#this is literally the scene when they all met for the first time bye

[sohnric]

millennium bug – e. sohn

pairing: eric sohn x fem! reader

genre: 90s au, twenty-five twenty-one au, brother's best friend au, childhood friends au, fluff, slice of life, coming of age. older brother! sunwoo. essentially just eric being baek yijin. oct-nov scenes inspired by weak hero class 1. no plot just vibes im sorry

warnings: minimal swearing and thats all lol

word count: 19k

a/n: posting a fic for a new fandom is always so scary pls be nice to me deobiblr bc im literally abt to cry. also yes i am calling this a 2521 au bc the plot is so heavily inspired it might just be one. a special thank you goes out to @csenke for dragging me into stanning this group i am enjoying myself 🤞

there are some pros and cons to not having friends growing up. cons: you're always forced to tag along with your brother and his group wherever he goes. pros: his childhood best friend is kind of hot.

JUNE OF 1999

Being Kim Sunwoo’s younger sister is no bed of roses sometimes.

Sure, you get the occasional excitement of having him bring you rollerskating with you down the hill or the ever so rare moments of him defending you in front of your mother when you two have done something wrong (while never saying he was in on the bad act as well, of course), but more than often, you are met with his disgusted looks and insults whenever the two years older boy passes by your room and casually bangs at the door just to spite you.

His snarky looks are especially ones to remember. Maybe it’s because he offers them to you often– much like in this very moment, completely unprovoked, and completely not by your fault.

“But mum–”

“I already told you, Sunwoo,” your mother looks at him with a stern look in her eye, the one that makes chills run down your spine, “you can go if you take Y/N with you.”

“But nobody’s bringing their sister! Mum, come on–”

“Take it or leave it, young man.”

And see, your brother may be 19 years old, but he’s still in need of getting permission to leave the house if it includes an overnight stay. It’s an unspoken rule he always follows, since he’s usually granted the right to leave, but the result of his conversation was different than what he expected this time. And see, you may be just two years younger than him (one year left until you are an adult), but even though your mother is too busy to take care of you and entertain your slowly adultling self on most days because of her highly demanding job, she always makes sure that you don’t stay alone for long, and that’s exactly why (you realize, contrary to your brother) she insists on making you tag along on Sunwoo’s trip to the beach house with his friends.

The male grunts and turns on his heel, not giving your mother another response– and with this, you know she won. And that means you’ll have to pack your bag soon, because you know that there’s no way Sunwoo would miss going to the beach house with his friends– even if it meant making his little sister tag along.

And sure enough, Lee Juyeon’s minivan pulls up into your driveway only a few hours later, and the sound of the honking outside is enough for your older brother to aggressively drag you outside of the house, shutting the door behind you and hollering an angry “Bye mum!” to your mother. Your figure is handled with the least amount of care possible as you’re thrown towards the white van, the door opened and 5 heads already peeking out with expecting eyes, waiting for your brother’s arrival.

“My mum made my stupid sister go with me, so I hope we have space for one more,” Sunwoo huffs as he throws his bag into the trunk, slamming it with more force than was necessary (boy does he know how to throw a scene), an encouraging voice of none other than Juyeon– the driver himself– landing in your ear. 

“Sure, just hop in!”

With that, your feet finally unglue themselves off the ground and bring you into the vehicle. You’re familiar with his friends– since a scenario like this hasn’t happened for the first time and you had to spend your fair time with Sunwoo’s circle growing up, mainly because you never really had many friends yourself. You’re not close with any of them, though, and you’re sure you haven’t seen half of them for ages. 

Lee Juyeon is the responsible one of the group. You’re comfortable with the fact that he’s the driver, since you’re not entirely sure if you’d trust any of the other men in this space behind the wheel (you fear the day your brother gets a driver’s license. You'd bet a million dollars that he’ll die while driving recklessly one day). Next to him on the passenger’s seat is Choi Chanhee, his best friend, carrying a map in his hands and twirling it in all possible directions to get his friend on the right track. In the three-seat behind those two is Ju Haknyeon, Ji Changmin and your brother himself, and in the very back of the whole van, almost in the trunk, you’re sat next to Eric Sohn– your brother’s childhood best friend.

“Hi guys,” you offer a greeting to all of them, settling into the uncomfortable leather seat (that’s peeling off, just by the way), watching as the rest of the men pay you no mind and ignore your voice, falling into a comfortable conversation with each other.

Sighing, because this always happens– your brother gets too annoyed because he has to bring you with him all the time, and you imagine his friends aren’t fond of the fact either– you settle deeper into the seat and cross your hands on your chest, looking outside of the window. You can’t imagine enjoying your trip now, since you feel like you’re a nuisance, a child they have to take care of (yes, it embarrasses you just the tiniest bit, you have to admit. Although, you do enjoy getting out of the house from time to time), and the fact that your feelings were probably more than justified and also true has you pouting, an unsatisfied feeling weighing at your lungs.

“Hi,” a voice resonates from your side, the sight of a smiling Eric peering at you taking you off guard. You didn’t expect anyone to react to your greeting– not so delayed anyway– and the sight of your brother’s best friend carrying on in the conversation with you has you shocked beyond belief. “Excited?”

Finding yourself hum in agreement– how much you are still excited for the pool and for the sun, you’re not really sure– and although you are upset, something about his open and nice demeanor has you visibly relaxing, the sparkles inviting themselves back into your eyes. “I’ve never been to the beach,” you admit, seeing Eric gasp at you in surprise.

“Really?” he asks. “I go every year with my parents.”

“Well,” you hum, “you know how my mother is…” you sigh, chewing on the inside of your cheek. It’s easier to joke about it than to actually let the fact get to you– with your mother being the main news anchor, she is too busy to actually go on trips and form bonds with her own children sometimes. That’s why you spent most of your childhood at Eric’s family’s house in the first place– this is what made you the closest with Sunwoo’s same aged friend. His parents were nice enough to let you stay over and have sleepovers whenever your mum had to leave suddenly and take week-long trips abroad, or have emergency shifts during late evenings. 

Eric hums, sympathizing with you. “Well, at least you get to experience it now!”

“Yeah,” you awkwardly nod, playing with the hem of your jean shorts. It’s the shorts you made yourself by cutting the legs off your favorite pants after you grew out of them and they got too short, and they’re starting to look a little worn-out now. Maybe you should beg your mum to get you some new clothing.

The conversation between the boys grows in volume, doing nothing to help you to relax in the crowded vehicle. You can’t really find a place to fit yourself in and talk, the topics too unfamiliar for you and the feeling of not even being welcome in the discussion sitting heavy on your chest, when a finger bears itself to the flesh of your thigh, making you snap your head around to gape at the source of the contact. Eric looks at you with a boyish grin, sparkles evident in his eyes.

“Wanna see something?” he asks.

“Sure.”

The male digs around his backpack, hands searching through the contents of his bag for only a couple of seconds– since he’s the neat one, contrary to your messy brother– before he takes out a small gadget: a square with a little screen on top, a silver, circular button space sitting big in the very middle of the device. Eric throws the thing into your lap, smiling when you take it into your hands and examine it with curious eyes.

“Have you seen one before? My dad got it for me last week,” he boosts, satisfied with your reaction to it. 

Your mother’s job pays quite well– meaning that you usually have the latest gadgets, the latest trends– but if you’re being honest, you haven’t seen one of these in real life before. Yes, you caught a glimpse of an ad for it in the town center, on one of the big billboards while passing by to get to school in the morning, so you know that it’s an MP3 player, but still; this was your first time touching one and examining it in real life. 

“How does it work?” you ask, watching as the boy scoots from his seat to the middle one, so he is now sitting directly next to you, before he takes out wired headphones from the first department of his backpack and turns the little square over in his hands, finding where the jack goes.

“You put those in,” he says, plugging in the headphones, “and then you press this…” he explains, taking the device out of your hand and pushing on the power button for a few seconds, “and then it should play.”

Watching him with expecting eyes, the boy finally puts the MP3 player back into your hold. Then, his fingers swiftly put the respective earphones into your ears– like you’d do to a little kid that has no idea how they work, making you a little flushed at the action– and after that, you’re left with the sound of an unfamiliar song playing in your ears, making the sound of the chatter in the van completely tune out. Eric keeps on watching you, a sense of pride in his eyes as you nod at him, all excited with the new explory, before he takes one of the earphones out of your ear, grinning.

“Cool, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “The song is good,” you dumbly say, watching as the boy next to you pridefully nods at the compliment, resting his back against the car seat. 

“It’s the H.O.T album. My dad says they’re good,” he mumbles, moving the headphone he took from you and placing it into his ear, making you nod at him in acknowledgement. The action has your insides bubble with disappointment, thinking that the fun is over as you reach for the other earphone as well, offering it to the male.

Eric looks at you with a shocked pout, shaking his head. “No, we can share!” he says, pointing towards your ear. “If you want, of course.”

The action has you smiling, a shy nod escaping out of you as you reach and put the earphone back into your ear, letting yourself fall deeper into the car seat, listening to the song from Eric’s MP3 player. You’re grateful for his presence– he didn’t have to keep up a conversation with you. He could ignore you, just like the rest of his friend group always has. Maybe it was something about the two of you growing up together that always made the boy at least a bit more affectionate towards you than the rest.

You spend the car ride to the beach house with Eric leaning on your side, listening to music and his occasional blabbering about how his previous days went. 

Somehow, you're glad the seat beside him was the only vacant one when you arrived to the vehicle.

YOUR SEVENTH BIRTHDAY, 1989

You don't quite remember when you met Eric for the first time, if you’re being completely honest. The first memory you have of him is of your seventh birthday party, although you’re almost certain the boy’s been present at some point of your life before– at one point, you think you saw a picture of him and Sunwoo, two chubby toddlers, watching you as you laid on a blanket on the ground somewhere in your photo album. As far as you’re concerned, he may as well have been there when your mother brought you back from the hospital– although you think he must have been too young for that back then.

The first memory you have of Eric Sohn is the day you turned seven– a gloomy, sad day that in the moment, you prayed you wouldn’t have to remember in the first place.

It was already established that while your brother is the social butterfly, you don’t have a big friend group. Actually, you could count the number of your friends on one hand, and since the amount wasn’t as big, your mother allowed you to invite them all over to your house to celebrate your birthday with you. 

She baked a cake, she decorated the living room, hell, she even took a day off from work– something you deemed special, for it doesn’t happen often– and as you sat on the floor of your living room, the cake standing proud on the small coffee table, waiting for your friends to arrive, you hummed a song under your breath, the clock slowly passing the time you agreed for them to come over and celebrate.

At first, you didn’t mind it– everybody gets late sometimes, it’s okay. It was just a birthday party, and you had a lot of time. Not everything had to be set on schedule.

But the closer the clock moved to being one hour, than two after the time your friends were supposed to come, you grew worried. Your mother’s nervous pacing around the living room and her heavy sighs as she sat next to you on the floor, smiling at you in what you can only explain as sad way made you more and more anxious about the fact that you only had three friends, but all three of them seemed to not care enough to come celebrate your birthday with you. And as your mother finally took the final bow in the form of a soft hand on your inner thigh, her tone gentle as she called your name– “Y/N, I think we should light the candles,” you began to tear up.

You were supposed to eat the cake with your friends. You were supposed to hear them sing the birthday song to you. You were supposed to turn on the radio and dance around with your classmates, eat the sweets and unwrap the cheap, but heartfelt gifts they brought along with them to celebrate your birthday. 

But none of these scenarios were happening, and you felt incredibly, incredibly lonely and sad. Forgotten, if you will. Not cared for, definitely.

Hiding your face into your hands, you started to cry. This disappointment was too big for your small heart to take, and you no longer cared about the cake, the candles, the seaweed soup your mother cooked for you to celebrate, the gifts, or the party. All you wanted to do was hide in your room and never come out– something about the whole situation felt deeply embarrassing, and to this day, the moment before the whole day turned around still makes you feel a bit ashamed of yourself. 

Too busy crying, you didn’t notice your older brother watching you with big bambi eyes, a worried glance sent your way each time your sobs grew louder and louder. And maybe the boy only wanted to taste the cake (he’s been bugging your mum about it since the very morning, but he was always sent off with a scolding look telling him that he’ll get a slice when everyone arrives), but no matter what his true intentions were, his actions still managed to pull your seventh birthday party together in a way you never imagined.

The sound of the front door faintly resonated in your brain somewhere in the middle of your aimless sobbing, but you paid it no mind, thinking it was just Sunwoo going out to the yard to kick the ball. See, your older brother had never really known what to do when you cried growing up– it didn’t matter if he was the reason for your tears or if anyone else was. If he was the reason for your emotional outbursts, he tried to shut you up with his palm and get you to stop crying before his mother found out and gave him a scolding, but if someone else was, the small boy sometimes turned angry at the source. Kicking his classmate that once made a snarky comment about you and made you tear up or punching his friend when he was too harsh with you was all he knew to do in these situations, so he wasn’t the one to comfort you with words or hugs. It was only natural for him to escape in this situation.

You were brought to a state of shock and surprise when a hand landed on your shoulder, a familiar voice breaking you from your emotional turmoil.

“Why are you crying? We have to eat the cake!” you heard, your big, sad eyes meeting the small figure of the boy living next door, your brother nervously stepping from one side to the other right behind his best friend. “Can you light the candles, Mrs?” Eric politely asked your mum, pointing towards the cake waiting sadly at the coffee table, the figure of your mother leaving your side only shortly to get the matches from the kitchen and illuminate your face with the small flames.

Confusion mirrored your features as you watched your brother and his best friend sing the birthday song to you while your mum lit your candles, both boys clapping and dancing around, acting silly just to get a laugh from you. You didn't know how Eric got there, but you guessed there are some good sides to having him as your neighbor. The energetic boy did his best to brighten up your mood a bit, and when you blew out the candle, making a wish, Sunwoo even went as far as smashing your face into the cake to bring in the full birthday authenticity.

That got him a slap to the back of his head from your mother, as well as made you stand up from your position– no longer making you look like a disappointed bulk of pity– and chase him around the room, icing falling off your nose to the laminated floor. You got your revenge and smeared the chocolate all over his forehead (he let you chase him down only because it was your birthday and he really, really hated to see his sister cry, but he won’t ever tell you that) and as the three of you sat back down to the floor, watching your mother slice the cake and offer it to you on small white plates, you realized you suddenly weren't as sad anymore.

“What did you wish for?” Eric asked you, mouth full of cake and face messy with chocolate.

“I can’t tell you,” you hummed, eyebrows furrowed. “Then it won’t come true.”

“You probably wished for that doll you saw in the store the other day,” Sunwoo snickered as he swallowed, having you glare at him and send a sharp kick to his shin, unwatched by your mother (thankfully), as the boy fought you back, having no mercy.

Music suddenly filled the room as Eric stood up and put the radio on, his 9 year old brain smart enough to know how the device worked, his small figure dancing away to the songs playing on the single radio station you could play without carefully sorting out the antenna so it faced the north, and truly, you didn’t know how it happened, but it had you standing up and dancing around, exactly how you'd imagined doing with your friends from school.

The day wasn’t ruined– quite the opposite, really. It was one of your favorite birthday parties, and ever since then, Eric was invited to every single one you had after. And while Sunwoo may act like he doesn’t hate anything more in this world than having a younger sister, every time you feel like a burden to him, you remember this very afternoon.

You will never tell anyone what you wished for that day– but just to let everyone in on the secret, 

it was to somehow, just like Sunwoo, find someone like Eric for yourself as well. 

JUNE OF 1999

Standing at the side of the pool, eyes squinting from the inevitable force of the sun, you’re starting to regret your decision of coming along just a little. See, you usually don’t protest whenever Sunwoo aggressively drags you around and brings you everywhere he’s supposed to, because even though you love to see your brother angry (especially when you’re the reason behind the emotion), you’d also hate to see him miss out, but now, as the scorching hot sun is having no mercy on every exposed inch of skin– and believe me, there’s a lot of it, since you’re wearing your swimming trunks– and the sweat on your forehead is no longer culminating in beads, but rolling painfully slowly down your forehead, you do admit you’d be a little bit happier in the shade of your little room than here, watching the guys play volleyball in the comfort of the freezing cold pool.

And as the only female around the house, you settle with the patriarchy and bring out a small folding chair and a camping table alongside with a big, sharp knife, struggling to hoist up the giant watermelon you got in a grocery store on your way to the beach house, with the intention of cutting it and serving it to the guys later. Who knows, maybe they’ll like you a little more after that. 

The knife sinks into the thick green skin of the watermelon easily, and so as you accompany yourself with the excited (and not so excited screams coming from the losing side of the game– mainly your brother himself), you cut up the fruit into halves, then quarters, and as you stare at the moon crescents settled on the camping table, you decide to play nice and cut up the fruit into smaller triangles as well, to really get on everyone’s good side.

The yearning for male validation awakes in a woman pretty early on in life. It’s an inevitable misfortune.

“Told you Sunwoo’s all talk but no game!” you hear Haknyeon yell out as the game seemingly ends, the younger boy lunging at him in the pool, fighting him for the truthful words. Glancing at the commotion, you notice the guys slowly getting out of the pool, making you heave out in victory– you’re finally gonna have your turn in the pool. Well, if they don’t decide to occupy it again before you even get a chance to get in.

“Y/N! You cut up the watermelon?” Eric asks a very obvious question, walking up to you with beads of water all over his half-naked body. His dark hair is damply sitting against his forehead, making him look like a wet puppy, but as the male gets closer to you, he drags his palm through the locks and pushes them back, revealing his forehead– a sight sweet to your eyes, but you refuse to pay it much attention in the heat of the moment. It’s just the sun making you delirious as the idea of finding him attractive flashes through your brain, that’s all. 

“I did! Take one,” you smile, watching as the rest of the guys walk over to your little stand– while also obnoxiously swatting out water out of their hair like dogs, refusing to use towels like normal people– and finally, there it comes: appreciative smiles appear on their faces as they each take a piece, biting down on the fruit with delighted sighs.

Sunwoo walks up to you with a surprised look on his face, sighing as he messes with your hair. “If I knew you’d be our servant, I wouldn’t have even minded you going in the first place.”

“You do something nice for people and they jump on the chance to exploit you,” you hum, shaking your head in disbelief. “That’s just like you, Kim Sunwoo.”

“No, that’s just me having older brother privileges.”

“I hope you choke on that, you know,” you bite at him, pointing towards the piece of sweet watermelon in his hands, the smile on his face turning bitter. There’s a satisfied look on your face when your brother does, indeed, choke on a watermelon seed a few seconds later– and they say dreams don’t come true.

“You didn’t have to,” you hear Eric speak up from the other side, your head turning to face the male, his features appreciative and warm. “Thank you,” he beams. There’s redness on the tip of his nose and his forehead, signaling his quickly approaching sunburn, and you can’t help but laugh out at his clueless, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer self. 

“What’s so funny?” he asks, furrowing his eyebrows at you in question.

“Nothing,” you peep, “you just look like you forgot to use sunscreen,” you mumble, watching as the male gasps and touches his face, a horrified expression overtaking him when the skin under his fingertips burns to the touch. 

“I didn’t forget! It must have rubbed off in the pool,” he mourns, “I must look stupid!” 

“Only a little,” you tease, a grin overtaking your features. See, there’s something about the fact that you’ve known Eric for the entirety of your whole life that makes you more prone to teasing him– you’re familiar with your dynamics and just how far you can go, so his next actions startle you just the tiniest bit as the male looks sternly at you, throwing the half-eaten watermelon slice to the camping table. You thought you had the risks calculated– apparently, you didn't.

“What did you say?”

Examining his features, seeing no signs of anger– just the stoic, fakely-offended face of your brother’s childhood best friend– you shrug. “That you look a bit stupid with your face like that.”

“Oh, okay,” he nods, “you’re going down for that.”

“What do you mea–”

Your words are cut short when the male lunges at you, his arms enveloping your thighs and holding you up. The contact of his cold skin from the pool and your heated figure makes goosebumps appear all over your body, your hands instinctively reaching around him to support yourself as he walks closer to the pool– his intentions are suddenly painfully clear and you start to panic. 

“This will teach you to respect your elders,” Eric huffs, the turquoise surface of the water slowly coming into your point of view.

“Stop! Stop-stop-stop,” you squirm, kicking your feet and trying to take down the predator, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, alright?”

The male takes a halt for a split second– making you foolishly believe he’ll let you off– before he breaks out into a devilish grin and continues to walk to the edge of the pool. “Too late.”

“Eric!” you scream, the volume of your voice resonating through the whole beach, your heart thumping wild against your ribcage with the awaiting process. You’re not even sure what you’re scared of anymore– you can swim and you bet the water will feel nice against the scorching sun– but still, you’re absolutely terrified as the male has no mercy on you, carrying you steadily towards the water. “At least let me tie my hair first! You can dump me in after, I promise,” you mourn, trying to buy yourself more time.

“Alright,” he nods, waiting at the very edge of the pool, leaving you to take the purple scrunchie off your wrist and gather your hair together, preparing to tie it into a bun so it doesn’t get in your way when you’re in the pool. The hair tie is just at the tips of your fingertips, the first loop over the hair ready to be done, when a scream cuts out of your throat.

The feeling of falling suddenly overtakes your body, leaving you no time to prepare yourself for the impact of the cold water against your skin and all up in your nose, since you didn’t pluck it when you were dumped into the pool. The fall only lasts a split second until you’re below the water, the force of it resonating in your ears, and when you finally act on your instincts and stand up in the pool (it wasn’t even that deep in the first place, only reaching to your upper stomach), you cough out all the water and pray to gods you don’t throw up chlorine into the freshly cleaned pool. After you’re done catching your breath and getting oxygen into your lungs again, you do your best at getting all the hair out of your face. 

There is laughter landing into your ears as soon as you manage to get all the water out of them by leaning your head to the side and violently slapping each one, and when your eyes look up, you see an amused Eric Sohn bending over in his waist at your disheveled appearance. 

Grunting and pointing a finger to the criminal that almost made you drown, you huff out. “I’ll kill you! Just you watch.”

Your scrunchie nowhere to be found, forever lost somewhere outside of the beach house, you think, as it flew off your hand in the impact of the attack, shock makes your figure shake alongside of the coldness of the water, making you audibly sigh. 

Yes. You do regret coming along just a little.

JULY OF 1999

Somewhere along the way, Eric Sohn starts acting as if he’s your second older brother. Sure, you’ve known the male your whole entire life and he’s seen you grow up, but it took him 17 years of your life to come to a point where he gives you equal amount of attention whenever he’s over at your house than he does to your brother, and even asks Sunwoo if you’re coming along with them whenever they leave to hang out somewhere else. It’s a change that comes naturally and slowly, and you welcome it unknowingly– the revelation shocks you on a hot summer day, though, when the idea finally comes to you in full force.

You would even argue and say Eric acts more like your brother than your actual sibling does– he asks if you’ve eaten and listens to you when you talk (which Sunwoo never does, well, except from when he’s arguing with you). Eric even compliments your outfits sometimes and lets you borrow his MP3 player from time to time– Sunwoo would never share his things with you, no matter how hard you pleaded and threatened to tell your mum. Yes, your brother's an adult and you’re one year away from becoming one– you still resolve your conflicts through your only parent, though. Some things, you never grow out of.

“I wanna try using the skateboard now, Sunwoo,” you order sternly when the boy finally reaches your destination. You’ve been sitting on the sidewalk for quite some time now, since your brother and his friend decided that they’re gonna try out their new skateboards on the hottest day of the year. Your town doesn’t have fancy skateparks and ramps like the ones you’ve seen in the music videos on TV, so you don’t really know what initially made the two buy those things, but you do admit that even driving up and down the road in front of your house does seem a little fun– so much you’d love to try it.

“What a shame we all wish for things we can’t have,” he shrugs ironically, shaking his head at you from his position above. The male reaches down for his bag, taking out a water bottle and putting it against his plush lips, all while you glare at him from below, still seated in your initial position. Eric comes up to you two, squishing at the soft plastic bottle in Sunwoo’s hold, making the water splash your older brother in the face, leaving a winning grin to be shared between you and the shorter boy, an expression that makes you all warm on the inside. See, at least Eric always has your back.

“You can try mine, if you want,” the latter shrugs, offering you a smile.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he nods, “why not?”

“I don’t know,” you shrug, “I just didn’t expect you to offer, since as you saw, my dear brother just refused when I asked…” you mumble, standing up from the sidewalk and taking the skateboard into your hand. Eric offers it to you with an outstretched arm and watches as you put the board on the floor, squinting at it with much examination.

“Do you know how to ride it?” he asks.

“No,” you shake your head, “but I mean, if Sunwoo can do it, how hard can it really be?” you joke, seeing as the said boy glares at you, finally finishing his water and dropping the bottle to the ground. 

“I’ll remind you of that statement when you eat shit on the pavement,” he shushes you, rolling his eyes. 

Not paying more attention to the grumpy being that is your own brother, you relocate your attention back to the skateboard on the heated road. You’re lucky you live on a street where cars don’t often drive by, since your neighborhood is on the very edge of the town, so you don’t really fear being run over by a pickup truck. What you do worry about, though, is your lacking sense of balance, which you discovered when you learned how to ride the bike for the first time. While your brother was a professional in no time, it took you weeks to get it right, and so with the idea of riding a board that provides you zero sense of security, you get a bit worried for your own life.

Dragging your hair out of your face and aimlessly trying to tuck it behind your ears– there’s no use in trying though, as the strands slip out just as fast as they found their place– you keep staring at the board only a few centimeters away from your feet, mentally calculating your next move. There’s a noise of a backpack being opened and rustling around in the background of your miserable thoughts, and when you look up to see what’s going on, you notice Eric offering you a small, purple bundle of fabric. 

“What’s that?” you ask, even though the answer is clear as the day– you recognise your own scrunchie with no problem. You’re just surprised to see it in his hold. You thought it was forever buried somewhere in the beach house, since you weren’t able to find it after you got out of the pool, no matter how hard you tried.

“Oh,” he shrugs, amidst a little too nonchalantly, “I found it and figured it was yours, but I forgot to give it back to you then… it seems like you need it now, though,” he offers you an explanation, lips pressed into a thin line that slightly signifies a smile.

“Ah,” you gasp, nodding as you take the hair tie out of his outstretched palm, gathering your hair into a bun and tying it up on the crown of your head– the staring contest you’ve been having with the board is much clearer now, when you don’t have your messy strands in the way. The idea of Eric keeping your scrunchie after finding it at the beach house makes your stomach do a weird kind of turn– you guess it made you a bit weirded out, if you’re being honest.

“Want some help with that?” he asks, pointing towards his skateboard.

Nervous, cracking your knuckles as you meet his eyes– he looks a bit amused, but still genuine– you nod, admitting defeat. There’s no way you’re getting on top of that board without help and not falling down. It’s always better to be safe than to be sorry, and so when Eric laughs airly at your composure and takes a few steps closer towards you, you let the male lead you, finding comfort in his secure words and actions.

Eric offers you his arms to hold when you try to get on the skateboard. He is peering at you from under his eyelashes when you put one of your legs onto the wood, his grip on your forearm getting firmer when you try to get your other foot on as well– and you must admit that you suddenly don’t feel like you might die anymore when there’s someone holding you and standing by your side. 

“See? It’s not that hard,” Eric mumbles, his voice low and reassuring from the proximity. You notice your hands sweating a little when his palm envelopes yours– damn the sun and its unbearable heat making you embarrass yourself– but he doesn’t mention it as he firmly holds you and meets your eyes. “I’m gonna drag you around a bit so you get used to it before trying yourself,” he says before taking a few steps forward, preparing to be your own type of personal driver.

Having him instruct you and help you around makes you feel more comfortable on the board. Sunwoo would never do such a thing for you– he’d enjoy watching you fall down and break your neck and possibly die– so you’re more than happy to have someone in your life that takes care of you in ways your older brother refuses to. 

The skateboard moves forward a little, starting slow, but then picking up speed as Eric jogs a little, making you laugh at the action. He does not have to go above and beyond, but he still does– but you guess it’s good for him to let out his energy somewhere. After a while, he looks back at you and meets your eye with a warm gaze, making you nod at him reassuringly and hold up a thumb of the hand he’s not holding right now, signaling that you’re okay and enjoying yourself. That has the male let go of your hand and let you take the road with the laws of physics, moving forward by yourself with the force he created. 

It’s nice. It’s fun. 

Yes, you totally understand why Eric and Sunwoo wanted skateboards after seeing them on TV. Hell, you want one now.

“Try it yourself now!” Eric encourages you as the board naturally comes to a stop under you, and his smiling face is enough for you to take initiative and nod, relocating one foot off the wood and placing it on the floor, then kicking it and making yourself move on the simple vehicle.

A moment of surprise envelopes you like a warm hug when you manage to not fall off and keep your balance, the joy of it making you try to go faster on the board, kicking once, twice against the pavement with the sole of your old, beaten up shoe. “I’m doing it!” you yell, glancing back at Eric standing on the sidewalk, watching you with excited eyes. The male offers you a victorious holler, something that makes you break into a laugh, makes your confidence blossom in marvelous ways.

Confidence rises in you so much you try to take a U-turn and go back to your teacher– perhaps showing off that you really got the hang of it now, or something– but as you try to maneuver the board and turn right, there it comes: the moment where you realize that you were, once again, too overly-confident in your abilities that are, sadly, very poor. Your body sways from side to side, your poor balance laughs at you and points an accusing finger at your attempts, and, well, to put it frankly, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes and the moment plays in slow motion as you lose the board from below your feet– the wood flying somewhere to the opposite side of the road, not at all where you meant to go in the first place– and your body inevitably comes crashing to the ground.

Awaiting the hard pavement meeting your nose and breaking it, you brace yourself with palms outstretched in front of you, the last remains of self-perseverance entering the sane parts of your brain in what you think are the last seconds of your miserable life. Another moment of surprise greets you when your yelp is muffled against something soft and your hands don’t hit the hard pavement, your ears filled with a grunt that belongs to another human swiftly chiming in and catching you before you fall.

Firm hands hold your waist– the touch somehow familiar, enveloping you in a strange sense of deja vu– and even though your body goes limp in terror, the male has you back on your feet in no time, his palms on the exposed skin of your stomach. The realization has you burning up as you look up and meet Eric’s eyes, gasping at the closeness of his face to yours. 

“You okay over there?” he asks as you unconsciously study his face– you never noticed his nose looked this nice up close– before you wake out of it and nod urgently, breaking away from his hold. You’re not gonna try to calculate the effort he must have put in just to chime in and catch you from where he was standing in such a short moment, but something about the passing thought of it has you weak in your knees from gratefulness. 

“Uhm- yeah,” you nod, kicking the pavement with your stained shoes, “I just… miscalculated my skills, that’s all,” you sheepishly hum, hearing the boy snicker at your shaken-up composure.

Watching him take off and retrieve his skateboard from where it wandered off against the curb– much to his golden retriever energy– you sigh and prepare to go sit back on the sidewalk, having enough of new experiences from the shock still lingering in your fingertips. You take a glance down the road, seeing your older brother cruising on the street– when and how he got there, you truly have no idea– when you hear Eric, who seemingly has different ideas for your next actions, call at you from the middle of the pavement.

“Where are you going? Come back!” he asks, having you look at him in surprise, mouth agape and eyes big, staring at him. He now has the board under his shoulder, but puts it back on the road and points at it, shrugging to himself. “I’ll push you down the road, it’s gonna be fun!”

“Eric, I’m literally going to die–”

“No, you’re not. Come on, I promise,” he says, but still, he doesn’t have you convinced. Your feet move against your best conclusions, though, and when you come to a halt right in front of your companion, he offers you a boyish grin. “Sit down on it, that way you’re more balanced. I swear you’re not gonna fall off, okay? I got you.”

“You promise?”

“Yes,” he nods, determined.

“Pinky swear,” you mumble, holding up your pinky finger– all thoughts of seeming childish pushed to the side in the desperate moment– and the male in front of you shakes his head in disbelief, breaking into a laugh.

“Cute,” he huffs, “yeah, okay. Pinky swear,” he nods, interlacing your pinky with his and bumping his thumb against yours, the seal foolishly making you feel more secure as you follow his order and take a seat on the skateboard, your hands gripping the bottom of the wood so hard your knuckles turn white.

“Okay, ready? 3, 2, 1–” he chants as he pushes you, two steady hands coming in contact with your shoulder blades, force making you move on the board, wheels taking you down with gravity. The sound of Eric’s shoes hitting the pavement fills your ears as you go faster, and as you finally get to the part of the hill that takes a downwards slope, he offers you a final push, sending you down the road. 

Wind makes your hair fly back, your surroundings blurring as you yelp and scream, but you can’t say you’re not enjoying the ride. Eric was right– it was fun, you liked it, and something about the gesture had you all warm on the inside. The breeze has you cool down a little in the summer heat, and the board continues to move even as you pass your older brother standing at the bottom of the slope, away from your trajectory. 

Body relaxing when the skateboard finally slows down, you let out a heartfelt laughter. Turning back and seeing Eric jog down the road with a humongous grin on his face, you offer him two thumbs up above your head, watching as he returns the gesture and makes his way back to the two of you on the bottom of the small hill.

The truth is, this was the day you realized Eric Sohn has always found his way to make you feel included and safe. 

You can’t help but feel grateful.

AUGUST OF 1999

“Sunwoo, you have to tie a knot here and then– no, you dumbass, you’re doing it completely wrong,” you mourn as you watch your older brother with a mess of thread in his lap, a focused scowl on his face. There’s a fan standing across from you, blowing cold air into your face, but you still feel yourself grow heated with frustration as Sunwoo just can’t help but not understand the art of making friendship bracelets. It’s not like you’re forcing him to do them– he was the one that asked you to show him how to, muttering something about offering one to his classmate Yeji once he’s back in school– so in theory, he should be putting in effort, no? 

Or maybe he is. Maybe he’s just… incompetent.

“I don’t get it,” Sunwoo hums under his breath, sighing as he leans against the sofa in your living room, the two of you sitting on the floor accompanied by his best friend squinting at you from the opposite side, a comic book in the latter's hand. The myth of men not being able to multi-task is quickly thrown into the bin as you watch Eric pay equal amount of attention to the comic book and the dialogue between you and your brother, and when Sunwoo seems to give up on the art of making friendship bracelets, his best friend can’t help but laugh.

“You’re giving up already? This is how you want to get a girlfriend?” you poke your brother to his side and take the threads off his lap, examining the mess of a safety pin and meters of yarn, all knotted up and not coming along in the shape you taught him to at all.

“It’s not to get a girlfriend, I just-”

“Sure,” you roll your eyes, huffing as you roll his poor attempt at friendship bracelet into a ball and throw it to the corner of the room, making a mental note to pick it up and throw it to the bin later. “You know what, just give her this one and pretend you made it,” you mutter, taking a bracelet you'd already made to demonstrate in between your fingers and throw it into Sunwoo’s lap, the older one catching it and examining it under his nose.

“That looks pretty good,” he hums, making you snort at his appreciative comment. The bracelet is pink and red, the colors just screaming romance and cute energy, which is exactly what a girl needs to be swayed by your brother. You can’t really believe a bracelet will make her swoop into his arms, because truthfully, with your brother’s face and manners, every living thing is keeping a fair distance, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to try, does it? Maybe his classmate is… majorly blind? That might do it?

“Of course it looks good,” you scoff, “that’s because I made it,” you nod, averting your gaze towards your lap, threading your fingers through the yarn you attached to a safety pin on your sweatpants to keep the growing friendship bracelet in place. 

“Then why is the one you’re making right now so ugly?” Eric asks, pointing towards the creation. 

Glancing up at the male slowly, mentally throwing all different kinds of curses at him for daring to talk badly about your craft, you huff. “What do you mean, ugly?”

“The colors… they don’t… they don’t really go together,” Eric sheepishly admits, scratching the back of his neck, quickly averting his gaze from you and gluing it back into his comic book. You think that if he doesn’t stop being a smart-ass and throw jabs at your artistic choices, he’s gonna have to protect his comic book with his own body– and you bet he’d do that, because he borrowed it from the library. The fees for damage are high.

“That’s just… not true at all,” you muse, but groggily take a look at the creation once again, but now, thanks to the remark, seeing it in a completely different way. Shades of orange, brown and purple stare back at you amidst a little disappointedly, and as you thread the yarn and make a couple of knots to end the bracelet, you can’t help but feel a pout growing on your face from the realization. Eric might be right. It does look a little bad…

“Whatever. Your taste is just bad,” you snap as you finish off the craft piece, unclasping the safety pin and sliding the bracelet off the inside, freeing it from the hold. Eric laughs a little at your frustrated state– similarly to what you do when you manage to get Sunwoo upset– and with that, you sigh and put the bracelet on the coffee table.

“I’m going out to the store to get some chocolates,” you say as you stand up, goal clear in your mind, “have fun, losers.”

“You’re still collecting the stickers from these?” Sunwoo asks, a mischievous smile growing on his lips. The teasing is inevitable and coming very soon, and there’s nothing you can do about it– you’re fully aware, which only further makes you want to escape the situation more quickly. Rolling your eyes at your brother’s antics, you move towards the door. 

“Yes, Sunwoo, I am. They’re cute and make me happy, do you have a problem with that?” you point an accusing finger at the male, having him shrug, tongue poking the inside of his cheek.

“You’re such a kid,” he huffs, averting his gaze from you when he lands the comment, the jab coming straight at your fragile heart.

“Okay, then,” you note, “I’ll just have my pretty and cute bracelet back, and you can get your girlfriend something else-”

The male quickly regains his previous composure, swatting his hands in hurry just to make you halt in your sentence. His eyes are big and his mouth is a little agape in terror as he tries to save his ass, plea written all over his face. “I was just joking! Don’t be so petulant… go get your cute stickers, they’re so fun!”

Humming to yourself, your face is tugged up into a victorious smile. “That's what I thought. So, as I was saying, have fun, losers.”

“Wait!” Eric suddenly calls for you, making you turn on your heel in the middle of your escape, eyes peering at the male. “Don’t I get a bracelet too?”

The request catches you off guard. There’s a certain kind of spark in Eric Sohn’s eyes as he asks the question, and you can’t really place it in any category, but it has you nervously shrugging at the preposition. You’re not really sure why Eric would want a bracelet from you, but to avoid confrontation and also the weird leap of your heart surely leading you into cardiac arrest, you only shrug and move back inside of the living room, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you scan the surroundings, searching for something.

“Sure,” you nod, taking the ugly bracelet off the table and offering it to him, “you can have that one.”

You hold a staring contest with the older boy for a couple of seconds, his head undoubtedly swirling with arguments and comments about the apparel of the friendship bracelet, but he’s smart– he must know the survival of his beloved comic book must be at stake. So, he only nods and smiles at you, outstretching his hand to you and nudging his head in its direction.

“Okay,” he hums, “tie it for me?”

A second comes by– a heartbeat, really– in which you chew on your bottom lip and gasp at the request, but still, you nod and come closer, crouching down to be at his level and taking the thread into your fingers. You wrap the bracelet around his wrist, making sure to leave a bit of wiggle room before you tie a knot, bringing the ends together, all while feeling the eyes of Eric glued to your face, watching every micro expression flash through your unsettling composure.

When you’re done, making a move to hide your hands behind your back and standing up, your limbs bump into each other and send an unspoken sense of electricity all through your body. The sensation is so strange you don’t meet anyone’s eye before you leave the room, yelling out a goodbye as you hurriedly open the front door and run out to get fresh air (it’s August, though. The air is humid and only makes your head spin more).

You clear your throat before you take off to the grocery store. It's only when you're halfway there that you realize you'd forgotten to bring your wallet with you. It's okay, though– you take this chance to walk around, regaining your casualty.

You bet Eric will take the bracelet off in a matter of a week.

SEPTEMBER OF 1999

The leaves start turning orange and the weather a bit colder when you become hyper-aware of your shifting composure whenever Eric Sohn is around. The way you feel heat rushing to your cheeks whenever he calls you cutie, a nickname he’s had reserved for you since you two were little kids, the way you feel weak in your knees whenever he casually brings his arm around your shoulders or when he bends down to tie your shoelace in the middle of the sidewalk. You don’t really know what those sudden changes are, yet, you feel a bit embarrassed by them whenever they take place. You don’t think it’s normal to feel this way around your brother’s best friend, and the more you hang out with him, the more you wish you read less books as a child– because now, you’re also hyper-aware of the title those feelings may have. 

Still, it only comes to you on one September afternoon– you wake up from blissful unawareness and jolt with the quickly opening pit in your stomach at the strange revelation.

“Eric! Sunwoo isn’t home, though?” you mumble, confused as you notice the boy standing on your doorway, a plastic bag in his hand and a red Nike jacket enveloping his frame.

“I know, he said he’s hanging out with Juyeon hyung today,” he nods, “I brought you something, though,” he says, holding up the bag and making sure you get a chance to see it, offering you a boyish grin.

“Oh?” you gasp, furrowing your eyebrows at the male. When you do nothing to invite him inside, he does so himself– slightly nudging you in your side as he passes your figure and enters your house. He acts like he owns the place, and by the amount of time he’s spent in your home, you’d think he does– he doesn’t, though. The only thing he owns is just a lot of audacity.

The male takes off his shoes in the entryway and walks his way over to your room– a surprising act, considering he’s spent the least amount of time in this very place– and when he’s sure you’re following his every move, he empties the contents of the bag to the middle of your freshly made bed. Watching as approximately ten items fall out of the plastic, your eyes widen with surprise as you recognise your favorite chocolate– the mini bars with stickers inside, the ones you collect and stick into your journal and look at in the middle of the night, giggling to yourself and kicking your feet at the adorable pictures in your make-shift collect book.

“Woah,” you gasp when the male looks at you, seemingly awaiting your response, and when he gets the wished outcome, pride overtakes his features, shrugging to himself.

“My mum got some for free because she bought a lot of cabbage for kimchi yesterday,” he explains, “I thought of you when I saw them, so I bought you some more.”

“I- you-” you stutter, emotions too big for your own good swelling all inside your fragile, little self, hands running into your hair and tugging at the roots to wake yourself up from the dream. “You didn’t have to!”

“We got them anyway, and I know you like the stickers,” Eric shrugs, scratching the back of his neck, completely ignoring the fact that he said he bought you some more, your heart skipping a beat at the sentiment. Clearing your throat, you tentatively take a step closer to your bed, gathering a bar of chocolate into your hand and opening it, taking a bite.

“You can have the stickers if you give me some chocolate,” Eric says close to your ear, almost as if he was creating a masterplan, to which you eagerly nod and plop onto your bed, moving the bars of sweets into one pile. As you continue to munch on the first one, you unwrap the sticker and look at it, praying to yourself as if you were checking if your lottery ticket was worth any cent– hoping you get a sticker you don’t own yet.

The image of a cute panda would cheer anyone up even in their darkest moments– not you, though, as you mourn and sigh, disappointment clear in your features. 

“What?” Eric asks, eyes big pools of worry.

“I already got that one.”

“Ah,” he nods, seemingly understanding– much to your surprise, “well, we got 9 more tries, let’s get to eating.”

Wrappers are rustling in your bed sheets as you and Eric eat the concerning amount of chocolate, gathering the stickers in a little pile on top of your notebook, promising each other to not look at the stickers as you go and just make a grand reveal at the end. Eric’s full cheeks are a sight you enjoy, telling him he looks like a squirrel– to which he sends a light flick to your forehead, telling you you don’t look much different– and soon enough, the nine bars left disappear from your plain sight (you only had 3 and Eric ate the remaining 5. He’s a growing boy, though, so you understand. He needs to get his undying energy from somewhere.).

“Ready for the reveal?” you ask, locking your gaze with Eric.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

With that, you get to the pile of stickers in the middle of your bedsheets. Looking at the first one, there’s a happy squeal cutting out of your throat, the image of an adorable yellow duck warming you up with euphoria. 

“You don’t have that one yet?”

“I don’t,” you nod, “this is just perfect.”

Eric nods and watches you with a certain kind of warmth in his gaze as you open up your notebook and stick the newest addition to your little sticker farm– or a ZOO, however you wanna call it. The next sticker from the pile is added as well– a brown, big bear– and the next one too, the most adorable colorful parrot slapped to the corner of your page. 

The rest of your stickers are the ones you already own, though– a displeased look takes over your features at the knowledge, but still, you can’t help but beam at the fact that you have 3 new additions to your collection, and they were a gift from Eric Sohn himself. Someone who doesn’t make fun of your childish habit. Someone who feeds your little interest, watches you with excitement in his eyes as you indulge. Someone not like your brother. 

Someone you could never see the way you see your brother.

“What do you do with the duplicates?” Eric asks, pointing to the sad pile on the top of your notebook. His figure is closer to you now, since he wanted to watch you stick the animals into your notebook, his crossed legs almost pressed against yours on the small bed.

“Well, usually, I just throw them out,” you shrug, “but since you’re here…” you muse, the idea plopping into your head like the newest discovery you should probably patent, peeling the back of one of the dog stickers off and swiftly turning towards your companion, mischief sparkling in your eyes.

You put the sticker on his left cheek, making the boy jump. “Hey!”

Giggling, taking another one of the stickers and pressing it to the middle of his forehead, Eric starts to fight you, your bodies wrestling on the bed. You don’t think he puts much effort into getting you off him– that, or he’s insanely weak– and in no time, his face is adorned with all different kinds of animals, his hair messy from tussling in your bedsheets. The image has you laughing before you realize you’re basically straddling him on your bed, his big eyes gaping at you from below, his appearance enough to make something in your brain short-circuit and make you leap off him, clearing your throat.

Heat rushes into your cheeks as you take a seat next to him, playing with your fingers. You pray for anything to come and ease the awkwardness you caused, and sure enough, today must be your lucky day. “Hey, look here!” 

You call for the boy as you swiftly take your polaroid camera off your bedside table– the one that belonged to your dad, the one you fought with Sunwoo about, the one your mum said was yours because Sunwoo is too careless with his things to keep it safe– and snap a picture of the puppy-like boy, laughing at the fact that now, you have the image of him looking dumb and covered in stickers forever. Or at least until he doesn't take it away from you– which he attempts quickly.

“Hey!” he yelps again, huffing as he lunges at you, trying to take the picture out of your grasp as you drop the camera into your soft sheets. Your feet take you to the living room, navigating through furniture, and when you don’t hear footsteps follow you, you think you’re safe– Eric does have a lot of energy, but chasing you around gets tiring for him quickly when he knows you'll never let him win.

Entering your room once again, prepared to find him on your bed like before, you’re taken by surprise as a shutter sound goes off right after you open the door, a polaroid picture taken of your face making you temporarily blind at the flash.

“Eric!” you whine, hating that there’s a picture of you standing shocked at your doorway now forever in the universe– not really caring that the boy just got you back with the exact stunt you pulled on him just a few minutes ago. Before you get a chance to blink out the blind spots in your vision caused by the flash and run after him, though, you feel him gently press you out of the doorway and slip outside, the sound of the front door opening and closing after him resonating along his slowly disappearing, amused laughter.

Serves you right, doesn’t it? 

Sighing, you shake your head and take a seat on your bed, the picture of the boy still in between your fingertips. You only take a look at it when your vision comes back to normal, and as the image of Eric covered in stickers, hair messy and cheeks rosy below the animal print comes into your sight, the revelation arrives the same second a starstruck smile plays with your features.

And with that, you’re absolutely terrified. 

Throwing the polaroid picture onto the bedside table and lunging yourself into the sheets, you scream into your pillow and wish for the feelings to disappear– because in what world does a crush on your brother’s best friend ever come to a happy ending?

OCTOBER OF 1999

Once October hits, you find yourself home alone more often than you’d like. Sure, you don’t mind having some me time to read comic books or watch the TV uninterrupted in the living room, but still– alone turns lonely pretty quickly, and somehow, you start to regret the fact that you’ve been relying on your older brother and his friends for so long instead of making some connections on your own.

Sunwoo started to play soccer at school– something is telling you that he might go far if he keeps it up– and that’s why he’s been stuck at practice every single day, coming home late in the evening all tired, but happy, so you’re not really complaining. Eric works in the little bistro downtown now, since he wanted to make some money and not rely on the allowance Mrs. Sohn gives him every month, and it’s not like you were that close to begin with, but the fact that the boy is now too busy to meet you is making your spirit fall just the tiniest bit. And with your mother always being at work, you find yourself alone in your room, laying in your bed and staring at the ceiling. 

Sometimes, you journal. About anything and everything, really. You don’t really think you’re ever gonna read back the entries once you’re older, since they would just be a reminder of how miserable and boring your teenage years really were, and that’s why you allow yourself to be authentic. On most days, you write about your assignments for school. Sometimes you bad mouth a classmate or two– gossiping with the diary pages, because you don’t really have any human beings to do so in real life– and seldom, you allow yourself to get into topics that evoke the slightest bits of existential crisis in you.

Topics like college. Growing up. Your lack of hobbies and social interaction with the outer world. The newly found crush on Eric Sohn…

Okay, maybe you do write about the boy with brown hair and dark eyes a little too often. You can’t help it, though– when he’s not giving you any new interactions to dwell on, you have to just pick apart the old ones. You think it’s a natural reaction.

And that’s exactly what you’re doing one October afternoon, the lamp in your room on, since the evening comes faster when the weather is colder, as you’re laying in your bed and kicking your feet back and forth, chewing on the end of your pencil. The sound of your doorbell resonates through the house suddenly and startles you, making you jump awake from your delirious delusions.

Mentally going through the list of possible visitors you could have– because it can’t be your mother or your brother, since they never forget to carry their house keys– you’re lost, not really finding any fitting candidates. Furrowing your brows, lost in thought and frankly, a bit confused, you plant your socked feet onto the wooden floor and walk over to the front door just in time for the bell to ring again. Scratching the back of your neck in nerves, thinking of precautions you could take for your own safety– since your front door doesn’t have a peep hole and you don’t want to open the door to a complete stranger– you clear your throat and yell over the door.

“Who is it?” you ask.

“Delivery!” a voice calls through the door, making you huff. 

“I didn’t order any food?” you yell back, confused. “Sir, there’s another house behind ours, sometimes the mailmen get confused and we get their mail. Maybe try there?” 

“The address is right, though?” the voice calls again, and somehow, it sounds kind of familiar… no, it can’t be, you dumb goose. You’re just imagining things because you’ve spent the last 20 minutes writing about the curve of his nose into your diary.

“There must be a mistake-”

“Come on, Y/N, open the door,” the voice on the other side mourns, the mention of your name making you jump, completely startled. The tone the man says it in is sweet like honey, though, so familiar in your ears, that you mentally want to slap yourself– so you weren’t dreaming. It is him.

Dragging your hand through your hair to smooth it down, praying you look at least a little presentable– although in your stained sweatpants and the Pokémon shirt you inherited from Sunwoo when he grew out of it, you doubt that’s even possible– you open the door and try to offer Eric a warm smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Food delivery,” Eric shrugs, pointing with his thumb in the direction behind his back, where his bike undoubtedly stands up against your gate.

“Oh…. but I already told you I didn’t order anything,” you mumble, confused. Studying his face– because a girl can indulge when she has the opportunity, am I right? – you notice his hair has grown a little longer, falling into his eyes. You bet it’s hard for him to see, but you must admit it looks nice, and you almost tell him, before you catch yourself and break away from the sentiment. 

The male snickers. “I know, I was just joking,” he says, “I did bring you food, though.”

“Why?” you ask, confused when he bends over and picks up a plastic bag off the ground, a container of food inside, the warmth of the contents making condensation appear all over the red sack. 

“We made this by mistake and it was just gonna be thrown out if nobody took it,” he shrugs, “and I figured you haven’t eaten yet– or if you did, you just had those cold kimbap rolls from the store– and I wanted to get some warm food into your stomach.”

“Ah,” you gasp, nodding at the explanation. It does explain the source of the food really well, but truthfully, it explains nothing about the fact why Eric thought of bringing you the food instead of taking it home with himself– he’s a foodie if you’ve ever seen one. The idea of him worrying about if you were fed or not is equally as strange and interesting in your head– still, you clasp your hand around the bag and take it, the smell making you involuntarily hungry. “Thank you.”

Eric only nods at you, a smile beaming at his face. “Well,” he sighs, “I’d love to stay longer and hang out, but I’m still on the clock, so…” he mumbles, taking a hesitant step backwards towards his bike, eyes never breaking contact with yours.

“Oh, right,” you nod, “that’s okay. Have a fun day at work!” you muse, watching him as he grins and finally retrieves back his bike, opening up the gate to your property and escaping, waving at you as he gets on.

“I’ll see you soon!” he calls as he rides off, your eyes following him until his figure disappears behind a corner, your ears buzzing with excitement and your lower lip trapped between your teeth with the innocent promise.

Walking back into the house, you grin as you close the front door behind you and carry the food into the kitchen. You quickly get the containers out of the damp bag, putting them onto the wooden table, and gasp when you find a sticky note on the very top one, a messy handwriting scribbled in a rush, but stuck to the food with care.

Eat well and don’t skip meals, Y/N-ie!! – Eric x

Not being able to battle your smile anymore, you decide to open up the containers and stuff your mouth with the food instead– only to find your favorite dish inside, staring back at you in what seems to be a dream that’s too good to wake up from. 

And sure, you are delusional, but are you delusional enough to believe that this wasn’t all a coincidence? You’re not so sure.

Still, you eat the food with feet kicking back and forth as you sit in the silent kitchen, the empty house no longer feeling so lonely. When you’re done, you throw the trash out– everything but the sticky note, which you glue into your diary a few minutes later, hoping to keep the memory forever.

NOVEMBER OF 1999

The world around you is dark as you step outside of cram school, your eyes are tired and your skin is prickled with goosebumps in the chilly air. You despise going to cram school, but your mother told you you have to– since you didn’t have any athletic features that could get you far in life like Sunwoo, you had to be good at studying, or else you won’t get into university. There was a lot of work ahead of you, but since you didn’t really have anything else to do in the day, you didn’t protest and went anyway.

The days are usually very long and you get off very late, resulting in you being tired almost all the time. When you get home, you undress yourself and change into your sleep clothes and doze off until the morning, when you have to wake up and go to school again– it’s an exhausting cycle, but you know you have to endure it for your own sake.

Walking down the steps that lead out the cram school building, you stretch your body and huff, cursing at yourself for the fact that you didn’t bring a jacket– you forgot that evenings get really chilly, and frankly speaking, you didn’t have much time to think when you were rushing to get ready in the morning. You’ll just have to get through it, you think to yourself as you walk in the direction of your house– the last bus to your neighborhood already left an hour ago, when you were in the middle of revising division– your sneakers kicking the stray rocks below your feet as you tug the sleeves of your hoodie lower, desperately trying to feel more heat.

“Do you never watch where you’re going? That’s gonna get you in trouble one day, you know,” you hear a familiar voice say, the joking tone making your heart skip a few beats as you place the owner of the saccharine voice to its face. Looking up, slightly alarmed at being caught in such a distressed state, you gasp.

“I was… watching my step, I guess,” you shrug as you come into a halt in front of him, shivering both under Eric’s gaze and the cold weather at once. “What are you doing here? Deliveries?”

“I just got off,” he says, “so I figured I could stop by. Sunwoo said you’re going to cram school, I thought you might enjoy some company on your way home.”

Gaping at his explanation, you nod, completely startled. The idea of your brother talking about you in front of Eric, the boy you have a very embarrassing, very big crush on scares you, to say the least. See, it doesn’t really matter that the boy grew up with you, pretty much seeing you at your lowest whenever he was around over at your house when you were both just little kids– the image of Sunwoo telling Eric about finding you sobbing at your comic book (the scene got too sad, nobody can really blame you) or about how your favorite jeans ripped right before you had to go to school one morning is terrifying. You don’t really want him to know about these things. He may act like your brother sometimes, but you never really saw him in that light in the first place.

“Well, then,” you clear your throat, “it’s… it’s good to see you,” you say. Eric shows you his boyish grin as your lips utter out the words, and you can’t help but mirror it, your eyes locking with the male. As if you just took a step back, your eyes see him in a light you’ve never seen him before– as if this was your first time meeting your brother’s best friend– and something about the sentiment has your stomach feeling all uneasy, heat rushing to your face. His hair is styled in a way that tells you that he didn’t really style it (or if he did, it looked truly effortless in your eyes, so props to him), pushed back a little and revealing his forehead, a few of the strands carelessly falling into his eyes. His jawline is sharper than how it was when you first met the boy, and with the realization of a foolish teenage girl, you have to admit that Eric Sohn grew up to be a very attractive, attentive man.

“You’re cold?” he says, although the sentence sounds more like a statement rather than a question, before he shakes his head at your antics and heaves out a sigh. “You should’ve taken a jacket with you when you went, you know it gets cold in the evening,” he scolds you. In those times, he reminds you the most of your brother– because although you and Sunwoo act like you hate each other sometimes, you know the older male still cares about you. He just hates showing it, which translates in his scolding tone whenever you do something wrong or against his wishes. 

In those times, Eric reminds you the most of the way your brother treats you, and you somehow hate it. You despise the fact, because that means he must only see you as someone like his younger sister– he never had one, so maybe he just likes to compensate for it by taking care of you all the time. Maybe he feels responsible to do so because of Sunwoo. The thought makes you equally as nauseous– you’d never want him to hang out with you just because he feels like he has to. 

“I didn’t have time in the morning,” you grunt, rolling your eyes at him. You avert your gaze from the male, for it makes you slightly uncomfortable after your previous thoughts, so when the noise of a zipper being pulled down and the weight of fabric on your shoulders brings you back to reality, you snap your head around at him all alarmed. 

“What? Wear it,” he says, head shrugging towards the direction of his jacket on your figure. “You’re gonna catch a cold if you don’t.”

Trying to wrestle out of the red material, you squirm in the hold of the windbreaker– Eric’s hands gripping each side of the jacket, as if predicting your next moves, making sure it stays on you and doesn’t fall down. His strong arms tug you closer to him to make your fight more difficult– and he’s successful with his efforts, because the proximity of him and his smell engulfs you and unarms you, heat rushing to your cheeks as you halt in your movements.

“Stop,” you mourn, “I don’t need it.”

“Yes you do,” he insists, “so stop being a baby about it and wear it.”

Staring into his eyes, as if to mentally tell him to stop what he’s doing– to stop how he’s treating you, how he’s making you all weak in your knees and sleepless at nights because of how much you think of him and hope he’s doing well each day, to stop being so gentle with you and taking care of you, because it brings all sorts of both doubts and delusions into your head– but he doesn’t back down. You’ve known him for quite some time, you should already be aware of just how stubborn he can be.

“Arms in,” he hums, holding on to the jacket and waiting for you to wear it properly. One thing about you– you can always admit your defeat. So, with a sigh, you put your arms through the sleeves of Eric’s red windbreaker, shrinking a little under his firm gaze. He looks at you with a look full of something you can’t decipher, and it’s all making you so, so insanely lost in the many thoughts and feelings swirling around your head, not helping your current state.

“I already have a brother, y’know,” you mumble in a moment of weakness, looking at your feet– your dirty white sneakers almost touching his from how close you are standing right now, “so you should stop treating me like one.”

A moment of silence overtakes you two, and you suddenly feel like you’ve done something wrong. Still, Eric’s hands are holding on to the sides of the opened jacket, keeping you close to him. “Hm?” 

Clearing your throat and shaking your head, you snicker to yourself. “Forget it.”

“No- I mean,” he blurts out, tone of voice a little nervous, “do you see me as your brother figure?” he asks, tone of voice more quiet now, more gentle.

Breathing in the crispy air, taking a moment before you reply, you shake your head in disapproval. “No,” you say, “no, I don’t. I- I don’t think I do,” you say, scared of what your answer will bring out of him. You don’t really know why, but at this moment, you feel insanely fragile– as if any bad move could make you break in his hands, waiting for him to glue you back together. 

Metaphorically, he does just that. “Good,” he nods, leaning down towards you, hands gripping the zipper of his jacket and zipping it together, making sure no cold can get to your bones as his fingers tug it up towards the very top, under your chin. “Because I’ve never seen you as my sister either.”

His answer once again startles you– but when you take a step back from the situation, you think it was in a good way. His hands grip your shoulders for a second as his eyes meet yours and he offers you a warm smile. “Come on, let’s get you home,” he says, tugging you towards the fence where you find his bike, his motions guiding you like a rag doll sucked out of all life.

“Hop in,” he motions towards the back of the bike, where the basket would usually be– Eric moved it towards the front, though, leaving enough room for you to sit at– and as you do, he takes a seat in front of you and looks back at you over his shoulder. “Hold on tight so you don’t fall.”

Like in a trance, your arms sneak around his middle– this was the first time you had this kind of physical touch with him, and just the thought of it makes you want to scream your throat out– before the male takes off on the bike, riding towards your neighborhood. With the cold wind slapping your face, you foolishly rest your cheek on his shoulder blade and close your eyes, enjoying the closeness of his body keeping you warm. 

If anyone asked you about the action, you’d tell them you were just tired.

DECEMBER OF 1999

Socked feet make their way through the room, the sound of footsteps resonating on the laminated floor, as the short male comes up to you with a bowl of potato chips in his right hand and a bottle of soda under his left arm. Eric Sohn sighs at you, shaking his head in disbelief, before he places the items onto the coffee table and takes a seat next to you on the floor, opening up the bottle and pouring the three of you drinks.

“Can’t believe I’m spending New Year’s Eve with you losers, of all people,” Eric snickers, having you roll your eyes at the male and grumpily furrow your eyebrows at his sentence.

“No one’s stopping you if you wanna go, y’know,” you grunt as you take the filled glass off the table, taking a sip of the sweet drink and sighing at him. If he’s gonna take a leap into the new year with you while making you annoyed, he may as well leave now and do whatever his initial plan was– once again, no one’s stopping him if that’s what he wants to do.

“I’m just saying,” he shrugs, “it would’ve been so much more fun if we all went to Juyeon hyung’s. Everyone’s there celebrating, but we’re stuck here in your room.” 

“Well, Eric,” your brother smiles ironically at him, shrugging to himself, “it’s not like it’s my fault you’re not over at Juyeon hyung’s right now. You chose to spend the new years here with me. My mother prohibited me from going there, not yours.”

The argument has the male shrug, his eyes averting your brother’s gaze once his comment gets a bit too honest and realistic. It’s true and he’s right– it’s not like Eric’s mum told him he can’t go celebrate with his friends, because she didn’t. Eric’s mum trusts him and wants him to have fun and do what all the kids his age are doing. Your mum, on the other hand, is making you and Sunwoo stay home for New Year’s Eve to celebrate with your family, because, as she quoted, New Year’s Eve the only time she gets time off work, and she wants to spend it with her kids– forget the fact that you’re currently sitting locked in your room with your friend, protesting the family time just because you can– and when Sunwoo told her she has to stop treating him like a little kid, she told him she has all the right to do so, because he is her kid. And that’s how the party he was supposed to attend with Eric (the party you foolishly thought you’re gonna have to tag along to, not hating the sentiment as much as before now) got canceled from your brother’s plans.

“Well,” Eric chews on the inside of his cheek, “I did it for you two. Be grateful.”

“Whatever,” you hum, “let’s turn on the TV. I bet there’s some variety show on.”

Eric heaves out a sigh as he reaches for the TV remote, clicking the power button and making the boxy device in front of you light up. Your mum got you a TV in your room when you complained about being too bored one November day, and although the box of entertainment didn’t really help like you imagined it to, you’re glad it’s of service at least today. Instead of the expected variety show, though, there’s news on– the face of the old announcer looking at you with a serious look on his face, the professional tone making chills run down your spine, for he reminds you a bit of your mother when she scolds you. You think that’s a common news announcer trait. 

“As the year 2000 approaches, computer programmers realize that computers might not interpret the 00 in the software as 2000, but 1900. The softwares currently running only use a two-digit code for the year, excluding the 19. The data was excluded because the data storage is costly and takes up too much space. Activities that were planned on a daily basis could be damaged or flawed,” the announcer says, making the three of you look at the screen with interest. Maybe it’s true that when you get older, you get more interested in news– you think it’s good to know what’s going on around you, although the topic discussed right now might not even concern you in the slightest.

“Banks, which calculate the interest rates on a daily basis, could face real problems. Interest rates are the amount of money a lender, such as a bank, charges a customer, such as an individual or business, for a loan. Instead of the rate of interest for one day, the computer could calculate a rate of interest for minus almost 100 years!” 

“Oops,” Eric lets out next to you, a reaction so far away from what a real adult would think of the situation. See, you are all just kids, after all.

“Centers of technology, such as power plants, are also threatened by this issue. Power plants depend on routine computer maintenance for safety checks, such as water pressure or radiation levels. Not having the correct date could throw off these calculations and possibly put nearby residents at risk,” the announcer continues, the information coming out of his mouth suddenly making you hyper aware of the reality you’re experiencing right now.

“Do we have a nuclear power plant nearby?” you ask in a hushed whisper, watching as the men next to you almost comically widen their eyes, shrugging.

“I’m not sure,” Sunwoo peeps.

“The worst of all, this software and hardware issue could cause such a big problem in nuclear energy facilities, where nuclear bombs and missiles could be set off, causing the world to go into utter chaos, or worse, an end,” the announcer concludes, the last word making you gasp in terror. 

“An end?” you chirp, sitting up straight in your seat as you look at the two men, now equally as terrified. There’s something in Sunwoo’s gaze that makes chills run down your spine, the reality crushing down on you with heavy measures. 

“I knew I shouldn’t have fought with mum. What if the last words the two of us exchanged before we die are the harsh words I had said yesterday?” your brother mourns, seeing as his best friend chews on his bottom lip, lost in thought.

“What did you say to your mum?”

“That- that I’ll never forgive her for ruining this for me,” he mumbles, his voice breaking at the end, “and… other things,” he adds, the hint of incoming panic making his best friend frantically wave his hands around and try to make your brother relax before he has to deal with the breakdown. If the world is ending, this is not how any of you want to go.

“It’s okay, don’t worry,” Eric says, clearing his throat and pointing to the TV, “look! The show is on, we should watch before the year ends,” he proposes, taking the remote into his hand and turning the volume up to hopefully drown out Sunwoo’s thoughts and have him focus on something else. And it works– noting that your brother has an attention span of a 5 year old– he can hardly remember what he was worrying about just 30 seconds ago.

Still, the thought keeps bouncing around your head like a child in a bouncy castle. The words of the news anchor keep repeating in your brain, making your ears ring as you look at Eric from the corner of your eye, watching his angelic face. Oh how you hate disturbing the peace now that you’ve all calmed down– but still, you can’t deal with the worries alone. Checking the clock hung above the TV, noticing there’s at least 5 minutes left before midnight, you clear your throat, feeling your whole body on fire.

“Do you really think the world is gonna end?” you ask, cracking your knuckles in a nervous manner. Looking at Eric, pupils shaking, you find your brother’s best friend seemingly lost in thought. The music of the variety show program serves you three as a background sound now, none of you paying attention to the TV anymore, instead, focusing on all the things you've done wrong in your life and how somehow, this feels like karma for all of it.

“I dunno,” Sunwoo shrugs, “I mean- they said it’s possible! It was on the news, and they wouldn’t lie on the news…” he nervously mumbles, scratching the back of his head. 

“That’s what’s worrying me,” you sigh, “we shouldn’t have turned on the TV.”

“It was your idea in the first place!”

“And I’ll carry the burden into my grave,” you admit, gulping as you press a forced smile onto your lips.

Momentarily looking back at the TV, you desperately want to keep the thought of the world being over out of your head before you spend your last minutes on this earth going crazy– but now that you started, you can’t keep thinking about it. “Man, the world can’t end yet. There’s so many things I haven’t tried yet! I’m too young to die!”

The men don't reply to that– you presume they’re too busy trying to find other things to occupy themselves with instead of the inevitable– which has you dissatisfied as you throw your body back into the sofa, heaving out a sigh. Seconds go by painfully slow but also painfully fast at the same time, given the circumstances, as you listen to the cheerful song playing in the background and nudge your friend into his upper arm with your pointer finger, feeling his arm encircle your shoulders and pull you closer to him. The contact of his fingers on your upper arm makes you squirm and break out into a smile, feeling a particular lightness in your stomach at the action, a sensation that has you in shock. 

“I’m gonna talk with mum before we die,” Sunwoo suddenly calls as he stands up from his seat on the floor, sighing to himself, “I can’t go with the thought of her being upset with me,” he sentimentally adds before he’s out of the door, rushing towards the living room.

The space falls into momentary silence now that your brother is gone, having you chew on your bottom lip with nerves. You think now is the time to beg for forgiveness with the higher forces– I'm sorry for not studying well. I'm sorry for being rude and ungrateful towards my mum. I'm sorry for being greedy– when the sound of Eric’s voice resonates through the place as he speaks up again, waking you up from the anxious slumber, the clock now striking 2 minutes before midnight. “What would you wanna do before you die?” he asks.

The question is simple. You presume he wants simple answers– things like getting into college, getting a good job and making a lot of money, growing old– but as you lean away from him and get back to your place on his left, your eyes locked with his, you’re left clueless. There are so many things you have yet to achieve, and the idea of not being able to pushes a burden to your chest, but at this very moment, you can’t really name one. 

Shrugging, you chew on the inside of your cheek as your eyes scan his face. His firm eye contact has you a bit flustered, making you shrivel in your seat, and as the sound of the TV morphs from the song into a countdown from 55, you’re overwhelmed with the thought that your friend is insanely pretty– and he always has been, you just hated admitting it to yourself for the past few months, despite still being fully aware– and that now, when the world ends, you’re dying unkissed and alone.

Well, not completely alone, since Eric’s here. And he’s always been here– your whole life, since you can remember, and he’s here now as well, even though he should’ve been at Juyeon’s house. As the clock strikes 30 seconds away from midnight, your eyes involuntarily travel down to his chapped lips, all air knocked out of your lungs, the thoughts in your brain picking up on speed the closer you come to the end.

You’re dying soon. You’re dying in 30- now 29 seconds, and you’ve never kissed anyone before. You’re dying before you get a chance to hold hands with someone and have a partner, and you’re dying before you get a chance to tell Eric how you feel about him. There’s 28 seconds left until the end and you’re just staring at him like a coward, because you don’t really let yourself indulge in the silly warmth of your heart whenever you’re around your friend, but god, you can at least admit it to yourself before you die.

And as the clock gets closer and closer to midnight, now only giving you 20 seconds before it all ends and a missile lands on the top of your house, blowing up the whole town and making you all disappear, Eric’s question repeats itself in your brain. What would you want to do before you die?

The answer is suddenly painfully clear as you take action– leaning towards the boy on your right, face closer to his than it’s ever been before, your eyes counting all his eyelashes and focusing on his surprised, yet unmoving face– and as you hear the countdown reach 15, you close your eyes and press your lips against his. 

The contact makes you weak in your knees as your hands reach to his face to steady him, your own firework show erupting in your stomach, and suddenly you’re completely content with dying tonight– because at least you’re with Eric, at least you did something. You kiss your friend with something close to an unsaid confession, your lips staying on his throughout the rest of the countdown, the taste of soda you’ve both been drinking the whole evening mixing in the contact of your skin. You’re not sure you’re even doing this right– again, you’ve never kissed anyone before– but it doesn’t matter to you much as you let go of your worries, aware of the fact that in a few seconds, nothing will matter anymore when neither of you are going to be around to say anything to each other after the kiss is over.

The countdown rings in your ears– coming down from 5 as you scoot yourself closer to Eric, 4 as you run the pads of your thumbs along his cheekbones, 3 as you still in your movements, 2 as you notice your knees bumping into each other on the ground and finally, 1 as you get ready to die, kissing your first and only love– when the sound of cheers and fireworks from the TV fills your ears instead, the world around you stilling and completely unchanged.

Your kiss started in 1999 and ended in 2000. Your love for him passed a century.

Eyes fluttering open and your mouth letting go of his, the image of the boy with his lips slightly parted, eyes closed and cheeks rosy comes to you in the yellow light of your room, making your heart fall down to your stomach. He looks absolutely angelic, his hair slightly messy and the fabric of his shirt a little disheveled in the front, and even though you’d love to indulge in your foolish desires and kiss him some more, you’re quickly taken aback with the noise of the door to your room opening and making you jump away from Eric, your brother appearing out of thin air in the presence of your room. It serves you like a weird kind of reality check, Eric’s eyes opening and looking at your brother, and even though you two haven’t been caught, the male clears his throat and bites down on his lower lip, looking almost guilty.

Oh no. What have you done?

Suddenly, you feel insanely silly.

JANUARY OF 2000

“You’ve been awfully quiet the whole day,” Sunwoo mumbles from beside you, his whole body engulfed in a pile of snow, “not that I care, but are you okay?”

“I thought you liked it when I don’t talk,” you mutter, playing with the frozen white all around you, seated on the red plastic sled at the top of the hill. You got tired after dragging it up from the bottom, and when you noticed that the rest of Sunwoo’s friends– Eric included– are still on their way up, you figured you could use up the time to relax and sit around for a while. It’s been quite some time since all of Sunwoo’s friends gathered to hang out at the same time, which made you surprised to see that your own brother invited you to tag along with them as they decided to go sledding on the second day of January, using up their break to best of their abilities. Which is also why you didn’t say no to the invitation– you thought sitting at home and moping around wouldn’t help you much.

“I do,” he says, nodding, “that’s why I’m asking what’s up– so I know what to do when I need to shut you up later,” Sunwoo hums, making you roll your eyes at the masked worry.

Shaking your head in disbelief, you scoff. “It’s nothing.”

“Sure,” he shrugs, “so you’re just going through puberty?” he teases, to which you take a handful of snow into your palm and lunge the white at him, satisfaction running through your veins when the snowball lands into his unsuspecting face, the male coughing and swatting his arms around to defend himself.

“Hey!” your brother screams at you once he gets the ice out of his eyes and his mouth, his body jumping into a standing position before he chases you around, the bubble of a laugh escaping your throat for the first time these days– they’re not wrong when they say malicious joy is the best kind of joy.

Running at the top of the hill, not really looking where you’re going– instead looking over your shoulder to see Sunwoo’s actions, preparing yourself to duck if he decides to turn your small quarrel into a snow fight– your legs get tangled with the red sled you left before you started a war with the angered man, a yelp cutting out of your throat as you get prepared to fall over and knock your teeth out.

Your body comes in contact with something half-firm, half-soft, and as your feet slip and the snow-covered ground disappears from below your legs, two arms wrap around your waist and steady you, making sure you don’t get hurt.

Turns out Eric Sohn is there to catch you every time you are about to eat shit. You hate this kind of deja vu.

As you open your eyes (that you had closed on instinct, not wanting to see your own death) once you’re sure you’re safe and sound, the world around you invites itself into your ears in an overwhelming noise. The laughter of Sunwoo’s friends– some hollering at your fall, some at the redness and last remains of snow covering your brother’s face– and the hushed arguments over who’s going down first– with Haknyeon screaming that he’s stealing Sunwoo’s (yours) sled and Juyeon following him. After all those happening in the matter of a few seconds,  you realize you’re left on the top of the hill alone with the male, terror shaking through your insides.

Clearing your throat and taking a step back from him, you tuck your hands into your pockets and avert your gaze from Eric. You two haven’t spoken since you decided to kiss him on New Year’s Eve, and with the awkward tension in the air, you don’t feel like doing so ever again in your whole entire life. 

“Thanks,” still, you hum.

Eric seems a little more light-hearted than you, shrugging as he replies to you. “Haven’t I told you to start watching where you’re going?”

“I’m not good with listening sometimes,” you mutter, huffing. Taking a look around yourself– noticing that there are no sleds left on the top of the hill, therefore, if you wanted to escape the situation, the only way down would be to roll around like a human version of a snowman, you once again admit your defeat, standing around nervously and shifting your weight from one foot to the other.

The silence is uncomfortable. It makes you want to dig a hole in the snow and bury yourself alive, to suffocate under the weight of the icy cold and never see Eric’s face again. You know that you ruined whatever friendship you had with the male– by being stupid and foolish, not really thinking about consequences (because there were supposed to be none and you were supposed to be dead), and the weight of the guilt makes you want to puke and hide away. 

Still, Eric comes out of his way to talk to you. Honestly, you’re kind of surprised– he should be disgusted with you. Realistically, he should be the one avoiding you, not the other way around.“They’re gonna take long to walk back up,” he notes, “wanna get hot chocolate with me?”

“I’m good, thanks,” you shake your head, not once breaking eye contact with the overwhelming white of the hill.

“Come on,” he sighs, “it’s just around the corner. They built a hot chocolate stand because they knew kids would come sledding here. Honestly, it’s an astute business tactic, but I promise the hot chocolate actually tastes nice,” he says, nudging you slightly with his arm, as if to make you look at him and change your mind.

“Thanks, but no,” you definitely say, chewing on the inside of your cheek.

“Are you avoiding me?” he asks, tone of voice casual– as if it was the most normal thing in the world, as if nothing ever happened and he was genuinely curious about the reasoning behind your actions.

“I’m not, I just don’t really like hot chocolate,” you sheepishly mutter, trying hard to avoid the topic.

“So you are avoiding me,” he hums, as if it wasn’t obvious before– and not only because you’re a bad liar. Plus, you love hot chocolate. Somehow, you think Eric knows.

“Look, Eric,” you sigh, running your hand through your hair, “can’t you just drop it?”

“No,” he shrugs, shaking his head, “and that’s why we’re talking about the reason why you’re avoiding me over a cup of hot chocolate. Let’s go.”

His persistence is terribly overwhelming sometimes. You wonder how the male does it. “I already told you-”

“You owe me for the stickers and the meal and everything,” he corners you, and you know you can’t argue with that. He’s kind of right, you suppose– you never paid him back for all the chocolates or for the free meal he brought you that one evening. And that’s exactly why you find yourself sighing as you follow him, mentally preparing yourself for the talk.

You hate how he can always get his way. Walking up to the stand, you crack your knuckles in the pocket of your jacket, nervously coming up with possible arguments to tell him. I didn’t kiss you on purpose, it was an accident. I only did it to know how it feels. We are both supposed to be dead, it’s not my fault the world didn’t end like it was supposed to! Each sentence sounds more stupid than the previous one, and so with that, you shake your head, wiping the thoughts away, smiling at the elderly lady in the stand. You’re just gonna have to be honest, you figure. 

“Two hot chocolates, please.”

Rummaging through your pockets to find your wallet– you do owe Eric, so it’s only natural for you to pay– you’re caught off guard as the male next to you swiftly takes out his own and unzips it, preparing to pay for you. 

“I thought I owed you?” you mumble, hand reaching to tug at his forearm to stop him, to which Eric only grins at you and sighs.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay,” he says.

“I think that’s exactly what that means.”

“Just take it,” he huffs as he brings out a note from his wallet, the force making something else fly out and fall to the ground with it, having the boy swiftly crouch down and pick the item up, attempting to hide it before you get a chance to see. And now, you don’t have 20/20 vision, but you recognise your face when you see it– that, and you also recognize the small white sheet to be a polaroid picture, and as far as you’re aware, you’re the only one who has a camera in his circle.

The boy hands you the drink with red-tinted cheeks. The idea of him carrying a picture of you that he took back in September makes you flush as well, and when your gloved fingers accidentally meet as you take the cup from him, he forces out a laugh. “We can talk about that after you tell me why you’re avoiding me.”

His nonchalance has you relaxing only for a few seconds. The boy walks with you as you try to heat up your cold hands on the boiling surface of the cup, and when you see a bench a few meters away from you two, you instinctively take a seat.

“So?” he becomes you, eyebrows rising as he takes a sip from the melted sweetness.

Sighing, you try to come up with the best way to go around this. Do you apologize? Do you promise to never do it again– and you won’t, even though you want to so badly and his lips look surprisingly soft today? Furrowing your brows at the war in your head, you place the cup on the bench next to you and put your head into your hands, hiding away from him when you realize the only way to do this is to be completely, utterly honest.

“I’m just so embarrassed, Eric.”

The only noise meeting your eardrums in the moment is the faint yelling of the crowd sledding in the background, your companion remaining quiet for a bit. When he sees you won’t explain yourself, he goes ahead and asks the question. “Why?”

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” you sigh, not believing his so casual composure.

“Maybe,” he laughs, the airy sound taking all breath away from your lungs.

Well, not all of it, since you have enough oxygen to go on a tangent, it seems. “Because I kissed you, goddamnit. And- and I don’t even know why I did it, honestly, I’ve never thought of kissing you before! It’s just- when I heard the world is ending, I realized I hadn’t had my first kiss yet, and that just felt like such a miserable way to die, and then you asked what I wanted to do before I die and I couldn’t think of anything else,” you say, progressively taking out your head from your hands and facing the male, big eyes staring into his soul. 

To your surprise, he doesn’t seem mad. Or disgusted. Or any of the reactions you expected, really. Eric stares at you with a soft, but amidst a little star-struck look in his eyes, and you’re suddenly painfully aware of every slight shift in his composure.

“Did you kiss me because you wanted to kiss me, or because you thought the world was gonna end?” he asks, awaiting your answer.

And if you’re being honest, 2 days after New Year’s Eve, you do admit the thought of the world actually ending sounds a bit stupid. Why did you even believe that theory? Why did they talk about it so seriously on the news? They tricked you into ruining your own life. 

But still, nothing can be done about it now. “Both,” you admit, shrugging, “I… I kissed you because I really didn’t want to die unkissed, but also… I wanted it to be you, y’know? Like… I thought we were really going to die, and so I thought kissing you might be a nice way to go. I really wanted to spend my last moments with you, I guess,” you sheepishly say, averting your gaze from the male.

Eric offers you his silence again after you’re done explaining. While you do admit you feel a little tense to hear what he has to say, you also realize you feel lighter now that it’s out in the universe and out of your system. A major weight was taken off your shoulders with the confession, and suddenly, you’re kind of glad that your friend was so assertive and insistent on talking about this– who knows how long you’d go before managing to face him. You think you could honestly go on… forever.

Taking a sip of the luscious liquid, you feel your body warm up once the anxiousness slips away from your bones. The boy next to you hums, making you face him with expecting eyes. “Then why were you avoiding me?”

Sighing, you shake your head. “I just told you. I’m starting to think you’re the one that’s bad at listening.”

“No,” he laughs, “that’s still you. Because if you were good at listening, you’d remember me telling you that I’ve never once seen you as my younger sister.”

Shrugging, kicking the pile of snow in front of you with the tip of your winter boots, you’re not quite following. “So?”

“So you should’ve realized that I’m not doing all of this,” he theatrically swings his arms around, “for nothing, you know?”

“All of what?”

“Taking care of you. Feeding you, helping you collect those stupid animal stickers, walking you home…” he mumbles, sighing. “Keeping your picture in my wallet,” he adds with a playful tone, making you smile.

“I thought you were just being a good friend,” you shrug.

“I don’t keep a picture of your brother on me at all times,” he says, tugging off his gloves. The sleeve of his jacket rides up a little as you watch him take his cup of hot chocolate off the bench, surprised (and flooded with warmth) to see the ugly friendship bracelet you made still adorning his wrist.

Grinning to yourself, excitement welcoming itself into the tips of your fingertips, you shrug. “So?” you mirror your own question from a little while ago, wanting him to say it to you instead of relying on your own brain– you think there’s still a possibility of you just being too delusional to see the reality for what it really is. You need to make sure you’re not imagining things.

“So,” he starts, sighing to himself as he turns a little in his seat to face you, “you should stop avoiding me, because I liked the kiss. And you. And we should probably do it again, because I didn’t get the chance to kiss you back the first time,” he says, once again taking all oxygen out of your lungs with the casualty of his preposition.

Locking his eyes with you, having you two staring at each other like two rays of sunshine warming up the cold January, he grins. “How does that sound?”

“Good,” you breathe out, “very good.”

The male takes it as an invitation as he scoots himself closer to you on the bench, his body turning a bit to face you. His free hand cups your cheek, leaning closer to lock his lips with you like he asked you to, your eyes fluttering close at the proximity, the fuzzy feeling in your stomach already expecting to kiss him again. The situation feels a little too idyllic to be real, though– you should’ve expected it to get ruined again.

Something cold and wet comes into contact with the side of your face, and when you sharply open your eyes, you see Eric staring at you with shock and terror in his eyes, the snow dripping down the side of his face as well. Whoever threw the snowball has good aim, you think– managing to target two people at once (even though your faces were that close to each other that it probably wasn’t even that hard), and before you get a chance to look around and see who cut off your kiss, there’s a scream coming from the left side of the two of you, the sound of feet quickly darting in the snow landing into your ears.

“Eric Sohn, what the fuck do you think you’re doing with my sister?” the voice hollers, and before you get a chance to react, the said male fastly stands up from the bench and runs to the other direction, laughter resonating all throughout the place as Sunwoo and his friends chase their shortest friend down.

Snow starts falling as you watch your brother tail his childhood friend, and with a foreign sense of warmth, you get reminded of the birthday wish you made while blowing out the candles on your seventh birthday.

You wished for someone just like Eric. You didn’t know the universe would be so kind to give you him instead.

#bjnet #the boyz #eric sohn #the boyz x reader #tbz x reader #tbz fluff #eric sohn fluff #eric fluff #eric x reader #eric sohn x reader #tbz scenario #tbz fic #the boyz scenario #the boyz fluff #the boyz imagines #sohn youngjae #youngjae x reader

[slashtakemylife]

Peggy lives under the shadow of Steve, even when she's the main lead

With the release of What If and Peggy Carter taking on the role of Captain America, Marvel is very likely patting their back on their "feminism" and how they've given us a badass female leader that can have her own spotlight however it's very easy to see how we are still seeing this story through a males eyes and male focus only.

1. The curse of being Cap's girl, she can only be his

Honestly the misogyny on Peggy's character actually begins since the first movie but we'll get into the little details later, the first glaring ones to me begins ever since the Cap 2 movie, when they show Peggy as old she has pictures of her kids but none of her husband, why? We are even told she's had a good life, a full life, so where is her husband?

Because in the patriarchal way, Peggy Carter, even as an old lady who has lived her full life and is basically allowed to... is still Steve's. It's more likely they didn't want to show who "filled his shoes", so to speak, this imaginary man, this husband who got to have Peggy, "bested" Captain America and you can't have that can you? I know it may sound stupid but we are dealing with a male's worldview.

It even shows when in her interview you can see how she still hasn't quite gotten over Steve, she even seems to reluctantly say, "That's where I met my husband", in that interview you can see she is still affected, aka she hasn't gotten over him but then you got to remember, she's married now, she's supposed to be over him, why is she still so affected? Why does she speak of her husband like an after thought? Why did she even marry a man when clearly she wasn't over her last? Peggy isn't the kind of woman to marry just because she had to, you know she would only marry a man she fully loved, not just to not be a spinster.

The answer is that in the male worldview, no one can supplant Steve Rogers but not because Steve Rogers is someone you can't forget but because in the male eye, Peggy is Steve's property, for someone else to have her it means they "won" over Steve and you can't win the representation of maleness. Peggy at best got second scraps, yes you heard it, Peggy's husband is just supposed to be a "second best" beside Captain America, I'm sure he was a lovely husband and father but no man can ever "best" America's representative of maleness, remember this is the worldview from a male perspective.

The only time Peggy ever gets some agency is in her show and there's a beautiful scene at the end of season 1 where we literally see her tell Steve good bye, she gets over him, by season 2 she is well over Steve, she's still affected, mind you, of course she misses him but he is no longer her world, in fact she can now flirt and get into the idea of finding new love and she does in Sousa.

It's really unfortunate when the Cap's girl curse gets landed on them because Steve was never supposed to come back into her life but then he did and of course this means crashing all her progress, they didn't just made them break up, they killed Daniel Sousa, there had to be no trace of competition so Steve could very joyfully land in the past and fit into her life as if he never left

Steve Rogers never gets over Peggy but Peggy did but since Steve wants Peggy, the writers took that progress back and made her love him again no questions asked.

2. On Captain Carter

Wow Marvel is sure patting their back thinking they nailed "feminism" when they grabbed Peggy Carter and turned her into Captain America.

In the first episode, they do get it mostly, she is bigger, she's strong and she leads the Howling Commandoes but there's one little trick that lets you remember, this is still a man's world.

Steve's Hydra Stomper.

In the original format, aka the movie, they sell Peggy to us as a top agent, and she is, we get some badass moves from her at the beginning but once Steve finally gets into his role as Captain America, she gets placed behind the scenes, it's the classical "woman in a high position" but really the real high position is Philips, Peggy at best is only seen removing little flags from maps but we never actually see her in combat until the end but of course she had to be there, otherwise how will we get to the final kiss scene amairight?

We should've expected the same treatment right? Especially since there's a very telling excuse for Steve to stay behind lines and be the master behind it, he's skinny now, he isn't fit for battle at all but he can still help coordinate the Commandoes right?

Wrong.

You can't leave Captain America, even in his skinny form, out the battle, what is he? A woman? Those double standards are what hit me, no one cared if Peggy Carter joined the fights, she doesn't have to, she's not supposed to, we all know she's Cap's girl, she's not a soldier so no one bats an eye but when the roles are reversed, it's inconceivable that Steve takes his assigned role as a love interest.

How interesting it is that when male characters are placed in the love interest role they just have to fight to be interesting right? It's almost offensive to put a man as just a love interest that does nothing but be there right?

I am also glaring at you Gwen Stacy, Gwen Stacy as Peter Parker's girlfriend is literally just a girl that got caught by the baddie and Spiderman accidentally killed but when they reversed the story and now it was Gwen as spiderwoman and Peter the boyfriend... He turned into a lizard, yeah the boy couldn't just be the boyfriend and I'm not even sure if he was the boyfriend or just the friend which also, red flags! Peter can have girlfriends but Gwen can't.

Back to Peggy, if they had only shown that first episode, it would've been good, some minor double standards with Steve's Stomper but meh, I'll live.

The real treat is the sequel, I'll also make an honorary mention on how also in other episodes they still grind Steve hard and show you she is very much in love, not a fancy, she hard loves him, not even Steve showed that much fanatism, but hey, back to topic.

My biggest glare to this episode starts with the Watcher himself, he says he never does sequels and honestly he's right, he shouldn't because the result is honestly shit, from a Peggy character pov

They copy the plot of Steve Rogers story instead of making a new one for her.

Yup, you heard me and fine she wasn't going to deviate much I know but they seriously stuck way too much into Steve's story up to the point where it doesn't work and yes I'm glaring at you Winter Soldier arc.

The Winter Soldier arc works so well because Steve and Bucky have history together, Steve and Peggy have just feelings, the relationship between Steve and Bucky and Steve and Peggy are severely different, in both cases.

For Peggy it is because she is a strong willed woman, she's had to fight her way everywhere, Steve sees her as an equal and both understand what it is to constantly be fighting to prove to others who you are because by being a woman/weak man, everyone looks past you, they undermine you, that is the Steggy dynamic.

Bucky is very different, he's exactly the opposite, he's a man of his time, he's charming, healthy, strong and noble but he isn't too moved to act the way Steve is, he isn't as strong headed as Steve is, he's been blanketed by society but thanks to Steve he gets inspired to stand up for others, remember that while Steve tried to enlist, they had to draft Bucky. One of the things about their relationship is that Bucky treats Steve as an equal too but not an equality of same struggle like he and Peggy, Bucky merely treats him as a friend, he pushes Steve out of his comfort zone, I mean he put him on the Cyclone, they rode on the back of a freezer truck, Bucky drags Steve into his adventures and treats Steve like a friend, not a sickly kid and then later on its Steve the one that has to repay the favor when it's Bucky the one's that the Winter Soldier. It's loyalty to their years of friendship and Steve knowing Bucky's character the best.

So no you can't just exchange roles and honestly the fact that if you see every single episode of What If, you quickly realize that while they may all start from a slight deviation, it leads to completely different scenarios totally outside of any MCU story.

Yondu not keeping Quill doesn't form a slightly different Guardian of the Galaxy, it generates an entire new Avengers team, they even get rid of Jotunheim and Asgard as an after thought, there's absolutely no step to step plot in any MCU movie, it's a brand new story

Same as Iron Man after the New York battle not going through the hole, it launches him into a crazy Space Race in Skaandar and while yes we get a repeat of characters and themes and places, it gets rebranded and adjusted to the characters it has, that being Tony Stark and even delves with other character's themes such as Gamora and Tony striking a friendship and both getting rid of Thanos.

This doesn't happen with Peggy, they reuse Steve's storyline, again and even pull other movies move by move, the episode is an interesting take but too close from the plot of the movies while every single one of them has deviated and found new interpretations of the characters under different scenarios, with Peggy this doesn't happen and they are trying to fit her neatly in Steve's story with slight changes but NEVER does she ever get out of the mold of being intently focused on Steve.

Even Natasha points on her dating like "what if he's named Steve?", Peggy also will never look at another man, it being her own version of "Sharon Carter", which we must remember Steve shared a kiss with, we won't ever get a whiff of a "Sousa", maybe a grandkid or something, nope you bet we never will because while Steve can, Peggy must certainly can never, she's is solely and only Captain America's girl, Steve Roger's love interest.

#peggy carter #captain carter #what if #what if...? #marvel #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #marvel mcu

[barbieaiden]

1. Kell: Dude. You're no fun to play with, you're too good.

Aiden: Kell, I love you, but I think you just suck at the game.

Kell: Dude! I always won against my siblings!

Aiden: Aww. I always let my brother win too when we were little.

Kell: You're cheating.

Aiden: I would never. I take these things very seriously.

2. Kell: By the way, you know that guy I went on a date with before your coma?

Aiden: Yeah?

Kell: Yeah, we were supposed to go on another date literally the day you got into the coma, so obviously I was like "dude, I can't make it, my friend is having a literal medical emergency", and he was like "okay, I'll just break this off here then, bye".

Aiden: Oh nooo. Did I cockblock you with my coma?

Kell: You literally did!

3. Aiden: I'll make it up to you. I'll wingman you so hard. I'll introduce you to literally everyone I know.

Kell: Isn't that, like, the entirety of River Bay?

Aiden: Almost, yeah. So you're bound to find someone.

Kell: Dude, you did not win again.

Aiden: You practically let me.

Kell: Dude!

Peyton: Is now a bad time to say hi?

4. Aiden: Peyton! NO, of course not. I didn't even know you were here, it's been so long!

5. Peyton: Yeah, I seem to recall being ignored for a month?

Aiden: Sorry about that. I was sleeping.

Peyton: For a month?

Aiden: Doctor's orders.

Peyton: Ah, of course. Totally reasonable.

6. Aiden: But don't worry. I'm back in my element.

Peyton: Do I want to know what that means?

Aiden: It means I'm ready to annoy the fuck out of you and text you every millisecond 24/7.

Peyton: Okay, I can get behind that.

7. Peyton: how are you doing?

Aiden: Great.

Peyton: "Great"? Really?

Aiden: So great. How are you? Are you still working at the mall?

Peyton: I quit impulsively a few weeks ago. I should probably get a new job if I want to be able to pay rent, but, eh. Video games are more fun.

Kell: If you're evicted you can move into Sam and Aiden's closet, I hear it's pretty empty nowadays.

Aiden: Totally.

8. Kell: Peyton, you're good at connect 4, right?

Peyton: I'd say so.

Kell: Help me win. Please.

Aiden: Who's cheating now?

Kell: There's no rule that says you can't have someone help you.

Peyton: Don't put it there. One step right.

Kell: Here?

Peyton: Yeah.

9. Aiden: Peyton, I love you so much.

Kell: Dude. Did you just make me lose?

Peyton: [Shrug]

Kell: Fuck you. Both of you.

[New scene]

10.

Sam: You met Aiden right after the car crash.

Jordan: Yes.

Sam: How bad was it? He never told me.

Jordan: Considering the crash, his injuries were very mild.

Sam: But he could've died.

Jordan: He didn't. And I don't think you need to worry about something that happened six years ago.

Sam: No, I just...

Jordan: Just what?

Sam: I don't know.

11. Sam: I hated Aiden when we first met.

Jordan: According to Kell's accounts you were simultaneously in love with him?

Sam: Attracted to. There's a difference.

Jordan: Not to me.

Sam: And how many successful relationships have you had?

Jordan: Well... I've certainly had relationships, I can tell you that much.

12. Sam: Don't you get tired of talking to new people all the time? How do you even find so many people you're interested in? I did it once and now I'm marrying him so I never have to do it again.

Jordan: It's easy if you're drunk and have very, very low standards. It also helps if you're fresh off a 13 hour shift at a hospital.

Sam: That sounds awful.

Jordan: I don't necessarily recommend it.

13. Sam: But you keep doing it.

Jordan: I suppose I have nothing better to do after those 13 hour shifts.

Sam: I'm so glad I dropped out of med school.

Jordan: You should be.

14. Sam: I'm just going to get some water.

Jordan: Okay.

15. Lucas: No, I had to do it because Michael thought it was "rude".

Michael: It was.

Lucas: If I pay for something, I want what I paid for. That's not rude. If I fuck someone's tattoo up I'd fix it.

Michael: You can't compare a meal to something that's permanently on someone's body.

Lucas: You agree with me.

Peyton: Oh, yeah.

Lucas: Exactly!

16. Peyton: Hey, Sam. How are you doing? Sleeping better?

Sam: A little.

Peyton: So... while you're here... Aiden.

Sam: Yes?

17. Peyton: He's acting... suspiciously normal, isn't he?

Lucas: Right? I literally told Michael the same thing ten minutes ago. This is the way Aiden always acts after medical emergencies, he just pretends everything's fine.

18. Sam: It's been a month. Things have gone back to normal, he's not pretending.

Lucas: No, sorry, no offense, Sam, but I don't think you get it. You weren't there all the other times he had to go to the hospital because of drugs--and that shouldn't be plural, by the way--this happens every time.

19. Lucas: He says he's fine and that he's clean now and then he just waits until people stop asking him about it and we're back at square one.

Sam: This was different though.

Lucas: Just because it was worse and because he maybe went through a tiny little bit of withdrawal while unconscious doesn't mean he's magically better.

Michael: Lucas, please.

20. Michael: You yourself said that there's nothing we can do.

Lucas: Well, we can't exactly force him to do anything but there's a difference between overcaring and pushing him away, and being so passive it turns into enabling.

Michael: I agree, but I don't think that has anything to do with Sam.

Lucas: I didn't say it does.

21. Lucas: I just don't want him dead, that's all.

Peyton: I seriously doubt any of us want him dead.

Lucas: Exactly. So we can't just trust that he's better because he says he is.

Sam: That's not what--[Sigh] I don't think it's fair to talk about this behind his back.

22. Lucas: I'd love to discuss this with him directly but he makes it pretty difficult. There's a reason he didn't want to talk to us for a fucking month.

Sam: Maybe it wasn't deliberate. Maybe he was just recovering from a coma.

Lucas: But he was talking to literally everyone else during that time, wasn't he? It's not a coincidence he ignored me, Michael, and Peyton specifically.

23. Sam: I... I don't know his motivation. And either way I don't want to be involved in this.

Peyton: That's fair. I didn't really mean for this to be a whole discussion.

Lucas: Sorry. Look, my point is just... if he's clean, that's fucking great. But I kind of doubt it. Just... keep an eye on him.

Sam: I always am.

#if these images don't load idk what i'll do</3 #ts4 story #lost #lost: aiden #lost: sam #lost: kell #lost: lucas #lost: michael #lost: jordan #lost: peyton

[tokusaatsus]

Hii can I get if it’s okay a Rinne, tatsumi and Rei confession scene either one confessing first is okay and there reactions, especially on tatsumi hehe <3 and uh please not a church scenario LDNSJKS <33

☆—AMAGI RINNE

Who confesses first: Rinne! Though you don’t really get it at first…

How: ??? I’m not even sure???

You’d like to think that with all the time you’ve spent with Crazy:B, you’re pretty desensitised to their idiosyncrasies.

There’s logic to their chaos, which you’ve slowly come to understand over the course of all the months you’ve been stuck with CosPro’s finest.

Kohaku-chan is pretty quiet, like he was forced to grow up too fast, but he acts more his age around people he trusts. HiMERU-san is also quiet, though they’re more of the ‘unconscious’ quiet, like they’re so used to hiding parts of themself they aren’t sure how to let them show.

Niki-chan’s the easiest to get along with, friendly and open. And of course, there’s Rinne.

He’d annoyed you a lot at first, but you think you’re justified since that’s basically his trademark at this point.

But you’d come to understand that he’s not all that bad. He can be a brat, sure, but he’s got his own brand of amazing.

So you’re definitely surprised when one day Rinne proclaims both you and Niki-chan to be his wives.

Not so surprised that you can’t retaliate, though!

“Shouldn’t I be the husband? I’m always working hard so you guys can do Lives and make money, plus I’m the one taking care of all the paperwork. If anything, I’m the overworked corporate slave husband and you and Niki-chan are my wives!”

Rinne lets out his signature ‘gyahahaha’ laugh but you think you can see a hint of surprise in his eyes.

You’d think that would be the end of it but noooo.

Everywhere you go, you’re no longer introduced as L/N Y/N, CosPro secretary and, like, occasionally Crazy:B’s impulse control. Now you’re just L/N Y/N, Amagi Rinne and Shiina Niki’s husband.

Soon enough, you just…accept it. Okay, I guess I’m your husband now?!

Sure, this means you get hit with the brunt of the marriage jokes but at least you have it better than Niki-chan, who has to deal with the marriage jokes and the stripping jokes.

And you can brag about your gorgeous wives all the time.

☆—KAZEHAYA TATSUMI

Who confesses first: neither of you!

How: who knows? It’s kind of like a ‘didn’t know they were dating situation’

People tend to joke sometimes that you and Tatsumi are the ‘parents’ of Alkaloid, but you like to refute that statement.

Mayoi-chan is the mom, you’re more of the…cool wine aunt? Or vodka uncle, perhaps?

Besides, you’re not even StarPro material. CosPro through and through, that’s you.

You’re the Bad Influence™ on the kids.

Despite taking on the role of Producer–and responsibility that comes with it–you like to think that in a unit with Tatsumi, who leads a…disciplined life, and Mayoi-chan, who is the single most anxious person you have ever met, Hiiro-kun and Aira-chan need a more relaxed individual who can show them that it’s okay to take it easy sometimes.

Tatsumi is often chiding you to show more control since the younger members of Alkaloid look up to you a lot, but you’ve told him that he does that enough for the both of you.

The two of you are always bantering with each other, though it’s mostly you bullying him.

(Lovingly, of course!)

Scary dog privileges except you are the scary dog.

Give each other cheesy nicknames and never hesitate to tell the other you love them.

“Bye kiddos, Mayoi-chan! Gonna bounce, maybe bully Saegusa-kun for a pay raise again… Love you, babydoll~”

“I love you too, angel.”

Literally everyone thinks you’re dating but no one says anything about it because a) they don’t have the courage to ask about it because again, scary dog privileges b) they just assume this is how normal friendships work (looking at you, Hiiro-kun…) or c) they just don’t care enough to bother.

You two are basically those couples on TV, the ones whom no one knows if they’re just friends or secretly dating.

The two of you blur the line between romantic and platonic so often that when you do (finally) date, literally no one is surprised.

(except the ones who already thought you were dating and couldn’t believe that whatever the fuck you two had going on was supposedly ‘platonic’!?)

☆—SAKUMA REI

Who confesses first: you!

How: after he overworks himself…again

You’ve known Rei for quite some time, so you like to think you’re familiar with his habits, both good and bad. So it’s no surprise to you when you find him passed out at his desk.

You sigh. He does have a bad habit of overworking himself…

But you say nothing, proceeding instead to scoop him up in a bridal-style carry.

He’s light enough that it isn’t too hard, though his lankiness forces you to adjust multiple times to make sure he isn’t spilling completely out of your hold.

Carefully as to not wake him, you gently deposit him in his bed before going over to the desk to sort through all the papers. Most of them are proposals for UNDEAD, but there are a few documents that require a more thorough approach.

Honestly, you could just let them be, you’ve done enough, but you decide instead to sit down and start reading.

After all, Rei is someone you care about deeply and you want to help lessen his burden, if only a little bit.

After some time–it might be a few hours, you’re not entirely sure–you feel a weight drop onto your back and a head nuzzle into your neck.

You don’t even give him a chance to explain himself or insist on finishing his work before you’re scolding him, though not as harshly as you should be.

“Rei, you really should be more careful. If you’re going to do things like this next time, I’ll have to follow you around like some sort of guard dog. If you’re taking on too much work, come to us for help next time. We all love you, y’know? You’re not a bother to us.”

He must be more exhausted than you thought because he doesn’t deflect or laugh it off, just makes a noise of affirmation and clings onto you tighter.

“Mm…okay. Love you too.”

☆—notes!

WC: 1k words

i Want what tatsuy/n has. idk if i want to be y/n or if i just want y/n qwq (i just want y/n)

HELP the riny/n one reads more like rinnikiy/n im sorry anonnie idk how to write rinne w/o writing niki (+ the rest of crazy:b) they are the skrunklies ever <33!! i swear im slowly losing it w every confession hc i write im. running out of ideas?!?! i don’t think i can do any more of these cries. i was literally wracking my brains for rei’s part–idk if this can even be called ‘confession’ hc–but i hope this made. some modicum of sense and that it was. decently enjoyable to read??

#✒️...scribbles! #amagi rinne x reader #kazehaya tatsumi x reader #sakuma rei x reader #enstars x reader #amagi rinne #kazehaya tatsumi #sakuma rei #crazy:b #alkaloid #undead #enstars

[halfagone]

hi, hello, big fan! literally all of your writing is so good and top tier and i love every second of anything of urs i've read. which the most recent thing i read was ur jason and danny big hero 6 story. and i was so excited bc i love big hero 6, and u served like u do every time. that voice recording from mech-Robin took me out into a puddle of my own tears.

that being said i had a potential scene stuck in my head after i read that and i need to make it ur problem so here (i love love sibling angst) :

(kinda playing on ur implied engineer/inventor jason and implied danny's weakness being electricity above a certain threshold):

danny' despite telling dick that he would do a last patrol to say good bye, does not actually do that. he can't. not after- he has jason's face. he calls himself the red hood apparently. murder, mob boss, assassin, call him whatever you want. danny knows jason and that- that's not words people use for jason.

danny knows all abt pple coming back. first hand. that- that was is jason. they fought a few times. danny tried to figure out what was going on. either red hood (bc hes not jason- not yet) is being extremely tight lipped, or he doesn't know wither.

this time had been like every other time this past week danny encountered red hood in jason's turf (it would always be jason's, danny was just taking care of it). they met on a roof top, or rather danny had intercepted him. dick had told him not to go, said red hood was too dangerous, no one knew how far he was capable to go, what he was capable of doing. (danny didn't have the words to tell dick who was under the hood). danny didn't listen.

danny could tell red hood was getting annoyed of him. he was being more and more drastic, trying to get in heavier hits. if danny wasn't already half-way dead, hood would've gotten him there himself by now.

so when hood turned to look at danny, almost expecting- ready for a fight- danny hadn't been surprised. they fought like the always did. hood tried to kill, danny tried to subdue- get through to him. you can't kill whats already dead.

but hood was trying getting as close as anyone had gotten. a weird metal rope rapped itself around danny's foot, and before he had the chance to go intangible and get rid of it, electricity spiked through it.

danny could handle regular electricity, wall circuits, random door nobs, chargers - he was fine.

this- this was not normal electricity.

danny couldn't stop the scream that came out of his mouth as he crumbled to the floor in pain. pain that he'd only ever felt once before- thought he would never feel again. after all you can only die once.

danny did have a way with breaking rules though.

"danny!" he heard dick yell for him.

"danny you're hurt. on a scale from 1-10 how much pain do you feel." robin came out from it's hiding spot danny had told it to stay in. he didn't want jason to make that connection. if he even remembered.

"fucking a thousand." he barley managed before everything went dark.

-

dick knew he should've tried harder to stop him. should've known the kid would need more than a measly tracker. at least a comm, at least some good tech. not like they were short on funds. dick was suck a goddamn idiot to only realize that when he heard the most thought shattering scream of pain in his life.

"danny!" he screamed, not even thinking of code names.

"nightwing. what happened?" oracle asked in his ear.

he didn't have time to respond, only focusing on getting to danny as fast as he could. he's promised jason- god damit dick- you promised jason that u'd take the kid if smt happened to him. he would screwier dick if he had even known that he let danny go out vigilanting in crime ally of all places. unsupervised at that.

red hood towered over an unconscious but still withering in pain danny, crow bar in hand, ready to make the kill.

dick knew he couldn't get there in time. "danny!" he cried again, not feeling this helpless since his last circus act. oracle said something urgently, then b, but dick couldn't hear over the static in his own head.

red hood heard him that time. the crow bar inches away from danny's skull froze from what would've been a critical hit.

"danny?" he heard red hood's robotic voice echo from under the mask, but he didn't let the implied confusion deter him. he tackled him to the floor.

hood stayed there. watching dick as he untied the metal rope from danny's foot and called be to bring the batmobile and for someone to prep the medbay.

dick felt danny's pulse. it was light, feint, almost gone.

he could work with almost.

"danny." red hood said again, this time more sure of something.

there was something familar about the way he said that, but dick couldn't figure out why. (it sounded like jason) it didn't matter, because he would make sure danny never had to take on red hood again. not on his own.

he made a promise and he would keep it.

---

sorry i didn't think it would be that long, but it was such a bad itch in my brain and i needed to get it out.

OH MY GOSH YOU USED THE LINE

Poor Dick, he's Trying™ so hard but you cannot save/solve everything 😔 But also I'm sure this was intentional but that very similar parallel to the Joker was Concerning. Still oh so angsty though, thank ye for that. This is why I shouldn't be allowed to write for Whumptober, and yes I'm still thinking about writing for Whumptober despite of that lol

But all this was inspired by "On a scale from 1-10?" asfhjdsgh

But you are right that fic was very emotional (it didn't help that I wasn't feeling the greatest at the time so I probably added some extra angst as a result lol) I'm so glad you enjoyed it!! It was very heavy so I know not a lot of people could/would read it, but to know that there are fans out there, that really did enjoy it 🥺 Thank you so much for sharing <3

#halfagone replies #halfagone's fics #i guess? #technically yeah #but also #not my writing #but from a lovely fan #<3

[riddles-n-games]

I feel the need for some reason to give my stance on this but I was never shy of giving my opinion before in this fandom so I won’t stop now either. I’ve went through some reviews of The Final Gambit today and I noticed some people mentioning how Jameson and Avery are “sleeping together” because they are sharing a bed and due to some supposed innuendos at various points in the book. One reviewer on goodreads went so far as to imply that they had closed door s*x three times and I was flabbergasted when I read that because I don’t even know where this information came from. Anyways, I feel like we should dispel some of this. Starting with them sharing a bed at night; listen, these two had been through a lot within the short amount of time they’ve come to know each other and started a relationship so this seems to be one of the unspoken ways they comfort each other. Avery needs Jameson to keep her nightmares at bay and Jamie, well, we all know how he is and given that he often has his guard up and is emotionally unavailable, this is the way he lets himself be vulnerable and open to Avery. It’s a sign of him trying to rebuild his trust in someone other than his family after being hurt and spurned by the first girl he loved. Now, if we’re going to go to the scene in Ch. 22 where he came back home all muddy and bloody after a fight with Grayson, he was just being flirtatious and I bet that they made out or had another mini challenge since that appears to be a hobby of theirs as a couple and I find that cute, it’s very fitting of them. They have a fun competitive streak that keeps them going and obviously over the course of the year that’s become a habit for them and something tells me Avery hasn’t gone that far with him anyway since he’s her first boyfriend. It’s also quite clear from their dynamic in all the books that they flirt with each other although obviously that’s more so coming from Jameson rather than Avery because she’s more deadpan with her responses but she clearly still engages in those conversations and that’s their typical banter. We know this through almost every other scene we’ve witnessed between the two of them, from the moment they met. Regardless, just because of some of the scenes having Jameson shirtless when it’s nighttime and the story takes us to Avery’s bedroom, that’s quite normal of this Hawthorne especially when our very first interaction as readers with him through our narrator’s eyes is literally him being with no shirt on in the middle of November, mind you, drunk and tempting death. There is no insinuation to s*x at all making me see this as a “did we read the same book” sort of situation. Anyways, thanks for reading. Bye until next time.

#averyjameson #avery kylie grambs #jameson winchester hawthorne #avery grambs #jameson hawthorne #the inheritance games #the final gambit #tig #tfg #rant #thank you for coming to my TED talk

[szaoceanw]

I come back here to display my disappointment for the season finale and Buck/Eddie storyline (eng is not my first language🤡):

-The episode was RUSHED AF, the emergency was closed pretty fast, too fast, they were all injured and boom next scene is a time skip, they’re all good like nothing ever happened 💀

-Kameron’s birth? 😭😭😭 so damn unrealistic, he didn’t even call Connor, HIS WIFE WAS IN LABOR and he was like naaaaah I call him after DUH

-Buck storyline? NO SENSE it didn’t make any sense, no character development, he made the same mistakes all over again, the story with Natalia was rushed, they literally had no chemistry it was taylor 2.0 all over again

-I would have appreciate more if he had chosen by himself the couch, BUT NO let’s make the couch theory about her, I’m so angry about this, it was soooo buddie coded

-Eddie? same shit, since when has he been so interested in Marisol? they met 2 times😭😭😭two episodes ago he didn’t even want to go on a date or get into a relationship and now is twirling and kicking his feet like a kid sooooo OOC

Absolutely disappointed and i’m not even talking about the whole buddie situation, I’m talking about their own storyline

It was a big big character regression for both of them

They could have delved into Buck's trauma but instead they just got him right back into a relationship. Right now this guy just needs a lot of therapy not the same old storyline with a girl

Buck is probably the worst written character in the entire series

okay bye

#911 fox #911 show #buddie 911 #eddie diaz #evan buckley #buddie #911 s6 #911 season 6 #tv: 911 #911 cast #911onfox #tv series #tv shows

[scentedsstuff]

Red Queen

By Victoria Aveyard

The PREMISE, The premise of this book is what easily caught my attention but as I proceeded to actually read the book, that’s where it lost me.

Quick Plot Summary:

Mare Barrow is our main character, born into a world divided by blood, and in this world you are either a red or a silver.

The reds are the commoners who labour away all day and the silvers are the ruling class, born with supernatural powers.

But what happens when this “norm” is disrupted by none other than our main girl; Mare Molly Barrow. In a turn of events it is discovered that Mare, a red, has supernatural powers of her own much to the surprise of everyone, including Mare herself. Why and how does Mare have the abilities that she does? Is she the anomaly or could there be others?

What follows is the beginning of a revolution.

Thoughts:

The idea was there, the execution, however, was not. Initially, I was intrigued by the premise, if you have two very different groups of people; reds and silvers, how can someone like Mare exist? Why does she have the abilities that she does despite having red blood?

I felt there was potential for me to like this book, but it was the characters that really deterred me from giving anything above 2 stars.

Mare was a bland main character, she really wasn’t standing out much from any other protagonist in a YA dystopian setting which made the book overall feel less memorable. The same could actually be said for the world building in general. It was an okay book with an okay protagonist but it wasn’t doing much for all the praise it seemed to be getting on social media.

Mare makes mistakes (like anyone else does) but doesn’t seem to learn from them nor grow as a character. There’s not much character development, and whilst I am aware that this is only the first book in a series, there doesn’t seem to be much promise for her character to get any better.

The rest of the characters suffered the same fate and were just as annoying.

There's a scene in this book that lives rent free in my brain (not because it’s particularly amazing but because I don’t remember ever cringing so hard from reading a book) :

Mare and the rebel gang are all together, plotting and scheming as one does, and they start to brainstorm how their plans are going to take care of a whole legion of soldiers under Cal (the big brooding brother)’s order.

Maven chimes in with “I happen to know a girl who knows a general very well” (**hint hint, It’s Mare and the general she knows very well is Cal).

She goes off on a lil tangent of “C’mon this is Cal, the solider, the general, the prince, Cal would never betray his country, not for anything!”

………literally the following excerpt reads “I know my brother, if it comes down to it, we both know what he’ll choose”

Mare ‘not like other girls’ Barrow responds “He would never choose me”

Maven shakes his head. “He will always choose you.”

Giirrllllll………..what the actual………. The way my eyes rolled so far back into my head (if that's even correct). I shut that book up and THREW it across the room.

I’m sorry but it feels like he just met you and before this dialogue she literally comes to the realisation that he loves her. How? How did this happen when they’ve only had a handful of scenes together where there was barely any build up. I can understand if he likes the girl and vice versa but love?! Bye. This book was testing me.

Mare had the personality and charisma of a blank piece of paper and I’m supposed to believe she had 3 guys head over heels in love with her.

Overall this book was very much a product of its time. Any redeeming traits were far and few and I just didn’t like it but that could just be me. If the premise seems interesting to you and you’re wanting to read it, be my guest.

#the red queen series #red queen #victoria aveyard #mare barrow #maven calore #cal calore #red queen series #book thoughts #bookish #books #booklr #fantasy books #book review #book reviews #young adult fantasy #fantasy book #book blog #bookblr #bookworm #books and reading #ya books #young adult books #young adult fiction #romance book #romance books #dystopia #dystopian fiction #dystopian books

[jamespotterthefirst]

Choices LIs Rated

Thank you @trappedinfanfiction and @planet-alicorn for the tag! 

Tagging: @takeharryandgo, @lucy-268, @coffeeheartaddict2, @heauxplesslydevoted, @genevievemd, @bex-la-get, @danijimenezv, @potionsprefect, @liaromancewriter, @peonyblossom, and anyone who wants to do it! 

This is the ranking system I made up:

Highest Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Additional: 

🔥 (Means this LI fucks GOOD)

💗 (FLUFF VIP)

🌩️ (Delicious Angst)

🏆 HALL OF FAME, BABY. ALL TIME FAVE. 

Let’s goooooo

#LoveHacks:

Mark Collins ⭐⭐⭐⭐ +  🔥

I’m a sucker for friends to loves, okay? I fuck with that so hard. Plus, Ben annoyed me. 

A Courtesan of Rome

Cassius  ⭐⭐

Syphax  ⭐⭐⭐⭐ +  🔥

Again, I’m a sucker for friends to lovers. So you know I had to go with Syphax. Not without being a slut first. Cassius was okay. Not bad. And I’d rather die than fuck M*** A***** seriously. I did play him though. That was the highlight of the finale. 

Baby Bump

Mayor Dixon ⭐⭐⭐

Sarcastic asshole who went down on my MC? Yes, please. 

Blades of Light and Shadow

Mal ⭐⭐⭐⭐  +  🔥

Tyril ⭐⭐⭐⭐  +  🔥

Literally couldn’t pick one so I made two MCs. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Bloodbound

Adrian Raines ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ +  🔥 🔥 + 🌩️🌩️

Omg. When he sucked my MC’s blood and the he sucked her ***. BYE

Also, my toxic trait was mentally forcing this man to say ILY even after I died and came back to life.

Desire & Decorum

Mr. Sinclaire  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ +  🔥 🔥 + 🌩️+ 💗

Babe, when he moaned??? The first time he fucked my MC. lkjdfksl. Core memory. 

He also took a bullet for me. Instant hall of fame. 

Distant Shores

Edward  ⭐⭐⭐⭐ + 🌩️

Oh Captain my Captain! We could’ve had it all but that bitch pb was playing too much. 

Endless Summer

Jake  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The minute he called me Princess and I called him Top Gun, it was a done deal. 

Foreign Affairs

Tatum  ⭐⭐⭐

Friends to lovers, my beloved. Also, we could’ve had it aaaaaaall.

Hero

Grayson  ⭐⭐⭐

Kenji  ⭐⭐⭐

I might have a thing for bosses in this app... 

Home for the Holidays

Wyatt ⭐⭐⭐⭐ +  💗 💗

FRIENDS TO LOVERSSSSSSSSS. SECOND CHANCE? And he’s a sweetheart. The choice was clear. 

It Lives in the Woods

 Connor   ⭐⭐

He was cool. I had to pick someone so here we are. 

It Lives Beneath

Parker ⭐⭐⭐ + 🔥

Lost a star because he’s a cop. Otherwise he would have been perfect. 

Mother of the Year

Thomas Mendez  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ +  🔥 🔥 + 🌩️🌩️ +  💗 💗 💗 💗

🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 

I am a slut for my Mexican American dorky lawyer FIRST and human being second. Like, the moment my MC met him, she knew he was hot but the moment he went all lawyer on that principal? He was the one. AND WHEN HE ASKED GUY’S UGLY ASS WHAT LILY (MY MC’S DAUGHTER) WANTED TO BE WHEN SHE GREW UP? He graduated to God Tier. 

I will never forget when this guy and my MC made Pozole and then fucked til kingdom come. It’s like whoever wrote that scene knew me on a molecular level. 

Nightbound

Nik Ryder  ⭐⭐⭐ +  🌩️🌩️🌩️🌩️

My MC told him she loved him and he basically said “K.” So then she died. I just wish PB would have shown a scene with him crying over her body dsklfjsdlkf

Open Heart

Oh, lads. You already know. 

Ethan Ramsey 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 

💗 💗 💗 💗 💗 💗 💗 💗  💗 💗 💗

🌩️🌩️ 🌩️🌩️ 🌩️🌩️ 🌩️🌩️ 🌩️🌩️

🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆

Ultimate MVP, y’all. Unmatched, undefeated. My MC laughed, cried, and c***. 

That fucking scene where they met and he started calling her Rookie and then LATER LAUGHED AND CALLED HER BROKE. Then she called him an asshole which he totally heard. That was the genesis. They were both like “I have never been more offended by something so true” or whatever the meme says. (This is not considering Bree’s version where I have them meet minutes before, where he almost runs her over. Run me over too sir)

ALL THE WAY TO THE LAST SCENE WHERE HE SAYS HE’S NEVER BEEN HAPPIER, HE’S PROUD OF MY MC, AND HE LOVES HER

There is so much in the “in between” but I have been screaming about it on this blog for almost 3 years. You guys get the idea.

Also, king of giving head. King of my heart. 

Perfect Match

Damien Nazario  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ +  🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 +  🌩️ 🌩️🌩️ 🌩️🌩️+  💗 💗 💗 💗 💗 +  🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆

Best friends to lovers. Sarcastic asshole with a fluffy inside. Angst. BOMB SEX (that train scene, y’all). 5/5 would do him again. 

Platinum

Raleigh Carrera  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐+  🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 +  💗 💗 💗

🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆

PAPI! When he was drunk and said it felt like every song he’s ever written has been about MC? GAH DAYUM. Then he f**** my MC so good while speaking Spanish. dsjfkldsf 

Queen B

Ian Kingsley   ⭐⭐ +  🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥

Toxic but great sex. I never finished the book but I can see my MC moving on after graduation. Thanks for the memories. Goodbye. 

Red Carpet Diaries

Matt Rodriguez   ⭐⭐⭐

I had to pick someone and I kinda loved him. I also hated everyone else. I didn’t make it far enough in the series to meet Hunt. 

Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance

Logan ⭐⭐⭐ +   🌩️ 🌩️🌩️ 🌩️🌩️

The classic plot of “It was all a game/plot/bet but I ended up falling for you for real”. I liked him. I’d like to think my MC found him again one day. 

The Elementalists

Bucket  ⭐⭐⭐ +  💗 💗 💗 💗

I remember being a BH stannie on tumblr (though a quiet one). LOL, it was a rough time but we persevered, babes 

The Royal Romance

King Liam ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ + 🌩️ 🌩️🌩️+  💗 💗 💗 💗 💗

My first LI ever on this app. Never forget. 

Veil of Secrets

Flynn O'Malley  ⭐⭐⭐

Lost a star for looking like Ian Summerhandle 

#ethan ramsey #thomas mendez #damien nazario

[gay-strawberry]

i think andreil is a mix of mickey and ian (shameless) and dizzee and thor (tgd), theyre not as toxic and voilent to each other as the first ones but also not as soft and the second ones.

it makes so much sense to me because both of those pairs were my absolute favorite back in 2012 and 2016. and then when i met andrew and neil in 2020 i felt the same about them.

andreil has the whole "we both have a terrible past that doesnt allow us to express our emotions in a healthy way but somehow we are so good and perfect for each other" vibe that mickey and ian got going on (in my opinion andrew is mickey).

and then they also have the "we are misfits, soulmates, are you real ? are you a dream ? i am so i love with you, i wish it was just the two of us in the world" intimate vibe that dizzee and thor have.

[tw blood, drugs]

like, you can draw andreil like this and it makes so much sense it could be canon:

but this could also be canon:

thor just got released from prison and goes to dizzee's show to see him perform but dizzee has consumed some corrupted angel dust and hes like on a dream state. hes missed thor so much he literally thinks he is hallucinating when he sees thor. they have this conversation:

and you cant know if he actually halucinated that or if they really talked about it. then dizzee is unresponsive and they have to take him to the hospital.

anyways !! all this because i was thinking that in the scene where andrew tells neil "that doesnt mean i wouldnt blow you" i imagine move like u stole it by zz ward playing in the nightclub because thats the song thats playing when ian and mickey kiss in public for the first time

well bye ! some day i will tell you about how i think aftg its just dark haikyuu (i even have a ppt of who in the foxes would be in karasuno) because i cant consume any type of media without comparing it with my favorite things :D

#idk i just think about all of them so much #i cant help but to compare them #maybe its just me #aftg #andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #tkm #the kings men #the get down #tgd #dizzee kipling #thor #thizzee #shameless #mickey milkovich #ian gallagher #gallavich #queer #gay #lgbt representation #tv shows #books #comparison #shit post #text #tw blood #tw drugs #if you liked 1 of these you should check out the other 2 #haikyuu

[chaand-sitara]

πέντε

"If you ever feel like something is taking a toll on you, then start running, you will always find a destination"

"I am not saying don't date the guy, I am only saying to take it slow, you're going way too fast" Bonnie said as Primadonna finished reading another chapter of her novel she had kept with her since that night "Plus, Evne Prim doesn't like the guy, right Prim?" Primadonna then looked at Bonnie and said "I mean, a little? Cause seriously? Who forgets someone's name?"

Then Elena gave Bonnie a pointed look and said "But Bonnie, you only had told me to go for it!" Then Bonnie scrunched her face and then said "And I now I am saying not?" Primadonna looked up from her book at Bonnie and gave her look which literally said 'seriously? That's the best reason?' Bonnie then shrugged her shoulders at Primadonna and then looked back at Elena.

"Why the pout face?" Bonnie then replied "It's not a pout face, it's just that you are single for the first time in your high school career! I believe you should enjoy it! It's the perfect time to pay the fields."

"Yeah,cause I am so that girl" Elena replied while playfully rolling her eyes and smiling, which Primadonna thought was doing alot these days for some reason. "Seriously, what are you not telling me Bonnie?"

Bonnie then looked down for awhile and then looked up and said "It's.. Stupid" and starts walking away, but then Elena and Primadonna stops her way and Elena says "Spit it out!"

"I had accidentally touched Stefan, and I got a really bad feeling from him" Bonnie blurted out, Elena and Primadonna looked at each other and then at Bonnie "Like.. Bad Bad feeling, you know?"

Then Elena asked "Is this the witch mojo thing again?"

Then Primadonna asked "How much bad?" then Bonnie said "Like..you know when you go near a dangerous animal your brain knows that it's dangerous? That bad.." 'that's weird' Primadonna thought.

Then Elena looked a little bummed so Bonnie said "Look, it's just a feeling, it's just be looking out for my best friend's new boyfriend. I swear." then Elena replied "And I love you for it, I really do but it's been a hard year and finally things are going in places and Stefan has a huge part in it."

Then on queue, Primadonna saw Stefan walking towards them so she whispered "Stefan alert, my friends, and let's talk about this topic later"

"Morning Elena, Morning Bonnie, Hey Primadonna" Primadonna rolled her eyes and said "Oh you remember my name now?" Stefan then cringed a bit inside because of his mistake and said "I already apologised to you for the fourth time, this is fifht, I am so sorry!" Then Primadonna forcefully smiled at him and said "Of course, I am gonna go. Bye" and started walking then Bonnie joined her too saying "I have to go too, Caroline had called me!"

As they both were leaving, Stefan sighed and said "I don't think they both really like me that much, I understand about Pridonna but,Bonnie?" Then Elena looked at him with a confused face and said "Stefan.. It's Primadonna, you know? The main singer of an opera show?"

Stefan's eyes went wide and then he started rambling "Oh my god I am so sorry again! I don't know why I keep messing a simple thing as a name! Please don't tell her!" Elena smiled a little and said "It is ok, it's nice that you care about my friend's opinion about you, plus, Her name was a handful to all of us when we first met her, she was the only saying it correctly for some years"

Stefan then smiled and said "When did you first meet her?" Elena smiled and said "Oh! That's when-..uh..I.. Don't remember?"

Stefan looked at her confused and said "Wait what?"

✧༝┉˚*❋ ❋*˚┉༝✧

"World War II had ended in.." Primadonna's professor's voice had drowned down in her ears as she was drawing something in her notebook, which was like a scene she had seen in her dream last night, apparently these dreams have been coming at her since few days ago which consists of people from the 19th century.

Then felt a tap on her table from right side of it and saw Bonnie "What are you drawing? Actually you never time pass between classes, specially AP history, what changed, Ms. Neris?" Bonnie said in a mocking manner of a British person, of whom Primadonna had the accent of, the reason behind, she had stayed in London with her father when she was a toddler till she was pre-teen

Primadonna smiled and said" Oh nothing, I already did my this term's syllabus for almost all subjects so these classes are very boring for me"Bonnie looked at her friend impressed and said "Now that's something none of us here would be able to do, btw what are you drawing?"

Then Primadonna looked at her notebook and saw that it was a drawing of three children, two boys and one girl between them, they were laying on a grass field and their clothes looked again like old times, One boy was looking older than the other and the little girl looked like. 'Pandora?why did I put her here? Meh maybe because I see the child so much, sadly today I can't cause she is gone for an orphanage camping trip"

Then Bonnie looked at her notebook while bending a little towards her and said "Woah, that's a nice drawing, btw, is that your cousin?"

"Miss Bennet! Miss Neris, I believe you can answer my question? Actually not you Primadonna, Bonnie please go ahead" Then Bonnie gave a confused smile and said "Pearl Harbour?" Tanner then looked at her confused, including Primadonna.

"December 7th,1941" Stefan said, Then Mr. Tanner looked at Stefan and said "Thank you, Miss Bennet." Then Stefan smiled and said "No problem sir."

Tanner now looked irritated and said "Very well, Fall of Berlin Wall" Then Stefan quickly said "1989"

Everyone looked at him with shock including Primadonna cause it had also taken her sometime to remember the answer of this question,Then Stefan looked at everyone's faces and said "uh, I am actually really good with dates, sir."

Then Tanner gave him a look and said "Are you? How good?" Then Primadonna thought 'Oh god, now he is going to take it as a challenge..' then Tanner said "Keep it to the year. Civil rights act?"

"1964"

"John F. Kennedy assassination"

"1963"

"

Martin Luther King"

" '68"

"Lincoln?"

"1865"

"Rode vs Wade?"

"1973"

"Brown vs Board"

"1954"

"The Battle of Gettysberg"

"1863"

"Korean War"

"1950-1953"

Then Tanner exclaimed "Ha! It ended in' 52!" Then Stefan looked confused and said "No, actually sir it ended in '53"

Tanner's all confidence broke and said to the whole class in a rush" Look it up somebody! "

Primadonna had phone in her pocket for some research so she took it out and searched and it read '25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953'

Then Primadonna guiltily said" Uh sir it ended in.. '53 so Mr. Salvatore here was right."

┗━✦❘༻༺❘✦━━┛

Primadonna stretched her arms while she was coming near at the practise location she then saw her two friends and ran towards them and said" Hey guys! Elena! You're here! That's great"

Elena and Bonnie looked at Primadonna and Elena said "Thanks Prim, btw you also cheer? I didn't know that! Did you learn in London?" Then Primadonna smiled and said "No silly, I just have a very flexible body, so I thought 'why not give it a try, I am trying to be more social this year' and it's kinda nice to be a little sporty"

As she finished, one girl came upto them whose name Primadonna remember was Tikki and said "Oh really Neris? Show how much flexibility you have" Primadonna shrugged her shoulder and sat down... While doing a split.

All of the three other girl's eyes went wide and Tikki then huffed and left, Bonnie and Elena then started clapping and when they stopped Bonnie said "That's so great Prim! You're perfect for a cheerleader."

Primadonna smiled and then Elena said "Oh yes, I almost forgot, Primadonna you're also coming for dinner" Then Primadonna looked confused and said "What dinner?"

Then Bonnie rolled her eyes and said "apparently, Elena here thinks that having one dinner with Stefan would make us change our opinion about him" Then Primadonna scrunched her face and said "I am sorry Elena, I have to babysit Pandora"

Which made Elena smirk and said "Ms. Neris, you were the one who had told us that she is on a one week camping trip with her school, remember? So that's final, you're coming"

Primadonna then groaned and said "Why me?" Then Bonnie patted her shoulder and said "Me too girl.. Me too.."

Then Primadonna lifted her head and said "btw, are you going to cook food?" Then Elena shrugged and said "No, I am gonna order it from outside" Then Primadonna placed her hand on her heart and said "That actually hurtled me Lena!"

Then Elena said "wait, why?" then Primadonna said "You know what? I will give you the list of ingredients for the dishes after practice, get them for me at your home and I will come early to cook them all, got it?"

The Bonnie looked at Primadonna and said "You know how to cook? How?" Then Primadonna sheepishly smiled and said "Uh.. Remember? I live alone?" then everything went in an awkward silence then Bonnie said "uh.. Ok! Change of topic.. Uh where is Caroline? Did any of you see her?" they both nodded their head sideways.

Just then a blue mustang arrived at the practice location and then Primadonna saw in the car was.. 'Caroline.. And Demon?'

Then Bonnie said" who is that? " Then Primadonna said" Uh. Demon Salvatore? " Then Damon's face scrunched and Elena laughed a little and said" Uh it's actually Damon Salvatore, now it's equal his brother forgot your name and you forgot his. Nice"

Then Caroline got out from the car after kissing Damon and walked past them saying "I got the other brother, hope you don't mind" While wearing a scarf in the heat of Mystic Falls.

Then Primadonna said "Why would she go out with him? Seriously that guys face says he is a maniac!" Then Damon rolled his eyes and smiled and waved at the three shocked girls and left.

╰─〔❨✧✧❩〕─╯

Primadonna was now at Elena's house hours before the dinner time preparing things in their kitchen while Jenna, Elena and Bonnie who had arrived early too, to see Primadonna cook, was looking at her in a state of mesmerised shock.

Then Bonnie said "it feels like a chef is cooking at your house" then Elena and Jenna slowly nodded their heads too while Jenna said "I know right?"

Then Primadonna left the white sauce to cook and looked at the window of the oven to check the blueberry cheesecake. Then she she drained out the fettuccine pasta and then placed it in a serving bowl and poured the alfredo sauce over it and mixed and added oregano, some chilli flakes, roasted small mushrooms and for the finale, a Bay leaf of top of it.

Then she also took out the Cheesecake from the oven and placed it in the fridge and removed a huge box from her bag and opened it, it was Lasagna, she placed the Lasagna too in the oven.

Then she came out of the kitchen, all sweaty and saw everyone, then after a second they started clapping and then stopped and Bonnie said "Woah.. How did you do that? It looks so professional!"

Then Primadonna smiled and said "I will tell you that later." then Elena smiled and said "and the Pasta and Lasagna is Italian, how did you know Stefan is Italian?"

Then Primadonna looked confused and said "He is Italian? I didn't know that! It's just Italian food are my speciality, including Indian."

Then Bonnie said "You can cook indian food too! Why didn't you tell us gosh!" then everyone laughed and then Primadonna said "Uh OK, so I am all sweaty so I gonna have to change, my home is too far so I have to go the nearest dress shop here and Aunt Jenna, please remove the Lasagna after the oven tings. Bye!"

Then Primadonna left in her car in search of a shop. After few minutes she found one and looked at the dresses in it and quickly picked a pink crop top with a cream coloured shrug and high waisted shorts and left to go back at Elena house and shower.

As she came back, Bonnie and Elena were arranging the table so she ran upstairs and took the shower and changed her clothes.

Then when she came down she her the doorbell ring and Elena happily skipped towards the door while Bonnie and Primadonna rolled their eyes.

.·:*¨¨* ≈☆≈ *¨¨*:·.

They all now were on the dinner table and eating the food when Elena said "So, did Tanner gave you a hard time today?" then Stefan shrugged and said "Well, he let me on the team, so I've must have done something right" Then Elena smiles while she looks over at her two very uninterested friends and says "You both should've seen Stefan today, Tyler threw a ball at him-"

Then Bonnie and Primadonna interupted and said "Yeah, we heard" Elena, being a very persistent person said "Bonnie, why don't you tell Stefan about your family?"

Then Bonnie sighed and said "um, divorced mom.Live with my dad" then Elena shook her head and said "No, I meant the witches" Which Made Stefan look up from his food, which for some reason made him feel like he had it somewhere before, and then at Bonnie.

Then Elena saw that Stefan also looked interested so she said "Bonnie has a lineage of witches, it's really cool" Then Bonnie boringly said "Cool isn't the word I'd use."

Then Stefan said "Well it's certainly very interesting, there are records of celtic druids migrating here in the 1800s."

Then Bonnie looked at Stefan and said "My family is from the Salem Witches" which Made Stefan smile and say "Well Salem Witches reserve heroic example of individualism and nonconforming"

Then Bonnie smiled and said "Yeah they are" Elena was happy that her one friend was now liking Stefan but now she had to find a way which would make Primadonna like Stefan too.

Just then they heard the doorbell ring "I am gonna go get it" Then She opened the door which revealed Caroline with a cake in her hand "Hey! We brought dessert!"

Then she moved in and then Elena saw Damon too, then Stefan got up from his seat and went towards the door which made Bonnie and Primadonna look at each other like 'you see what I am seeing?'

Then Stefan glared at Damon and said" What are you doing here? " Then Damon smiled and said" waiting for miss Gilbert to invite me in!"

Then Elena nods and says" Oh yeah you-" then Stefan interrupts her and says" No uh, no he can't!" then Caroline literally just demands" Just come in" while Stefan says "That we've just finished"

Then Elena sighs and says "Just come in Damon." Then Damon smiles and says "You have a beautiful Home Elena" while Elena smiles at him for the complement.

Then Damon and Caroline goes in the dinning room and see Bonnie and Primadonna "Caroline smiles at them both and takes two plate from shelf and gives one to Damon and sits next the Bonnie while Damon has to sit next to Primadonna now.

Stefan and Elena join them too and continue their food,Then Damon takes a bite of the pasta and the bite suddenly reminds him of something he can't really put his finger on it.

"Woah, the food is great, Elena, did you make it, it tastes really good." Damon exaggerates to annoy his brother then Elena smiles and says "No actually the person who made this food is right next to you Damon."

Then Caroline, Damon and Stefan look at Primadonna with a shock "You can cook? And this good?" Caroline asks. Then Primadonna shrugs and says "I like cooking" then Bonnie smiles and says "Well Primadonna has a reason behind it, and she is gonna tell us that now! Please!"

Then Primadonna's eyes go wide then she looks at Elena and sees she also wants her to tell it.

"Uh.. Ok.. So. My dad used to teach me ato cook when I was young because my dad is a professional Chef. He also owns a restaurant"

Then Elena says "Oh that's why! I guess the apple didn't fall far away from the tree! So, what is the name of the restaurant?" then Primadonna says "Well it's a restaurant" then Damon rolls his eyes and says "We get it, your father works in the commercialised food industry, now tell the name!"

Then Primadonna quickly says "Uh the Serene's" Everything stops and Caroline accidentally drops her fork on the ground.

Then Bonnie slowly says "Do you mean the literal multi-million dollar food chain, The Serene's? Whose secret recipe pasta we all are eating now?"

Then Primadonna sheepishly smiles and says "Uh.. Yeah you can say that." Then Caroline says "Woah, now I ge it, why your almost everything is of a famous brand. Your dad is literally a millionaire"

Then Damon says "So your dad is Achilleus Tsimehcla?" then Primadonna says "Uh yea, my Full name is Primadonna Neris Tsimehcla."

Then they all slowly finish their food after a shocking reveal then Primadonna tells Elena and Bonnie "Uh I have to go, my house is far away so it would take me time plus we have school."

She waves them all goodbye and gets inside her car and starts to drive away from her home, when is almost at her house she gets a headache and stops her car and sits down.

Then she hears footsteps of someone running towards her then she tries to run but the person grabs her from her waist, then turns her around, but before she could even see the person's face, they grab her face and smashes their lips with her.

She tries to remove herself from the person's grips and after sometime manages to do so, she then slaps the person and when the person looks up she shouts

"Damon!?"

A/n:- Oooo.. Things just got interesting and I am gonna leave it at a cliffhanger.. Don't worry, I might post the next chapter today itself cause I am free today and also I am really excited how Primadonna would react for Tanner's death as almost for all the tvd fic, for some reason everyone loathed tanner, I do too but Primadonna's favourite subject is history so I have to give her a different reaction from rest of the fics. Plus I think this is the longest chapter I wrote in this fic

AURA OUT!

#bonnie bennett #caroline forbes #damon salvatore #elena gilbert #elijah mikaelson #klaus mikaelson #kol mikaelson #rebekah mikaelson #stefan salvatore #sebastian kydd #stefan salvatore x reader #alaric saltzman #austin butler x reader

[iwritesongfics]

Summary: Your brother finds out you’re secretly dating Eddie and makes your life hell.

Tags and Warnings: angst, fluff, not proof-read, curse words, panic attacks

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Carver! Reader

A/N:

I tried not to put any specific pronouns, and although cheerleaders in the 80s are most likely female, hopefully while reading this it can be overlooked.

I just realized that the part with Eddie is so short, I'm sorryyy 😭

You woke up with a start as the sun seeped through the curtains of your bedroom window.

“Shit, it’s 7 o’clock!”

Jason must have overslept. “Jason! Jason!” you called out, while sifting through your dresser for your cheerleading uniform. “We’re going to be late!”

You hopped around the hallway, trying to make your way to his room while stuffing your feet into your trainers. “Jason, come on!” He was going to be so upset that he woke up late for the pep rally.

As you were hammering on his door, your mom’s head peeked through your staircase. “You’re still here? Jason left 30 minutes ago!”

“What?!” You gasped. “Did he say why he left me?”

Your mom shrugged. “I didn’t know you were here, dear. He just said he had to leave early for the pep rally.”

“Mom! I’m literally a cheerleader! I’m also in the pep rally!” You shrieked as you grabbed your bag from the closet and ran out. “Bye mom, love you, see you later!”

Wondering what possessed your brother to leave you on one of the most important days of the school year, you hurried to grab your old bike from the garage, wishing to heavens that Chrissy didn’t kill you for not making your call time.

---

“Where were you?!” Chrissy snapped as soon as you ran into the gym 20 minutes later. “It’s almost time for the pep rally, we didn’t get to polish our routine because of you!”

Panting, you held a hand up while trying to catch your breath. “I’m so sorry, Chris, I overslept, Jason left without me, have you seen him?”

Chrissy looked bewildered. “He left you? Why would he – anyway, there’s no time for that, we’re starting in a few minutes!”

“Good thing I’m already warmed up,” you offered jokingly, and Chrissy rolled her eyes with a smile, signaling her forgiveness.

---

The pep rally went without a hitch, with your brother even calling out a cheesy shout-out for Chrissy, but you didn’t see him right after, he seemed to have disappeared.

In fact, all your friends are nowhere to be found. What is happening to the world?

You quickly freshen up and head over to the cafeteria, happy to see your brother and the rest of your friends at last. Grabbing a tray, you grab a hot lunch of spaghetti and a carton of milk and head over to your usual table.

“Hey guys,” You plopped onto your seat beside Jason and Chrissy, but an awkward silence met you.

“What’s going on?” Your friends didn’t seem to want to make eye contact with you and kept their silence. “Jason?” Your brother wouldn’t look at you, his jaw and fist obviously clenched.

“Chrissy?” she gave you a pitying glance but just shook her head.

“Jason, this isn’t funny, first you leave me at home and now this? What’s with the silent treatment? What did I do?” You knew you were making a scene but you were so confused.

Jason slammed his fist onto the table, upending your milk carton, which spilled on your uniform.

“What the fu-“

“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend what you did, huh?” he exploded.

You paled at his outburst; the whole cafeteria went silent, too. In your mind the only sound was your heavy breathing and the continuous drip, drip, drip of the milk as it spilled from its carton to your uniform to the floor.

“I don’t – “

“Shut the fuck up, I saw you with him,” Jason seethed.

“Jason, please, I’m still your sister,” you placed a hand over his arm, which he shrugged off angrily.

“I don’t have a sister who dates freaks. Talk to me when you’ve come to your senses,” he turns away from you and sweeps your whole tray away from the table, your plate of spaghetti and the rest of your milk clattering to the floor.

“Carol? Chrissy?” you bleated out. I can’t believe this is happening. Everyone was staring. Even the lunch ladies stopped doling out food to watch the spectacle that is your fall from social grace.

The room started to spin the longer your brother and your friends kept silent. With the exception of Jason, who refuses to look at you, you could feel their silent judgement the longer they stared.

Feeling your breathing getting shallower, you stood up and make your way out of the cafeteria before you have a full-blown panic attack in public.

“Wait –“you hear Chrissy call out in a small voice before someone, your brother probably, shushes her.

“That’s right, go on to your freak boyfriend,” Jason taunted as you slowly walked away from them. You held your head higher and tried to look unbothered despite your cheerleader uniform dripping with milk as you walked past the whole student body in humiliation.

“Anyone I see talking to that traitor gets to join the freaks, too,” Jason bellowed out to the room, and was the last thing you heard as you finally stepped out of the seemingly endless room. As soon as you were out of the doorway, you ran as fast as your feet could carry you to the woods beside the school, where you allowed yourself to fall apart.

---

“I’m sorry.”

You looked up and saw the reason for your exile slowly approaching you, his large brown eyes somber and hands held up in surrender. Taking one look at him, you exploded in sobs anew, your chest heaving with emotion. “Hey, hey, I’m here, babe,” he sprints the short distance to hold you in his arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Eddie kept murmuring to your hair as he held you and rubbed your arms and back in an attempt to comfort you.

“Eddie, why are you apologizing?” you asked when you managed to run out of tears, slightly hiccupping.

He cups your face in one hand, his other hand whipping out his black handkerchief to wipe your tears as he avoided eye contact with you and your question.

“Eddie?”

Eddie hangs his head, letting go of your face to look at his hands. “It’s my fault,” he mumbles out. “I’m sorry.”

“Baby,” you whispered. “Can you look at me, please?” He reluctantly looks at you, and you see guilt and fear in his eyes.

“It’s not your fault they’re all assholes, Eddie,” you said, holding his face in your hands.

“But if it weren’t for me – “

“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have fallen in love,” you interrupted, stroking his soft hair away from his face.

“I love you too, babe, but I’m not worth sacrificing your brother or friends,” he kisses your hand that was still cupping his cheek.

“You’re worth the world, Eddie Munson, don’t you ever think otherwise.” You softly kiss his cheek and nestle in his arms.

You sit with Eddie in comfortable silence for a while, until you heard him give a small sigh.

“It’s just that, if you stay with me, then I’ll be the only person you’ll have in your corner.”

“You know what, Eds, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

He finally gives you a smile. “It wouldn’t?”

“It would be the best thing.” You smiled up at him and kissed him on the lips, hoping to show him just how much of a good thing that would be.

#Stranger Things #Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson x Reader #Eddie Munson Fluff #eddie munson fanfic #Spotify

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 8-13

OKAY. Here we go. The rest of season 4, in verbal-vomit format (sorry).

It's all uphill from here, folks. The second half of season 4 is a lot stronger (in my opinion) than the first half, with all the season's best episodes piling up towards the end, not to mention James's return at the very end of the finale. We made it! We rushed, but it wasn't SO bad. I actually enjoyed myself on this rewatch (as long as I watched a few fave scenes from other seasons after each episode in order to scrub Eddie out of my brain). It's a really good season for Teresa's character development, actually. I felt like I could really see this time how queenpin was born out of everything. Anyway, I'll dig in below the cut...

Like I did for the first half, let's look at the second half of season 4 plot lines and what they do for Teresa's overall character development.

Cheo and Luce Episodes 4x08 and 4x09 were taken over by this single story arc where El Gordo's guy Cheo (whom we met in 4x01 when Teresa met El Gordo at his cock fight and planned the heist of his shipment) is on the verge of becoming an FBI informant. As always, this somehow becomes Teresa's problem, and El Gordo sends an assassin to New Orleans. Teresa's supposed to help him take out Cheo, who is traveling with his wife and child. But instead of helping the assassin take him and his whole family out, she (well, Pote) kills the assassin and then threatens the wife and child in order to get them to convince Cheo not to talk after all and to go to prison instead. It works, but…. she could’ve also just taken Tony, gone to Belize, and left El Gordo to deal with his own mess.

This whole little side-plot is meant to illustrate how Teresa’s changed from someone who would avoid harming any innocent bystanders at all costs, even if it made it harder for herself to escape the business, to someone who would willingly harm innocent bystanders, if it meant she didn’t have to escape the business. Obviously she chooses a more indirect form of harm—rather than killing Cheo’s family, she merely uses fear to get them to do what she needs them to do—but it’s still harm. And I guess I don’t buy it. I don’t really get why she doesn’t just take the opportunity to be like, ok, screw it, we’re getting out of here. Supposedly she doesn’t want to uproot Tony again, but… she doesn’t want to uproot him to a better life in the Caribbean away from the cartel violence and threats to his and her life…? It doesn’t add up. I get what the writers were trying to accomplish here, but it wasn’t nearly subtle enough and didn’t even feel believable.

Javier/Emilia Javier continues to be a ball and chain, dragging Teresa and Emilia down with him. His lie about Rene manages to get Emilia killed, then Tony, and finally Teresa has to turn him over to the Judge herself in order to save Oksana. He goes down in literal flames, and I have to say: I actually really, really love the season finale and part of it is it FINALLY gives Javier screen time that I enjoy. The emotion between him and Teresa now that she finally knows the truth is real, it’s so believable, it is gut-wrenching. Actually her good-bye to Javier is consistently the only scene in the show that makes me cry every time. I’m not really a crier when I watch stuff but man, that scene, and Alice’s and Alfonso’s acting… truly truly great.

But the whole Emilia storyline feels like wasted time, another little side story that could be cut out of the season without leaving a trace. I feel like she was brought in to be a parallel to Teresa and Eddie? Like both her and Javier are looking in some way for normalcy outside their lives in the business and Emilia is the cautionary tale of what could go wrong, while Teresa luckily manages to cut Eddie off before it gets to that point? Idk but quite frankly I would’ve been more than fine with Eddie being the one to die a horrible and sad death 😂 I don’t think we needed to watch a second innocent female character this season die. AND, I don’t think the story helped Javier at all. Look at how powerful it was once he was actually being honest with Teresa, look at what those two could do together on-screen, the emotion they could generate!! SO MUCH LOST POTENTIAL in what could’ve gone down between them this season instead. Heck, I would’ve even preferred a failed romance between them than having to watch two boring failed romances with Eddie and Emilia, and for the record, I do not in any way ship Teresa and Javier, I just think it would’ve been better writing than what we got. SO THERE.

Tony Man, I am starting to sound like a cranky old-timer, but here I go again: this story was more wasted potential. The actor didn’t do it for me, he didn’t feel like real Tony, he felt like an actor. There were a few great moments with him and 4x08 when Teresa breaks down in tears while telling him about Chino and Guero and how Pote was originally coming after her to kill her too is one of them. Alice I swear to god can create screen chemistry with a doorknob, not to say the actor who plays Tony is quite doorknob level, but… Anyway, that scene feels powerful to me at least in part because she finally says out loud that Guero was to blame for where she ended up. Feels like she’s put him definitively to rest, no more sheen of nostalgia. And the emotion in recounting the trauma of those early days in the cartel feels so palpable, so real. It was nice to have that callback to season 1. But otherwise… I don’t know, they could’ve made the tension with her trying to figure out family vs. cartel, normalcy vs. impossibility of normalcy, a lot more emotional in my opinion, so that when he died, I would actually have felt her grief. But the early part of the season distracted so much with other crap that I didn’t really feel that invested in Tony, and the fact Teresa kept him at arm’s length meant that the emotional investment in him didn’t really build.

Pote/Kelly Anne Their relationship felt sweet this season. I’ll give them that. But I’m struggling to think of any time Pote was otherwise actually useful to Teresa? It seems like maybe the purpose of focusing his screentime with Kelly Anne and Tony was to build him up as this possible family man—not just the teddy bear sicario, but someone you root for independently and also want to see survive to a post-cartel life. The problem is I feel like it kinda neuters him as a character. By the time episode 4x11 comes around and Teresa’s in a coma, Pote’s running the show and I kinda don’t care about him? Sorry?

Kelly Anne, though, man she’s so good this season when she’s sharing screen time with Teresa. Episode 4x10 is one of the strongest of the season because Teresa teams up with Kelly Anne to take down a shady banker. It’s SO SATISFYING! Teresa gets so little screentime with women this season compared to the first two especially, but even the third, and I find myself wondering why didn’t they feature Kelly Anne more prominently in relation to Teresa??? Why did she have to get siloed with Pote? They could’ve made her and Teresa overcoming the season 3 betrayal a bigger part of the story, idk, or had all of that happen earlier in the season so that there would be more time for her to be on display as Teresa’s lawyer. Because she’s SO GOOD in that role. And speaking of Teresa teaming up with women in 4x10…

Oksana My heart starts to hurt when I think of all the screentime dedicated to Javier/Boaz/Emilia or to Eddie or even to the Judge/his son that could’ve gone to Castel (sob) or Kelly Anne or Oksana. She was so delightfully sleazy with respect to Teresa, a refreshing change from all the men who are sleazy with her. Her arc this season is fairly minor; El Gordo connects Teresa to her so that Teresa can start distributing up the east coast and then Oksana facilitates Teresa’s expansion to NY via her invisible cousin, Kostya. I think the main purpose of these characters in season 4 is to set up the final season, or that’s what it seems like given how little we actually saw of Oksana, but this is another one they could’ve done a lot more with. But like Kelly Anne’s team-up with Teresa in 4x10 to take down the corrupt banker, Oksana’s team-up with Teresa in that same episode to finally take out El Gordo is just as satisfying, if not moreso. Oksana feels a little bit like Camila at first: she’s sexy and chilly and intimidating. You can almost imagine that if Camila hadn’t been so jealous of Teresa, or had met her as an equal like Oksana does here, that they could’ve had similar vibes. Unsure if they can trust each other, cautious about any ulterior motives, fully aware of the risks and how powerful they each are. Anyway, I love Oksana, and it’s so good watching her agree to side with Teresa against erratic El Gordo. Oksana corrected him back in 4x05 that a woman doesn’t need to be twice as brutal as a man in this business—just twice as smart, and maybe he got a little too confident that he could get away with whatever bullshit and she wouldn’t come down on him. Well, dude, how’s this: women can still be brutal, too, and neither Teresa nor Oksana needs you now, so they outsmarted you to boot.

Marcel OH MARCEL. Okay, I forgot when I did my recap for the first part of the season that he really truly redeems himself by the end. It doesn’t change the fact that the way he treated her in the beginning was sexist and violent and unfair (strong-arming her into working with him, bullying her, attacking her business, and then killing Birdie), but it shows that he, like everyone who works with her, grew to truly respect her, was changed by her, even. She showed that it was possible to take the moral high road and not carry resentment or ill will, and that burying the hatchet was not showing weakness, but strength. And with those lessons, she earned his true respect and loyalty. So by the end, their relationship was one of the biggest strengths of the season. The moment in 4x12 when Marcel meets with the Judge and is faced with the pressure to betray her is a real nailbiter and then the follow-up moment when he calls Teresa to warn her that the Judge is coming for her at the end of that episode is soooooo good. I may or may not have pumped my arm and shouted “YES!” at my screen at that part. Even though this is my second time watching this season all the way through so it wasn’t as if it was a surprise.

The way Teresa allies with Marcel this season is still “old Teresa.” Despite so many changes and sacrifices she’s had to make, she is fair with Marcel, and transparent, gives him the benefit of the doubt and takes the higher road, as I’ve said. This is part of her she hasn’t lost yet, this desire to do business respectfully, honestly, and with integrity. I hate that it’s the part of her she’ll lose as soon as season 5 begins (and I’m sure I’ll dissect that more again when I get there…). But I love that it’s her that helped Marcel believe in it being possible to do business this way (much like she convinced King George, and James, and Taza), since he sure wasn’t operating that way at the beginning of the season.

The Judge Finally, the Judge. The season’s ultimate antagonist. I think I said this in my first-half recap but I do appreciate the show making the villain a representation of the (white/male supremacist) political establishment here in the U.S. And I mean, he is sooo evil, but it’s still largely believable. At least, the extortion and the blackmail and the funding private prisons and funneling innocent kids to those same prisons is believable. The whole weird side-plot with his son and dead wife felt a bit hollow and I just didn’t find myself caring, not to mention the time dedicated to the detective sidekick, and would’ve preferred the screentime to go to anyone in Teresa’s inner circle. But as a villain, I can’t complain.

Still, idk, as far as screen chemistry I wish there had been anything that could’ve come close to filling in the gap Camila left. Partly I think it’s just that this season had so many fewer women playing opposite Teresa. But also Teresa and Camila had such great chemistry together. I even felt (as I’ve written before) that season 3 suffered from siloing Teresa and Camila apart from each other, though I recognize their relationship and proximity needed to change for story purposes. I also realize Camila wasn’t relevant anymore to Teresa’s rise, so it’s not like I think she shoud’ve stuck around. I think I just kinda maybe felt like the villain didn’t need to be quite so personified anymore this season; it could’ve been a more character-driven season with Teresa having to just slowly come to terms with what the heck she’s doing in this business. Definitely still need the enemies, and I definitely like having the white government official bad guy, so I wouldn’t toss him altogether, but give him a little less story maybe?

Do you appreciate how I’ve basically made this recap an excuse to talk about all the things I would’ve done differently this season? Lol. That wasn’t my intent. Overall I actually really really enjoyed the last third of the season, from 4x10 on. The episodes are really solid; the plots focus on Teresa and her core crew; Boaz becomes a more present character which will lead into season 5; Teresa’s badass and idk it all just WORKS. I love it. (4x11 is a weak link, especially with the rewriting Tony timeline, but the other three are REALLY good.) And then, of course, at the end of them all, James comes back. It’s about time. YOU WERE MISSED.

#qots s4 #4x08 #4x09 #4x10 #4x11 #4x12 #4x13 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #I did try to half-ass this but it's literally impossible for me to keep anything concise #so instead you get stream of unedited consciousness #sorry? #also I couldn't get the gif search box to find me a season 4 Marcel or season 4 Oksana gif wtf #I know they exist #but couldn't figure out the right search terms #so you'll just have to imagine them and I apologize for the wall of text

[frstcorinthians]

; rosary-strung (i)

summary: second meetings seem like firsts. even saints have nightmares. pairing: eventual hob x oc x morpheus, right now it’s just gearing up warnings: mentions of violence (familial abuse & sexual assault hinted at very vaguely), blood, rusty writing skills since it’s been a minute for me wc: ~1.7k notes: hihihi i haven’t written fic, never mind oc fic, in like a literal decade. but here, have this. hope its alright okay bye

cross-posted to ao3

The second time she met Hob Gadling, he was taking care of her cat.

The silly creature had wandered off without telling her, there one day and gone the next. She had heard the calico’s cries for distress in the back of her mind, a small itch that manifested into louder meowing. She followed the sounds late one night to the door of a brightly-lit building, the sounds of chatter and good cheer spilling out onto the street. The sign read “The New Inn.”

She sighed. Time to collect her cat.

She pushed her way through the crowd, following the small purring rattling in her mind. It led her to a cozy corner towards the back of the building, covered in papers in various stages of grading. Her cat sat squarely on top. The purring moved out of her head and into the real world as she took in the scene before her: a handsome man cradled her cat’s head, petting and scratching between its ears. A small smile crossed his face. 

She cleared her throat. “Excuse me. It seems you’ve found my cat.” The man looked up. He had kind eyes, she noticed. Absently, she thought she’d seen eyes like those before. It had been so long, though, since she had recognized someone. A lifetime ago.

“She’s yours? She wandered in the other day. Sweet thing, she had a thorn stuck in her paw. I pulled it out, she seems to be healing well.” He gave the cat in question a couple pets between her ears.

“Thank you. I was worried, with the traffic and all. I’m glad she found a kind heart to land with.”

The man’s smile was dazzling. “Of course.” The calico yawned, stretched, and eyed its owner, before hopping down onto the table bench and beginning to wash itself. She looked around the bar once again, taking in the atmosphere. Maybe she’d get a drink. It had been ages since she’d had a night out.

“Can I buy you a drink for taking care of my little runaway?”

The man laughed. “I’d love it, but I’m not sure the owner should drink while on the job.”

“Consider it a debt owed, then. If you’re ever at the coffee shop down the road, I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

“Saint Sebastian’s? Consider it done. Their cider is hard to beat.” A small smile began to play across her lips. She liked this man, despite the strange feeling he brought to the back of her mind. Maybe she would linger, buy a round. “I don’t mind watching her for a few more minutes, if you want to sit down and have a drink.”

She laughed. “If you insist. A couple of the drinks did catch my eye.”

He raised his mug. “Cheers to that. Let me know when you two are leaving, I’ll come say goodbye.”

“Of course.”

The rest of the night passed in a warm haze, the familiarity of being surrounded by strangers, all kind but all unknowing. It had been a long time since she had gone out, longer still since she had been relaxed enough to enjoy herself. She lost herself in the steady thrum of life around her, the snippets of conversations she overheard, the peals of laughter. Her scars barely bothered her, the warm environment chasing away all memories, as she purchased round after round, indulging. She was at loathe to leave, even when her eyelids started drooping. She only called it a night when she found herself nodding off at the bar. She whistled for the calico, hoping it would hear but not expecting it to respond, before donning her coat and heading for the door. 

“See you soon! I’ll remember about Sebastian’s,” a cheery voice called out from behind. She stumbled, heart knifed by a pang of familiarity. She was back in the bar just days before her death, riding the same high of good company and heavy drink she felt now. The voice that had waved her out of the New Inn was a mirror to the one echoing through her mind now. She brushed her hair out of her face, determined not to lose herself in the past. Not yet.

“Of course! Tell them you know the owner.” She waved her hand behind her indistinctly, calico trailing at her heels. After a short walk down the street, she pushed her way into her apartment. Her eyelids felt heavier still as she peeled off her coat before flopping into bed. Her sleep was dreamless, at first.

It began the way it always did. She was scribbling at her father’s desk again, nine years old. The words were placed in her mind as she wrote them, divine and perfect. The door banged open, her father grabbed her hair, and she was hauled off his chair and down the stairs, pain ricocheting through her knees as they hit every step. The pain moved into her wrists as she was pinned down, James’s breath wet and sticky on her neck. She twitched as she slept, thrashing smothered under the blanket of sleep.

This night, however, the dream didn’t reach its zenith. She expected the pain to move up, lacing delicately around her neck. Instead, it seeped out of her completely. She found herself stretched out, four paws and twitching tail. She looked rather like her own calico. She was suspicious, at first - why had the pain left her? where did it go? - before slumping down to enjoy the warmth of the fire. She had been suffering for so long. Who was she to deny a little comfort? And the fire was so warm, and she was so cozy. She slipped away before she even realized, into dreams so deep she didn’t remember them when she woke.

The next afternoon found her mirroring the stranger’s position from last night. Her books were spread out across a table in the back of St. Sebastian’s,  glasses sat low on her nose, pencil dancing between her fingers. April hummed away at the espresso machine, pulling shots and steaming milk. She was partway through dissecting one of Byron’s poems when the bell above the door chimed. A warm greeting echoed through the space, and she looked up to see the face of the stranger from last night. She felt her face break into a smile, despite herself.

“The cat owner! I figured I’d find you here.” He rubbed his hands together, warding off the last of the late autumn chill. “So how’s the cider looking today?”

She pushed out from the table.

A round of coffee led to conversation about the state of the neighborhood, the customers each of their businesses got, how beautiful the weather had been lately. There was still something about this man she recognized, something in the tilt of his head or the glint of his eyes. She was comfortable around him in a way she hadn’t been around someone in very many years. She hesitated to question why, but couldn’t stop her mind from wandering.

The conversation drifted, then quieted. He glanced at the books covering the table, lazy at first, before his eye caught on one.

“Hamlet, huh?” His nose wrinkled.

“What, you take issue with the Bard?” She aimed to tease, but something in his tone snagged her attention.

“Unfortunately. It’s a bit personal.”

“Oh?” She didn’t mean to prod, but couldn’t help but want to tease out more about him. She sipped her coffee. “I remember when I first saw it performed. A long time ago, but it’s stuck with me.” A long time ago, indeed. She had been a child, starry-eyed at Ophelia’s ravings. She whispered the lines to herself as she fell asleep that night: there’s rosemary, for remembrance. There’s fennel for you, and columbines.

“How long?” The question brought her back. He was fiddling with his earlobe, eyes fixed on her.

“Quite some time.” She couldn’t look away. “Long enough that I don’t know if you’d recognize any of the actors.”

He hummed. The conversation faded again, not quite as comfortable as before, a small spark now lighting the air. She went back to her edits, he continued to sip his drink. The sun dipped low in the sky, and she noticed April starting to make eyes at her, begging to leave. At last, the stranger sat up, stretching before pushing out his chair.

“Well, I’d better get going. Nightlife calls.” She gave him a small wave as he headed out the door. She was lost in thought the rest of the night, mutely helping April dry and put away dishes. Her mind was still in the past as she fed the calico, a million miles away from the tin of cat food she opened.

When she slept that night, she dreamt of her childhood home. She was a cat again, still by a warm fire, but the plush carpet under her was the sapphire of her father’s study. A prickle began to crawl its way down her spine. She sat up, tail thrashing back and forth. Not a moment sooner, a large black cat stalked around her, coming to sit between her and the fire. She resisted the urge to hiss, settling for backing up several paces.

“What do you want?” Her voice was sharp, girlish, not nearly as forceful as she had intended.

The cat’s eyes glinted, somehow reflecting the fire behind him. The man you met today. What is your business with him?

She twitched her nose. “Nothing. He found my cat, we shared some drinks. Nothing more.”

I see you, little saint. Your death reverberated through the dreams of those who saw it. You bring suffering and agony wherever you go.

Her hackles were fully raised, voice quiet in her fury. “How dare you.”

 Be careful, little saint. The fire dimmed slowly, casting the room into darkness, until all that was left were his eyes. You have hurt others. Take care you cause no harm to him. She hissed then, either to ward him off or against the encroaching darkness, she didn’t know.

Her nightmares began in earnest, then, in all their painful, bloody glory.

#aleks.docx #sandman fic #morpheus x original character #hob gadling x original character #bro i have no idea how to tag this anyways here it is #pls enjoy i wrote quite a bit of it while i was drunk #god please give feedback i want to chat about this

[sithzuko]

vaatu and raava: *fighting over the literal fate of the world*

wan: can i have a waffle? can i please have a waffle?

#i love him ur honor #this is literally the scene when they all met for the first time bye #tlok #the legend of korra #lok #incorrect quotes #incorrect #tlok incorrect quotes #incorrect tlok quotes #incorrect tlok #the legend of korra incorrect quotes #incorrect legend of korra quotes #incorrect legend of korra #incorrect lok #incorrect lok quotes #lok incorrect quotes #avatar wan #vaatu #raava

[souyasbabyy]

• pairing: wakasa x fem!reader, mikey x fem!reader, senju x fem!reader

• request by @raysano: hello! i just found your blog and i already love it!! :D i was wondering if i could request a mikey, wakasa and senju (separately ofc!) x fem!reader where reader has 5 older brothers and they invite their s/o around to meet their family. bc reader is the youngest, their brothers are really protective of them! i wish my brother was like that for me ;D thank you and have a wonderful day/evening!! p.s. if you don't feel comfortable writing a fem!reader, feel free to write it as gender-neutral!

• genre: fluff, crack

• note: thanks for the request it was funny to write and i really hope that it's what you actually wanted!!! also why i wish i had a protective older brother too 😭 thank you so much for the support, hope you'll spend a good day/night too 🖤

— wakasa

he knew that you had so many older brothers and he always acted as if he didn't cared

but when you actually told him that your brother wanted him to meet him, he was shitting himself

he even called benkei because he was scared they were gonna kill him

your eldest brother opened the door and looked him up and down, not even letting him in until you came, pushing your brother out of the way

wakasa said hi and literally none of them answered "aaah come on, don't be like that" you smile and wakasa ankwardly laugh when they answered

they asked him all type of questions and he answered, really he looked confident, but you could feel his hand sweating in yours under the table

also they hitted him with the "you hurt her i'll kill you" conv

he left and you were about to kiss each other but your brothers all decide to say bye to him so he left just waving at you

and then he texted you like "they hate me?"

probably think that you were gonna break up with him bc of them

— mikey

the first time he met one of your brother he was out with draken and saw you hugging a guy, boy was mad thinking you were cheating with him

you know that scene where hina and takemichi spy on emma and mikey yeah, he forced draken to do the same and when he had enough he came to you, pushing your brother and putting his hands on your shoulder "Who is that asshole Y/n?" he asked

your brother raise an eyebrow "remove your hands from my sister" he says and pushinghim away from you, hiding you behind his back

mikey was like :O

like he literally wanted to cry

(draken is probably laughing at him in the back)

"who the fuck are you?" asked your brother, looking down at mikey "i'm her- she's my- i'm sorry" and he ranaway

like he literally went 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️, even draken was surprised

you had to explain to your brother that it was your boyfriend and he laughed so hard, like he said it to all your other brothers and now they were "excited" to meet mikey (they'll tease him until he die)

mikey called you whinning because he was embarassed also to say sorry

— senju

senju was used to coming unnanounced and barging in like it was her place, running to your room and almost making you having heart attacks when she opens the door of your bedroom

but since now she was lucky that your brother were never home

until that day, where she opened the door screaming "where is my girlfriend?!" and that she saw 5 guys looking at her

she went 😳

and when you came out of your room, you kissed her took her by the hand and walked to your bedroom

she was rumbling about how she was gonna die of embarassment like "that was my first meeting with them?! i'll die!"

one of your brother decide to come in your bedroom, pretendind he was searching something before leaving as he left the door opened on purpose

5 minutes later another one of your brother came, sitting on your bed and just looked at her "so you're the girlfriend huh?", "leave her alone" "i just want to know!"

and senju answered "i can fight" you looked at her like "tf" and she panicked "i mean not you! i mean, i can protect her, i mean not that you don't do it good, and i know she can protect herself but you know haha"

please help her

by the end of the day they probably all end up in your room, talking with you two and that evening she told you she won't come unnanouced ever again

#mel 🌻 #tokyo revengers x reader #tokyo revengers imagine #tokyo revengers headcanon #tokyorev x reader #tokyo revengers fluff #mikey x reader #tokyo revengers mikey #mikey imagine #tokyo revengers wakasa #wakasa x reader #wakasa imagine #senju x reader #senju imagine #tokyo revengers senju