of his and you completely forget about your mission, then Miguel has to go look for you because enough time has passed, only to find you half unconscious and very stupid, with clear signs that another Miguel fucked you.

I was actually hooked on your idea idk idk

TYPE — drabble

SYNOPSIS — what anon said

WARNINGS — 18+ , cheating but is it really cheating if it's a variant of your husband , cunnilingus , squirting , implied multiple orgasms/milking

FEM-ALIGNED READERS AND MINORS DNF, YOU WILL BE BLOCKED.

COMMENTS AND REBLOGS ARE HEAVILY APPRECIATED.

TAGS — @sweetcorpse , @tophamhat-kyo , @villainousdelicacy , @realitylemon , @gayaristocrat , @gaynesspersonified

MORE — this idea literally has me foaming and slamming inside my cage

This version of your home world isn't unusual. It's literally a couple years from '99, a couple years back into the past. Nothing unusual, nothing uncommon from your current year back in your original timeline. Swinging around your city is nice, the sky dark with the city lights polluting the night sky, preventing you from seeing the stars - that is, you never really did see them, unless if you went to the moon station. But that was only ever a privilege you got once you were older.

You spent majority of your youth in the underground part of Nueva York, living in the dark with only the city lights as the sun. You only ever stepped out whenever you wanted to rebel and when you went to college, and only ever moved out of the underworld - the name many called the underground of NY - when you got with Miguel. Bless his heart, as much as you adored your husband and how many years you've been living on the nicer side of NY - that is in looks, but just barely - you would always favor the underworld. You found that despite the reputation it earned, the people were always more real and down to earth than the people living overhead.

You shook yourself out of your thoughts and just barely swerved out of the way before you hit a pole. You swung yourself up and landed on top of a skyscraper of a building, landing in what many would dub the classic spider pose. You peered over the edge of the building, overlooking the city in all its glory. Nueva York, as a whole, no matter how corny you would sound right now, would forever hold a special place in your heart. The people, the food, the diverse mixture of culture and background - that's what made Nueva York, Nueva York: just a clusterfuck of everyone and everything.

After a solid couple seconds of surveying everything you raised your hand to look at your goober - despite what Miguel tried to get everyone to say, it was a goober at the end of the day, a damn watch if you want to be simple about it - and began to type in it. You read over the mission Miguel gave you, just a simple 'catch an anomaly and go home' type of mission It wasn't one of those big bad villains, just some guy. Didn't even have a name.

You snorted to yourself as you lowered your arm and stretched, grunting as one or two of your bones popped pleasantly, blood flooding back to wherever it needed to go.

"I didn't know we had a Spider-Man."

The sound of Miguel's voice nearly has you falling off the building, and hadn't it been for your ability to stick to surfaces, you would've been a splat of flesh on the floor. You whipped around, startled, and found yourself looking at your husband.

...Future husband, as this Miguel isn't - first of all - your Miguel and younger than the early thirties man you knew and love. But it was still technically your husband. Technically. Unless if this was one of those world's where you didn't go overhead and stayed in the underworld, or something along those lies, somewhere where you never met Miguel.

This Miguel of Earth-547, Miguel-547, was younger than your Miguel, a bit more youthful, but no less handsome. Perhaps in his twenties, with the telltale signs of a lack of sleep on the heavy eyebags underneath his dark eyes, perhaps from studying so much. The thought has you almost snorting but you caught yourself as you stepped down from the railing of the building, looking over at Miguel with a slight tilt of your head.

"You don't. Not yet, at least." You replied, eyeing him with keen interest, mission forgotten.

Miguel raises an eyebrow, looking unimpressed. You shake your head, snorting in amusement. He's Miguel, he's your husband, just like when he was younger, back when you first met him, back when you first roomied with him against your will.

"Who are you?" Miguel asks, and you can see the regret written across his face. This time, it makes you laugh, both at his face and at the question.

"That's.. that's stupid. Nevermind." Miguel mutters, face darkening in embarrassment as he lightly pouted - frowned, whatever, he has the same face for both feelings - and looked away. It's such a Miguel thing to do that you choke and cough, laughing, and wiping away tears that never meet your fingers, not with your mask covering your face.

"I'd tell you my name but..." You rolled your shoulders, placing your hands on your waist. "I think Miguel would get mad at me for revealing my identity, even if it's just my name. I don't want to mess with any canon event. You know how it is."

"I don't." Miguel replied, glancing back at you with a confused expression. "And Miguel? That's.. that's my name. I'm guessing you mean somebody else? And canon ev- what the shock are you even talking about?"

Oh the irony, you thought to yourself. "Something like that, sure, and it's a long story."

Miguel pursed his lips and gave you a look. You grinned behind your mask, the lenses to your mask squinting at him.

"But I can offer you something better."

This got Miguel's attention and you chuckled, still grinning. Gotcha.

Which is how you ended up in Miguel's dorm room, stuffed between his legs and eating at his pussy. His legs hold you firmly between strong thighs, keeping you trapped and stuffing your face into pussy - not that you minded of course. It's your favorite past time, and why would you deny yourself the opportunity to eat your man's cunt like it's your last meal? You'd be a fool not to.

Miguel's voice is breathless and whimpery, a hand holding the back of your face as he shamelessly grinded against your mouth. He arched his back and squeezed his thighs when your mouth attached to his swollen cock, sucking on the sensitive nub. Your tongue dipped into his hole as you felt him tremble and moan, incomprehensible words of praise and encouragement tumbling from his mouth as he came inside your mouth.

He tried to push you away once his climax passed over, but you didn't budge, merely using your enhanced strength to grab onto his thighs and gently push them down. The position made him even more open and gave you even more access to the sweet, delicious slick that poured out of him, which you didn't dare let a spare a single drop and eagerly slurped up.

"Hah - ca- shock! - cálmate, pinche perro!" Miguel moaned, his thighs tensed and twitching as he danced between pushing your head away and humping into your mouth. He moved when you slipped into two fingers and began to move them, thrusting them in and out of his pussy with a certain expertise that came with someone who's done this before, and sucked on his cock.

Whatever you did, however you learned it, was enough to rip an unexpected orgasm from Miguel that had no buildup and caught him off guard. Even moreso when he felt liquid shoot from his pussy and he went unbelievably warm, but shock, if it didn't make him stomach flutter. His cheeks darkened when he heard you obscenely slurp, drinking whatever liquid he squirted out.

"What - what the shock was that?!" Miguel breathed out after you finally pulled away with a pop. Miguel felt something hot and possessive curl in his stomach when he saw the bottom half of your face - the only thing you dared to show him, the upper part of your face was hidden by the mask you wore - was dripping wet with his fluids. He watched as you licked your lips; and Miguel swallowed.

"You squirted," You said calmly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. You pulled your fingers away from his pussy and plopped them into your mouth, cleaning them of whatever slick coated it, and Miguel stared with wide eyes.

He slowly blinked and looked away, beyond flustered.

"I never knew I could do that." Miguel muttered, panting.

"Well now you do, use it wisely." You replied, amused, lips curled into a teasing grin. Miguel rolled his eyes, but not unkindly. Your eyes flickered from his face down to the rest of his body and over to the lower half. His pussy was slick and swollen, the dark hair neatly trimmed, looking and smelling and tasting absolutely delicious. That never did change about him, did it? You could spend all eternity between his legs, eagerly doting on his cunt.

You snapped out of your thoughts with a little grunt as Miguel suddenly hauled you off the ground and onto his bed, flat on your back. The lenses of your mask widened and your mouth went dry when Miguel swung himself over your lap, straddling you. Your hands instinctively fell onto his waist, so small and holdable, and nervously giggled, licking your lips that suddenly felt too dry.

"What's - what's all this about?" You asked, flustered. Miguel seemed to pick up on this and smiled, a little dangerous, a little fond. He slowly rolled his hips down, eyes gleaming when you softly moaned, your cock, hard in your suit, eagerly responding to some stimulation.

"Just a little treat. You ate me out..." Miguel's hand reached down to grab a hold of your cock, rubbing it through the material of your spandex. "...So I'll let you hit."

"Fuck." You whispered, breathless. Miguel just chuckled, eyes dark and smile dangerous in the way that made you fall in love all over again.

"Have you checked on [Name], Miguel?"

The sound of his AI's voice is enough to rip Miguel's attention from the holograms in front of him. His eyes feel dry as he gives a couple of blinks, vision straining from having stared at screens for so long. It takes a couple of heartbeats before Miguel could process Lyla's question and gave her a questioning look as she hovered near him.

"What?" He asked, intelligently, and totally not in a dumb way.

Lyla rolled her eyes, exasperated. "[Name]? Your husband? The one you sent on a mission?"

It was Miguel's turn to roll his eyes. "I know the name of my husband. Why are you asking if I checked up on him? He's reliable, he'll get the job done."

Lyla smirked in the way that told Miguel she knew something he didn't and could already feel his heart dropping to his stomach.

"What's wrong?" Miguel demanded, immediately on alert, his mind beginning to creep with different scenarios that made him stomach twist uncomfortablely.

"Nothing's wrong. He's fine, he's not hurt." Lyla paused and gave him a look over her heartshaped glasses. "He's just neglecting his duties for a variant."

Miguel processed the words and paused, eyebrow raising. "Variant?"

Lyla just smirked even wider, glitching and moving somewhere else, teasing. A set of coordinates appeared on Miguel's watch.

"Why don't you check it out?" Lyla chuckled, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "But just go alone, alright?"

Miguel didn't know if he wanted to strangle Lyla or himself. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know.

He took a deep breath and rubbed his temple. He could already feel the telltale sign of a migraine appearing, and no, his lack of sleep did NOT contribute to it.

"Lyla, open a portal." He eventually sighed out, dragging a hand over his face to get rid of any drowsiness.

"You got it, boss."

The orange and colorful portal appeared in front of Miguel, lighting up his dark lab in a warm color, changing the texture of the area around it. Miguel took a moment to appreciate it, a moment to gather himself, before throwing himself in the portal.

He knew the world he sent you to was one of your guy's timelines. Just a couple years back into the past, nothing crazy. The whole mission was a simple one, even a newbie could've done it. He knew you could handle more, obviously, but the thought of you getting hurt, of losing you, that frightened Miguel. It scared him. And while he knew you'd get tired of basic missions like the one he assigned you, he wouldn't budge. Well, at least not now.

But he didn't think he'd end up in a rather familiar dormroom. Specifically, his old dorm room, in his bedroom. Familiar posters line the walls, little figurines scattered around, his old desk lined next to his bed and scattered with messy shit. It's nostalgic, and for a second, Miguel imagines himself as his fresh out of high school guy barely entering his college years.

What's out of place, however, is the body of his husband laying on his bed. He's not dead, thankfully, Miguel's eyes catching sight of the slow rise and fall of his chest, and if anything, seems to be half out of it.

His mask is pulled halfway up, from his nose and down being the only thing revealed. His lips are slick and bit, light bruises on his jaw. The pants of his spandex are pulled down far enough to reveal his cock, which lays heavy and flaccid on his stomach, and yet...

Miguel's cheeks darkened and his lips pursed when he saw the dried evidence of cum on your belly and cock. Miguel pixelated his mask away, sighing out of exasperation, even if his core squirmed in a familiar way.

Miguel walked the short steps towards his bed and hovered over you, taking in your frazzled and obviously worn out appearance. Miguel reached down and gently grasped your jaw, tilting your head to get a better look at you.

He was surprised when you softly groaned, squirming as you seemed to awake up.

"Miguel?" You slurred out, and Miguel then realized his variant must've had his time with you.

"[Name,] ready to head back home?" Miguel questioned, his voice quiet but a faint hint of affection tinting his words. Perhaps he should be jealous that a variant got to his husband, but he can't find it in himself. If anything, it was... kind of hot. But that was another thing for another time.

"Mm? Home.... wait-" You stirred a little, becoming just the slightest bit alert. "Which dimension?"

Miguel made a little exasperated face even if you couldn't see. "928."

You went slack, pleased with the answer. "Mkay, le's go h'me..." You slurred before promptly knocking yourself out. Miguel stared before slowly setting your head down. He gently pulled your mask down and stuffed yourself back into your spandex before scooping you up.

"Lyla-" He began but was caught off by the AI, who glitched into existent.

"He looks kind of cute. You're, like, his knight in shining armor - or would it be spider in shining armor?" Lyla mused as she took a couple mixtures of the husbands. Miguel didn't dignify her with a response as a portal opened up, illuminating the room in a warm colorful glow. Then, a thought crossed his mind and he paused.

"Did he even finish his mission?" Miguel asked Lyla, even if he knew the answer.

"Absolutely not." Lyla grinned.

Miguel took a deep breath but didn't get angry - he never did get angry with you, now did he?

"Send someone to finish it." Miguel asked as he slipped through the portal, his AI glitching out of air. Missions he damned, he had his own mission now: giving you the aftercare his variant failed to do, which, in his opinion, made him the best variant out there.

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seaofgoldensand · 21 days

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so, i had seen a lot of people saying that xavier only loves queen mc, but after reading his 3rd anecdote, i’d beg to differ.

there is a quote in there where he says “no matter how many times it takes, no matter where you are… i will find you.”

to xavier, mc is both hunter and queen. there is no difference. even if mc were to have another life, xavier will still see her as the same person, the love of his life basically. and no matter how many lives it may take, he will go through anything and everything to find her and be with her in some way.

also, his relationship from queen mc evidently carried over to hunter mc. remember in his myth where she was in a duel with xavier before he was taken away and jeremiah came up to talk to her, but when xavier returned and saw jeremiah’s arm around mc, xavier clearly was pouting and even told him basically to stay in his own lane. then we have hunter mc who jeremiah was measuring her figure in order to create an outfit to fit her fake role only for xavier to deadass spray water at him like a misbehaving dog saying that she can do it herself.

i know damn well jeremiah had a ball in both instances, he just enjoys provoking xavier whenever possible.

his jealousy shows the same whether queen mc or hunter mc, perhaps he learned from his mistake before, but his efforts with hunter mc seems more like ‘i’ve made this mistake before, i won’t allow it to happen again’. because, if it were truly only for queen mc, then why would xavier go out of his way for hunter mc; when mc lost caleb and josephine, how she felt lonely and xavier told her about snowflakes falling on loved one’s shoulders by their passed loved ones. or even the most recent cards such as ‘romantic afternoon’ and ‘succumb’ as well as his 4* memories altogether.

for someone who is coined as the one who only loves and cares for one version of a woman…he sure treats hunter mc a lot better than he did with queen mc. but, i still stand on this hill that xavier loves mc, no matter what version she is. also something i want to add, man is old, he’s been traveling space to and fro, he would never waste his time on someone he didn’t genuinely want to be around or simply be with.

when i say it transcends, this is legit what i mean.

to him, queen mc is right there with him, once made to be his knight, now hunting and defeating wanderers side by side.

also for @ly-pleiades because she asked to peek into my thoughts about xavier and such and i am happy to deliver what i can

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minnaci · 9 months

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contents: established dan heng x gn!reader. reader is a member of the astral express crew, but is not the hsr mc. hurt/comfort, post-1.2 spoilers

a/n: a little bit of a longer one today! thanks to @itoshisoup, @/petrichorium, n @/kitsunefreak for answering my questions abt dh's reincarnation (ask here)! if u see this i hope u know it took everything in me not to call him daniel heng

you and dan heng have never needed words. why say "i love you" when you could just cut him a plate of fruit? why say "i need you" when you could press little, fluttering kisses to his spine, and watch the shiver of goosebumps spread over his skin?

your language has always been one of quiet actions, quiet loves, which is perhaps why he looks so surprised when you take one look and him and say, quite loudly, "what the fuck?"

because the dan heng standing before you isn't the dan heng you could recognize by touch alone. he's.... taller, somehow. broader. he carries himself with an ease that he hadn't before. and most importantly—

"are those horns?"

"yes," he says, with no further explanation.

"dan heng used to be a cool dragon warrior guy in his past life!" march 7th interjects, seemingly oblivious to your increasing upset. "he was super powerful and super important, too!"

you'd known about the whole... reincarnation thing. he'd explained it to you before, but from your understanding, his past lives weren't important. he'd told you that this life with you was the only one that mattered to him. so why hadn't he told you...?

"that's quite enough, march 7th," himeko takes one glance at your expression and cuts in as march 7th begins rambling about dan heng's... boyfriends? husbands? from his past lives and how handsome and cool and strong they all were, and how their story was so romantic—

dan heng says nothing.

"well," you say abruptly, forcing a smile, "i'm suddenly feeling a bit tired. i'm going to turn in. dan heng, you can sleep outside tonight."

you stand up and swiftly make your way to the passenger car. behind you, you hear march 7th ask, "did i say something wrong?"

you let it all fade into silence as you step into the archive room— you and dan heng's room. at least, it would be silence, if it wasn't for the faint footsteps behind you.

"you're upset with me." dan heng crosses the room to you in a few long strides. gently, carefully, he pulls you into his arms. you let him. despite all of the visual changes, he still smells the same. it's more comforting than you thought it would be. you take a few deep breaths, letting his familiar scent calm you down.

"i'm not angry," you say, voice a bit muffled as you bury your face in his chest.

"you're not," he agrees. "but you are upset."

silence falls upon you. you curl further into dan heng's embrace, and he welcomes you easily, drawing wide circles over your back. he's generous with his touch, his affection. it helps you begin to sort through the mess of feelings in your heart.

"you always told me that your past lives weren't important," you say. the words spill from you, a waterfall of hurt and insecurity. "but then you come back from the luofu looking like some— some celestial war dragon, and then i hear about your banishment for high treason and your two beautiful lovers who recognized you across lifetimes, and how it's so romantic because they're probably your soulmates—"

"i know you don't like when i interrupt," dan heng interrupts. "but i... i want to explain before you get more upset, as there are nuances to this situation that i do not think march 7th handled with enough care. you know how she can be when she's excited."

you nod. you do know. you take another deep breath— in through your nose, out slowly through your mouth. "okay, then. explain. please."

"i do not consider myself the same person as the version of me who lived in the past," dan heng says. "i am dan heng. the person that march 7th spoke of was called dan feng. his deeds and his lovers are not mine. i claim no ownership of nor association with them. thus, they are not important to me. dan feng is not important to me. does that make sense?"

"not really," you say. "you're literally him."

"i am not him," dan heng says. "we may share a soul, but i am not him. i do not remember his life, nor do i want to. i have everything i could ever want here and now, as dan heng."

"really?"

"yes," he says. there's a warm brush of lips against the crown of your head. "the astral express crew makes me happy. you make me happy. we may have our troubles, but there's nobody i would rather face them with than you."

warmth flushes through your body, and you hide your face again. it's rare that dan heng voices his emotions so clearly. his candor strips you raw, scraping at the inside of your chest. he's the one being vulnerable, so why are you the one feeling so seen?

"i mean it," dan heng says, taking your silence as disbelief. "i love you. nothing about my past reincarnation's life will change that."

"you're so ridiculous," you sniffle, willing your tears away. "i love you, too."

silence settles around your shoulders once more, comforting like a feather-filled duvet. dan heng rocks you gently— back and forth, back and forth. new clothes and new horns aside, he still smells the same. he speaks the same way. and when you press your ear to his chest, his heart beats the same, steady beat.

"were your— dan feng's— past lovers really that hot?" you break the silence, and dan heng lets out a rare laugh.

"of course you're curious about that," he says, with no small amount of fondness. "here— i'll let you form your own opinions."

he taps on his communicator a few times, pulling up a picture.

"no way," you do a double take, hands flying to your mouth, and you pull back to look at him, wide-eyed. "dan heng. no way."

"yes way," he says, and you can hear the little smug smirk in his voice. he loves you, you know he does, but you can't blame him for the bit of pride that shines through his tone. if you'd managed to pull not one, but two men that magnificent in your past life, your head would get so big that you'd explode.

"and you don't care about them at all?" you have to ask. dan feng was one lucky guy. it's hard not to feel insecure, just a little—

"why would i? they're strangers to me," dan heng blazes through your train of thought, tilting your chin to look you in the eyes. he sobers. something in his voice reaches into the soft, small animal of your heart, holding it steady as it flutters. "besides, i already have the most beautiful person in the universe in my arms."

extra:

"so does this mean i can sleep in the room again?"

"mrgh," you mumble. if your eyelids were any less heavy, you'd open your eyes to shoot him an incredulous look. your limbs are intwined with his like an octopus, and it's bedtime. surely, he's capable of extrapolating. as it is, you mouth sleepily at his collarbone, and hope he understands it as permission.

"okay. just checking. goodnight, dear."

#writemin!#hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #dan heng x reader #hsr hurt/comfort #honkai star rail hurt/comfort #dan heng hurt/comfort #hsr spoilers #(just in case)#+dan heng

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minniesmutt · 2 months

Text

♱ ━━━━━━ 𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋: 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓

♱ ━━━ CONTENT: ORAL [F. REC] FINGERING, MULTIPLE ORGASMS, OVERSTIM, PET NAMES, UNPROTECTED SEX, NIPPLE PLAY, CUM SHOT, CUM EATING/SHARING, AFTERCARE ♱ ━━━ WC: 1.9K ♱ ━━━ PAIRING: HAN X READER ♱ ━━━ 18+ work!! minors and ageless/blank blogs DNI! you will be blocked, put an indicator on your blog somewhere that you are 18+ before interacting with this work/blog ♱ ━━━ a repost from my old blog

After a short nap, Y/n took to unpacking the things she had brought. It was mostly clothing and a few photos but nothing else. Maybe if she asked, one of them would take her shopping.

She heard the elevator ding and peeked her head out of the bedroom. Chan walked out, hands in the pockets of his slacks. Y/n stepped out of the room and met him in the hallway

“How are you settling it?” Chan asked as he wrapped an arm around her

“Fine, the place is a bit bare though,” Y/n told him.

“I’ll have one of the guys take you out shopping tomorrow. I just came by to see how you were settling in and to go over something with you.”

“Oh?”

“Come on,” Chan pulled her into the kitchen. Sitting down at the table he had put in for her and pulling out a stack of paper

“What’s this?” Y/n asked skimming through the words

“Contract. Jist of it says what you’ll be doing as a front and you will be paid for the work you help us with,” Chan stated

“You guys are paying me but you’re also basically paying everything for me?”

“Think of it as fallback money. If something happens to us for any reason or another, for any amount of time, you’re not left with nothing to fall back on, financially that is.”

“How considerate.” Y/n smiled, “I’m assuming there’s another part that talks about sex.”

“Yeah. Every one of us has our own version of this contract. But you're welcome to update anything in it to your comfort level. Most of it goes over what we are into and that every single one of us is clean.” Chan explained

“Well, so am I, guess there really is no point in condoms,” Y/n smiled

“Only to prevent a pregnancy.”

“I’m on birth control. Don't worry about that.”

Chan explained a couple more things; everyone was made aware of using the traffic light system as a safeword— tapping them twice if she was able to talk for whatever reason as a fallback—, aftercare being important to all of them no matter what, promising her safety from anyone outside of them, etc. Y/n read through the papers as she listened to him, making a few adjustments here and there, but mostly agreeing with what everyone wanted. She signed her name where needed and turned the paper back to him. Chan checked everything and made a quick message about changes to the rest of the guys.

“We don’t expect you to memorize anything either. And it doesn't have to be one way, you can ask us for sex too.”

“Thanks, Chan,” Y/n smiled at him

“No need to thank me,” Chan smiled back

“Is there anything else I should know now that I live here?”

“Say goodbye to your privacy,” Chan chuckled

The two laughed for a moment before Chan got called away. Y/n saw him off before going into her living room. They had been kind enough to furnish the apartment for her so that was one thing she didn't have to worry about. She figured she’d do a little online shopping for a bit. Adding things she just thought were pretty to her cart, even if she didn't need them. She’ll find a use for them.

She heard the elevator again and ignored it after looking up for a second, one of the guys came in to see her, something she was quickly getting used to.

“Whatcha doing,” Jisung asked as he joined her on the couch, laying on top of her as she was laid back against the armrest

“Shopping,” Y/n answered as she peered down at him.

“For what?” He asked

“House decorations, clothes, random shit.”

“Doesn’t sound like fun.”

“Well, I was bored and that’s why I started. If you have better ideas, I’m all ears.” Y/n dropped her phone on her chest and looked down at him

“Just keep shopping,” Jisung smirked

Y/n shrugged and picked her phone back up. Scrolling through the website she was on. Jisung pushed her shirt up a bit then pulled her leggings off her legs. Y/n lifted her hips a bit to help him as he adjusted her legs to lay over his shoulders as he came face to face with her clothed cunt.

Y/n peeked down at him before he started kissing down and licking the cloth of her panties. Y/n let out a small moan as he continued teasing her over the fabric. Nonetheless, she kept shopping.

Eventually, he removed the fabric and softly kissed her clit, licking the bud to her entrance. Y/n smiled as she peered down at him. One hand removed itself from her phone and ran her fingers through his hair, gazing back at her screen. Jisung picked up his pace after a few moments until he was eating her like a starved man.

It wasn’t long till the phone and shopping were forgotten. Her hands tangled in his soft locks and her legs threatened to close around his head.

Han hummed against her clit as she gave him a particularly harsh tug. His eyes cast up her body as flicked the little bud. “Fuck Ji,” Y/n moaned

Jisung didn’t dare let up. Playing with her clit and entrance with his tongue. Enjoying the taste of her juices on his lips and dripping down his chin. He just gave a bit more pressure when he sucked on her clit which seemed to do it for her. Hips rutted against his mouth as he licked her clean from her orgasm.

“So fucking good,” He wasn’t letting up. He continued making out with her sensitive clit. Y/n closed her legs around his head as much as she could. Jisung groaned against her cunt, eyes rolling into the back of his head, just from her thighs suffocating him slightly.

He pushed her thighs up after a minute. Putting them to her chest as he kept going.

“Close,” Y/n whimpered as she grabbed the cushions.

“Give me ‘nother,” Ji mumbled against her clit. He pushed one leg over the back of the couch to free up a hand.

Soon he was pushing two fingers into her and matching his pace to the rate he was eating her out

“Fuck!” Y/n cried as her second orgasm hit her.

Ji kept going through her high. Fingers pumping in and out of her as he pulled his hips from her clit and sat up on his knees. “One more doll. Give one more and I’ll give you whatever you want,” Jisung begged as he pulled her other leg over his shoulder and kissed her ankle

“Need your cock,” Y/n whined, legs slightly shaking

“One more baby and I'll give it to ya’.” a third finger pushed into her

“Too much,” Y/n whined as she grabbed his wrist

“Color?”

“Green!” Y/n called as his fingers curled into just the right spot

“You can take it, doll,” Ji smiled

He pushed forward till he had her coming on his fingers. Her body convulsed under him as he pulled his fingers out, watching her juices flow out of her and soak the cushions.

“Good job doll,” Jisung smiled as he leaned down and kissed her forehead.

He gave her a moment to come down and rest. He took off his belt, setting it on the coffee table.

“Where the fuck did you learn to eat pussy that good?” Y/n asked after her mind out of its haze a bit more

“Now why would I tell you?” He smirked as he leaned over her.

“Secrets are hot. You know what's hotter?”

“What?”

“Your dick in me.”

Jisung didn’t waste another second pulling ever fully down onto the couch and unbuttoning his pants and pulling his hard dick out, far too eager to actually take his pants off. Y/n couldn’t help but giggle at his eagerness and worked on unbuttoning his top and pushing it off him as he pumped his cock. He took his hand off his cock to take the white shirt off his body. Her hand replaced his on his cock, pumping him and lining the tip up at her entrance.

Jisung tossed the fabric to the ground before grabbing her hips and pushing into her. Both moaned as they got quickly used to the feeling. Jisung pushed his pants and boxers down more as he let her adjust to him.

“Fuck, move Ji,” Y/n whined

Jisung pushed her t-shirt up over her breast and moved her legs around his waist. He laid his hand on the armrest above her head. He pulled out slowly and thrusted back in quickly. His eyes glanced back and forth from her tits bouncing with his thrusts to her cunt swallowing him.

Y/n was a mess of moans and whines from him going down on her and making her come three times. Her walls were already clenching around him.

“Fucking warm,” Jisung groaned as his hips snapped into her.

Y/n tightened her legs around his waist. One of his hands fell from the armrest to lay next to her body. He lowered himself a bit to kiss between her breasts then sucked on the skin. Y/n ran her hands through his hair as his lips latched onto her nipple. Y/n gripped his hair tighter, clenching it around him.

“Keep clenching around me doll and I’m gonna blow,” his words were muffled against her boob, shifting his ministrations over to the other nipple and giving it the same treatment he gave the other

“Give…me, please.” Y/n whined. Her legs hiked up higher on his waist as she got closer to her next high.

“Got you all dumb on my cock,” Jisung couldn’t help but chuckle at her.

His tip hit right up against her g-spot. She pulled at his hair as her orgasm hit her again. The man above her pulled away from her nipples and gave himself a few more thrusts before pulling out; coming on her lower stomach.

Jisung rested his head on her chest as they both caught their breath. It took a few minutes before Jisung lowered himself down and then looked up at her. Y/n caught his gaze as he licked his cum from her skin. Y/N shivered under the touch of his tongue before he pulled away, bringing his lips back up to hers. His tongue immediately darted into her mouth. Y/n melted as his cum transferred from his tongue to hers.

Ji pulled away after another moment of enjoying her lips. “You could’ve come inside,” Y/n told him

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” Jisung smiled.

He stood up from the couch and fully took his pants off. He scooped her up in his arms making her squeak in surprise. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he made his way to her bathroom.

Jisung sat her down before giving her a forehead kiss. He started a warm bath for the both of them before walking out of the room and grabbing their clothes. Y/n took care of herself by the time he came back and checked the water.

“How are you feeling,” Jisung asked as he helped her into the water after he got in.

“Tired,” Y/n sighed, leaning back against him.

Jisung wrapped his arms around her body and kissed her shoulder, “Go to sleep, I’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you, Ji.”

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tarjapearce · 10 months

Text

Impostor

Warning: ANGST. Mild smudge of fluff at the end. Mentions of a character death, strained relationships.

Inspired in THIS ask. Thanks anon! ❤️✨

Pairings: Miguel O'Hara x GN! Reader

Summary: Your husband died in your arms, a canon event that instantly grants you a ticket to the Spider Society. But of course, anomalies can be quite dirty players and take hold of what you adored the most.

Being a spider hero wasn't an easy feat. Balancing hero life with married life had surely taken a toll on you and your husband. As much as you wanted to be there, there was always something that needed to be done.

Of course, you were always trying to find a common ground to prevent your marriage to keep slipping away from your hands. But soon enough, you finally had digested that, despite a hero you were still a person. And as a person, you could only do so much.

And the day you feared, to lose him, your beloved husband Miguel, had arrived, like an unannounced hurricane, destroying everything in it's wake. The only victim of such destruction: your heart.

The commotion was heard from the upper roof, a shot rang through your ears, hammering it's echo on the walls. Spider senses roared alive, as every hair on your body stood, letting dread seeping in your bones.

Descending down the walls you saw a very familiar figure on the ground. Your heart beat, a tight knot constricting your throat as a passing by car illuminated the crime scene, only to reveal Miguel's face on the ground.

Please

Some of his curls had fallen off on his face. Your feet rushed to him, shaky hands turned him around, gently. A slow and almost imperceptible sigh escaping his paling lips.

Don't go...

You had begged him through the mask. The light in his eyes was escaping faster than you had anticipated, warm blood staining your clothed fingers. Your mask was removed. His eyes drifted to you and you swore he was trying to smile. As if finally understanding the reason of your ongoing absence in your marriage.

Im so sorry, I should've...

Miguel closed his eyes, and your cries were only drowned by the bustling of the living city.

-------

If you were sure of something is the fact that you could never see this Miguel straight in the eye without tears blurring your sight. Despite two years going by, and you had joined this sort of Spider Society, the once forgotten grieving only resurfaced whenever the splitting image of your deceased husband walked around, barking orders at everyone to keep the Arachnohumanoid-polymultiverse together.

Even though you both, had discussed this matter directly, you still preferred to keep yourself from him at arms lenght. Interacting only when it was necessary. It was a dynamic that although crumbly, worked for the both.

The man wasn't blind to your evident distress whenever he lingered too much around you. You did your part, and so did he. Both working in silent harmony. Together but not scrambled.

----

The anomaly alarm flared up, alerting Miguel right away. Jessica and Ben following in.

"What is it now? Vulture with a new explosive device?" Jess mumbled as she approached the screen area. She stopped upon seeing Miguel's muscles tensing as he exhaled, dreadfully.

"The reality is glitching on (Name)'s universe"

"Glitching? I thought that only happened when someone who isn't supposed to be there-"

"Exactly the problem." Miguel grumbled as Jessica beckoned herself closer to the screen Miguel was looking at.

The video image showed another version of him. A civilian one wandering the streets, with a confused and distressed look in his face.

"Isn't that-?"

"(Name)'s husband."

"Another version of you is married to them?"

"He is supposed to be dead. Why isn't he dead?"

"The anomaly suggest unusual behavior. As if the code model have been rewritten." Lyla spoke as she materialized next to Miguel's shoulder.

"Is that possible?" Jessica looked at the screen again as steps approached from afar.

"Apparently, it is. It has to-"

"Heard the alarm. What is it?" You stopped upon seeing everyone looking your way, solemnity on their faces.

"(Name)..."

"What is it?"

"There is... a glitch."

Frowning, you approached the screen, Miguel however stood in your way. Unsure if allowing you to see what the alarm was about.

Your fist clenched as tears welled up in your eyes.

"Miguel" you tried and he sighed, stepping aside. The clip was revealed to you, your Miguel stared at his surroundings, as if looking for something. Or rather someone.

"W-Why... How is this possible?" Your throat cleared up, trying to subdue the tightness in it.

"That's what we are trying to find out."

"It's just an anomaly, right?"

"Yes."

"I'll handle it."

Miguel followed you as his hands reached to you, holding you gently by the shoulders, his eyes locking on yours.

"It's my mess. I have to... I need to go, Miguel."

"We can find a better approach to this, (Name)"

"He is not supposed to live!" you snapped and Miguel's jaw clenched.

"That's why I will send someone-"

"No. I... I need this."

"(Name)..."

"I need closure." your voice a faint whisper, "I owe myself that, so don't take this chance away from me."

"The anomaly is starting to interfere with the universe, Miguel!"

Seizing the little distraction, you ran off through a portal, ignoring the angry callings from Miguel.

-----

You landed on a nearby building, and begun your search. You dodged towers, cars and trains as you swung through them, your senses tingled upon approaching an abandoned building. How the structure was still standing was a mystery to you.

You crawled up the wall and got inside through a hole on one of it's walls. You could see the anomaly. looking around, when his eyes settled on you. Your heart thumped hard as a cold sweat ran down your spine.

"(Name)!" He called in that ever loving voice you loved to hear. Landing before him you removed your mask.

"It's you..." He rushed to you and cupped your face. Your Miguel held you tightly in his arms and you couldn't help but sob.

"¿Qué pasa mi amor?" (What's wrong, my love?)

"I'm so sorry... for..."

"Shh... It's okay. I now understand why you... always ran."

"I could've been better. For us. I could've told you the truth..."

"We can start all over, again. Like a family."

Your heart broke a little more with every word that came out of his mouth.

"Miguel..."

"Aren't you excited?" His voice echoed through the building, but then he glitched.

"You are not my Miguel."

"What are you talking about? I'm right here! I am alive!"

"That's precisely the problem!" tears rolled down your cheeks as your husband, or at least whatever that had stolen his appearance, clung to you. Kissed you, and held you so lovingly you fell for it for a second.

His touch, his scent, his warmth, everything that made him your beloved partner in crime, was right before you. Offering you a new start.

"I don't want to leave you. There is so much I wanna do better, with you. Just listen to me-"

"You are supposed to be dead."

"No, I'm right here." His voice desperate, trying to convince you with his truth.

Your hands removed his from your frame and he looked at you, both fearing and pleading. The building glitched.

"You are interfering with this reality."

"I'm... Im not understanding. All I wanted to do was to see you again." He muttered gently, "And I now have that chance again!"

"Don't talk... please. "

Your husband went silent as you cried while your webs tumbled one of the pillars that held the structure.

"W-What are you doing?" Panic surged through your husband's face as another column was brought down. Dust showering his clothes

"You are not supposed to be alive." Despite your grief, you had seen what anomalies could do, and if not dealt with it soon, the whole universe could collapse. The other Miguel, your boss had shown you.

"Is it because we didn't get to celebrate our anniversary? Tell me!"

The lump on his throat rivaled with yours as you got another column down. The building shook as it's base crumbled down.

"It's because you died! In my arms! I saw you dying. I had your blood in my hands! You... You think I want to do this? If I could... I would damn this whole universe just to be once more with you."

The anomaly approached you and cupped your face. Even though his skin and touch felt warm, it felt void. Almost rehearsed.

" But I can't. I can't damn a whole universe for my selfishness." His eyes widened upon your words, you shook your head, resolution in mind.

"My husband died years ago."

"Wait" His large hands held tightly on you but he glitched once more, allowing you to escape and crawl onto a wall. Ignoring the tugs at your heart as your Miguel pleaded you to stop.

"He was shot in an alley." you shoot your web and pulled the last column down.

The building itself started to collapse within. The anomaly ran, seeking refuge as it pleaded for you to help it.

"And died in my arms." you whispered as the anomaly looked around, frantically for refuge from the crumbling structure. His feet however were webbed to the ground.

"(Name)!!" his voice called you, but you just turned on your back and left. Blue and red suit followed you, as the structure collapsed completely.

"The anomaly was contained, Miguel" Lyla announced before going quiet again.

"(Name)"

"I need to be alone."

He just watched you, as the rest of the team arrived at the scene.

-------

Miguel approached and leaned on the table with a coffee mug on hand. He offered and you took it. The warmth heating up your fingers.

"Good job."

"Hm." You just nodded and stared at your fingers.

"Thanks." you spoke after a while, "I... I needed this."

"You did what was right."

"Just did what it needed to be done. Learned that from you."

There was a weak smile on your face as he stared at you.

"You're a good leader."

"You're a good hero." He mumbled, and nodded.

"Still, I'd like to keep this... dynamic we have settled between us. After everything that has happened I still need time to adjust to... all of this."

He chuckled and nodded

"When you're ready, we'll talk."

"About what exactly?"

He shrugged and pointed at your ripped and damaged suit

"A new suit, perhaps"

"Or a new watch prototype. This one is a bit too heavy for me. Makes me slow when throwing punches"

"Might do" He gave a small reassuring smile and it made your aching heart to hurt a bit less.

#miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x reader #atsv miguel #spiderman 2099 x you #atsv angst #miguel o'hara fanfiction #miguel ohara x reader #miguel o'hara angst #spiderman 2099 x reader #request #asks and replies

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